When Pigs Fly

by Bob Sanchez

  God, am I a jerk, Cal told herself. I’m not sleeping with you. You really know how to attract the men, Ms. Vrattos! Meanwhile, Mack hadn’t touched her except to brush the back of her hand and give her an innocent kiss. That had been rather sweet.

  She drove around Tucson until she found a gun shop. If Mack couldn’t help her, she would have to help herself. She purchased a small .22-caliber handgun that fit easily inside her purse. God help her if she ever had to shoot anybody—could she do it? If it came down to shooting Elvis, where would a bullet cause the least pain but still stop him? There were so many considerations—arteries, vital organs, blood loss, lawyers. It would be much better to play Dodge ‘em if possible, then if cornered, close your eyes, pull the trigger, and sort out the consequences later. She headed back to the library to pick up Mack.

  He beckoned frantically to her as he stood by a station wagon that had four flat tires and occupied a handicapped parking space. Coming around the corner were Diet Cola, Elvis, Frosty, and Ace. Diet Cola swore as his weight slowed him down. Elvis caught up with Mack, who sidestepped him and sent him sprawling into a flower bed.

  Cal slid over to the passenger side so Mack could drive.

  “I bought a gun,” she said.

  “Most likely you won’t need it. Not for Elvis and his pals. I let the air out of their tires to slow them down.”

  “What about the GPS locator?”

  “I gave it back. It’s under their front seat, so from now on they’ll be tracking themselves.”

  Ace ran out of the library with a stapler from the reference desk. You never knew when you’d need one, and events hadn’t exactly given him time to find better loot. He had a vague feeling that he ought to spend more time in libraries; wisdom of the ages and all that. Books intimidated him, though. At least the stapler gave him something to remember Mrs. Gomez, the way-hot reference lady.

  Diet Cola screamed at Elvis and Frosty. His face was red, his pony tail bobbed as he pounded the trunk of the car, and his mouth dripped spittle the way the bad guys sometimes did in the comic books.

  “Get in the car!” Diet yelled. “All of you!”

  “It’s got flat tires,” Elvis said, walking around the car. “All of them.”

  Diet opened the back door and threw Elvis inside. Frosty shrugged and joined him, which left Ace happy to ride shotgun for a change. Diet backed out of the handicapped space. “I’m going to kill you all,” he said, not for the first time. Ace used to hear that all the time from his mother’s boyfriends, and it never came to anything. “I’d be rich if I wasn’t with the biggest bunch of losers on the planet.” The car thumped along, probably not doing the rims and the tires a big favor, Ace guessed, though who really cared? He squeezed the stapler, amused by the way the bits of metal came out bent flat. Diet ranted on with empty threats having to do with fricasseed testicles.

  From the back seat, Elvis pointed to the GPS locator. “Look! They’re still here!”

  “They’re long gone,” Diet said. “I don’t care what your green thingy says.”

  “You gotta believe in this technology stuff. This is the twenty-first century.”

  “I can hike another car,” Ace said.

  Diet pulled into a gas station and stopped next to the air pump. “Who’s got a quarter?”

  “I’ve got five bucks out of the librarian’s purse,” Ace said. “I’ll get change.”

  Diet pumped up the tires, which apparently Mack Durgin had not damaged. In fact, Diet probably damaged them by driving three quarters of a mile. Too bad tires were so hard to shoplift, or Ace could pick up some nice radials. Stealing tires was always possible, but it was tough getting them installed too.

  Plump tires didn’t seem to make Diet Cola any happier. He stopped at an Ace Hardware and told Elvis to go inside and buy a shovel. Ace entertained himself by re-bending the staples and putting them back into the stapler. “What’s the shovel for,” Frosty asked, but Diet Cola became very quiet.

  Carrick Durgin agonized over how wrong this trip had gone. All he’d wanted to do was provide the love of his life with what might be their final ride before Valhalla. Brodie seemed to see it differently, through an altered prism of her consciousness, simply enjoying each moment as though it were one of an endless supply. Even these moments with this awful, tattoo-skulled Zippy creature seemed to bring her life.

  “So you’ve got a kid named Mack,” Zippy said. He turned to the back seat and showed his stained teeth in what could have been a smile.

  “Watch the traffic, young man,” Brodie said. “Our son is Mackenzie to you.”

  “Mackenzie’s a pussy name. Mack is a real name, like a truck.”

  “You needn’t be insulting him. Our boy has a black belt in karate.”

  “Okay, let me see. Your son has a Ph.D., he was the finest crime-stopper in the city of Lowell, he was a Golden Gloves boxing champion, he has a heart of gold or maybe of a lion, he was an Army paratrooper and a championship marksman, and now he has a black belt in karate. So how come he’s running away?”

  “Mackenzie Durgin doesn’t run,” Carrick said. “He’s just going about his business.”

  “And what might that business be? He’s got a hot chick and a hot temper, and I think they’re on the trail of something big.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “My son is only showing a young lady the sights before she leaves.”

  “Stop,” Carrick urged Brodie.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t tell them about Sedona,” she said.

  Chapter 38

  Highway I-17 rises north of Phoenix and lifts travelers out of the blistering heat of the valley. The saguaros, everywhere in Phoenix and Tucson, thin out dramatically as the elevation increases. Mack and Cal stopped briefly at a restaurant that had hitching posts at the parking spaces. They bought water and sandwiches, and headed toward the red rocks of Sedona, a few hours to the north. Mack had never ventured north of Phoenix, but he’d heard of its beauty and wondered if George might like Sedona as a final resting place. The Grand Canyon would add at least a couple of hours to the trip each way, and then what was he supposed to do? Dump the ashes over a railing?

  Mary stood in the breakdown lane, shaking her head. Really, Mack.

  “You’re quiet,” Cal finally said, which was true. Mack nodded.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” she said, and he held out his right hand while he steered with his left. She rummaged in her purse, found a penny, and placed it in his palm.

  “They’re following us,” he said.

  Cal looked over her shoulder. “No, they’re not.” After a pause, she said, “Is that all a penny buys? You ripped me off.”

  “It snowed up here last winter. A school bus was stranded overnight, and it made the evening news. The kids had a blast.” Mack sipped his bottle of water. “I don’t know why I know we’re being followed, because there’s all of Phoenix we could lose them in. It’s not rational, but I’m sure those goons are going to show up again. Hmm, let’s see. A penny’s worth of brain dump. They nearly caught me in the library. The ticket’s apparently a loser, but there was no time to double check.”

  This time, Cal was silent. He held out the penny, and she grabbed it back. “Without the GPS locator, I don’t see what they can do. After we get your friend George settled, I can bring you back home and be on my way. What you’re doing for him is sweet, by the way. He was a lonely man, wasn’t he?”

  “Divorced, jobless, and disgraced. His last act on duty was to crash his cruiser into a fire hydrant. Water, water everywhere. Anyway. He wanted to get his life back, or some small part of it, which was impossible. We had long talks sitting along the Merrimack River, drinking coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I told him he was slowly killing himself with booze, but that didn’t stop him. ‘Look,’ he told me one night, ‘Life is good. I sleep rent-free under a canopy of stars.’ On cold nights he’d sleep indoors, but he seemed closest to contentment when he could sleep with the stars. Many times he told
me he wanted to visit the southwest. In the last year of George’s life, my dad became friendly with him. Eventually, Dad was saddled with George’s ashes.”

  “Now you are.”

  “Nah. George is good company. Though a living, breathing, beautiful woman is even better.”

  “Thank you, I think. For company I’m better than a dead person?”

  “Hands down.” Mack smiled, unsure whether his kidding had offended Cal. She looked away at the passing scenery. Cactus had given way to scrub pine, and the flat desert had become rugged hills. The air felt thinner. He swallowed to equalize the pressure in his ears. They passed a sign for Flagstaff.

  Soon the terrain took on a spectacular twist, with massive red rock formations rising up to the sky. Cal held out the penny. “Sedona was a woman,” Mack said.

  “Is this an Indian legend?”

  “No, she was the wife of the town’s founding father.”

  “Such a beautiful name.”

  “Such a beautiful place. Some people think the rocks have special powers.”

  “I’ve heard of them. Vortices, aren’t they?”

  “Vortexes, they’re called locally. They’re supposed to be funnels of energy emanating from the rocks and commingling with the Inner Self. If my watercolor friend is right, the energies can be masculine, feminine, or balanced. Junipers living in a vortex grow in a helical form.”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “I think she’s expecting a lot from a bunch of pretty rocks.”

  A doe stepped onto the highway. Mack slowed. The beautiful animal sauntered back to safety.

  “Maybe these vortexes have the power to make your friend happy,” Cal said.

  “Maybe,” Mack said. “I’ll listen to what he tells me.”

  Chapter 39

  Diet Cola drove north of Phoenix with a cherry slush, the three losers and a shovel to bury them with. Ace and Frosty chattered like the mindless twits they were, while Elvis picked at a couple of loose sequins on his jacket. Diet would get them to dig a hole, and then he’d shoot them one by one. There was a hundred million dollars just within his reach, and these two-bit, nitwit clowns had pulled the string just as he was ready to grab. He thought about killing them right now, because he just hated them so bad. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel horn, which responded each time with a pained honk. Finally he gave it one wicked punch and got himself a long, plaintive ho-o-o-o-o-nk that wouldn’t stop. He also splashed cherry slush on his shirt.

  “Pull over,” Ace said. “I can fix the horn.” Diet Cola looked out at the bleak landscape with malevolent joy, pulling up next to a rock outcropping ten or fifteen feet high—a perfect screen for what he had in mind.

  Ace finished the job quickly and closed the car’s hood. He had a special talent for working on cars without getting his hands dirty. Diet Cola didn’t know how he did it. “Okay, Ace,” Diet said. “You’re my man. I want you to go back behind this rock and dig a deep hole.”

  “What for?”

  “A latrine, man. We can’t go messing up a perfectly nice countryside.”

  “What do you do with a latrine?” Ace asked.

  “You fill it up,” Diet Cola said.

  “Then why not leave the hole filled up to start with, that way it’s already filled?”

  Frosty took Ace aside, his arm around Ace’s shoulder. Elvis sat on a rock, playing air guitar. “Love me tender, love me too…” he crooned.

  Diet Cola lobbed a rock at Elvis. “Love me true, asshole.”

  Elvis looked up and carefully set down his invisible guitar as though it might break. He had a disbelieving look on his face.

  Elvis, Ace and Frosty went behind the rock outcropping while Diet Cola waited in the car with the a/c running. After a while, he opened a can of beans and ate them with a spoon as he wondered what was taking those lazy oafs so long. Maybe they’d just died on their own, which would be a nice coincidence. He lay back and closed his eyes, dreaming of naked women and palm trees.

  When he awoke he grabbed his gun and stepped out of the car. The idiots were too quiet, and it was time to check on them. Behind the rocks the desert stretched out forever, dotted with tangled brush and what must have been a dozen kinds of cactus. Diet Cola liked the big kind, the ones with the long green arms stuck up into the air in surrender.

  Elvis was alone, leaning on his shovel next to a pretty good-sized hole. “Where’s my pals Ace and Frosty?” Diet Cola asked.

  “Frosty said they’ll be right back.”

  Diet Cola smiled. “Oh, my goodness,” he said, pointing at the horizon. “Look at that!”

  Elvis’s sequined jacket hung on the arm of a cactus, and his chest hair was matted flat with sweat. He looked toward where Diet Cola pointed. “Look at what?” Elvis turned around, caught the flat of Diet Cola’s boot on his butt and tumbled into the hole.

  “Sit up.” Diet Cola grabbed the shovel and began replacing the sand and gravel around Elvis’s feet. He shoveled quickly, threatening three times to whack Elvis over the head if he so much as moved. “This is how the Indians did it in the old Westerns. Bury you up to your neck, let you die nice and slow while the ants crawl on your face and bite.”

  Elvis sobbed and begged for his life as Diet Cola emptied the rest of the 32-ounce frozen slush on his head. The liquid would dry and leave a sticky-sweet residue guaranteed to attract every stinging, biting, welt-raising insect within a hundred yards. Maybe a swarm of those African killer bees would zero in and finish him off. Dumb as they were, Ace and Frosty had pretty good radar for avoiding danger, so they probably slipped away for good. There was no chance they’d have the guts or the goodness to come back and rescue Elvis, but Diet Cola scouted around to see where they might have high-tailed it to.

  He stopped and pissed on a bush that gave off a smell of creosote. What did he eat to cause that stench? Maybe it was just the bush—he sure hoped so. If it was from him, his dick was going to smell like a telephone pole.

  He walked quickly as he scanned the horizon for Ace and Frosty. At the edge of a gulley he tripped over something and stuck out his arms to break his fall. On his way down, he remembered what his mother used to say about watching his step and how the stupid hag always said it when it was too damn late. A small pincushion cactus caught his shirt, which Diet Cola didn’t consider very helpful, since the needles stuck into his chest like little knives. His gun went off and blasted one of the small cactuses into jelly and bird feathers. A couple of birds flew away, leaving one of their dead cousins behind. He staggered to his feet, his pierced chest in agonizing pain. There lay the thing he tripped over, a rotten pig with some of its flesh eaten away. Diet Cola looked around for living targets, saw none, then braced himself in a two-handed police-style stance and fired his weapon into the stinking corpse. Flies buzzed everywhere. What a waste of perfectly good ammo, he thought. What a waste of perfectly good ham.

  Slowly, painfully, he picked needles out of his bloody shirt and tried to ignore Elvis’s pathetic moans. In the hot sun, he began to feel lightheaded and dizzy. He’d better get back to his car, because there was no other shade big enough for him for miles. Luckily, he had the keys to the car, so the bozos couldn’t leave without him.

  Then he had a thought more painful than passing a kidney stone. Ace and Frosty didn’t need keys to start his car. Hell, Ace probably didn’t need gas. The thought made Diet Cola feel like crap. He walked the other way around the rocks, thinking the way was a little quicker. He jumped a ditch, but the far side didn’t hold his weight, and he tumbled in. A snake, long, gray-green and ugly, slithered away, its rattles trailing behind it. He aimed his gun and pulled the trigger, missing the snake but blasting a bees’ nest. The snake got the message and slithered away. Three or four yellow-black bees swarmed a few feet away.