Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 28

Lamar stole a '91 Trans Am out of the very same library parking lot and followed Ruta Beth and Richard back to the farm.

When they arrived, he had it all mapped out.

“Okay,” he said, "this is how we do it. We don't do nothing at the game. Too many people, too much traffic, too much you can't control.

We hook onto goddamn Bud Pewtie though, and we follow his ass home. We wait till he's all snug inside with his goddamn family. Then we blow the doors down and start shooting. We leave hair on them walls. I want that kid and the mama dead and whoever's else in that house. I want Bud Pewtie to know what loss is. I want him to suffer as I suffered. Then I'll cut his face off, Richard, and then we're out of here, you got that?”

“All of them?” said Richard queasily.

“Son, you ain't up for this work? It don't mean nothing to you that I save you from being the niggers' fackboy, that I save your goddamn life in Denny's and in the goddamn river, and that this sonofabitch done shot poor Baby O’Dell full of holes? Richard, this is a raid. It's man's work. You got to go in hard and shoot straight and put all of them down. Yes, all of them. The whole goddamn family. Now, either you going with us, or we'll leave you here and you won't be a happy boy scout.”

“I can do it,” Richard said. In a funny way, he now believed it. It was, after all, only a mechanical thing: You point the gun, you pull the trigger. There was no higher meaning.

“You, Ruta Beth. Can't do a job like this 'less you believe in it the whole goddamned way. You with me?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said.

“The kids, the women, all of them. It's for the baby. We'll show them what it means to hurt a baby.”

“Good. Now I want us to change into some uppity clothes. We got to look like we got a boy playing ourselves.

Any clothes from your daddy and mommy left, honey?”

“There's a trunk.”

“Can you and Richard git it? Then we'll change and go.”

“What are you going to do. Daddy?”

Lamar smiled.

“The guns,” he said.

“I'm checking the guns.”

Lamar went upstairs and saw what there was to see. The SIG .45 that he'd taken off the Texas Ranger, the Smith357 Magnum from Pewtie and two other .45s from the Stepfords, and two sawed-off shotguns, the Browning automatic and the Mossberg that had come from Bud Pewtie's cop car. Ruta Beth had bought ammo: 185-grain hollow tips for the .45s, 125-grain hollow tips for the .357, and six boxes of double-ought buck for the two shotguns.

He lovingly threaded shells into chambers and magazines, thrilled, as always, at the fitting together of parts, the slick cam ming of slides and pumps and bolts, the heavy feel of them all, until each gun seemed alive with its charges. The SIG, one of the other .45s, and the Browning semiauto would be his; he'd give Ruta Beth the pump gun and a .45, and poor Richard could carry the .357.

Then, gathering them, he went downstairs. Richard had washed up and changed into a nice pair of slacks and a striped sports shirt. He looked like a lawyer at a party. Ruta Beth looked almost cheery in a white polyester pantsuit that had once been her mama's and a pair of loafers. Lamar quickly changed into a nice leisure suit in gray and a colorful shirt; he could keep his handguns out of sight that way.

He went to the mirror in the bathroom. He saw the same old. Lamar, with that thick, friendly face, that mashed nose where the Cherokee deputies had pounded him all those years ago, the open, alert eyes.

What is wrong with this picture? The hair, that's what. Too much hair. Looked like a bjker or an Indian, or some other kind of trash.

“Ruta Beth,” he called.

“Come cut all my hair off.”

The team was already on the field in sweats when Bud and Jeff pulled in. It was the last game of the season, and already parents had begun to gather in the parking lot. Bud could see the other team's bus—eisenhower h .” it said-and knew their players would probably be in the locker room suiting up.

“Well, here we are,” said Jeff.

“Let me go 'long with you to talk to him. This goddamned hero business may do us some good.”

The two walked under the bleachers, around a gap in the fence, and around the edge of the dugout. Ahead of them, on the diamond, a lean black assistant coach was fun going grounders to the infielders. Bud watched the ball snap and hop across the green and watched as the boys bent gracefully to scoop it up, always magically snaring it on the right bounce then pirouetting as they fired across the diamond to the first baseman, who then fired the ball to the catcher who served it up to the coach. In the outfield, boys were drawing beads on descending balls, gathering them in and then launching long throws.

Bud and his son ducked into the dugout, where an elderly man sat cross legged, fussing with a lineup card.

“Coach?”

The old man looked up.

“Well, hello there, Jeff. Sergeant Pewtie.”

“I'm out, sir,” Jeff said.

“I was wondering if it was possible if I could play?”

“Technically, both boys' parents have dropped charges against Jeff,” said Bud.

“The magistrate released him in my care on my word we'd find some counseling for him. It turned out Jeff didn't do no serious damage, and their parents acknowledge that what they done was stupid and what Jeff done, while also stupid, was understandable.”

“So you ain't going off to prison?”

“Doesn't look like it, sir,” said Jeff.

“It'd mean a lot to Jeff if he got to play,” said Bud.

“Well, I think it'd mean a lot to the team if Jeff got to play. Let me make a call.”

The coach stood and went to a pay phone a few feet down under the bleachers and dropped his own quarter and did some asking and some listening and some more asking, and then came back.

“Well, Jeff,” he said, "You're to be suspended. For three days. I can't legally allow a suspended boy to participate in athletics. That's the rule.”

“I see,” said Jeff, but the disappointment broke on his face like a wave. He swallowed and seemed to tear up just a bit, too.

“Well, sir,” said Bud, "thanks for giving us a hearing.

The rules are to be obeyed.”

“That they are, Sergeant Pewtie,” the coach said, "and to a "T.” And the "T' says that the suspension doesn't begin formally until tomorrow.

Far as I'm concerned this boy's still in school and he better get his ass out on that field before I start to chew on it.”

Jeff lit up like a candle.

“I'll go get my uniform.”

He raced off.

“You're not going to get in any trouble for this?” Bud said.

“Hell,” said the old man, "I been here for thirty-four years and won ’em seven state championships. What can they do? Yell at me?”

Bud shook his hand.

“I appreciate what you're doing for the boy. He's a good kid. He deserves a break.”

“Yes sir. Sergeant Pewtie, I agree—he is a good kid and he does deserve a break. I hope this helps him.”

Bud slipped out of the dugout.

The stands were beginning to fill. He checked his watch.

It was five p . and the game began at six, would probably be over by eight-thirty.

An overwhelming melancholy came over him.

Well, it was time.

He went to a refreshment stand that had just opened and bought a Coke to fight the dust and the phlegm in his throat.

Its cold sweetness plunged down his gullet, momentarily energizing him.

But then it was gone, the cup tossed into a steel garbage barrel, and there it still was, what he had to do.

He walked over to the same phone the old coach had used to call the school, dropped in his quarter, and dialed the number.

She answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” he said wanly.

“Well, Bud Pewtie, bless my heart, my parts are still abuzzing for all the attention you paid them today. Fact is, don't think they'll settle down until sun goes down. Ain't felt this good in years.”

“Well, I'm glad” was all he could think to say.

“Now, what do I owe this honor to? Usually, I don't hear from such as yourself until late at night.”

Her voice was so happy! He could see her face, all lit up, the way the joy came into her eyes. He had never been able to please a woman so.

It had been that way with them from the start.

“Ah,” he said, "I'm at Jeff's game. Probably be here, oh, till eight-thirty, nine o’clock. It's his last game of the season. I'm hoping he'll have a good one.”

“I know he will, Bud.”

“Anyway, Jeffll probably go with some of the boys to a pizza place or something and I thought maybe I'd drop by after the game.”

“Bud!” she said, squealing with delight. But then her delight stopped.

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

He lied. What was the point of hurting her now, of making her suffer for three hours until he could get over there?

He didn't have it in him.

“No, no, nothing like that. It's just, I have some time, no one's going to notice where I am or why, and I thought maybe we could have a beer or something.”

“Oh, Bud, it's a date. You haven't taken me on a date in months! I don't believe you've ever taken me on a date. I'll see you then.”

“Yes you will,” he said, hanging up.

Lamar sat by himself, up top of the Lawton Senior High bleachers. He was aware of the cop nearly thirty rows away, on the other side of the horseshoe of scaffolds and seats that embraced the base-paths of the diamond. But he never looked directly at the man, for he had a feel for the magic power of eyes—whatever it is that makes some men feel the pressure of eyes on them, and turn at the last goddamn second to avoid the shank sweeping toward them to end their lives. He'd seen it on the yard enough times: men who tuned their nerves and were always right on the goddamned edge, prickly and fast and fucking dangerous. Others just didn't pay attention, and when the reaper came for them, they weren't ready and it just split them open, there where they stood. But Lamar knew from more than seeing it happen:

Once a nigger trying to make a name for himself had jumped him blindside in the yard at Crabtree State, meaning to rip his guts out right there. Lamar often wondered if it was the hand of God or the breath of the Devil blowing in his ear or some kind of animal thing that felt a push in the air; he spun a cunt hair before the knife reached his spine, caught it with his left wrist (he would always wear the jagged scar), and head butted the man to death in approximately thirty seconds, pile-driving the top of his skull into the bridge of the man's nose with all the power in his body until it was done.

It was judged self-defense, the only time Lamar had ever won anything at a hearing; he later heard the boy had come for him in order to impress the Tulsa Afriques, the baddest nigger gang in that pen. He was hoping to get in; Lamar sent him to his weeping mama in a bag, and oddly enough Toussaint Du Noir, as the leading black punk of the Afriques had renamed himself, sent Lamar a carton of cigarettes for getting rid of a wannabe. But they were only Kools, and Lamar traded them for a couple of blow jobs from a bitch named Roy.

But Lamar was sure that Bud would have such an intuition, too, and therefore wanted to steer clear. So he had told his crew to wait in the Trans Am, which was parked a couple of rows behind Bud's easy-to-identify Ford.

Lamar enjoyed sitting there. He was with the fans from the visiting team, Lawton Senior's cross town rivals, all of them good hard-working people of the sort Lamar had no problem with.

That goddamn Pewtie kid was good. Lamar knew him almost right away, from the squareness of his head and the same alert way his father stood. He guessed Bud had been a good athlete, too, for such things tended to run in families, just as his daddy had been a hell of a prison ballplayer and he, Lamar, had once been a good prison leagues center fielder when he still had his speed.

But this young Pewtie could run anything down in left field, and had a good arm. Christ, though, he could hit a ton; it was the fifth inning and he'd already drilled a double and a single. But it was the way he attacked the plate when he hit, unafraid, legs apart, head straight, just waiting for the ball to come toward him so he could demolish it.

It was his hunger that Lamar felt up there in the bleachers.

And that somehow made him hate the lawman even more; it wasn't enough that he took from Lamar the one person that he'd cared about, but that he had so much: wife, great kid, a place in a world that would forever shun such as Lamar Pye. It was a world that would only know him through fear.

Lamar sipped a Coke, adjusted his baseball cap, looking for all the world like just another working-class dad watching the high school kids play ball, all the while nursing his rage into something so hot it was cold.

It felt delicious. It was coming.

As a present, he looked across the way to the big state policeman sitting in the stands, yelling after his boy, and he thought: Goddamn, mister, what you got coming. What you got coming.

A last pop-up seemed to rise until it would bring rain but then fell, accelerating lazily in the bright night lamps' light, and an infielder nabbed it. That was it. Game over.

Not a bad one, either. Jeff had gone two for four, stolen a base, and made two nice running catches in the deep outfield.

He'd made a good throw, too, a special victory, because his arm was the problematical part of his game. Lawton-won easily, eight to two, and the game had essentially been over since the fourth inning, when Lawton put six runs on the board. No drama.

That's how Bud wanted it.

He looked at his watch. It was eight thirty-five. Plenty of time.

He milled through the departing crowd, slipped through the fence, and ducked into the dugout, where boys and parents had gathered. The coach gave a nice little speech about what a great team this had been, even if they didn't make it to the state tournament, and he may have had more talented teams but he'd never had one that had worked so hard, and that next year looked really good, and he hoped all the sophomores and juniors would play Legion ball this summer.

There was a polite smattering of applause.

Then the team broke into its cliques and the players began to filter out in twos and threes, some with parents, others without.

Jeff slipped up to him.

“We were going to meet at Nick's,” he said.

“You know, like we always do.”

“You have a ride?”

“I'm going with Tom and Jack and Jack's girl.”

“Don't stay out too late. Don't worry your mother any.”

“I won't. Dad.”

The moment hung between them.

“Okay,” Bud said, "now I'm going to take care of that business I told you about. And everything's going to be all right.”

“I know, Dad.”

“You just go and have a good time. Don't stay too late.

No beer.”

“Yes sir.”

Jeff slipped away, engulfed in a tide of boys, and Bud knew it was time to go.

Lamar was just a little bit nervous. He left the parking lot and parked a hundred yards or so down the road, so that he wouldn't have to start out of the nearly empty lot exactly as Bud did, because such a thing might give him away to a sharp-eyed man. He swallowed.

He was driving himself because he didn't trust Ruta Beth or Richard.

But still, it was a touchy thing: to follow Bud's truck through traffic, ever so gentle, never losing touch, never being too tight, just close enough to track his rabbit to its hole. It was plain, old-fashioned hunting.

But he'd helped things along; after leaving the game in the seventh inning, he'd placed a piece of reflecting tape flat under each of Bud's taillights, low on the bumper; that way, he could drop back a hundred or so yards and still keep sight of the truck by the unusual pattern.

He didn't have to see the truck proper, only the lights.

He watched Bud now leave the rinky-dink stadium, among the last. The lawman was by himself, moving with something akin to melancholy that Lamar couldn't quite figure, though he read hesitancy and regret in the body language. Before the trooper had seemed to swagger. He was under a goddamn black cloud. Even Ruta Beth noticed it.

“What the hell he so down for?” she wondered.

“Yeah, Lamar,” said Richard, "you said the boy got lots of hits.”

“Who knows?” asked Lamar. He thought he was sad now, imagine what he was going to feel.

Bud got in, turned on the lights, pulled out. Lamar turned on his lights and sped down the road so that he actually beat Bud's entrance into traffic, making his man wait while he lazed on by. Bud pulled into traffic behind Lamar, but Lamar wouldn't let himself look; some little thing like that, a look at the wrong time, and the whole goddamned shaky thing could fall apart.

-"There he—”

“Shut up, Richard. Goddamn it, boy, keep your mouth shut and look right straight ahead.”

Lamar slowed just a little; with a hasty spurt. Bud dipped into the oncoming lane and shot by, lost in his own thoughts. Good—that meant Bud couldn't have picked up someone coming into the traffic behind him, then hooking up; he'd have to be a genius to pick up the cue.

Lamar dropped a few car lengths behind.

“Can we turn on the radio?” asked Richard.

“Shut up, Richard,” said Ruta Beth.

The cars ambled through the early evening traffic in the fading light.

Up and down the streets, the streetlamps and shop signs were coming on, blurring in the windshield, making it hard to track the set of lights that was Bud's truck. But his concentration was so intense it was as if he were some other man: he just saw the two red lights and the bright strips that were Bud's and nothing else in the universe.

Then Lamar saw a problem up ahead. It just came, all of a sudden, from nowhere. Bud signaled a left just as his truck was moving into yellow. Lamar would never make the intersection before red, and he knew if he blew through the light, he might be spotted by a cop or even Bud. You can't be too careful.

Lamar calculated quickly, figuring the least risky of two very risky courses in a split second. He took his left now, down -a side street that he didn't even know went through.

Out of Bud's sight, he hit the pedal, raced wildly, swerved by a slowpoke who honked, frightened two women back on the curb, wheeled right up another street, and came to the street Bud had turned left down. There was a steady stream of traffic.

Shit!

Where was he?

He scanned the lights disappearing down the road, goddamn it, and saw nothing, and felt a raging emptiness.

“Lamar, I don't—”

“Shut up, Richard, Daddy's working.”

Then he saw it, the small jot of red reflected light under a taillight that signaled Bud. Lamar gunned his Trans Am, slid through the traffic, darted through two left-hand passes, and soon enough fell in a hundred yards back in the right lane.

“He ain't seen shit,” he said.

“Hot damn.”

Bud pulled up outside the little house, now glowing in the dark. It looked merry and friendly. The black kid with the trike was nowhere to be seen. He climbed out, waited by his car for a second.

That goddamn house. She moved here to be with you and now you got to do this goddamn thing. You're going to hurt her so. You will hurt her and hurt her and then walk out.

He tried to put a nice spin on things. It was better for her.

Really, she deserved a fresh start, not some half-life with a retread full of lead and freighted with kids and guilt and his own memories of a betrayed wife and a dead partner, who was her husband. She deserved so much. A little frog worked into Bud's throat as he looked at the house.

Then it was time and he went in.

He walked up the walk. It was only eight hours since his last trek up the walk. What it had led to that time was sex with her. Smoke rose in his mind as images came to him.

There was the business in the living room, on the sofa; and then the business on the steps; and the final business in the bedroom. They had stretched it out, moving from room to room, as if to celebrate the freedom they now enjoyed after so many motel rooms. Interesting things happened in each room, but the stuff on the steps—he didn't think they'd done anything like that before.

Gone, all gone.

An enormous sense of loss suffused Bud.

Had to do it, he thought. His sons. His wife. His family.

This was hard, the hardest thing yet, but he could do it and save his family and win it all back.

He climbed the steps and before he could reach the door, it popped open.

“Well, howdy there, Mr. Bud Pewtie himself,” she said.

“Hi, Holly.”

“Well, get you in.”

Bud walked in. Same house, same Holly smell in it.

“Do you want a beer?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Bud, you have that do-I-have-to-go-to-church? look on your face. Why don't you spit it out so’s we can get to the nut-cutting part.”

“Oh, Holly.”

She sensed the remorse in his voice. A grave look came across her, as if she'd been slapped. She knew, instantly.

He could tell.

“Bud, no. We're so close.”

“We're not close.”

“Bud—don't do this to me. Please, sweetie.”

“Holly, I—” He stopped, stuck for words again.

“You what?”

“I never meant to hurt you. That was the last thing I ever meant. I wanted everybody to be happy.”

“But everybody can't be happy.”

“No, they can't. Holly—Jeff's found out. My son is in so much pain.

I'm going to try to put his life together again.”

“Bud.”

“Holly, you are a young and beautiful woman. You can have your whole life. You can have anything you want.”

“Bud, I want you. I want us. I want what we said we'd have together.”

“I can't give you that. I'm sorry.”

“Bud—”

“Holly, I have to be a better father to my son than mine was to me. Without that, I ain't shit, and I know it. I took something from him. I want to give it back.”

“Bud, it's not an either-or thing. You can have both. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but you can have both.”

“Holly, I'm setting you free. Goddamn, you can have anything.

Anything. You just wait. Your life is going to turn out swell, you'll see. You get through just this little bit, and then the good times start.”

She stared at him furiously, and after a bit began to cry.

He wanted to go to her and comfort her. She had given him such comfort over the months.

She sat down.

“I don't see how you can live a lie. You go back, and it's some kind of fake thing where you're pretending to be noble, and then I'm gone, and you're stuck with a wife you don't love. So then what have you got? You'll end up with nothing.”

Bud himself sat down. Now she put her head in her hands and began to sob.

Help her, he thought. Stop her hurting.

Her face smeared and swelled and turned red and patchy.

Her nose ran. Quiet, racking shudders raced through her shoulders.

He'd seen women cry that way on the turnpike when they looked at the carnage that had been their husbands or their children. There was nothing you could do for them except hope that they healed and went on.

“Bud, I love you.”

“Holly, it ain't about love. My son can't get another father and I can't get another family.”

“Bud—”

“Holly, I can't be the kind of man who runs away. That's where all this crime comes from—everybody cutting and running. I can't be that kind of a man.”

“You lied to me. So many times.”

“Maybe I did. But I lied to myself, too. I thought we had a chance. I ain't the man to give you that chance. You deserve the man who’ll give it to you.”

“It's so easy for you.”

“No ma'am, it's not. It's not anything like easy. Holly-I love you.

Don't you see that?”

“Oh, Bud,” she said.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Lamar thought it would be a bigger house. He was disappointed.

He knew cops weren't rich unless they were crooked, and he didn't think Bud was crooked. But he thought they did all right. This little, run-down house?

“He can't be doing too well,” he said.

“He ain't doing as good as us,” said Ruta Beth.

“This is a shitty neighborhood.”

“Really,” said Richard from the back, "it's just a crummy civil service job. He doesn't make twenty-five thousand a year, I bet.”

They were parked on the street, half a block down from Bud's house.

They could see his big truck parked out front.

“We going to hit them now. Daddy? In, out, bang, bang?”

“Let me think some,” said Lamar.

It was a sweet thought: blow through the door just like at the Stepfords', catch him completely flat-footed, and pump out 12-gauge until nothing in the house lived. Then head out fast.

But… he hadn't realized it would be in such a dense little neighborhood. At the sound of shots there'd be witnesses everywhere; they'd get a fast ID, and before Lamar could get them back to the farm, the law would be on him.

Second, Pewtie was fast himself, that was the trouble. He was wearing a coat, he was probably carrying, Richard might panic, who knew what might happen? If he got to that goddamned Colt, all kinds of hell might happen.

Plus, he didn't know who was there. Maybe the whole goddamn SWAT team.

It was a SWAT team birthday party or something.

Lamar had to fight to control that part of him that screamed to go in and leave hair and blood on the walls.

But he held steady, letting the smart part of his brain take over.

“Okay,” he said.

“We just going to stay calm. Now Richard, I want you to get out and mosey on down the street. Don't stop, don't slow down none, don't stare, goddammit, don't stare, and then you come on back. You let me know what you can see, but don't you push it, boy, or I'll have your balls for breakfast.”

“Yes, Lamar.”

Richard got out of the car, did not slam but rather eased shut the door. Maybe he was beginning to learn a little something: he began to mosey on down.

“Daddy, what you thinking?”

“I just want to play this sucker really right. That's all, hon. Then we done our duty to O’Dell and we be off.”

“I can't wait. I'll do anything you want, you know that, Daddy.”

“I know, sweetie. You are the best.”

He felt her hand touch his neck, gently.

“I could come up front now and put my mouth to you.

You could have me in the mouth,” she said.

“It would help you relax a bit. I don't mind.”

The idea didn't appeal to him.

“Not now,” he said.

“We got work to do.”

He watched as Richard shuffled along the sidewalk slowly, seemed to pause just a second, and then moved on down the road. Then he repeated himself, coming back. It seemed to take forever. But finally Richard got in.

Lamar started the car, drove down the block, and turned before he asked what he'd seen.

“They're having some kind of fight or something. He's yelling at her, she's crying. She came over to him, he yelled something and she went away.”

“Sounds like my mother and daddy,” said Ruta Beth.

“You see anybody else?” said Lamar, turning another corner.

“No sir. No one.”

“You didn't see that boy of his?”

“No. He must still be out.”

“Okay, okay.”

Lamar rounded another corner.

“Where we going. Daddy?”

“I'm just going to come in from another angle, and park in a new place.

I don't want no citizen seeing peoples sitting in a car and calling the cops. That's all we need. Goddamn, I wish his boy was there. That's what would make it really good.”

He returned to the street and parked on the other side, this time well beyond Bud's.

“Okay,” he said.

“What the hell. We go. We get ’em both, we blow ’em away, man and wife, and then it's finished.

Fair enough?”

“Yes sir.”

“You up for this kind of man's work, there, Richard?”

“I can do it, Lamar.”

“I want you in the back. You go in the back. Anything comes your way without calling out your name, you put a bullet in it. But no one's coming your way. I'm blowing them to hell and gone, that's it.”

Lamar got out, went back to the trunk, opened it. He slid out the Browning semiauto, just peeled the bolt back a bit to see the green double-ought shell in there, and let the piece rest in his hand alongside his leg.

Ruta Beth had the other shotgun.

Richard took out his revolver.

“Not yet, you coon-brain. Not till you get in the house.

You ready?”

“Yes sir.”

“You, Baby Girl?”

“Yes Daddy.”

“Then it's butcher day.”

“We can't keep going over the same thing again and again. We're like cats in a damn bag. It ain't going to change.”

“So that's it? You're just going to leave?”

“Holly, I—”

“I can't believe you can just leave.”

“I can't stay here forever. It ain't going to change.”

“Oh, Bud.”

He rose, picked up his hat, and walked to the door.

He opened the door. Then he turned.

She was still on the sofa. She looked like he'd beaten her. Her face was swollen and wet.

“God, Holly,” he said.

“I am so sorry. You deserve so much. You deserve so much more than I could ever give you.”

She just sat there.

He tried to think of something more to say, some magic sentence that would make it all better. Of course there wasn't one. So in the end, he merely turned and walked out.

If she'd have cried out, what would he have done? A part of him badly wanted to go back. A part of him didn't know what the hell he was doing. He only knew he had to get out of there, or he'd never leave.

So he walked as if in a tunnel to the truck.

Lamar was seventy-five feet away when the door of the house suddenly opened. He saw Bud, big as life, looking like John Wayne in the doorway of a hundred westerns, face grim, broad Stetson low over his eyes.

But Bud didn't see him. Instead he walked in a straight line to the truck.

It was too far to shoot. He could run at Bud, but Bud would see or hear him. Again, he fought his thirst for action, and melted back, sinking into the ground behind a hedge, with his hand driving the girl and Richard back.

They watched as Bud climbed into the truck. He was too far away to attack, and they couldn't get back to the car in time to follow him.

Bud started the truck and drove off.

“ Where's he going?” whispered Richard.

“Shut up,” said Lamar.

“What do we do. Daddy? What do we do?”

Lamar thought for a second and thought the same thing:

What do we do?

Then he grinned.

“I know,” he said.

Holly sat there. The sense of loss was on her like a heavy wool blanket. The whole thing played out before her eyes and the words so close, so close kept echoing in her mind.

But she could never get him to see it: how perfect they were, how they'd be more together than they ever would be apart.

Then someone knocked on the door, filling her heart with hope.

She rose and ran, thinking. Bud, Bud, Bud, and opened the door.

But it wasn't Bud. It was Lamar.