fanned wetly over his broad back. He breathed through his mouth, drawing the air over a dry, dead tongue. Nothing moved on his body; he looked as passive as a piece of stone, though the veins on his muscular right arm were distended and now and then a rogue impulse caused one of his remaining fingers to twitch.
He'd been sitting there since three o’clock, when he'd returned from another of his long night walks.
Richard approached gingerly. He felt as if he were a small boy in the presence of greatness.
He stood, waiting to be recognized.
After a long time, Lamar finally looked over.
Richard saw two glistening tracks running down his cheeks, which connected with no knowledge of Lamar that he'd ever had, until at last he recognized that tears had left their mark. Lamar was weeping silently.
“Lamar, are you all right?”
“Oh, I'm hurting something mighty, Richard,” Lamar said.
“I'm hurting so fierce I doubt if I'm a-going to make it.”
“Please, Lamar. What would we do without you? You can't talk like that. You've got to make it. It always seems darkest just before the dawn.”
“Goddamn Richard, that poor boy, he never'd done a thing wrong if I hadn't a-steered him to it. It's me should be lying on that slab, not him. And I promised him I'd take him to his mama's grave and I never done that. And now he ain't even going to git no funeral. They going to dump him in some goddamned pauper's grave and that's the end of it.
It's so sad. It kills me how sad it is.”
“Lamar, I finished the drawing. I'll put the colors in tomorrow if you like it.”
He held it out to Lamar, who took it and examined it closely in silence for some time. Then Richard heard a shuffle, a choke, a sob, as Lamar broke down completely.
Richard stood there feeling as if he'd violated some immense privacy of Lamar To see a man so bold and strong and fearless weeping hysterically—it befuddled Richard. It was like seeing his own father crying, when all the signals always said that fathers don't cry. His never did. Mothers cry. But his never did, either.
But then Lamar looked over and said, 'Richard, goddamn, what you done here, that's wonderful. The Baby in heaven, Bud Pewtie in hell.
Goddamn, Richard, you are a great artist. Just looking at that lets me imagine it in some way I couldn't before. I do know that he's up there, a-waitin' on me. Goddamn, Richard, boy, it's like you done lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.”
“Why thank you, Lamar,” said Richard, stunned at the response.
Then Lamar looked at the bottom part, the hell part.
“Now what's this?” he said, his features darkening.
“I thought I told you he was supposed to burn, like in hell.”
“Lamar, Lamar, I thought hard about it, and I came up with something different. Something so… strange it would make you famous. Famous forever. It's so horrible.”
Lamar's features knitted as he tried to penetrate the image.
Gradually, they lightened.
“His face,” he said.
“You got me doing something to his face.”
“Yes,” Richard admitted shyly.
“I don't get it, Richard.”
“What is a man, Lamar? A man is many things, and you can take them from him, but the one thing, if you take it, you take everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Everything. Not his life, not his family, not his balls, but—his face.”
“I'm cutting his face off?”
“Everything. Eyes, nose, tongue, lips, teeth. You've taken his face.
You've left him without a face. Consider it!
It's so… extreme.”
Lamar looked at Richard and a strange light came into his eyes. And then Richard saw that it was respect.
Lamar suddenly embraced Richard, held him tightly.
“Richard, I think you done helped me find the power.
You and the Lord, Richard, you both done helped me find the power.”
“You can go on?”
“Go on? Hell, boy, we gonna git us a Bud Pewtie. And his goddamned family. And this time, we'll leave a ruckus in the chicken coop they talk about in Oklahoma for a hundred years! You mess with the Pyes, they'll say, and the Pyes will have their day! And we'll leave him for all to find —without a face!”
CHAPTER 25
They began to come in the night. He could not deny them.
He wasn't sure if they were dreams or fantasies, but they always came between the hours of four and six while he was in a semi wakeful state, involving visions and positions as yet untried: smoky memories, these visions, all of Holly.
He'd roll over and see Jen sleeping, and wonder. Why, oh why aren't you enough for me?
But the fact was: She wasn't enough, or at least now that he'd had the other, younger woman so often and knew how she tasted (salty) and how she smelled (musky) and the consistency of her hair (tight) and all the secret parts of her that he could touch to make her squeal and moan.
Maybe it was just the closeness of the brush with death; whatever, now he needed flesh to confirm that he was unmistakably alive. He wanted Holly's flesh. He did not, god damn his soul to hell and goddamn his allegiances to hell, want his wife's flesh.
“I have to go,” he said to Jen in the morning.
She just looked up at him. She was a handsome woman, near his own age, with a square, beautiful face, now completely unimpressed and beyond surprise. Her eyes just bore into him. He sensed her remoteness and her passage into a zone beyond disappointment, as if to suggest there were few words left.
“My guns,” he said.
“I called that OSBI lieutenant, Henderson. They're out of the state ballistics lab now, they all been tested. He says I can sign for ’em.
Sure would feel better with my own guns, and not somebody else's.” He'd been given a department Smith .357 for self-defense, just in case, but somehow it lacked the proprietary intimacy of the ones he'd put so many holes in targets and O’Dell with.
“So you're going to go fetch them?” Jen said suspiciously.
“Yes, thought I might. Then I thought I'd stop at the range and run a box through each and see how it felt. Then I'll be right back.”
“You haven't been 'right back' in four months, but I suppose if you have to go, you have to go.”
Bud tried a smile. It didn't work. He knew he shouldn't appear too anxious, but whenever he 'acted,” he knew his movements seemed awkward and forced.
However, today he knew he had to have Holly and damn the consequences, and so after dawdling over another cup of coffee and reading a sports section whose scores he already knew by heart, he at last got up, threw on his hat, slid the generic Smith into a belt holster and a jacket over that, though it was hot, and set out.
He blinked. The Percodan knocked out the sharp jabs but couldn't reach deep enough into his nervous system to shut down the more general throbbing in his limbs and joints that made him aware of every movement; once again, he felt ancient. He no longer wore the eyepatch, but some moisture came and he blinked it back as he slid behind the Ford's wheel. As he climbed in, he fired something off in his leg wound, where the pellet had sunk so deep, and a momentary flare of pain blossomed inside. He shook it off and pulled the door shut.
