Fup

we'll come back the next night and my son Tiny will tear off your arms and pound on your head with them until you get the idea.'

'I'd only do that if I was really mad,' Tiny assured him.

Fup tucked her head under her wing.

'I won't be threatened,' the manager shrilled.

'No, you'll be hurting,' Granddaddy promised. Then he added, still sharply but somewhat softer, 'A duck. A duck. What possible fucking difference could it make to your stunted heart or the world at large?'

'Alright, alright,' the manager relented, backing away. 'But keep it in the car. And if there's anything unusual, you're out. And no refund.'

There was no trouble with admission after that.

Tiny and Granddaddy Jake were both partial to Westerns, especially those featuring gunslingers against a good-hearted Marshall.

Granddaddy, who was usually pretty well into his second jar of the day, pulled hard for the outlaws and other forces of disorder, often leaning out the window to holler advice at the screen-'No, no, you dumb shits. Don't meet him on the streets… bushwhack the sum-bitch from behind a watering trough!' He was also highly critical of the gunslinger's choice of weapons, ranting to Tiny and Fup, 'Goddamn why do they want to use them pistols all the time? Can't hit jackshit with 'em past 10 yards. Situation like that requires a sawed- off.10 gauge and nine or twelve sticks of dynamite. Idiots! No wonder they never win!'

Tiny quietly rooted for the Marshall.

Fup was generally indifferent to Westerns, except for seemingly arbitrary scenes when she would quack excitedly. It took Tiny and Granddaddy Jake about five months to figure out what all the scenes had in common were horses, and after discussing it they decided to buy her a colt for company when Bill Leland's mare foaled the coming spring. Tiny started roughing out drawings for a ten foot high split-rail corral when they got home that night.

Fup's favorite movies were romances, whether light and witty or murderously tragic. She watched intently from her roost on the back of the seat, occasionally tilting her head to quack in sympathy at the problems assailing love. She would not tolerate Granddaddy's derisive and consistently obscene comments, and after she'd almost torn off his ear a few times he settled for quiet mumbling. Tiny watched without comment.

Granddaddy Jake liked horror movies almost as much as Westerns. He thought they were hilarious. Tiny and Fup didn't like them at all. Tiny shut shis eyes at critical points. Fup paced the back of the seat, occasionally hissing at the monster or quacking frantically to warn an unsuspecting victim, who was usually quite innocently exploring a radioactive cave or wandering around pressing buttons in a laboratory on a lightning-streaked night.

Considering the range of their tastes, it was fortunate that the Rancho Deluxe always had a double feature. Between movies Tiny would walk across the humped asphalt to the concession stand and buy them some snacks. The order was usually the same: two pieces of beef jerky for Granddaddy to work on, eight bags of salted peanuts and two large root beers for himself, and for Fup the $2.99 Family Tub of buttered popcorn and a large orange drink. They munched away as the second movie began.

* * *

The drive-in was fun. The Sunday morning pig hunt was serious work-at least for Tiny and Fup. Since they started at dawn, Grand-daddy didn't go with them, seeing no reason to disturb his dreaming or, he claimed, show them up. He did, however, offer endless advice.

There was considerable argument among the local folks whether Fup was truly a pig-duck, a pig-duck in the sense that Boss had been a pig-dog. With her snake-necked waddle, beak working the ground like a bloodhound's nose as she weaved to cut fresh track, she looked like she was hunting. She didn't find many pigs, though, but either nosed down or blundered on enough to make it seem she knew what she was doing. To Tiny, who followed her with his.243 cradled in his arms, there was no question. When she hit fresh track she would start quacking to herself, and as the track got hotter, the volume and intensity increased. He considered it proof that she was indeed tracking and not just casting about. He was also convinced that she had an excellent nose, and though no one but Grand-daddy Jake agreed, he believed Fup could have trailed any pig she wanted. But she was after one pig in particular: Lockjaw. It was Tiny's notion that the few pigs she did nose out, while not the silent boar himself, were directly related to him, off-spring, that had a similar scent. Of course, he couldn't prove it, and that frustrated him. Granddaddy told him there was no need to prove it, that most things spoke for themselves, but to not necessarily assume he'd got the reasons right. The reasons for things, Granddaddy cautioned, were tricky.

In thirty-two Sundays of hunting, they found Lockjaw twice. The first time, Fup's crazed quacking scared him up early, and Tiny only had time for a single shot at 250 yards. At the sound of the rifleshot, Lockjaw went rolling down the hill. But when Tiny and Fup finally worked their way over to where they'd seen him go down, there was no sign of Lockjaw. No body, no blood. Fup picked up the trail immediately but lost it at the bottom of the draw where it hit McKensie Creek. They searched up and down the creek on both sides till well after noon but found no sign. Fup was so exhausted Tiny had to carry her home.

The second time they saw Lockjaw, Lockjaw had seen them first, circled back on his tracks, lay down to wait in a tanoak thicket, and when they passed, he charged, slashing at Tiny's legs and missing, but knocking him down, and literally running over Fup, smashing one of her webbed feet so severely Tiny had to carry her home again. But he'd gotten a clear-if quick-look at Lockjaw just before he'd been bowled on his ass, and he reassured Fup as he packed her along that Lockjaw couldn't last forever, that he seemed to be slowing down, looked a mite skinny, appeared to be missing a tusk, and definitely had a matching set of.243 holes in his ears.

Granddaddy met them at the kitchen door. 'You don't even have to tell me you saw that pig… I know you did.'

'What makes you so sure?' Tiny asked.

'Because every time you see him, you come home carrying Fup.'

Fup hissed.

Tiny glowered, then smiled.

Granddaddy hooted.

Lockjaw, tired with the exertion, picked his way along the creek to the tangle of dug-out redwood roots where he enjoyed snoozing on hot afternoons. He gave a few deep grunts along the way, sounding his satisfaction. Being pursued by a huge strange duck and a giant kid every seventh day was an annoyance, but not very dangerous. Of course, as Granddaddy Jake would've had it, nothing is very dangerous for an immortal. They survive by definition, one way or another.

4 The Second Heart

Although he never said anything, and used his need for sleep and sweet dreams as his excuse, Granddaddy Jake didn't like the Sunday morning pig hunt, didn't like it at all. It bothered him that Tiny was becoming obsessed with killing Lockjaw. Hunting was one thing, killing another, and obsession in any form was, to Granddaddy's experience, utterly treacherous; you couldn't be born if you wouldn't let go, and very few people could deliver themselves of obsession. The tight excited flash in Tiny's eyes disturbed him with its helplessness. He blessed Fup for accompanying Tiny, for despite her intensity she was slow, and together they only covered about an eighth as much territory as he could have alone or with dogs. Granddaddy, in his innermost heart, didn't want Lockjaw killed; he firmly believed that Lockjaw was the reincarnation of his old friend Johnny Seven Moons. This belief constantly surprised him, since he generally held that reincarnation was a pile of horseshit five feet deep.

Johnny Seven Moons was the only man besides Granddaddy who had ever taken a drink of Ol' Death Whisper without flinching. Granddaddy had first met him shortly after he'd given up gambling in favor of the still life. He'd been sitting on the front porch sampling his fifth batch when he saw an old Indian man coming across the yard wearing a battered cowboy hat and a black serape. Although he's never seen him before, Granddaddy Jake recognized him from stories as Johnny Seven Moons, an old Pomo that wandered the coastal hills without an apparent home or source of income. According to some of the stories Granddaddy had heard, Johnny Seven Moons had trained as 'doctor' or medicine man before the crush of white civilization had disrupted tribal ways.