The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven by Joseph Caldwell Read Free Book Online

asked the name yet again, he would only say, “It has so many names, each different, depending on whom you ask.”
    â€œFine. And I’m asking now.”
    â€œAll right, then. To my family, to us, it’s been always known as Kinvara. But don’t say it to others or they’ll claim there’s no such place. But to us it’s Kinvara. There. To the north.” And he would point out to sea.
    After Declan had buried the boy for safekeeping in the newly dug garden of Kitty McCloud, he had set out to the north, to find Kinvara and the boy’s family, to bring him home so he wouldn’t lie among strangers. More than a year of wandering had taken him to far places, to islands no map had ever shown, to villages unvisited by travelers, to towns where no one recognized from Declan’s words a young man who had wanted to be a thatcher: he of the dark brown hair and deep blue eyes, the straight broad shoulders and the skinny arms but powerful hands; he of the marked cheek, the right one, where a thrown stone had missed the eye toward which it had been aimed by an older brother. He of the confident nose and the innocent lips, the negligible chest and the long thin legs, the happy insistence that he become a master of his chosen trade. He of the high laughter and low sighs, the easy smiles, the hidden sorrows and the big feet. He of the unknowable mystery of himself, all gathered together in the name of Michael—the Hebrew word the boy had told him meant “Who is like God.”
    His death was unexpected but not sudden. They had been thatching a cottage roof off a road that would end before it reached the top of a great hill, giving way to rocky pastures where the sheep would graze. The thatch was of combed wheat, guaranteeing long service and certain shelter. Declan had decided from the first that at least one layer of the old thatch should be removed, the gulley indentations filled with new reeds, creating a firm foundation for the next course.
    It was while Michael was filling in the gullies near the roof beam of the high-pitched roof that, for whatever reason, he decided to stand upright, perhaps to relieve a crick or a cramp, maybe just to be free of the blunted scent rising from the reeds. He slipped, he slid, he fell, and Declan was helpless to do anything but cry out, “Don’t!”
    Michael’s head hit the flat stone sunk in front of the cottage door. But no sooner had the boy straightened himself out full length than he sat up, raised both his arms, looked at Declan, and smiled and shrugged, congratulating himself for not having been subject to the punishment he deserved for contradicting his master’s instruction about not taking unnecessary risks.
    He got up, put his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and made the ascent, unfazed by the fall and the flat stone. Together he and Declan worked until sundown. During the walk back to the truck Michael stopped, went to the side of the road, leaned against a fence bordering a sheepfold, then carefully began lowering himself onto the ground, his eyes showing surprise more than hurt. He lay back his head but had not yet straightened his legs out in front of him when the legs simply fell sideways and his body tipped slowly toward the ground. He had died.
    Declan sat down next to him and drew his body into a sitting position. To keep it from tipping again, he put his arm across the boy’s shoulders and drew him closer. Declan would wait a moment, then take the body to the hospital in the next village and report what had happened. The authorities could then locate the boy’s family and arrange for a proper burial.
    The moments passed and still they sat there. Then Declan recalled all those times when he had been too tired to roam (if such a thing were imaginable)and the boy would recite the old tales and legends sent down by mouth or set down by a seanchaí, stories retrieved from ancestral memory. Some Declan