Free The Boys from Santa Cruz by Jonathan Nasaw

glasses and a cigarette dangling from her lips. “Honey, you have
got
to be shitting me.”
    “I shitteth you not,” said Pender, lighting up his first Marlboro of the day with his trusty Zippo. A legacy from his father, it had the letters
USMC
engraved on one side and the Marine Corps anchor on the other; the chrome finish was worn down to the brass. “The thing is”—he took a deep drag, blew it out the window into the slipstream—“I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t think I can do it any more. Matter of fact…”
    He took a sidewise glance toward Amy, who drove like a man, leaning back casually, one hand on the wheel, one elbow out the window. Unable to read her expression behind the shades, he blundered on. “I’ve been seriously thinking about eighty-sixing the whole goddamn enchilada, the Bureau, my fucked-up marriage…just giving it all up…” He paused again, to give her a chance to cut in, make this a little easier one way or the other; no such luck. “…and maybe moving out here for keeps.”
    He turned toward her, the seat belt tightening across his chest. The only sign that she’d heard him was that she’d gone perfectly still, except for her steering hand. Finally she blew a puff of smoke out of the side of her mouth and turned to face him. “You do whatyou got to do, honey,” she told him, her cigarette bobbing. “Just don’t do it for me.”
    They drove on through the August heat. Pender took a sudden interest in the landscape, the golden, rolling hills, the dusty green live oaks, a turkey vulture wheeling in the sky, a glowering, hunch-shouldered hawk perched atop a telephone pole. “I’m not sure what that means,” he said eventually.
    “It means, believe it or not, that I haven’t been waiting around all those years for you, or anybody, to come along and rescue me. Not that I don’t like you a lot, and not that it hasn’t been fun.”
    When they got back to the farmhouse, Pender went inside to pack, while Amy hosed down her truck barefooted, in a T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs. A few minutes later he came out carrying his suitcase and wearing his seersucker jacket, the houndstooth tweed hat with the little feathers in the brim, and a pasted-on grin.
    “Have you made up your mind what you’re going to do yet?” she asked him.
    “Not precisely.”
    “That offer still holds good, you know.” A weekend bouncer’s job and the use of the vacant flat above the Nugget until he got himself settled.
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” said Pender as he tossed the suitcase into the trunk of the Bu-car. But they both knew he didn’t mean it. With the romantic future he’d been constructing in his mind unmasked as a daydream—and a rather immature, escapist daydream at that—Pender was having a hard time remembering why he’d decided to drop out in the first place. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten about the videos—it was the depth of feeling, the utter despair, that he was unable to resurrect.
Hell, maybe a little R & R
was
all I needed,
he decided, slamming the trunk lid closed.
    Amy turned the hose off at the nozzle and intercepted him as he opened the driver’s door. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a hug he wouldn’t soon forget. Nor would he forgetthe last glimpse he caught of her in the rearview mirror, waving good-bye in a wet T-shirt and a pair of skintight Daisy Duke shorts.
2
    Dusty dead. No food, scarcely any water. Only a vague idea where I was, and not a clue about where to go. I thought the shit was as deep as it could possibly be. Then the vulture showed up.
    I couldn’t yell or scream, in case the counselors were nearby, so I waved my arms, shook a stick, and chunked rocks at it to drive it away. But somehow the damn bird seemed to realize that I didn’t pose any threat to it. So I had to stand there and watch as the vulture began to circle in deepening spirals, each pass bringing him closer to Dusty, spread-eagled and speared like a