Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 14

On Saturday, Bud went to the new Lawton public library just down from the new police station and looked at art books and books on Africa.

Lions. What the hell was this thing about lions?

Was it just lions? Or was it another theme—the lion in art? Of the latter, there wasn't much. He only came across one painter who could be called a lion artist, a Frenchman named Rousseau who painted the goofiest things Bud had ever seen. The stuff was called primitive. The most famous showed a lion licking a sleeping black man under a spooky moon. Bud gazed on the picture, trying to figure it out. It actually kind of shook him: it was like looking into someone else's dreams—it had that clear, serene quality to it, almost childish. It seemed somehow smug that its meanings were sealed off to normal folk like himself. It gave him the goddamn willies.

The other famous lion painting, also by Rousseau, actually wasn't primarily about lions at all; instead it was about a woman on a chaise lounge in the jungle. She had the same spooky calmness. In one corner of the picture, a lion and a tiger, almost lovers, gazed from the dense green trees. It also had that childish quality, but there was nothing in it that seemed to have to do with Lamar Pye or Richard Peed, because they were so peaceable and in a way, so unnatural.

To Lamar, nature was savage; this kind of wussy lion would strike Lamar as a kind of sacrilege somehow.

But then Bud noted a small drawing in an art history book jammed with paintings of important men and battles.

Was it a lion? It was a cat, but could it be a lion? He looked close at the caption, more foreign gibberish with one recognizable key word: "Lion tour ne vers la gauche, la tete levee, 1854it read. The artist was another French guy, a Eugene Delacroix.

This Eugene appeared to know a bit more about lions than his poor countryman Rousseau. There was nothing phony or movie-like about it and this lion couldn't have come out of any dream. It was a big beast, somehow shivering in the delight of its own existence, its head corkscrewed slightly to the left so that you couldn't see the famous lion profile or much of the familiar mane. The beast seemed to be stretching itself on some plain somewhere. But Eugene must have feared lions and known what they could do, in a way the dreamer Rousseau never could: Eugene somehow got its throbbing power, the bunched muscles under the skin, the sense of sheer grace and coiled energy stored in it, its animal purity. But the eyes, especially, seemed to have some secret meaning: They were jet-black arrowheads set in the narrow skull, animal eyes, devoid of mercy or curiosity, merely intent on feeding whatever instincts happened to play across the lion brain. Odd how much emotion a few lines inked on a piece of paper one hundred odd-years ago could stir.

Bud shivered himself, though not with delight. He felt the power of the predator, the instinctive killer. Maybe this is what Richard was trying to bring out.

But that was all he came up with, and so he put the art books aside, and turned to the lion as animal, gazing for hours at lion photography from a variety of texts. This got him even less. Lions, for all their vaunted majesty, were just big cats. In their slouchy poses, their silkiness, their slope-bellied laziness, he saw a cat one of the boys had once had, a yellow tabby thing hung with the name Mischief, who’d laid around the house all day watching the human beings with total disinterest, seeming as harmless as a slightly animated pillow. But every once in awhile, he'd bring in a tiny lung or heart or something, as an offering, as if to a god. As if he. Bud, master of the house, were the god. Whatever, it worked; the cat lived with them in perfect harmony for eleven years before finally dying comfortably of old age.

Bud had always liked its split personality: that it could be the complete tabby by day, then slip out at night and revert to savagery, rending some small creature down to its organs.

But this got Bud nowhere except into a blinding headache.

He called Holly and had a brief but entirely pleasant chat, as he told her all about the lions of the Lawton library, and she laughed at the image of the big old boy who looked like John Wayne looking at books on lions and how the mamas must have thought he was crazy or something.

She said he was damned lucky they didn't call the police.

Then he said, "Uh, I was thinking, I might drop by tomorrow”

“You was, was you?” she said, in flirty fake astonishment.

“Well, whatever gave you that idea?”

“Oh, a little fellow.”

“Well, if you come, you best bring him along.”

“About noon?”

“Yes sir,” she said.

When he got home, everybody seemed happy. He even felt happy, though he had to gobble a Percodan to keep from hurting. It seemed that all was at peace in the strange realm he called his empire; he didn't have to mollify any of his far-flung, rebellious provinces. He had a few beers, a light supper, and went to bed before either of the two boys got home from dates or parties or whatever. He dreamed of lions.

On Sunday, Bud rose and, feeling he hadn't been paying enough attention to Jen and feeling also guilty over what he had planned for noon, went to the nine a.M. service with her and Jeff. Russ, of course, the intellectual, had stopped going to church in the eighth grade.

So Russ slept, because he'd been out late the night before on some fool thing. At least he hadn't come back with another earring. Bud put his anger aside or in the little place where he stored it, and drove across town with Jen and Jeff in Jen's station wagon.

Jen had taken to going to the Methodist Church though, like Bud, she'd been christened a Baptist. Her father, a prosperous farmer up near Tulsa, had always referred, sneeringly, to Methodists as Baptists who forgot where they came from, and although Jen stuck with her father on pretty near everything, she'd decided to give Methodism a shot, and it stuck. The Methodists had a preacher named Webb Fellowes whom she liked a great deal because he always gave a damned entertaining sermon:'f or a younger man, he seemed to be quite wise and respectful, and he was funny.

Today he told an amusing story about a rich Texas oil man who annually gave 15 percent to the church and quite a sight more when the parishioners decided to build a new building. Afterward, this Texan was asked if he belonged to the church.

“Hell no,” he said, "the church belongs to me!” Bud saw what Webb Fellowes was getting at: It wasn't a thing about how much you gave in dollars, but how much you gave in your heart.

If that's the case, he thought, I ain't much of a Christian, especially because as soon as the service is over and Jen and Jeff and I go to get some breakfast, I'm going to go break a commandment.

After the service, they walked down the line that got them to the minister, and he was well up on things.

“Hear you hit a dinger, son,” he called out heartily, clapping Jeff on the arm.

'"Yes sir, I did,” said Jeff.

“That ball's still climbing,” said Jen.

“No ma'am, it just barely made it over the center fielder's mitt,” Jeff said, "But it was a home run nevertheless.”

“Well, Mrs. Pewtie, you've got every right to be proud.”

“And every right to be thankful,” she said, and took Bud's arm and brought him a little closer.

“How're you doing, Sergeant?” asked Webb Fellowes.

“Well,” said Bud, "they tell me I won't be going through any metal detectors without setting off every alarm between here and Kansas City, but I feel pretty good.”

The minister laughed.

“The Lord looks after those who know He's there,” he said.

Bud smiled enthusiastically at the young minister and at the absurdity of the statement. What a crock, he thought as he pumped Fellowes' strong hand, the Lord don't look after nothing. He just sets the goddamned Lamar Pyes of the world loose, and hell comes for a meal nearly every place that boy hangs his hat.

Afterward, the family went to the Denny's on Cache Road near the Holiday Inn and had a nice big breakfast, though Bud, who hated to wait in lines, grew restless while waiting to be seated and began to get somewhat angry. But there was no point to that. Then he remembered that once he'd had lunch with Holly in this place, but it hadn't gone well because he was so frightened of being seen by somebody.

He tried to put all that out of his mind.

Bud had what they called their Grand Slam, three scrambled eggs, home fries, bacon, and a pancake.

“Bud, I swear, you leave some food for the people still in that line,” Jen said, in her abstract way.

“I don't know why, but I am damned hungry.”

“You haven't been eating since it happened.”

“Lamar Pye took my appetite, that's for sure. But I do believe he gave it back to me today.” He shoveled down a forkful of home fries. They were a significant weakness of his.

“Dad,” Jeff said, "I wanted to head out to the batting cages on sixty-one. I don't want to lose what it is I got. Can you drive me out?”

“Sure,” Bud said, trying to keep a little stab of disappointment off his face, his plan with Holly just washed up.

“When do you want to go?”

“Oh, anytime. Figure we'd get home and change and then go.”

“Sounds good,” he said, feeling like a heel for what he was about to do.

“Oh, say, I'll tell you. I was going to log in some range time today.

I think I may invest in one of those nine-millimeters. I don't never want to try and speed load under fire again. Sixteen shots'll beat six any day of the week. The Lawton boys carry these Clocks and I thought I might head over to their range and see if I could talk one of them into letting me run a box of ammo through to see how I like it. Though Jed Wheelright had a Beretta I liked a lot. So, whyn't you relax a bit after you get home, let the food settle, and I'll go on. Be back in an hour or so.

Then we'll go hit.”

“Bud, you know you get to talking guns with those boys at that range you won't be home till well after nightfall.”

It irked him that she knew him so well.

“No, I swear it. Just fifty rounds in the Q target, just to see if I can hit a goddamned thing with a nine, much less a Glock, and then I'm home.”

“Believe that when I see it,” Jen said.

“Sure, Dad. I have some reading to do anyhow.”

When they got home. Bud changed into jeans and a loose-fitting golf shirt that wouldn't rub against the bandages that still crisscrossed his wounds, and took his midday's ration of Percodans.

“I'm going now,” he called, but there was only sullen silence from Jen.

But of course Bud didn't drive to the range. Instead he drove to Holly's trailer in Sherwood Village, parked around back, and feeling self-conscious as hell, slid up to the door.

As he knocked on it, he took a glance at his watch.

Now that's a terrible sign, he thought. Every time you start by looking at your watch, it ain't going to be a good thing at all.

But she opened the door in a short white robe, and her perfect, thin, long legs got him to forgetting about the time and for an hour or so, they were the only two people in the world.

“God, Bud, you sure you ain't eighteen?”

“You make me believe I could be, that's for sure.”

“I'da hated to know you when you were eighteen.

You'da killed me, I guarantee it.”

“You were one, then. And I don't think I knew the difference between my pecker and my carburetor. Didn't until you began showing me three months ago.”

He lay back, trying to suck all the pleasure out of the moment. The room was sunny and bright, her spare bedroom, because Bud still felt queer about making love to Holly in a room where she and Ted had been, though that spot was but ten feet away from where he now lay, through a thin tin wall.

“Goddamn, I feel good,” he said.

“Nobody ever made me feel as good as you do.”

“You ain't so bad in the how-good-it-feels department yourself, Mr. Pewtie,” she said.

“But Bud—” He lay there a bit, watching the shadows play on the ceiling.

“Bud, I want to know just one thing. Are you at least working on it?

By that I mean, thinking about it. There's work to be done. We got to find a place. You ought to talk to Jen and the boys. You ought to talk to a lawyer. There's much to be done. It can't just happen, up and sudden.”

Bud faced the ceiling. Everything she said was true.

“Holly, this ain't the time.”

“But it's never the time.”

“I told Jeff I'd drive him out sixty-one to the hitting cages.”

Now she sighed.

“Okay, Bud, go to the hitting cages with Jeff. But you have to do something. Soon. It ain't fair to nobody.”

It wasn't so bad after that was said. He dressed, she joked with him and wouldn't sulk or act victimized, and she gave him a good fare-thee-well, so he could go off and be with his son without the cloud of a bad secret scene hanging over him.

About a mile from home, he pulled into a strip mall parking lot and opened the lockbox in the rear of the pickup. He took out his shooting bag, where he kept his muffs and shooting glasses and assorted tools, and picked up a small brown bottle of Shooter's Choice bore solvent.

He squirted it on his hands and worked it in, like a hand cream, because the odor was so totally associated with firearms in his house.

The act itself disgusted him. It was so common and low.

You have become cheap, he told himself.

Then he locked it back up and drove home. He checked his watch. He was only half an hour late. He prayed that Jeff hadn't lost interest or gone off with friends.

“I'm home,” he yelled, coming in the door.

“Sorry I'm late. Jeff, let's go.”

“Okay, pad,” Jeff called.

“Russ, we're going to hit at the cages. You want to come?”

“Nah, thanks, Dad. It's okay.”

Jeff came bounding down the steps in cutoffs, a collarless jersey shirt, and his Nikes. He looked ropey as a cowboy, a string bean of a boy, all sinew and muscle and ranginess.

“Okay, let's go.”

“Y'all be home by dinner,” Jen called from the kitchen.

Now again Bud was happy. Nobody was in any pain anywhere. Once again he'd gotten away with it. Nobody suspected a thing, and even Holly seemed content. The edge he might fall off of wasn't so close, at least for a little while.

He and Jeff drove out Route 61 to Mick's Driving Range and Batting Cages, a down-home entertainment center that had seen better days but for which each had conceived a deep affection.

“How was the Glock, Dad?” Jeff suddenly asked.

“What?” Oh. The Glock. The Clock. Now he had to lie to his son, flat out, something he hated to do.

“It shoots well. Just like a revolver, you pull the trigger and off she goes, no cocking or anything. They got the safety in the trigger, little latch you pull automatically when you pull down. But I don't know. Didn't have much feel to it. Not like my Smith.”

“Could you trade grips?”

“No, the whole damn frame is one piece of plastic. Technically speaking, it doesn't have grips. They do have this little rubber sleeve you can pull over it, I hear, give it a palm swell and finger grooves. But I think I like the Beretta nine-millimeter best. It feels just like that Beretta .380 I have.”

“I heard that Beretta nine's a good gun. The GIs carry it.”

“That they do,” said Bud.

“Problem is, it costs about one hundred dollars more than the Clocks do. That's why the cops all like the Clocks. You can own one for about four-fifty. A Beretta run you five-fifty, six. Hell, my .380 was nearly five.”

“Dad, you ought to buy the gun you like. If you ever have to use it again, it'd be better to have one you liked rather than one you got a good deal on.”

Bud nodded. The boy was right. At least someone in the family was thinking straight.

Mick's Driving Range and Batting Cages was set on a rolling chunk of green Oklahoma farmland that overlooked the surrounding countryside, and now and then, when the artillery students were firing over at Fort Sill just to the north, you could hear the rolling booms of the big 155s as they detonated against far mountainsides. The road ran on a crest, the highest point in the county, and from the complex you could see for miles. It was a windy day, and Mick's was always festooned with pennants, like some kind of extravagant musical comedy, and the pennants snapped and fluttered in the wind.

The driving range was full up with golfers driving their little pills out onto the green like tracer bullets, but for some reason the batting cages had never quite caught on.

Jeff had no problem finding an empty one.

“Dad, you going to hit?”

“Nah, I'll just watch. I'd pop stitches if I swung the bat too hard.

We don't need that. You need some money?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

Bud handed over a ten-dollar bill and took a seat on the bench as Jeff got change and fed the tokens into the machine.

He stood easily at the plate as the mechanical device ninety feet away issued what sounded like a reptilian clank as it came to life. Then, with a shiver, its arm lashed out, and it dispatched a ball. Jeff just leaned into it and sent it sailing with a satisfying crack.

Jeff was hot. He was in the zone. He was really seeing it.

Bud just sat there and watched him and enjoyed each second of it: the snap as the arm uncoiled and sent a ball whistling inward, Jeff's seemingly slow stroke, the inevitable contact, and the rise of the ball, a white dot that screamed toward orbit then fell disconsolately to earth.

“Man, you are really whacking that ball today,” Bud called.

“Yes sir,” said Jeff.

“I am out of the slump.”

When Jeff used up the first ten dollars, Bud gave him another, and then, when that was gone, offered still another.

“Dad, you don't have to.”

“It's okay. It's so great to see you out of your slump.”

“Nah, it's fine. I feel good.”

Jeff and Bud headed back to the truck.

“What are you doing different? Can you tell?”

“It's the head. I was leading with my chin and it was throwing the whole swing off. That, plus pressing. So I just concentrate on keeping my head still, watching the ball, and swinging through. It's working.”

“Was it set on fast?”

“Absolutely, Dad. From the start.”

“Well, if I were a scout, I'd give you a hundred-thousand-dollar signing bonus, on the spot.”

“I'd settle for a Coke.”

“It's a deal.”

They got Cokes at the machine, nodded to gruff old Mick, and headed home as the twilight passed on toward darkness.

“You mind if I see if anything's on the radio. Dad?”

“Nah, go ahead,” said Bud.

Jeff fiddled with the stations, looking for KOKY, out of Oklahoma City, the big rock station, but as he slid through the sounds he cut across some urgent chatter that signified catastrophe, built around the last two syllables of the word "robbery.”

“Wait, stop,” said Bud, but they couldn't get a clear signal. It must have been some Texas ghost signal or something.

But Bud grew concerned, in his way, and said, "Switch to the AM. That news station.”

“Dad, you said—”

“Jeff.”

“Okay, okay.”

Jeff switched bands to get to KTOK, and they heard the weather, a network feed out of Washington, with headline summaries of notable local stories.

“See, it's—”

“Shhh,” commanded Bud, for he'd heard the announcer launch into another story.

“Authorities in Wichita Falls, Texas, have issued an all points bulletin for three escaped convicts in connection with a bloody shoot-out and robbery at a Denny's Restaurant this afternoon. Six persons are dead, including four law enforcement officers, in an armed robbery that netted an undetermined amount of cash. Oklahoma convicts Lamar James Pye, his cousin O’Dell Warren Pye, and Richard Franklin Peed escaped from the Mcalester State Penitentiary in Oklahoma April second.

They killed a prison guard, an Oklahoma highway patrolman and a bakery goods driver —and kidnapped an elderly couple—before dropping out of sight four weeks ago. Police say today's armed robbery and shoot-out in Wichita Falls shows that they are armed and dangerous and at large in the North Texas-South Oklahoma region.”