The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page A

staring at it, then placed it again at the man’s side where it had lain for so long.
    Whenever she came to a grub or wormlike creature working its way through the earth or along one of the bones, in and through the clothes, she would pick it up and drop it on the mound growing at the side of the hole. A flat stone, a shard of hard sharp flint, lay in the chest and next to the skull was a round rock like a misplaced pillow. These his aunt rubbed and scraped until they were cleaned, as if they too were skeletal parts deserving of care. She then placed them, the round one on top of the flat, at the head of the grave. Other stones were added, two taken from the crook of the left arm, one from the pelvis, two from the right thigh, others from the folds and wrinkles of the worm-tattered clothes. By the time they’d uncovered the body, she had built a small cairn marking at last where the man had lain.
    There was a baseball cap on the head, and he was wearing what must have been his Sunday best, a suit of dark wool. Navy blue it seemed, the purple socks and the impressive shoes, the heels well worn. His shirt, shredded now into strips, could have been white, possibly even starched, the rim of the collar still jabbed into the jaw. Like a half-eaten nut at his throat, what had been the knot of a tie held a few wisps of dark silk that reached down past the first button of the suit coat. Someone had neglected to tuck it in. The tattered clothes, the holes with the bones showing through, the opened seams suggested that their deterioration was no different under the earth than it would have been above. If the clothing was not in such fine condition, it could be said that this was the natural state arrived at after doing harsh and awful service, the world and the weather having had their way, one moment a rip here, a tear there, a hole appearing now, a slit then, until a Sunday suit had taken to itself the effects of the working day, the unending labors, its payment for the privilege of being worn on a good man’s back.
    When the body was completely uncovered, Kitty sat back on her haunches and spoke for the first time since she’d instructed Aaron to use his hands instead of the spade. “This is Declan Tovey,” she said. “I know him by the cap and the suit and the shoes and the tie. Didn’t I sew this button on myself.” She reached down and lightly touched the second button on the jacket. It came loose and slipped away, down to the side. “Well, nothing stays forever, does it?” She withdrew her hand and put it on her lap. “We all thought he’d gone off, as usual, to who knows where, and here he’s been all this time.” Again she reached down, now to lift from his sleeve a lump of dirt. She put it on the mound at her side, then leaned over and took yet another clump from his pants leg, and one from his chest as if she were picking lint, occupying herself as she spoke. “He could build a house with four boards and enough stones for a chimney and make the roof of water reeds cut from the bog not far inland. The last of the last. A troubadour, but with strong hands instead of a song. A journeyman who never stayed but always came back. And then the work would get done where there’d been no man to do it. That shed he built, and now it’s Lolly McKeever’s pig wrecked it to a ruin. And it’s Lolly McKeever put this poor man here, and it’s only right Lolly McKeever’s pig has dug him up. Put him here she did, so the blame would come to me, that I was the one murdered him. And look at the way she’s buried him! Just stretched him out and dumped the dirt on him and only three feet down for a pig to find.”
    Aaron had kept alert for a pause where he might interject some expression of astonishment or ask a pertinent question, but he soon realized it was a vain hope. The monologue, the soliloquy, the extended speech fueled by a fiery passion was, he