Free The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell Page B

anything and not wince. That an ear could wince was a consideration he’d take up another time. For now, Lolly McKeever’s ears were quite capable of either wincing or not wincing. She herself would know which response would be right and proper.
    Before he could continue his attentions, he began to shiver again, but not from the cold or the wet. Thoughts of Phila Rambeaux, had just passed through him. And in passing they had taken with them his bones, extracting them through his skin, wet as it was, through his salted clothes. His spine was gone and his pelvis too. He might have been left his skull, but the knee sockets had been emptied and all joints released from their joinings and spirited away. He shivered again, trying to hold his body together. Now he was shaking, trembling in every part that Phila had left behind, mostly in his shoulders and his hands.
    Lolly McKeever was no longer studying his feet. She was looking at his shoulders, then at his face, just above his right eye. She was neither laughing nor smiling. “Do you drink?”
    Before Aaron could deny or affirm, Kitty called from the pasture. “Come see if it recognizes you or not, why don’t you?” After a sad shake of her head, Lolly turned and waded into the grass.
    Kitty was standing by as the pig snouted up one patch of grass, then another, grunting its disappointment that it had made yet one more faulty choice, taken one more worthless gamble. “It likes it here,” Lolly said as she came alongside Kitty. Kitty took one step away not to avoid Lolly but to place the two of them more in front of the pig. “Now let it have a look at you,” she said.
    The pig shifted, giving the two of them a full view of its hams. To accommodate the move, the women stepped sideways, then began circling the pig from the cliff side of the pasture. Again the pig shifted, again no view was given except its high behind, the skinny legs that ended in what looked like high heels and the corkscrew tail that flicked itself lightly when the turn was completed. The women moved. The pig moved. Again the women moved, this time even closer to the cliff. The pig moved, its adamant hams confronting again the determined women.
    More thoughts of Phila Rambeaux passed through Aaron, going in the opposite direction, toward the sea. His bones were returned to him, his joints rejoined, his pelvis and his ribs still aching from the transaction. Now the thoughts were gone. They had deposited the bones in their familiar casing, and they, the bones, must take up again their usual chores. The trembling slowed, then stopped. Aaron moved his jaw and was relieved to discover that he could exercise some control. He might even be able to speak should that requirement ever be made of him again.
    Kitty and Lolly, not more than two feet from the edge of the cliff, where the pig had obviously maneuvered them, were appraising the pig’s hindquarters, no longer insistent on a full frontal experience. With stiff unsynchronized tilts of the head, a little to the right, a little to the left, like two metronomes—each determined to impose its own beat—the women regarded what they saw with thoughtful interest and skeptical appraisal. Kitty, looking intently at the pig’s behind, spoke first. “See? It knows you.”
    â€œThe hams look like saddlebags. They’re too lean.”
    â€œToo lean for what?”
    â€œToo lean for it to be my pig.”
    â€œYou’re just being fussy.”
    â€œI would hope so.”
    â€œPoor darling, look at it. You’ve made it so ashamed it won’t even show its face.”
    Aaron looked at the pig. It stood motionless except for an intermittent twitching of the ears and a single wiggle of the tail. Its snout seemed to be straining toward Aaron, as if the scent he was giving off was a smell it couldn’t quite identify. Again the ears twitched, an encouragement for the women to continue their