Fup

Johnny Seven Moons was widely suspected of conducting extensive sabotage on local fences and heavy equipment, and he generally wasn't welcome in the area. However, he was always spoken of with a strange respect-he was always polite and soft-spoken, and with his shamanistic past came a rumor of powers… nothing ever specific… just a sense.

Granddaddy had sensed it before Johnny Seven Moons reached the porch, asking if he might do a chore or two in exchange for something to drink, preferably whiskey. They sat on the porch and drank whiskey for two days and well into late evening of a third. Grand-daddy Jake found him to be an excellent companion, for in that time Johnny Seven Moons didn't utter a word-just sat sipping from his jar, gazing at the day, the night, calmly and extremely still.

On the third evening he took a deep breath and turned to Jake: 'Let me tell you about my name, Seven Moons. I added the Johnny when the white man came because I thought it sounded young and sexy, but it didn't seem to do much good. I think it's bad now to just make up names, but I keep it to remind me you must live with your mistakes. I earned my name Seven Moons when I trained as a doctor. I went away alone to find my name in a vision. I wandered and sought without food for three days, a week. Nothing happened. On the seventh day, as the sun touched the sea, I came across a group of maidens from another village out on a foraging trip for reeds and berries. It was a warm fall night. They were camped along a stream, cooking a fat salmon, and had acorn bread and berries. Have you not found in your life that hunger becomes most intense near the point of imminent satisfaction? I joined them, and we feasted. And that night, as the full moon traveled the heavens, I made love with every one of them, and with each I felt the full moon burning in my body, a great pearly light exploding inside my head. Seven Maidens. Seven Moons.' He paused, smiling in the dusk. 'Your whiskey… four moons, maybe five.'

From that first visit until he died six years later, Johnny Seven Moons dropped in on Jake about every two months, and while Jake enjoyed his usually silent companionship, he relished the rare utterance. Seven Moons, whether out of a reverence or distrust for language, never said much, but when he did, he always said something. Jake could remember a few in particular. Once, as they'd watched the sun go down over the ocean, Seven Moons had said with the sweet weariness of constant marvel, 'You know, I've seen 30,000 sunsets, and no two that I can remember have ever been the same. What more can we possibly want?'

Another time, he'd swept his hand across the landscape, and said, 'Yarrrg, you white men did a lot to take it from us, but nothing to deserve it. You desire to tame everything, but if you just stand still and feel for a moment you would know how everything yearns to be wild.' He spat. 'And all these people with fences, fences, fences. Isn't the whole point to keep nothing in and nothing out? But I know you understand this Jake, for you have no fences, and devote your life to making whiskey and keeping still, and those are noble activities, worthy of a man's spirit.'

The statement had haunted Jake when Tiny started building fences. But when Tiny had turned his hunt for Lockjaw into an obsessive ritual, what haunted Jake to his core were the last words he remembered Seven Moons saying to him.

Jake had walked out the ridge with him to say goodbye, and just before they'd parted Seven Moons had pointed at some fresh pig rooting and flashed a stupendous smile: 'Ah, there we see hope-the domestic gone wild. Pigs are so lovely. Their bodies are made to hold up the sky. I wouldn't mind being a pig sometime… a big ol' crazy boar. That would be great.'

Granddaddy Jake couldn't get it out of his mind, so he finally told Tiny what he thought might be the case, that Lockjaw was the reembodied spirit of Johnny Seven Moons, and that maybe he should think about that before he got too fixed on killing him.

Tiny adamantly shook his head. 'It's just not true, Granddaddy,' he replied, almost pleading, 'when people die, they're gone. Gone. And that's all.'

So Granddaddy Jake let it drop. There was no point. His notion wasn't as strong as Tiny's need. He'd said his piece, and in doing so satisfied what he felt was his responsibility both to his grandson and his old Indian friend. Johnny Seven Moons, in whatever form his spirit had taken, would have to look out for his own ass. And so would Tiny, wherever his spirit was taking him.

A few nights later, out for his nightly stroll, Granddaddy Jake met Lockjaw on the old saddletrail that ran out to the Claybourne place. They met blindly at the top of a rise; both recoiled for an instant, then charged. Granddaddy was knocked high in the air, did a splaying one-and-a-half somersault, and smacked down on the rain-softened earth like guts on a slaughterhouse floor. Fortunately the only thing he broke was the jar of Death Whisper in his overcoat pocket, and though Lockjaw made a few jaw-popping lunges, slashing at Jake's ribs, the fumes from the spilled whiskey soon had the mammoth boar staggering, his jowls streaked with tears from his burning eyes, mucous bubbling in his ravaged snout. He lurched off into the brush, leaving Grand-daddy Jake to assess the damage to his person. He felt himself all over, methodically, expecting to find himself torn to shit and bleeding, but all he found were a couple of patches of slobber along his right side. And it came back to him then through the shock: the sight of Lockjaw looming above him, hooking with his head, huge in the dark, but old, he was old, the sag of skin, the ripple of ribs, both tusks missing, snapped off at the jaw line or else fallen out.

'Gawddamn,' Granddaddy moaned, staggering to his feet, 'good thing it was a fair fight-don't think I coulda held my own if he wasn't already worn down about as much as me.' He scraped off the mud as best he could in the darkness then headed on out toward the Claybourne's. He was glad now he hadn't pursued it with Tiny, trying to make him see that Lockjaw might be Seven Moons, because now he wasn't so sure that such was the case. The Johnny Seven Moons he remembered would have stopped to lick up that spilled whiskey.

He didn't tell Tiny. After thinking on it for three afternoons, mulling it with that slow, voluptuous thoroughness that is a reward of the still life, Jake reaffirmed his neutrality. He wouldn't tell Tiny anything about Lockjaw, and he wouldn't tell Lockjaw anything about Tiny. That decided, he turned his attention to other pressing matters, like teaching Fup to fly.

* * *

He'd been sitting on the porch one afternoon letting his mind wander as usual, taking a sip now and then, pouring a little into Fup's saucer, when he'd suddenly realized he was already getting bored with immortality. He needed a task, a task that would not only challenge his wisdom, but enlarge it: he needed to teach something he didn't know. A pupil, fortunately, was near at hand. Reaching down and stroking her sleek neck, he said coaxingly, 'Fup, I think you should learn to fly. It'd do wonders for your social life. Hell, maybe you could pick up a husband-or at least zoom off for a quickie in the cattails with some emeraldheaded stud. Tiny and I have talked some about getting you a mate, but the truth of it is I ain't got an ounce of pimp in me… and anyway it would be an insult to your good looks.'

Fup looked at him without a sound and wearily tucked her head under her wing.

'Good Christ, sweetheart,' Granddaddy persisted, 'just think about it-you could fly from here to Mexico, just soar along looking down on it all and give it a great big quack!'

Fup removed her head from under her wing, and in a voice strong, deliberate, and not without a hint of mockery, responded 'Quack… Quack… Quack.' Then hissed a bit, and stomped around. Granddaddy Jake took it as a beleagured agreement.

But Fup did not agree at all to the diet. Tiny had agreed only with great reluctance, noting, correctly, 'She's not going to like it.'

'If you want to fly,' Granddaddy argued, 'you got to make sacrifices. How's she gonna get off the ground with all that weight?'

'She's just big for her age,' Tiny defended. 'It's all in proportion.'

'Tiny, she's not just big for her age, son; she's enormous for maturity. I've seen millions of mallard ducks in my time, and Fup is not just a touch bigger, or a wee bit bigger, or half-again, or twice: she's about seven times the size of whatever's next. Now I don't think she's grotesquely fat or nothing like that-just a bit too heavy for flight is all. Hellfire, we'll still feed her, just not as much.'

But Fup wanted as much, and when she didn't get it, she sulked. She examined the portions as if straining to see them, then, spotting food, gulped it in a frenzy of false gratitude, turned her back, and shit in the dish. She kept to her daily routine, somewhat sustained by the extra goodies Tiny slipped her at work, but she pouted and languished at every opportunity. She was seriously pissed, a disposition hardly improved by Granddaddy's teaching techniques.