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“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 begi
“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, Da
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 Da
“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 Da
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 Da
“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. Da
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.”
Da
“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.
Da
“See what I mean?” Amy asked Georgie and Pete, as the two men got into the backseat. Then the skydiver drove away, giving the artists the finger out the window of the car. Patsy Cline was singing on the radio, and Katie had stopped dancing; someone must have changed the station again.
“I don’t want to eat the pig,” Joe told his dad.
“Okay,” Da
He carried the boy over to where his mother had stopped dancing; Katie was just swaying in place, as if waiting for the music to change. She was drunk, Da
“To get out of a boring marriage, maybe,” Katie answered him.
“Since I’m the driver, I’d like to leave before dark,” he told her.
“Lady Sky is an angel, Mommy,” Joe said.
“I doubt it,” Katie said to the boy.
“She told us she was an angel sometimes,” Da
“That woman has never been an angel,” Katie told them.
JOE WAS SICK in his car seat on their way into Iowa City. A Johnson County sheriff’s car had followed them the whole way on U.S. 6. Da
Da
“Let me out of the fucking car,” Katie said.
“Here?” Da
“Who said I was coming home?” she asked him.
“Oh,” Da
Just before dark, he’d seen her talking to someone on the phone in the farmhouse kitchen-probably Roger, Da