Dirty White Boys (12 page)

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? Odell, 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. Odell, get that other boy’s gun from him.”

Odell 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 Odell reached down and yanked his gun from him.

“Gun,” said Odell, proudly, lifting Ted’s Smith.

“That it is, Odell, 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. Odell, put a shell into that cruiser’s radio, and then check it for weapons.”

Odell 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 Odell, 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 thumbsnap 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 tossed 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 Odell.

“Odell, 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 Odell.

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.”

“I—”

“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 Odell 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 Odell 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.

T
hey traveled in silence for the longest time, Odell behind the wheel, beaming with bliss, a wary Lamar next to him, and Richard and the rigid Stepfords in the back seat. At one point, Mrs. Stepford whispered something to her husband.

“Excuse me,” he said, “Missus has to go weewee.”

Lamar said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask you to squeeze it in a mite longer. We have to make some tracks.”

“What the hell difference does it make?” said Mr. Stepford. “You’re going to kill us same as you done them law enforcement boys.”

“Just cooperate, okay, old man? I got to concentrate on where I’m going.”

They drove onward, over country roads, right at the speed limit but never breaking any laws. They heard no sirens, and the radio announced no discoveries of police bodies. They saw no helicopters.

“Okay,” said Lamar, looking at a map, “you want to go on straighty-straight. No turnee. Y’all keep your eyes open for Cox City, where we’re going to go left on 21 to Bray. He can’t read the signs but he can drive straight and turn when I tell him.”

“Where are we going, Lamar?” asked Richard.

“Richard, I ain’t ready to talk to you yet. Got to figure this out yet and what I’m going to do with you. You just be quiet.”

“Did I do anything wrong?”

But Lamar just glared ahead. Finally, past Empire City, Lamar took off his hat. It was a wide, white Stetson, once Mr. Stepford’s finest Sunday-go-to-meeting hat. He made a show of examining the small pinfeather in the band, but it was clear he had made a decision. He pirouetted around in the seat to face the three in the back.

“Now Richard,” he finally said with a good deal of weariness, “I want to know—where the hell were you during the fight?”

“Ah,” said Richard, “ah, I went through the kitchen after Odell. I was going to circle around from the
other
direction, see. Only it was over before I got there.”

“Weren’t not,” said Mr. Stepford. “I could hear him. He was lying on the goddamned kitchen floor. He was crying.”

“I believe you’d make a better outlaw than this poor Richard boy here, don’t you, Mr. Stepford?”

“Believe I would, Lamar, though I don’t run with no trash like you boys.”

“Well, anyway,” said Lamar, “Richard, what the hell am I going to do with you? You got to do more than just
art.”

“Lamar, you know this isn’t my cup of tea.”

“It sure ain’t. But if I can’t trust you to back me up in a scrape, what the hell good are you? We are in Scrape City from here on out.”

“Lamar, I don’t even know how to shoot the g—”

Lamar’s arm flashed back, and he slapped Richard hard with the hat across the face. It didn’t hurt so much as shock Richard, who looked at Lamar with utter dismay. This
merely made Lamar more angry, and he commenced to beat heavily on Richard with the hat, slapping it at him. Richard cowered, covering himself with his arms.

“That used to be a fine hat,” said Stepford.

At last Lamar settled down. He turned back to the front, breathing heavily. His anger had mottled his face red; his lungs wheezed and ached in his chest. He said to Odell, “Pull over. Anywhere’s fine, this big field.”

Odell slowed the old Wagoneer down, let it slew off the gravel shoulder a bit, then eased it across the drainage ditch and into a field. He let the smooth V-eight perk for a few moments, then, satisfied, he turned the key and let it go silent.

The road, a narrow black ribbon, cut across the wide flatness of cotton and peanut fields. No cars were anywhere in sight. The sky was huge, piled with clouds like castles. Some scrub oaks lay a quarter mile to one side.

“Okay, folks,” he said. “Time to get out.”

“Don’t do this, Lamar,” said Mr. Stepford. “You are scum but you can’t do this to us. You have come to admire my wife’s cooking and my fine collection of guns, which served you well in the fracas.”

“I have to do what I have to do, old man. You too, Richard. You got to come, too.”

“Oh, God, Lamar,” said Richard.

“Stop your sniveling, Richard,” said Mrs. Stepford. “Lamar, do what you will but shut this boy up. He is giving me a headache. But can I pee first? I’ve been holding it in very tight.”

“Yes, ma’am. Odell will watch, because it don’t mean nothing at all to him. The rest of you, turn round, give the lady some privacy.”

They did as he commanded. Richard saw the trees far
off. It wasn’t fair. He had
tried
. He had wanted so hard to do what was expected of him.

“Lamar, please.”

“Shut up, Richard. You all set, Mrs. Stepford? Thank you ma’am. This way.”

He walked them into the field. It was near twilight. The sun was setting in an orange smear. It looked like a Constable sun to Richard. Utter serenity lay across the land. It was the exact opposite of the pathetic fallacy: Nature was being ironic, damn her exquisiteness. They wandered across the field. Richard felt as if he were an ant on a pool table. The horizon around them was remorselessly flat. They came, after a time, to a fold in the land and stepped down into a gang of scrub oak trees abutting a messy little creek. It was utterly private.

“Okay,” said Lamar. “This will do. Have y’all made your peace with God?”

“You piece of shit, Lamar,” said Stepford.

“Don’t make it hard on yourself, old man. It don’t have to hurt a damned bit. Don’t run or nothing; there’s only pain in it.”

“Hold me, Bill,” said the old woman.

“You are a goddamned beautiful woman, Mary,” said Bill Stepford to his wife. He was crying a little. “You gave me fifty great years and you never complained a bit. Mary, I wasn’t a decent husband. I had an affair. I had many affairs. The sharecropper’s daughter, Maggie? Minnie Purvis, in town. Al Jefferson’s niece, the secretary. Mary, I am so very sorry.”

“It’s all right. I knew about them.”

She turned to Lamar. “This man flew fifty missions over Germany in the war. He was wounded twice and won the Distinguished Flying Cross, though he says it’s nothing. He came back and built a farm up from fallow ground and was
the Grange president for twelve years. He raised four sons and two daughters and gave work to over a hundred itinerant laborers and their families. He paid for their medical while they was here and for three of their children to go to college and he never asked for nothing. He is a good man. You have no right to end his life in this field.”