Lily's Story (70 page)

It was Robbie, at the
bottom of the steps, alone.

“
Yes,” she
said, and released her lover’s hand.

2

N
ext day the Sunday
hush lay more heavily than usual upon the village. The church bells
importuned as lungfully as ever, but empty places were duly noted
in a number of pews, and even in the choir-stall itself. Lily
listened to their familiar, reassuring ring as she ironed a clean
shirt for Brad, who was to go down to Sarnia tomorrow for his
interview with Mr. Axelrod, the principal-designate of the recently
constructed, independent high school. Brad lay on the chesterfield
pretending to be absorbed by some verse-saga called
Don Juan
, a gift from Miss Stockton – daintily inscribed – in
honour of his extraordinary performance on the Entrance
Examination. Lily had taken some of the cash she had been putting
away in a crockery jar under her bed and purchased her son his
first store-bought oxfords, suit, vest and tie. Robbie was off by
himself hunting cottontail in Second Bush.

It was a hot and humid July day
without the relief of a breeze. Lily was thinking that she should
go discreetly over to Sophie’s to see if the kids wanted to have a
picnic and spend the day on the beach. If Wee Sue came along, then
Brad would also. She was mulling these thoughts over sleepily – her
dreams had been deep and disruptive for weeks now – when she was
startled by a commotion in the back shed. A laundry pail clattered,
pursued by a mutilated curse. Sophie.

Lily arrived in time to help
her upright. Sophie glared at the offending pail, then flashed a
teeth-stretching grin at Lily, catching her frontally with a boozy
gust of breath. Her eyes hovered, radium red. The thick humus of
her hair shrieked outward. The look she gave Lily (just before the
mask of her face closed over it) skidded on the edge that separated
ecstasy from desperation.

“
C’mon, Lil,
we’re gonna have us some fun, some
real
fun,” she said in
a voice amazingly unslurred, riding its own energy.

Lily took her friend by the
arm: “Let me get you home to bed, Soph. You ain’t had much sleep, I
bet.”

“
If you’re
suggestin’ I been drink’ an’ screwin’ all night, then you’re
absolutely right,” she laughed, pulling away and grabbing Lily’s
hand in turn. “C’mon, you an’ me’s gonna haul old Duchess’s ass up
the hill an’ give that bachelor pig up there the thrill of his
life!” She rocked back on her heels, sat down on the cushions of
her rump, and let out a dry, rattling cackle like a pullet with a
kernel in her craw.

Lily allowed herself to be
dragged across the lane to the Potts’ yard, where it became clear
that Sophie had already put her plan into action. Beside the
pig-pen sat the rickety trundle-wagon Stoker used for hauling logs
or vegetables up to the house. Duchess had been lured out of her
shady retreat with a bucket of milk-slops strategically set near
the gate to the sty.

“
C’mon, Lil, I
need a little help gettin’ her up on the wagon. Mind you, if she
knew where she was goin’ she’d hop up there like a toad into poop,
but she won’t listen to a word I say to her.” She flung open the
barrier and called out in saccharine, seductive tones: “Soo-ee,
soo-ee, soo-ee!”

Duchess pricked up her floppy
ears, blinked pinkly, but decided not to abandon the slop-bucket in
spite of its barrenness. She was a fine Chesterwhite sow with
rosy-hued skin, a soft, lecherous snout, and fold upon fold of
self-satisfied fat. More than a dozen litters had suckled from her
contented teats, and whenever she was in heat, like now, she lazed
in the mud and dreamed of nipples ripening and Farmer Holly’s
Yorkshire boar rearing up behind her, his cleft trotters flailing
against her roused flanks, while she prinked her golden bristles
and joyfully sucked out his seed. But Farmer Holly’s boar was much
overdue.

“
Son-of-a-bitch up an’ died on us,” Sophie explained,
circling the wary sow. “The old man, not the stud,” she chuckled.
“Now you put that there ramp up to the wagon while I push this
barrel of grease-shit from the rear,” she shouted.

“
Soph, you’re
crazy. You can’t get Duchess up on that contraption, an’ you can’t
let her in with John the Baptist’s boar. He’ll kill
you.”

“
He ain’t
home,” Sophie said triumphantly. “Gone perch fishin’ with Hap
Withers’ boys, out on the
lake
for the
whole
day!”

“
He ain’t
gonna like it, you know how he feels about Aquinas.”

Sophie glared over at Lily.
“Hey, you an Alleywoman or not?”

Lily grabbed the two planks and
tried to make a ramp out of them. Sophie managed to get downwind of
Duchess and plop a hand on each of the sow’s haunches. She grunted
and heaved the animal forward, and was making some headway when she
decided to expedite its progress by twisting its tail about three
hundred degrees counterclockwise. Duchess squealed like a bruised
bagpipe at the outrage and lurched sideways. Sophie lost her
handhold, overcompensated and flopped flat on her back in the
slime. Lily leaned forward and put a gentle arm-lock on Duchess
while Sophie yawed fitfully in the mire, gained a knee, and then
let her jaw slacken like a hippo’s yawn.

“
You
blubber bucket! You bulb-bellied
slop-cunt of a pig’s hooer! You fat-tit, slant-eyed son-of-a-boar’s
bitch!
” She hollered through
her megaphone at the stunned sow – its eyes red as raspberries –
and continued improvising her medley of curses, whose foul
effluence rose into the air above the Alley and like an
irresistible spoor drew to it all manner of curious creature.
Indeed, by the time Lily had seduced Duchess to one of the
trundle-wagon’s uprights and pulled Sophie to her feet, they were
surrounded by McLeods, McCourts and Shawyers of every size and sex.
All were eager to help.

Sophie, canary-yellow
from the front and mud-umber from the back, re-established what she
took to be her dignity by hurling commands into the chaos, and
somehow, amid much laughter and several temporary setbacks, managed
to assist the terrified sow up the plank and into the wagon. Lily
hopped aboard and tried to sooth Duchess with some nonsense patter
she thought might approximate a porcine lullaby, a manoeuvre which,
while having little evident effect on the beast, did succeed in
reducing Lily and Sophie to a state of paralyzing mirth. Sophie
leaned the mighty ballast of her body against the rear of the rig
while a dozen ululating children pushed from the side and pursued
some invisible Pied Piper up the dusty trail towards the
bootlegger’s shack. Other pleasure-seekers, large and small, joined
the procession en route. Cap Whittle was seen scrambling down a
yard-arm. Spartacus and Stumpy fell in behind, and Honeyman Belcher
left his pony to graze where it stood.

As the tumbrel lumbered
past Hazel’s Heaven, the hoots and cries of the cavalcade awoke the
drowsy concubines within, and by the time it reached the stamping
ground of John the Baptists’s soul-mate, the afternoon was aflutter
with petticoat and tinkling laughter. As the circus crowd gathered
and jostled for the best view, Sophie halted the carriage with a
toss of her head and waddled aggressively towards the abode of the
victim. All commentary ceased. Wavelets could be heard stroking
Canatara beach.

Aquinas had come out of
his sanctuary to accost the intruders. In some ways his pen was the
sturdiest and most impressive structure on the Alley. A commodious
corral – of stout split-logs and deeply-augured posts braided with
chicken-wire – allowed him freedom to exercise his bulk, loll in
the soothing mud, or intimidate children and idling strangers by
stamping his trotters on the gravel pad and grunting like a tusked
peccary in the wild. Behind him stood a hutch-like affair lovingly
constructed by his friend and helpmate. It was water-tight, being
shingled with cedar-shake, and the south side of it could be opened
completely to the air merely by raising the two wall-size shutters
on their hinges and laying them flat across the roof. This
transformation occurred on warm sunny days when Aquinas preferred
to lie in his manger, shaded and content, and peer out at the
fevered world beyond – his feed trough less than a head-loll away,
and if he were pressingly hungry, as he often was, he might even
nudge open the lid of the large grain-box where the goodies were
stored.

When he espied
the crowd ringing his demesne on three sides, he stopped in his
tracks and tilted forward the horn-shaped ears he often brandished
like the sabres of his jungle cousins. Aquinas was a purebred
Polish China boar, black as silt except for the tufts of white on
his feet, tail and snub-snout that made him look, no matter how
fiercely he agitated his bristles, slightly comical. But his
grunting in itself could be awesome, and when the foolish or unwary
ventured so close as to touch the walls of his monastery, he swung
his bullocks in a frenzy and stabbed the air with his progenitive
wand. Unfortunately, the only sins of the flesh he had ever
committed were those of gluttony and gormandizing. His celibacy was
the talk of the Alley, and beyond. Baptiste Cartier, if he himself
knew why, would not say. He treated the boar like a favoured pet,
feeding him grain and Jersey milk and windfall apples and a lap or
two of homemade stout when he was extra good. After dark Baptiste
could be heard gabbling in
joual
to Aquinas, who
listened with exaggerated politeness and allowed his itching brow
to be stroked and stroked. Sometimes it would be three in the
morning before John the Baptist rejoined his customers in the shack
at the very end of Mushroom Alley.

At this
moment, though, with the afternoon sun blinding him, Aquinas was
alone, surrounded by silent, gawking faces and under siege from a
large female who had just – incredibly – entered the gate beside
the open hutch as if she were waltzing into church. Trying hard to
ignore the presence of those arrayed behind her, he pawed the turf
with his right trotter and stiffened his jowls like a rooster’s
wattles. He belched volcanically and aimed a vicious snort in
Sophie’s direction. As he looked about, ready to mount a charge of
some sort, his beady eye caught sight of Duchess, who was being
escorted down the wagon-ramp right behind the invading force. His
nostrils flared, appraised the available odours, and tightened.
Sophie hauled Duchess by the ears fully into the pen and Lily
slammed the gate shut in back of them. This acted as a signal for
the silent chorus to erupt in a series of whoops, hollers, lewd
ana
tomical suggestions and
general merriment.

Aquinas froze, and waited
in the middle of the sty as the dust from his terrible stomping
settled in pools around him. He didn’t seem to know which of the
approaching hags he ought to be most chary of. Something in the
aura about Duchess – with her pink plumpness, her undulant
softness, her wobbling, fetid underparts – prevented him from
outright retreat, from unqualified terror. He watched in rapt
trepidation as Duchess, veteran breeder that she was, waddled into
the muddy wallow a few feet away, tipped forward on her knuckles
and presented herself for servicing.

A rasping cheer went up
from the well-wishers. Sophie picked up its inspiration. “All right
you black-balled son-of-a-bitch” she yelled at Aquinas, “Let’s see
what kinda stud you really are!” She turned to the crowd for
support, rocking with belly-laughter, and brushing off the mud
dried on her backside with lewd aplomb. Aquinas, tempted and
shivering, stumbled forward two steps, all caution momentarily
overpowered by the incense of passion just beyond his nose. At the
last possible second, however, with Duchess braced for capture and
rude entry, he lunged diagonally, splashed through the muck and
headed for his manger. But the lady’s duenna was even swifter;
Sophie cantered after the spooked hog, cutting him off at the
corner of the opening to his hutch, where they collided with a
blubbery thud. A collective ‘ooh’ was emitted by the throng. Both
combatants went down but Sophie was up first, spitting sludge and
umbrage. She flopped on top of Aquinas, who made no pretense of
resistance. He had given up all emotion but fear, and as she threw
a choke-chain of flesh around his neck and jerked him vertical, he
closed his eyes, squealed like a piglet without a nipple, and then
howled as piteously as a barrow staring at his clipped
testicles.

“
Grab him by
the handle!” someone offered.

“
He ain’t got
one!”

Sophie was dragging him
stiff-legged across the wallow towards the puzzled sow, and might
actually have succeeded in carrying out such a forced congress if
Duchess herself had not decided she required more privacy than this
to satisfy her procreative longing. She stood up, unstuck her front
trotters from the mud and stumped past the purblind Aquinas towards
the shelter.

“
The other
way! The other way!”

Sophie uttered an oath that
sprung something inside the boar’s head and he went limp, all six
hundred pounds of him. Undaunted, Sophie gripped him by the
knuckles and inched him back towards the sow now settled in the
shade of the manger. The crowd whooped. Suddenly Lily was at
Sophie’s side. Together they tugged Aquina’s deadweight slithering
through the slough, tumbling into it themselves, popping up again
with only their eyes and teeth to signal the manic delight of their
laughter and fury, and finally – riding a crest of hysterical
cheering and good-will – they pitched the wretched male creature
into the straw beside Duchess. Lily fell back against the stool
John the Baptist used when conversing with his bachelor friend, and
let the tears wash over the mud on her cheeks. But Sophie – fuelled
by some darker, unspoken purpose – belly-flopped between the dazed
beasts and made a lunge for Aquinas’s crotch. There was no need. In
panic or dread or desire – who would ever know? – the Polish China
boar rose up and then down, and with a savage thrust did his
pedigree proud.