Free When Pigs Fly by Bob Sanchez

nurse had just come by with enough codeine to drive away the buzzards that chomped at his brain. He thought he might as well check himself out and get on with business, so he dressed back into the Elvis costume he’d worn on his arrival in E.R. A nurse told him he was in no shape to leave the hospital, but leave he did—wanting to say thank you ma’am, but I am a man on a mission, no one can stop me because I know my God-given rights as an American citizen. All of this was hard to say without moving his jaw, so he finally just walked right out the front door and down the street, where he crossed the Merrimack River and hoofed it another half dozen blocks to his home. There he reinforced the codeine with a couple swigs from a pint bottle of brandy while he tried to remember where the hell Calliope lived.

Chapter 12
     
    Pincushion
    “It’s for the best, baby girl,” Sally Windflower heard her father say as he steered the pickup truck far down a desert road. “Poindexter was born to live in the wild anyways.”
     
    “Was not,” she snapped. She draped one arm around the javelina’s neck and fingered the laminated identification tag that read, “Hello. My name is Poindexter.” It was fastened around his neck with a plastic strip. One day when Sally had children of her own, she would wander out this way and find her sweet pet’s bones with the name tag still in place.
     
    `The engine coughed to a stop, and Sally’s father pushed back his dusty hat. “This is far enough,” he said. “It’s time.”
     
    “This is so mean ,” Sally said. “I’ll never ever forgive you.”
     
    “Oh darlin’, that hurts me so much, but he belongs out here with his own kind.”
     
    “Does not.”
     
    They stepped out of the cab, and Sally’s father let down the back of the pickup, opened the pen and eased Poindexter to the ground. He grunted and rubbed his rough hide against Sally’s leg. Her father tried nudging him away with little luck. “Shoo! Go on! Git!” he finally had to say, and Poindexter disappeared into the barren desert. Sally had lost her first love, and she was inconsolable.

Chapter 13
     
    Back East
    Frosty scratched his neck, the backs of his hands and behind his ears. He gritted his teeth while he rubbed a shoe on his ankle. “Mmmrrrggghhh!” he said, sounding like he was sitting on the can and having a tough go of it.
     
    “Quit that,” Ace said. “You’re making me itchy.” Ace scratched his private parts (his own, not Frosty’s), a potential embarrassment since they were picking up a few things at the Shop ‘n Save, and rule number one of shoplifting was don’t get noticed.
     
    All this itchiness might have been from the poison ivory they stood in yesterday, behind the house they robbed where the guy got the living crap kicked out of him. They stood in the aisle with the toothpastes and the enemas and the ointments people used for wicked bad rashes. Frosty picked up a blue plastic bottle and slipped it inside his shirt just as an old lady came around the corner and glared at them.
     
    “You’re stealing,” she said. “Put that back!”
     
    Frosty sucked in air between his teeth. “Mind your business, you old bag.” The lady weighed maybe eighty pounds including her purse, but her jaw went tight like fast-setting concrete. Ace wished his brother hadn’t said that. They really needed that calamine lotion so they could treat their rashes and concentrate on planning their trip.
     
    “Ma’am,” Ace said smoothly, “my brother would apologize if he could. He’s got this turret syndrome where he scratches and says rude things. It’s out of control.”
     
    “Hmph. I never heard of that. I’m getting the store manager.”
     
    “Bitch!” Frosty’s eyes went wild. Ace slapped his arm and took the bottle from his belt.
     
    “I’m so ashamed, Ma’am,” Ace said, his eyes beginning to water. “This was supposed to be Frosty’s last outing before we had him committed.