Their faces brightened as though they'd gotten fixed up with new batteries."My God, Carrick," the woman said, "we w-"The guy put his fingers on her lips, old Carrick's way of saying shut the hell up. The man, a tall dude, nodded as though analyzing each number in turn. The lady put on the glasses that dangled around her neck. They stopped, looked at the board, and then traded puzzled expressions. The guy had a red bow tie and the broad had a straw hat with a flowing blue ribbon, straight out of a freak show if you asked Diet Cola. The bell over the front door jingled, and a white-haired couple walked in. What kind of lame numbers were those? He picked up a family-sized bag of Doritos, a package of Little Debbie snack cakes and a quart of half and half, which would have to get him through until lunchtime. Diet Cola crumpled a fistful of losing tickets. No, the owner said, the winner hadn't come forward yet.The winning numbers were posted on a white board for everyone to see: 1-2-3-4-5-6. The skinny man looked into the camera and said he came from New Delhi. Diet Cola looked over their heads as the TV news reporter interviewed the owner of the deli where the winning ticket had been sold. "Who won the hundred million bucks last night?" "Not me!" "I wish!" "If only!""I'll win when pigs fly!"A dozen customers talked about striking it rich next time.
When Pigs Fly, Chapter 1Lowell, Massachusetts The Big Belly Deli buzzed with the chatter of happy losers. George Ashe may not be alive, but his remains are having the adventure of a lifetime.Īs Mack encounters one crazed character after another in his quest to fulfill his friend's last wish, he learns that life is a gamble and that pigs really fly. With a bit of luck and a lot of junk food, they trace Mack to the little town of Pincushion, Arizona. Cola hooks up with a pair of loony housebreakers, a bald Elvis impersonator, and a dopehead with an outline of his brain tattooed on his skull. Diet Cola is an ex-con who loves greasy food, but more than anything else, he desperately wants what he hid in the urn. On his journey through the desert, Mack meets Calliope Vrattos, a lovely ex-waitress who wields a mean hairbrush. But Mack has no clue what lies hidden within the urn besides his friend's ashes. When a FedEx driver drops off an urn filled with his friend's ashes at his front door, Mack reluctantly knows he must fulfill George Ashe's final wish: to have his remains spread over the Grand Canyon. Retired cop Mack Durgin used to bust perpetrators in Massachusetts, but now he's widowed and living in Arizona.
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