When Pigs Fly (13 page)

“Hey, Bubba!”

“Hey yourself, Billy Jack! This here’s my buddy Ben, my partner in crime if you will.”

They were probably shaking hands as Ace reached for a handful of chocolate bars, the big ones that said 33 percent more free, which Ace always thought was a bargain.

“Name’s Ben Lawton. I expect we’ll have a blast in Tucson.”

“Or on the bus. It looks to be mostly full, don’t it?”

The beads of sweat froze on Ace’s forehead.
Osama! The terrorist!

This was bigger than whatever Mack Durgin had. This was a matter of national security. It could be worth millions. Maybe a handshake with the President or even a chit-chat with Oprah. Or a lap-job with Britney. He knew he had better not look back at the men, because they would see how he was on to them. He was so excited he paid for the candy on his way out the door and forgot to wait for the change.

“What’s the matter with you?” Frosty asked.

“Urgent business.”

“What urgent business?” Diet Cola asked.

“None of yours.”

Diet grabbed Ace’s shirt. “You got no secrets with me. Anything you got cooked up, count me in.”

“Terrorists on the bus,” Ace said. “Those guys, I’m pretty sure.” He saw three men over Diet’s shoulder, one of them tall and bony and carrying what was supposed to look like a black book that could have been hollowed out to hold a bomb. Ace had to admit, the cross hanging from a gold chain on the guy’s neck was a clever touch to throw people off. Another guy wore one of those big cowboy hats and kind of strolled, trying a bit too hard to blend in. The last guy Ace decided was maybe a woman, considering the pastel lips and the sort of bulges in her NASCAR t-shirt. They were all fakers. It took one to know one, so Ace wasn’t surprised he’d discovered them before the FBI did.

“For real?” Diet whispered.

“Osama Ben Lawton. And Mohammed el Bubba.”

“Naw,” Frosty said. “Terrorists have beards.”

“Don’t you get it? They’re blending in!”

“You got heat stroke, boy.” Diet grinned and emptied his bottle of Poland Springs water on Ace’s head. “Comin’ atcha straight from Maine!”

Diet kept laughing as they got back on the bus, and Ace filled himself with patriotic pride at the sacrifice he planned to make, which hopefully wouldn’t land him and Frosty in that national cemetery where Marines in starchy uniforms fired off twenty-one gun salutes to bury their heroes.

Diet went to his regular seat in back. The bad guys sat in the middle of the bus, right where Ace figured a bomb would do the maximum damage. He grabbed Frosty, and they sat right behind them, Frosty by the window. Ace was terrified at his own display of courage.

“Pardon me, but y’all are in our seats.” The way some people talked down here, Ace wondered how even their mothers understood them. This was a tourist coot couple with nice-looking Nikons hanging from their necks and tanned wrinkles on their faces. The woman also had a black purse over her shoulder, and it wasn’t closed. Her cell phone was visible, as was a wad of gorgeous green cash.

“Plenty of room in back,” Frosty said.

“We’ve rode in these seats since Memphis,” the woman said as the bus started up again. The guy, probably her husband, had a gray aircraft-carrier haircut and looked like a retired Marine who maybe’d kicked some serious butt in his day.

“Possession is ninety percent of the law,” Frosty said, probably a mistake, since the woman reached over to grab his arm. Flatso just smiled like a man who thought his sweetheart was being cute.

“Mary Jean’s gonna possess ninety percent of your butt, Mister,” he said.

She smelled pretty good, like one of the apple-blossom perfume samples Ace had lifted for a possible date that never worked out. It was just like springtime, especially with the slivers of green peeking out of her purse like brand-new weeds.

“Now hold on, lady,” Ace said, but then she planted her knee in his crotch to get at Frosty. “Sir? Can I reason with you?” He held up a couple of twenties, and the guy coaxed Mary Jean away just in time, because the pain was bad.

“Come on, Babe,” Flatso said, laughing. “Ease up on the boy.”

“We need these seats,” Ace said. “We’ll gladly pay you to switch with us.”

The bus driver looked up into his mirror and told everyone to sit down. Flatso snatched the twenties. Across the aisle, a man said, “It was your money anyway. I saw the kid swipe the bills right out of the lady’s purse.”

“Thief!” Mary Jean said.

“Liar!” Ace said, and he and Frosty got up to defend their honor against the busybody, managing by pure accident to knock down Mary Jean and Flatso. “We got terrorists on the bus!”

A woman screamed. “Oh, no! Oh, my God, no!”

Cries and shouts erupted. “Where? Who? Is there a bomb? They have a bomb! Why here? Why us? We’re all going to die!” Flatso got up, his hands balled into fists, maybe he could find someone to pummel. The guys in the orange robes both had headphones on and blew bubbles with pink gum like they were already enjoying their next lives. A couple of women scuffled. An old man blew into a paper lunch bag and yelled, “Everybody stop, or I’ll shoot!” Nobody stopped, and he popped the bag,
bang!

That caught everyone’s attention except for the kids in the robes. “That was a warning shot,” the old man said. “The next time, it’s going to be serious!”

Meanwhile, the three terrorists had stood up and looked back at Ace and Frosty with weird expressions like they’d never seen Americans before. They looked strangely peaceful amid the excitement, the way Ace would feel if
he
had seventy-two virgins waiting for him. Them and him would make seventy-three.

Ace reached for the nearest terrorist, the guy with the bra under his good ole boy t-shirt, and punched him smack in the jaw.

“You assaulted my wife!” Osama was furious. The bus driver braked hard, and people lurched forward. Ace pointed a finger at his enemy.

“Osama Ben Lawton!”

There was a laugh from somebody who obviously didn’t keep up with the news. Then Osama stood up, his black eyebrows snaking together, and his mouth curled in fury. Ace saw a black blur followed by an explosion of light and pain, after which came nothing much at all for a few minutes.

When Ace came to, he was sitting on the side of the road next to the bus. The sun had cranked up the heat real bad, church bells clanged, and somebody had possibly driven a spike up his nose. People stood around him, and he flinched as Osama wiped Ace’s face with a cloth. The bus driver was an angry-looking black guy with a twitchy gray moustache.

“I’d have you arrested,” he said, “except Reverend Lawton here asked me not to, and I’m behind schedule as it is. But you’re not getting back on my bus.”

“They’re twenty miles from anywhere,” Lawton said, and Ace began to wonder if he might have made some kind of mistake.

“The boys got thumbs, they can find some other circus wagon.” The driver walked toward the front door of the bus. “We’re leaving in a minute, Reverend.”

Ben Lawton lifted Ace to his feet. “I apologize to you, Sir. I simply lost my temper in there. What I did was wrong.” Frosty held the cloth now, and it was covered with blood from Ace’s nose. “Your bleeding seems to have stopped.”

“You’re dot a terrorit, den?”

Diet Cola let go with a maniacal laugh. “See you at the bus station,” he said.

Reverend Lawton smiled and shook his head. “Only where Satan is concerned.” It didn’t hurt so much for Ace to blink now.

“Mad, Ibe debber bid hit like dat bepore.”

Reverend Lawton held up the black book, the King James Bible. “No sir, and that is my shame. You were hit with the word of God.”

“Looks like you got hit with one a them stone tablets,” Frosty said. “The one that says, ‘Thou shalt not be stupid.’”

The driver leaned on his horn for a long, angry honk. The Reverend and Mrs. Lawton boarded the bus, the door hissing shut behind them. Ace and Frosty sat on the roadside while the bus belched black smoke in their faces. Through the back window, Diet Cola smiled and waved until the bus became a little spot down the road.

Tucson was more than two hundred miles away, so Ace and Frosty agreed they’d better start hitching. Luckily, their thumbs hardly had time to pick up a good tan by the time they got a ride from a guy who introduced himself as Eddie Windflower. “And this here sulking young gal is my daughter Sally.”

Ace looked to the back seat and winked. Sally looked about twelve. She sat with her arms folded and her mouth twisted into a scowl, as though the world completely pissed her off and there were going to be casualties. He reached in his pocket and took out a chocolate bar. “Want a Kit Kat, Sally?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Candy from a stranger? I don’t
think
so.”

“It’s okay, darlin’,” Eddie said, “’cause you’re with me.” He shrugged and said to Ace, “You might notice Daddy’s in the doghouse. I let her pet javelina go free the other day, and if I ever want my girl to speak to me again, I’d better find him.”

“If we had time, we could help look,” Ace said. It felt generous to say stuff like that; you got credit for good intent without ever being expected to follow through. He didn’t know what one of those animals looked like anyway. Plus the desert was totally huge. Pigs would fly before anybody found her pet out there. “Maybe your dad could get you another one.”

“Maybe my father could get another daughter. Poindexter is irreplaceable.”

“Suppose you could turn on the a/c?” Frosty said. Hot air blew from the dashboard vent.

“It’s broke, and this buggy’s about four hundred thousand miles out of warranty.”

“Pull over and pop the hood,” Ace said. “I’ll look.”

Eddie pulled over, gravel crunching under his tires. “You a mechanic?”

“The best.” Ace gave him a huge grin, then got out and lifted the hood. You could bake a potato on the engine block except the grease and dirt would spoil the taste. He connected a loose wire; maybe that was something important. Everything else looked like a dried-up swamp. He closed the hood and got back in the car. “All set,” he said.

Eddie turned on the ignition and resumed driving. After ten minutes or possibly eternity, cool air began flowing through the vents. Sally rewarded Ace with a two-second half smile.

The ride seemed to take forever, but at least they were more or less comfortable. Ed eventually dropped them off at the bus station’s parking lot in downtown Tucson. They even beat the bus, so they waited for Diet Cola and admired the pots of fake flowers while they swigged Dr. Peppers and ate Mars Bars they’d even paid for.

“What took you so long?” Frosty asked as Diet Cola finally walked through the door. Diet Cola flipped them the bird and headed for the closest vending machine.

They all sat on plastic chairs while Diet Cola emptied his third bag of potato chips. “Transportation procurement, my fat ass. You any better at that than stealing out of women’s purses?”

Ace felt insulted, and he took a wad of cash out of his pocket. “I didn’t get caught stealing, I got caught giving back. The lady had seven twenties, now she has two.”

Diet Cola let out a thoughtful belch. “Let’s see how good you are.” They went outside and looked around the bus station’s parking lot until he pointed at a Lexus.

“Naw, too conspicuous,” Frosty said. “Take that Dodge.”

“You take the Dodge,” Diet Cola said. “Me and Ace don’t need you.”

“I’m not the odd man out, you are.” Frosty’s tendency to tell off someone three times his size scared Ace. It was like David mooning Goliath.

“No squabbling, gentlemen,” Ace said, his hands up in a gesture of peace. “The Lexus it is.” He had to admit, the baby blue paint job and the cream-colored leather seats looked classy. In seconds, the lock popped and the car alarm went
wah-WAH-wah wah-WAH-wah wah WAH-wah
and he pulled a wire to stop it. Luckily, nobody paid attention car alarms. They all hopped in, and Ace pulled into traffic and cut somebody off. A guy in a pickup truck leaned on his horn, which Ace thought was very rude, so he flipped him the bird.

Ace and Frosty sat in front of the Lexus, Frosty riding shotgun, while Diet Cola reached from the back seat to try to get the a/c to work. Diet Cola smelled like last week’s chicken wrappings.

“Crappy piece of junk,” he said. “An oven on wheels. You’d think they’d spend some money on upkeep.”

“Blame the jerk who picked it,” Frosty said. “Roll your window down.”

Diet Cola whacked Frosty’s head with his elbow and spoke to Ace. “Give you credit, though, you got a way with ignitions, and you’re an okay thief. I’ve got plans, maybe there’s room for you.”

“Plans like what?” Frosty seemed to have recovered from the b.o. attack.

“Plans like you’re not included in them.”

“Nuh-uh,” Ace said. “Frosty’s with me. You do business with both of us or have a nice life.”

“Forty percent, then.”

“Forty percent of what?” Frosty asked. “And for what?” Up went Diet’s armpit again.

Ace stuck out his hand. “Let’s shake on it, big guy. We’ll trust you on the details.”