He and O’Dell walked back to the house.
“O’Dell, go wash,” he said.
“Wash-wash, for dinner.”
“Din,” O’Dell said and went merrily off.
He knew he'd find Ruta Beth out back, working at her wheel. It amazed him what she could do. Just the lump of clay, the pumping of her foot, the spinning of the wheel, and some kind of miraculous thing occurred.
Goddamn! He loved to watch it.
And there she was, hunched over the spinning wheel, her hands actually sunk into the blurred muck, her face intense and furious. The muck seemed to be spinning itself into something thin and graceful today, like a candleholder that he remembered his mama had before his mama died.
“Amazin' what you can do,” he said.
She almost never blinked; she had this funny way of just looking at something until she'd sucked it dry. It amazed him that she wasn't afraid of him, a man killer like him, with fuck you I tattooed on his knuckles, who made the quality nervous if he were in the same goddamned county.
“Mr. Pye,” she said, "it ain't nothing, really. You could do it.”
“Me, nah. I'd mess it up. But go on. Love to watch you.”
She worked intently for another few minutes. Then she said, "What will you do? Them cops won't never stop looking. You have to move on.”
“I know. I hate to go. Ain't ever seen O’Dell so happy.
It's where he should be. Can't hurt nobody, can't get in no trouble, no liquor, no niggers or hacks trying to take from him. He could be happy here.”
“You love him. Everybody says you are the meanest man there is, but you love him.”
“He's all I got. We go way back.”
“It's so beautiful. But they will get you. Stories like yours never have happy endings.”
“This here place is my happy ending.”
“I swear, I don't see no bad in you.”
“But bad is what I am. I guess I was homed to it, on account of what happened to my daddy. I never once looked back. Only thing I's ever any good at.”
“You could have been a farmer.”
“Then somebody come and try and walk on you. You can't let that happen. So you stop ’em, and next thing, you're pn the run. That's how it started. Goddamned Uncle Jack kept O’Dell in the barn. Kept him chained. Beat him.
His own son. Beat that boy. He got thirty dollars a month from the county to keep that boy on account of his being so sick in the brain and he didn't spend a goddamned penny of it on O’Dell. Only reason he took me in is because the state paid him twenty-two dollars a month on me, so as to get me out of their reform school. He was brother to my daddy Jim, who was killed dead by state troopers over in Arkansas, and when my mama Edna Sue died and they put me in their reform school and I give them so goddamn much trouble, 'cause people was always trying to back you down, and I just got it in my fool head nobody was going to back me down, anyway, they sent me to my uncle and his wife Camilla, and I was just shit to him, shit that brought in a Social Services check.
“One day he beat O’Dell so goddamned bad I thought the boy would die.
Because O’Dell had shat up his pants. They had so much trouble teaching O’Dell about the bathroom.
Anyway, I reckoned to stop it. Caught Uncle Jack along the Perkinsville Road, drunk as usual on O’Dell's money. Ain't done nothing in my life that made me feel so good as when I put the blade into that mean old bastard. And it's been like that ever since, me watching out for O’Dell, him for me, we was all we had in the goddamned world. And it wasn't so bad, we'd made our place, until goddamned Junior Jefferson pulled his stunt.”
It was as complete an accounting of his life as he'd ever given to anybody.
“You've had such a hard time.”
“The House is full of men with hard lives. We're just like them, that's all.”
“It's a sad story. Mr. Pye, I honestly believe if you'd have caught a break somewhere along the line, you could have been a great man.”
“I don't know why you'd say such a thing. I'm just a piece of scum.”
“But what would you do if you could do anything?”
Lamar thought. The question had never been put to him before.
“I'd like to invent a ray,” he said.
“You know, like a beam of light. And everything you shine it on, you make it fair. You shine it and there's a lot of money and nobody's sick or angry or nothing, you just make people happy. That's what I'd do. A happy ray. I'd shine it in all the prisons and all the shithole, jerkwater towns. I'd shine it on O’Dell and he could talk and his mouth would be mended up. I'd even shine it on the niggers, yes, goddammit, I would, and they would change their evil ways.”
She beheld him gravely.
“That is the sweetest thing I ever did hear.”
“Well, it won't never happen,” said Lamar.
“You're like that ray. You give people hope. You watch.
They'll believe in you like in Jesus or Mr. Elvis Presley.
They know you stand for freedom.”
She touched his knee.
“I thought you loved that Richard. He showed me that letter.”
“I guess I did. Don't know why I thought so much of poor Richard. He ain't but a ninny. I doubt he has hair on his privates. What is it you want? I'll give you everything you want.”
“No woman ever said that to me. So sometimes I'd take it.”
“I want you to have it. I so bad want to give it to you. I'll be your true first, Mr. Pye,” she said shyly, "and you'll be my first, too.”
Richard could tell he'd fucked her. It had really only been a matter of time. A woman as nuts as Ruta Beth would almost certainly end up fucking a crazy fuck like Lamar.
Anyway, when they came in from the barn, loosey goosey and giggly, they both smelled of cunt. It was, to Richard, a low, rank odor. His mother smelled like that sometimes, after one other "friends” had visited, when he was a little boy and he'd been made to play in the garden.
But now Lamar was happy as a goddamned head of household who’s just made the mortgage. Even O’Dell picked it up. He looked up from his cereal bowl and smiled brightly, flecks of Frosted Mini-Wheats clinging to his lips and yellow teeth. He was happy.
It's like a family, my God, thought Richard. It was some terrible parody of happiness: Lamar the daddy and Ruta Beth the mommy and O’Dell and Richard the two boys. It was the normal life he'd never had.
It was such a good time, the little family in the kitchen of the farmhouse, laughing. Some demented Norman Rockwell could have painted the picture and put it on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, Richard thought, Lamar with his ponytail and tattooed knuckles and scrawny Ruta Beth with her chalky Addams Family skin and her inbred farm face; and O’Dell, eternal boy-man, with a tunnel for a mouth and a mop of reddish hair and two tiny eyes. And, of course, him, too, Richard, who’d blinded his mother one day in a fit of rage because the para fascist right-wing Daily Oklahoman had refused to review his exhibit, "Richard Peed: Artist in Transition,” at the Merton Gallery on Dwight Street.
They even did errands, like any family. It turned out that Ruta Beth had no paper anywhere in her house, no writing implements, nothing. She didn't even have any magazines, newspapers, or books. So of course she had to go out and get tablets of paper and pencils for Richard to continue his lions with, as that was his most important contribution.
And she also had to drive all the way to Murfs Guns in Duncan to buy double-ought buckshot for the shotguns, when they learned from the TV that goddamned salty old state cop had somehow managed to survive because he'd been hit with birdshot.