explosion had thrown me away, caught me on fire, but not burned me up or blown me up.
'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
