The Pig Story
So, I think it’s time we talked about the pig.
I’ve been asked a few times what the deal is with the cover for HELL CHOSE ME (Feb. 4th, 2019 Down & Out Books) and shockingly—against all book cover trends—the pig is in the book. I know, weird and crazy. I could have asked them to have a picture of an unidentified man with his back to the viewer while holding a gun, but what can I say, I’m a rebel.
That said, the pig is personal. The excerpt below (Chapter 5) is as close to an autobiographical account of my own life as I’ve ever committed to page. The broader details are changed to fit the characters, but I think it’ll be easy to get the gist.
Setting the stage: HELL CHOSE ME is the story of hitman Bryan Walsh. He kills to keep his comatose brother alive. The pig story is something Bryan likes to tell his brother on visits—a rare memory of happier, but somber times.
If you dig this, pick up HELL CHOSE ME in your favorite format on February 4th.
Hell Chose Me: Chapter 5 Excerpt
Any asshole can tell a story.
Folks are perfectly content in hearing the summarized bits of our lives without the need to commit. It serves as a break to the monotone hum of the mundane. Some people seek those stories out on purpose. Thrive on the idea that maybe that nobody in the cubicle next to theirs drew an even shorter straw. We crave the distraction and a quick story never hurts.
Example? The pig story.
Back in the mid-eighties, our grandfather took us back to Ireland to visit family and work on a house he planned to retire in. One night he got drunk with his half-brothers and they challenged him to slaughter a pig since he was a big muck-a-muck from New York City proper. Slaughtering a pig was beyond the likes of him. So, he drank some whiskey and chased after a poor pig for nearly forty-five minutes. Caught it. Stuck it in the neck. It got loose and led him on another chase. About a half hour later, he finished the deed. We laughed. Days after, I informed my four-year-old brother the pork pies and black sausage we were enjoying were the very same pig. He cried for two days.
That’s not how you tell a proper story.
Why?
Because what’s the use in telling a story if the listener isn’t going to become a part of it—become completely engrossed in the single time and place you’re bringing them? Without that, you’re a rambling asshole most folks are entertaining out of pity or obligation. I can’t think of a sadder position to be in.
I’m going off the rails now.
To properly tell the pig story, I need to explain who my grandfather was—the incomparable Mairsial Walsh II. Born in Killarney, Ireland, to Jane Powers and Mairsial Walsh. By the time he was a month old, his father was dead—burned alive in a barn fire. Poor kid was only nineteen. My great grandmother—now sixteen with a son and no husband—then married one Edmund Shea. Stories told painted him as a right bastard of a man. A member of the original Irish Republican Army—rabidly devoted to Irish independence. He was a head’s height taller than my great grandfather and ginger like my great grandma. My grandfather, unfortunately, was the spitting image of his father—dark hair, dark eyes, dark mood.
Mairsial did not have a good childhood.
He was beyond latchkey. Owned the same pair of ratty shoes until his toes burst through them. Half his right ear lobe was lost by the age of five from an especially irate—drunk—Edmund. His palms and the pads of his feet were calloused over by the time he was eight. By the age of ten, Mairsial was sent across the Atlantic to live with an “aunt.” His mother had five new mouths to feed and Edmund had enough of this cuckoo taking up space and causing chaos.
Mairsial landed in New York and was told to do his part if he wanted to keep a roof over his head. In days, he found a job sweeping floors in the print shops all over lower Manhattan. A few years passed, and he convinced someone to teach him how to run the printers. Broke his ass for more than fifty years printing and binding books. Always brought proofs home to my brother and me. My mom—his daughter—wasn’t always agreeable to some of the material, but our dad disappeared after Liam mistaked his way into the world when I was nine; so, she kept her mouth shut. She knew we needed a strong, honest man in our lives.
Our grandfather introduced us to Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, and Hulk Hogan—everything two boys growing up in a hard world ever needed. We were half-wit snots, but he taught us right and wrong and when to throw the first punch. I always knew he had a fondness for Liam—his double—but being older gave me first dibs on the receiving end of his wisdom. Whether that was words of advice or the business end of a belt was up to me.
Our grandma passed early. She had a bad heart. Our mom was his only child, so he clung to us and us to him. Over time, he became smart enough to realize my brother and I were severely cut off from our history. We were Bronx micks, didn’t care about our history or the country so many of our own called home.
That was why he dragged us to Ireland. The first time Liam and I had ever gone—1985—and we were excited to run through all the places our mother described to us from her own childhood. I was almost thirteen and had to keep a precocious four-year-old Liam occupied. I still remember the Kilmacoliver Walk—the views from the summit were amazing. The stuff you read about in story books.
By this point my great grandparents were long gone. My great aunts were in the States, but the three boys, Edmund, Sean, and James, all stayed behind to care for the Shea farmlands. Livestock and grass stretching to the end of the world. All the time my grandpa was away, his stepfather flourished. Never let my great grandma mail a single cent stateside. My mother never thought that was fair, but Grandpa figured he didn’t deserve what he wasn’t there to earn. While I was young, I agreed with my mother. It would take a long time to realize how wrong she was.
One night, the subject of my grandfather’s exile came up. The Sheas were proud members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. They were pretty involved with the Troubles—the war between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Britain—and were probably a little resentful of the prodigal son who did his best to keep his nose out of affairs he truly didn’t care about. Which Uncle Sean made it known to my grandpa whenever he could.
Sean would tap his gimpy left leg and growl, “You never lost blood for your home—never wounded in the name of freedom.”
Sean never got into the history of that limp, but some folks said it was from being involved in the Belfast bombing spree back in seventy-two. Sean claimed those events were what helped put him on the “map,” so to speak. My grandpa used to say it was from being kicked by a mule when Sean was a teenager.
It surprised everyone when Uncle Edmund produced a young pig from the backyard. All their drinking turned every other conversation into a weird pissing contest over who was better at doing menial, everyday tasks. Edmund claimed the pig was the runt from a recent litter and thought it would be a good idea to have my grandpa do the butchering as the guest of honor. They egged him on and shoved a blade into his hands—a litany of offenses against his manhood on their lips.
“Any Shea would kill a pig as easy as he breathes,” I remember Edmund saying.
“Shit, any Irishman worth his stone can do that,” Sean added.
James was quiet. He was the scary one with the weird look in his eye. Always gave me the willies.
So, they let that poor pig loose and Grandpa went after it like a man possessed. Down the alleys near the house, across the pasture, and through throngs of sleeping cattle—like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. He should’ve cut back on the whiskey. His legs were wobbly, and I could swear he nearly put that knife into his own chest more than once.
When my grandfather caught up to the exhausted pig, he scooped a hand under its snout and slipped the knife clumsily into its throat. The blade pierced flesh and that pig went into full on flight mode—took off like a rocket and straight onto the porch of Edmund’s house. I remember it screaming and bleeding everywhere—the side of the house, the fence, even Uncle Edmund. The only thing louder than the pig and my grandfather’s curses was the Shea boys busting their guts with laughter. By the time Grandpa caught the pig again and ended its misery, we were all laughing—even my mom.
Three days later we ate enough pork to last us a lifetime. I told Liam late into the meal that all those pork pies he was huffing down were made of the poor little pink thing he watched get slaughtered nights before. He cried, and I laughed. My mom used a fancy brush to give me a spanking. Liam laughed while I pretended my mother did any real damage.
Now, that’s the pig story most people—even Liam—hear.
There’s a part of the story I always leave out.
On the night he killed that pig, when everyone else had retired into the house, I was outside with my Grandpa while he cleaned up. It was a little chilly, but the refreshing kind of chilly—kept you sharp and aware of everything. A short sleeve shirt and shorts were probably not the best choice, but I wasn’t uncomfortable.
My grandfather’s cleaning got my attention. I straightened up and looked his way. “Pa, why weren’t you laughing?” I asked.
He wiped his calloused hands on his pants. “Wasn’t funny.”
“Uncles Ed, Sean, and Jimmy thought it was. So did Mom, well, after.” I sat cross legged on a wooden bench. Picked at a scab on my elbow.
He nodded. “I suppose they did, boy, but then again, they weren’t the ones shedding blood tonight, were they?” His brows raised the way they did whenever he raised a counterpoint. A sight I was seeing more and more as I expressed my teenage dissention whenever I could.
“Why does that matter?” I leaned back against the table. Crossed my arms the same way he would whenever he had a long discussion with his drinking buddies.
He sat next to me and placed a hand on my shoulder—hard. “Bryan, one day you’ll understand that sometimes life puts you in a place where you do something wrong and while everything inside you tells you not to do it—” he trailed off.
“So why not do what’s right? You’re always telling me that.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah, I do, don’t I? Still, it’s more complicated as you find yourself getting older. You’ll end up in a place where you have a choice and the best one isn’t always the right one. Even for your kin.” There was a finger of whiskey left in a bottle on the table. He picked it up and sucked it down greedily.
“What if you’re doing it for the right reason?” I cocked my head to the side.
Grandpa shrugged. Gave me a pat on the back. “Then it isn’t so bad, I guess. But sometimes you’ll still find yourself doing wrong for wrong. Be it for fun or an easier way out of a bad situation.”
“What do you do then?”
He looked away. “You deal with it. You face that mistake and concede that hell chose you to work its benefit.”
“Then what?” I ignored his discomfort. Maybe if I were older, I would have taken the hint by then. I wanted an answer—a solution to this weird conversation we were having. To leave it open-ended—I don’t know—maybe I already smelled the stench of adulthood in a conversation like this and hoped to swing it back to black and white.
He sighed. Kept his eyes on the bottle and ran a fingertip over the open lip. “You accept what you are and move on, Bryan.”
In the distance I heard a shuffling in the brush—something my grandpa didn’t seem to notice. I turned my head toward it and I swear on my mother’s eyes I saw the very pig my Grandpa had slaughtered—its throat red and glistening in the moonlight. The grass beneath its pale hooves shifted in the wind. Its eyes found me and watched. I watched back. Didn’t feel my grandfather’s hand leave my shoulder or hear him walk back into the house.
I sat and watched a dead pig root into ground it couldn’t break. It stomped a hoof in frustration. Ignored the constant stream of dark life escaping from the jagged wound that ran from ear to ear. It turned its nose up at me and gave off a low-pitched oink, turned, and walked off into the brush. I lifted myself to sit on the clean table. Laid back and let the stars make me feel tiny again. Closed my eyes and listened to low wail of the banshees in the wind.
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