Now Why Come That Is?

That squall. That squall: metallic and beastly, squalling, coming from the bottom of hell itself, a squall full of suffering and pleas for mercy, a squall so familiar since Percy's earliest days, from when he was a little boy feeding his daddy Malcolm's Poland China brood sows . . .

But he didn't want to hear it now, damn it, not now, no, for now Percy Terrell was deep inside a dream. He and Elvis were on the town--was it Memphis? New Orleans? Nashville?--he didn't really know, and it didn't really matter. Cause he was in this diner with the King after a wild night of drinking and pool--the velvet night as tangible as the sheets in which he entangled himself at this moment of the dream--at this moment when he and Elvis sat in the diner with the checkered red and white tablecloth with two blondes, one each, one for him, and one for the King; and Percy had his hand on the milky-red thigh of that big-legged gal who smiled through her smacking gum and that leg was so soft and so inviting and she smiled even bigger as Percy moved his hands up that thigh toward--

But that squalling got louder as if someone were murdering that damn hog over and over, calling Percy back to wakefulness, and Percy didn't want to wake up, not with this fine big-legged thing sitting next to him, practically begging for it, and Elvis looking on across the table through his sunglasses, his arm around his sweetie for the night.

What's your name again, hon?

Evangeline, she said.

Evangeline. What a pretty name. Yeah. Percy slid his hand a little higher. Yeah. What's that smell?

At that moment, the moment when the dreamer begins to lose the threads and fabric of his dream, Percy began to dwell more and more on that vile, that powerful and obnoxious odor. Was it the woman? No, hadn't smelled her before. She looked clean enough. And the squalling kept on and on and the smell of hog. Hog. Hog.

Percy sat up in the bed, wide awake. As he blinked and focussed, the squalling continued, but not in the bedroom now, and presently stopped altogether. Percy swung his feet over the side of the bed, and one foot landed in something warm and slick, the sensation at once comforting and sickening, ooey and gooey and warm. His bare foot slid on the Carolina blue carpet.

"Shit."

Shit. There it was, and Percy's heart almost leapt for joy. Almost. For his foot was in a turd. But he had proof. At long last the evidence he needed.

"Rose," he called to his snoring wife, turning on the bedside lamp. "Rose," he began to shake her. "Rose, wake up. Look, Honey, look. That damn bastard has been here and he's left his calling card. Wake up!"

Rose Terrell smacked her mouth absently, and frowned, the sleep so deep around her eyes. "Hmmm?"

"Look, Honey, look." Percy held his soiled foot perilously close to his wife's face. "See, Rose, see it there! I wont lying. He was here. That bastard was here."

Rose opened one eye, moved it from her husband's brown-stained foot, to his gleeful face, she closed it and turned over. "Percy? Take a bath. You stink." Rose brought the sheet over her head, and almost as quickly began to snore.

Percy, a little dejected, removed his foot, and with a little hesitation began to wipe it clean with a tissue. Yet he was not completely deflated, no. He was not crazy, as his be-soiled foot and annoyed nostrils bore witness. This proof was what he had needed; he had finally gotten a physical sign, a residue; and with all the stubbornness his Scotch-Irish blood could muster, he was going to prove, at least to himself, that he was...