Pigs in Heaven
Page 8
“No offense, but we spent the better part of this night looking for one of your hawks.”
“Its a holiday weekend.”
“Happy Easter,” Taylor says. “Let’s go hunt some eggs.”
Alvarez sighs. “I know you mean well, miss, but it doesn’t sound very probable. Somebody else would have seen it.
We can’t justify calling out a rescue on this unless we have a witness.”
“We have a witness. My daughter is the witness.”
Alvarez rubs his nose with his pen and decides not to add anything to his log of facts.
“She’s never told a lie in her life,” Taylor adds.
“Frankly,” he says, “I haven’t heard her say anything.”
“She doesn’t talk much. If you leave out all the bullshit in life, there’s not that much left to say, is there?”
Alvarez looks at Decker again and carefully winds his watch. Taylor gets up and walks to the door and back, rein-ing in a real need to kick a chair leg with her cowboy boot.
“Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to say I saw it too? If you write that down on your report, then can you call a rescue party?”
“Just tell me what happened. Just the truth.”
“Just the truth is: a man fell down the spillway of your wonderful dam, today, right around sunset. My daughter saw him go in, and it would give her a better impression of the human race if you’d act like you give a damn. Because if he dies in there he’s going to be just truly dead.”
On Sunday, after a few hours of cramped nightmares on the seat of the Dodge, Taylor and Turtle find the head grounds janitor in the employee parking lot coming onto his shift.
Taylor likes the looks of his truck: a ’59 Ford, cherry. Maybe he’ll be the one to listen. She works in the automotive business and has noticed that people who take care of old things usually have some patience.
“Down the spillway?” he asks. “Can’t be. We got a fence around that. I saw a guy go right over the top once, down there.” Taylor shudders, thinking of that long freefall. “Middle of the day,” he says. “Accident. Your suicides, they mostly hop off at night. Scrambled eggs in the morning.”
Taylor is woozy from lack of sleep and could live without the scrambled-egg report. “This guy was about my age. Long hair. He had on overalls and, what else? A bandana.”
“A green bandana?” The janitor’s face comes on like someone threw a switch behind it. “Tied around his head, like this? And hair like this?” He chops his hand to his shoulder.
Taylor and Turtle nod.
“Oh, hell, that’s Lucky Buster.” He heads for the spillway.
They follow him. “You know this guy?” Taylor asks.
“Retarded guy. Oh, hell. I can’t believe this. When?”
“Last night. You know him?”
“He’s been hanging around here a couple weeks. I can’t believe this. He was driving me crazy. He’s a little kid in his mind, you know what I mean? He has this thing about litter.”
Taylor yells, “Wait up!” Turtle is dragging on her fingers like a water skier. “What thing about litter?”
“He’s nuts. Two or three times I caught him climbing around places a damn mountain goat should not be climbing around. Trying to pick up soda cans, would you believe. Oh, hell. Lucky Buster.”
He stops at the spillway and they all look down, at nothing. The janitor is trying hard to catch his breath. “Oh, hell.”
At ten o’clock Monday morning, six volunteers from the North Las Vegas Spelunking Club, plus one paramedic with rock-climbing experience, emerge from the spillway on the Arizona side. It took all night to assemble this team, and they have been down in the hole for hours more. Taylor and Turtle are front row in the crowd that is pushing quilt-cheeked against the security fence. Guards shout through bullhorns for the crowd to disperse, attracting more new arrivals.
The rescuers look like miners, blacked with grit. The rope that connects them waist to waist went down at dawn in yellow coils, but now is coming up black. Only the clinking buckles of their climbing gear catch the sun.
The stretcher comes out of the hole as a long, stiff oval, like a loaf shoved from the oven. Lucky Buster is wrapped in rubber rescue blankets and strapped down tightly from forehead to ankles with black canvas straps, so he bulges in sections. He can’t stop blinking his eyes. That crowd on the fence is the brightest thing he has ever seen.
3
THE TRUE STORIES
TEN O’CLOCK IN KENTUCKY: THE sun has barely started thinking about Arizona. She can’t call yet. Alice has been cleaning out her kitchen cabinets since dawn. She saw something on the early-morning news that disturbed her and she needs to talk to Taylor. Time zones are a mean trick, she feels, surely invented by someone whose family all lived under one roof.
“Its a holiday weekend.”
“Happy Easter,” Taylor says. “Let’s go hunt some eggs.”
Alvarez sighs. “I know you mean well, miss, but it doesn’t sound very probable. Somebody else would have seen it.
We can’t justify calling out a rescue on this unless we have a witness.”
“We have a witness. My daughter is the witness.”
Alvarez rubs his nose with his pen and decides not to add anything to his log of facts.
“She’s never told a lie in her life,” Taylor adds.
“Frankly,” he says, “I haven’t heard her say anything.”
“She doesn’t talk much. If you leave out all the bullshit in life, there’s not that much left to say, is there?”
Alvarez looks at Decker again and carefully winds his watch. Taylor gets up and walks to the door and back, rein-ing in a real need to kick a chair leg with her cowboy boot.
“Do you want me to lie? Do you want me to say I saw it too? If you write that down on your report, then can you call a rescue party?”
“Just tell me what happened. Just the truth.”
“Just the truth is: a man fell down the spillway of your wonderful dam, today, right around sunset. My daughter saw him go in, and it would give her a better impression of the human race if you’d act like you give a damn. Because if he dies in there he’s going to be just truly dead.”
On Sunday, after a few hours of cramped nightmares on the seat of the Dodge, Taylor and Turtle find the head grounds janitor in the employee parking lot coming onto his shift.
Taylor likes the looks of his truck: a ’59 Ford, cherry. Maybe he’ll be the one to listen. She works in the automotive business and has noticed that people who take care of old things usually have some patience.
“Down the spillway?” he asks. “Can’t be. We got a fence around that. I saw a guy go right over the top once, down there.” Taylor shudders, thinking of that long freefall. “Middle of the day,” he says. “Accident. Your suicides, they mostly hop off at night. Scrambled eggs in the morning.”
Taylor is woozy from lack of sleep and could live without the scrambled-egg report. “This guy was about my age. Long hair. He had on overalls and, what else? A bandana.”
“A green bandana?” The janitor’s face comes on like someone threw a switch behind it. “Tied around his head, like this? And hair like this?” He chops his hand to his shoulder.
Taylor and Turtle nod.
“Oh, hell, that’s Lucky Buster.” He heads for the spillway.
They follow him. “You know this guy?” Taylor asks.
“Retarded guy. Oh, hell. I can’t believe this. When?”
“Last night. You know him?”
“He’s been hanging around here a couple weeks. I can’t believe this. He was driving me crazy. He’s a little kid in his mind, you know what I mean? He has this thing about litter.”
Taylor yells, “Wait up!” Turtle is dragging on her fingers like a water skier. “What thing about litter?”
“He’s nuts. Two or three times I caught him climbing around places a damn mountain goat should not be climbing around. Trying to pick up soda cans, would you believe. Oh, hell. Lucky Buster.”
He stops at the spillway and they all look down, at nothing. The janitor is trying hard to catch his breath. “Oh, hell.”
At ten o’clock Monday morning, six volunteers from the North Las Vegas Spelunking Club, plus one paramedic with rock-climbing experience, emerge from the spillway on the Arizona side. It took all night to assemble this team, and they have been down in the hole for hours more. Taylor and Turtle are front row in the crowd that is pushing quilt-cheeked against the security fence. Guards shout through bullhorns for the crowd to disperse, attracting more new arrivals.
The rescuers look like miners, blacked with grit. The rope that connects them waist to waist went down at dawn in yellow coils, but now is coming up black. Only the clinking buckles of their climbing gear catch the sun.
The stretcher comes out of the hole as a long, stiff oval, like a loaf shoved from the oven. Lucky Buster is wrapped in rubber rescue blankets and strapped down tightly from forehead to ankles with black canvas straps, so he bulges in sections. He can’t stop blinking his eyes. That crowd on the fence is the brightest thing he has ever seen.
3
THE TRUE STORIES
TEN O’CLOCK IN KENTUCKY: THE sun has barely started thinking about Arizona. She can’t call yet. Alice has been cleaning out her kitchen cabinets since dawn. She saw something on the early-morning news that disturbed her and she needs to talk to Taylor. Time zones are a mean trick, she feels, surely invented by someone whose family all lived under one roof.
