Last Night In Twisted River

“Is everything a contest, Katie?”

But she didn’t answer him. She opened the bathroom door and left them with the pile of clothes and Danny’s discarded running shoes. “I lost my sandals somewhere,” she told them.

Outside, the skydiver was wearing just a towel around her waist and was drinking a beer. “Where’d you find the beer?” Danny asked her. He’d already had too much wine on an empty stomach.

Amy showed him the tub of ice. Rolf was sitting on the ground beside the tub, repeatedly dunking his face in the icy water. There was blood from his nose everywhere. He had a pretty good gash on one eyebrow, too-all from the head-butt. Danny took out two beers, wiping the necks of the bottles on his boxers. “That was a terrific idea, Rolf,” Danny told the photographer. “Too bad she didn’t land in the fire pit.”

“Shit,” Rolf said, standing up. He looked a little unsteady on his feet. “No one’s watching the pig in the pit-we got distracted by all the heroics.”

“Is there an opener?” Danny asked him.

“There’s one in the kitchen somewhere,” Rolf answered. The bearded painter who’d been hit with Amy’s jab and hook was holding a wet T-shirt to his face. He kept dipping the T-shirt in the icy water and then putting it back on his face.

“How’s the roast pig coming along?” Danny asked him.

“Oh, Christ,” the painter said; he hurried after Rolf in the direction of the smoking hole.

There was potato salad and a green salad and some kind of cold pasta on the dining-room table, together with the wine and the rest of the booze.

“Does any of this food look interesting to you?” Danny asked Joe. The writer hadn’t been able to find an opener in the farmhouse kitchen, but he’d used the handle on one of the kitchen drawers to open both beers. He drank the first beer very fast; he was already halfway through the second.

“Where’s any meat?” Joe asked.

“I guess it’s still cooking,” his dad said. “Let’s go look at it.”

Someone had turned on a car radio, so they could have music outdoors. Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” was playing. Rolf and the painter with the beard had managed to lift the bedsprings out of the fire pit; the painter with the beard had burned his hands, but Rolf had taken off his jeans and used them as pot holders. Rolf’s nose and the cut on his eyebrow were still bleeding as he put his jeans back on. Some of the roast pig had fallen off the bedsprings into the fire, but there was plenty to eat and it was certainly cooked enough-it looked very well done, in fact.

“What is it?” Joe asked his dad.

“Roast pork-you like pork,” Danny told the boy.

“Once upon a time it was a pig,” Rolf explained to the two-year-old.

“A pretty small one, Joe,” Danny told his son. “Not one of your big friends in the pen.”

“Who killed it?” Joe asked. No one answered him, but Joe didn’t notice-he was distracted. Lady Sky was standing over the blackened pig on the bedsprings; little Joe was clearly in awe of her, as if he expected her to take flight again and fly away.

“Lady Sky!” the boy said. Amy smiled at him. “Are you an angel?” Joe asked her. (She was beginning to look like one, to Danny.)

“Well, sometimes,” Lady Sky said. She was distracted, too. A car was turning in to the long driveway of the pig farm-probably the little plane’s pilot and copilot, Danny was thinking. Amy took another look at the roast pig on the bedsprings. “But there are other times when I’m just a vegetarian,” she said to Joe. “Like today.”

Merle Haggard was singing “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive” on the car radio; probably someone had changed the station. Out on the lawn, Katie had been dancing by herself-or with her glass of wine-but she stopped now. Everyone was curious about the pilot and the copilot, if only to see what would happen when they arrived. Amy walked over to the car before the two men could get out.

“Fuck you, Georgie-fuck you, Pete,” the skydiver greeted them.

“We were too high up to see the pigs, Amy-we couldn’t see them when you jumped,” one of the men told her; he handed her some clothes.

“Fuck you, Pete,” Amy told him again. She took off her towel and threw it at him.

“Calm down, Amy,” the other man said. “The guys on the farm should have told us there were pigs.”

“Yeah, well-I made that point to them, Georgie,” the skydiver told him.

Georgie and Pete were surveying the artists in the pig-roast crowd. They must have noticed that Rolf was bleeding, and the painter with the beard still held a wet T-shirt to his face; the pilot and copilot surely knew this was Amy’s work.

“Which one ran into the pigpen to help you?” Pete asked her.

“See the small guy in the boxers? The little boy’s daddy-that’s the one,” Amy said. “My rescuer.”

“Thanks,” Pete said to Danny.

“We appreciate it,” Georgie told the writer.

Lady Sky was only slightly less formidable-looking when she was dressed, in part because she dressed like a man-except for her underwear, which was black and skimpy. Amy wore a blue denim workshirt, tucked in, and jeans with a belt with a big buckle; her cowboy boots had a rattlesnake pattern. She walked over to where Danny was holding little Joe. “If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll be back,” Lady Sky told the boy; she bent over him, kissing his forehead. “Meanwhile, you take care of your daddy,” she said to Joe.

Katie was dancing by herself again, but she was watching how the skydiver made a fuss over her husband and little boy; Katie never took her eyes off the big woman. There was a song from The Rolling Stones’ album Between the Buttons on the radio, but Danny could never remember which song it was. By then, he’d had a third beer and was working on his fourth-this was on top of the red wine, and he still hadn’t eaten. Someone had once again changed the station on the car radio, the writer had noticed. He’d watched Lady Sky kiss his son, sensing that the kiss was meant for him; Amy must have known there was no better way to make an impression on a parent than to be nice to the beloved child. But who was she? Danny wanted to know. The scar from her cesarean section must have made her someone’s mother, but Danny wondered if one of the stooges with her was her husband or boyfriend.

“Can we get anything to eat here?” Georgie was asking.

“Believe me, Georgie, we don’t want to eat here,” Amy told him. “Not even Pete,” she added, without looking at him-as if Pete couldn’t be trusted to make his own food decisions. Danny didn’t think she was sleeping with either of them.

The pilot and copilot tried to be careful how they stuffed the parachute and the skydiver’s harness into the trunk of the car, but it was impossible not to get some pig shit on themselves in the process. Amy got into the driver’s seat of the car.

“You driving, Amy?” Georgie asked her.

“It looks like it,” she told him.

“I’ll get in the back,” Pete said.

“You’ll both get in the back,” Amy told them. “I’ve smelled enough pig shit today.” But before the men could get into the car, the skydiver said: “You see that pretty little woman, the dancer, over there? You can see her tits through her shirt-that one.”

Danny knew that both Georgie and Pete had already noticed Katie; most men did.

“Yeah, I see her,” Georgie said.

“What about her, Amy?” Pete asked.

“If you ever lose me-if my chute doesn’t open, or something-you can ask her to do anything. I’ll bet you she’d do it,” the skydiver said.

The pilot and copilot looked uneasily at each other. “What do you mean, Amy?” Pete asked.

“You mean she’d jump out of an airplane without any clothes on-you mean that kind of thing?” Georgie asked the skydiver.

“I mean she’d jump out of an airplane without a parachute,” Amy told them. “Wouldn’t you, honey?” she asked Katie.

Danny would remember this-how Katie liked it when the attention came to her, for whatever reason. He saw