raise his hands, but Lamar, with his great iron-pumper's strength, would bring the ax down again and again in a rain of killing blows. It excited Lamar. He wanted to do it so bad!
They paused to gab a bit at her workbench, and the cop said something that Lamar didn't catch. But when the cop started to examine the car, Lamar slid through the darkness and got almost within spitting distance. He could lunge out now at any instant and take the man down.
His hand tightened and loosened on the ax shaft and he tried to control his excitement and think through the red rage that clouded his brain so that he could figure out the right thing. Hell, maybe he should just do it and to hell with it.
But he waited.
“Hah,” said Bud.
He stood up, a little disappointed. The old, once-red Tercel lay blistering in the sun. Its plaid interior had faded, and was anyway jammed with blankets. Spots of rust flaked the left rear fender, and the rear bumper also looked rotted out a bit.
Then he leaned back again, looking at the escutcheon on the old tire.
Slowly he walked around, one by one, looking at them.
Nope! Goddammit, nope.
The tires were old, all right, but they were Bridgestones, not Goodyears.
For some reason, he'd just had a suspicion this one might be the one, the woman's nervousness, the isolation, the anomalies of the TV and the hard male work put into the place.
“Well, thanks very much, Miss. Tun. I see I can scratch your name off the list. No ma'am, I don't believe you shot up any Denny's restaurants lately.”
“Not in this lifetime, at any rate,” she said with a little laugh.
Bud disengaged abruptly from the situation. It was of no more interest to him.
“Well, I'll be getting out of your hair now. Have to get over to Granite.”
“Sure, Mr. Pewtie. Now, I can't interest you in one of them pots?”
Bud looked back. One of them really did leap out at him:
ocher glaze, black diagonals, and a bright orange sunburst, like the end of a world.
“Could you sell me one?”
“I get fifteen dollars for the small ones and twenty-five for the big ones.”
Ouch! Not cheap.
“But I'll tell you what. Your choice, ten bucks.”
-'Hell, that's a bargain if ever I heard of one.”
Fortunately the pot he chose wasn't a big one, so he forked over the ten without feeling terribly greedy. He didn't as a rule like to take little extras with the badge but hell… once in a while didn't hurt a thing.
She fetched the pot, brought it to him, and the two of them walked back through the barn to his truck.
“Come on back,” she said.
“I enjoy visitors.”
“Thanks, Miss. Tun. Good luck to you.”
He got in.
Now if they were just lucky a little bit longer. If O’Dell or Richard didn't come walking out of the house.
Lamar watched from the pool of shadow behind the barn door. His heart was thumping. Pewtie was too far away to get with the ax now. It was in the hands of God.
He diddled with the car a bit, picked up his radio, and called in what Lamar assumed was his 10-24—task completed—and then with majestic leisure started the truck. It took him another minute to back out of the yard and then three more minutes to pull down the dirt road to the macadam, take a left, and then disappear.
There seemed to be a long pause in the day. Lamar found that he was doused with sweat. Unlike the race out of Deimy's he didn't feel exhilaration; he just felt the total numbing meltdown of shock that attends survivors of near death experiences. He didn't like it a bit.
He looked up. Ruta Beth came out of the house, almost in a daze. She cupped her hands as if she were about to call to him.
“No,” he said, loud, but not a shout.
“Don't call. Don't look left or right. Just mosey into the barn, in case.”
At that moment O’Dell opened the door, looked out in confusion.
“O’Dell, stay where you are. No, wait—and make sure the shotguns is loaded. Keep Richard in the house.”
O’Dell nodded and ducked back in.
Eventually, Ruta Beth came on over.
“You was in the barn the whole time.”
“I was. One silly move out of that boy and I'd have cut him open with this ax.”
“He had two guns. I saw them both. One under his coat, the other in his belt.”
“Probably had more, goddamn,” said Lamar.
“That boy was loaded for bear. The car. It was the car he wanted to see, honey?”
“Yes it was. Daddy.”
“Tell me 'exactly what he asked.
“Xactly. I have to know the words.”
Numbly, Ruta Beth reiterated Bud's explanation.
“I see,” said Lamar, concentrating mightily.
“He said he had to 'check it off.” They still use that old one?”
“That's what he said. Daddy.”
“Now, honey, you think real hard. Tell me the whole talk. Not just what he said, but what you said. I have to know if you said something that gave too much away and a sly old dog like him might sniff it out.”
Laboriously, she recreated the conversation, now and then prodded by Lamar's insistent probing. It went on for ten minutes. But then she said, 'I tried hard, Lamar. I didn't do nothing on purpose.”
“Honey, you done great. See, he caught us in a mistake.
We should have stories prepared. Last thing you ever want to do is try and be making stuff up as you go along.
Trip up too easy. No ma'am, got to have your story straight up front, got to have it worked out and tested, that's how you do that kind of work. Goddamn, Ruta Beth, I must say, you got to be some kind of natural at that kind of work.”
“Have you figured it out? Why he was here?”
Lamar thought a little harder, and then he had it.
“Tires,” he said.
“That was soft dust this side of the Red. Sure enough we left tracks in it. They must have got a good tire print and the F-fucking-B-I done ’em the models of cars them tires could fit. So they're just wading through the DMV listings, hoping to turn up the right car with the right tires and the right fucking boys. They're so goddamn worried, they even got old Bud Pewtie, his hide so full of buckshot still he can't hardly walk, out doing shit bird work.”
He was laughing now. He saw the joke in it.
Ruta Beth stared at him in horror.
“But Lamar,” she said.
“They was right. I got them tires two years ago when they was marked down because the tire place said Goodyear had discontinued the line and they just wanted to reduce inventory.”
“Not them tires, no ma'am. Night of the' party I went out, remember?
Goddamn, I got to thinking about the ways we could slip up and only one I hadn't covered was the goddamn tires. I swapped ’em with Bridgestones I lifted off a Hyundai Excel. Hah! Old Bud Pewtie thinks he's so goddamn smart. He ain't as smart as no Lamar Pye.”
CHAPTER 20
