“Good. I don't want you out in the world without some protection.”
“Didn't do much good the last time,” he said, 'but the theory sounds promising.”
Bud went to his truck, a blue Ford F250, climbed in, and stuck the key into the column switch, then paused. Christ, would there always be somebody pulling on him? Would it ever end?
Looking carefully left and right, he eased out the clutch and backed into the highway, then threw a bit of gravel as -he accelerated. In seconds he came to a larger road and slipped into traffic behind a huge cattle carrier.
Bud worked his way through the gears in the heavy-duty four-speed, tugging the stick firmly, his feet light on the accelerator and clutch pedal. He loved the goddamned truck, he truly did.
But Bud didn't drive straight out to the Stepfords'. With no conscious thought at all, he stopped at a convenience store and went to the pay phone. He dropped the quarter and dialed the number. It was just like the last time, in front of the diner, just that simple.
In time she answered.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Thank God you called,” Holly whispered.
“Oh, Bud, I can't talk now. The minister is here. He thinks he's helping.
Oh, lord, seeing you would help.”
“I been home and couldn't call, you know. I've got something to do anyway. Can you meet me in Elgin, that diner, Ralph's, I think it is, say about two this afternoon?”
“I'll be there.”
Bud hung up and returned to the truck. The drive to the Stepfords' passed without incident. On the way he drove by the diner where the waitress had mentioned Bill Stepford's absence: Why hadn't that set bells ringing?
Reason was, a policeman will knock on a thousand doors in a career, maybe a hundred thousand. Maybe a thousand policemen knocking on a hundred thousand doors over a twenty-year span will produce one Lamar Pye, waiting in the window with a semiauto shotgun, ready to blow them to hell and gone. The numbers say: Go ahead, knock on the door. Lamar was just the road accident that happens to other people and makes life interesting.
Bud now came to the mailbox and the road into the farm.
He turned, headed down it. The same line of oak trees, the same just-turned wheat fields, the same eventual arrival at the house itself, a white clapboard structure with new rooms added every decade or so; the porch, the barn, the feeding pens, the mud, the hay. It all looked the same, except now the yard was much crisscrossed with tire tracks from the multitude of emergency and police vehicles.
And the tree. Bud looked at what for two or three days had been the most famous tree in Oklahoma and North Texas, where he and Ted had sought cover and from which he had fled to the cruiser to call for backup, not making it.
Bud parked where he'd parked before, the obvious place.
It was now as it was then: still, green, just a farm. He had a bad moment where he didn't want to get out. Am I ruined now? he wondered.
No real fear for twenty-five years, but then I've never been hit in twenty-five years. Now, has this thing ruined me? Am I afraid to make the stop or knock on the door? His breath came in little spurts.
He opened the truck door, hearing the buzz of cicada as he had that day. He smelled alfalfa and animal shit, as on any farm. He stood for a moment, looking around. It could have been that day, same bright weather and warmth, same time. But then his knee began to hurt because there was a tiny ball of steel under the kneecap that the surgeons hadn't had time to get out. Maybe they'd go back and get it, maybe Bud could live with it. And as he thought about that one, in a hundred other places, his body began to sing. The Percodan was wearing off; he checked his watch, it was an hour till the next dosage.
Shit, he thought. It wasn't a bad dream. It all happened.
He closed the door and headed to the house, but halfway up, as before, he was intercepted by a man with a shotgun.
“Now, hold on, mister, this ain't a tourist attraction. You got business you see my lawyer, but otherwise you clear on out.”
Bill Stepford was spry and peppery as a cat, even with half of his face swollen like a blue-green grapefruit. He didn't exactly point the gun at Bud but just sort of clung tightly to it, as a man who’s gone without water may cling to a canteen even after his rescue. His blue eyes, one round, one flat, both fiery, burned into Bud and a Y of veins stood out on his forehead.
“Mr. Stepford, I ain't here to sell or buy a damn thing, I came to offer up my thanks.”
“Goddamn yes! Mary, come out! Look what's showed up! It's that Bud Pewtie, the man too tough to die. Up and about in six days—my lord, son, you must be made of pure gristle.”
“No, sir, I'm made of skin and bones, just like you, and maybe you saw some of the same kind of blood on the ground.”
“I surely did. Thought you were a goner.”
“I was till you walked halfway across Oklahoma and saved my hash.
That's what I came on by for.”
“Bud, dammit, it wasn't nothing. I'm an old coot who walks ten miles a day. If I hadn't gone two miles in the wrong direction to start, I might have gotten there earlier.”
“Don't think it would have made much difference, sir. I had another few hours of life left any way you cut it, and poor Ted was already in the barn.”
“Bud, you come on in and have some coffee and tell me all about your adventures.”
“Ain't much,” said Bud, following.
“Got a thousand holes in me and maybe a hundred of them little tiny balls no probe could get out. None of ’em went too deep. They just cut the Jesus out of me, that's all. I'm damned glad you hunt doves and not deer with those deer slugs.”
“Bud, I have a case of Winchester deer slugs under my workbench. Old Lamar just never found them! Don't that beat the monkey!”
They headed inside, laughing like old pals.
Mary Stepford, looking pale and leathery, rose from the sofa to greet them.
“Well, Mr. Pewtie, I swear, I never thought you'd be coming by for coffee.”
“I didn't either, ma'am. I thought my coffee-drinking days were over.”
“Well, you are a sight for these sore eyes,” the old woman said, and pulled him close and gave him a down home hug.
“I came by to thank you-all. A letter or a call didn't seem right, after what you did. You were the heroes.”
“A bad boy like Lamar don't leave you no choice, Bud.
You got to be at your best or you're finished.”
“You'll get him. Bud.”
“Ma'am, I have to confess, the last thing I want to do is run into the Pyes again. Scared me then, scare me now.
Maybe if I'd had a second, just a second, to get my bearings.
But it happened so fast.”
“That's scum for you,” said Bill.
“They know the advantage of surprise—works for ’em every damn time, just as it did against me.”
They had a nice little visit, and Bud kept it light, because the old woman seemed a little shaky, though old Bill Stepford was billowing brimstone and hellfire most of the time. He didn't really want to take them back through it.
What was the point, really?
When it came time for Bud to leave and the old man walked him back to his truck, only then did the conversation meander back to the three convicts. Stepford ran salty profiles of each one by Bud.
When Bud heard how useless Richard was, he wondered why Lamar hadn't dumped him.
- 'Maybe it's the lions,” Stepford said.
