But now Richard got it: He had to pay for Junior Jefferson.
He had inherited Lamar's burden of guilt.
He tried to keep his own face dull. He just stared at them as they approached.
Okay, he thought. Is this it? He wasn't particularly frightened for some odd reason.
They were on him.
“Hey, Richard.”
“Yeah?” Give them nothing. Don't let them see your fear.
“What you say, man?”
“I'm okay,” he said.
“How you doin'? You need anything, man? You need smokes? I can get you smokes.”
“Cool,” Richard said.
“Shit, man, we ain't got no beef with you. Just want you to know that up front, Richard. You okay.”
“That Richard,” said Rodney to his young charge, 'he smoked two goddamned troopers. A lieutenant and a sergeant.
Blew their ET.-looking white motherfucking asses away cold. Stood up there like the motherfucking man and put them Smokey-Bear cocksuckers down. You git ’em both, Richard?”
“I capped the lieutenant,” said Richard.
“Goddamned sergeant had more lives than a cat. But I'll tell you this: He hasn't had a good night's sleep since he ran into me!”
The four black men laughed.
“Richard, you okay. Man, you got the stones. You cold, motherfucker.
You ice, man.”
Someone clapped him on the back. He felt their warmth, their love, their respect.
“You go cool, Richard. For a dirty white boy, you ain't half bad.”
He watched them walk away. The young one made a gun from a finger and aped blowing a state trooper away and they all burst out laughing.
“Richard?”
He turned. A pale white man stood before him, maybe five years younger.
“Richard, my name is Aaron Miles. I'm one of your cellmates. I was wondering—” -'Did I talk to you, motherfucker?” said Richard.
“Ah—no. It's just that—”
“It's just that nothing, motherfucker. If we talk, and note I don't say when we talk but only if we talk, we talk when I say so. Do you understand, fuck boy 'Yes sir.” :
“Now I want half your cigarettes,” instructed Richard.
“Every week, I get half. Get it? Or I become interested in you. And you don't want that.”
“Yes sir.”
“Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
The boy scurried away. Richard watched him go. He had a nice ass.
Now, for the first time in months, he felt something: an actual sensation slid through his bones, a small, tight smile played across his face.
He stepped back into his cell and saw his print.
Captured in a few deft pen strokes, the creature crouched on some featureless plain, swaddled in muscle, its head twisted almost as if in a feeding frenzy, its tiny eyes black and cunning, a spasm of blood lust throbbing through it.
Ah: lions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their assistance, while at the same time absolving them of all blame for its excesses and inaccuracies.
Besides dedicatees Mike Hill, Bob Lopez, Steve Wigler, Lenne Miller and, especially, Weyman Swagger, all of whom gave good counsel when desperately needed, the others are: Steve Woods, Pat Mcguire, Floyd Jones, Jean Marbella, John Feamster, Mike Mayo, Jim Horan, and the countless Oklahomans who were indefatigably polite and hospitable as I poked around their state for several weeks.
My agent, Esther Newberg of ICM, is the true heroine of the book, as abetted by my editor, David Rosenthal: special thanks to both of them for 'getting it.” My wife Lucy, as usual, did the dishes and the bills so that I could slip off and pretend to be an Oklahoma state trooper and a badass escaped convict, which was much more fun than dishes and bills; my children—teenagers, by now, actually, Jake and Amy—were reasonably behaved throughout it all.
Finally, I should say that though I represent certain Oklahoma State Agencies—notably the Oklahoma Highway Patrol the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, and the Oklahoma Bureau of Prisons—the preceding work is entirely fictional and not in any way intended to reflect upon their performance of their duties.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Stephen Hunter is the author of nine novels, including the national bestsellers
He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
