Tiny and Fup left the house next morning at first light. They cut around the top of Rifkin's Draw and then down along the southern fence that Tiny had built when he was sixteen. They paused for a minute to let the dawn-light brighten, then, with Fup in the lead, they began to follow the fenceline along the edge of a tanoak thicket, heading toward a seep-spring where Lockjaw was fond of wallowing. They hadn't gone a hundred yards when Fup began nosing the trail like a pedigree hound; in moments she was quacking excitedly. Tiny shifted the weight of his.243, easing his thumb to the safety. He couldn't see down the fenceline on his side because a small stand of pepperwood sprouts blocked the line of sight. Fup plunged straight through them, her neck snaked out flat, still wildly quacking, and Tiny crashed through right behind her. When they finally cleared the pepperwoods, they both stopped in a sudden split second of silence: Lockjaw was lying twenty feet away, on his belly, staring at them, his left hind leg caught in the twisted mesh of fencewire.
Tiny raised the gun to his shoulder, his concentration locked on the pig. Fup was quacking incessantly at his feet, shrill, hysterical. He centered the bead directly between the pig's unwavering eyes. It was Lockjaw, he was sure, but he looked old or diseased, no tusks, ears tattered, the jet black bristles along his spine turning a ghostly grey. Tiny took a deep breath, trying to shut out Fup's maniacal quacking; he let the breath out slowly, holding the bead steady between Lockjaw's eyes, and started to squeeze the trigger. Fup, flapping frantically at his feet, saw his finger tightening and bit him as hard as she could on the leg.
"It's Lockjaw, Lockjaw!" Tiny bellowed, kicking at her. Fiercely quacking, she scurried out of range to the right. Oblivious, Tiny quickly brought the bead back to a dead hold between Lockjaw's eyes. As he pulled the trigger, Fup hurled herself upward at the barrel, knocking Tiny off balance. He tripped backward, Fup in front of the muzzle as the gun fired. The blast and shock of the bullet tore her apart.
Tiny couldn't breathe. On hands and knees he crawled toward her shattered remains. Gasping, he reached out to gather her in his hands, gather her back together, but his hands refused. When he finally touched a mangled wing and her blood smoked on his fingertips, he heard, far away, a great, wracking cry torn from his body. He sat back on his haunches and wept.
Then he stopped. He felt Lockjaw staring at him; he turned, ready. Lockjaw's head was stretched out flat, resting on his forelegs. His gaze was direct, vast, utterly indifferent. Slowly, the eyes began to cloud and film over, lose themselves behind a dull silver glaze, the color of the sky just before it rains, a color like the back of a mirror.
Tiny got to his feet, walked over to the pig's body, took the fencing tool from his back pocket, and cut Lockjaw's leg free from the fence. The huge, gaunt body slumped over on it side. Tiny knelt beside the body and delicately touched the left eye, leaving a faint, bloody fingerprint on its filmed surface. It didn't blink. He moved his hand down and pressed his palm firmly against the pig's rib-cage just behind the shoulder. There was no heartbeat under the coarse, stiff bristles against his damp palm. For a moment he thought he felt a movement inside, a dull pulse, but he wasn't sure. The last quiver of nerves, maybe; the involuntary movement of smooth muscle that lasts beyond death. Then he felt it again, certain this time, and carefully began moving his hands over the pig's body feeling for the source of the pulse.
A hand's breadth above its penis, against the lower ribs, he felt a steady movement. He put both his hands on the bare belly and gently pressed. It was a steady pulse against his palms, not the sporadic twitch of guts. He rolled Lockjaw over on his back, the pig's legs, already stiffening, awkwardly protruding into the air, then laid his head against its belly. He felt the steady pulse resonating in his cheekbones.
Bracing the pig's body against his leg, he took out his pocketknife and opened the long slender blade he used for gutting. He started the cut at the pelvic bone and ran it alongside the penis on up to the sternum, blood feathering in the wake. When he let the pig fall back on its side the guts spilled loose. Within the coils of warm guts was a thin, slick, membranous sac, blood orange, throbbing. Deftly, using just the tip of the knife, Tiny slit it open.
Inside, he saw what his mother had seen shining on the bottom of the lake: a point of light; rich, steady, dense. It divided into two. Into four. Eight. Beginning to whirl as it instantly multiplied through the blinding trajectory of form toward some new coherence, the arc of energy into matter, the white parchment of a scroll unfurled flashing in the sun.
The whirling light, as if consolidated or absorbed, faded into the form of a duckling. Fup shook herself free of the clinging membrane, fanning her wet wings as she issued a few soft tentative quacks. Growing by the moment, she continued to fluff herself under Tiny's astonished gaze; fullgrown, she uttered a triumphant burst: QUACK-WACK-WACK-WACK-WACK-WACK-WACK.
When Tiny reached to touch her, Fup exploded into flight, straight up like a puddle-duck should, an explosion of water and wings. Tiny screamed. Fup leveled off and swung to the east, merrily quacking. Abruptly, amazingly graceful for her bulk, she banked off the wind and came sailing back over.
"FUP! FUP!" Tiny howled at her, waving his arms as she passed. She went into a high, curving, climbing turn and circled back around him. Suddenly she folded as if shot and plummeted a few feet before spreading her wings again, quacking wildly as she banked, swooping, and then she quit quacking and started to ascend above him in a perfect, opening spiral. Tiny stood rooted, stunned, watching as she vanished into the sky.
Granddaddy Jake, slammed awake by the gunshot, had lurched outside in his longjohns and followed Tiny's wails to a knobhill overlooking the fence. He'd crested the knoll just as Tiny had gutted Lockjaw, and had stood transfixed as Fup had seemingly risen from the pig's body and began her spiralling ascent. He watched entranced, whispering over and over to himself, "I don't fucking believe it." Yet he believed it without hesitation.