by Bob Sanchez
Their fingertips brushed each other as she accepted the gift. She lifted the top, saw the bracelet and laughed. Then she slipped it onto her wrist and aimed a smile at him. “Thank you. God, I thought you were offering me a ring.”
Johnny Cash was walking the line, but Mack’s laugh drowned him out for a few seconds until he saw Cal’s hurt expression. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant no offense. We’ve just been acquainted for two weeks.” She was so young and beautiful. Why would he think she’d ever accept a proposal from him?
“Exactly. We don’t really know each other.”
“Well said. I haven’t even kissed you yet.”
Cal caught her breath and looked into Mack’s eyes. “That hasn’t escaped my attention,” she said. “What’s up with that?” He reached across the table and took her hand, noticed the warmth and softness of her skin. She squeezed his hand gently and fixed her gaze on his face, and they sat without speaking. The waiter approached and quietly left a check. The walls seemed to absorb whatever was playing on the jukebox and reflect it into Mack’s ears as white noise. Other patrons became indistinct shapes, nondescript bit players in a dream. But Cal was quite distinct with her brown eyes and swept-back brown hair, her slender bare arms, her slender neck and lovely figure. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a pass. Should I? He knew what Mary would say: You still have a life, Mack. Don’t be an idiot. He blinked once, expecting her to be standing with her hands on her hips, but she wasn’t there.
Cal looked at him, her eyes saying it’s your move, Mack, as though she and Mary had been comparing notes. Mack softly kissed the back of Cal’s hand. If she pulled back, that would be that, but she didn’t. He gently pulled her arm, and they leaned across the table to each other. Her lips parted as though to whisper—
An empty chair scraped at their table, and Frosty sat down. “How you guys doin’? Ace is with me, but he’s taking a leak. You two playing spin the bottle?”
Mack’s dream evaporated. The music turned suddenly loud, the lights suddenly bright. Waitresses and patrons sharpened back into focus, and Frosty looked like a bleached pear. “We’re busy,” Mack said. “Go away.”
Frosty turned to Cal. “You give him some tongue, Cal. I’m sure he can get that up.”
“Leave us alone!” Mack snapped. He felt steam building behind his temples.
“No need for harsh. That’s way immature.”
Mack stood up and lifted Frosty out of the chair, up toward the tin ceiling. Frosty’s face flushed with fear. “I’ve had enough of you and Ace,” Mack said.
“But we’re your friends.”
“No you’re not. You’re just two punks I never arrested.”
The manager interrupted them. He looked like he could bench press Mack and Frosty together. “What’s the problem here, gentlemen?”
“None at all,” Mack said, letting Frosty down. “I was just giving my friend a lift.” Ace came out of men’s room and dried his hands on his pants.
“See? You admit we’re friends!”
The manager put his hand on Frosty’s shoulder. “You all right, son?”
Frosty straightened himself. “I think so. I won’t be pressing charges.”
“You might want to take your friendly discussion outside, gentlemen.” The manager’s warning look was enough for Mack, whose evening was already ruined. Cal gave Mack an enigmatic smile as he followed Ace and Frosty into the parking lot.
“We just thought you’d like to know Diet Cola’s completely ripshit at you,” Ace said. “Sounds like you conned him out of something.”
Mack scratched his chin while Ace and Frosty eyed him expectantly. “I shouldn’t tell you boys this. I hired a plane to spread my friend’s ashes over the Grand Canyon. There’s a lottery ticket hidden in the ashes.”
“A winning ticket?”
“Why else would he want it?”
“How much?”
“Diet Cola’s expecting a hundred million.”
“And you threw it away?”
Mack shrugged. “It’s just a piece of paper to me.”
“God, no wonder he called you all those names!”
“Sticks and stones, Frosty. I’m not very sensitive.”
“If I was you, Officer Durgin, I’d worry about those sticks and stones.”
Ace and Frosty were back in their motel in Williams after a frustrating trip involving a wrong turn that got them almost to the California state line. Leena lay snoring on the bed, tongue out and drooling on the pillow, tusks gleaming from tooth whitener, eyelids fluttering, porky maleness evidently aroused by sweet pig dreams. Earlier they had shaved his body and oiled it with Johnson’s Baby Oil, and Leena must have thought he was the King himself. It was kind of odd that Leena had a plastic tag around his neck that said Poindexter, but then everything about the last couple of weeks was odd.
Ace ripped a Bud out of its plastic six-pack ring and handed it to Frosty. Finally they knew what they were looking for, and it was better than Ace had ever dreamed. With this kind of money he could buy a new car every year, rent himself a girlfriend, even give up stealing except for recreation.
“You thinking what I’m thinking, Frosty?”
“Besides Durgin’s a putz? Besides he should have given us the ticket if he didn’t want it?”
“Yeah, besides all that.”
“Besides he’s a total idiot, I’m not thinking anything. You?”
“I’m thinking we go to the wedding, we find out where he dropped the ashes. Then bingo! We go get the ticket.”
“He went to the Grand Canyon. Isn’t that kind of big?”
“That’s negative talk, my man. It’s just a hole in the ground. We’ve gotta think success.”
The Grand Canyon stretched beyond the horizon, an endless patchwork of color that left tourists in awe. “Your parents are the handsomest couple in the whole park,” said Cal, who Mack thought looked mighty fine herself. Plus she had her hand on the small of his back. They stood at a South Rim railing and looked into Nature’s magnificent handiwork, multihued layers of sandstone with a river that patiently carved ever deeper. Through binocular lenses, Mack saw a doughty band of hikers and burros, tiny specks in a vast, deep oven. He handed the binoculars to Cal and pointed at the caravan below.
“They’ve done the easy part,” Mack said. “Coming back up is the killer.”
“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.