When Pigs Fly (30 page)

A few minutes later, he looked up at the sound of familiar voices. Cal stood motionless near the front door as though she had turned into a pillar of salt. She was face to face with Elvis Hornacre.

Mack hurried over to her side. Elvis was decked out in the full regalia of the King. Sequins glittered on a gold-colored jacket and matching pants. He wore blue suede shoes, a gold chain around his neck and an emerald ring on his left pinky. An attractive middle-aged woman stood beside him, wearing tight-fitting jeans and a denim shirt, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her hand was in Elvis’s back pocket.

“What are you doing here, Elvis?” Mack asked.

“Having a hot meal with a hot date.”

“You’ve been stalking me across the country,” Cal said.

“
Au contraire,
y’all
.
I’ve been pursuing happiness, which is my constitutional and God-given right. You, my young beauty, have been running away from happiness.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“I’m gonna leave y’all alone. Trust me, I am here with a woman that has made me forget all others.” Elvis’s jaw was still swollen and discolored, and his arm was around the woman’s waist. Mack thought his Southern drawl needed lots of work.

“Lucky her.”

“You’d best not attempt anymore contact with her,” Mack said, not even wanting to repeat Cal’s name.

“Where are you folks sitting?” the woman asked in a smoky voice.

“Alone,” Mack said.

“We’ll join you.”

“No. Don’t.”

“Thanks, we’d love to.” There were four seats at Mack and Cal’s table, and everyone sat down despite Mack’s scowl. The woman motioned to the waitress and ordered a pitcher of Corona before extending her hand to Mack. “Name’s Ursula. Did the King tell you we’re getting nuptialed?”

“The King?” Cal asked, disbelieving.

“If you had him in the sack, you wouldn’t call him nothing else. You talk about your good vibrations—damn! So we thought the Grand Canyon was just the place to get ourselves hitched. And Elvis introduced me to this real cute couple, Zippy and Juanita. She was showing me all the tattoos on her ta-ta. It’s sort of like a scrapbook of her dates.” She threw a sly look at Mack. “What’s your name again? She just added a new one the other day.”

“Have you looked at the menu?” Mack asked as the waitress delivered the pitcher. “Let me pour you a beer.”

The upcoming nuptials got Ace to thinking. Here were those screwballs Zippy and Juanita getting hitched, the Durgin fogies renewing their vows—whatever that was all about—Elvis and Ursula hardly knowing each other but ready to pledge their undying eye-doo’s. “We’re deeply in love,” Elvis had told everyone, but Frosty had said he was really just deeply in Ursula. Now, for all Ace knew, Mack might roll out of the sack with that way-hot Cal and make it a South Rim foursome. Maybe Diet Cola would show up in a wedding dress and marry himself like that basketball player did a while back. Cola was in jail, though, so it probably wouldn’t happen on the same day.

All of which would have left Ace and Frosty out if Elvis hadn’t invited them to the wedding, and then they would have had a hard time keeping an eye on Mack and locating the valuable whatchamacallit. “We need to bring a present,” Frosty said.

“I know just the thing,” Ace replied. They headed over to the animal hospital in Sedona.

“We’re emissaries of Mack Durgin,” Ace told the pretty vet lady, “and we’re here to pick up his pig.”

“Javelina?”

“No thanks,” Ace said as he took out his wallet. “He just wants the pig.” There was silence all around—even the animals suddenly went quiet, making him realize she hadn’t offered him anything. “Yeah, lady. We’re here for Leena.”

She smiled as though he’d said something stupid. Ace knew that smile well. “Poindexter is all set,” she said. “Mister Durgin paid in advance.”

Ace sprung for a leather leash, paying real cash. He walked to the car with Frosty and Leena. “Emissaries,” Frosty said. “You pulled that word right out of your ass, didn’t you?”

“I heard it on TV. It’s not my fault if you’re ignorant.”

“So what’s it mean?”

“There’s something else I know. The pig’s name is Leena.”

“You shuckin’ me, right? Leena’s not a girl pig.”

“Course not, but go ax the vet his name, you don’t believe me. Maybe he’s got gender problems.”

Frosty shrugged and drove the car while Ace sat on the back seat with his arm around Leena’s neck to keep him still. They pulled into a mall parking lot, and Frosty went shopping while Ace bonded with his new friend.

An hour later, Ace began to wonder what happened to Frosty. Maybe he got caught.

“Frosty’s never been busted,” Ace confided to Leena. “But if he doesn’t come back soon, you and me are both pork roast.” Leena seemed unconcerned. She was cleaned up but still smelly.

Eventually Frosty came back loaded down with two armloads of bags, and some old lady carried a couple more to the car for him. The nosy lady looked at Ace and Leena cockeyed but didn’t say anything much.

Inside the bags Ace noticed a plastic food dish, a bottle of scented bath oil, a pair of sunglasses, a light blue vest, a pair of scissors, a bag of sequins, a bag of Doritos, two six-packs of Bud Lite and a wallet that must have jumped out of the old lady’s purse.

“I’ll say this for you, Frosty,” Ace said. “You sure know how to shop.”

“Shop is a half a word, my man. The correct term is shoplift.”

Ace was awestruck at how well Frosty had developed professionally. He whistled under his breath. He was so damned proud of Frosty, he hoped they were blood relatives.

“The trick isn’t the stealing. The trick is getting people to help you with your bags. Now we’ve gotta find a motel.” Frosty turned the key in the ignition, and soon they were on their way across town.

Leena stuck his snout out the half-opened back window, leaving pig slobber smeared on the glass. Ace thought he ought to clean it later, so they could eventually return the car the way they found it. They stopped at the first motel they found. Frosty registered for a first-floor room in the back.

“Elvis and what’s-her-face are going to love this wedding present,” Frosty said, turning the key in the door. Ace followed with Leena on a leash, and Frosty carried in the stuff. The room was air-conditioned and had a couple of beds that weren’t going to get any use, as Ace and Frosty didn’t need the place for sleeping. There was some nice homey artwork on the wall showing a snow-covered log cabin, smoke rising out of its chimney, cozy lights showing through a window, a stream with dancing trout, the sun going down over a plum-colored mountaintop all aspangle with clouds the color of raspberries and lemons. Ace thought he might lift the painting on his way out—it was that good.

Leena sniffed around. He bent his front legs and stuck his snout under the edge of the bed, raising his butt in the air and snorting a dust bunny, which caused an explosive sneeze that made Ace’s heart skip a beat.

Frosty looked startled. “Sounded like a gas main explosion.”

“Man, that could’ve woke the Pope,” Ace said. “Come on, Leena. We’ve gotta get you clean.”

Leena grunted happily as Ace led him into the bathroom, but stopped at the sight of the ceramic tub. Frosty watched at the door. “Help me lift him,” Ace said. He lifted Leena’s front feet as Frosty lifted the haunches. Leena apparently didn’t think too highly of whatever was going on, as he shook his head violently and kicked his hooves in all directions. The shower curtain came down on top of him, and he looked like he was wearing a blue plastic toga with mermaids and clamshells. A tusk caught Ace’s shirt and ripped it, popping three buttons.

Ace’s eyes also popped. “Lift him up, Frosty!”

“How can I? You let go!”

“Those tusks will cut me in half! We gotta calm this guy down!” Ace was screaming, which didn’t do much for Leena’s agitated mood. Frosty ran into the bedroom and tore the blanket off one of the twin beds. He brought it into the tiny bathroom just as Leena charged out of it like a raging bull.

“Olé,” Frosty said.

“This is no time to talk about potato chips,” Ace said, even though Lay’s was his favorite brand. “We’ll have supper later.”

Frosty tossed the blanket over Leena. “This will calm him down. As long as he can’t see, he’ll be all right.” The pig in the blanket reminded Ace of pancakes and sausage, though he couldn’t think exactly why.

But Leena charged blindly, knocking over a lamp and hitting a chair before getting its feet tangled in the blanket. He squealed like a baby getting shots at the doctor, and he thrashed every which way. Ace grabbed the pig, which popped out of the blanket and climbed onto a bed, taking the high ground. Ace grabbed a pillow. Leena tore through it with a tusk.

The television slid to the edge of the table and tottered on the edge. Frosty’s eyes widened and his hands stretched out as he dove to catch it but missed. The set crashed on the floor with a loud crack. Ace had always wondered what the inside of a TV tube looked like. It wasn’t pretty. Leena squealed like—Ace struggled to find a comparison—like a pig, he decided.

Meanwhile, the painting fell off the wall, and the frame cracked on the headboard of one of the beds and fell on Leena’s head. Suddenly he stopped and peed on the bed.

There was a knock on the door. Ace and Frosty tried to ignore it. Then the knuckle-rapping turned to fist-pounding. “This is the manager. What’s going on in there?”

Ace stood next to the door. Luckily, the din was lessening. “Sorry,” he said. “The TV was up way to loud.”

“Turn it down!”

“We just did. I apologize. My brother is deaf as a stone and he accidentally flushed his hearing aid down the toilet, so we had the TV volume way up.”

“That moron’s not deaf! I just spoke with him an hour ago!”

“He lip synchs—I mean, he lip reads.”

“I thought his problem was Tourette’s.”

“Fuck a duck,” Frosty chimed in.

“That too,” Ace said. “We’ll be quiet from here on. I promise.”

“One more peep out of you guys and you’re gone,” the manager said. Ace did try one more peep through the peephole and saw him walking away, literally bent out of shape by the little circle of glass. Cool, he thought as he saw cars in the parking lot all twisted upwards. How did they get the glass to do that?

Then he turned and looked at the room. A blanket and pillow were ripped, a sheet had a big yellow stain with a nasty smell, a mirror lay in a thousand pieces, and wall hangings and glass and electronic guts were scattered on the floor. Clothes lay all over the place with Leena’s footprints on them. Hurricane Piggy had struck hard, but now he lay down on a torn bed sheet and shreds of the shower curtain, just as calm as ham on rye.

Ace sat down next to Leena, feeling frustrated. This was something
good
he and Frosty wanted to do for someone, for gosh sake. The only silver lining was that they had no intention of paying for this room, otherwise they’d have to ante up serious cash for damages. He patted the bristles on Leena’s head, and the pig responded with a contented grunt.

“Oh my God, gross! You’ve got wicked pig breath!”

“Don’t get him excited, Ace. Maybe we can give him some kind of anesthetic. Maybe I can get some codeine at the drug store.”

“Good idea. Meanwhile, this dude is getting mouthwash. Get the bottle from the bathroom, will you?”

Frosty came back with a plastic glass of minty green liquid. “Good luck getting this into him,” he said. Ace nodded. This was going to be tough. Frosty grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.

The pig sniffed the cup and stuck his tongue in it, then pushed with his snout and splashed the liquid all over Ace’s lap. “Damn,” Ace said, but the pig started licking his pants. Ace tried to stand, but the pig hooked his belt buckle with a tusk and made him sit still.

“That’s some serious perversion you two have there,” Frosty said.

“He likes it! Piggy likes it!”

“So do you, apparently.”

Ace undid his belt and released himself, then picked up a plastic cereal bowl that had fallen onto the floor. He poured in some mouthwash and placed it on the floor. The pig slurped it up and pushed the bowl toward Ace. More please, it was saying. Ace filled the bowl and Leena drank up.

A hundred watts lit up in Ace’s brain. He looked at Frosty. “Go out and get the biggest bottle of this stuff you can find. Pay for it if you have to.”

Frosty wrinkled his pink forehead, clearly not grasping the significance of Ace’s discovery. “What?”

“Twenty-one point six percent alcohol is what. We’ll get him drunk, then we’ll bathe him.”

“You make me proud sometimes,” Frosty said. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

By the time Frosty arrived back in the room with two liters of Scope, Ace had Piggy wrapped in the blanket again, desperately trying to keep it still. “He’s turned mean,” Ace said. “Just give him some more, quick.”

A few minutes later, Piggy had emptied one of the new bottles, burped and struggled to stand. Then he collapsed. Ace lifted him by his front legs and carried him to the bathroom. “We’re gonna take care of you, Leena,” Ace said. “You’ll be the prettiest pig on the planet.” The pig’s eyes opened halfway, and then he barfed a gutful of Scope onto Ace’s shirt. It was actually a nice color.