by Bob Sanchez
“You let go of my son this minute!” It was Brodie, who meant well.
“No!” It was everyone else. Mack’s eyes were at ground level, and he saw a great milling of legs.
“Everybody stay back! You give me the ticket right now!”
“Then let me up and I’ll give it to you.”
“Now! If you have the ticket on you, fish it out and read me the number. If you don’t have it, you die here and now.”
Mack reached into his pocket while blood settled in his head and his eyes focused on the tree. If he fell, maybe he could reach it and hold on. If not— He held his wallet up where he hoped this crazy bastard would get it.
“Here it is. Let me up.”
Dieter Kohl didn’t take it. “You got a problem with following orders, asshole? Answer me.”
“No. This has what you want. Now let me up.”
“Let me up what?”
“Let me up, please.”
“Is that how you talk to somebody’s got your life in their hands?”
“Mister Cola, would you please let me up, sir?”
“I asked for the ticket, not the wallet. Next time you don’t follow orders, my arm might all of a sudden get tired.”
Mack struggled to fish the ticket out of his wallet, which bounced off a narrow ledge and fell out of sight. He waved the ticket so Dieter Kohl could see it.
“What’s the number? It’s not the right one, you’re doing the big bounce.”
Mack had no idea what the winning number had been. He read the numbers aloud.
“You reach up with the ticket and maybe I won’t drop you anyway.”
“Here it is, then.” He bent his body upwards, and Dieter Kohl bent over to reach for the worthless prize with his bandaged hand. Kohl’s face dripped with insane hatred, and Mack understood that Kohl intended to drop him regardless. The paper brushed Kohl’s fingertips, and a warm breeze blew as Mack opened his hand. The paper swung back and forth, cradled by the wind, before an updraft carried it far into the canyon and it swirled out of sight.
“Bring him up safely, or I’ll blow your stinking brains out!” Mack twisted to see Cal pointing the Glock at Dieter Kohl’s head. In the distance, there were police sirens.
“Hang in there, son!” Mack could always count on his Mom for sage advice. The blood pressure kept building in his face.
Diet Cola was bent over the railing as Mack twisted his head for a view between his attacker’s legs to his crowd of would-be rescuers. A crowd of legs suddenly jumped aside as Poindexter charged full-boar at Dieter Kohl.
“No!” bystanders screamed in chorus.
“No!” Dieter Kohl screamed as he released his grip.
What was their problem? Mack was the one who fell. He grabbed the base of the tree, his face inches from the canyon wall. Then Kohl and Poindexter landed with a massive thud and struggled to hold on—Kohl to the tree, Poindexter to Kohl. There was a sharp crack in the ancient trunk. Roots loosened, pebbles fell.
Kohl clung to the unlucky side of the crack. His face paled, his eyes widened, his johnny bloomed in the light breeze. “Give me a hand here, for cripe’s sake! Mister Durgin, come on! Please!”
Poindexter jumped nimbly off Kohl’s back and stood between the two men. Mack found a toehold that eased the strain on the tree, then he searched for a handhold—if he could reach to his right, there was an almost reasonable incline where he might be able to clamber up on his own. But the odds were less than even, and there would be no second chance.
The tree gave way. Mack grabbed with both hands at a sandstone outcropping just as the old tree snapped, and he held on as though his life depended on it.
Several pairs of arms reached out to pull Mack to safety. Soon he stood on the safe side of the fence, regaining his bearings. Everyone seemed to want to kiss Mack or shake his hand, depending (he supposed) on their gender. Everyone except Cal, who stood well away from the crowd, all alone. He ignored the clamor and focused his eyes on her as the rest of the world became blurred. She tilted her head, her expression a question mark while tourists aimed their cameras.
He walked over and took her in his arms. She looked up, her lips slightly parted. All of his tension began to drift away as he gave her a long and tender kiss. Eventually he drew back and looked at her face, which filled with delight. She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him the kind of kiss that lit bonfires.
“What about the pig?” Ace said. “He’s still down there!” People rushed to the railing. Mack and Cal looked down to see Poindexter sitting peacefully on all that remained of the tree trunk, his sunglasses smashed and his sequined suit a tattered mess.
Mack smiled. Elvis lives.
The post-wedding bash got off to a slow start as the police had dozens of questions for Mack and every other witness. Dieter Kohl had landed in the bottom of the canyon, with predictable effect. “This ass Kohl shot an officer,” a cop said. “Thank God for Kevlar vests.”
Juanita sashayed down the motel’s hallway and into the lounge, wearing tight shorts and a pink t-shirt dotted with hearts. Zippy and Elvis were already at the bar, pickling their brains. Carrick and Brodie squeezed themselves together in a love seat, sipping from glasses that had pink umbrellas. Mack and Cal sat together on an overstuffed couch, their fingertips touching.
“You’re one gutsy man, son,” Carrick said.
“Was that really a lottery ticket you tossed away?” Ace asked Mack.
“Yep,” Mack said, but he didn’t want to talk to Ace, especially now.
Outside the lodge, a television news truck pulled up, and a pony-tailed man started unloading a camera. A tall Nordic-looking guy with swept-back blond hair and a cordless microphone swept into the lobby as though expecting gasps of admiration. Mack recognized Sven Jensen from the nightly news down in Flagstaff. Soon a camera zeroed in on Mack’s face, and bright TV lights were melting the ice in his diet cola. “I understand you’re a hero,” Sven intoned in his oily baritone. “This is your chance to tell the world about your harrowing ordeal.”
“It’s been a good day. My parents renewed their vows.”
“But you almost died. How did it feel, clinging desperately to the side of a cliff?”
Mack draped an arm around Cal’s shoulder and thought he never wanted to let go. “The view was amazing. Look, I’m kind of busy right now. How about doing a story on the lost javelina named Poindexter?” He pointed to Ace and Frosty. “Those two gentlemen know where he is.”
The reporter turned to Ace and Frosty, who looked delighted at the attention. Mack and Cal quietly left through a side door and soon found themselves walking hand-in-hand a hundred yards from the canyon’s rim, alone except for the spruces and the moonlight.
“I’m tired of being chased,” Mack said.
“And I’m tired of being chaste,” she said, holding him tightly.
The next morning back in Pincushion, Sally Windflower awoke to her father’s cheerful voice. “Wake up, Sally darlin’. Your mother made Brussels sprouts.”
“I hate Brussels sprouts!” She buried her face in her pillow.
“Ain’t for you, sweetheart. They’re for a friend of yours we saw on TV last night.” He looked at his watch. “Gonna be twelve hours to Williams and back, and folks are waitin’ for us. We’d best get a move on, girl.”
Sally squealed and leaped out of bed.
At the same time in Sedona, Mack stood alone in the sunlight on Airport Mesa, where a half dozen light planes sat idle against a backdrop of red cliffs. The air was warm, the sky china-blue. The wind socket nodded in slumber.
The pilot walked toward him. “Ready to go, Mister Durgin?”
Mack picked up the urn with the ashes of his friend. “We’re ready,” he replied, and he followed the pilot across the tarmac. The Cessna would get them over the Canyon in hardly any time at all, and then it would be over. George Ashe had been his friend and his obligation, and now it was time for a proper good-bye.
The plane
lifted off and flew above old Sedona, nestled low among the towering red rocks. Hot-air balloons with candy-stripe colors drifted below them. Soon the Cessna flew over Williams and seemed to race a railroad train that chugged northward with its tourists, leaving a thin trail of gray smoke.
There’s old Route 66, Mack explained to George. You remember that TV show, don’t you? George allowed as how he did.
They quickly outpaced the train, and a pink rip in the horizon heralded their approach to the Grand Canyon. Mack held his breath as he tried to absorb all of the majesty, but the Canyon stretched far beyond what any one person could see, a labyrinth of endless deep layers of pink and purple and gray. Mack thought of Cal, of their nocturnal escape from the screwball crowd, of the pleasure and the warmth of her embrace, of the kiss that Mary blew to both of them.
I’ve got a lot to thank you for, Mack said. You took a bullet meant for me.
This more than squares it. I never saw anything so beautiful in my life. God took his time on this one, didn’t he?
What’s he like?
George kept silent for awhile. Finally he said, God doesn’t take sides in football games, and he doesn’t care who wins the lottery. Beyond that, my friend, I’m not at liberty to say.
Far below was a thread-wide path dotted with tiny specks, bending around the base of a cliff and reappearing on the other side, near a dry and ancient riverbed. Mack looked through his binoculars and saw a group of hikers and a pair of burros, and he thought he spotted Ace and Frosty. Could they be looking for the lottery ticket down there? He laughed at the idea. They’ll find it when pigs fly.
The airplane cruised only a few hundred feet above the endless array of buttes and mesas, where Mack wondered if people had ever stood. The Colorado River snaked through the Canyon, carrying precious water from the high country to thirsty millions in the arid west.
This is the perfect spot, George Ashe said, and Mack had to agree. He pushed the window open and felt the rush of warm air in his face. He lifted the urn and tipped it over the wing. There was a brief black puff of dust, and then it was gone.
The end
