When Pigs Fly (32 page)

“Have you done it?”

“Last year. I drank plenty of water, and the sun baked out almost every drop. All the way back up, Mary wagged her finger in my imagination, calling me a macho fool. A couple of times I thought I would pass out and fall off the pathway and into some deep, untrodden abyss, and my sorry bones would bleach before anyone found me.”

“Son! There you are!” Mack and Cal turned to see his father.

Age had shrunk Carrick, and he still stood about six feet tall. He wore a green seersucker suit, fresh-out-of-the-box Oxford shoes, a crisp white shirt with ruffles and ruby cufflinks and a crimson bow tie. “You look smashing, Mister Durgin,” Cal said. “I see where your son’s good looks come from.” The colors made Mack think of Christmas, and he hoped Cal wasn’t laughing inside.

“I’m nervous,” Carrick said to Mack. “What if your mother backs out?”

“It’s too late for that, Dad. She’s given you three children.”

“Yes, she’s kind of stuck, isn’t she?” He gave Mack a just-us-guys wink, then waved at Brodie, who sat on a bench in the shade a short distance from the rim. She beamed as the three approached, and Mack hugged her.

“My son’s inamorata,” she said as Cal kissed her on the cheek. “How are you, dear? Don’t let my son get too rough with you in the hay.”

Not wanting to look anyone in the eye, Mack looked heavenward and shrugged.

“You just be careful around Mister Durgin,” Cal said. “He can’t wait to get you alone.”

Brodie cupped her hand to Cal’s ear as though she were whispering. “It won’t be the first time, you know.”

Cal held both of Brodie’s hands, and they both bubbled with laughter.

Mack looked at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock on a brilliantly sunny morning. “Time to go,” he said. “People are starting to gather at the rim.”

Hallelujah Pitts was a minister Mack had hired from Williams to preside over the festivities for a hundred dollars, gas money and a fifth of Cuervo Gold. “Call me Reverend Hal,” the Reverend Pitts said as Mack introduced him to his parents and to Cal.

A Korean tour bus disgorged a crowd of tourists with their fanny packs and their cameras. They crowded around Elvis, who wore a sequined jacket and pants, sunglasses and a slicked-down toupee with long sideburns and a duck’s-tail in back. Mack tried to ignore Juanita’s Dolly Partons and dared to hope his name wasn’t tattooed on them. She ran over to him with her arms wide as the Arizona sky. He held up his hands and tried to step backwards, but was blocked by the crowd as she locked her arms around his neck. He turned his face to one side, but took a fat crimson kiss on his cheek.
Be polite but firm.
He tried to push her away, then realized his hands were on her breasts.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Zippy separated them. “I’ll let it pass, ’cause her and me aren’t married quite yet.”

Mack’s face burned as Brodie smiled at him. “Is that someone you know, dear?”

Cal seemed not to notice.

The four couples and the minister stood at the railing, the myriad twists and turns of the canyon at their backs, the myriad twists and turns of fate yet to unfold in front of them. The river had taken eons to carve thousands of feet through the multicolored layers of rock, and Mack wondered if there were parts never explored by humans. Would marriage settle Zippy and Juanita down, or would Zippy fry his brain and join the Cuckold of the Month Club? Would Elvis find happiness with Ursula, or would he wind up in a nuthouse guarded by Ace and Frosty? And how long
was
an eon, anyway?

He was only sure about his mom and dad, dear Brodie and Carrick, who certainly would be together and full of life until the end of their days.

Reverend Pitts cleared his throat and began. “We are gathered here at this beautiful temple of creation—”

“Hold it right there! We don’t want to miss a thing!” Frosty pushed past an elderly Korean woman who gripped her walker for balance. Ace ran right behind him, holding on for dear life to a leashed javelina that wore sunglasses and a sequined suit. Ace tripped over the walker as he lost his grip on the leather leash and knocked down three Koreans like so many cold-war dominoes. The javelina—wasn’t it the one that Mack had brought to the vet? —seemed in a panic as it charged toward the wedding party. Someone screamed, the crowd parted and the javelina galloped—if that’s what those creatures did—into the fence, wedging its head between the parallel bars at the edge of the canyon.

Mack bent down to pick up the elderly woman, who appeared stunned. “Are you all right?” She weighed no more than a bag of bones, and Mack wondered how many of them she might have broken. People hovered around her, everyone suddenly quiet except for Ace and Frosty struggling with the animal. He should toss both idiots over the edge—no, the law was inflexible about stuff like that.

The elderly woman refused medical attention. “She okay,” said a man who seemed to be her husband. “She ask if she just see pig fly.”

It actually looked like a crash landing. Ace and Frosty were trying to free the javelina by its hind legs. The poor animal’s tusks were caught in the metal railing, and it squealed like the stuck pig it was.

Cal’s jaw dropped. Ursula laughed. Juanita gasped, and her breasts heaved. Everyone spoke at once:

“My goodness!” Brodie said.

“Holy crap!” Zippy said.

“Gosh almighty!” Carrick said.

“Good Lord!” Reverend Hal said.

“Awesome suit!” Elvis said.

“Give us a hand!” Ace yelled.

“What’s that damn thing doing here?” Mack asked, picking up Reverend Hal’s bible from the ground and handing it to him.

Reverend Hal looked offended. “It’s the Good Book. Oh, you mean the animal.”

“This is Elvis and Ursula’s wedding present,” Frosty said. Mack walked over and checked it—sure enough, the plastic tag said “Poindexter.”

Poindexter was badly wedged in as tourists snapped photos, and all Mack could think about was getting this whole fiasco over with and having a couple of drinks with Cal, maybe making a couple of serious moves on her. He and Cal rounded up everyone in the wedding party to get started again. They all lined up in pairs, facing the magnificence of the canyon and the haunches of the javelina.

“Mooned by a pig,” Frosty said. “This is the best wedding ever!”

“I do,” said Elvis, Ursula and Zippy when their turns came. Then Juanita hesitated and took a long look at Mack instead of her groom.

“Sure,” she said. Mack was just as sure that the piddling detail of marriage wasn’t going to take her out of circulation.

Carrick looked into Brodie’s eyes as he held her hands. “Marrying you was the best choice I ever made,” he told her. “I pledge to be with you forever.”

A police siren wailed nearby as Brodie repeated her pledge. “Get out of my goddamn way!” Mack recognized the voice. Dieter Kohl jumped out of the cruiser, wearing a hospital johnny and holding a pistol that Mack took to be a nine-millimeter Glock.
He must have killed a cop! He must still be after the damn lottery ticket.
Mack had to draw Kohl away from the crowd, but how? He walked quickly along a gravel path to his right, hoping not to be seen.

“Nobody go nowhere!” Kohl shouted. Mack kept moving, casually walking like an oblivious tourist who was circling back to the parking lot. “All I want is Durgin.”

“He’s not here yet. He’s late.” Mack looked to his left and saw Cal approach Dieter Kohl, her hands outstretched as if urging him to stop. “Maybe you passed him on the road?”

Mack picked up a fist-sized rock, the best he could find. Kohl stopped and waved the gun in Cal’s general direction, looking completely crazed. “You’re lying to me!” He grabbed Cal’s throat with her free hand.

Mack cocked his arm and shouted. “Let her go! I’m right here!”

Kohl wheeled around, and Mack drilled him between the eyes with the rock. Diet Cola staggered and dropped his weapon. Both hands went up to his face. If Mack could reach the gun, the game was over, but as he lunged for it, Kohl kicked him in the gut and dropped him to the ground. Sharp pain seared Mack’s chest and left him breathless. Kohl picked up Mack, slung him over his shoulder and began lumbering toward the edge of the cliff.

“Stop!” Several people screamed. “Please stop!”

Mack knew what was coming, so he kicked and clawed until they came to the railing—then he held on with his arms and legs as Diet Cola tried to throw him over the cliff’s edge.

Kohl’s massive hands pried Mack loose and then held him by the ankles. Mack fought terror as stared down into an unthinkably deep grave.
It’s not my time to die
. He felt the weight of his blood settling in his face.

“You cheated me!” Kohl shouted.

“Give up. You don’t have a chance!” A couple of feet out of his reach, a gnarled pine grew out of a crack in the cliff wall. If he fell and grabbed the tree at the base, it just might hold him—and it just might not. Other people’s hands were grasping at Mack, apparently trying to hold onto him.

“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.