“Why are you doing this to me?”
Lamar thought it would be a bigger house. He was disappointed.
He knew cops weren't rich unless they were crooked, and he didn't think Bud was crooked. But he thought they did all right. This little, run-down house?
“He can't be doing too well,” he said.
“He ain't doing as good as us,” said Ruta Beth.
“This is a shitty neighborhood.”
“Really,” said Richard from the back, 'it's just a crummy civil service job. He doesn't make twenty-five thousand a year, I bet.”
They were parked on the street, half a block down from Bud's house.
They could see his big truck parked out front.
“We going to hit them now. Daddy? In, out, bang, bang?”
“Let me think some,” said Lamar.
It was a sweet thought: blow through the door just like at the Stepfords', catch him completely flat-footed, and pump out 12-gauge until nothing in the house lived. Then head out fast.
But… he hadn't realized it would be in such a dense little neighborhood. At the sound of shots there'd be witnesses everywhere; they'd get a fast ID, and before Lamar could get them back to the farm, the law would be on him.
Second, Pewtie was fast himself, that was the trouble. He was wearing a coat, he was probably carrying, Richard might panic, who knew what might happen? If he got to that goddamned Colt, all kinds of hell might happen.
Plus, he didn't know who was there. Maybe the whole goddamn SWAT team.
It was a SWAT team birthday party or something.
Lamar had to fight to control that part of him that screamed to go in and leave hair and blood on the walls.
But he held steady, letting the smart part of his brain take over.
“Okay,” he said.
“We just going to stay calm. Now Richard, I want you to get out and mosey on down the street. Don't stop, don't slow down none, don't stare, goddammit, don't stare, and then you come on back. You let me know what you can see, but don't you push it, boy, or I'll have your balls for breakfast.”
“Yes, Lamar.”
Richard got out of the car, did not slam but rather eased shut the door. Maybe he was beginning to learn a little something: he began to mosey on down.
“Daddy, what you thinking?”
“I just want to play this sucker really right. That's all, hon. Then we done our duty to O’Dell and we be off.”
“I can't wait. I'll do anything you want, you know that, Daddy.”
“I know, sweetie. You are the best.”
He felt her hand touch his neck, gently.
“I could come up front now and put my mouth to you.
You could have me in the mouth,” she said.
“It would help you relax a bit. I don't mind.”
The idea didn't appeal to him.
“Not now,” he said.
“We got work to do.”
He watched as Richard shuffled along the sidewalk slowly, seemed to pause just a second, and then moved on down the road. Then he repeated himself, coming back. It seemed to take forever. But finally Richard got in.
Lamar started the car, drove down the block, and turned before he asked what he'd seen.
“They're having some kind of fight or something. He's yelling at her, she's crying. She came over to him, he yelled something and she went away.”
“Sounds like my mother and daddy,” said Ruta Beth.
“You see anybody else?” said Lamar, turning another corner.
“No sir. No one.”
“You didn't see that boy of his?”
“No. He must still be out.”
“Okay, okay.”
Lamar rounded another corner.
“Where we going. Daddy?”
“I'm just going to come in from another angle, and park in a new place.
I don't want no citizen seeing peoples sitting in a car and calling the cops. That's all we need. Goddamn, I wish his boy was there. That's what would make it really good.”
He returned to the street and parked on the other side, this time well beyond Bud's.
“Okay,” he said.
“What the hell. We go. We get ’em both, we blow ’em away, man and wife, and then it's finished.
Fair enough?”
“Yes sir.”
“You up for this kind of man's work, there, Richard?”
“I can do it, Lamar.”
“I want you in the back. You go in the back. Anything comes your way without calling out your name, you put a bullet in it. But no one's coming your way. I'm blowing them to hell and gone, that's it.”
Lamar got out, went back to the trunk, opened it. He slid out the Browning semiauto, just peeled the bolt back a bit to see the green double-ought shell in there, and let the piece rest in his hand alongside his leg.
Ruta Beth had the other shotgun.
Richard took out his revolver.
“Not yet, you coon-brain. Not till you get in the house.
You ready?”
“Yes sir.”
“You, Baby Girl?”
“Yes Daddy.”
“Then it's butcher day.”
“We can't keep going over the same thing again and again. We're like cats in a damn bag. It ain't going to change.”
“So that's it? You're just going to leave?”
“Holly, I—”
“I can't believe you can just leave.”
“I can't stay here forever. It ain't going to change.”
“Oh, Bud.”
He rose, picked up his hat, and walked to the door.
He opened the door. Then he turned.
She was still on the sofa. She looked like he'd beaten her. Her face was swollen and wet.
“God, Holly,” he said.
“I am so sorry. You deserve so much. You deserve so much more than I could ever give you.”
She just sat there.
He tried to think of something more to say, some magic sentence that would make it all better. Of course there wasn't one. So in the end, he merely turned and walked out.
If she'd have cried out, what would he have done? A part of him badly wanted to go back. A part of him didn't know what the hell he was doing. He only knew he had to get out of there, or he'd never leave.
So he walked as if in a tunnel to the truck.
