Free The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell Page B

cheek. Reverting to her native Irish she said, “Well, we could give it a try. But what if they interrupt us?”
    â€œSpiritus interruptus?”
    Kitty groaned. “Now you’ve ruined everything.”
    Kieran stood up. “I’ll make amends.”
    â€œIrish only. Right?”
    â€œThere’s no other way,” Kieran answered. After he took his lips away from hers, she said, “And no stopping if someone starts playing the harp.”
    And so their Irish splendors began—in the presence of the harp and the loom.

5
    T he merry month of August had arrived and with it the near lifelong requirement that both Kitty McCloud and Kieran Sweeney see and, more important, be seen, at the famed Dingle Races. This would be the first time they would be there together. In days past, before their miraculous marriage, their avoidance of each other, and the exchange of invective when they did meet, had provided added sport to the running of the horses. Everyone, of course, had taken sides. Were not the McClouds and the Sweeneys both progeny of familiar if not always respected lineages? No one knew exactly what the ancient quarrel was about, allowing as many certainties of the cause as there were people in County Kerry. Some spoke of a stolen cow, others of a boundary dispute; more than a few assumed the seduction of a wife, the elopement of a daughter. Most subscribed, however, to the charges and countercharges of a Sweeney priest betrayed by a McCloud informant—or, depending on one’s familial allegiance, McCloud clergyman’s secret escape passage to the sea exposed by a greedy Sweeney, the man captured and hanged. Since these accusations were for crimes beyond forgiveness and redemption, no one could be neutral on the subject. It could not be ignored.
    Long years ago, divisions within the community threatened to become permanent, to be passed on from generation to generation, like the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Montagues and the Capulets, the Hatfields and the McCoys, rending the community, unraveling the weave of the social fabric, disfiguring the body politic, and distracting the populous from the common cause that required the employment of all their energies and all their resources: everyday survival.
    To restore the needed unity, one Father Fitzsimmons, now many years gone, a man of Solomonic bent, spread a series of false rumors, declaring in whispered confidence the truth of each, contending that the story of priests betrayed was a cover-up for a far lesser cause of contention, one that lacked heroics, a more domesticated source that, in their pride, the Sweeneys and McClouds discounted. The good citizens, however, eager to accept any diminishment of a friend or neighbor, took up the priest’s rumors and elevated them to gospel status, mocking the Sweeney-McCloud pretensions. In time, the feud became more a cause for amusements than contention—except, of course, between the Sweeneys and McClouds themselves—a local topic that could be called into service should a conversation lag or a television set go out of commission.
    The walk from the town of Dingle to the field where the race course had been set up was less than a half kilometer. The morning rain had moved on toward Tralee, and Kitty and Kieran climbed without effort the slow rise of the road, managing not to be killed by those foolish or lazy enough to drive their cars. Intent on provoking comment, they held hands. Today was the last of the four days the races ran. Kitty had argued to go the first day. It was more festive, and the horses would be in better shape, since most of them would be required to run each day, sometimes in more than one race. Kieran, more melancholy by nature, preferred the closing event with its intimation of the end of things. In support of his preference he became an out-and-out Darwinian. Only the surviving horses would run. The spent and the disabled would have been eliminated,