Dirty White Boys

CHAPTER 6

Must be some kind of trash, Bud thought, amazed at the speed with which he raced through his betrayals. It was so easy. It grew to be a habit, second nature. He could call Jen and bluff his way through a desolate little communication, subconsciously calculated to stay uncommunicative because the less he talked the less likely he'd screw up. Then he'd call Holly, and be so sweet and kind and decent, just that simple, that fast. Made him sick. But he could not stop doing it.

He was in the pay phone outside Jim's Diner in Ratliff City on Oklahoma 76, about halfway between Duncan and 1-35 south to Dallas. Wasn't much here: the diner, a Sunoco, a Laundromat, and a convenience store. The diner was known for chili, but it was too early for chili: about ten in the morning, and they'd been on the road since six, part of a larger sweeping movement aimed at trying to intercept intercept what? The inmates? Those boys hadn't been seen or heard from since the discovery of the truck with the body in it thirty-six hours ago.

The phone rang twice, then Jen picked it up.

“Hi, how are you? Thanks for the uniforms.”

Jen, a slave always to her many jobs, had driven up to the Chickasha facility with five fresh uniforms in a plastic bag, plus underwear and socks, as Bud was running low off his first supply.

“Well,” she said, "that's fine. We're all right here. So how are^ owl Her voice was so Jen: far away, distant, with an undercurrent of some distress but nothing you could put your finger on.

“Fine. You know, it's beginning to get damn dreary, and nobody's got no idea in hell where these boys are. They're going to call off the roadblocks and roving patrols sometime soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

It's pointless.”

“It's terrible what they did to that poor vending service man,” Jen said.

“Yes, it is, isn't it? They're bad boys. How are the kids?”

“Russ got his college board scores. They were so high.

We should be proud of him.”

“He takes after you. How's Jeff doing?”

“Oh, he's fine. He had a game last night, but it was close and he didn't get in. But he was in a good mood afterward.

The boys went out for pizza and he went along.”

“I should be there. This damn job. I'll be there next year.”

“Oh, Bud?”

“What is it?” he said, glancing at his watch.

“Were you over near the Fort on Friday?”

Little signal of distress. Friday, yes. He'd been with Holly. In a motel room for a couple of hours. Place was called the Wigwam, a little down from the number four gate to Fort Sill, catering mainly to visiting military families. It was run by a retired city cop who let Bud have the room for free around midday.

Bud was surprised at how hard this hit him. He had never had any trouble before. He looked up and saw poor Ted sitting at the counter over an untouched plate of eggs and a half-gone Coke, talking to the waitress.

“No, no, can't say that I was,” he lied, trying to force some innocence into his voice and feeling himself fail miserably.

“Marge Sawyer swears she saw you pulling out of some parking lot. She honked, and you didn't see her. I only mention it because she wanted me to ask you if you knew that part of town, by the base, if you could recommend a ' good motel, something a little less expensive than the Holiday Inn, but in town, not at the airport. Her sister is—”

“No, Jen, wasn't me,” he barked.

“I don't know nothing about that part of town,” he said, feeling the lies awkward in his mouth.

“Look, I've got to get back on the road. Call you tonight if possible.”

“Sure.”

Bud hung up, feeling he had done badly and furious at himself for it; it was a bright morning, and he was surprised to find how hard he was breathing. Who the hell was Marge Sawyer? What had she seen? He'd been in uniform that day, too, so there could be no mistaking. Damn!

It had been a foolish thing to do. Best to cut back for a while or something.. ..

He dropped another quarter and dialed the number. She picked up right away.

“Oh, Bud, it's been so long since you called. You said you'd call last night.”

Now this always irritated Bud and in his present mood it struck a bad note. Sometimes just the managing of It got to be so damned troublesome that he needed a night off. There was always so much to remember: why he was late, what had happened, what route he'd taken home, all the things that go into running a deception. And sometimes it just wore him down.

“I couldn't get any time away from Ted. They got us running all over the damn place. I've only got a second.”

“Well, how are you?” Holly wanted to know.

“Well, it's a hell of a lot more boring than just patrolling, I'll tell you that. But I think they're going to pull back after a while. This road stuff ain't panning out.”

“Bud, you sound so irritated.”

“I'm just tired. Holly.”

“I miss you.”

“Sweetie, I miss you too.”

“The day they break it off—will I see you?”

“Well, I'll sure try,” he said, feeling vaguely trapped.

“I don't know if it's possible. I already missed one of my son's games and I want to get to the next one, in case he gets to play.”

“Okay,” she said in a tone that suggested it wasn't.

“I do miss you.”

“I know you do.”

“Talk to you soon.”

He hung up, feeling sour as hell. Hadn't he just promised her that on the first day off, he'd see her? Great. He'd be exhausted, and what would the situation be with Ted, wouldn't he be off the same day? It was a mess. Sometimes Bud didn't know what the hell he'd do.

So after indulging the sourness for a few seconds, he headed back into the diner and slid in next to Ted.

“How is she?” Ted asked.

“Fine. Just fine. You call Holly?”

“Oh, Holly's okay, I suppose,” Ted said.

“Well, I reckon we should shove, huh?”

Bud shot a look at his watch. Ten-fifteen, yeah, they were due back on the road, just in case. He didn't like to be out of radio contact that long. Didn't realize he'd been on the phone for close to ten minutes. He took a last sip of coffee —lukewarm—and stood to peel some money off for the food. Not strictly necessary, but Bud knew that if you started eating for free—it was so easy—people soon stopped respecting you. He left a single for the girl, also irked that Ted never bothered to pitch in, at least with a tip.

“Oh, Bud,” said Ted.

“One thing. This girl here, she wanted to ask you something.”

Bud turned to the woman, a middle-aged waitress, with the name Ruth on the nameplate of her uniform; she was vaguely familiar from previous stops, but he'd never struck up a relationship with her as he had with a few of the girls in other towns.

“Yes, Ruth?”

“Well, Sergeant, it's old Bill Stepford. He's stopped off for coffee each morning for the past ten years, every morning, nine o’clock sharp.

He didn't show this morning. It sort of bothered me.”

“I told her it was something for the Murray County sheriffs office,”

Ted said.

“Well, they're all out playing hero,” Ruth said.

“Sam Nicks hasn't set foot in this place since the jailbreak up at Mcalester.”

“Did you think about calling this farmer?” Bud asked.

“Yes sir, I did. The line was busy. Called four times and the line was busy.”

“Maybe he's talking to somebody.”

“Well, maybe he is. But I know Mr. Stepford and he is not the talking type.”

“What about his wife?” Ted asked.

“Well, she's a mighty nice woman but she's not the sort to spend half an hour on the line either.”

“Sounds like the phone is off the hook,” said Bud.

“Bill Stepford hasn't missed coffee here in ten years. He came the last time we had heavy snow; drove his Wagoneer through the drifts. He likes our coffee.”

Bud considered.

“Where is it?”

“Seven miles down the road. Then left, on County Road Six Seventy-nine. A mile, you'll see the mailbox. I'm afraid maybe he fell or something, can't get to the phone. People shouldn't live so isolated like that.”

“Well,” said Bud, "I'll call Dispatch and see if anything's going on they need us for. If not, maybe we'll take a spin by.”

Lamar let Richard shower and sleep first, because Richard had driven while Lamar and O’Dell slept. So Richard sank into dreamless oblivion, a mercy. But when Lamar shook him awake at nine, he was still in the Stepfords' upstairs bedroom, still an escaped convict, still in the company of murderers.

Richard pulled on a pair of Bill Stepford's jeans and a blue workshirt and then settled in to do two things at once, under Lamar's instructions. He was to sit in the upstairs bedroom and keep watch, just in case. And he was to draw lions.

“Ah, now, Lamar? With everything that's going on?”

“Yes sir. I want it done, I want it perfect, so that when the time comes, we can move to the next step.”

What next step?

Anyway, he now sat doodling, the original much-studied sketch before him. It was beginning to fade into gibberish, just a random blotch of lines. He wondered what Lamar saw in it to begin with. He knew it was insufferably banal: a lion, a woman, some sort of crazed Aryan fantasy, something out of the Hyperborean age. It matched exactly La mar's arrested stage of development, but it had nothing to do with art; it was, rather, something out of that great unwashed fantasy life of the lumpen proletariat that expressed itself on the sides of vans or in comic books or boorish, bloody, boring movies. It was so coarse, untainted by subtlety or distinction.

Yet it had saved his life, he knew: It had in some way tamed Lamar's rage and redirected it, made Lamar see there was more to life than predation. And the drawing itself: There was something wildly savage and free in it that Lamar himself had responded to but which Richard had since been unable to capture, whether he stuck with lions or moved on to tigers and eagles. When he thought about it, it went away; you just couldn't do something like that offhandedly.

It was a left-brain, right-brain thing. Lamar had understood and let Richard have a little bit of room on the issue. But now he was pressing him for results.

Fortunately, the farmer had a large selection of paper and pencils available. Working with a No. 2, Richard sat at the window, looking out dreamily, and tried to imagine some savage savannah where man and cat were the same creature, but woman was still woman. And on this plain, the strongest ruled, by tooth and claw and without mercy. And of these creatures, the most powerful and cunning was Lamar, Lamar the Lion, who wasn't merely a killer but also a shrewd and cunning king.

Richard's pencil tip flew across the page; he felt deeper into the concept of lion than ever before, as if he'd somehow entered the red zone, the mindset of the jungle, where you looked at other life-forms and one question entered your mind: What does it taste like?

He stopped. Hmmm, not bad.

Dreamily, he looked out the window. He tried to imagine a plain dotted with zebra and giraffe and cape buffalo and little wily antelopes, and the ever-present hyenas.

And he almost saw it, too, though the illusion proved difficult to sustain when he noticed a black-and-white Oklahoma Highway Patrol cruiser rolling down the road toward the house.

Even though Bud was driving, he was still in his surly mood.

“Ted, you really ought to call Holly.”

“Nah” was all Ted could say.

“She'll be worried,” he said.

“The truth is. Bud,” said Ted, "we just don't have much to talk about these days. I let her down, too. I can see in her eyes, I don't mean a thing to her. Goddamn, how I love her and there she is, and I can't reach her.”

Bud swallowed uncomfortably. Something seemed to come up into his throat. Ted was truly miserable, stewing in his own pain.

“Now you and Jen, you have a perfect marriage. You're a team. She's a part of your career. She's happy with what you got. She never puts any pressure on you.”

“Well, Ted, you know that appearances can be deceiving.”

“Not yours. Bud.”

“Ted… look, we're going to have to have a talk.”

“A talk?”

“About some things you think I am that I am not. And about some other stuff as well.”

“What?”

But they had arrived in the barnyard of the Stepford farm. The house was white clapboard, an assemblage of structures added as the farm prospered. The lawn was neat, and someone had planted a bright bed of flowers by the sidewalk. A huge oak tree towered over the house.

Bud and Ted climbed out. Bud adjusted his Ray-Bans and removed his Smokey hat from the wire rack behind his seat and pulled it on. He looked about. There was a fallow field, where the spring wheat had already been harvested and the earth turned. Copses of scrub oak showed here and there among the gentle rolls of the land, and far off, a blazing bright green field signaled the presence of alfalfa.

There was a blue-stern pasture off to the right, and a few cattle grazed amid the barrels of hay.

“Looks okay to me,” said Ted.

“The goddamned phone is probably off the hook.”

“Hello?” cried Bud. And then again.

There was no answer.

“Let's go up and knock and see what happens.”

Richard ran downstairs. He knew he shouldn't scream but he wanted to.

The panic billowed through him brightly.

He wanted to crap again. His stomach ached as he raced thumpingly along.

“Lamar,” he sobbed, "Lamar, Lamar, oh Lamar.”

He plunged down the steps.

In the darkness of the basement, O’Dell was over by the workbench, sawing with a hacksaw. Richard looked and saw three long metal poles on the floor and three wooden boots or something.

Lamar looked over at him.

“Lamar,” he gasped, "cops. State police.”

Lamar just looked at him blankly. Then he said, "How many? A goddamned team? SWAT, what? Or just a one car?”

“I only saw one,” said Richard.

“Halfway up the driveway.

Be here in a minute.”

Lamar nodded. He turned and looked at the Stepfords, who sat groggily on an old couch.

“You make a sound and you're dead. I mean that, sir, and I ain't a-fucking with you.” His voice was level but intense.

O’Dell, meanwhile, had risen from his position and was busy threading ammunition into the shotguns that Richard now saw had been sawed off so that they were short and handy.

Lamar took one, threw some sort of lever with an oily clang.

“We're going upstairs. You tie these people up and I mean tight. Then you come up. You hear shooting, you come a-running, do you get that?

And bring your gun.”

“Hootin',” said O’Dell happily.

“Yes, Lamar,” said Richard.

“Okay, O’Dell,” said Lamar.

“We goin' fry us some Smokey.”

Lamar stuffed a dozen bright red-and-blue shells into his pockets and O’Dell followed. They raced up the steps.

Lamar watched them. A guy with some miles on him, and a kid. Standing in the sun, just looking the place over.

The older one called out "Hello” and adjusted his duty belt. Then he got his Smokey hat out and set to fiddling with it. He wanted it just right, just set perfect on his head.

Show-ofiy cocksucker. The kid looked somewhat grumpy, maybe tired. He wanted to get it over with.

Lamar knew they were cherry. He could smell it on them. They had no idea what they were walking into; if they had, they'd have had their pieces out and they'd be behind cover. He watched as they exchanged a few dry words, then made up their minds to come up to the house.

He could tell also that the young one had a vest on by the unnatural smoothness of the way the cotton of his shirt clung to the Kevlar; the older one, though barrel-chested and big, was apparently without body armor, for there was more give in the material as he moved.

“O’Dell, you go out the back, around the side of the house on the left.

You ain't gonna fire until I do. You wanna do the old guy first, same as me. He may have been in a scrape or two and maybe has been shot at.

He probably won't panic so bad as the other. But main thing is, they can't reach the goddamn cruiser, because then they'll call it in, and in two minutes they got the goddamned backup in.

We gotta take ’em out clean, you got that, sweetie?”

“Kwean,” said O’Dell.

“You shoot for the head on the boy. Aim high, try and hit him in the face. The old boy, you can gut shoot him. He ain't wearing no vest.”

O’Dell darted out the back, shotgun in hand.

Lamar moved up to the left of the window. They were too far for a shotgun. If this goddamned old farmer had had an assault rifle, he could have taken them both out with one fast semiauto string. He had four shells in his cut down Browning auto, a pocketful of spares, and his goddamned long-slide .45, but he hated to shoot it out with a handgun.

Too many its or maybes with a handgun.

The excitement in him was incredible. But so was the giddiness. He almost giggled. Bliss boomed through him.

He tried to chill himself out, but goddamn, this was going to be/yn!

When to fire? Fire when they knock on the door? Fire through the goddamned wood, blow ’em back? But maybe the buckshot didn't have enough power to get through the wood and would spend itself getting through it. No, best to let ’em get within ten feet and then pull down. Knock ’em down with the shotgun, then close and finish them off with the .45.

Oooooooeeeeeeee! Bar-b-cued Smokey!

They walked up toward the house. A large dragonfly flashed in the sun.

Bud saw the flowers and the love of flowers the owners had put into them. Jen was like that, too.

It seemed strange they hadn't come out to greet the policemen, as farm people were among the last in America to still show respect to the badge.

He had turned to Ted to remark on the stillness of it when Ted exploded.

Ted didn't actually explode; he was simply standing stricken in a sudden cloud of red mist and his throat had gone to pulsing colors and his eyes had widened with horror.

To Bud it seemed as if they had stepped through a glass door into another world and were suddenly ensnared in a medium of molasses or oil, something thick that dampened all sound and made their motions utterly painful and slow.

There was no noise at all. Or if there was. Bud didn't hear it a bit.

He felt the stings as though being attacked by a swarm of bees and had a sense that a leg had died on him.

And then the world flashed orange and he had no sense of anything, as if he'd been somehow snatched from time itself, and then he returned to earth a second later, surprised to find himself down on the ground. He had no memory of falling. Blood was everywhere. He looked at poor Ted, who was bleeding even more profusely at the throat and screaming soundlessly. A starburst had fractured the left lens of Ted's Ray-Bans; blood ran in a snaky little line down from the obscured eye.

It all seemed to be happening so slowly, and he could make no sense of it at all, though the air seemed full of dust and insects, and then he realized they were taking shotgun fire from the left window and that he had been hit bad.

Boomy! Boomy! Boomy!

Gun go boo my-jerky, shell outta poppy, gun go boomyjerky! again.

Ha! Ha!

Makey smoke, ma key fire.

Bad 'uns fall down go hurt. Red on them. Look it, red!

Boomy ma key red.

Mar go "Loady-shooty, loady-shooty” loud. Dell ma key 'gun go boo my again.

Put in shell thing. Gun go klack! then gun go boo my

O’Dell laughed.

Funny, so funny.

“I'M HIT, OH GOD!” screamed Ted, blowing through the soundless ness Now there was noise everywhere. Bud's ears were ringing in pain and it was so loud he hurt. He had a coppery taste in his throat, as if he'd just had a penny sandwich. His lungs creaked and the rasp of Ted's breathing sounded louder than a buzz saw.

Bud didn't remember drawing the Smith, but he just had it there in his hand out of some miracle or something and he was pumping off rounds at the broken window, just squeezing and squeezing, and then another rake of pain ripped across his chest—Vest! Vest! he mourned—and he went down flat. The gun was lost. Then he had it again and brought it up and fired but came up with nothing but the sounds of hammer striking empty primer. He opened the gun and six shells fell out. He stared at it dumbly.

Speedloader. Speedloader!

Clumsily he grabbed at a speed loader from the pouch but his fingers were thick and greasy with blood. It fell from them and rolled in the dust, picking up grit where it was smeared with red.

“I'M HIT, OH GOD I'M HIT!” wailed Ted.

Cover, Bud was thinking, cover. The car was too far.

He rose and half-yanked Ted to the tree ten feet away. A large man ran at him and Bud lifted the Smith to fire and the man ducked. Bud couldn't figure out why the gun didn't fire. He looked. Oh yes. He hadn't reloaded. The speed loader lay in the dust. He thought he had another in the pouch.

Reload, reload, he told himself, pulling the second speed loader out.

He dropped it, too. Then he remembered Ted's gun and tried to get it out, but the security holster wouldn't permit the piece to be withdrawn. Ted shivered desperately beneath him. Blood pulsed out of a hole under his ear, and his whole face was spotted with blood. His legs were also bleeding.

“I can't see,” he said.

“Oh, Christ, Bud, I can't see.”

“Be cool, be cool,” Bud said, trying to make sense of it.

He picked up his dropped speed loader and somehow got the tips of the six cartridges it held inserted in the chambers.

He twisted the knob and the shells dropped into the gun. He slammed the cylinder shut and looked around for targets, but he could see nothing.

The car, he thought. Get to the radio, get backup, do it, do it now} "Ted, I gotta run to the car.”

“DON'T LEAVE ME, PLEASE, DON'T LEAVE ME!”

Richard tied the last knot too tight and felt the old man shiver in the cruelty of it. But he didn't care. He had other things to do. He looked at the two of them, trussed like pigs. Under other circumstances, a tragic scene. But not now.

He raced up the stairs to the kitchen. His thought now:

Get out of here.

He would run to the barn and into the fields beyond. He simply would disappear while the shooting was going on.

They would find him later. He would convince them: he had nothing to do with it.

But he was halfway through the kitchen when the first blast came, even louder than the one Lamar had fired last night. It was like being inside a kettledrum.

He dropped instantly, his face on the floor.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

It would not stop. The noise level just rose and rose and rose. He had no idea guns were so loud! He lay there on the floor and began to cry.

Please don't let me be hurt.

He tried to free himself from Ted and looked for targets.

But smoke and dust hung in the air, illuminated by the sun.

He blinked. Nothing made a lot of sense. Shotguns, two shotguns, that much he knew.

He thought he saw movement at a corner of the house and fired two-handed this time, fast, two shots, and when he rose to run to the car, a blast took his legs out from under him and blew him down. The gun skittered away. He couldn't see the gun. He tried to crawl.

“DON'T LEAVE ME, PLEASE,” Ted yelled, grabbing at his ankle.

He craweled a bit further, until he looked up at Lamar Pye, standing over him.

“Well, howdy. Dad,” said Lamar.

“Oh, Christ,” said Bud.

“Yes sir, I was you, I'd make my peace too, Mr. Smokey.”

“Fuck you,” said Bud.

“Oh, ain't you a bull stud, though? O’Dell, come see what we have done bagged. Coupla Smokies.” He turned back to Bud.

“Liked that speed reload you done under fire. Right nice. Give this to you—you're a professional. You just got outsmarted. O’Dell, get that other boy's gun from him.”

O’Dell Pye, amazingly big, his red hair tossed every which way, his face blotchy with pimples and freckles, walked over to where Ted cowered bleeding. He kicked him hard in the back. In pain, Ted spasmed outward, and O’Dell reached down and yanked his gun from him.

“Gun,” said O’Dell, proudly, lifting Ted's Smith.

“That it is. O’Dell, that it is.”

Lamar turned to Bud.

“Now, Dad, case you don't know it, your bacon is fried.

I got no beef agin most cops, just other stiffs doing their jobs. But you Smokies shot and killed my old man many years ago. I wasn't even borned yet.”

“Fuck you, Pye, and the horse you came in on. We'll get you, you watch.”

“You watch. Trooper. I'm gonna cut a path across this state nobody won't never forget. A hunnert years from now, daddies'll scare their young kids to sleep with tales of mean old Lamar Pye, the he-lion of Oklahoma. O’Dell, put a shell into that cruiser's radio, and then check it for weapons.”

O’Dell went to the car. Bud heard the report as he fired a shotgun shell into the radio. Then, a second later, he heard the trunk open.

“Eeene gun, eene gun,” sang O’Dell, and Bud saw that he had shaken the case off Ted's AR-15.

Shit, he thought.

Then he thought. Can I make it to my backup? He had the Smith .38 around his ankle.

When Lamar turned, Bud lunged. He got to the gun, but he couldn't get the thumb snap off clean because there was so much blood on his hand and his thumb kept slipping.

Time he got it off, Lamar had leaned a big boot on his ankle, pinning it, and had reached down and removed the gun.

“Big boy like you, little lady thang like this? You ought to be ashamed.”

He tpssed the gun away.

“DON'T KILL ME! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!” shouted Ted.

“Ted, shut up,” yelled Bud-.

“I don't think he can hear you,” said Lamar.

“I think he done lost his mind.”

“He's just a kid. Let him be. He hasn't even been on long enough to make corporal. He's got a wife. He'll have kids sometime. Don't hurt him. Kill me. I'm an old man, I've had my kids.”

Lamar's eyes widened in mock amazement.

“Tell you what,” he said, "how 'bout if I kill both you and then you can argue in heaven over which one I should have killed.” He thought his own joke was pretty funny.

But then he turned to O’Dell.

“O’Dell, you go get that goddamned Richard and the old people. We are going to get out of here now, case anybody heard the ruckus. You get ’em loaded up.”

“Yoppa, Mar,” said O’Dell.

Lamar knelt down by Bud.

“You in much pain? I could do you now, save you some hurtin'.”

“Fuck off, Pye.”

“Sand. Smokey got sand. I like that in a man. Now I would say, though, your partner is sorta lacking in the ball department. He's whining like a baby. I hate babies.”

“He's a kid, you prick.”

“Still, gotta learn not to whine. Nobody likes a baby.

How you onto us, anyhow?”

“It's on the net. There'll be sixty cruisers here in a minute.”

“You goin' to face the Lord with a lie on your lips?

Bible say that's a ticket to hell, friend. You'd best use this time to make your peace with God.”

“Pye. Don't hurt the boy any more. And the old people.

Let them go. You got me, you got your Smokey sergeant, that's enough game for one day.”

“Say, you are a bull stud,” said Lamar, "but I'm going to kill you anyway.”

Bud tried not to shiver but he could not stop. He tried to make it stop hurting but it would not stop hurting. He looked. So much blood.

He must have been hit a hundred times. He never guessed he had so much blood in him. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to think.

Lamar had gone somewhere. He was alone. He thought of Jen. Oh Christ, he'd been such a bad husband. All the things he'd never said or did. And at the end, all that time with Holly. Why? Why wasn't I a good man? I only wanted to be good and it all came to this. And he thought of his youngest son, Jeff. Oh, Jeff, I wanted to be there for you so bad. I wanted to help you, show you things, and if you needed a little extra help, I wanted to give it to you. I never would have left you. He missed his children.

“Bud,” came a sob.

He rolled over through oceans of pain. He didn't know it could hurt so.

“Ted, just be calm.”

“Bud They're going to shoot us dead.”

“They're just trying to scare us. They gotta get out of here fast and they know it. If they do us, our people will hunt them down and kill them and they know that. It's all bluff.”

“No, it ain't. Bud, you'll make it. I won't. I'm dying no matter what. Bud, please. I miss Holly. I love her, oh Christ, I love her so. I'm sorry I wasn't the man—”

“Stop it, Ted.”

“Bud, you take care of her. Promise me, please. You take care of her.

You help her. Like you tried to help me.”

“PLEASE! OH GOD, I'm scared. PLEASE before I die.”

“Ted, I—” But Lamar was back. A car pulled up, a Jeep Wagoneer.

Bud saw the two grim old people sitting ramrod stiff in the back. They were next. A twerpy-looking white boy was driving—that goddamned Richard Peed. Lamar and O’Dell walked over.

Lamar said, "You made your peace with the Lord yet, Trooper?”

“Eat shit,” said Bud.

Lamar walked over to Ted. Ted had folded into a fetal position half on his belly and his side, and was weeping softly. Lamar bent over him with the .45 and shot him in the back of the head. His hair jumped a little as the bullet tore into it. Then he turned to Bud. But the .45 was empty, and its slide had locked back.

He handed the gun to O’Dell and brought his shotgun to bear. The range was about twenty-five feet.

“You shoulda worn your vest, Sarge,” said Lamar merrily.

Bud crumpled against the buckshot and heard no noise:

He was in the center of an explosion. Red everywhere, the smell of dirt and smoke in his nose, the sense of heat and the thousand things that tore into him. He felt his soul depart his body.