“Jen pushed him through the crowd, which magically melted and stilled.
Now and then a low "Howdy, Bud” rose, and Bud nodded to acknowledge. As the last of the crowd parted, Jen slid him into the front row where the big shots sat. Colonel Supenski in his dress blues, a man from the Governor's Mansion standing in for a governor who couldn't make it, two old people who had to be Ted's grieving parents, Captain James, and at the end of the row, Holly.
If he had been seeing her for the first time, he'd have fallen in love with her all over again. She looked still and grave and almost numb; but her skin had blossomed somehow, as if it were dewy with moisture; she seemed as pale as a white rose, her eyes focused on nothing as she just sat there in a kind of solemn haze.
Told you I'd see you on the day we got off it, he thought.
Another one of my damned lies.
She felt him looking at her, and she smiled.
The smile blew him away.
He loved her smile. One of the best parts of their intimacy was the way they laughed so hard at each other's strange jokes. They shared some kind of wavelength or something.
Holly rose and came over and smiled bravely at Jen and knelt down and touched his hand.
“How are you, old trooper?” she said.
“Holly, I tried so hard. Just couldn't save him. They got us cold.”
“It's okay, Bud.”
She rose and gave Jen a hug and then hugged Jeff before returning to her seat.
Bud had been through too many before. The details were all familiar, and only the tiniest, most meaningless deviations set this one apart from the others. A trooper honor guard consisting of one man each from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Missouri walked the casket from the hearse to the bier and set it down, and only one man was out of step by the end of the trek instead of the usual two.
The casket was heavy, but they always were: just dead weight, after all. The elaborate business of the flag folding proceeded awkwardly because the team was newly united; but eventually they got it crushed into the tricorn shape, only stars showing, and the team leader presented it to Holly with a little salute.
Twenty yards off, the seven-man firing team fired three volleys, for a total of twenty-one; the volleys were ragged as they always were, and, in the vast space, the gunfire thin.
The worst moment was always taps. It didn't matter if the bugler played it well or poorly, in tune or out; there was something in the mournful ache of the music, and how it spoke of men dying before their time for something they only vaguely understood and being only vaguely appreciated by the people on whose behalf they died, that made it hurt so much. Bud bit back a tear, feeling the blackness in him rise and rise yet again. He saw the puff of hair as the slug went in and Lamar unbending from the task with the blank eyes of a carpenter or a stonemason.
No words were said, beside an invocation by the minister.
And then it was over, that fast. Holly was swept up and embraced and borne out. The troopers and cops began to file to their cars.
“Okay, Bud?” Jen wanted to know.
“Or do you want to stay a bit.”
“No, let's get out of here.”
Four days later. Bud was released from the hospital. At home, he lay there feeling slightly liberated. But in a bit the -black vapor settled over him again, almost like a blanket that he could pull tight.
Someone had warned him of this:
post-stress syndrome, a bitch to get through, feelings of worthlessness and failure and bone-grinding fatigue. All right, so: I got it but good.
He chased Jen out and she slept in the living room. She never saw him cry; nobody had ever seen him cry and goddamned if he would start now with that shit. But he had a night when he cried and another night when he locked himself in the toilet and threw up bad. The doctor dropped by twice a day, and there was a long session with Colonel Supenski, a highway patrol shooting investigation team, and homicide investigators from the Murray County Sheriff's Department and the county prosecutor's office. Bud told it all to them, except his surliness over the near slip of being caught by Jen; they went over it doggedly, who was where when the shots came, this and that, like a slow-mo replay in a football game. Would Bud testify before a grand jury in order to get a true bill against Lamar? Bet your ass he would!
He tried not to think of Holly, but at night that came over him, too: the flash of the gun, the softness of her skin, the ugly powder burn melted into Ted's skull, the tautness of her nipples, the grin on Lamar's face as he pivoted with the shotgun, the smoothness inside her thighs. One became the other: flash and explode, orange ness pain, ecstasy, all of it crammed together. He yearned to call her. But he couldn't.
On the fourth day, it was at last time to rise. He got himself up and slung on blue jeans, a starched white shirt with a point collar, a good pair of Tony Lama boots, brown with a black shaft. He threw a bolo tie, with a horse's head on the clasp, around the shirt neck, tightened it up. He slid a Colt Commander with a Shooting Star magazine crammed with eight hollow tips into his waistband over his kidney, then pulled on a sports coat.
He lumbered down the steps, at first feeling woozy. But then he got the hang of it.
“Jen, I'll be out a bit. Then I'll stop at the hospital. Back before dark.”
She came from the kitchen and intercepted him at the front door. Her face was gray and remote and, as always, somewhat impassive, except for the glare in her eyes.
“You can hardly walk. Just what do you think you're doing. Mister?”
“I feel I have to say something to that farmer.”
“Write him a letter or give him a call. That's why they invented the telephone.”
“Without this old boy's gumption, I'm in the ground and you're the one they're bringing the hot dishes to.”
“Send him a card. Bud, you still have steel in you. Suppose something breaks free and you start bleeding again.
You could bleed to death.”
“If I was meant to bleed to death, I'd have done it with a thousand steel balls in me, not in my truck driving out to the country.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“The Commander.”
“Good. I don't want you out in the world without some protection.”
“Didn't do much good the last time,” he said, "but the theory sounds promising.”
Bud went to his truck, a blue Ford F250, climbed in, and stuck the key into the column switch, then paused. Christ, would there always be somebody pulling on him? Would it ever end?
Looking carefully left and right, he eased out the clutch and backed into the highway, then threw a bit of gravel as -he accelerated. In seconds he came to a larger road and slipped into traffic behind a huge cattle carrier.
Bud worked his way through the gears in the heavy-duty four-speed, tugging the stick firmly, his feet light on the accelerator and clutch pedal. He loved the goddamned truck, he truly did.
But Bud didn't drive straight out to the Stepfords'. With no conscious thought at all, he stopped at a convenience store and went to the pay phone. He dropped the quarter and dialed the number. It was just like the last time, in front of the diner, just that simple.
In time she answered.
“Howdy,” he said.
“Thank God you called,” Holly whispered.
“Oh, Bud, I can't talk now. The minister is here. He thinks he's helping.
Oh, lord, seeing you would help.”
“I been home and couldn't call, you know. I've got something to do anyway. Can you meet me in Elgin, that diner, Ralph's, I think it is, say about two this afternoon?”
“I'll be there.”
Bud hung up and returned to the truck. The drive to the Stepfords' passed without incident. On the way he drove by the diner where the waitress had mentioned Bill Stepford's absence: Why hadn't that set bells ringing?