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

fattened or not fattened. Or, worse, sold to what was known as “intensive,” a fate Lolly would never allow for any Irish pig. Her animals were the beneficiary of her insistence that she would be a swineherd if she so chose, even if she were the last independent pig person in all of Ireland. She was determined not to relinquish her calling. In her family, swine-herding reached back to the days of Queen Maeve herself. Never would any pig of hers be confined to an overcrowded area, there to be mechanically fed, with no human hand to give it a slap, no befouled boot to give it a kick. Better the butcher than “intensive.”
    But before Lolly could say the words aloud—which would make them irrevocable, since she was never known to change her mind—her American husband had made a proposal of his own. They would return the animal to Kitty and Kieran. They were the ones responsible for its current plight. It was at Castle Kissane that the tragic exchange had taken place. It seemed only fair that they should be made to deal with the consequences of their error. Let them suffer the loss of sleep, let them hear the constant cries, let them try what consolations they might. If they didn’t want to fatten it, well, that would be their decision, not Lolly’s or Aaron’s. There would be nothing to trouble their conscience.
    When the truck reached the castle, Aaron saw Kitty weeding the vegetable patch near the courtyard. As the truck came to a halt, his aunt dusted her hands against her faded jeans and, seeing Aaron in the back of the truck with the pig, called out, “Which one has come to stay? The man or the pig?”
    Lolly got out of the cab. “Take your choice.”
    â€œThe one’s too skinny. I’ll take the fatter one, even if it’s a bit skinnier than I remembered it.”
    Aaron, an American by birth and not yet accustomed to Irish ways, all but sighed at this display of what he had come to accept as Kerry wit. He removed the tailgate and shoved the ramp into place. He then made the mistake of giving the pig an obligatory slap. The full force of its earlier lament was given new voice. The stubborn refusal to cooperate returned with added resolve. It rooted itself to the bed of the truck, daring one and all to infringe upon its right to be intractable.
    Aaron walked down the ramp, went to his aunt, and mouthed his hello. She in turn mouthed hers, then called out to Lolly loud enough to best the noise of the pig’s complaints, “Is this what you’re leaving us? I’ll take the skinny one after all.”
    Aaron walked over to pretend—his recently acquired expertise—an interest in the garden, thereby distancing himself from the pig. Because he was in Ireland and not America, he allowed himself to engage in some specious reasoning: A pig was woman’s work. Not only was it a tradition that the women of the house looked after the animals, but it was a known fact that women had an instinctive sense when it came to understanding nurture. Lolly had known how to get the pig onto the truck. Aaron, therefore, felt it was perfectly permissible that she dip down into her instincts and retrieve the one unfailing gesture that would bring a docile and amiable sow from the bed of their truck onto the castle grounds. It was no concern of his.
    Lolly, unable to abbreviate the witty exchange, yelled back to Kitty, “They’re both skinny. The pig came back to us fat, but it hasn’t eaten since. With all the ructions it’s been raising, we’d take it to the butcher in a minute, but we can’t until it’s put on a bit more bacon. If you and Kieran would just make it more eligible, we’d be obliged.”
    At a fair remove from the courtyard chaos, Aaron walked around the periphery of the garden, the fresh greens promising vegetables he couldn’t identify. It was into cabbages that the dead Declan had been deposited. Aaron