He turned the picture over. ode ll mama camilla, anadarko, oklah 1967 it said, in bold, childish letters, though the writing could not have been O’Dell's since the man was hopelessly retarded and illiterate.
Next out came a coloring book. Bud opened it. Some time early sixties, badly done, the crayon strokes violent and mixed, paying no attention to the lines. The book was drawn from a Walt Disney cartoon movie called Sleeping Beauty, full of thin, beautiful blond people. An act of cruelty, Bud thought, to give such a thing to a hulking, damaged boy like O’Dell, with the hole in his face and the nothingness in his mind: He could just look and wonder at what he could not have, ever. A woman's flowery hand had written "O’Dell's favorite book” inside the cover, and paging through, Bud finally came upon what must have been O’Dell's favorite page. It was a dragon, rearing up ferociously, about to strike a handsome knight with a sword.
Alone, it was not touched by a crayon; the image held too much power for young O’Dell to defile.
That was it. So little for a human life, even an O’Dell Pye's. He pulled the next box over, finding it heavy. It had to be Richard's, because the heaviness soon revealed itself to be books. Richard was a reader: In the Belly of the Beast, In Cold Blood, The Pound Era, Thus Spake Zarathustra by somebody whose name Bud could not even figure out how to pronounce. The books looked a little like Russ's, which somehow irritated him. Paging through them. Bud found lines highlighted in yellow marker. It was all gibberish, mostly about violence.
Thus speaks the red judge, "Why did this criminal murder? He wanted to rob.” But I say unto you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery: he thirsted after the bliss of the knife. His poor reason, however, did not comprehend this madness and persuaded him: "What matters blood?” it asked; "don't you want at least to commit a robbery with it? To take revenge?” And he listened to his poor reason; its speech lay upon him like lead; so he robbed when he murdered. He did not want to be ashamed of his madness.
Crazy stuff. What the hell could it mean?
He guessed Richard was trying to figure out what he was doing in here.
Too bad, Richard boy. You made your decision, now you got to take the consequences.
Bud put the little book down and went through a few heavy and glossy paperback books on art, mostly painting, again nothing pornographic.
Some art supplies—sheaves of drawing and tracing paper, a small box with pencils, chalk, chunks of charcoal for sketching, but no sketches.
No weapons, just shaving gear, all neat, and a toothbrush, the toothpaste neatly rolled up. A comb, a Bic razor, some Colgate shaving cream, soap in a plastic box. It all gave Bud the creeps for some reason, and he soon tired of Richard and his intellectual vanities.
He pulled the last box over. gave, l.” it said on the outside.
The clothes were neat in a professional convict's way:
jeans, a jean jacket, even a pair of cowboy boots, much polished, much worn. A stack of magazines: Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Gun World, and a profusion of stroke books. Bud paged through them: Penthouse and Playboy and a few more obscure ones that seemed to show women in stockings or women bent over, spreading their asses, exposing their tulip like assholes or leaning back and ramming plastic or rubber dildoes into amazingly prehensile vaginas. Again, Bud felt slimy, as if Lamar were drawing him in, making him party to Lamar's own inner horror. He set the magazines down, found a well-thumbed copy of The Picture History of the Third Reich. He found something called The Turner Diaries and another called The Last Clarion for the White Race.
Aryan brotherhood shit.
At last he came to an album of sorts. He pulled it out.
lamar's book, it said in blocky letters, the same letters he recognized from the back of the picture of O’Dell's mama.
He opened it up, encountering a crumbling yellow news clipping from the Arkansas Gazette of August 1955.
hero trooper slays two before dying, the headline read, and Bud made out the murky one-column shot of a man identified as "Trooper Sergeant Swagger.”
A State Trooper Sergeant shot and killed two suspected murderers on Route 71 north of Fort Smith yesterday afternoon, before dying himself of gunshot wounds inflicted by the two men.
Dead were Sergeant Earl Lee Swagger, 45, of Polk County, a Marine Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the Pacific in World War II; and Jim M. Pye, 27, of Fort Smith and his cousin Buford "Bub” Pye, 21, also of Fort Smith.
State Police give this account of the event:
Yesterday morning two men answering the descriptions of Jim M. Pye and Buford Pye robbed an A&P in downtown Fort Smith, shooting two employees. They escaped in a white 1954 Ford. Authorities immediately began roadblock procedures, but the two assailants evaded the roadblocks.
They were spotted by Sergeant Swagger on Route 71; he gave pursuit and managed to drive the vehicle off the road near Winslow. Attempting to arrest the men, he was shot in the lower chest and stomach.
As the two men made their getaway on foot. Sergeant Swagger shot and killed Buford Pye. Then, he trailed Jim Pye for nearly three hundred yards into the corn fields where he exchanged shots again with his assailant.
Pye was hit in the eye and the stomach and was found dead at the spot.
Sergeant Swagger returned to the car to await medical attention but bled to death before help could arrive.
He leaves a wife, Eria June, and a 9-year-old son, Bob Lee.
Wow, thought Bud. They knew how to build a lawman in those days.
Wonder if I'd have the guts for that action?
Rather than contemplate so melancholy a topic. Bud gave the page a turn. Next was a report card, from the Arkansas State Reformatory Middle School, dated June 1962.
Lamar got a bunch of 3s and 4s in his subjects—As and Bs, that was—but some educator had written:
Lamar shows great potential when his classes interest him, but his tendency for getting in fights or disruptive behavior threatens his academic achievement. He must learn impulse control. Additionally, he sexually assaulted two younger boys; he clearly has overly mature aggressive tendencies as well as serious resentment of authority. He had better be given therapy quickly before he develops serious personality pathologies.
Of course he wasn't; of course he did.
The next page, another news clipping, from the Anadarko Call-Bulletin of January 1970:
FARMER FOUND SLAIN ON PERKINS VILLE ROAD.
The story simply related how a farmer named Jackson Pye—the third worthless Pye brother. Bud concluded—had been stabbed to death by a mysterious assailant as he walked home along a country road from a nearby tavern.
There were no witnesses. The report also said he was survived by his son O’Dell.
Another page: convenience store robberies continue.
Another: local man arrested on rape charges.
Another: bail denied to violent offender gave.
Another: gave escapes from county lockup.
Bud riffled through the pages: the raw verbs of crime headlines yelled up at him from the seventies, and the crimes, mostly robbery and theft, now and then a murder and a sentencing. Lamar had become the compleat career criminal, master of a dozen violent trades, his acts marked by brazenness, violence, and a certain nutty courage. Lamar had balls, no doubt about it.
pyes convicted in pusateri killing read the last one, an account of how Lamar and O’Dell shot a motorcycle gang snitch in the head and dumped him, how he miraculously survived to identify them before dying.