Lamar was seventy-five feet away when the door of the house suddenly opened. He saw Bud, big as life, looking like John Wayne in the doorway of a hundred westerns, face grim, broad Stetson low over his eyes.
But Bud didn't see him. Instead he walked in a straight line to the truck.
It was too far to shoot. He could run at Bud, but Bud would see or hear him. Again, he fought his thirst for action, and melted back, sinking into the ground behind a hedge, with his hand driving the girl and Richard back.
They watched as Bud climbed into the truck. He was too far away to attack, and they couldn't get back to the car in time to follow him.
Bud started the truck and drove off.
“ Where's he going?” whispered Richard.
“Shut up,” said Lamar.
“What do we do. Daddy? What do we do?”
Lamar thought for a second and thought the same thing:
What do we do?
Then he grinned.
“I know,” he said.
Holly sat there. The sense of loss was on her like a heavy wool blanket. The whole thing played out before her eyes and the words so close, so close kept echoing in her mind.
But she could never get him to see it: how perfect they were, how they'd be more together than they ever would be apart.
Then someone knocked on the door, filling her heart with hope.
She rose and ran, thinking. Bud, Bud, Bud, and opened the door.
But it wasn't Bud. It was Lamar.
CHAPTER 29
Bud drove aimlessly through downtown Lawton in the dark, not really seeing anything except the blurred lights.
He followed no particular path and at various times found himself nearing the airport, the Great Plains Coliseum, and Gate Number Three.
Even Fort Sill Boulevard seemed desolate.
Downtown, those amber lights caught everything in a particularly harsh brown glow, so that no true color stood out.
Bud felt exactly the opposite of how he expected. He thought he'd feel liberated at last, shorn of his secret life, ready and willing to embrace with all seriousness of high purpose his old life, which had been miraculously restored to him. But no. He just felt draggy, slow, morose, grouchy.
He wanted to get in a fight. Impulses toward extreme anger flicked through him. A part of him wanted to lash out, maybe at Jen, maybe at Jeff, maybe at Russ, really at himself.
It wasn't depression so much as plain old regret; images from all the sweet times with Holly kept playing on a movie screen in his head.
So little to show. She'd given him so much and she got so little.
Well, Holly, let that be a lesson to you that will stand you in good stead sometime in the future: no married men. Not worth it. All's you get is promises and sex up front, and pain and abandonment at the back end.
At last he turned down his own street and pulled into his own driveway.
Jen's station wagon was there in the carport.
He got out, walked in. The house seemed especially small and cheesy.
Wasn't much of a house. No room in it big as a motel room. The furniture, except what Jen had been given by her mother, was cheap, bought on time, in ruins before being paid off. The linoleum in the kitchen was dingy; the walls needed repainting; his shop was a mess; the lawn needed cutting.
For some reason it seemed to stink of a thousand meals tonight, of backed-up toilets and spilled beer and TV dinners and pizza kept in the refrigerator too long. God. How had all this happened? How did he end up in a house he didn't love with-'Well,” she said.
“About time.”
“All right, Jen,” he said.
“So where is he?”
“He's with his friends. I got him out in time to play and drove him over. That coach said officially his suspension didn't start till tomorrow so the old geezer let him play. Git himself in a lot of trouble, you ask me. Anyway, Jeff did fine, a double and a single, made a nice running catch late in the game.”
“It went into extra innings?”
“No, no, it didn't.”
“He's with his friends. Bud, where were you?”
“Oh, I had some business.”
“What business? Bud, what's going on?” Her face was grave and her eyes locked onto him. He could not meet their power.
“Ah—” It hung in the air.
Finally he said, 'Look, I understand I haven't been the best of husbands lately, Jen. I just had my head somewhere else. Okay. I've told you some lies, I've done some things I shouldn't have done. But, Jen, I want to tell you now, flat out, straight to your face, that's all over now. Now I am going to be father to my boys and husband to my wife. I want us to have our old life back, the one we loved for all those years. ''Bud 'What?”
“Bud, I won't ask you for details.”
“I'm glad.''I've heard things and I don't want to know if they're true or not. I just want you to tell me whatever it was, it's all over now.
You have a good life. Bud, fine, strong, brave sons. No man could have better sons.”
“I know that.”
“I know I'm not so young as I once was. I can't help that. Like you I got old, and like you I got fat. I just got fatter.”
“It's not that.”
“Oh, who knows what it is, Bud. I do know that I can forgive you maybe once. But, Bud, don't you ever do anything like this again. If you want to be with her, just go and be with her. But no more of this running around.”
“I will make it up. I'll make it so you won't notice there was a bad time. It was all good times, you, me, the boys.”
“Okay, Bud. Then I don't want to hear of it again. We close the book and we lock it and I don't want to hear about it again. Is that clear?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Now I think we should go to bed. I think you should show me that you love me still. In the physical way, I mean. It's been nearly a year, are you aware?”
“I didn't know.”
“It's been a long, long time, Bud, and I have needs, too, though you don't like to face it.”
“Well, then let's go.”
They headed upstairs.
The phone pulled Bud from a blank and dreamless sleep, and he awoke in the dark of his bedroom, his wife breathing heavily beside him. All through the house it was quiet.
Groggily, he picked it up.
“Pewtie.”
“Well, howdy there. Bud” came a voice from far, far away. It swam at Bud from lost memories, out of a pool of still green water. He fought to recall it but its identity lingered beyond his consciousness.
