tarmac before it and the fields of wheat country, now fallow in summer, behind it. It said simply stepford
“Party time,” said Lamar.
It fell to Richard. Lamar explained patiently.
“This old farm lady, she take a look at me and she's on the phone to the county sheriff. I got something about me scares people. You, Richard, you got no tattoos and a girly body, you couldn't hurt a flea.
So you knock on the door and get us in and when I come in, you make sure that old man don't make it to no gun.”
They parked halfway down the farm road. Richard could see the house, its windows glowing, standing in the middle of a barnyard, the barn towering nearby. It looked like a Christmas card. He yearned for moral destitution, some sign of country decadence, so that there'd be some sense that these people deserved what Lamar had in mind for them; but no. It was too pretty, a banal quaintness, possibly too studied. A farm from a Potemkin village.
O’Dell split off back; he'd come in the rear when Lamar came in the front. It was about ten o’clock. Why were the old people up so late?
“Y-you won't hurt them if you don't have to?” Richard asked.
''Course not,” said Lamar.
“I ain't low-down. Only, see, we do need these guns. Suppose Johnny Cop pulls down on us. Go back to the pen? Let the niggers do us up?
You too, up so fine? Even O’Dell? No sir, can't let that happen.”
“Okay. Just so I have your assurance.”
“You can count on me,” said Lamar.
Richard watched as he melted into the darkness. He stood alone, breathing hard, in the brisk night, hearing the wind beat through the trees and now and then the squawk and rip of small things in the dark, fighting or dying. There was no moon; the stars rolled like wheat fields, torrents of them, high above, remote pinwheels of ancient fire.
Richard wanted to weep but he could only obey: he counted in his head and when he reached the number three hundred, off he went.
As he approached the house he could see the old man sitting in his study, under some mounted game animals; a glass gun case stood against the wall; there was no old lady anywhere in sight, but he saw the blue glow of a television from an upstairs room.
He prayed there weren't grandkids or something in the house, or visiting relatives.
He knocked on the door. Maybe they'd be smart. Nobody just opened the door to strangers in the night these days. Maybe they'd be smart and call the sheriff, or get a gun and drive the interlopers away. He knocked again, praying for inaction.
The door opened wide.
“Why hello,” the woman said.
“Er, hello. I'm, I'm an art teacher in Oklahoma City. My car broke down on the road. I was wondering if you could call the Triple A. I don't have to come in.”
“And wait out there in the cold? Why, I wouldn't hear of it. That's the silliest thing I ever heard say. You come on in out of the chill and we'll get the tow truck on its way. Do you like coffee?”
Lamar slid in like a shadow of a cat and seemed to envelope her, muffling her cry. He had the shank hard against her throat, and Richard fixated on the way its blade pressed against her white, loose skin. She made a weeping sound, and in her desperation her eyes settled on Richard; they were widening in terror and begging, please, for mercy.
Richard shuddered and looked away.
Two loud crashes boomed through the house, and O’Dell, for some bizarre reason without his shirt and with his hair wet and slicked back, broke in from the rear, an ax in his hand. He paused to howl at the ceiling or the sky beyond the roof, and Richard watched in abject fascination as the cry arose from him and his body shivered in rapture. All his demons were free and dancing in the room. He raced for the study where the old man looked up at him in utter befuddlement, then cowered from the blow he seemed about to receive from the immense half-naked man with the ax.
“The guns, Richard,” ordered Lamar.
Richard ran to the gun case. Its glass stopped him. Inside, the gleaming treasures lay in repose. He could see green and yellow boxes of cartridges stacked neatly in the corner. He tried the handle, but the thing was locked. It baffled him, and then the bafflement departed as the glass seemed to explode out at him. O’Dell had just blasted it with the ax.
“Wook oub,” said O’Dell, raising the ax in another mighty effort.
Richard fell back as the ax smashed the door off the frame, and O’Dell greedily pulled a long-barreled gun from the rack and a box from the shelf, and began inserting red tubes into the weapon. With an oily klak he cycled it and turned.
“Dwan mub,” he commanded, but the old man hadn't.
He sat there shaking, literally stunned into shock from the way the universe had conspired in an instant to deconstruct his life.
Lamar had dumped the old woman, and came over to examine what lay before him.
“Goddamn,” he said almost immediately.
“Shotguns!
Shotguns! You don't got no pistols? What the fuck is the matter with you, you old piece of shit!”
Angrily, he kicked the case. Then, grasping his fury, he took a shotgun off the rack and threaded shells into it. He pumped it, pointed it upwards, and fired.
The noise was terrific.
Richard had never been near a gun going off before in his life. The pain of it assaulted his ears. So loud! A satisfying rain of plaster cascaded down on Lamar, who smiled at this tiny victory over the world.
O’Dell was dancing merrily around the room. Now and then he would smash something and holler. The two old people found each other at the couch, the woman weeping in the old buzzard's arms.
At last, Lamar went over to them.
“I thought you hunted, old fuck. You! I'm talking to you.
You want me to gut the heart out of that old bitch? You talk to me, motherfucker.”
The old man glared up at him.
“I gave up hunting deer last year. Sold all my center fires
“You what?”
“I killed over one hundred deer, two elk, three bears, and a moose. It was enough.”
“You fucking pussy, I want CENTER FIRE I want OOOMPH! I want AUTOMATIC! I want a goddamn BERETTA! I want COLT! I want MAGNUM! You dick sucking old puss, I wouldn't even fuck your scrawny ass, I'd give it to Richard. Richard, if he don't tell where the pistols are, fuck his ass. You hear me: Fuck him good up the ass and fuck his old lady up the ass.”
“Tell him. Bill,” said the woman.
“I can't,” said the old man.
“Tell him, Bill,” said the woman.
“He'll just take them and go out and kill people in the world. He's going to kill us anyway. We're dead already. It don't matter none.”
He turned to Lamar.
“You know, back in 1944, a lot of blond young men tried to kill me, in airplanes called Messerschmitts. But I bombed their factories and killed their wives and children and destroyed their filth. You're them, you prison scum. Go ahead, fuck my ass and fuck my old wife's ass. You can hurt me but you can't scare me.”
Lamar, for the first time in his life, seemed a little unsure.
“Richard, you hear that? A goddamn hero. O’Dell?”
“It's the Pyes,” the old man told his wife.
“On the news, the escapees. Just the worst trash. A sane society would have executed them both years back. Well, to hell with you, Lamar Pye and this simpleton and your little homosexual pal.”
