end of a human shish-ka-bob, the rebar impaling Marty and the several people beneath him who had cushioned his fall. He was sorry they were dead, but at the same time, knew if they hadn’t died, every bone in his body would be broken. The thing to do was not to think about them or that it was their guts sticking to his back.
He looked to his left, and saw a crumpled Buick Regal only inches from him and realized things could be much, much worse. He could’ve been under that.
“Help!” he yelled, and immediately felt a blinding, teeth-grinding wave of pain that almost made him faint.
No one’s going to come for you. There are families trapped under houses. Neighborhoods in flame. Who gives a shit about some guy stuck on a spike in the LA river?
He looked to either side again, and then he listened. The only moans he heard were his own. He was alone. His walk was over and probably his life, too.
Marty closed his eyes. It was almost laughable. He’d survived so much, only to be taken out just a few, short miles from home. All because he’d strayed from his path to find a little girl he didn’t even know.
And Beth would never know why he died. She’d always wonder how he ended up speared in that river bed, so close to home, with a snapshot of two strangers in his pocket. If only he had a pen, he could write it all down, tell Beth so the story would be resolved. But this story would remain unfinished, just like every other one he ever tried to tell. There was a certain ironic justice to that.
A rock pinged into the car, right above his head, startling him into opening his eyes. Was this more loose rubble, or was the rest of the bridge about to fall on him now? He stared at the cracked asphalt, willing it not to move.
Another rock hit the car, near his head again, but he was certain it didn’t come from above, because he was watching. This rock came from an angle. Someone threw it.
“Hey Marty,” a voice yelled, “wake the fuck up.”
He turned his head, looked up to his right and saw a figure standing on the edge of the high, vertical riverbank.
It couldn’t be.
Marty blinked hard and squinted at the trick of the light.
“I knew you were alive,” Buck yelled happily. “You’re the luckiest damn guy I’ve ever met. Now, are you going to lie there all day feeling sorry for yourself or are you going to get up?”
It was one of those utterly improbable and convenient coincidences that he railed against every time he came across them in a script, an undeniable hallmark of weak plotting and hack writing. And yet there Buck Weaver was, like a western hero, the sun behind his back, casting his long shadow across the concrete river.
Marty smiled. “Buck, what are you doing here?”
“Saving your skinny ass.”
“What are you waiting for?” Marty replied, “Get down here and do it.”
“That’s not exactly the plan I had in mind.”
“Then what’s your plan?”
“My plan is that you get up off your ass, like I said.”
For a moment, Marty’s anger actually eclipsed his crippling pain. “I’m impaled on a fucking piece of rebar. Why don’t you come down here and help me?”
“Because I’m not fucking Spiderman. These banks are totally vertical, so that’s out, and if I try climbing down that bridge, I could bring it all down on top of you, not to mention me. I suppose I could go all the way back to Balboa Park and walk up the canal from there, but you’ll probably bleed to death before I get back. So you might as well get off your ass. You’re fucked no matter what.”
Marty closed his eyes and groaned. He felt the blood pulsing out of his wound. “And then what am I supposed to do?”
“Walk to the park and climb out of the river.”
Marty had to laugh, even though the slightest motion of his stomach caused a new wave of pain. “I got a better idea. You go find help. I’ll wait here.”
“There isn’t any help. I’m it. And I’m telling you to get up. Be a fucking man.”
Be a fucking man.
Of course, Marty thought, why didn’t I think of that. “How did you find me?”
“We can have a fucking chat when you’re on your feet,” Buck yelled angrily. “Now get up, goddamn it! You can’t catch fish with your line in the boat.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. Get up!”
Marty didn’t know how to lift himself off the spike, and even if he did, he was afraid the pain would be so bad, he’d fall right back on it again, impaling himself somewhere else even worse. He was also afraid of how much it would hurt, though it was hard to imagine anything hurting more than it already did.
“How am I supposed to do this, Buck?”
“Grab the car with one hand, use the other to steady yourself. Then bend your knees, plant your feet, and use your hands and legs to simultaneously lift and push yourself up. Nothing to it.”
It sounded like the most complicated physical procedure Marty had ever heard. At this moment, Olympic gymnastics seemed simpler to perform. But Buck was right, Marty had no choice, unless he wanted to stay there and bleed to death.
With his left hand, Marty grabbed hold of the car, made sure he had a firm grip, then placed his right hand flat beside him and tried not to think about what the spongy surface was under his palm. Then he drew his knees up, which caused him to slightly shift position. The bolt of pain that shot from his wound took his breath away.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Marty whispered to himself. Somehow, though, Buck heard him.
“I read about this Texas Ranger in the old west, got himself captured by the Mexicans. You know what they did to him? They made him stick an arm into this knothole that went through a pecan tree. They put a big rock in his hand, then tied his fist shut around it so he couldn’t pull his arm back through the knothole. They left him like that for the wolves or the Indians or whatever. You know what that tough bastard did? Cut his own arm off with a pocket knife and dragged himself 40 miles to the nearest settlement. And you’re complaining about one, lousy sliver in your flab?”
Put like that, his problems did seem a bit petty. Marty counted to three and did it.
The agony was excruciating. He screamed, the rebar sliding out of him with a moist squish. It felt like half his guts came out with it, too. Just before he fainted against the Buick, he imagined his intestines trailing out behind him, tangled in the pipe.
For a moment, he was just floating, the pain was gone, and he was blissfully calm. Then his consciousness came back, pushed forward by a stampede of pain that pounded through his body.
His eyes flashed open again.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Buck said.
“My side is killing me.”
“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.
