PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay (2 page)

His name was Hutt Kenny.
 
Not Kenny first, but the other way around.
 
Hutt, he said, though nobody asked.
 
Hutt stood for Hutton, but no one called him that.
 
Cecil was certain no one in the state of Louisiana had a name like Hutton Kenny.
 
Boston, maybe, or Rhode fucking Island, but nowhere in New Orleans.
 
Which meant the old man was really out of the picture.
 
That his boy was bringing new people in from out of state.
 
People from the East.
 
People with names where Kenny came last.
 
That was depressing, Cecil thought, but everything changed, nothing ever stayed the same.

There was some kind of trouble, an angry swell above the usual bedlam at the bar, a brief discord that quickly faded way.
 
Cecil paid it no mind, not until Grape came back with Kenny in tow.
 
Kenny was mad, holding it back, but you could see it in his eyes.
 
You been around a while, you can see it in the eyes.

"What's the problem?" Cecil said, talking to Grape, not talking to Hutt.

"Nothing," Hutt said, "no big deal."

"Ol' boy called him a fag," Grape said.
 
"Said he was wearing funny shoes."

"Who was this now, you know who it was?"

"Skinny dude, short hair, leather jacket."

"Forget it," Hutt said, "fucker was drunk."
 
He downed his drink, tapping the glass to get the whiskey past the ice.

"Like an aviator jacket," Cecil said, looking at the bar.

"Uhuh, something like that."

Cecil looked at Hutt.
 
Hutt wouldn't look back.
 
He was clearly irritated.
 
The girl came with drinks. She didn't have a bottom or a top.
 
Hutt gave her a quick appraising glance, then picked up his glass and drank it down.

"Let's forget it, all right?
 
We've got business, Mr. Dupree.
 
That's why I drove up here, so you and me could talk.
 
I don't give a shit what the guy said, doesn't mean a thing to me."

"I give a shit," Cecil said.
 
"This is my place, you're a guest here.
 
That boy showed no respect to you, Mr. Kenny.
 
Like you're showing no respect to me.
 
I am overlooking that, I don't take offense.
 
My guess is, you being a asshole doesn't have a thing to do with this.
 
This is a social disorder, this is a personal failing in yourself.
 
What I am saying, I'm saying Ambrose Junior, this is the word from him to me.
 
Junior wants to tell me I am off his Christmas list.
 
He'll let me do bidness, but I got to kiss his ass.
 
I got to pretend this kid who is wet behind the ears is the fucking Godfather, thinks he's in a movie somewhere.
 
What do you think, Mr. Kenny, am I getting close, would I be correct in saying that?"

It looked as if Hutt might strangle on his collar.
 
His glass was empty and all he had was ice.

"This isn't right, Mr. Du-pree, now you're aware of that.
 
This kind of talk, this won't get us anywhere at all."

"You can take that tie off you want.
 
We like folks to feel at home here."

Cecil looked past the booth, studied the crowd at the bar, looked at the bar a long time, looked back at Hutt.
 
Long enough for Hutt to look off at something else.

"Grape, get us some food in here, "Cecil said.
 
He stood, then, and set down his beer. "Get me a Shiner, get our guest another drink."

"Nothing for me," Hutt said.

"Get him a drink," Cecil said.
 
"Easy on the ice.
 
The man's from fucking Maine somewhere, he don't want a lot of ice..."

T
he bar was against the west wall, the tables shoved together past that.
 
There were two small platforms next to center stage.
 
When a girl got through, she could climb on a platform and do her thing there.
 
There were always three girls going all the time.

The place was packed solid, good for Tuesday night, though most nights at Piggs were like Saturdays anywhere else.
 
Texas law said a club could serve drinks if the girls only took off a top.
 
Bring Your Own Bottle, if the bottom came off as well.

The law applied to Garner County, the exception being Cecil Dupree, who gave of himself through personal endowments, outright bribes, and football scholarships.

The crowd was mostly male, a mixed bag of college kids, used car salesmen and men in gimme caps.
 
Sometimes, a man would bring a woman in Piggs, hoping the kinky convolutions on stage were contagious, that a wife or a girlfriend would maybe learn something, and take it back home when she left.

Cecil wouldn't keep a woman out, but he thought it was wrong to bring them in.
 
It made guys nervous to see a woman sitting there with all her clothes on.
 
A guy comes to Piggs, he doesn't want to see that.

He made his way through the darkened room, keeping to the edge, avoiding the crowd as best he could.
 
Piggs had been a seafood place before Cecil bought it out.
 
Built-in tanks ran around three walls.
 
The tanks had held tropical fish, but now they held pigs.
 
This is how Piggs got its name.
 
The pigs were cute and pink, the size of puppy dogs.
 
People liked to watch pigs, liked to watch them romp about.
 
A man gets tired of just watching private parts, he'll stop and watch a pig.

You could write your name on a pig for twenty bucks.
 
This was Cecil's idea, and it brought in some nice extra cash.
 
Your name might be next to Dolly or Garth, or maybe even Willie himself.
 
No one stopped to think pigs grew fast.
 
There were always pigs in the tanks, signed by ordinary people and famous country stars. Always cute, and always the very same size. . . .

I
t was mid-July, and the A/C was high as it would go.
 
Cecil slipped out the side door, into the hot oppressive night.
 
He stopped and looked up at the dark and starless sky, breathed in the heated summer air.
 
The smells were smells he liked.
 
Tar grown soft from the fury of the day, the fumes of passing cars.
 
He could smell the grease from Wan's, smell the tang of sour beer.
 
There were plenty of smells in the world, but these were the ones he liked the best.

The neon sign atop the building read
PIGGS,
a sign you could read nearly three miles away.
 
The pink letters flashed every second and a half.
 
Circling the sign was a herd of blue pigs. They chased one another in a fast and jerky pace just below the speed of light.
 
Flashing letters and the orbital pigs played tricks upon the eye.
 
People felt dizzy as soon as they arrived.
 
People who were drunk had a tendency to throw up on the ground.
 
People prone to fits didn't go to Piggs at all.

Cecil crossed the dim parking lot.
 
He'd spotted the aviator jacket, seen the man leave, watched him go while he talked to Hutt Kenny or maybe Kenny Hutt.
 
Talked to the asshole Ambrose Junior had sent up from New Orleans.
 
Sent him up to insult Cecil R. Dupree, who'd been his father's friend.
 
If the old man knew, he'd be angry and ashamed.
 
Ambrose Senior was a standup guy.
 
He would never allow an insult to his friends.
 
Or maybe, Cecil thought, Ambrose wouldn't care.
 
A man having trouble with his parts doesn't really give a shit about anybody else.

C
at Eye was standing by Cecil's Cadillac, a man a little smaller than a truck, a man with little alligator eyes.
 
Cecil hadn't asked him to follow, but that was Cat's job, to be anywhere Cecil wanted him to be.

Cecil walked to his car, which was parked in its spot against the wall.
 
The car was extra-long and lizard-green, a super-extended '93 Caddie, big enough to haul a pro basketball team.
 
He opened the trunk, found a burlap sack, and closed the trunk again.
 
Cat Eye leaned against the car.
 
A Dodge Ram roared out of the lot, spraying gravel in its wake.
 
College boys who'd downed a few beers, seen some naked girls.

No one else was leaving, no one else was in the lot.

The man in the aviator jacket was standing by a low-slung car, looking for his keys.
 
The car was an '84 Spider, maybe '85.
 
The paint was beetle-black, so deep and shiny black, the neon from Piggs was a dazzling sight to see.

The man heard Cecil walk up behind him, jerked around fast, wondered what this was all about, decided he was bigger, shook his head, said, "What the fuck, man?"

Cecil pulled a short-handled axe from his burlap sack and whipped it across the man's gut.
 
The man cried out and staggered back, slammed against the car.
 
He threw one hand before his face.
 
Cecil hacked at him again.
 
The blade took off three fingers, buried itself between the neck and the shoulders clear to the center of the chest.
 
The man slid down, leaving dark streaks on the beetle-black car.
 
Sat with his hands hung loose by his sides.

Cecil put his foot on the man and pulled the blade out.
 
Dropped the axe in the sack and walked across the lot.
 
Stopped to talk to Cat Eye, gave Cat the sack, and went back into Piggs.
 
The A/C labored on the roof, chugging away in a hopeless effort to chill the Texas night.
 
A truck whined by, heading for 35, heading for San Antone.
 
The headlights swept across the lot, flashed, for an instant, on a man with alligator eyes.
 
A man with a sack by a lizard-green car.

H
utt was looking better, more relaxed now, slumped in the booth, a couple more drinks inside him and a skinny naked girl on his lap.
 
The color in his cheeks was partly from the drinks, partly from the fact that the girl was doing something out of sight.
 
The girl billed herself as Alabama Straight, though Cecil doubted that.
 
The homo persuasion was rampant in the stripping game, a fact club owners didn't care to advertise.

"I asked you to get us some food over here," Cecil said,

"I don't see food anywhere."

"It's coming," Grape said, "I got you garlic shrimp."

"I don't like the garlic shrimp."

"Yeah, you do.
 
You get it all the time."

"I used to get it, I don't get it anymore."

"I'll get you something else," Grape said.

Cecil looked at Hutt.
 
Hutt hadn't noticed he was back.
 
He had the girl down in the booth.
 
The girl didn't like it, but Hutt didn't care.

"I forgot about the shrimp," Grape said.
 
"I remember you saying, we was over to Wan's, you don't like it the shrimp."

"Forget it.
 
Forget about the shrimp."

"What you want me to do?
 
He's going to nail her right there."

"What I'm going to do is nail him.
 
I'm not taking a partial, that asshole don't know it yet.
 
Leave him alone; give Alabama a twenty from me."

"There he is, there's the guy again," Grape said.

"There's who?"

"The clown, the dude called your guy a fag."

Cecil looked where Grape was pointing. "That guy's got a brown jacket.
 
You said a black."

"No, sir.
 
I believe I said brown.
 
Short hair, brown jacket like the aviators wear."

"I think you said black."

"I think I said brown," Grape said.

"I'm pretty sure you said black."

"It's fuckin' dark in here, I coulda said a black."

"I think that's what you did."

"Whatever," Grape said.

"The food gets here, I'll get you somethin' else. The Moo Goo and hot and sour soup."

Moo Goo's fine," Cecil said. "Gimme a eggroll, forget the fucking soup."