Cloud Nine- When Pigs Fly Read online

  “Acting funny?” Winky said. “You mean like they start tellin’ jokes and stuff?”

  “I don’t think he meant funny ha ha,” I said. “More like funny strange.”

  “Right,” Goober said. “Most people are just weird when it comes to money. That’s why I had to leave St. Pete. Every time the AARP finds me, I know my deadbeat relatives are only days behind.”

  “I get that,” I said. “But why live like a bum?”

  Goober cocked his head toward me. “It has its advantages.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, when you go out with a homeless guy, after the date, you can drop him off anywhere.”

  Winky shot out a staccato laugh.

  “Get serious!” I grumbled.

  “Okay,” Goober said. “Here’s one. No one pays attention to transients, Val. It’s the best way to remain invisible.”

  “That’s not true,” I argued.

  “Okay,” Goober said. “There was a guy standing by the traffic light we passed back in Monroe. What did he look like?”

  “I dunno.”

  “My point exactly. Being a transient, you can hide in plain sight.”

  “But then why go and do outrageous things...like your Le Petomaine fartist gig in downtown St. Pete? Or being a hair-teasing tranny in a rainbow Mohawk? Why couldn’t you just...I dunno...work a normal job in the feed store like a regular guy?”

  Goober lifted his head from the seat and shrugged. “Too much manual labor involved. Besides, can’t a guy have fun if he wants?”

  “Fun?”

  “Yeah. Working in the beauty shop, I get to hear the latest gossip. I know the dirt on everyone in town. See that gal over there?”

  Goober pointed to a plump woman coming out of a Li’l Champ convenience store.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “She has a two-carton-a-day habit.”

  “Cigarettes?” I asked.

  “Little Debbies.”

  “You don’t say,” Winky said. “What kind?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Better drink ‘em now, boys,” I said. “Mom doesn’t allow beer in the house.”

  Goober’s mention of a fat lady’s penchant for Little Debbies had stirred Winky’s appetite something fierce. He’d jerked the steering wheel on the hearse like a berserk chimpanzee, and before I knew it, had hung a U-turn on US 90 and lurched into the parking lot of the Li’l Champ convenience store in a cloud of orange dust.

  My forehead had almost hit the dash as he’d slammed on the brakes, but I hadn’t objected. In fact, I’d been glad. I’d been in no hurry whatsoever to get to our final destination, and a visit with my mother always went down better with a dose of liquid courage.

  After making a quick run inside for provisions, the three of us stood out in the parking lot, chugging back a shared six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I didn’t know if it was the beer or what, but sandwiched in amongst the monster trucks, ATVs and cobbled-together junkers around us, I didn’t feel so conspicuous anymore about leaning on a flame-covered hearse.

  “So, what’s been going on in your neck of the woods while I’ve been gone?” Goober asked.

  I glanced over at him. That conspicuous feeling started to creep back in again. The orange coveralls Goober’d borrowed from Winky only came down to his shins. Paired with his red converse sneakers, purple surgery marks and that rainbow Mohawk, Goober looked like a clown from some poor kid’s birthday party that had gone horribly awry.

  “Lose the Mohawk,” I said.

  “What? You’re not into diversity?” Goober joked.

  “Lose it. Please?” I begged.

  “Okay.” He grinned, looked in the side-view mirror and began peeling the strip of wig from his shiny pate.

  “Well, Laverne’s went and got herself a pet pig,” Winky said between gulps of beer. “Named him Randolph.”

  “Randolph,” Goober said, trying the word out on his tongue as if he could taste the bacon within it. “Sensible name for a Sus scrofa domesticus.”

  “He ain’t that messy,” Winky said. “Besides, Laverne keeps him outside now.”

  “At least until the fake luau on Friday,” I said. “Which, by the way, has actually turned into a real luau.”

  “Good,” Goober said, and flung the Mohawk into the hearse through an open window. “Nothing worse than a fake luau, I always say.”

  “And Caddy’s is going to be torn down to build condos,” I said.

  That got Goober’s attention. He scowled. “So, in other words, business as usual on the Florida Suncoast.”

  “I’m afraid so. I’d laugh at the stupidity of it all if it weren’t for the fact that people have gone missing in the deal.”

  “What people?” Goober asked.

  “Greg Parsons, for one,” Winky said.

  “Greg as in the owner of Caddy’s?” Goober asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “And Norma, too.”

  “Geeze.” Goober’s face grew serious for the first time. “What happened?”

  “If we knew that, they wouldn’t be missing now, would they?” Winky said.

  Goober sighed. “True enough. I guess that was the beer talking.”

  “I wish my beer could do the talking,” I bemoaned. “I never know what to say to my mother.”

  Winky belched. “Why don’t you just say ‘Hi, mom’?”

  “Gee, Winky,” I said sourly. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  WE WERE ON OUR WAY to mom’s place with a few beers under our belts when I realized I should probably call Tom and let him know the news.

  “Tom?”

  “Hey! You made it there okay, I see.”

  “Yes. And we found Goober!”

  “You what? You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. He was working as a tranny at my mom’s beauty parlor.”

  Tom was silent for a beat. “What’s wrong with me that I’m not even surprised by that?”

  I laughed. “I guess it comes with the territory when you’re part of this crew.”

  “He’s all right, then?” Tom asked.

  “Yes. He gave us a scare, but...never mind. It’s all good. I’ll explain when we get back tomorrow.”

  “He’s coming back with you?”

  “I...I guess so. I just assumed he would.”

  “Good. Tell him I said ‘hi.’”

  “I will. How are things going with your case? Any news on the whereabouts of Greg and Norma?”

  “Nothing definitive.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I was going to wait and tell you when you got back. But...we found something floating in the surf this morning. It appears to be a human thigh bone.”

  “Geeze! Greg’s?”

  “Too soon to tell. And another thing. Demolition on Caddy’s starts Monday morning.”

  “Crap. Isn’t there any way to shut Amsel down?”

  “You can’t stop progress, Val.”

  “That’s not progress! I wear, Tom. If I have to, I’ll stand on the beach and fight the bulldozers tooth and nail.”

  “Save your strength for your mother. You’re gonna need it.”

  “Ugh. Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Be good. See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  When I hung up the phone, Goober said, “Pardon my eavesdropping, but what’s so bad about your mom, anyway?”

  “Besides the fact that she has a mind rusted shut by entrenched opinions?”

  Goober laughed. “Whose mother doesn’t?”

  “No, really. My mother is a psychological force not to be reckoned with, Goober. She could have been downright diabolical if she’d had any ambition. Why do you think we call her husband ‘The Hostage’?”

  “Geeze!” Goober said, his eyebrows an inch higher than normal.

  “Speak of the devil, we’re here,” Winky said. He lurched the hearse into mom’s dirt driveway.

  A plump woman wearing a faded house dress, a frizz
y perm and a bulldog scowl came out and stood on the porch.

  “’Bout time you got here!” she bellowed.

  I looked at the guys and said, “Welcome to my world.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Goober’s caterpillar eyebrows shot up another inch. “That’s your mom?”

  “Yeah. You do her hair at the beauty parlor,” I said as I opened the passenger door on the hearse.

  “Yes. I most certainly do. My condolences.”

  “Thanks.” I froze in place. “Wait. Why?”

  “Oh...no reason,” Goober said, and climbed out of the hearse behind me.

  “I see you done traded in another one,” Mom grumbled from the run-down porch tacked onto the faded, ranch-style house.

  “What?” I asked her.

  She nodded her frizzy head toward Goober. “That ain’t Tom.”

  “No, Mom. It’s Goober.”

  “That one what up and disappeared?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Well, what are y’all waitin’ for?” she barked. “Get inside a’fore you let all the AC out.”

  We followed Mom inside. She waved a ham-hock sized arm at a plaid couch that nearly matched the hideous chair of Tom’s that I’d laid waste to last month with my Hammer of Justice.

  Huh. Maybe that’s why I hated that chair so much....

  “Y’all have a seat,” Mom said.

  Goober headed for a brown recliner and was about to make butt-fall when Mom yelled, “Not there!”

  He made a hasty reversal and joined me and Winky on the ugly couch. The three of us watched like mesmerized puppies as Mom backed her sizeable derriere up to the brown recliner, leaned backward, and let gravity take her the rest of the way down. The worn-out recliner creaked in protest. Its groans echoed off the dusty knick-knacks and wood-paneled walls surrounding us.

  I breathed in the smell of the place. It was comfortingly familiar, even if it was an odor best described as the comingling of stale farts, old cheese, and Jergens hand lotion. I probably would’ve been more embarrassed if I hadn’t been so mortified about the old pictures of me hanging on the walls.

  Mixed in among a hodgepodge of classic Olan Mills family portraits, images of me could be found in various stages of my life, including without teeth, without boobs, and without hope.

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” Goober said without the slightest bit of irony.

  He really is a good friend.

  “Hrrmph,” Mom grunted. “You know how it is. When you got kids, you got nothin’ else.”

  “Mom, you haven’t had any kids in here for thirty years.”

  “No thanks to you, Valliant. Couldn’t see fit to make me a grand-baby.”

  For a second, I thought about showing her a picture of Snogs. But I knew it wouldn’t fly. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Y’all hungry?” Mom asked.

  “I thought we’d all go out to eat,” I offered, mostly because I didn’t feel like having to scrounge through the leftovers in her refrigerator and then wash all the containers. “Where’s the Hosta...husband.... Uh...where’s Dale, Mom?”

  “He’s off in that blamed golf cart with Tiny McMullen.”

  “I remember that feller,” Winky said. “He’s the one what fixed Tom’s 4Runner when we had that axle-dent when we was up here last.”

  “Yep,” Mom said. “That’s right. Too bad Tom ain’t here, too. Val, you ain’t no prize poultry no more. It’s time you learned how to hold onto a man.”

  “I told you, Mom. We’re still together. He just couldn’t come. He’s working on a missing person case.”

  Mom eyed me skeptically. “Uh-huh. I’d say he’s the one’s gone missin’.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do you think Tiny might be able to take a look at Goober’s RV?”

  “I don’t know, Vallie. Ask him yoreself. They just pulled up.”

  I ran out the front door to greet Dale. He’d come into my life after I was grown, but he’d been worth the wait. Unlike my mother, I’d never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. The poor little guy was as blind as he was kind. With glasses as thick as coke bottles, Dale never saw me coming.

  I wrapped my arms around him. “Hi, Dale!”

  “Is that you, Val?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well I’ll be,” he said, and hugged me tight against him. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You, too.”

  “You remember Tiny McMullen, don’t you?”

  “Sure.” I shook hands with a man so tall and big around he probably wouldn’t fit inside a large chest freezer. Then I worried about why I would make such an odd observation.

  “Howdy, Dale, Howdy, Tiny,” Winky’s voice sounded behind me.

  “I see he’s still out,” Tiny whispered to me.

  “Huh?” Then I remembered at our last visit. I’d told Tiny we were transporting Winky to Chattahoochee mental hospital. It had been a joke. But it had apparently stuck. “Oh! Yes. He’s all better now.”

  Tiny eyed Winky, then the flaming hearse, and asked, “That your vehicle?”

  “Yep,” Winky answered.

  “She’s a beaut. Mind if I look under the hood?”

  “Be glad to show you, Tiny. She’s got herself a diesel V8, you know.”

  Tiny shook his enormous head and grunted appreciatively. “I’ll be.”

  “Maybe when you two are done we could run up to Betty Jean’s Beauty & Feed and have a look at my RV,” Goober said from the porch. “It needs some major work.”

  Winky shot a knowing look at Tiny. “Busted pistons.”

  “You don’t say,” Tiny said with a grin. “That’s my favorite kind.”

  “TINY SURE LOVES WORKING on engines, doesn’t he?” I asked Mom as we stood on the front porch and watched the guys climb into the hearse. “Sure you don’t want to go along for the ride?”

  “Nope,” Mom said. “I’ll just wait right here.”

  “Me, too.”

  Mom shot me a look. “I got dibs on the bathroom.”

  Crap!

  “Well, hurry up.”

  “You cain’t hurry perfection,” Mom said, and hobbled down the hallway.

  Great.

  Some women had synchronized periods. My mother and I had synchronized bowels. Whenever I needed to go, you could bet the farm that she did, too. Her place only had one toilet, and she always beat me to it without fail.

  “SO, HOW’VE YOU BEEN Mom?” I asked, and handed her a glass of iced tea.

  “Meh. Fair to middlin’. I come into this world with nothin’, Val, and as you can see, I still got most of it left.”

  “Mom!”

  “But at least I’m better off than you. I still got Dale.”

  “Mom, I really am still with Tom.”

  “You ain’t married. You ever plannin’ to?”

  “No plans as yet. I want to take it slow. I don’t want to make another big mistake.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Valliant. Tom ain’t no mistake. I like him.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure. I’ve learnt over the years to never underestimate the value of a man who bathes regular.”

  I took a sip of sweet tea and sucked my teeth.

  “Yeah. Well, Mom, you’re right. Tom does have that going for him.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I was lost in the pine woods alone. The pounding of heavy footsteps drew nearer. Some horrid creature was after me! The sound of its panting and growling grew louder as it got nearer...ever nearer.

  I held my breath and braved a peek through a scrub palm. Gadzooks! It was a huge brown bear! Its eyes locked on me. Suddenly, it began to barrel toward me, crashing through the scrub, causing the earth underneath me to reverberate with each pounding step.

  I tried to get up, to run – but my legs were paralyzed! Before I could move, the bear leapt on top of me. It threw back its hideous head and let out a horrible, gravely howl. It put its nose up against mine. The hairs on its head wer
e frizzed like a bad perm. I could feel the hot saliva draining from the bear’s lips onto my face. It opened its mouth and let out a roar not unlike the sound of a toilet flushing....

  I awoke with a start. In the moonlight filtering through the dust particles, I could see I was in my mother’s living room. I’d fallen asleep on the couch.

  I sat up on one elbow and wiped the drool from my chin. Someone had covered me with a blanket. Lying beside me was a teddy bear. The same one Winky had given Goober at the hospital.

  Slow, heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. A door creaked closed. I sighed and leaned back onto the pillow. I pulled the stuffed bear to my chest, smiled, and closed my eyes.

  I WOKE AGAIN SOME TIME later, feeling as if I had gotten a new lease on life. With the help of Winky and Goober, I’d survived the evening with my mother. All I had to do now was get through breakfast and I was home free.

  I stumbled into the kitchen and scooped a whole cup of Folgers into a filter, poured a carafe of water into the Mr. Coffee machine, and hit the “on” switch.

  So far, so good.

  But I should have known my luck wouldn’t hold.

  Goober was the first to emerge from the guest room down the hall, where he and Winky had shared a full-sized bed for the night.

  “Morning,” he said, and rubbed his bald pate.

  “Morning,” I said. “Coffee?”

  “Please and thank you, ma’am.” He shook his head. “You know, Val, I had no idea Lucille was your mom.

  “Yesterday you offered me your condolences. Why? What did you hear about her?”

  “Well, it’s probably just old-lady gossip, but I heard she can be a tad self-absorbed.”

  “You think?” I deadpanned.

  Goober snickered. “I heard she missed her best friend’s wedding because she was getting her hair done.”

  “That’s a totally true story. What else did you hear?”

  “Well, I know this for a fact, because I do her hair. Your mother’s got a bald spot on the back of her head as big as a goose egg.”

  “What from? She’s not sick is she?”