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

for any act beyond relief—and, of course, a quick look at his watch. The second hand was still sweeping its way around the face. The big hand was between the seven and the eight, the small hand was close to the three. It was, he deduced, about twenty to three Irish time. He closed his eyes. He kept them closed to the count of three, then opened them. He took two more breaths, deep, taking in the salt smell of the rock that made him think of summers past. He must stop indulging himself. He had not washed ashore, saved from a sunken ship. He’d had a simple swim. That and nothing more. He had no right to his exhaustion. He was an excellent swimmer, or at least had been. He’d even been awarded a plaque more than several years before, attesting to his successful swim off the Long Island shore.
    What he had done now was negligible. He’d got wet; he’d got cold. Now he would get dry; now he would get warm. And the swim, if he’d only pause to take note, had excited his energies instead of depleting them. He paused, took note, and sat up.
    Some distance off, two men in a fishing boat waved at him then returned their attention to the other side of the boat. No gulls flew overhead, but a lone crow circled high above, laughing its raucous laugh at Aaron’s plight. The water no longer seemed to be rising, but the sea swells were beginning to crest, to fall, to send their froth rising toward the rock, disappointed that they could not reach the tips of his toes.
    The time had come to meditate on Phila Rambeaux, to sit solitary on this rock, fasten his gaze seaward, and brood on loss and the impossibilities of love. He would recall her face, her gesture when, in his class, she would rub her thigh with the heel of her left hand as if trying to erase something she had written on her green plaid skirt. Or the way she would, with her index finger, place her hair back behind her ear, forgetting that the hair was too short to stay there for more than the second it took her to take her finger away. Or maybe he would opt for the abstract, for a general melancholy that would give his sorrows a more universal cast, his woe identified with the woe of the world. Until now he had been unfaithful to Phila. Almost a full day gone and he’d given her almost no thought at all. No pangs had pierced, no yearnings had struggled to find release, to wander, to search, never to find. The grieving that he owed her had been left unexercised. It was time to make amends.
    He looked at his watch. It would now be a quarter to three. He could mourn at least until the water had receded to knee height. How long that might be he did not know, but he didn’t require that he should. His grief could easily outlast the ebbing tide. It was eternal. He might even wait for the tide to return, then ebb again before leaving off his meditations. Phila, his beloved, deserved no less.
    But then he wouldn’t be at his aunt’s when Lolly McKeever would come for her pig. He had phoned her. She was due at three. She hadn’t sounded particularly eager to make the retrieval nor had she given him thanks for his efforts. His tale of tenacity was cut short before he’d even told her about the top of the hill. The cheerfulness with which she’d responded to the dispersed pigs was apparently reserved for catastrophe and not for rescue. “At three then. And don’t feed it until I’m there.” With that she had hung up, as if Aaron had been some rash intruder calling to solicit funds for some obscure cause. He had hoped to hear her laugh, but she hadn’t laughed at all.
    It then occurred to Aaron that this woman might indeed be, as Kitty had claimed, the jealous killer of the man in the garden. It also occurred to him that Kitty might take the opportunity of Lolly’s visit to confront her with the remains and force a confession. There would be a spirited exchange of words, of accusations, denials, and, possibly,