The Pig Did It (4 page)

“Sweeney's the man's name, not the pig's,” Aaron said.

“All pigs are named Sweeney, a name come down from the Romans.
Sus, suis.
Then the Italians.
Sumo.
Then the Irish, the final refinement, into Sweeney Shame on you for not knowing it. Next time you see the man you might tell him. And tell him who told you. Now, do you want to come into the house?”

Because he could think of no alternative, Aaron had said yes.

They went in the side door, directly into the kitchen, where scrolls of wallpaper, paste pots, and a ladder took up most of the space, including the five chairs and the heavy wooden table. Now he could see his aunt, and she could see him. She was the first to speak. “You've grown no more than that?”

“I'm over six feet.”

“Well, you don't look it. Now give me a squeeze, and we'll be the way we used to be and no years between.”

He gave her the hug but didn't quite feel the renewal she'd predicted. Still, it was a start, and he was, if not satisfied, at least encouraged by this renewal of family bonds. Standing away after the embrace, Aaron had his first impression confirmed: his aunt was taller than he'd expected. But her lips were still a little too full, her mouth a little too large, and the all-seeing eyes seemed still to find both amusement and disdain in what they saw. The freckles had not faded from her cheekbones or her nose, although her forehead seemed to have cleared. “We'll have fine times again,” she was saying. “I can see to that.”

Aaron wondered if now was the time to tell her the truth—that he had come here to suffer. He had come to deepen the lines on his forehead, to implant a mournfulness into his eyes that would forever silence the joyful and inspire shame in the indifferent.

Aaron decided he'd wait and tell his aunt another time. Or, better, she would become aware and ask hesitant questions, becoming more sympathetic and compassionate with each and every answer he'd quietly, stoically give. She would be moved. She would admire him. He would become choked with gratitude. Soon, but not now.

Kitty had cleared a space on the table, then on the stove, brushing the wallpaper off to the floor where
it
could unroll if it wanted to, putting the paste pot on a rear burner so she could use the front. The talk was of Aaron's pig adventure, the young woman's interesting attributes, and the kindness of young Mr. Sweeney. At the mention of the name, his aunt had said, “Maybe you'd like to stop talking and eat what's been put before you.” For his first meal in Ireland, Aaron was given spaghetti with enough made for the two of them and the pig besides, with the pig to get most of the tomato sauce. The pig would also enjoy a full box of corn flakes, a near-full jar of applesauce, and what looked like the remains of a tuna fish casserole. (A stalk of celery and a turnip were considered, but decided against. The barley soup and the chocolate pudding, she said, would be saved for the morning.)

The food was stirred into a wholesome mash in a dishpan. Kitty stuck her finger in, then licked it clean. “Let it never be said the guest of a McCloud goes hungry.” She stuck her finger in again, licked it again, and nodded her head in approval of what she had wrought. Then she took it out to the pig.

Aaron was given an apple for dessert and told to take it upstairs to his room so she could finish the wallpapering without him in the way. That he had been offered no television, no drink in the living room, surprised him. He had looked forward to refusing. He had wanted to speak of his weariness, to hint at his need for solitude, but he was given no chance. No different from days long gone, he felt be was being shooed up to bed; he'd been enough trouble for one day.

Aaron had dressed by the open window so the ocean breeze could air first his body, then his clothes, cooled by a wind made newly fresh by the pasture dew and the mist not yet fully dissolved out over the sea. He took in a deep breath to fill his lungs with longing, but before he could exhale he saw the pig bound out from the side of the house, more a gamboling lamb than a low-bellied swine. Without pause it trotted into the field and began to root with its snout, digging down into the grass, tearing deep into the turf.

Aaron exhaled. No doubt his aunt had let the pig out of the shed. But its presence, its inclusion in the view, seemed an affront to the sad thoughts he'd begun to generate in his mind. The austerity of the scene was disrupted; no longer was it the perfect setting for the drama he was determined to enact. The cadenced fall of the waves was reduced to distant commentary by the snortings and snufflings that Aaron could hear as clearly as if the pig were there with him in the room. The pig was an intruder, as much on Aaron's sensibilities as on the general scene, and it must be dispatched without delay.

He put on his high thick-soled boots, his Timberlands, presumably waterproof, for walking on the beach. The woman—Lolly whatever-her-name-was—must come and collect the animal immediately. Aaron would even forgo the thanks he'd hoped to receive. The woman could take her good cheer and her pig and move on. He no longer required her gratitude, the surprised smile, the leaping laugh at the sight of the wayward pig returned. The handshake, the soft and healthy grip of her hand in his, the beaming disbelief with which she would greet the tale of his pursuit, the astonished awe she would feel at his proved ability to discipline a renegade—all this he would deny himself. Even the touch of her free hand on his upper arm during the handshake, and the feel of the tip of her shoe against the toe of his boot, all his due reward he would surrender without complaint. Praise for his—and here Aaron stopped in mid-thought. He tied his shoes. The phrase “animal husbandry” had come into his mind. Uncomfortable with its kinky connotations, he blocked further consideration of Lolly what's-her-name's effusions and started downstairs.

The snores coming from his aunt's room as he passed down the hall—at first he thought he was still being pursued by the sounds of the pig—told him that she was not yet up and, by a process of logic that took some few seconds to complete, he deduced that she was not the one who had set free the pig. He went down the stairs and into the kitchen. The room was orderly and immaculate. The wallpapering was done, a pattern of small red roses looking somewhat like diseased bees covering not only the four walls but the ceiling as well. He expected to hear the hum and buzz of the bees' distress. If he were to move he would be attacked, he would be stung, mortally. They would swarm all over him, moving in busy anger over his head, his face, his hands, his entire body.

That the effect of Kitty's labors was so disturbing detracted not at all from the immensity of the task performed. Nor did it take Aaron long to realize his aunt's intent, conscious or subconscious. On the table was a computer, complete with screen and keyboard, with modem and mouse. It was here in the kitchen she did her writing. To protect her solitude she had made the room as inhospitable as she could. No one would pause within these walls. An intruder was dared to intrude. The unease, the discomfort, would discourage anyone this side of insensible. This hive was her domain, the sickly bees her protector and her guard.

Kitty wrote novels of some popularity. Her method, admitted to Aaron alone, was simple. She would take some work that had already proved its appeal and then, as she put it, make her “corrections” and market the book as her own, which, in truth, it would be. Happy endings would be imposed, the proud debased, the humble given the victory. The couplings would be rearranged; one weapon would be substituted for another, hair colors changed and coiffures traded one for the other. Clothing she redistributed with little alteration, the fashions not always surviving, but a chic provided by way of recompense. Gender change solved more than one problem, with new possibilities often suggested. To place the settings beyond the reach of plagiarism, she would mix up the backdrops, the furniture, and the props, creating not so much confusion as, more often than not, an environment the reader found compelling in its singularity and invention.

When Aaron, in a letter responding to her confession, asked why—when she had so much imagination at her disposal, so much craft at her service—why she didn't simply write novels of her own devising, she answered that she was helpless without the anger and frustration aroused by those who'd written the originals. They'd gotten
it
all wrong, and she would set it right. Their mistakes fueled her imagination; they generated energy. Without the goad of their errors, she had no will, no need to proceed. Her sense of superiority allowed her to see their world and all its people with a clarity made possible by being seen from so great and grand a height, a vision obviously unavailable to her precursors because they had failed to be, quite simply, Kitty McCloud. She was doing them all a favor. She was doing the readers a favor. Taking to herself the burdens of error, she made the necessary revisions. It was not, she claimed, a difficult task. So egregious, so obvious had been their mistakes, that it took minimum effort to return intelligent understanding to its rightful place, to restore the reign of common sense and, in the process, strike a significant blow for the cause of Kitty's bank account. Not with onions and cabbages did she support her acreage, not with parsnips and radishes did she make secure her view of the Western Sea. Her “corrections” had improved upon her inheritance, keeping available to Aaron the stretch of beach below on which he would soon exercise his anguish.

For all the repugnance Aaron felt at the sight of the wallpaper, he couldn't move toward the outside door without pausing to note the book, open at page 276, next to his aunt's computer. He lifted it and read the spine. It was
Jane Eyre.
He put the book down, open at the same page. He remembered a recent letter from his aunt. This was the book currently being “corrected.” In Kitty's version it would be the Rochester character, not the madwoman, who would jump from the tower, stricken as he was by Jane's refusal to participate in his proposed bigamy. The novel would end with Jane's cure of the madwoman through kindness and sisterly care, their affectionate friendship, and the fulfillment they would find in the practice of weaving and—again the phrase—animal husbandry. Aaron glanced quickly at the blank computer screen, wished it luck, and continued out the door.

It surprised Aaron that the slam of the screen door, the quick clap, the low thrum, didn't bring on some Proustian recall of his boyhood summers there, an assault of high-clouded days, of rabbits and clams and apples with worms, of bare feet and cow pies and thistles, and of thundering storms with jagged lightning piercing again and again the tortured breast of the sea.

But then he quickly remembered: In his childhood there had been no screen door. This American artifact was introduced into Ireland by his aunt when she returned from her college days at Fordham in the Bronx and realized there was no real reason why the flies had to be invited into the family kitchen. In deference to its newfound Irish identity, she referred to it as a mesh door, allowing the Americans to keep their own designation.

(She also brought back an intensified nationalism inspired by her homesick yearning for County Kerry and, finally—with the exception of a BA in moral theology—a recipe for meat loaf and Apple Brown Betty, a farewell present from a roommate, June Gately, who had majored in economics.)

But now all thoughts of Proust and mesh doors were brought to a fast halt by the devastation he saw spread out before him. His aunt's vegetable garden had been rooted up entirely. The pig's search for grubs and forage had destroyed what Aaron recognized by their remains as tomatoes and cucumbers, peppers and green beans, red cabbage, carrots, leeks and the obligatory potatoes. A patch of herbs—basil, mint, cilantro, and cumin—was now made mulch. Four tall sunflowers that had marked the far boundary of the garden lay facedown in the tumbled earth.

Aaron next saw the shed where the pig had been put for the night. The door hung by its hasp like an appendage connected by a single thread. The hinges had been butted free and the doorframe splintered. Only the padlock had held, keeping the door tipped on its side, resting on a wheelbarrow just to the left of the doorway. Aaron let his eyes shift to the pasture. There the pig was continuing its search, rooting with its snout into the lush green grass, overturning with an efficiency a plow might envy one clump after another, convinced that there was a grub
somewhere
and that finding it would bring rewards beyond measure, beyond price. Snorts and grunts of anticipation accompanied each attempt, and Aaron had to marvel, even in his dismay, at the ability of so blunt an instrument as a pig snout to shovel into the earth and turn it upside down. Without paws or claws it could burrow better than a fox or a rabbit. Without blade or tusk it could dig up a field better than any pitchfork or spade. Bred over the millennia to overfeed and fatten, its instincts for plunder had obviously evolved into a talent for devastation that only the elements of earth, fire, water, and air (and humankind itself) could surpass.

Aaron's first impulse was to go back inside the house, close the screen door quietly behind him, move silently through the kitchen, back up the stairs, into his room, and into the bed, where he would wait to hear his aunt's howls when she would either look out the window or step outside the door. Then, sleepy eyed, he could innocently ask what was the matter. And follow his aunt's directions as to what might or what should be done.

But his annoyance with the pig overwhelmed such wisdom, and he ran into the pasture, once more clapping his hands, once more, as on the hill the day before, shouting,
“Suuueee! Suuueee!”
What this was supposed to accomplish he had no idea. Maybe if he could just stop the animal from further devastation, that would be enough. But there was no place to drive the pig, no place to put it.

The scent of the sea wafted into his nose. Without looking up, he knew the water was there, ahead—and the cliff at the pasture's edge. It would not be his fault. He would, on the contrary, have been trying to warn the pig away from the precipice. But the pig had ignored him. Which had seemed, from the beginning of their association, the pig's preference. He would be innocent. He would proffer his regrets to the lady. (He saw himself holding a hat in his hands, a fedora, passing the rim through fingers as if he were reading there in braille the words of condolence.)