Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 17

The water was cold. He couldn't make it another second.

He would die. He could feel his lips chattering and his body growing numb. It was so cold.

“I can't make it, Ruta Beth,” Richard said.

“Shut your mouth, you damned fool,” she spat back.

“You lie there like a goddamned man or I'll have O’Dell hold your head underwater for a few minutes.”

“But it's hopeless. He isn't coming.”

“Daddy will come,” Ruta Beth said.

“Goddammit, Daddy can take care of himself and he will come. Isn't that right, O’Dell?”

“Will cwuh,” said O’Dell, also chattering.

The three of them crouched in a patch of reeds, the cold water of the Red River running up to their necks. They were in a desolate spot, about ten miles outside Burkbumett, between the Burkbumett and the Vernon bridges over the river. A hundred yards of strong black current lay between them and the promised land of Oklahoma, but the rush of the water was so strong, Richard knew he'd never swim it; it would suck him down and drown him. There was no mercy at all in the night. The wind whistled and rattled through the reeds; in the dark he could just see riverbank and mud flat. And enemies were everywhere.

A few hours back, a Department of Texas Safety four-by four with two squint-eyed Rangers had come lurching down the riverbank, punching its way over fallen logs, skimming into the low tide where necessary, its spotlight playing in the brush for signs of the robbers. But it had passed by, at one point only fifteen feet from them, and gone on down the line. It would be back.

Then, about an hour later, there were lights on the Oklahoma side, as presumably a duplicate of the same mission unfolded over there. But the trucks weren't the problem.

The problem was the helicopters.

They came in fast. They came low, and their noise seemed to explode from nowhere as they roared along the river about a hundred feet up, two, three times an hour.

These hunters really wanted to kill something. Once, Richard had caught a glimpse of the observer hanging out of the cabin door, a squat man with huge binoculars, a cowboy hat, some kind of mouth microphone and the meanest-looking, fanciest black plastic rifle Richard had ever seen. It looked like a ray gun. He was a boy who meant business; he wanted to drop a bad man before the night was over.

“Can't we wait on the bank?” Richard now moaned through his chattering teeth.

“Won't be another helicopter by for an hour.”

“You're the biggest fool I ever met, Richard,” said Ruta Beth.

“Didn't Daddy tell you 'bout infer-red? With that infer-red stuff, they can see you in the dark by the heat of your body. That's what they're doing—hunting you by your heat. Them boys get a reading on heat from three bodies hiding in the grass, goddamn if they won't have a whole company of Rangers here in 'bout a minute.”

How did Lamar know so much? Lamar knew everything.

But Lamar was dead.

“He'd have been here by now if he was going to make it,” Richard said.

“We are going to freeze to death and that will be that.”

“Daddy is too goddamned smart for any Johnny Cop.”

She was even beginning to talk like him.

“Now Richard, please shut up or O’Dell will have to discipline you.”

“Yes, Ruta Beth,” Richard said.

“Wi-chud,” came O’Dell's glottal spasm.

“O’Dell, I heard, no bon ky please!”

But O’Dell didn't want to hurt Richard. Instead he gathered him up and hugged him. It was the strangest thing; O’Dell's arms just drew Richard in, and his great body seemed to absorb Richard. There was nothing sexual in it at all, for the sex part of O’Dell's brain lay happily dormant;

but it was all tenderness.

Wi-chud ma key ma key good. Wi-chud no cold. Wi-chud, like, ma key warm.

O’Dell's love bloomed like a hothouse flower: Richard felt the heat radiating from the big body, and in the embrace, the purity of survival. O’Dell! What a strange boy! What planet do you come from?

The warmth saved Richard. It reached out and plucked him from the frozen loneliness of his exile and gave him a life. He yearned to lose himself in it. He knew now he could get through anything.

The hours passed. Six more times the helicopter roared by. At last the dawn began to nudge its way across the sky.

“Ruta Beth?”

“Yes?”

“What do we do if he doesn't show?”

“Nothing. Wait some more.”

“But they'll catch us.”

Ruta Beth had no response. It was true. The car they had arrived in was deposited under a camouflaged tarpaulin in some trees but a mile or so away, at the end of a farm road near an abandoned farmhouse. In daylight, its shabby fraudulence would be uncovered swiftly enough.

Spotted by the chopper, it would draw hundreds of cops within minutes; they'd fan out with bloodhounds, find the trail, follow the little party to the river's edge, and find it cowering there.

Across the river, Ruta Bern's Toyota had been artfully hidden. It, too, would be discovered in daylight. The only real chance was to get across the river in darkness, pull away in the Toyota, which as yet had no criminal charges against it, and head by back roads to Ruta Bern's farm.

In the slow progress of light, Richard at last saw Ruta Beth's stony face. She was a true believer in the cult of Lamar, but even now he could see that her hope was vanishing.

“He'll be here,” she said.

“Know he will.”

Waiting for Lamar. It was like some existential play written by a perverted Frenchman high on keef and boy-love.

But instead of snappy patter and ironic reflections on fate, the three principals merely huddled in the water, wrinkled as prunes, waiting for the sun to rise and betray them.

At least, thought Richard, it would be over soon.

A fish bit him. He started at the impulse of pain fighting through his numbness, but the fish bit him again. Not bit him—goosed him, almost comically, squeezing his balls playfully.

“O’Dell?”

But O’Dell's passive face indicated no measurable mental activity.

What the-"Goddamn,” said Richard.

“He has come.”

Lamar broke the water like a seal, shivered in great animal fury, and snorted merrily, "Hah! Shoulda seen you jump, boy!”

At that moment, Richard loved him.

“Lamar! Lamar!” shouted Ruta Beth.

“Mar! Mar! MARRRRRR!” aped O’Dell.

“Now folks, hold it down! It ain't party time yet. I got to git you out of here.”

“Where you been. Daddy?”

“In some damn John's garage. I managed to git me out by cop car, dumped that, cut cross town and ended up hunkered down in this garage, waiting for the lights to go down so’s I could jump-start the car and come a-calling on y'all.

You got the money?”

“You bet we do, Lamar,” said Ruta Beth.

“Come, give me a hug and a kiss, honey.”

“Believe I will,” said Lamar, and as O’Dell watched happily, the two swarmed toward each other in the grayness for a big sloppy kiss.

Only Richard thought to wonder: How many did he kill to get out?

But, disengaging himself from Ruta Beth, Lamar announced, "Now, it's time to move. Where's that goddamned canvas sack, honey?”

“Up on the bank. Daddy. You want me to git it?”

“I do.”

He turned to Richard.

“You look cold as a corpse, boy.

You chattering?”

“I-i-t's so cold, Lamar,” Richard said.

“Hell, in three hours Ruta Beth'll have you eating biscuits by the fire.”

Ruta Beth pulled the big canvas sack close to Lamar.

“Great, babe,” he said, and reached in to pull out a coil of thin, waxy rope. Richard could just barely make it out in the gray light.

“You swim, Richard?”

“Yes,” said Richard.

“Good. Now I want you to swim across and slipknot this to a tree good and strong so that these folks can pull themselves across.”

“I-I—” gulped Richard.

He looked. The torrent of the Red was strong, swollen with rain; it thundered along and in the gray light was beginning to show the source of its name; it looked like a river of blood, rushing out of a sucking chest wound, pausing only here and there to generate eddies of bubbles where the current curled on itself and lashed downward. Now and then a stick or piece of vegetation would come shooting along. It was the river of death, that's all. Out there, Richard would surrender, his limbs pummeled by the long night's cold; he would be sucked down, then shipped downstream, a bloated, leaky corpse.

“Haw!” barked Lamar.

“Had you there, son! I'll swim the goddamned river. You help me git the rope set around a branch here, so it don't get away. Then you go across hand by hand. You got that? Ruta Bern, you follow. O’Dell?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Wop,” said O’Dell.

With that, Lamar and O’Dell unleashed the rope and got it secured around the stout trunk of a green willow that grew crookedly out of the bank.

Lamar tied some strange super knot that only a bosun's mate or an Eagle Scout would know.

“Okay, O’Dell, you hang on to these bad boys,” and he pulled two handguns from under the water. O’Dell took them eagerly.

“Wish me luck,” said Lamar.

“Wish to hell I hadn't a-skipped all them swimming lessons back at the country club.”

He threw himself into the water like a child at the beach and in several long strokes was gone. It was almost five minutes before they saw him scuttle out at the other end, slither up the bank, and secure the other end of the rope to another limb. He gave the signal.

“Okay, boys,” said Ruta Beth, "Daddy's calling. O’Dell, can you go first?”

“Go,” said O’Dell.

O’Dell began to pull himself across the river, hand over hand along the rope that ran just under the water's now pinkish surface. With his great strength he went quickly, even though he carried the money sack.

“Now you, Richard.”

“No, Ruta Beth. You go.”

“Suit yourself, but don't mess around, Richard. The law gonna come soon and we can't wait. And if they git you, no matter how much you fear Lamar, you will betray him. We both know that.”

She fixed him with a burning glare. Her small country face, so severe in the gray light, had the aspect of a Botticelli nude's, so reduced was it to planes and angles. It was as if she were putting the evil eye on him, some furious hex thing, so that he could not escape his fate. Then off she went, and being light and farm-strong, pulled herself along without apparent effort, until he lost her in the rush of the water.

Now it was Richard's turn. Tentatively he pulled himself out. The current was so much stronger than he anticipated.

When the river deepened so that he could no longer stand, it scared him. He almost froze on the spot. But then he got his nerve back up and launched himself farther. With each pull on the rope, his anxiety increased. The rope was deeper, his face was farther in the water, it was so cold, the current was so strong. At one point the rope seemed to sink a good two feet beneath the surface and it was all he could do to keep his head above the water, sucking in half a lungful of air now and then. From his vantage point he could see nothing —no land, no sky, only the glinting surface of the water, as if the universe had become nothing but water. The idea of it terrorized him.

Yet he pulled on. Then he opened his mouth too early and caught a swallow that rocketed down him. The cough racked up through him, seizing his body, but still he clung to the rope. Just a little farther, he thought. He managed to get two more pulls on the rope in before surfacing for air. / must be nearly there, he thought.

But he made the mistake of turning to look at the far shore, which he assumed must be but a few feet away; he could barely see it. He wasn't even halfway.

The depression of it hit him like a sledgehammer.

Give it up, he said. Give it up.

But he fought on, blindly. It was a long, groping night walk; the world resolved itself into the roar of the water and the exhaustion in his arms. He ached to surrender. At one point, he did, and ordered his hands to release him. But they would not. He found it in himself to go another few pulls and then another. A good, sweet lungful of air got him over his worst despair. Onward, he pulled.

It was going to take forever. But at the next sighting, he was astounded at how close the shore was. And with a mighty pull, he got himself into the shallow waters. He saw them in the brush a few feet back from the river's edge. His feet touched. He let go of the damned rope. He stood to raise himself and wave.

And then the current had him.

“Richard,” said Lamar, almost conversationally. Richard was so close, he was coming out of the water, then he just seemed to sit down and the water scooted him along.

His face had a silly half-smile, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, as if this were some damned joke.

“Richard,” said Lamar, irritated.

“Git your ass out of—” But he was gone. The water had him, and as Lamar watched, the silly look melted into one of sheer terror and weakness. Richard panicked, began to flap, lost control, and was out of sight in seconds.

“Wi-chud,” said O’Dell.

“That boy's gone,” said Ruta Bern.

“Water took him.”

Lamar just watched. He felt something like disappointment.

Then he was angry. Goddamned stupid Richard, come all this way, and-"Shit,” he said.

“Lamar, it's over. Let it be,” said Ruta Beth.

“Let it be.”

Richard sank. The world turned dark and liquid. There was no light down here. Weakly he kicked and waved against his fate, but there was no mercy at all, anywhere.

He fought for air, but the water beat its way into his lungs.

He gobbled for air, but there was only water. He closed his eyes in the gray light.

He thought of his mother.

Mother, he wanted to cry.

His mother was a beautiful woman. She drove his father away with all her "friends.” They were a rich, aristocratic crowd from Tulsa, third-generation oil money long removed from the smell and sweat of the fields, and his father preferred the old boy network of kick-ass riggers and up-from penury scalawags like himself, who’d made their fortunes on guts and nerve. All these puffy people, all of his mother's friends with their Eastern pretensions, they finally drove the poor man away, though Richard didn't think there'd ever been a divorce.

Richard's mother told him he could be an artist. She took him to art lessons so early and surrounded him with artistic people. He went to Europe when he was six, nine, eleven, and fourteen. It wasn't her fault he turned out so disappointingly.

She had done everything she could.

Somehow, things were always set against Richard. She would arrange for "introductions” to various prominent men in the East when they traveled there, but the men were always disappointed in him. He had a gift but not a great one, that was clear, and he was so much less interesting than Mother, he was a wretched conversationalist, he didn't have her buoyant charm, her vividness, her confidence. And she told him that, not in subtle ways, but baldly and to his face.

“Richard, you could do so much better if you weren't so meek. You will not inherit the earth that way, I promise you. You have to learn to project. People don't find your self-doubts attractive at all. Reach out, open up.”

But the more she pushed him, the more he sealed up. It was as if he was blossoming inward, becoming more retarded and pitiful and self-conscious and crippled with terror.

He was afraid of everything!

On the day it happened, he returned home and found her with a friend.

Eventually the friend left, and she came downstairs and mixed herself a drink, still beautiful at sixty-one, and asked him how the newspaperman had liked the exhibition.

“Uh,” said Richard, aching with dread, "Mother, he didn't show.”

“He what?”

“He didn't show. Mother, I don't know what happened, maybe he got lost.”

“Richard, I have over four thousand dollars invested in that exhibition! What do you mean, he didn't show?”

He stood there, thirty years old, quavering like a child.

He hated her almost as much as he hated himself.

“Call him,” she said.

“I did. He wasn't there.”

“Call him again.”

~ "Mother.”

“Call him, Richard, call him now. You silly little fool.

You cannot let people simply walk on you. It's why you always end up with nothing and why I always have to bail you out. I pay for everything, Richard. You get everything for free.”

He made the call.

The man was there.

“Uh, Mr. Peed, sorry, I told you I'd come by if I could.

But the art critic thing is only part of my job; I also have to read all the Sunday feature copy and we got a little behind and I just couldn't make it. It's not The New York Times, you know. It's just the Daily Oklahoman.”

He hung up.

“Call him again,” his mother said.

He was never sure, not then, not in the immediate aftermath, not in the months of meditation, why it happened the way it did when it happened.

Why that day, that minute? It could have been any other day, any other minute.

It was the maid who called the police.

He tried to make them see, he wasn't trying to blind her.

He was really trying to kill her. But the knife was short—it was a butter knife, quite blunt—and somehow she had proven so much stronger than he thought; she'd gotten down beneath him so he couldn't reach her heart. After the first pitiful blow, she'd sort of curled up, so he had to un peel her, but she was very strong. The only place he could stab her was the face. The eyes? Well, the eyes are on the face, aren't they? It wasn't his fault.

Richard suddenly broke the surface of the water. He was way out in the river. The trees were hurtling by. It was much lighter.

A flood of sweet oxygen poured into his lungs. He smiled, but the water sucked him down again.

Richard yielded to death.

It embraced him and he embraced it. He felt its strong arms pull him in, smother him. There was no pain at all, only a persistent tugging that broke through the numbness in his body. He had a last dream of Lamar, of all things:

pitiful, crude, powerful, violent Lamar. Odd that he should think of Lamar here at the end.

Lamar had him up on the surface. Richard choked on air.

“Calm down, goddammit, Richard,” screamed Lamar, "don't fight me.”

He was upside down in somebody's strong arms. The sky was bright and blue, the clouds rushed by. A helicopter should have come, but it didn't. Nothing came. The roaring had ceased. He felt as if he were in one of the swimming pools of his boyhood and wanted to spit a gurgle of water to see if he could make Mother laugh.

He felt the ground, and in his exhaustion looked up to see that O’Dell had him and was pulling him ashore.

Lamar came out of the rushing red water a second later, beautiful in the gray dawn, soaked and muscular, his hair wet, his denim clothes plastered to him, his face grave with effort and pain.

He smiled at Richard.

“You are a peck of trouble, Richard, I swear.”

“C'mon, boys,” said Ruta Beth.

“Let's git before goddamned Johnny Cop shows.”