a striped sports shirt. He looked like a lawyer at a party. Ruta Beth looked almost cheery in a white polyester pantsuit that had once been her mama's and a pair of loafers. Lamar quickly changed into a nice leisure suit in gray and a colorful shirt; he could keep his handguns out of sight that way.
He went to the mirror in the bathroom. He saw the same old. Lamar, with that thick, friendly face, that mashed nose where the Cherokee deputies had pounded him all those years ago, the open, alert eyes.
What is wrong with this picture? The hair, that's what. Too much hair. Looked like a bjker or an Indian, or some other kind of trash.
“Ruta Beth,” he called.
“Come cut all my hair off.”
The team was already on the field in sweats when Bud and Jeff pulled in. It was the last game of the season, and already parents had begun to gather in the parking lot. Bud could see the other team's bus—eisenhower h .” it said-and knew their players would probably be in the locker room suiting up.
“Well, here we are,” said Jeff.
“Let me go 'long with you to talk to him. This goddamned hero business may do us some good.”
The two walked under the bleachers, around a gap in the fence, and around the edge of the dugout. Ahead of them, on the diamond, a lean black assistant coach was fun going grounders to the infielders. Bud watched the ball snap and hop across the green and watched as the boys bent gracefully to scoop it up, always magically snaring it on the right bounce then pirouetting as they fired across the diamond to the first baseman, who then fired the ball to the catcher who served it up to the coach. In the outfield, boys were drawing beads on descending balls, gathering them in and then launching long throws.
Bud and his son ducked into the dugout, where an elderly man sat cross legged, fussing with a lineup card.
“Coach?”
The old man looked up.
“Well, hello there, Jeff. Sergeant Pewtie.”
“I'm out, sir,” Jeff said.
“I was wondering if it was possible if I could play?”
“Technically, both boys' parents have dropped charges against Jeff,” said Bud.
“The magistrate released him in my care on my word we'd find some counseling for him. It turned out Jeff didn't do no serious damage, and their parents acknowledge that what they done was stupid and what Jeff done, while also stupid, was understandable.”
“So you ain't going off to prison?”
“Doesn't look like it, sir,” said Jeff.
“It'd mean a lot to Jeff if he got to play,” said Bud.
“Well, I think it'd mean a lot to the team if Jeff got to play. Let me make a call.”
The coach stood and went to a pay phone a few feet down under the bleachers and dropped his own quarter and did some asking and some listening and some more asking, and then came back.
“Well, Jeff,” he said, 'You're to be suspended. For three days. I can't legally allow a suspended boy to participate in athletics. That's the rule.”
“I see,” said Jeff, but the disappointment broke on his face like a wave. He swallowed and seemed to tear up just a bit, too.
“Well, sir,” said Bud, 'thanks for giving us a hearing.
The rules are to be obeyed.”
“That they are, Sergeant Pewtie,” the coach said, 'and to a 'T.” And the 'T' says that the suspension doesn't begin formally until tomorrow.
Far as I'm concerned this boy's still in school and he better get his ass out on that field before I start to chew on it.”
Jeff lit up like a candle.
“I'll go get my uniform.”
He raced off.
“You're not going to get in any trouble for this?” Bud said.
“Hell,” said the old man, 'I been here for thirty-four years and won ’em seven state championships. What can they do? Yell at me?”
Bud shook his hand.
“I appreciate what you're doing for the boy. He's a good kid. He deserves a break.”
“Yes sir. Sergeant Pewtie, I agree—he is a good kid and he does deserve a break. I hope this helps him.”
Bud slipped out of the dugout.
The stands were beginning to fill. He checked his watch.
It was five p . and the game began at six, would probably be over by eight-thirty.
An overwhelming melancholy came over him.
Well, it was time.
He went to a refreshment stand that had just opened and bought a Coke to fight the dust and the phlegm in his throat.
Its cold sweetness plunged down his gullet, momentarily energizing him.
But then it was gone, the cup tossed into a steel garbage barrel, and there it still was, what he had to do.
He walked over to the same phone the old coach had used to call the school, dropped in his quarter, and dialed the number.
She answered on the third ring.
“Hi,” he said wanly.
“Well, Bud Pewtie, bless my heart, my parts are still abuzzing for all the attention you paid them today. Fact is, don't think they'll settle down until sun goes down. Ain't felt this good in years.”
“Well, I'm glad” was all he could think to say.
“Now, what do I owe this honor to? Usually, I don't hear from such as yourself until late at night.”
Her voice was so happy! He could see her face, all lit up, the way the joy came into her eyes. He had never been able to please a woman so.
It had been that way with them from the start.
“Ah,” he said, 'I'm at Jeff's game. Probably be here, oh, till eight-thirty, nine o’clock. It's his last game of the season. I'm hoping he'll have a good one.”
“I know he will, Bud.”
“Anyway, Jeffll probably go with some of the boys to a pizza place or something and I thought maybe I'd drop by after the game.”
“Bud!” she said, squealing with delight. But then her delight stopped.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
He lied. What was the point of hurting her now, of making her suffer for three hours until he could get over there?
He didn't have it in him.
“No, no, nothing like that. It's just, I have some time, no one's going to notice where I am or why, and I thought maybe we could have a beer or something.”
“Oh, Bud, it's a date. You haven't taken me on a date in months! I don't believe you've ever taken me on a date. I'll see you then.”
“Yes you will,” he said, hanging up.
Lamar sat by himself, up top of the Lawton Senior High bleachers. He was aware of the cop nearly thirty rows away, on the other side of the horseshoe of scaffolds and seats that embraced the base-paths of the diamond. But he never looked directly at the man, for he had a feel for the magic power of eyes—whatever it is that makes some men feel the pressure of eyes on them, and turn at the last goddamn second to avoid the shank sweeping toward them to end their lives. He'd seen it on the yard enough times: men who tuned their nerves and were always right on the goddamned edge, prickly and fast and fucking dangerous. Others just didn't pay attention, and when the
