Invasive Procedures (39 page)

They looked up. The rain clouds had parted, revealing countless tiny lights against a sweeping black canvas.

“Wow,” said Monica. “You live in LA, you forget what real sky looks like.”

“It’s like this every night in Montana,” said Byron. “Nothing but stars.”

“How many are up there, you think?” asked Wyatt.

“Oh, about a bajillion,” said Byron.

Wyatt made a face. “A
bajillion
?”

“What, you never heard of a bajillion before? It’s one step above a trillion. You know, million billion trillion bajillion. And then of course there’s foobajillion.”

Wyatt looked skeptical. “Uh-uh.”

“No, it’s true. Ask Frank.”

They both looked at Frank. Byron winked.

“Um, yeah,” said Frank. “That’s right. Foobajillion. And after that is . . . oh, what do you call it?”

“Fooba-doobajillion,” said Byron, keeping a straight face.

“Right, fooba-doobajillion,” said Frank. “How could I forget fooba-doobajillion?”

“You’re making that up,” said Wyatt.

“Oh no,” said Frank. “In fact, I read recently that scientists have determined that there are exactly six fooba-doobajillion and one grains of sand on the earth.”

“Really?” said Byron.

“Yeah, scientific fact. Well, actually, that’s not completely accurate. Last time I was at the beach I accidentally swallowed a grain of sand, so now I guess there’s only six fooba-doobajillion even.”

Monica laughed.

“I knew you were teasing,” said Wyatt.

“Fooba-doobajillion?” she said. “Sounds like a Hawaiian fruit smoothie.”

They all laughed then, even Wyatt, who probably didn’t get the joke but knew it was one. It felt good to laugh; a release, almost, allowing them to forget for a moment what had happened at the barn. They were still laughing when Dolores arrived, tired and breathless.

“Y’all could wake the dead with all the noise you’re making. What’s going on? We celebrating? Healers decided to leave us alone or something?”

Mentioning the Healers dampened the mood in an instant.

“We should keep moving,” said Frank.

After another mile they found a paved road. They followed it for a few hundred yards and came to a privately owned campground. The sign by the gate said
Closed
, but they went in anyway.

The office was locked. Frank looked in through the window but didn’t see a phone.

They went around back and saw that most of the campsites were empty. Either it was off-season or people had left when the rain hit.

A small cinder-block building nearby turned out to be a laundromat for campers. Nobody was inside, but two of the dryers were spinning and filled with clothes. Frank ushered everyone in and locked the door behind them; he couldn’t risk someone coming in unexpectedly.

The clothes in the dryers were dry and hot to the touch. Frank took everything out and threw it onto the counter. It all belonged to a couple, it seemed, a man and a woman of medium build and height. There was enough for everyone to have a new shirt. And everyone but Frank got new pants.

“Where do we change?” asked Monica.

“We’ll turn around,” said Frank. “Women change first. Put your wet clothes in a pile here.”

“If you think I can fit in these pants,” said Dolores, holding up the ones Frank had given her, “you’re smoking something green and illegal. Ain’t no way in heaven my butt is getting in these. Not unless you take out all the other organs inside me.”

Frank took them and tore slits in the waistline. “Here.”

She took them back but still looked doubtful. “Well, turn around, then. A woman needs her privacy.”

The boys sat down on the floor behind the washers. After a minute, Dolores reappeared. “What do you think?”

“Dashing,” said Byron. “Definitely better than a man’s suit.”

She grinned. “Thought so myself. You all can change now.”

When the boys got up to get their clothes, Monica was towel-drying her hair and wearing a long-sleeved pullover and a khaki pair of capri pants. She saw Frank watching her and stopped toweling.

“Done with that?” he asked quickly.

She tossed it to him.

“Thanks.”

Wyatt put on a sweatshirt that hung to his knees and a pair of men’s shorts that hung to his ankles. Dolores gave him her belt, and Frank made a hole in it so that it fit Wyatt snugly.

“I look stupid,” he said.

“No you don’t,” said Frank. “You look cool. Baggy is in.”

“This isn’t baggy,” he said. “This is a bedsheet.”

“Hey, too big is better than too small,” said Byron. “I can hardly breathe in this thing.”

Dolores took one look at Byron’s T-shirt and smiled. “You look like one of those muscle guys on Venice Beach.”

“Except without the muscles,” he said.

“Please. You got muscle. Just not toned, is all. Ten push-ups a day for a week and you’ll be turning heads.”

Byron smiled. “You’re a physical trainer all of a sudden?”

“Ha. That would be the day. Me with a job.”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Cause I’m a homeless woman, that’s why.”

“Whatever you think you are, you’re right.”

She made a face. “Who said that? The president? Please, thinking you’re somebody and being somebody is two different things. Just because I think I’m a supermodel doesn’t make me one.”

He made a face of disbelief. “You mean you’re not a supermodel?”

She shoved him.

“I’m serious. There’s got to be a job out there for someone as stubborn as you.”

“There ain’t. I got nothing nobody wants.”

“Ever tried to get a job?”

She put her hands on her hips. “What is this? Oprah? Homeless people can’t get a job. What’s the first thing they ask for on a job application? Huh? I bet you don’t even know. You’ve probably never had to fill one out before.”

“I’m going out on a limb on this one . . . uh, name.”

“Right. And after that I got nothing to write down. No address.”

“What about family?” Byron asked. “Is there a relative you could stay with?”

She smacked her forehead. “Now, why didn’t I think of that? I’ll just
pick up the phone and call my rich brother in Beverly Hills. I’m sure he’s got an extra room in that mansion of his.”

“Sorry. I just meant—”

“Nobody chooses to be homeless, Byron. If you’re homeless, it means you got nobody, or at least nobody who claims you. Only friend I got is Jesus. And he does me just fine.”

“You sure he’s your only friend?”

“He’s never forgotten me. When I’m hungry he feeds me, when I’m naked, he clothes me.” She motioned to her new outfit. “See?”

“What I mean is, maybe there’s other people who want to be your friend.”

She snorted. “Like who?”

“Like me.”

She looked at him, surprised. “You?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“You want to be my friend?”

“Yeah. I kind of thought we already
were
friends.”

She looked surprised. “But I’m ugly.”

He could only laugh. “No, you’re not. You’ve helped all of us through this. Monica, don’t you think Dolores is a beautiful person?”

“The most beautiful.”

“See? Frank, what about you?”

“One in a million. Gem of a woman.”

“See?”

“
I
like you,” said Wyatt.

Byron laughed. “See? Even Wyatt likes you, and he’s an incredibly tough judge of character.”

“Ya’ll just trying to be nice because you feel sorry for me.”

“If people tell you they want to be your friend, Dolores,” said Byron, “you either tell them yes or no.”

“We waited for you, Dolores, because you’re one of us,” said Frank. “You want to belong to somebody, you belong to us.”

“That’s right,” said Byron.

She looked at each of them, then nodded, beaming. “All right. Sounds good to me.”

Frank gathered their wet clothes once they were finished, as well as everything else they had touched, and threw them in the trash. Then he
tied off the trash bag, took three more bags from the utility closet, and put each bag inside another until he was certain it wouldn’t break open if snagged. Then he threw it in the Dumpster out back.

When he came back inside Monica was preparing more syringes.

“Again?” said Dolores. But she didn’t put up a fight. In fact, she even rolled up sleeve without being asked.

Once everyone had received a dose, Monica got the tweezers out of the bag. “I need to take out those staples,” she said.

“It can wait,” said Frank.

“It’s waited long enough. Take your shirt off.”

He removed his shirt and lay on the cold concrete. She knelt beside him and delicately pinched each staple before pulling it out. Frank felt awkward there on the floor with her so close to him. Rather than look at her while she worked, he looked just past her up at the ceiling tiles.

“There,” she said, removing the last one. “That should feel better.”

“Thank you.” He got up and quickly put his shirt back on. It did feel better. Much better. In fact, he realized that most of the discomfort he had been feeling was from the staples and not from the wound itself.

“Now what?” said Byron.

“Dinner,” said Frank. He walked to the junk-food vending machine in the corner and kicked in the Plexiglas. It took three sturdy kicks to make a hole big enough to reach everything. The machine hadn’t been stocked in some time, but there were enough potato chips and candy bars to go around. Wyatt and Dolores couldn’t have been happier.

After fifteen minutes, Frank was wishing he hadn’t eaten so many.

“Who wants the last Snickers bar?” asked Dolores.

“It’s all yours,” he said.

She tore into it while he went back to the utility closet for more trash bags. He filled them with the Plexiglas shards and the food wrappers. Then he emptied the bottle of spray glass-cleaner and filled it with bleach. While the others watched, he sprayed down everything they had touched: the dryer, the vending machine, the countertops. He even went back to the office and sprayed the window he had looked through and the door he had knocked on.

The remainder of the bleach bucket was emptied onto the floor. When he was done, the laundromat smelled so strongly, it was doubtful anyone would enter without hosing the place down first.

The others were waiting outside. “Any luck finding a car?” he asked.

“One,” said Byron. “Over at that campsite. Man and a woman. I think these are their clothes.”

Frank spotted the tent and car in the distance.

“But they’re sleeping in it,” said Byron. “Tent must have flooded in the rain.”

“No good then. We can’t risk infecting them. We’ll have to keep looking. Meanwhile, we stay off the road. They might be looking for us. Wyatt, you want piggyback or are you walking?”

“Are you kidding?” said Monica. “He’s on a sugar high. He could carry
us
on his back.”

“I’ll walk,” he said.

They stuck to the woods but stayed close to the road. Occasionally a car would pass. “Why don’t we flag one down?” asked Dolores.

“Same reason we shouldn’t have flagged down the boat,” said Frank.

“So we have to find a car with nobody in it? Oh, that’ll be a cinch out here in the middle of nowhere. People are always abandoning perfectly good cars on the side of the road.”

“You’re a woman of faith, Dolores,” said Frank. “Pray for a miracle.”

“Oh, I’m praying already. Trust me. And when this car magically falls from the sky, then what? You going to break inside and jump it? Or should I also pray that the key be in the ignition?”

“Key in the ignition is preferable,” said Frank.

Dolores grunted in exasperation.

They passed a road sign, and Byron went up to the street and read it. “Says we’ve been in Kings Canyon National Park.”

“Where’s that?” asked Frank.

“Couple hours north of LA along the Sierra Nevada.”

“Couple hours in a car, maybe” said Dolores. “Not on foot.”

“Then I suggest you keep praying,” said Frank. She gave him a look that said she was half annoyed and half amused.

They got moving again, and no one said another word for two miles. Finally Wyatt came and walked beside Frank and broke the silence. “Where’d you learn to shoot a gun?” he asked.

Frank looked at him. He looked like an adult who’d been hit with a shrink ray in those clothes. “In the Army,” he said.

“I thought you said you were a doctor?”

“I am. I work for the military.”

“Oh. Is that where you learned how to fight?”

“I suppose so.”

“Think you can teach me a few moves?”

Frank raised an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

“There’s this boy in my class. Keener Kiner. Big guy, total jerk. He picks on me and my friends.”

“Anyone with a name like Keener Kiner has no right to pick on anyone.

“That’s what I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“He punched me in the stomach.”

“Oh. So you want learn how to punch him back?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“Did you tell your teacher he picks on you?”

“That’s what my mom said. But it doesn’t work. If I told, then he’d really come after me.”

“Hitting someone isn’t easy, you know? It’s not like in the movies. It really hurts your hand. It’s like hitting a tree.”

“So you’re not going to teach me?”

“I could, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Let me guess. Now you’re going to lecture me on how it’s wrong to fight.”

Frank smiled. “No, I’m going to give you a dose of reality. Let’s say Keener the wiener corners you, and you sock him one. And let’s even assume it’s a really good punch. What’s going to happen next?”

“Um, he’s going to hit me back?”

“Right. And if he hits you, and remember he’s really ticked at this point, what’s that going to feel like?”

“It’s going to hurt,” said Wyatt.

“Right. And probably a lot. And then what are you going to do?”

“Um, hit him again?”

“OK, so you hit him again. Now you’re hitting each other. Boom boom boom. How is this going to end?”

“Me getting my butt kicked?”

“No offense, but probably so.”

“Well, at least I stood up to him. That’s something, right?”