PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay (6 page)

I
t was only two feet to the ground.
 
He stopped and took a breath.
 
To the right was pitch black.
 
Where he was standing, though, was directly beneath the floor of Piggs.
 
The floor had been there a while–little spears of light found their way through the cracks, lights of every color, dancing in a million motes of dust.
 
Sound was hardly muffled at all.
 
He could hear every note, from the tenor to the bass.
 
He could hear guys yelling and stomping on the floor.

If you thought about it, the place was kinda nice.
 
For the first time since he'd come to Mexican Wells, nobody knew where he was, no one could find him down there.

That was the thing, working for Cecil R. Dupree.
 
Even if you had time off, Cecil was always on your ass.
 
You couldn't get private anywhere.
 
If he wanted you, he'd have Grape or Cat track you down.
 
Morning, noon, middle of the night, Cecil didn't care.

It always seemed to work that way.
 
No matter what, Jack thought, even if it started off good, it always turned out the same.
 
Get a job, get a room, try and settle down.
 
It lasted for a while, then the shit hit the fan and he'd take off again.
 
Fort Worth and Lubbock, then up to Tulsa, clerking in a halfass store.
 
He'd borrowed a twenty from the register, not any fifty, like the asshole said, meaning to pay it back.
 
So he'd taken maybe two hundred more, and hauled out of town.
 
All you had to do was look at this dude, he wasn't even born over here, you knew he was going to turn you in.

Bumming over to Denver, keeping out of trouble, staying straight an hour and a half.
 
Pulling that crap in Ponca City, living real high with what's her name till the money ran out.

And every time you got somewhere, some place you liked a lot, something went wrong.
 
Some of the time, it wasn't anyone else; it was something you messed up yourself.

Jack wondered how that happened.
 
And how come even if you knew, it happened every fucking time?

I
t got pretty easy when his eyes got used to the dark.
 
He felt his way along the wall, cement block, cool and slightly damp.
 
His fingers found familiar shapes.
 
Cabinets or boxes, he couldn't tell which, apparitions in the underground night.

He knew he was walking downhill, the room getting narrow, the far wall closer all the time.
 
He sensed something coming, backed off and stopped.
 
Reached out and touched it, a cyclone fence.

He panicked a moment, sure the fence had trapped him, blocked his way out.
 
Then, working his way around, he saw the fence butted against the two walls, continued down the room, with a narrow walkway in between.

What the hell was that for?
 
You did fences up.
 
You didn't do fences underground.

He didn't know the answer, didn't really care.
 
The room went somewhere, it didn't go to Piggs.

W
hen he found where it went, he almost turned back.
 
The dark room ended abruptly, in a crumbling brick wall.
 
An iron ladder was imbedded in the brick.
 
The ladder was rusty and the only way was up.
 
When he touched the lower rung, it came off in his hand.
 
Bricks tumbled to the floor.
 
Something squealed and ran across his foot.

"Shit,"
 
Jack said.

He looked up in the dark.
 
Reached up and grabbed a rung.
 
Jerked it hard and it didn't come off.
 
Found the rung above that.
 
A hand and then a foot.
 
Pause, take a breath, take a step again.

His head hit something hard.
 
He felt it, knew what it was.
 
The cover to a mini-manhole, the thing the guy lifts up to shut your water off.
 
He reached up and pushed.
 
The cover wouldn't give.
 
Jack stepped up another rung, put his shoulder in it and shoved.
 
The third time it gave.
 
Dirt tumbled down in his face.
 
He closed his eyes, opened them again.
 
He was fifteen feet from the far side of Wan's.
 
Ortega was sitting on the steps, reading under a 20-watt bulb.
 
Humming to himself, smoking a cigarette.
 
The night was hot, and the sky was full of stars...

J
ack pulled himself up, put the cover back, stirred the dirt around.
 
Stood, and walked to Wan's.
 
Ortega looked up and set down his magazine.

"I think they gonna kill you, Jack.
 
Rhino says it'll be wors'n than that."

"I expect he's right."

"Rhino says he was you, he'd go to Delaware."

"Why up there?"

"'Cause Cat don't know where it is."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"I think the whales are against us," Ortega said. "I think there is evil in these great creatures we've yet to dream about."

"I never thought much about it."

"You look at whale sometime.
 
You look him right in the eye."

"I will," Jack said.

Ortega was reading Discover magazine.
 
Ortega liked nature. Especially otters, animals that lived in the sea.
 
Jack felt he was fifty, maybe eighty-six.
 
His skin was the color of clay.
 
Three-day beard.
 
Never one or two.
 
Wore those Pancho Villa outfits all the time.
 
Wore them waiting tables at Wan's Far Eastern Bar & Restaurant.

When Jack first met Ortega, he was startled by his speech, which sounded like someone named Sven.
 
He was born in Tuxpan, Mexico, and deserted as a child when his mother passed through Hope, North Dakota.
 
Ortega was raised by friendly Swedes, and lived there until he was seventeen.
 
Though he spoke very little greaser at all, he was fiercely loyal to his native Mexico, and hated all whites.

"What do you know about Chavez?" Jack said.
 
"What kind of guy is he, what's he do?"

"Ricky Chavez."

"Big guy.
 
Comes over here from San Antone."

"I know who he is, Jack.
 
You don't have to tell me who he is."

"Okay I won't."

"Good."

"Am I insulting you or what?"

"A white eye's thinking, both these dudes are tacos, they gonna know each other, right?
 
Am I right?
 
Fuck you, pal."

Jack sat down on the steps.
 
"What's the matter with you.
 
You been drinking again?"

"We are all
borracho
.
 
Read you fockin' Hemingway.
 
It ees thees thing of the drink, Ingles."

"I feel I may have caught you in a bad frame of mind."

"This could be.
 
You think they would put me in the pen if I killed Rhino?"

"I doubt it."

"Good.
 
Then I will.
 
Chavez owns a bank in San Antonio.
 
Also one in Kerrville.
 
He has about a billion acres near Carrizo Springs."

"Jesus.
 
That explains the gold-toed boots."

"People of the Hispanic persuasion say a man like this has the
suerte
.
 
Luck, good fortune."

"That's what people of the Anglo persuasion say, too."

Jack stood.
 
"You going to do anything, you going to sit here all night?"

"Why don't you ask.
 
Give me the courtesy of that."

"Okay.
 
You think maybe I could use the car?"

"There is very little gas. I will hold you responsible, you run out and leave it somewhere."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Good.
 
Because you have done this several times before."

"You people are a very suspicious race."

"I wonder where the fock we learn that?"

I
t had to be well after four, closer to five.
 
Clouds had swept in while he and Ortega talked.
 
The stars had disappeared, and lightning flared off to the west.
 
It wouldn't likely rain this time of the year, but anything could happen, even a wonder such as that.

Ortega kept his car beneath a live oak tree back of Wan's.
 
The oak was a thick-boled giant that had managed, somehow, to avoid the lumber yard and the ravages of time.
 
The tree was four hundred years old.
 
Ortega's car was an '89 Plymouth, not nearly as sound as the tree.

The car smelled of garlic, beer and cigarettes.
 
Hershey bars and sweat.
 
The back seat was high with Budweiser cans.
 
The front was an avalanche of Pacific Otter and Nature Magazine.
 
The covers pictured happy seals, and ugly manatees.

Jack drove far enough to see down the street.
 
Far enough to see the front of Piggs, close enough to Wan's to stay in the cover of the trees.
 
He thought about the secret that he'd found.
 
A big empty room, a passage underground.
 
He decided it must have been part of the seafood place that was there before Piggs. The only thing was, it seemed awful big for that.
 
A hell of a cellar for a country restaurant.

Which didn't really have much to do with what might happen in the morning, which wasn't that far away now, an hour and a half.
 
Wednesday was not his best day.
 
The shit had hit the fan in Dallas on a Wednesday afternoon.
 
They'd found him guilty–what else?–on a Wednesday, and bused him to Huntsville the Wednesday after that.

The best thing to do, Jack decided, was not even think about what might happen with Cecil or the Cat.
 
The best thing to do was not wait around and find out.
 
Take Ortega's car, drive it till it dropped.
 
Catch a bus, haul ass completely out of state. Any state would be fine.
 
As long as it wasn't Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas or Arkansas.

The only thing was, he knew he couldn't run.
 
He couldn't go no matter what they did.
 
He could have before, but he couldn't do it now.
 
Now, he had something going in his life, something worthwhile.
 
He couldn't take off and leave Gloria behind.
 
He would never, ever in his life, meet another woman like that.

T
he parking lot was empty and that was fine with Jack.
 
That meant Cecil had already left, along with Grape and Cat.
 
Most of the girls didn't bring a car to work.
 
Weirdos tended to hang around the lot.
 
A guy or another girl would pick the girls up.
 
Phylla's niece came and got her every night.
 
They went by Gloria's place and dropped her off.

Jack didn't think she'd be upset.
 
She wasn't like that. She'd told him no, but they could get around that.
 
Go get some pie.
 
Just ride around and talk.
 
That's what he wanted anyway. Just to be with her, have some time to talk.

Someone picked up Minnie.
 
Maggie pulled out in her car.

A Chevy stopped for Laura Licks.

Jack was concerned, but not much.
 
Gloria always took her time.
 
Getting to work and going back.
 
Getting in her costume, taking it off again.

She might be late, but what she was not–and he wondered why it had even crossed his mind–what she was not, was out with that wetback fucking millionaire.
 
She wasn't doing that.
 
Chavez could buy a whole store full of cheapass flowers, she wouldn't be going out with him.
 
Gloria had real values, Gloria was deeper than that.