Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 19

Lamar would never admit defeat or even disappointment.

Still, $4,567.87 wasn't exactly a huge sum, given what they'd had to go through to get it.

“Now, maybe it ain't a lot,” he said, "but it ain't a little either.

Not by a damn sight. Why, there's lots of places to go, lots of places to see, on almost five thousand dollars.”

But the truth was, Ruta Beth had over nine thousand dollars inherited from her beloved late mother and daddy already in a bank account, which she was willing to just fork over to Lamar.

“Ruta Beth, that wouldn't be right. You just don't give money to a person, even though you love him.”

“It would be right if I said so,” she said.

“Well, maybe come a rainy day, that money'll help out.

In fact, maybe we'll borrow against it, though I can't but guess they'd have the serial numbers recorded.”

“That would make Mother and Daddy happy,” Ruta Beth said.

Lamar smiled. Still, he was secretly upset. A night or two after the robbery, when the little family was gathered around the TV at the news hour, watching for the latest on their own celebrity, a flashy black man came on and said, "Some are calling the Pyes the boldest gang to come out of Oklahoma since the thirties, when Pretty Boy Floyd roared out of the Cookson hills and lit up America with his desperado ways.

But what Pretty Boy had in style and substance, this gang makes up for in sheer firepower. And dumb luck.

They are the gang that could shoot straight but couldn't think straight—the horrifying face of modern crime.”

Lamar brooded silently on this for a bit, until his anger at last came welling out during the weather. He suddenly started bellowing like an enraged father.

“All this goddamn shit about Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde and Johnny Dillinger and how great they were! It's shit, I tell you. What we done, we done better'n them old boys, by a goddamn cocksucking mile.” His outburst quieted them all, even O’Dell, who was working on a big bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Lamar seemed to have it back under control, but a vein on his head suddenly began to throb. And then Lamar got tooting again.

“In them days,” he said earnestly, looking at Richard, "in them days, the police didn't have nothing. The radios had a range of about ten feet, when they worked, fingerprints was brand spanking new and had to be hand-catalogued by clerks, there weren't no computers, the cars was slow, they didn't have no Magnum pistols, your biggest gun was your .44 Special, they didn't have no helicopters, no infrared, no fax, no nothing. Hell, the FBI in them days was nothing but another gang, with machine guns and BARs.

Nobody did hard time in a joint where all the niggers was uppity. Why hell, any goddamned body could have been a desperado. Now look what we got to contend with. Look what we went through to get a lousy five grand. I'm telling you, no Charlie Floyd, no Bonnie Parker, no goddamned Johnny Dillinger could have pulled off what we pulled off.

We don't get no credit. They're saying we were just goddamned lucky.

Well sir, lot more to it than luck, by goddamn God. Yes sir. Yes sir.”

He sat there, seething.

“You should write that boy a letter, Lamar,” said Ruta Beth.

“No ma'am. Another way of how come our type is better than them old-timey ones. The cops been using that trick for years. Go on the radio or the TV and disrespect an honest job of thieving, so that the thief goes and gits himself all smoked up, and pulls a rash job or sends a letter or something. No sir, what we have is self-control. I guarantee you. We are goddamned serious.”

Then he got up and went outside. They heard the Toyota start up and leave the farm.

“Daddy is upset,” said Ruta Beth.

“Set,” said O’Dell.

“He has a right to be upset,” said Richard.

“I wish I had a surprise or something to give him so that he would feel better.”

It was a wonderful idea!

“A surprise!” exclaimed Ruta Beth in joy.

“O’Dell, has anyone done give Daddy a surprise?”

O’Dell's face went slack as he contemplated this problem.

For minutes his eyes registered no occupancy, but at last he found a kernel of information to impart, took a deep breath and tried to find the way into speech. His face mottled with effort. The suspense grew.

He looked like he might explode.

But finally, he said, "No prise!”

“Whooee,” squealed Ruta Bern.

“Let's give him a surprise then.”

“A cake,” said Richard, who had himself always fantasized about a surprise party when he was a child.

“We ain't got no cake,” said Ruta Beth.

“Gake, gake,” said O’Dell.

In O’Dell's mind there was a memory of cake, too. He remembered:

Way back old time. Mama sing. Mama kiss. Cake! Softee sweet, on fire.

“Happy birthyday to you, happy birthyday to you-oo, happy birthyday to O’Dell, happy birthyday to you.” Mama so nice. Cakey good! So long ago!

“You hush now, O’Dell honey, there ain't no cake. We'll make do with something. Come on.”

The merry band went into the kitchen. They opened the cabinets and, indeed, could find no cake. But O’Dell did quickly spot a can of store-bought vanilla frosting. He liked to spread it on bread.

“Pros! FROS!” he said urgently, pointing, his whole face turning red in the effort.

“Oh, Dell, honey, that's wonderful” said Ruta Beth.

O’Dell smiled.

“You could put that on something,” said Richard.

“It wouldn't be a cake. But it would be sort of a cake.”

“Well, I'd like to have a real cake,” said Ruta Beth.

“It's a damned shame we ain't got no cake.”

“Could you bake one?”

“No time.”

But O’Dell was not through yet. He began jumping up and down with excitement and pointing. His face lit with frustration as he tried to find the words to present what was clearly the most complex thought his brain had ever attempted to generate. His eyes rolled. His tongue fought in his mouth for fluidity.

He was putting two pictures together in his mind.

Ed + Pros = Cake.

How could he get them to understand?

“Ed,” he was saying, knowing that somehow it was wrong. The harder he tried, the more angry at himself he got. Sometimes he wanted to rip out his own eyes and tongue for being so different. The pressure rose as he tried to form the word!

“Ed. ED!”

“Ed?” said Richard.

“Ruta Beth, do you know what he's trying to say?”

“No idea,” she said.

“O’Dell, honey, you go slow and try and say all the letters.”

“O’Dell made an effort to calm himself. When he at last seized control of his own voice, he spat out the word "Bed.”

Bed? thought Richard.

“Bread,” shouted Ruta Beth.

“Yes, Richard, he's saying bread.”

The excitement was intolerable. Richard felt it himself.

Yes. What was a cake but bread with sugar? Well…

why not put some sugar on a nice loaf of bread, then cover it with frosting. Wouldn't that be sort of like a cake?

“We can do it!” he shouted, exalted.

“We can do it.”

O’Dell smiled rapturously as Ruta Beth kissed him and "Wi-chud” gave him a manly clap on the shoulder.

Eagerly, they set to work. Richard's artistic talents came to the fore. One problem was that, shed of its wrapper, the loaf of bread kept separating into slices. It was Richard's brainstorm to pierce it with uncooked spaghetti strands to provide a kind of internal discipline that would hold it together.

O’Dell didn't have the patience to spread the frosting, but it turned out that Richard didn't either, even with his art training. It fell to Ruta Beth. With her eyes squinted and her tiny face knitted up like an angry fist, she dabbed the frosting on the sugary bread a dollop at a time. When she was finally done, by God it did look like a cake!

He began to sing, "Py birfee, a-py birfee.”

“We need candles,” said Richard.

“Candles would really make it work.”

“Suppose it ain't his birthday? Or suppose he's one of them that don't like to be 'minded of his age?” Ruta Beth asked darkly.

But Richard held firm.

“No, it should have candles,” he said.

“I think we can take it on principle that Lamar is the sort of man who’d see the necessity for the ceremony.”

His will held sway. They had no birthday candles, of course, but they did find some candles kept in case the power went out. Richard cut them up and wedged them, like carrot stumps, into the frosting. When they were done, it looked pretty much like a cake. But something was missing.

Richard tried to guess what. It just looked sort of disappointing.

The frosting was white, somewhat unevenly applied, but mainly it was that the shape of the loaf of bread wasn't obscured enough. It just looked like a loaf of bread smeared with frosting.

“We can do better than that.” he said.

Then he knew.

“It needs… a lion!”

Everybody agreed that this was a wonderful idea. Richard set to work.

Quickly he located supplies: peanut butter to etch the face, two raisins for eyes, smashed bits of Frito to form the mane. Steadily he worked, as the other two hovered over him in the small, warm kitchen.

At first it was chaos. But Richard had invested so much over the weeks in lions that he was able to bring the shape out from nothingness, just seem to demand that it emerge from the swirls of peanut butter. And the liquidity of the peanut butter as a medium was interesting: somehow it was more naturally akin to the texture of muscle that he had had so much trouble getting into his drawings. The body-form just seemed to define itself out of the glop, powerful and radiant, vibrant with predatory muscularity. It pleased him.

Slowly, like a Mediterranean mosaicist adding his last few tiles, he built the Fritos into a mane. Then he added the two raisins. They were too big. It looked stupid. Then he saw a half-opened package of Oreo cookies; O’Dell liked to pry the Oreos apart and lick the frosting off. He took a cookie out, broke it into bits, and found two of approximately the right size that looked like eyes. Carefully, he placed this last detail where it belonged.

“Wi-on! Wi-on!” shouted O’Dell.

“Lordy be,” said Ruta Beth.

“It do look a lot like a lion.”

Just then, they heard the car pull into the yard. Lamar parked near the barn, then ambled toward the house.

“Git ready for a su-prise!” called Ruta Beth.

Lamar climbed to the porch, opened the door, and stared at the candles glowing in the dark.

“Now what the hell—”

“SURPRISE,” shouted Ruta Beth, Richard, and O’Dell simultaneously, leaping from the corners of the kitchen at Lamar in the split second after Ruta Beth had turned on the lights.

For the first time in his life, Lamar stood agape. His mouth fell open. He looked at them dancing merrily in the kitchen and at the thing they had made for him.

Then he started to cry.

“That's the goddamned prettiest thing I ever saw,” he said.

“Oh my, oh my, oh my, how you have made me proud today. That's the goddamned best surprise a man could get!

And a lion on it! Richard, boy, I know your work, that's you! Oh, it's so goddamned nice!”

“Gake! Gake!” shouted O’Dell.

“Well, let's up and have us a piece,” said Lamar.

“Lamar, it ain't a real cake. It may not taste like much,” said Ruta Beth.

“Well, damn, I'd say it's as real as a cake could get, Ruta Beth.” He bent to cut it, but O’Dell yelled "Kwandul, kwandul.”

“Candle,” said Richard.

“He is saying, Blow out the candle. Make a wish.”

Obediently, Lamar blew out the candle.

“What'd you wish for?” Ruta Beth wanted to know.

“For us always to be this happy,” he said. He cut the cake into four pieces, the knife in his big fists, the f u c k and the y o u I blazing off his knuckles, and passed the pieces out, for the birthday boy always hands out the cake.

And if they sort of closed their eyes and let the sugary bread run in with the frosting, it did taste like real cake.

There wasn't but a dime's worth of difference between the two of them.

So it was that Lamar woke strangely happy the next morning. He had started scraping the house for its new coat of paint, but somehow he didn't feel like it. They all needed to chill after the rush of the robbery. It would be a good day to take it easy. He wanted to check the far field, which Ruta Beth said her daddy had once dreamed of planting with alfalfa, but he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to plan that far ahead. It would be a shame to start something so ambitious and then have to let it go for one reason or another. O’Dell was up watching the early morning cartoons on the TV, which he never missed, and Ruta Beth was messing around in the kitchen. Richard was still sleeping, of course.

So Lamar went out to the creek that ran between Ruta Bern's and the Mcgillavery's place. He was trying to think of another job. A job that would light up Oklahoma like the goddamned Fourth of July. But it was hard with this crew.

They'd just managed to skip by on the Denny's and had been lucky, as that goddamned TV nigger had said; suppose that damned woman had hit him, instead of missing?

It was probably Richard's scream that made her miss. Richard wasn't much good at nothing, but the scream had helped probably more than it had hurt. Lamar didn't like to think how close he'd come to buying the ranch, even with a little .380. Goddamn, old Ruta Bern had been faster than O’Dell on the return fire. Wasn't she a peach?

But—what kind of a new job were they capable of? You needed a really hard crew to bring off something fancy.

Richard could drive, he and O’Dell could handle the heavy stuff, and Ruta Bern could tail-gun. That was about all that was available. He now saw that going in without leaving someone in the car was a big mistake. Almost got them all killed. So he tried to think of something they could do.

Another Denny's? Nah. Maybe a grocery market or the big PX at Fort Sill. Or what about something that nobody had ever done—say, a whole mall? Wouldn't that be something:

the whole goddamned thing! Or a rodeo? Had anyone ever robbed a rodeo? What about one of them casinos the Indians had built on their tribal property. Or a high-stakes bingo game?

Lamar sat back, dreaming of the glory of it all, mightily pleased. So much was possible. Two months ago he'd been just another con in the grim hole of the Mac with nothing to look forward to except trying to hold on to what he had.

Now look: He had a family! He had a family! He hadn't worked it out just yet, but if they could do two or three more scores, big ones, then maybe they could lie low.

Maybe buy a camper and go to Florida or something. Lamar had never seen Florida. He had an image of beaches and water and palm trees. He could imagine O’Dell splashing in the water and Richard drawing and Ruta Beth just staring at him in that hard way she had, as if she were trying to suck his soul out of him through her eyes. How that girl could stare! Anyhow, he imagined them happy, happy always.

Come the middle of the afternoon, he got to feeling thirsty and thought how nice one of those ice-cold Coca Colas Ruta Beth kept in the fridge would taste, and so he decided to head on in. He was a man very much at peace with himself and ready to face the world when he rounded the corner of the barn and saw a truck coming down the driveway toward the house.

Bud pulled up in front of the house. He heard no dogs barking; strange, because most of these farm places had dogs. But the Stepfords never did, either. Bud felt a little buzz from somewhere, he wasn't sure where. It was like that time a week or so ago on the reservation; just a sense of being watched.

He picked up the mike.

“Dispatch, I am ten-twenty-three the Tun Farm, off 54 east ofaltus.”

“That's ten-four, six-oh-five, we have you.”

“Listen here. Dispatch, got me a feeling. Want you to run the name Tun through records real fast, see if anything kicks out.”

“Ten-four, six-oh-five. You hang in there.”

“Ten-four.”

Bud sat for a minute or two in the heat. Usually, you pulled into a farmyard, the Mrs. came out to see what was going on, or one of the hands leaned out of the barn or something. But it was just quiet. He could hear the slow tick of the truck cooling. An old farmhouse lay before him and beyond, in the emptiness, the Wichitas, standing out like boulders. The wind snapped; sunflowers along the red dirt road bobbed and weaved in its force. A cicada began to saw away like a lumberjack.

He looked back at the house. These people hadn't given up: someone had commenced scraping to prepare the wood for new paint, though the job was at rest now. Still, it spoke of hope for the future. Looking around, he saw the fields were fallow, but they didn't look grown out.

Hard work:

hard as hell. Bud had worked farms when he was a young man, between classes at Oklahoma U. before he had to drop out, and he'd hated it.

There was no harder way to make a living than to pull it out of the earth with your own two hands.

“Six-oh-five?”

“Ten-four, Dispatch.”

“Ah, we have nothing on Tun in our records. I did do a cross-check and it seems some years back a Mr. and Mrs. Tun, that address, were killed, but there's nothing in the records to indicate adjudication in the case.”

Maybe that was it. The feeling of death, heavy in the air; the way it sinks into the wood. A farm couple, murdered.

Nothing in the records to suggest the culprit had been caught. Seemed eerily familiar, but he couldn't place it.

“Okay, thanks, Dispatch. I'm going in. Wait for my ten twenty-four.”

“Wilco, six-oh-five. Good hunting.”

Bud touched his three guns: the big new Beretta under his arm, the Colt on his right kidney, and the little Beretta380 inside his shirt. Okay, he thought, time to go.

Lamar watched the man climb out of the truck. He knew he was a cop from the long time he'd spent on a radio in the cab. Now the man got out, looked around, set his hat just right, yet still paused, checking.

Cautious bastard.

Lamar had sunk into the high grass. He didn't move a muscle. Then the cop came around the truck, still looking, and by God, Lamar thought he'd fall through the earth itself. It was that goddamned trooper sergeant, the one he thought he'd smoked at the Stepfords, big as life!

Pewtie, that was it. Pewtie. Oh, ain't you a tough bastard your own self? Pewtie was big and had that flat cop face, weathered and serene, that just drank in every damn thing.

Lamar had seen that goddamned face a hundred times.

But now it was time to think. What's he doing here?

What's he up to? Is it a raid? Goddamn no, there'd be SWAT people and FBI and choppers and OSBI hot dogs all over the goddamned place. This Pewtie was here on his own.

Lamar wished he had a gun on him and told himself he'd never again be without one. He thought of his two .45s upstairs in the bedroom, freshly cleaned, each with a magazine of glinting shells in it. But he also knew if he'd had a gun, he'd have drawn and fired and, no matter what. Pewtie's 10-23 would have brought the boys here soon enough.

Then he thought of a new problem. What happens if he sees poor O’Dell?

He'll know him in an instant. He'll draw and shoot and poor baby O’Dell will just go down, spitting blood out with his Frosted Mini-Wheats. Or Richard? He would recognize Richard, too, for he'd have that cop gift for memorizing a face off a bulletin, able to pull it up at a moment's notice.

We are fucked, he thought. If he sees them two, we are fucked. If I kill him now, if I can, then maybe we're not fucked so fast, but we are fucked.

Best thing that could happen?

Ruta Beth.

Come on, Ruta Beth honey. You got to get us out of this.

Bud looked around one more damned time. He could see nothing in the yard that seemed the slightest bit out of place. He decided just to get the goddamned thing over with.

He walked toward the house. A ladder leaned against it, and Bud could see the line where the paint scraping had halted. Whoever did the work knew what he was doing; the old paint was scraped off down to bare wood slicker than a whistle. Maybe they did it with a machine or something, but it just looked like hard work to him, the old-fashioned kind. No job for a slacker, that was for sure.

He climbed up on the porch. From inside he heard the sounds of the television, a cartoon show for children. That was good, too. Kids meant family meant probably not escaped-convict armed robbers and killers. Now he was feeling pretty good. He knocked on the door.

He heard some rustling inside, but he wasn't sure what it was. At last, the door opened and a chalky-faced young woman stared at him. Her wide eyes were dark as coal, and she wore her dark hair pulled back in a long ponytail. She was in jeans and a nondescript print blouse, sleeves pushed up. She fixed a glare on him, which might have been fear and might have been hate.

“Miss. Tun?”

“Yes I am,” she said.

“If you're here to sell me something, I don't need nothing.”

“No ma'am,” he said, and took out his ID folio with its golden State of Oklahoma shield.

“My name's Russell Pewtie; I'm an investigator for the state highway patrol.”

“I ain't done nothing wrong,” she said.

“I'm not saying you have, ma'am. It's just that we're investigating a crime and we may have a lead in a tire-tread mark so we know what kind of car it is. Your car fits the profile. I just want to take a look at it so I can cross you off my list and get on to the serious business.”

“Ah—” she said. Was it a look of panic in her eyes?

Bud began to pick up a sense of disturbance.

“Ma'am, if you'd like to call the family lawyer and have him come on out or something?”

“I don't have no family lawyer.”

“Well, ma'am, I'd be happy to wait until you called someone. If you like, I can give you the number of Legal Aid and they can either supply or recommend a lawyer. But no charges are pending against you. Miss Tun. We just want to account for these cars so by process of elimination we come down to ones we can't explain. Those are probably our boys.”

“Okay. Sure, it's—sorry, I'm just not used to policemen.”

“I understand. Wouldn't be natural if you were, ma'am.”

She stepped outside. In a flash glimpse, he saw a kitchen and through a hall and two doors, the blue TV glow.

“Your son, ma'am?”

“What? Oh, the TV? No, I just like to leave it on. It keeps me company.”

“You live alone?”

“I do. Since Mother and Daddy died, I've been here by myself.”

“I see. You're having some work done?”

“Yes. Got tired of looking at the old dead paint. Hired some men to clean it up and paint it. But then they got another job, so they ran off to do it. Said they'll be back, but you know how hard it is to find quality work these days.”

It seemed to hang together, but Bud was wondering: Why is she so nervous?

Lamar watched as the trooper ID'd himself to Ruta Beth and began to gull her into something.

Would she be smart enough? Would she make some stupid mistake?

Goddamn, how could they have tracked him?

He had been so careful, he had thought it out a step at a time, sometimes staying up all night just worrying his way through it. What could he have done wrong?

He looked this way and that. O’Dell must be still camped in front of the tube: if you didn't give that boy an order, he'd be content to sit there like a bump on a log from June till November. Richard was the goddamned problem. Richard could bumble in at any moment and start to cry. The cop would recognize him, it would all fall apart.

It came down to this: Lamar hated the idea that the trooper sergeant he'd caught so flat footed a month and a half ago would be the one to bring him down. He saw the stories now, for he knew how they thought: The newspapers and the TV would turn it all personal, they'd make this lucky motherfucker into the greatest goddamned detective since Dick Motherfucking Tracy! He, Lamar, would be the goat!

Lamar's anger ruptured like a boiler exploding. He felt his muscles begin to tense and the blood begin to sing in his ears.

Be careful, he told himself. You get mad, you make a goddamned mistake.

He tried to clear his mind in order to figure out choices.

Maybe he could double around, get into the house by the back way, get to a gun, and just blow the fucker away. But that would take minutes. It might come apart before then, and he'd be stuck in the fields out back, while Bud Pewtie blew away O’Dell and Richard and called for backup.

What would Pewtie do? Would he go in the house or was he after something else?

Suddenly, Ruta Beth stepped outside, closing the door after her, and the two of them began the long walk to the barn.

Lamar slithered backward, a snake, then plunged into the darkness of the barn and began to look about for some kind of weapon. Then he saw it: the ax he'd used to split logs.

He had it up in a second, and slid into a pool of darkness inside the door, dead still, not hardly breathing. The ax had killing weight to it. If he got just the smallest break, he'd be on Pewtie like the night. One swipe and it would be over.

“This must be that shoot-out in Texas,” she said.

“It's so terrible what them men did. Why do people have to be so cruel?”

“Ma'am, I've been a police officer for nearly twenty-five years, and the truth is, I don't know. Four thousand dollars.

Couldn't buy nothing with that.”

But as he was talking, Bud was looking all about. Something still didn't sit right with him. Her nerves, the idea of leaving a television on just to hear it. Why not a radio?

“I keep it out back by my wheel,” she said.

“Beg pardon?”

“Wheel. I am by profession a potter. I turn clay on a wheel. Then I paint it and glaze it and bake it in a kiln. I can make pret' near anything by now. Then I go to craft shows on the weekend. It isn't much, but it's a living.”

“Well, that's nice. Funny, I met all kinds but I don't believe I met a potter before.”

“I'd be pleased to give you a pot, Mr. Pewtie.”

“Well, that's kind of you, ma'am. I think I'll just get it checked off and be out of your way.”

“Gits kind of lonesome out here, that's why I'm talking up such a storm.”

“I can appreciate it.”

They walked through the barn and out back to her work area. Her potter's wheel stood under a lean-to, the coal fired kiln next to it, and on her bench were several cans of paint and her pots. They blazed with color. She seemed to be doing some imitation Indian thing with them, but they were better than any pottery he'd seen in the reservation shops. The colors were jagged, almost savage, and stood off the echer like blood pouring from a wound.

“My,” he said, impressed, "you are a hell of a potter.

Those things are beautiful.”

“Why, thank you. Officer,” she said modestly.

And then he turned to the car.

Lamar watched as she boldly led him toward the barn.

Beautiful, sweetie, beautiful, he was thinking.

He could have pounced at any second, and in his mind he thrilled at the prospect of it. That was what he was addicted to: the hot fun of the violence. He saw himself really getting his weight into it and bringing that blade whanging down into the trooper's bull neck. What a wound it would open! The meat would splay open, red and pulsing, maybe a sliver of bone would show. There'd be more goddamned blood than you could shake a stick at. Pewtie would turn, stunned, unbelieving, and his eyes would lock onto Lamar's and beg for mercy, and he'd weakly raise his hands, but Lamar, with his great iron-pumper's strength, would bring the ax down again and again in a rain of killing blows. It excited Lamar. He wanted to do it so bad!

They paused to gab a bit at her workbench, and the cop said something that Lamar didn't catch. But when the cop started to examine the car, Lamar slid through the darkness and got almost within spitting distance. He could lunge out now at any instant and take the man down.

His hand tightened and loosened on the ax shaft and he tried to control his excitement and think through the red rage that clouded his brain so that he could figure out the right thing. Hell, maybe he should just do it and to hell with it.

But he waited.

“Hah,” said Bud.

He stood up, a little disappointed. The old, once-red Tercel lay blistering in the sun. Its plaid interior had faded, and was anyway jammed with blankets. Spots of rust flaked the left rear fender, and the rear bumper also looked rotted out a bit.

Then he leaned back again, looking at the escutcheon on the old tire.

Slowly he walked around, one by one, looking at them.

Nope! Goddammit, nope.

The tires were old, all right, but they were Bridgestones, not Goodyears.

For some reason, he'd just had a suspicion this one might be the one, the woman's nervousness, the isolation, the anomalies of the TV and the hard male work put into the place.

“Well, thanks very much, Miss. Tun. I see I can scratch your name off the list. No ma'am, I don't believe you shot up any Denny's restaurants lately.”

“Not in this lifetime, at any rate,” she said with a little laugh.

Bud disengaged abruptly from the situation. It was of no more interest to him.

“Well, I'll be getting out of your hair now. Have to get over to Granite.”

“Sure, Mr. Pewtie. Now, I can't interest you in one of them pots?”

Bud looked back. One of them really did leap out at him:

ocher glaze, black diagonals, and a bright orange sunburst, like the end of a world.

“Could you sell me one?”

“I get fifteen dollars for the small ones and twenty-five for the big ones.”

Ouch! Not cheap.

“But I'll tell you what. Your choice, ten bucks.”

-"Hell, that's a bargain if ever I heard of one.”

Fortunately the pot he chose wasn't a big one, so he forked over the ten without feeling terribly greedy. He didn't as a rule like to take little extras with the badge but hell… once in a while didn't hurt a thing.

She fetched the pot, brought it to him, and the two of them walked back through the barn to his truck.

“Come on back,” she said.

“I enjoy visitors.”

“Thanks, Miss. Tun. Good luck to you.”

He got in.

Now if they were just lucky a little bit longer. If O’Dell or Richard didn't come walking out of the house.

Lamar watched from the pool of shadow behind the barn door. His heart was thumping. Pewtie was too far away to get with the ax now. It was in the hands of God.

He diddled with the car a bit, picked up his radio, and called in what Lamar assumed was his 10-24—task completed—and then with majestic leisure started the truck. It took him another minute to back out of the yard and then three more minutes to pull down the dirt road to the macadam, take a left, and then disappear.

There seemed to be a long pause in the day. Lamar found that he was doused with sweat. Unlike the race out of Deimy's he didn't feel exhilaration; he just felt the total numbing meltdown of shock that attends survivors of near death experiences. He didn't like it a bit.

He looked up. Ruta Beth came out of the house, almost in a daze. She cupped her hands as if she were about to call to him.

“No,” he said, loud, but not a shout.

“Don't call. Don't look left or right. Just mosey into the barn, in case.”

At that moment O’Dell opened the door, looked out in confusion.

“O’Dell, stay where you are. No, wait—and make sure the shotguns is loaded. Keep Richard in the house.”

O’Dell nodded and ducked back in.

Eventually, Ruta Beth came on over.

“You was in the barn the whole time.”

“I was. One silly move out of that boy and I'd have cut him open with this ax.”

“He had two guns. I saw them both. One under his coat, the other in his belt.”

“Probably had more, goddamn,” said Lamar.

“That boy was loaded for bear. The car. It was the car he wanted to see, honey?”

“Yes it was. Daddy.”

“Tell me 'exactly what he asked.

“Xactly. I have to know the words.”

Numbly, Ruta Beth reiterated Bud's explanation.

“I see,” said Lamar, concentrating mightily.

“He said he had to 'check it off.” They still use that old one?”

“That's what he said. Daddy.”

“Now, honey, you think real hard. Tell me the whole talk. Not just what he said, but what you said. I have to know if you said something that gave too much away and a sly old dog like him might sniff it out.”

Laboriously, she recreated the conversation, now and then prodded by Lamar's insistent probing. It went on for ten minutes. But then she said, "I tried hard, Lamar. I didn't do nothing on purpose.”

“Honey, you done great. See, he caught us in a mistake.

We should have stories prepared. Last thing you ever want to do is try and be making stuff up as you go along.

Trip up too easy. No ma'am, got to have your story straight up front, got to have it worked out and tested, that's how you do that kind of work. Goddamn, Ruta Beth, I must say, you got to be some kind of natural at that kind of work.”

“Have you figured it out? Why he was here?”

Lamar thought a little harder, and then he had it.

“Tires,” he said.

“That was soft dust this side of the Red. Sure enough we left tracks in it. They must have got a good tire print and the F-fucking-B-I done ’em the models of cars them tires could fit. So they're just wading through the DMV listings, hoping to turn up the right car with the right tires and the right fucking boys. They're so goddamn worried, they even got old Bud Pewtie, his hide so full of buckshot still he can't hardly walk, out doing shit bird work.”

He was laughing now. He saw the joke in it.

Ruta Beth stared at him in horror.

“But Lamar,” she said.

“They was right. I got them tires two years ago when they was marked down because the tire place said Goodyear had discontinued the line and they just wanted to reduce inventory.”

“Not them tires, no ma'am. Night of the' party I went out, remember?

Goddamn, I got to thinking about the ways we could slip up and only one I hadn't covered was the goddamn tires. I swapped ’em with Bridgestones I lifted off a Hyundai Excel. Hah! Old Bud Pewtie thinks he's so goddamn smart. He ain't as smart as no Lamar Pye.”