"You got to walk it off, like a cramp."
Marty tried to stand up straight, but the pain was so bad, he started to see lights in his eyes, like flashbulbs going off. He blinked hard, his vision cleared, and he stumbled around the bloody spike, trying not to look at the other bodies impaled on it. He staggered into the river bed, clutching his side, feeling the blood coursing between his fingers.
"I'm gonna bleed to death, Buck."
"Probably," Buck replied from the bank. "Shove your shirt into the wound and press as hard as you can, try to stop the bleeding."
"It's going to hurt."
"It already hurts, how much worse can it get?"
"Easy for you to say."
Marty untucked his shirt, gathered up his shirt-tails, and crammed the fabric against his wound. It was like sticking another spike in his flesh. He whimpered.
"Press harder, Marty."
"It hurts," Marty yelled, nearly crying.
"It's better than being dead, goddamn it. Now hold it tight against the wound and start walking."
Marty hugged the concrete bank to his right, staggered under the tunnel created by the fallen section of overpass, and then he just kept going, dragging his shoulder along the wall, using it as a support to prop himself up.
Above him, Buck followed along. "When we get to the park, you can follow some of the medical advice I gave you at the field hospital."
"You want me to look for horsehair to put in the wound?"
"Horseshit would be better, but mud will do."
This talk about the field hospital and treating his wound raised an obvious question. What was Buck doing here?
"So now will you tell me how you found me?"
"I wasn't looking for you. I was looking for Clara Hobart."
Marty looked up at Buck, but from his angle against the concrete wall, he couldn't see Buck's face, just the shadow he cast as he followed him. "How did you know about Clara?"
"You told me."
"I did?"
"It was one of your rants explaining why you didn't have to do a fucking thing for anybody because you already did your heroic deed for that kid's mother," Buck replied. "But since Molly's toast, and you technically did nothing heroic, I said it didn't count. Saving her kid would count."
"I don't remember having that conversation."
"You wouldn't, selfish bastard, which is why I decided to come here and do it for you. I figured you'd forget about her. So, as you can imagine, I nearly shit myself when I saw you down there."
"I know I didn't say anything to you about Dandelion Preschool."
"You didn't have to, I'm a licensed investigator and bounty hunter. This is what I do for a living. I saw the kid was wearing a Dandelion Preschool t-shirt in the picture you're carrying around, so I deduced, as the crack investigative professional that I am, that she might be enrolled there."
"I never showed you the picture."
"I saw it when I was going through your pockets."
Marty was outraged. "You went through my pockets? When?"
"While you were sleeping in the office building. It was the first chance I had and I was curious."
"About what?"
"How the fuck do I know? I go through everyone's pockets. It's what I do."
Marty wanted to throttle the infuriating, son-of-a-bitch. And then he had a startling realization, in his anger, he'd all but forgotten his pain. Buck had managed to distract him from it, which made Marty wonder if that wasn't Buck's intention to start with. Then again, maybe he was crediting Buck with more cleverness than the Neanderthal could possibly possess. And now that Marty had made himself conscious of the distraction, the pain came rushing back full force. He went against his better judgment and decided to encourage Buck to piss him off some more.
"What happened to staying and helping Angie?" Marty asked.
"She's a lesbo," Buck said, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did, but for medicinal purposes Marty wasn't going to let it go.
"How do you know she's a lesbian?"
"It's obvious."
"If it's obvious," Marty asked, "why did you bother hitting on her?"
"Because if there was any hetero left in her, and there was, I could have brought it out."
"You thought one look at you would unleash the lusty heterosexual trapped inside her."
"Sometimes it takes longer. Instinctively, she wanted me. She couldn't hide it. But making her realize it would have taken too much time. I've been through it before. It's hard work, but in the end it's worth it. There's nothing hornier than a freed lesbo. Bottom line is, no matter what they say, they all want dick."
"Specifically, your dick."
Buck leaned over the edge of the embankment and gave him a cold look. "You're mocking me."
Marty looked up at him and smiled. "Yep."
"Do you know why you're mocking me?"
"Because it's fun and it distracts me from my pain?"
"Jealousy, inadequacy, and rage."
"Excuse me?"
"You wish you were as masculine as me and as capable as me and you're pissed at yourself because you know you can't be."
Buck was obviously trying to deflect the conversation away from his defeat, but Marty was determined not to let that happen.
"You're partly right," Marty replied. "I know I will never have your ego or arrogance. But here's where you're wrong: I don't want it. I don't want to intimidate or offend everyone I meet. I'd like to have some friends."
"Like that producer guy we met?"
"That was an unusual situation," replied Marty defensively, knowing his argument was slipping away from him and, with it, the fun he was hoping to have. Suddenly Buck wasn't on the spot any more; he was. That had to be reversed, fast.
"The point I'm making," Marty said, "is all you think about is overpowering people, whether verbally, physically, or with a gun. You get off on intimidation."
"And you don't? You were afraid if that cook saw you in your filthy clothes, some day he'd stick you at a bad table and you'd wouldn't be able to intimidate people into listening to your stupid fucking notes anymore. The difference between you and me is people listen to me because I make 'em, not because some burger flipper tells them to. That's what you envy. You're second-in-command of your own fucking life."
"Allowing other people to have some impact on your life is what gives you a life." Marty said. "That's why you spend your nights alone in bars, collecting napkins to decorate your bathroom with, while I go home to a woman who loves me."
Buck snorted derisively.
"Is that what you think the difference is between us? A woman? Anybody can get a woman. That doesn't mean shit. Being able to be alone, and comfortable with yourself, is a hell of a lot harder. Can you look me in the fucking eye and tell me you're happy with who you are?"
Marty wasn't falling for that one. "Nobody can."
"I can."
"Then you're fooling yourself. You honestly think there's nothing missing from your life?"
"There sure as shit is," Buck said. "A couple thousand cocktail napkins, numerous appliances, a big screen TV, a pristine Mercury Montego, a dozen firearms, and the best fucking dog there ever was."
"Don't you ever get tired of it?"
"Tired of what?"
"Your tough-guy posturing. You know, that guys look at you and tremble in fear or envy. That every woman wants to fuck you, including nuns, grandmothers, lesbians, and the clinically dead. That you're so tough you eat live scorpions for breakfast and wash your mouth out with battery acid. That shit. Did I forget anything?"
"Did it ever occur to you that I'm telling it to you exactly the way it is? There's no fucking mystery who I am. What I put out there is it. You're the guy who's full of shit, but I think we've already established that more than once."
"Yeah, I guess we have."
That was the last time Marty was going to try and bait Buck, at least until he could figure out a safe way to do it. So far, the conversation always ended up turning around and biting Marty in the ass instead, and that was certainly no fun. Buck was like Beth in that way. It was like they took the same "How to Neuter Marty Slack" course.
They walked for a few minutes in silence, except for Marty's occasional moans and groans. Then Buck cleared his throat and spoke.
"Your feet still hurt?"
Marty was holding his guts in with his hand, and Buck was worried about his blisters? But he knew what the remark was really about. It was about apologizing for trashing a guy while he was down and letting Marty know that Buck cared about him.
"Not as much," Marty replied.
"I guess the new shoes helped."
Marty glanced at his sturdy new shoes, now splattered with blood. "I think so."
Buck nodded. "A man needs a solid pair of shoes."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Valley Girl
6:26 p.m. Wednesday
As Martin Slack sat on the weedy river bank in Balboa Park, packing a mixture of mud and leaves into his wound, he saw he wasn't hurt quite as bad as he'd imagined.
Marty was afraid he'd have to stuff his oozing intestines back into some gaping, gory hole in his stomach. Instead, it looked like the rebar left a clean puncture about a half-inch around, swollen and red, straight through one of his "love handles." He didn't have to shove a perforated kidney or some other internal organs back into place after all. Then again, for all he knew, birds were fighting over meaty chunks of his appendix in the river bed right now.
The cool dirt made his wound feel better, and staunched the bleeding, but he couldn't help wondering if it was promoting an infection at the same time. It was dirt. Weren't you supposed to keep that out of open wounds? Then again, infection was hardly his immediate concern. All he really wanted to do now was stop the bleeding and diminish his pain so he could get home. So far, there were noticeable improvements on both fronts.
Buck studied the poultice and nodded with approval. "That's gonna make for one manly scar."
"Something to go with the bullet wound," Marty said.
"Now that you've got some hard-living on your doughy flesh, you won't look like such a wimp anymore. You may have to consider a new line of work."
"I already am."
Buck grinned. "I don't usually take on apprentices, but I can make an exception in your case."
"That's a nice offer, Buck. But I was thinking of something more sedentary."
"You want to be a gardener?"
"I said sedentary not sedimentary," Marty replied. "I'm going to be a writer."
"A writer would choose his words more carefully to avoid confusion," Buck said. "Maybe you ought to look into a field that already matches your skills. You know, like car salesman or telemarketer."
Marty ignored the remark. He picked up a sturdy tree limb he'd found on the bank and, using it for support, lifted himself up into a standing position, gasping with pain. It felt like his back and his side were competing with each other to be the most agonizing.
Now that Marty was standing, he could see the mass of earthquake refugees that surrounded the man-made lake in the center of the park on the other side of the river. It looked like they'd gathered for an outdoor rock concert. And, in the distance beyond them, he could see thousands more people filling the public golf course, which every few years would flood so suddenly and so completely, stranded golfers had to be plucked out of the trees by helicopters.
"I sure could use something to drink," Marty said. "My throat feels as dry as that river."
Buck motioned to a Red Cross tent in middle of the flood of people. "They've probably got water."
Marty considered the distance, and the complications that would arise if the Red Cross workers saw his wound, and shook his head no. "I'd rather use the energy to get closer to home. Besides, we still have one more stop to make. C'mon, let's go."
"You sure you can make it?" Buck looked at him skeptically. "Maybe you'd be better off quitting and flopping on a cot in that Red Cross tent."
"I've been quitting and flopping for too long already." Marty hobbled off grimacing towards Victory Boulevard, leaning heavily on his walking stick.
Buck looked after him thoughtfully for a moment, then fell into step beside him.
* * * * *
6:50 p.m. Wednesday
After World War II, service men flush with GI loans all wanted their square footage of the American dream and came looking for it in the San Fernando Valley. Developers manufactured the dream with assembly-line precision, economy, and sameness, coating the valley with ranch-style homes that offered easy-living in harmony with nature, what little of it hadn't been graded and paved over.
Every home Marty and Buck passed looked the same, with their plywood siding and low-pitched, wood-shake roofs, bird houses built into the over-hanging eaves or perched on top like little cupolas to add that extra touch of prefabricated charm. On many houses, the roofs stretched to detached garages or carports, creating breezeways which, in later years, were widely converted into cheap additions by amateur carpenters.
Dandelion Preschool still looked like the rambling, free-flowing ranch house it once was, only with several room additions and a high cyclone fence surrounding a broad front yard long since turned into a parking lot.
The school's plywood sign, decorated with bad renderings of famous cartoon characters, dangled from the collapsed front porch, and a crack ran around the house where it met the raised foundation. But beyond that, and other superficial cracking, the house appeared to have come through the quake fairly well, raising Marty's hopes that Clara might be alive and unhurt.