Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving

Author:John Irving [Irving, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-61145-546-5
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2000-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

At home, Kit — the receiver of messages, the composer of rooms — had news for him. First, Margaret Brant had left word she was dropping the Harlan Booth assault because Booth had called and begged her forgiveness. Second, Booth had called and left Kit a list of names. “Real ones,” he’d said. Third, something was up with Bardlong and the infernal tree. The tree surgeons had alarmed him about something, and Bardlong and his wife had been poking about under the tree, along their side of the slatestone wall, as if inspecting some new damage — as if plotting some new attack.

Wearily, Ronkers wandered to the yard to confront this new problem. Bardlong was down on the ground on all fours, peering deep into the caves of his slate-stone wall. Looking for squirrels?

“After the men did such a neat job,” Bardlong announced, “it came to their attention that they should really have taken the whole thing down. And they’re professionals, of course. I’m afraid they’re right. The whole thing’s got to come down.”

“Why?” Ronkers asked. He was trying to summon resistance, but he found his resistance was stale.

“The roots,” Bardlong said. “The roots are going to topple the wall. The roots,” he said again, as if he were saying, the armies! the tanks! the big guns! “The roots are crawling their way through my wall.” He made it sound like a conspiracy, the roots engaged in strangling some stones, bribing others. They crept their way into revolutionary positions among the slate. On signal, they were ready to upheave the whole.

“That will surely take some time,” Ronkers said, thinking, with a harshness that surprised him: That wall will outlive you, Bardlong!

“It’s already happening,” Bardlong said. “I hate to ask you to do this, of course, but the wall, if it crumbles, well

“We can build it up again,” Ronkers said. Ah, the doctor in him!

As illogical as cancer, Bardlong shook his head. Not far away, Ronkers saw, would be the line about hoping not to get “legal.” Ronkers felt too tired to resist anything.

“It’s simple,” said Bardlong. “I want to keep the wall, you want to keep the tree.”

“Walls can be rebuilt,” Ronkers said, utterly without conviction.

“I see,” Bardlong said. Meaning what? It was like the 500 volts administered to Kesler. There was a real effect — it was visible — but it was not effective at all. On his gloomy way back inside his house Ronkers pondered the effect of 500 volts on Bard-long. With the current on for about five minutes.

He also fantasized this bizarre scene: Bardlong suddenly in Ronkers’s office, looking at the floor and saying, “I have had certain … relations, ah, with a lady who, ah, apparently was not in the best of… health.”

“If it would, Mr. Bardlong, spare you any embarrassment,” Ronkers imagined himself saying, “I could of course let the, ah, lady know that she should seek medical attention.”

“You’d do that for me?” Bardlong would cry then, overcome. “Why, I mean, I would, ah … pay you for that, anything you ask.

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