Black Light

47

Russ didn’t stop having Lamar Pye dreams right away; in fact, two weeks after he got back, he had a terrible one, the worst yet, a screamer, full of Lamar, shotguns, this time Jeannie Vincent thrown in, his hero Bob’s gun empty and not shooting, a real monster. But as the weeks passed, the space between them seemed to widen and then one day in late September he’d been so busy with his arrangements and his goodbyes, he suddenly realized it had been almost a full, clear dreamless month.

So he knew it was time for the last thing.

It was a small house, much smaller than he expected, and he checked twice to make sure he had the address right. But he had. The day was beautiful, now chilly with the coming fall, but very clear, and the constant Oklahoma wind pushed through the trees, shaking them dry of leaves.

Russ got out of the truck and went up to the house, climbing up the porch and going to the front door.

I feel like an idiot, he thought.

But he knocked anyway, and after a bit, the door opened—it was still the Midwest and people opened doors without looking out first—and a young woman stood before him. She was in her late twenties, strikingly attractive, thin, with a spray of red freckles on her whitish skin and a crop of reddish-blond hair.

“Yes?” she asked.

“You’re Holly?” he said.

“Yes. I’m sorry, who are—”

“I’m Russ.”

She still looked blank. She was not getting this.

“Russ Pewtie,” he said. “My dad lives here.”

“Russ! Russ! Oh, God, Russ, I didn’t recognize you, it’s been so many years and you were a teenager. Come in, come in, he’ll be so happy!”

She all but pulled him into the house, which was modest but clean and had a lot of books and gun magazines around. Little indicators of domestic intimacy irritated Russ: a Lawton Constitution TV guidebook, a pair of Nike running shoes, his father’s by the size, a table with a checkbook and a stack of bills where someone had been paying what was due, a frame displaying a batch of decorations from the Oklahoma State Police. But he pushed the anger and the pain away.

This is the way it is, he told himself.

From somewhere deeper in the house came the sound of a football game.

“Bud, Bud, Bud honey, guess who’s here?”

“Goddammit, Holly,” came his father’s irritated voice from the sunporch where the TV evidently had been placed, “it’s the fourth quarter. Who the—”

“Bud, it’s Russ.”

“Russ!”

His father came booming out of the doorway and stood there, huge and looking more like John Wayne than ever. His hair was shorter, but just as gray, and he’d lost that pallor and grimness that had been so evident when he’d been recovering from his wound several years back, Russ’s freshman year. He no longer seemed halting or confused.

“Oh, Russ, it’s terrific to see you,” he said, beaming, his face flushing with pleasure.

“Hi, Dad,” said Russ a little sheepishly, feeling fourteen again.

“This is making him so happy,” said Holly, crying a little. “He just said to me, Oh, gosh, I’d like to see Russ again.”

“Holly, get the boy a beer. No, get the man a beer, Lord how he’s grown and toughened up. I talked to your mother on the phone: she said you were going back to school.”

“Vanderbilt. In Tennessee.”

“That’s a good one, I hear.”

“It’s real good. It’s better for me because it isn’t so eastern.”

“You think you’re going to stay in the newspaper business?”

“Well, sir, I’m going to give it a try. I’m majoring in English, and I’ve got some projects in mind.”

“Is that why you were in Arkansas?”

“Yeah, you won’t believe this: I decided to try and write the life story of Lamar Pye,” he said. “So I went back there and looked into his background. He had quite a background.”

“Russ, why? Why? He was a violent scumbag. He lived as he died. He hurt people.”

“Yes, I know, Dad, and I wanted to know why.”

“Did you find out?”

“Yes,” said Russ, “I did. It has to do with family. Anyway … how’ve you been? You look great! What’ve you been up to?”

They talked for three hours.

The sun hid behind pale clouds. The day was gray and dreary. In the distance, the prison showed white, the only source of radiance in the grim day; as always, it looked exactly like it was what it wasn’t, a magic city, an enchanted castle.

The tall, thin man climbed the scruffy little hill. Around him, the Oklahoma plains rolled away toward the horizon. He walked among the grave markers, seeing the names of felons long forgot, bad men who’d done terrible things and now lay unlamented in this forgotten parcel of America. The ever-present wind whistled, kicking up a screen of dust that swirled across the ground and between the gravestones.

At last he came to the one he’d been seeking.

“LAMAR PYE” was all it said. “1956–1994.”

“That one,” somebody said. “That was a bad one.”

Bob looked and saw the old black trusty who’d been here before, when Russ showed him the spot.

“Wasn’t you here a few months back?” the trusty asked, his face screwing up in the effort to remember.

“Yes, I was,” he said.

“You was looking at old Lamar then too, right?”

“We came to see Lamar, that’s right,” he said.

“We don’t get many people stopping by. You was the only one ever came to see old Lamar. I’d remember if there were more. Nope, you and that boy the only ones.”

Bob looked at the gravestone. There wasn’t much to see, just a flat stone, overgrown and dusty, showing the wear of wind and dust and time.

“A bad, bad boy,” said the trusty. “The worst boy in the joint. Lived bad, died bad. Bad to the bone. Bad at the start, bad at the finish.”

“He was a bastard,” Bob said. “No one could deny that.”

“Pure evil,” said the trusty. “I do believe God sent him to us to show us what evil is.”

“Maybe so,” said Bob, “but from what I understand, someone did a good job of beating it into him. I’d say men put the evil in him, not God. It’s what happens when you don’t got nobody pulling for you or nobody who gives a damn about you.”

The old black man looked at him and didn’t know what to say.

There was the sound of other vehicles and both men turned as a tractor with backhoe began to lumber down the prison road, followed by a long black hearse.

“What the hell?” said the trusty.

Bob reached into his jacket and pulled out a document.

“Here. I’m supposed to give this to the supervisor but he’s not here so I guess I give it to you.”

The old man opened the document with a puzzled look, fumbled with some glasses and tried to make sense out of what was there.

“It’s an official exhumation order,” Bob said. “We’re taking Lamar back to Arkansas. He’s going to be with his father.”

The old man’s eyes were filled with incomprehension, but no further explanations came.

Bob turned and headed down the hill, where his wife and daughter stood waiting.