away.
Bud listened to the sudden silence.
He felt chilled, and missed his sons. He wasn't sure if he'd done right or wrong. He yearned to call Jen or Holly or have his old life back.
He began to shiver.
Richard had never heard anyone howl in such pure animal pain before.
“AAAAAAAH!” Lamar cried, bucking and sobbing in the back seat, holding his crippled and bloody hand. There was blood everywhere, all over the seats, on the sideboards, everywhere.
Meanwhile, curled in total concentration, her face grim and unyielding, Ruta Beth drove mindlessly onward.
“Slow down, goddammit,” yelled Lamar once through his pain, when he thought she was going too fast.
But if they expected squad cars rushing their way, the howl of sirens, ambulances, helicopters, whatever, it didn't happen. They drove on through darkness.
“We've got to find him help,” said Richard.
“He'll bleed to death.”
Again, through his pain, Lamar screamed out.
“You shut up, Richard, goddammit. It ain't bleeding no more. It's only pain. I kin git through pain. Ruta Beth, you git us home, you hear?”
“He'll bleed to death,” shrieked Richard.
“It is bleeding.”
“Shut up, Richard,” said Ruta Beth, 'let Daddy decide.”
Lamar tried to lie still but the pain was intense.
“Should we dump the car, Lamar?” asked Richard.
“Maybe they have a description.”
“And what then, you moron. They'll find it and trace it and beat us to the farm. I don't think that sonofabitch got a good lookiesee, he was so goddamned busy jumping down those goddamned stairs. He didn't have no time to get no read on the license plate, tell you that. Oh—” A sudden spurt of pain seemed to jack through him; he tensed and wailed.
It seemed to come like that, in spurts; or when they took a corner and the centrifugal force spun blood toward his wound and the pain flamed again.
“Daddy, you sure you're all right?”
“Just drive, goddamn it, Ruta Beth. Where'n the hell was you? We's in there shooting it out with that Johnny for a hour before you came in.
Whyn't you jump him in the goddamn lot?”
“Lamar, baby, we didn't know he was a cop. He looked like a cowboy, in a pickup truck, that's all. Then all hell's breakin' loose and Richard and I are trying to figure out what the hell to do. So I just finally goose her, figuring any other way, either you or he shoots us as we come through the doorway. Couldn't a been more than a minute.”
“Felt like a goddamn day. Oh, that fucker was good, shoots me in the goddamned hand.”
There was a silence.
Then Ruta Beth said, 'What about the baby?”
“The baby is dead. That goddamned Smokey must have hit” him fifty goddamned times. I never saw a boy soak up so much lead and keep a-going. Goddamn, O’Dell, he was a man, O’Dell was—AWWWWWWWW.”
A spark of pain erupted somewhere inside him. Then he was quiet.
Ruta Beth began to cry.
“Poor O’Dell,” she said, 'he never meant no harm to nobody. If the world had left him alone, heda left it alone.
Oh, that's so sad. He never got to see his mama's grave neither. Oh, Lamar, oh Daddy, that's so wrong what they done to him.”
Richard just looked out at the dark Oklahoma country side as it flowed by, more emptiness than he'd ever seen before in his life.
“How that fucker got there, that's what I want to know.
How did he know we'd be there?”
“Maybe it was just bad luck,” said Richard.
“No luck is that bad, Richard. It was that goddamned Bud Pewtie, that trooper sergeant. Fuck has more lives on him than a goddamn black cat.
I blowed him away twice at that farm and still he man tracks me down, that fucker.
How'd he do it? How'd he know? He some kind of Dick Tracy or something'? Is he goddamn Columbo? Is he the Pink Panther? What the fuck? How'd he know?”
The question hung in the silence.
Lamar lay back, rocking gently.
Then he sat back up.
“Only one goddamned way a cop know anything these days. Someone drops a fucking dime to buy some time off.
You got that gun, Richard? That heavy one?”
“Yes I do, Lamar.”
“Well, give her here.”
Awkwardly, Richard handed it to Lamar, who sat up in the seat to take it. He cocked it and pointed it at Richard's head.
“God, Lamar, you—”
“You sure you ain't been talking to anybody, boy?
You sure? I ought to blow your head off just to be sure.”
“Please Lamar. Oh, please, please. I swear to you. When would I? How could I? I didn't even know we'd end up there. Who knew? You wait, the papers will say why he's there.”
“Ahh, it ain't that. You don't have the guts to betray me,” Lamar said. He uncocked the Smith and chucked it on the seat. Then he lay back again.
“Goddamn, it hurts,” he said.
“Oh, Christ, it hurts so bad. That goddamned Bud Pewtie!”
Bud had no sense of time. He hid in the basement for what felt like hours and hours. His scalp wound began to sting unbearably and would not go away, but at the same time his leg wound throbbed; the second was somehow a deeper and more troubling pain. At one point he touched his face and realized it had been ripped to shreds. The vision in one eye was blurred, as if he had a stone the size of a cinder block in it.
His mind blacked out into shock, but he never really lost consciousness.
He remembered the last camping trip, in the Wichita Mountain Preserve.
It would have been about 1991. It was the last time they were really a family. Russ was a freshman and little Jeff would have been in the seventh grade, already having troubles, grades that just weren't happening and serious self-doubts. Bud remembered wishing he could reach the boy, cut through whatever ailed him, could put his hands on him, and say, Hey, it'll be all right.
Bud lost himself in this world for quite a bit: he remembered how green the world had seemed up there, how pure.
They camped in a Nimrod that he'd pulled behind his truck, high up on a ridge, with much of the state spread out before him, and the air so clean it almost ached to breathe it in.
He'd been so happy. They'd loved each other so much, even if no one had said a thing about it. He remembered the shouts of the kids and Jen's pleasure in being out of the house, and the sense of the world being forgiving and wide with possibility.
Then he saw the light.
The beam caught him and he blinked. Behind it he made out crouched shapes, the Weaver position, shooting arm straight, support arm locked underneath, the posture somewhat bending the body shape.
“Don't you twitch, mister, goddammit. Show me your hands.”
