"I found I could walk. I wandered off, lived under a porch for three or four days, and the people owned the house never knew I was there. When my ears quit ringing, I could hear them come and go and I could hear their TV playing. A dog came under there and slept with me. That's what I did most of the time. Slept. And hurt. Hurt something awful. It was cold then, right at winter, nothing like the way it is here today, but cold. That blast had burned me so bad the weather felt good at the same time it made me shiver and feel sick. It being cold might have been what saved me, I don't know.
"When I got strong enough, I got out of there at night, staggered to a phone booth, busted the phone box open, made it work without any money. Give me a bobby pin, and I can hotwire a jet. I called a man sympathetic to our cause, and he came to get me. When he saw me he gagged and threw up.
"I must have been a sight, all right. Skin burned off, top of my head open. Dirt embedded in my face. An ear gone.
Looked like walking, breathing hamburger meat. Way this guy acted when he saw me, I wished the bomb had done me in. Wish that now.
"To shorten it up, he got me out of there and took me to Chub, Chub didn't have what he needed to take care of a case like me. He'd mostly handled gunshots for us before, and those only minor, but here I was with my head wide open, burned over most of my body, and him with just the basic stuff. He did the best he could, I give him that. He kept me there till I was better. Guess I ought to figure I owe him. But I don't. I don't even like the fat fuck. He fixed me up, and I gave him a cause. I consider us even. In fact, from that day on, it didn't take much for me to consider myself even with just about everybody and everything.
"Chub made arrangements for me to stay with some other Movement people. One of them was Howard. He was living in Austin at the time, and I wanted to go back to Texas and rest, get involved again when I felt better. Or so I said, but I knew it was over. The whole dumb dream was through.
"For the next year or so, I went from one sympathizer to the next, being taken care of, passed around like some kind of exotic pet, one of the last of a dying species. The noble, wounded hero who gave his face for the cause.
"Then one by one there wasn't anyplace for me to stay. Harboring a fugitive from the old days was no longer romantic; flirting with the law and danger was no longer fun. People had to take their kids to soccer games and work in the PTA. The really radical people were getting caught. The Weathermen were out of it by then. And that explosion had killed all the Mechanics but me.
"Oh, there were a few die-hards throughout the country that would put me up, but they liked to talk the talk and not walk the walk. On the whole, I was old, bad news. The bullshit times were over. That was it for Gabriel Lane."
"So you're hiding from the law?" Leonard said.
"Not exactly, but I don't want any truck with them. I figure if the FBI thinks I'm alive they're not saying. There was such a mess and mixture of bodies there, they had to have decided it got us all. But I'm not one to take chances."
Paco reached into his mouth, took out his top teeth and put them on the table. So much for his fine smile; it was a fake. The gap where the teeth had been made him look truly horrible.
"Explosion got the real ones. Chub made these for me," Paco said. "Fat bastard knows about medicine, both human and animal, and he knows dentistry. You got to give him that. I've had these teeth, what, twenty years maybe."
He put the teeth back, fastened them to the back molars. "I bummed some, read about me in a few books and magazines, about my death and all, found that what we had done really hadn't amounted to a hill of beans. We blew up some places, killed a few folks, and I've got no face."
"How come you're with Howard and Chub?" I asked.
"The money. Howard got in touch with me. Thinks now that he's been in prison he's learned some things, that he's an intellectual tough guy out to do some good. Ready to revive the sixties. Power to the people and all that shit. Thinks he's gonna get this money and make some changes.
"But he decides he needs help to do it, and he calls around to some people he knows that know me, and they catch me next time I pass through. And that's no easy feat, cause I go my own schedule. Work till a job plays out or I play out. Anyway, I get the word Howard has something I might want to get in on, something that would do some good. Like the old days. Money was mentioned and I got interested.
"Course, it's really Trudy behind all this. I can see that. I know her type. She hears about this money from Howard, maybe one night after he's put the pork to her, and they're lying there thinking sweet thoughts, reliving the sixties like they do, and she gets an idea about it. Next thing you know, Howard's looking me up, believing it's all his idea. He gets in touch with Chub cause he knows him too. We may not be much, but we're all he's got left from the sixties.
"I listen and figure a way to score. Can't do this town-to-town shit labor rest of my life, so I'm in. But not for any goddamn cause."
"And now," Leonard said, "here we all are."
"All right, goddammit," I said. "I bite. What's their plan for the money?"
Paco grinned his false teeth at me. "Trust me. Stay out of it. Take the money, like I'm going to take the money, and go on. I promise you, you'll be a hell of a lot happier."
Chapter 12
Next day the weather cleared up some. It didn't go warm, but part of the meanness went out of it. It was cold with no new ice and no high winds. The sky was flat as slate and the color of chipped flint. Leonard and I took his car down to the bottoms to see what we could see. I wanted to locate the Iron Bridge, find that money, get on with things; go away from this weird winter and Trudy, talk of the sixties and Paco's failed revolution.
Although the house where we were staying was at the edge of the woods, it wasn't the part of Marvel Creek legitimately called the bottoms. The bottoms was lowland with lots of trees, water, and wildlife, and it didn't start where it used to. Civilization had smashed the edges of it flat, rolled blacktop and concrete over it, sprouted little white wood houses and a few made of two-story brick and solar glass. Barbecue cookers sat in yards like Martians, waiting till the chill thawed out and summer came on and they could have fires in their guts again. Satellite dishes pulled in movies and bad talk shows from among the stars, and dogs, too cold to bark, too cold to chase cars, looked out from beneath porches and the doors of doghouses and watched us drive past.
Beyond all that, the bottoms were still there. They started farther out from town now, but they still existed. They were nothing like the Everglades of Florida or the greater swamps of Louisiana. Not nearly as many miles as either of those, but they were made up of plenty of great forest and deep water, and they were beautiful, dark and mysterious—a wonder in one eye, a terror in the other.
So we drove on down until the blacktop played out and the houses became sparse and more shacklike and looked to have been set down in their spots by Dorothy's tornado. The roads went to red clay and the odor of the bottoms came into the car even with the windows rolled up: wet dirt, rotting vegetation, a whiff of fish from the dirty Sabine, the stench of something dead on its way to the soil.
Winter was not the prettiest time for the bottoms. Compared to spring it was denuded. The evergreens stayed dressed up, but a lot of the other trees, oaks for instance, went in shirtsleeves. Spring was when the bottoms put on its coat and decorated itself with berries and bright birds that flitted from tree to tree like out of season, renegade Christmas ornaments. Leaves would be thick and green then, vines would coil like miles of thin anacondas up every tree in sight, foam over the ground, and hide the snakes. Considering how thick the vegetation would be in the spring, how many snakes there would be, this bad old winter might come to some good after all. Like making me and Leonard some money.
Still, winter or not, the place was formidable. When I was growing up in Marvel Creek, folks used to say, you hang out down there long enough something bad will happen.
Perhaps. But some good things happened too. I caugh
t fish out of the Sabine and swam naked with Rosa Mae Flood.
When I was sixteen, seventeen and eighteen, I parked my car down there and made a motel of my backseat. Made love not only to Rosa Mae, but to other fine girls I remember fondly. Girls who made me feel like a man, and I hope I made feel, at least temporarily, like women.
The clay roads turned to shit as we went, and we had to go slow and easy, and finally Leonard said, "We oughta have something better for down here. Four-wheel drive maybe. We're gonna get stuck."
"Well, we can always go back to town and buy a couple. One for me and one for you. Could get them in matching colors even."
"Just saying we could use it is all."
"We won't get stuck, Leonard. We're the kings of the world. We do what we want, when we want."
"Right."
We eased on and I tried to make out landmarks, but there weren't any. Everything had changed. I had the sudden sick feeling that I had no more idea where the Iron Bridge was than Trudy and the gang. I wondered if anyone knew where it was anymore. All I remembered was that it was not on the river proper, but off of it, and deep down in the bottoms at a place that looked like something out of a Tarzan movie.
"You got some idea where you're going?" Leonard said.
"Of course," I said. "You know me. I never been lost, just—"
"A little bewildered. Save it, okay? I can tell. You got no idea where we are."
"It'll come back to me."
We went on down that main clay road and turned off on a few smaller ones that dead-ended against trees or the edge of the river. Some of the roads were so narrow we had to back our way out. Sometimes we had to back a long ways. Leonard loved that. He knew more foul words than I thought he knew, and I thought he knew plenty.
About high noon we were dipping down over a hill on the main road and there was a sudden sound like strained bowels letting loose, and the car started to slide right.
A blowout.
Leonard tried to turn in the direction of the skid, but the skid didn't care. The ice on those clay roads would not be denied. The right rear fender struck a sweetgum with a solid whack and my seat belt harness snatched at me and pulled me snug.
We got out.
The car wasn't banged too badly. I said, "I think it's an improvement."
"Remind me to knock a dent in your old truck when we get back, you like it so much."
"While you're changing the tire, I'm gonna look around. Looks kind of familiar around here."
"Now the place looks familiar. Got a tire to change, and you know the place like the back of your hand."
"I merely said it looks familiar. I'll be back."
"When?"
"About the time I figure you've got the tire changed."
It didn't look familiar to me at all, but hey, I hate changing tires and tires hate me. I know from all the bruised knuckles I've gotten over the years, all the quick moves I've acquired from avoiding slipping jacks.
My mechanical abilities are simple. I can air up a tire, put water in the radiator, check water in the battery, let water out of the radiator, check the oil and put it in, fill the tank with gas.
Beyond that, I'm an automotive moron.
I walked around a bit, hoping I'd stumble onto something familiar, but nope. I went back to the car and Leonard had the spare on, was jacking the car down.
"Been going well?" I said.
"Now I know why you hang around with a black guy. So in case you have a flat, you got someone can change the tire."
"It's your car."
"Your fault I'm down here."
"All right, you found me out. I like me a black fella to change tires."
"And chauffeur."
"That's right, and chauffeur. I think the ethnics should know their place."
"You so right, boss, and I is proud to serve you."
"Actually, I don't know how to break this to you, Leonard, but I only hang out with black guys when I can't find a Filipino."
"You tighten the bolts. You're not getting out of this scot-free."
He put the jack in the trunk and gave me the tire iron. While I was tightening the bolts, he said, "We could go home. Not even pick up our gear. Just drive out of here and forget all this business."
"We could," I said. I didn't want to admit it, since I was the one who got us into this, but I had been thinking pretty much the same.
"We could go to jail that money doesn't turn out to be the kind of money Howard says it is."
"If there is any money."
"Yeah, if there is any money."
"But there isn't a thing happening at the rose fields now, and I can't think of another line of work we could go into."
"There's always shit work," Leonard said. "It isn't like we're some kind of professionals."
I finished the bolts and put the tool in the trunk, positioned the ruined tire between the oxygen tanks and the diving suits, and closed up. "I leave it to you, Leonard. Whatever you want, that's fine by me."
He thought that over. "Really, any of this familiar to you?"
"I remember part of the road we came in on," I said. "Outside of that, I could be on Venus."
"That's not encouraging."
"No, it isn't."
He thought some more, said, "Tell you what. We'll give it, say, three days for you to start seeing if something's familiar. You see something you recognize, we'll go longer. We find the bridge, maybe we'll look a few days, we still feel like it. Don't come across the boat or signs of it pretty quick, we'll go home."
"Deal," I said.
Chapter 13
Just before dark we drove back to Marvel Creek, stopped at Bill's Kettle, had a hamburger, bought a six-pack of Lone Star at a cut-rate store, and started back to the Sixties Nest, as Leonard called it.
We found ourselves following the jaundice-yellow Volvo that lived in the yard of the Sixties Nest, and we pursued it to the house and parked behind it.
Howard got out of the car. We kept our seats and drank our beer, observed him like aliens examining an inferior species through the portal of a flying saucer.
He was wearing slightly greasy blue work clothes with a patch over the left shirt pocket. I couldn't tell from where I sat, but my bet was his name was stitched into the patch.
He looked at us a moment and went into the house.
"Looks to have been a tough day at the old job site," I said.
"I know it's got to be the same with you," Leonard said. "I can't make up my mind. Is it him or Chub I like best?"
"They both have a lot of charisma," I said.
We went inside. Paco was sitting on one of the fold-out chairs grinning his false teeth. Trudy was sitting on the couch. She had her legs and arms crossed. She looked as if she could crack walnuts with her asshole.
An unjustified strain of guilt went through me. I felt like a husband whose wife had just found rubbers in his wallet.
The guilt went away when Howard and Chub came into the room. Chub didn't bother me, really. He couldn't help being a jerk. But Howard was a self-made man in that department.
Chub went over to the couch and sat down. Howard crossed his arms and held his ground in the middle of the room and glared at us. His eyes roved a little to his right to check out his audience; the teacher was about to make an example of us.
I wanted desperately to knee him in the nuts.
"I thought there was an understanding that you were working with us," Howard said.
"We forget to punch the clock or something?" Leonard said.
"You don't want any part of what we are, but you said you wanted to do a job. There were things we had to do today, like go to straight jobs."
Leonard looked at me. "Straight jobs, Hap?"
"That's what they used to call square jobs, back in the beatnik days," I said.
"Ah," Leonard said.
''Straight is, relatively speaking, a sixties term, still popular today."
"Ah."
"I'm surprised you have
n't heard it."
"I've been kind of outta step."
"It's not funny," Howard said. "Chub ran some errands for us. But you two, we had no idea where you were. There were things we needed to talk about this morning. Plans needed to be made. We were all about our business but you two."
"You didn't say what Paco was doing," I said.
Paco grinned even wider. Poor guy. In that face, the fine white teeth made him look a little bit like a sun-dried barracuda.
"I think he's playing favorites," Leonard said. "I hate that kind of thing."
"Paco has earned his keep in the past," Howard said. "I haven't seen what you two can do. But it smells like what you can do is drink beer."
"But can you tell how many we've had?" I said. "Smelling it from over there is good, but I want you to say how many we drank."
"And what brand," Leonard said.
"No use trying to talk to them when they're like this," Trudy said. "They'll go on until you get tired or mad. You can't reason with the fools."
"Fools?" Leonard said. "Now that's rude."
"I'd as soon the two of you pack up and get out," Howard said.
"We'll decide when we get out," I said.
"And if we stay," Leonard said, "we still won't report to you. You're just some guy we don't know, that's all."
"Besides," I said, "while you been fretting about what we been doing, we've been down in the bottoms looking for the Iron Bridge."
"And?" Chub said.
"We didn't find it," I said. "We're going to give it three days. I don't come up with it, maybe we will get out. You can go your own way then. We won't tell on you or anything. You'll have our blessing."
"Anything look familiar?" Trudy asked.
"No," I said, "but it's been a long time since I been there. But I can solve all this easy. I can just ask someone. A classmate, an old-timer. It might be thought odd if one of you asked, not being from here. I can claim nostalgia, wanting to look around at the old growing-up place."
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