“Toast! Jake wants toast!” he screeched.
“You can’t have toast,” Edwina yelled at him. “You can have a muffin.”
“Fuck off!” Jake paced back and forth on his perch making garbled noises that sounded like mumbling.
Laughing, Quint bent down and looked at Jake again. “Ed, did he just tell you to ‘fuck off’?”
Jake landed on the bottom of the cage and jumped up and down. “Fuck off, dickhead! Fuck! Off!”
Quint shook his head. “Well, I never...”
“Quint, if you’re not gonna leave,” Edwina said, “just sit there quietly while we try to figure out what this bird wants. Vic’s trying to teach him not to say fuck and you’re bringing out the worst in him.”
Sandi bent over, eye level with the parrot. “You stop saying bad words. Aunt Ed and I are going to clean your house. Sit here and be a good boy. Take a nap.”
“That’s such a small cage,” Debbie Sue said. “I suppose we could let him out.”
“Oooh, no,” Edwina said. “Cleaning this aviary thing is bad enough. I don’t want to clean bird shit off all the walls, too.”
Jake hopped up and down. “Bird shit! Bird shit! What the fuck!”
“Let’s get this done so we can put him in it,” Sandi muttered. She and Aunt Ed immediately donned rubber gloves and set out to take the plants out of Jake’s aviary in the corner of the room.
Debbie Sue picked up one of Jake’s toys and shook it at him. “Here, Jake. Play with this.”
“Jake’s mad!” he screeched. “Lemme out!” He threw his head back and screamed a string of what sounded like an assortment of invectives at the ceiling.
“All right, all right. Just shut up.” Debbie Sue opened the travel cage’s door and invited Jake out. He hopped out onto the floor, spread his wings and bobbed his head. He began to squawk loudly. He paced back and forth, squawking and bobbing his head.
“What is it, Jake? Why are you upset?” Debbie Sue offered him a handful of hair rollers to play with, but he batted them away with his beak. “Why are you mad, Jake?”
He continued to pace and squawk unintelligibly. All at once, he ran to where Edwina and Sandi were cleaning his aviary and hopped up and down. “Jake’s mad! Jake’s mad!”
Edwina and Sandi looked at each other, then at Debbie Sue. “Unless it’s because I didn’t cook toast for him, we don’t know why he’s mad,” Edwina said.
“That sonofabitch is pigeon-toed,” Quint said.
Jake made a loud screech and hopped up and down. “Dickhead!”
“Did he call me a dickhead again?”
Jake ran across the floor and bit the toe of Quint’s boot.
Quint jerked back his foot. “What the hell?” He stared down at his boot. “He scarred my damn boot. These are custom-made boots.”
Jake paced back and forth in front of Quint, volleying between squawking and screeching and making loud unidentifiable noises.
“My God. I think the little bastard is having a tantrum,” Edwina said and looked at Sandi. “Does he know he’s pigeon-toed?”
“I don’t know,” Sandi answered, shaking her head.
Edwina gave Quint a pointed glare. “Maybe he doesn’t like being compared to a pigeon. Or maybe he just doesn’t like Quint.”
Quint opened his palms. “What the hell did I do?”
“While you’re standing there doing nothing, feed him a muffin,” Edwina said. “They’re in that bag on the floor by my station.”
Quint picked up the bag and began to dig inside. Jake continued to pace and screech and squawk. Quint pulled out a baggie filled with miniature muffins. “Since when do birds eat muffins?”
On a squawk, Jake attacked Quint’s boot again.
Just then a sound came from the back room and Debbie Sue shot a look toward the door to the back room. “Was that the back door?”
“Nah,” Edwina answered. “Nobody comes through the back door.
Everyone but Jake stopped what they were doing and listened. Jake continued to squawk and ramble.
Chapter 24
The door into leading into the salon opened. A scruffy unshaven man stepped through and in his hand was a very large pistol. “Okay, folks. Stay right where you are and nobody gets hurt.”
Oh, my God! John Wilson!
Debbie Sue had recognized the intruder instantly. He looked just like his mugshot. Her eyes bugged.
He gestured with the pistol barrel toward Quint, who had thrust his arms straight up and turned pale even under his phony tan.
“Dickhead!” Jake took flight and sailed to the top of his aviary in the corner.
Wilson’s eyes darted between Jake and Quint. “You,” Wilson said to Quint. “Gimme the keys to that truck out back.”
“Whoa, buddy. It’s not my truck.”
Debbie Sue’s thoughts raced. Oh, no. Not my pickup.
“Gimme them clothes,” Wilson said to Quint.
“No way. I can’t undress in front of these women.”
“Fuck that!” Wilson pointed the pistol at Quint’s face. “I don’t like wearing bloody clothes, cowboy, but it beats what I got on. Do it!”
“Fuck that!” Jack squawked a noise that sounded like a pistol cocking. “Fuck that! Jake’s mad!”
Wilson’s attention swerved to Jake. “What the hell is that?”
In a quick move, Quint karate chopped Wilson’s wrist with the side of his hand. The gun hit the floor with a deafening blast. Blam! The smell of cordite filled the room.
Debbie Sue’s heart took off racing even faster. Everyone in the room dropped to the floor, scrambling for the gun. Through the scramble of hands, Wilson grasped it and got to his feet shouting. “I’ll kill every one o’ you sonsabitches!” He gestured with the gun barrel again. “Get on your feet. All of you.”
“Aaawrk! Call the cops!” Jake flew to the opposite corner of the cage and began to screech and squawk. “Fight! Fight! Call the cops! Call the cops!
They all stood cautiously.
He pointed the gun at Quint again. “Gimme them goddamn clothes and don’t gimme no shit.”
“Okay, okay. Just don’t let your finger get itchy.”
Slowly, Quint began to undress. Hopping on one foot, he pried off a boot, then moved to the other. Next came his socks.
“Hurry up, goddammit. I woulda
