jeans, a jean jacket, even a pair of cowboy boots, much polished, much worn. A stack of magazines: Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Gun World, and a profusion of stroke books. Bud paged through them: Penthouse and Playboy and a few more obscure ones that seemed to show women in stockings or women bent over, spreading their asses, exposing their tulip like assholes or leaning back and ramming plastic or rubber dildoes into amazingly prehensile vaginas. Again, Bud felt slimy, as if Lamar were drawing him in, making him party to Lamar's own inner horror. He set the magazines down, found a well-thumbed copy of The Picture History of the Third Reich. He found something called The Turner Diaries and another called The Last Clarion for the White Race.
Aryan brotherhood shit.
At last he came to an album of sorts. He pulled it out.
lamar's book, it said in blocky letters, the same letters he recognized from the back of the picture of O’Dell's mama.
He opened it up, encountering a crumbling yellow news clipping from the Arkansas Gazette of August 1955.
hero trooper slays two before dying, the headline read, and Bud made out the murky one-column shot of a man identified as 'Trooper Sergeant Swagger.”
A State Trooper Sergeant shot and killed two suspected murderers on Route 71 north of Fort Smith yesterday afternoon, before dying himself of gunshot wounds inflicted by the two men.
Dead were Sergeant Earl Lee Swagger, 45, of Polk County, a Marine Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the Pacific in World War II; and Jim M. Pye, 27, of Fort Smith and his cousin Buford 'Bub” Pye, 21, also of Fort Smith.
State Police give this account of the event:
Yesterday morning two men answering the descriptions of Jim M. Pye and Buford Pye robbed an A&P in downtown Fort Smith, shooting two employees. They escaped in a white 1954 Ford. Authorities immediately began roadblock procedures, but the two assailants evaded the roadblocks.
They were spotted by Sergeant Swagger on Route 71; he gave pursuit and managed to drive the vehicle off the road near Winslow. Attempting to arrest the men, he was shot in the lower chest and stomach.
As the two men made their getaway on foot. Sergeant Swagger shot and killed Buford Pye. Then, he trailed Jim Pye for nearly three hundred yards into the corn fields where he exchanged shots again with his assailant.
Pye was hit in the eye and the stomach and was found dead at the spot.
Sergeant Swagger returned to the car to await medical attention but bled to death before help could arrive.
He leaves a wife, Eria June, and a 9-year-old son, Bob Lee.
Wow, thought Bud. They knew how to build a lawman in those days.
Wonder if I'd have the guts for that action?
Rather than contemplate so melancholy a topic. Bud gave the page a turn. Next was a report card, from the Arkansas State Reformatory Middle School, dated June 1962.
Lamar got a bunch of 3s and 4s in his subjects—As and Bs, that was—but some educator had written:
Lamar shows great potential when his classes interest him, but his tendency for getting in fights or disruptive behavior threatens his academic achievement. He must learn impulse control. Additionally, he sexually assaulted two younger boys; he clearly has overly mature aggressive tendencies as well as serious resentment of authority. He had better be given therapy quickly before he develops serious personality pathologies.
Of course he wasn't; of course he did.
The next page, another news clipping, from the Anadarko Call-Bulletin of January 1970:
FARMER FOUND SLAIN ON PERKINS VILLE ROAD.
The story simply related how a farmer named Jackson Pye—the third worthless Pye brother. Bud concluded —had been stabbed to death by a mysterious assailant as he walked home along a country road from a nearby tavern.
There were no witnesses. The report also said he was survived by his son O’Dell.
Another page: convenience store robberies continue.
Another: local man arrested on rape charges.
Another: bail denied to violent offender gave.
Another: gave escapes from county lockup.
Bud riffled through the pages: the raw verbs of crime headlines yelled up at him from the seventies, and the crimes, mostly robbery and theft, now and then a murder and a sentencing. Lamar had become the compleat career criminal, master of a dozen violent trades, his acts marked by brazenness, violence, and a certain nutty courage. Lamar had balls, no doubt about it.
pyes convicted in pusateri killing read the last one, an account of how Lamar and O’Dell shot a motorcycle gang snitch in the head and dumped him, how he miraculously survived to identify them before dying.
SENTENCE FIFTEEN YEARS TO LIFE FOR EACH KILLER COUSIN.
The album was Lamar's life, what he was proud of, his resume. What would you do with such a man? How could he possibly be reclaimed? He came from criminal stock, he evinced antisocial behavior from an early age, was unnaturally aggressive, and took to the lifestyle of the professional criminal with extraordinary ease. He was born to be a criminal, that was all.
Bud put the book down. There was nothing at all here, except a warning for any and all who dared mess with Lamar Pye without backup and lots of firepower Put him in your sights and blow him away, that's all.
He glanced at his watch.
He'd been at it three hours! Jesus Christ! And Holly was still waiting outside.
He reached for the pile of slick magazines to reinsert in the box, but by their very slickness, they fell to the floor, skidding and opening.
Bud cursed and bent to retrieve them and then noticed something strange. Across the rolling mountainous breasts of the Penthouse Pet of August 1991, there was inscribed some sort of figure. It wasn't a drawing, but the impression of a drawing that had been done on a paper laid across it.
Bud picked it up, tried to find some angle of light that would reveal its secret. That didn't work; the image kept collapsing as the light changed. It occurred to him to do a tracing. He remembered that Richard had some light paper in the art supplies in his box and he quickly got it out. He laid the paper across Miss. August, only slightly obscuring the thrust of her tits, the prong like tightness of her nipples; with a piece of charcoal, he delicately rubbed the paper, just enough pressure to leave the charcoal everywhere except in the grooves, where it sank under pressure.
When he was done, he looked at what he had brought out: It was the image of a lion.
CHAPTER 13
Mar go bye-bye wif Rutie-girl.
Dell go barn, see moo cow Plus Wi-chud. Moocow niceynice. Soft.
Smell toasty. Eyeballs brow ny like poop.
Big eyeballs. So still. Eyeballs so brown. Touchy moo cow moo cow go 'Moooooooooooo,” Wi-chud go 'Nonononono!
Wichud girl!
Wichud girly-girl, like Rutie-girl!
Wichud always Boo-hoo, like girly. Wichud baby thing.
Then… Rutie-girl back. No Mar. Where Mar? Mar go? Mar go away far?
WHERE MAR?
WHERE MAR?
Dell feel bad. Dell hurt. Dell scarey-scare.
WHERE MAR?
