Decision (64 page)

Chapter 6

Bubba Whitby, unlike Boomer Johnson, was not a good boy. Bubba, as his mother Julia was always telling her employers, the Barbours, was a bad,
bad
boy. Yet there was, possibly, something to be said for Bubba—much, some would assert, because Bubba in many ways
was
a classic case.

It was rather too bad, actually, that
he
had not been the Pomeroy Station bomber. All those who found it a little difficult to sympathize with Earle—though they felt they must—would have been able with a clear conscience to sympathize with Bubba.

He fitted so snugly into so many patterns.

Bubba had just turned eighteen, as Julia had told Mr. Barbour; and Bubba’s immediate family, aside from earnest, God-fearing, hardworking Julia and her other three kids, had contained some fairly worthless stuff.

Two weeks after their marriage, with Bubba already
in utero,
Julia had found Bubba’s father with another woman; and since she was a small woman herself, rather frail, which was why she was allowed to take her own time about doing the housework, she did not respond as one of her girl friends might have, with shrieks and wails and teeth and nails and hair-pullings and face gougings, to hold her man. Not that she didn’t do a lot of wailing, of course, but that was all she did, and it didn’t do her much good.

After that, Bubba’s dad was right back where he’d always been, cattin’ around; and Julia, unable to do much else, put her head down, hired herself out for housework and plowed ahead, only taking time out to have Bubba, his two younger brothers and their kid sister. When Bubba was six years old and his sister three, after Julia and Bubba’s dad had been “married,” if you could call his occasional visits that, for five hectic years, Bubba’s dad left to go off on some mysterious life of his own that nobody knew much about but that everybody suspected might have something to do with numbers and, later on, more fashionably and profitably, dope. From then right on up to now, Julia was on her own in raising the kids.

Bubba, in the minds of many, might have been said to have two strikes against him.

Julia herself, though, was a pretty powerful strike in the other direction, because Julia was, as Janie Barbour used to say back before that terrible accident, “a very
good
lady.” She was decent, she was kind, she was hardworking, she was devoted and loyal and God-fearing and church-going and a lot of other good things that weren’t as fashionable as dope, maybe, but still were pretty nice. She was also absolutely devoted to her children and absolutely determined that they should be reared to be “a credit to me and to your race.” She often told them this, and she lavished a lot of love and care and attention upon them. So much so that some might have said that Bubba
had a mother problem and was being smothered.

As with Earle Holgren’s younger sister, however, this did not seem to bother Bubba’s siblings. Bubba, like Earle, was the only one who went bad. And Julia, like the elder Holgrens though with infinitely less to give in the way of material comforts, was equally baffled and dismayed.

“We’re poor but we’re decent,” she often told the kids; and she and three of them were. But from about the time Bubba was eight it began to be alarmingly apparent to her that Bubba wasn’t. And it just defeated her. Thereupon, some might have said, Bubba
began to lack parental support and guidance.

Still, though, Julia couldn’t honestly see that this was her fault, because the Lord knew she did her very best to change his ways and make him behave. When he was found with little girls she spanked him. When he and little boys began to steal things and break windows, she spanked him even more.

Bubba, before long, became what some might call
intimidated and repressed.

He could not—
and did he ever let people know about it!—
express himself.

At least, he couldn’t express himself—with his mother’s knowledge,
anyway—in the ways he wanted to express himself. And he refused to express himself the way she wanted him to, which was just to be a nice, decent, well-behaved kid.

There were a lot of kids in their neighborhood in suburban Maryland, and later on in Northeast near Stanton Square where they had come to live five or six years ago, who had much the same background and upbringing as Bubba. And somehow most of them turned out all right even with rough economic times and the never-ending struggle to find decent jobs. There were an awful lot of nice, decent, well-behaved kids around—some bad apples, too, of course, but many more who were just plain nice kids. Bubba was not among them.

In the eyes of some he could have been regarded as
decidedly thwarted.

He took it out, as he grew rapidly older and bigger—much too big for his age, always, which was another problem, making him feel self-conscious and physically laughable—by becoming increasingly foul-mouthed, brutish and insubordinate to his mother and increasingly bullying to his brothers and sister.

He began to show signs of an inevitable reaction—to what, except Julia’s desperate and often tearful attempts to raise him right, it was hard to explain, although there were some, including the social worker at the school he attended—sporadically—who tried very earnestly to do so.

It was not long before she began to refer to him as
a classic case.

Overhearing this one day when she was talking to a teacher he had just straight-armed out of his way in the hall, he took it home and repeated it often and proudly—“I’s a classic case.” The social worker begged his teacher to have
understanding and patience and try to forgive.
The teacher, a male who was not quite as big as Bubba but capable of holding a long grudge, flunked him later. Bubba waylaid him after school in the parking lot and beat the holy shit out of him, giving him a broken jaw, a couple of broken ribs and a broken arm.

That was the first time Bubba went to juvenile home.

Now outside forces began to take a hand in Bubba’s life.
Society,
the social worker said earnestly, was becoming
harsh and repressive
to Bubba.

Julia, however, just thought her son was getting what was coming to him. It was about then that she began to confide in Mr. Barbour, since Mrs. Barbour didn’t seem all that interested. She got sympathy from him, and, in these recent years, offers of small but respectable jobs suited to Bubba’s years and inexperience—which Bubba always turned down. She was very hopeful (she told herself tonight as she wondered forlornly, for the thousandth time, where Bubba was) now that Mr. Barbour was on the Court, that he really might be able to offer something Bubba would accept, before it was too late.

By the time he was fifteen, there had been three more juvenile detentions for Bubba, one for trashing a store and two for stealing cars.

He was now defiantly showing signs of
rebellion and protest—
in fact, Julia thought, he wasn’t showing much else, most of the time. But after all, what did society expect? He was
obviously misunderstood.
Not only that, he was
socially handicapped.
And to top it all, he was
definitely disadvantaged.
How could you beat that for a classic case?

He was also insufferable and insupportable to his mother and to all her decent friends, who were many. An armed truce came to exist between them, and she began to feel that the less Bubba was around, the better for them all. This broke her heart for a while, but once again she put her head down and plowed ahead. Bubba increasingly went his own way, a truant, a renegade, refusing to accept any of the modest but decent jobs that also came his way from others, and increasingly, from some source she did not know and did not dare surmise, affluent.

Now, though she did not know it, Bubba was using and peddling dope. He had already impregnated two giggly little junior high school girls who were taken with his enormous size and not bad looks; was participating regularly in petty thefts and robberies—and some not so petty; and had already killed another youth, entirely unbeknownst to the police and fortunately also not known to his mother, who would have perished of fright and mortification. And underneath it all were a growing disillusion and resentment against the things—himself, mostly, as he recognized dimly but felt hopeless to change—that were defeating him. A restless boredom began to prompt him to seek release in ever greater violence and ever more dangerous thrills.

And all the time, Bubba’s two younger brothers and little sister, coming from exactly the same background, just as socially handicapped, just as disadvantaged, just as subject to the appeals of a mother who only sought to raise them decently—in their cases, with success—were coming right along, getting steadily more mature and reliable, growing up into good, decent, responsible citizens. So were many dozens of other kids, all around. Life was often hard for all of them, but a great many were managing to come through it quite all right.

Somewhere in Bubba there was something sadly and inherently awry that the social worker simply could not—in fact, deliberately
would
not—recognize.

This was not Julia’s fault and probably, although he wasn’t much good, it wasn’t his evanescent father’s fault either.

It was just in him.

It was there.

And it made of Bubba Whitby a dangerous youth, just as it was surely and inevitably and before very much longer going to make him a very dangerous man.

He was very rapidly on his way to becoming, in fact, everything that the great majority of his countrymen despised and feared and wanted to get rid of. He was everything that many perfectly sincere and well-meaning people wanted to help and educate and succor and save.

But unfortunately they would die—and some of them probably would, sooner or later, at his hands—rather than accept the thought that saving Bubba was something that it was impossible for them to do.

He was Death, as Earle Holgren was Death; and in this moment of their meeting he was, perhaps, if it were possible to draw comparisons between two such, the more fearsome—because unlike Earle, who even in this insane, utterly disconnected hour when he was floating out there cut off from all human goodness and decency, could persuade himself, if rather desperately now, that he had a purpose, and that it had been achieved, Bubba had none except possibly a great resentment, a great boredom and a great desire to just
do somethin’,
and the worse the better, to entertain himself on this hot … muggy … oppressive … dreadful night…

At first Earle thought he heard a funny skittering sound, as though someone were skipping toward him under the dimly lighted trees ahead.

Then it stopped.

He stopped.

Then he shrugged, though the hairs rose on the back of his neck, and started to walk on.

As abruptly as Earle had stepped before Boomer, the tall, hulking figure emerged silently from the trees and stood before him on the old uneven brick sidewalk. He could not see its face, for a streetlamp was behind it, but the menace in its stance was unmistakable.

“Hey, man,” it said in a softly crooning tone that he knew instantly spelled deadly danger, “where you goin’, man?”

“Just walking along, man,” he said, heart suddenly beating fast but speaking casually. “Just taking a walk.”

“Funny place for a white dude to be walkin’,” the figure said, in the same soft way. “This here’s a funny place. What you got in mind, man?”

“Nothing much, man,” Earle said, thinking: keep him talking and maybe something will divert him. “It’s a nice night, just thought I’d take a walk.”

“I still think it’s funny, man,” the figure said. “You ain’t no honkie fuzz come to git me, are you? Not any of them
undercover
folks they set on people like me?”

“I’m not any fuzz, man,” Earle said carefully, shifting his weight ever so slowly onto the balls of his feet, positioning himself to strike with his fists since he realized with a devastating clarity that he had no weapon: the gun was in his room, the letter opener with Tay. “I hate ’em as much as you do.”

“That’s good, man,” the figure said and suddenly shot out a long arm and gave Earle a quick little shove in the chest that knocked him off balance for a moment so that he had to scramble awkwardly and obviously to regain it. “Don’t get ready to try nothin’, man. It won’t work.”

“I’m not getting ready to try anything,” Earle said, beginning to breathe a little hard, but reassuring. “Do you know where this street comes out?”

“It comes out at the end,” the figure said contemptuously. “Where’d you think it comes out? And what you want to know for, anyway?”

“I’m on my way to Union Station,” Earle said, casting desperately about for something—anything—to prolong the conversation until he could figure out how to destroy his tormentor. “Want to find the Metro. You know where the Metro is?”

“I know where the Metro is,” the figure said, “and I know where Union Station is. And this is a funny way to get to ’em. What you doin’ back here in these parts, I said!”

And suddenly he shot out the long arm again and grabbed Earle by his arm, twisting it suddenly so that Earle almost yelled with pain when he found himself pinned with his back to his captor.

“There’s a car coming,” he said with desperate relief. “You better let me go, man, or somebody’s goin’ to think something funny’s going on.”

“You think anybody’s goin’ to stop in
this
ay-reah?” the figure demanded, still contemptuously but releasing him and simultaneously spinning him around so that he faced him again. “Not if they know what’s good for ’em, man. And everybody does—except maybe you, man,” the figure added, its voice dropping again to the soft, crooning note. “Except you.”

“Maybe it’s the fuzz,” Earle said desperately as the car drew slowly nearer.

“And maybe it ain’t,” the figure said. “If it is, we’re just standin’ here talkin’, right? Just two old buddies. Just some inner—innerrayshal—conversation. And if it ain’t, well, then, they ain’t goin’ to stop, anyway.”

“We’ll see,” Earle said, half-turning to look at the battered old Cadillac.