Read PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay for Free Online

narrow, the far wall closer all the time.   He sensed something coming, backed off and stopped.   Reached out and touched it, a cyclone fence.
    He panicked a moment, sure the fence had trapped him, blocked his way out.   Then, working his way around, he saw the fence butted against the two walls, continued down the room, with a narrow walkway in between.
    What the hell was that for?   You did fences up.   You didn't do fences underground.
    He didn't know the answer, didn't really care.   The room went somewhere, it didn't go to Piggs.
     
    W hen he found where it went, he almost turned back.   The dark room ended abruptly, in a crumbling brick wall.   An iron ladder was imbedded in the brick.   The ladder was rusty and the only way was up.   When he touched the lower rung, it came off in his hand.   Bricks tumbled to the floor.   Something squealed and ran across his foot.
    "Shit,"   Jack said.
    He looked up in the dark.   Reached up and grabbed a rung.   Jerked it hard and it didn't come off.   Found the rung above that.   A hand and then a foot.   Pause, take a breath, take a step again.
    His head hit something hard.   He felt it, knew what it was.   The cover to a mini-manhole, the thing the guy lifts up to shut your water off.   He reached up and pushed.   The cover wouldn't give.   Jack stepped up another rung, put his shoulder in it and shoved.   The third time it gave.   Dirt tumbled down in his face.   He closed his eyes, opened them again.   He was fifteen feet from the far side of Wan's.   Ortega was sitting on the steps, reading under a 20-watt bulb.   Humming to himself, smoking a cigarette.   The night was hot, and the sky was full of stars...

Chapter Ten
     
    J ack pulled himself up, put the cover back, stirred the dirt around.   Stood, and walked to Wan's.   Ortega looked up and set down his magazine.
    "I think they gonna kill you, Jack.   Rhino says it'll be wors'n than that."
    "I expect he's right."
    "Rhino says he was you, he'd go to Delaware."
    "Why up there?"
    "'Cause Cat don't know where it is."
    "I'll keep it in mind."
    "I think the whales are against us," Ortega said. "I think there is evil in these great creatures we've yet to dream about."
    "I never thought much about it."
    "You look at whale sometime.   You look him right in the eye."
    "I will," Jack said.
    Ortega was reading Discover magazine.   Ortega liked nature. Especially otters, animals that lived in the sea.   Jack felt he was fifty, maybe eighty-six.   His skin was the color of clay.   Three-day beard.   Never one or two.   Wore those Pancho Villa outfits all the time.   Wore them waiting tables at Wan's Far Eastern Bar & Restaurant.
    When Jack first met Ortega, he was startled by his speech, which sounded like someone named Sven.   He was born in Tuxpan, Mexico, and deserted as a child when his mother passed through Hope, North Dakota.   Ortega was raised by friendly Swedes, and lived there until he was seventeen.   Though he spoke very little greaser at all, he was fiercely loyal to his native Mexico, and hated all whites.
    "What do you know about Chavez?" Jack said.   "What kind of guy is he, what's he do?"
    "Ricky Chavez."
    "Big guy.   Comes over here from San Antone."
    "I know who he is, Jack.   You don't have to tell me who he is."
    "Okay I won't."
    "Good."
    "Am I insulting you or what?"
    "A white eye's thinking, both these dudes are tacos, they gonna know each other, right?   Am I right?   Fuck you, pal."
    Jack sat down on the steps.   "What's the matter with you.   You been drinking again?"
    "We are all borracho .   Read you fockin' Hemingway.   It ees thees thing of the drink, Ingles."
    "I feel I may have caught you in a bad frame of mind."
    "This could be.   You think they would put me in the pen if I killed Rhino?"
    "I doubt it."
    "Good.   Then I will.   Chavez owns a bank in San Antonio.   Also one in Kerrville.   He has about a billion acres near Carrizo