“You never cared too much what the world thought.”
“Yeah, maybe. And there's the other thing.”
“What's that?”
“Lamar.”
“Lamar?” Holly said.
“Oh, yeah. Lamar. Now what the hell you think that means?”
“It don't feel right with him still out there.”
“Bud.”
“Holly, I said I'd take care of you for my partner. That was the last thing he asked before Lamar come over with the gun. And I will. I swear to you, I will. But I got to take care of my partner first.”
“Ted's dead. Bud, there's no care to be taken. And nothing with Lamar Pye is going to bring him back.”
“Well,” Bud said, without much more to offer.
“Is that it. Bud? Lamar? You're going to go up against Lamar? The whole goddamned state of Oklahoma can't find Lamar and you're going to find him?”
As usual, he didn't know what he meant.
“I don't know. What I mean is, nothing feels right with Lamar on the loose. Wouldn't necessarily have to be me gets him. Frankly, the last thing I want is to run into Lamar.
It ain't personal.”
“The hell it ain't.”
“Holly, I just ..”
“So you aren't going to touch me?”
“Did I say that?”
“Seems like what you meant.”
“I swear to you, at that moment when Lamar meant to finish me, what was in my heart was the thought I'd never been with you fair, in the open, the two of us, at a restaurant, a barbecue, you know, a damn couple.
Last thing on my mind as I went under.”
Was it true? It felt true about now. But he wasn't sure.
He really didn't remember.
“Damn, Bud, you kill me.”
“Well, that's my job.”
“You know that place two exits back. The Do Si Do Motel?”
“Yes.”
“Got us a room. Bud. Wanted to celebrate being alive.”
Bud looked at his watch. He was due at the hospital by three and it was already near two. But what the hell. It was only a hospital.
Their differences—was it a woman-man thing or a Bud Holly thing?—had to do with being naked. She didn't mind it. She sort of liked it, in fact, and could be so damned casual about it. Bud hated it; just that feeling of vulnerability, of being wide open to assault, of being a fat man whose nakedness revealed his idiocy. So it was that after they had made love, he had to pull the sheets up around his loins. In secret and terrible fact, he yearned always when they were done to dress instantly; but he also knew that the moments afterward were the most hallowed to her, were in some sense the point of the exercise, where her oneness with him was at its most intense, and so he could never deny her them.
“Goddamn, Bud,” she said.
“Lamar may have filled you with lead, but he sure didn't take your manhood. You had plenty left for me.”
Why did she think him that good a lover? In the beginning he'd been a mighty engine, able to climb the mountain two or three times in a single afternoon. It was the incredible joy of freedom, of a new, other life. But the beginning was long past, and it seemed to him at least that his mighty engine only just got up the hill these days. But he figured that what she saw was what she wanted to see: that buck from the first weeks. He knew he'd never be that again, or at any rate, not with her. It saddened him, but he never quite had the guts to put it into words.
“You sure he didn't shoot you with love potion instead of lead?”
He laughed. She could be so damned girlish. Her breasts showed: they were little things but beautiful; he loved their weight, their heft, their round perfection and pink tips and the way they jiggled ever so slightly when she laughed.
“It was steel he shot me with,” he said.
“Steel shot.
Another lucky break. The infection rate on steel is much lower than lead. But that ain't luck at all, compared to having you.”
“You didn't start bleeding.”
“No.”
The bandages held; no telltale red spots marked the opening of the tiny wounds.
“It must have felt like being hugged by a stamp collection,” he said.
“Oh, 'Bud, you are so funny! First time I saw you, I thought, oh my, it's John Wayne himself, but then you got me to laughing and I saw how much better you were than John Wayne. Or anybody.”
Her absurdly high vision of him! How could he say no to a woman who thought so highly of him? He came the closest to being the man she thought he was and believed him to be when he was with her; and no other place in his life.
“I wish I could stay here forever,” he said suddenly.
“No, Bud,” she said.
“It ain't good enough. We deserve a house and maybe our own kids. Or to travel. A real life.
We were meant for it. We were supposed to meet, I believe that in my heart.”
“I believe you're right,” he said, exactly what he didn't want to say.
It amazed him: Somehow he always did the exact opposite of what he set out to do. He was turned inside out. But not by her. She was just Holly, as usual. He was turned inside out by It, the thing, the two of them.
“Well, sweetie, ought to be heading back. I'm late.”
“You go. Bud, just promise me. This Lamar thing?
You're not going to let it grow into some huge obsession.
Some mission, where you got to get your revenge? It ain't worth it.
It would just get you killed.”
“It ain't anything like that. I just want to be part of the team that brings him down, that's all. A part of his end, the way I was a part of his beginning.”
The doctor was angry because Bud was so late, and he seemed to wish he could find something seriously wrong with Bud and throw him back in a hospital room out of sheer meanness. But Bud's wounds resolutely refused to break and bleed; it was as if he had sealed himself up again.
“Yqur colonel called. He said he'd tried to reach you at home. I don't think he was happy.”
“Well, I didn't get in any trouble today, so he shouldn't be too angry.”
“What you did. Sergeant, was you got laid.”
Bud looked at him in surprise.
“Sir, I—”
“No, I know it, I can tell it. Physiological signs. I don't know what you've got going, Sergeant, but I wouldn't press it.”
“You ain't going to—”
“No, it's your business. Just don't try and go too far too fast. You could get hurt again. And this time permanently.
Now take your Percodan.”
And when he got home, there was only more trouble. It was Jeff's game night, and Bud had promised he'd go. He was late and Jen had gone on without him. He gobbled a sandwich and almost called Holly, since he was alone in the house and she was back now, too. But he thought the better of it and instead raced across town to the Lawton Cougars field, where the JV team was playing its home Thursday night game under the lights.
