SENTENCE FIFTEEN YEARS TO LIFE FOR EACH KILLER COUSIN.
The album was Lamar's life, what he was proud of, his resume. What would you do with such a man? How could he possibly be reclaimed? He came from criminal stock, he evinced antisocial behavior from an early age, was unnaturally aggressive, and took to the lifestyle of the professional criminal with extraordinary ease. He was born to be a criminal, that was all.
Bud put the book down. There was nothing at all here, except a warning for any and all who dared mess with Lamar Pye without backup and lots of firepower Put him in your sights and blow him away, that's all.
He glanced at his watch.
He'd been at it three hours! Jesus Christ! And Holly was still waiting outside.
He reached for the pile of slick magazines to reinsert in the box, but by their very slickness, they fell to the floor, skidding and opening.
Bud cursed and bent to retrieve them and then noticed something strange. Across the rolling mountainous breasts of the Penthouse Pet of August 1991, there was inscribed some sort of figure. It wasn't a drawing, but the impression of a drawing that had been done on a paper laid across it.
Bud picked it up, tried to find some angle of light that would reveal its secret. That didn't work; the image kept collapsing as the light changed. It occurred to him to do a tracing. He remembered that Richard had some light paper in the art supplies in his box and he quickly got it out. He laid the paper across Miss. August, only slightly obscuring the thrust of her tits, the prong like tightness of her nipples; with a piece of charcoal, he delicately rubbed the paper, just enough pressure to leave the charcoal everywhere except in the grooves, where it sank under pressure.
When he was done, he looked at what he had brought out: It was the image of a lion.
CHAPTER 13
Mar go bye-bye wif Rutie-girl.
Dell go barn, see moo cow Plus Wi-chud. Moocow niceynice. Soft.
Smell toasty. Eyeballs brow ny like poop.
Big eyeballs. So still. Eyeballs so brown. Touchy moo cow moo cow go "Moooooooooooo,” Wi-chud go "Nonononono!
Wichud girl!
Wichud girly-girl, like Rutie-girl!
Wichud always Boo-hoo, like girly. Wichud baby thing.
Then… Rutie-girl back. No Mar. Where Mar? Mar go? Mar go away far?
WHERE MAR?
WHERE MAR?
Dell feel bad. Dell hurt. Dell scarey-scare.
WHERE MAR?
“Mar be here,” Rutie-girl.
Wi-chud. Where Mar?
Rutie-girl, where Mar?
Wi-chud go The no know,” nicey Dell.
Dell go boo-hoo. No Mar. Dell go boo-hoo. Dell want Mar. Dell red.
Red inside. Red Red Red Red.
WHERE MAR! DELL WANT MAR!
Wi-chud, you tellum or Dell go BON KY on head, Wichud.
Wi-chud, crybaby girly, "No No Dell, No Hurty.”
GO BON KY Wi-chud. GO BON KY Then… Mar!
Mar new car!
Car whitey!
Dell be so happy-happy.
“New car, new car,” Dell.
“Yes, it is, O’Dell, and now we're going to repaint it,” said Lamar, as he climbed from the dusty vehicle.
“Richard, you're a painter, ain't you? Time to pull your weight, son.
Let's get this sucker repainted.”
But Richard looked like somebody had just squeezed all the air out of him. He was the color of dead petunias.
“What's wrong, boy?”
“O’Dell hit me! Twice!”
“I don't see no blood. If he really hit you, you'd be bleeding.”
“But he hurt me.”
“O’Dell, no bon ky Richard. Richard nicey nice. O’Dell, go me sorry.”
O’Dell's face lit in contrition. Genuine pain seemed to briefly shine from his eyes.
“Dell baddy bad,” he said.
“See, he apologizes, Richard. Okay? Does that take care of it?”
“Ah,” said Richard, "I suppose.”
“Lamar, the baby has been upset at your absence,” said Ruta Beth.
“I wonder if we could control him if you weren't here.”
“Don't you fret that, hon,” said Lamar.
“Now come on.
We got work to do.”
But Richard wondered. For just a second there, it looked as if O’Dell was going to lose it. His dull eyes inflated in fear and rage, and it was as if his whole chest swelled. He had grabbed Richard and slapped him hard atop the head twice.
Richard had felt like a rag doll. The fear/ hate of losing Lamar had turned O’Dell briefly psychopathic and frightening.
It scared the shit out of Richard. In one of his "moods,” O’Dell could hurt anyone. He shuddered at the thought:
O’Dell, alone in the world, without Lamar.
“Come on, boy, get to work,” commanded Lamar.
They spent the afternoon with cans of spray paint and Richard tried to lose himself in the work. He was surprised how much he enjoyed the simple task: It was freedom from lions, it was freedom from fear, it was freedom from O’Dell's whimsy or the utter domination of Lamar. After a frenzy of taping over the trim, he sprayed the bright orange paint on the car in smooth, circular motions, almost as if it were an airbrush, amazed at how quickly the car picked up its new color and how good he was at it. He was much better than Lamar, a lot better than Ruta Beth, and completely better than O’Dell, who simply could not get the concept of smoothness and just hammered a spot onto a single sector of the car so clumsily that even Lamar saw the hopelessness of it and gave him another job. And pretty soon they had it: a nice orange car.
The next day, Friday, Lamar said to him, "Okay, Richard, you come with me today. We goin' pick up our second car.”
“A second car?”
“Yes sir. It will surprise you how a dumb Okabilly like me got this sucker planned out, Richard. We actually going to use three cars.
Yep. You got to plan it right if you want to stay ahead of Johnny Cop.
Them boys got their computers and their helicopters and their what-all.
Gittin' harder and harder to do an honest day's stealing. But I think I got em buffaloed on this one, yes I do. Hey, boy, you're a-running with the big dogs now. Ain't it a toot?”
“Yes sir,” said Richard.
As they were pulling out of the farmyard in Ruta Beth's Toyota, she came out and gave Lamar a little peck on the cheek.
“You be careful, hon.”
“I will. And you take good care of O’Dell. You watch him. He can wander off.”
“Don't you worry about O’Dell. Me 'n' him are going to have a good time.
I'm going to work and he's going to spin the wheel for me.”
“Good. He feels useful then.”
“Richard, you mind Daddy. He knows what he's doing.”
“Yes ma'am,” said Richard.
“Don't be late, honey.”
“We won't be.”
“You want the roast beef tonight?”
“That'd be super,” Lamar said.
They pulled out. Lamar was happy.
“Damn,” he said.
“She's the best goddamn girl a man could find. I'm a lucky man, Richard. Yes I am.”
They drove the mile down the red dirt road, turned left on 54, then, a few miles down, west on 62, toward Altus.
The highway was flat across a flat land under a high western sky and a blaze of sun unfiltered by the thin clouds. The mountains jutted from the plains and the wind snapped across the earth. Now and then a tractor would slow traffic down or they'd meander through some one-horse town, a brick bank and hardware store, a strip mall with an auto parts place and a Laundromat, the inevitable 7Eleven.
“See,” said Lamar amiably, "trouble with those goddamned Seven-"Levens is that ever goddamned hour the manager sets a certain amount of the cash in the time lock vault. Through a little chute up top. So at any given time you can't get but what the store's taken in in the past hour.