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soars in dangerous places.
    There’s only one explanation for such behavior. The big ugly bird soars in dangerous places because doing so makes it beautiful.
    When the heat on the trunk lid finally becomes unbearable, Ricky Lang heaves himself upright. Five feet ten inches of hard muscle, small, fierce brown eyes flecked with gold, and the rolling, pigeon-toed gait of a sailor. Not that he’s ever been to sea, not really. Airboats don’t count—an airboat is more like skidding a slick car around a soft, watery track. Got the slightly bowed legs from his dad. That and hands like ten-pound hammers. First time Ricky ever saw the movie
Superman
he had to talk back to the screen because white-bread Clark Kent wasn’t the Man of Steel, no way. Tito Lang was the Man of Steel, everybody knew that! Fists like steel, head like steel, nobody messed with Tito, back in the day.
    Ricky, five years old, assumed Superman was stealing from his father. Thirty years later, the Tito of today—that doesn’t bear thinking about, it makes his head hurt. More like the Man of Mush than the Man of Steel. Brain gone soft, pickled with swamp whiskey, and his trembling hands formed into weak arthritic claws that can’t manage his own zipper.
    Thinking about his dad, Ricky clenches his fists so hard that his ragged fingernails draw blood. Feels good, the pain, keeps him focused. Unlike his father, Ricky doesn’t drink swamp whiskey, or any form of alcohol. He gets drunk on other things, on liquors that form in his own brain.
    Fear of the dead, rage at the living. That’s what keeps his heart beating. Lately he’s learned to sip at the rage, make it last. For instance today he’s been enjoying a prolonged confrontation with casino security. Started at, what, eight in the morning, and it’s nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, so he’s had it going for five hours, on and off. A marvel of sustain. He loves the push and pull of it, the way he makes the security guards all jumpy and sweaty. Their eyes bugging when they see him approaching the main entrance. Hurried yaps into their handheld radios, looking for guidance, calling in the reinforcements. They’re afraid of him and that makes it sweet, because he can savor their fear and use it to organize his own thoughts.
    Being in charge of his own thoughts is very important to Ricky. That when he says jump, his thoughts say
how high?
Because his thoughts have been all over the place lately, bouncing around in his skull like speeding pinballs. Each bounce inside his head resonates all the way to the balls of his feet, and makes him feel like he can leap buildings in a single bound.
    As Ricky approaches the entrance, shrugging his big shoulders like a linebacker, a size-large dude in a lime-green blazer hurries out to intercept him.
    “Am I a bird or a plane?” he asks before the guard can speak. “You decide.”
    The guard glances nervously at a charter bus unloading senior citizens. All those soft, Q-tip heads bobbing slightly as they head for the bingo halls and the slot machines.
    “Sir, I told you, sir. You are not permitted access.”
    “Bird or a plane?”
    “Sir, you are not permitted access to the casino or the casino grounds. You must exit the parking lot.”
    Ricky grins, passes his hand through the thick bangs of his Moe Howard hair. “Dude? I own this parking lot.”
    “I’m sorry, sir.” The guard is blocking his way, but not yet willing to lay hands on him.
    “I own the casino,” Ricky reminds him. “You get that?”
    “I don’t know who actually owns the casino, sir. I only know that you are not permitted to enter the premises.”
    “That was my rule,” Ricky says, pretending to be reasonable. “I made the rule, I can break it.”
    The guard grimaces, eyes swiveling for the reinforcements that haven’t yet arrived. Nobody likes dealing with Ricky Lang, they’re slow-footing it.
    “Tribal council makes the rules, sir,” the guard responds rather plaintively.