reaper came for them, they weren't ready and it just split them open, there where they stood. But Lamar knew from more than seeing it happen:
Once a nigger trying to make a name for himself had jumped him blindside in the yard at Crabtree State, meaning to rip his guts out right there. Lamar often wondered if it was the hand of God or the breath of the Devil blowing in his ear or some kind of animal thing that felt a push in the air; he spun a cunt hair before the knife reached his spine, caught it with his left wrist (he would always wear the jagged scar), and head butted the man to death in approximately thirty seconds, pile-driving the top of his skull into the bridge of the man's nose with all the power in his body until it was done.
It was judged self-defense, the only time Lamar had ever won anything at a hearing; he later heard the boy had come for him in order to impress the Tulsa Afriques, the baddest nigger gang in that pen. He was hoping to get in; Lamar sent him to his weeping mama in a bag, and oddly enough Toussaint Du Noir, as the leading black punk of the Afriques had renamed himself, sent Lamar a carton of cigarettes for getting rid of a wannabe. But they were only Kools, and Lamar traded them for a couple of blow jobs from a bitch named Roy.
But Lamar was sure that Bud would have such an intuition, too, and therefore wanted to steer clear. So he had told his crew to wait in the Trans Am, which was parked a couple of rows behind Bud's easy-to-identify Ford.
Lamar enjoyed sitting there. He was with the fans from the visiting team, Lawton Senior's cross town rivals, all of them good hard-working people of the sort Lamar had no problem with.
That goddamn Pewtie kid was good. Lamar knew him almost right away, from the squareness of his head and the same alert way his father stood. He guessed Bud had been a good athlete, too, for such things tended to run in families, just as his daddy had been a hell of a prison ballplayer and he, Lamar, had once been a good prison leagues center fielder when he still had his speed.
But this young Pewtie could run anything down in left field, and had a good arm. Christ, though, he could hit a ton; it was the fifth inning and he'd already drilled a double and a single. But it was the way he attacked the plate when he hit, unafraid, legs apart, head straight, just waiting for the ball to come toward him so he could demolish it.
It was his hunger that Lamar felt up there in the bleachers.
And that somehow made him hate the lawman even more; it wasn't enough that he took from Lamar the one person that he'd cared about, but that he had so much: wife, great kid, a place in a world that would forever shun such as Lamar Pye. It was a world that would only know him through fear.
Lamar sipped a Coke, adjusted his baseball cap, looking for all the world like just another working-class dad watching the high school kids play ball, all the while nursing his rage into something so hot it was cold.
It felt delicious. It was coming.
As a present, he looked across the way to the big state policeman sitting in the stands, yelling after his boy, and he thought: Goddamn, mister, what you got coming. What you got coming.
A last pop-up seemed to rise until it would bring rain but then fell, accelerating lazily in the bright night lamps' light, and an infielder nabbed it. That was it. Game over.
Not a bad one, either. Jeff had gone two for four, stolen a base, and made two nice running catches in the deep outfield.
He'd made a good throw, too, a special victory, because his arm was the problematical part of his game. Lawton-won easily, eight to two, and the game had essentially been over since the fourth inning, when Lawton put six runs on the board. No drama.
That's how Bud wanted it.
He looked at his watch. It was eight thirty-five. Plenty of time.
He milled through the departing crowd, slipped through the fence, and ducked into the dugout, where boys and parents had gathered. The coach gave a nice little speech about what a great team this had been, even if they didn't make it to the state tournament, and he may have had more talented teams but he'd never had one that had worked so hard, and that next year looked really good, and he hoped all the sophomores and juniors would play Legion ball this summer.
There was a polite smattering of applause.
Then the team broke into its cliques and the players began to filter out in twos and threes, some with parents, others without.
Jeff slipped up to him.
“We were going to meet at Nick's,” he said.
“You know, like we always do.”
“You have a ride?”
“I'm going with Tom and Jack and Jack's girl.”
“Don't stay out too late. Don't worry your mother any.”
“I won't. Dad.”
The moment hung between them.
“Okay,” Bud said, 'now I'm going to take care of that business I told you about. And everything's going to be all right.”
“I know, Dad.”
“You just go and have a good time. Don't stay too late.
No beer.”
“Yes sir.”
Jeff slipped away, engulfed in a tide of boys, and Bud knew it was time to go.
Lamar was just a little bit nervous. He left the parking lot and parked a hundred yards or so down the road, so that he wouldn't have to start out of the nearly empty lot exactly as Bud did, because such a thing might give him away to a sharp-eyed man. He swallowed.
He was driving himself because he didn't trust Ruta Beth or Richard.
But still, it was a touchy thing: to follow Bud's truck through traffic, ever so gentle, never losing touch, never being too tight, just close enough to track his rabbit to its hole. It was plain, old-fashioned hunting.
But he'd helped things along; after leaving the game in the seventh inning, he'd placed a piece of reflecting tape flat under each of Bud's taillights, low on the bumper; that way, he could drop back a hundred or so yards and still keep sight of the truck by the unusual pattern.
He didn't have to see the truck proper, only the lights.
He watched Bud now leave the rinky-dink stadium, among the last. The lawman was by himself, moving with something akin to melancholy that Lamar couldn't quite figure, though he read hesitancy and regret in the body language. Before the trooper had seemed to swagger. He was under a goddamn black cloud. Even Ruta Beth noticed it.
“What the hell he so down for?” she wondered.
“Yeah, Lamar,” said Richard, 'you said the boy got lots of hits.”
“Who knows?” asked Lamar. He thought he was sad now, imagine what he was going to feel.
Bud got in, turned on the lights, pulled out. Lamar turned on his lights and sped down the road so that he actually beat Bud's entrance into traffic, making his man wait while he lazed on by. Bud pulled into traffic behind Lamar, but Lamar wouldn't let himself look; some little thing like that, a look at the wrong time, and the whole goddamned shaky thing could fall apart.
-'There he—”
“Shut up, Richard. Goddamn it, boy, keep your mouth shut and look right straight ahead.”
Lamar slowed just a little; with a hasty spurt. Bud dipped into the oncoming lane and shot by, lost in his own thoughts. Good—that meant Bud couldn't have picked up someone coming into the traffic behind him, then hooking up; he'd have to be a genius to pick up the cue.
Lamar dropped a few car lengths behind.
“Can we turn on the radio?” asked Richard.
“Shut up, Richard,” said Ruta Beth.
The cars ambled through the early evening traffic in the fading light.
Up and down the streets, the streetlamps and shop signs were coming on, blurring in the windshield, making it hard to track the set of lights that was Bud's truck. But his concentration was so intense it was as if he were
