In the bright fake light, he looked so lean and strong, so poised, so perfect. Bud realized his heart must have been yammering and his knees shaking, but from the distance Jeff could have been a Cal Ripken or a George Brett, a natural hitter.
Oh please let him get a hit, he requested of the universe. Some mercy for my son. Let him do well, or not so bad. Do not let him fail. I’ve failed enough for both of us; please show him mercy.
The pitcher, a tall and whippy black kid, wound and delivered, and Jeff took a called strike. The ball popped sharply into the catcher’s glove, dust rising from the impact like a gunshot. Bud thought again: The bullet hits, Ted’s hair flies, and Ted is gone. He shook his own head, as if to clear the troubling thoughts from alighting anywhere, and dialed back into reality to check as Jeff took what was apparently the second of two balls.
“This should be his pitch,” he said to Jen.
The pitcher fired and Jeff, overeager, swung wretchedly. He looked like a crippled stork, and the ball ticked weakly off into foul territory to the third-base side.
“Damn,” Bud said. “He should have parked that one in the wheat.”
He thought: Oh, Christ, I would give my life for my son to do well.
On the fifth pitch, Bud thought the pitcher uncoiled with a particularly venomous spasm, almost snakelike in the strike of his arm, and the ball swept toward Jeff in high theatrical light just as Jeff himself seemed to unscrew from the hips up, shoulders following hips, arms following shoulders, bat following arms. The whole thing was liquid somehow, punctuated by the sharpest crack Bud had ever heard, much louder and more decisive than the shots Lamar had launched at him. The ball rose, the noise of the desultory crowd rose, Bud himself rose, screaming “Yes, yes, YES!” and the ball sailed outward.
Go you bastard, GO! Bud willed it, oh please.
He saw the left fielder crouching at the fence, and as the ball descended, the boy leaped and it seemed he had it zeroed. But felt despair rise like a black tide into his heart, but the leap wasn’t high enough by three feet and the ball bounded away in the darkness.
“Oh, God,” Bud said, grabbing Jen’s arm, “he hit a home run! Jeff, Jeff, WAY TO GO!” He was crying, literally, as his son trundled sheepishly around the bases to be greeted at home by some of his fellow players.
“God,” he said to Jen, “I’m so damned happy.”
“Bud,” she said, “my God, you’re bleeding.”
CHAPTER
11
Odell sat with the AR-15 in his lap and a red wig on his head. He had tits. He was wearing lipstick and a blue fur-trimmed coat from the year 1958, the year that Ruta Beth’s daddy had bought it for Ruta Beth’s mother at Dillon’s Department Store in Oklahoma City. He didn’t look much like a woman. He looked like a gigantic transvestite with an assault rifle, if you looked close.
But who would look close?
He sat benignly in the back seat of Ruta Beth’s little Toyota twelve miles beyond the Red River on the outskirts of Wichita Falls, Texas, just off Interstate 44 on its long pull from Oklahoma City. Sitting next to him was Richard, also with tits (tennis balls taped inside the dress), also with a wig (black), and a red hat with feathers curling down as well, all of it having at one time belonged to Beulah Tull. Ruta Beth had done the makeup, though Richard thought she’d gone a bit overboard on the rouge. In the mirror, he’d looked like some kind of corpse. If Odell didn’t seem to mind, Richard certainly did, but of course he would say nothing.
In jeans and sunglasses, his ponytail tucked out of sight under the brim of Bill Stepford’s Stetson, Lamar sat, chewing on a long stalk of wheat. Next to his right leg, also out of sight, was the cut-down Browning A-5 12-gauge, though it was not loaded with birdshot but double-ought buck shells. He had the long-slide .45 in the waistband in the small of his back. And next to him, in the driver’s seat, with Bud’s Mossberg, sat Ruta Beth herself, also in a cowboy hat.
“That’s it,” said Lamar. “What we come this piece to see. That’s it, our ticket to tomorrow.”
But Richard didn’t get it.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Use your mag-i-nation,” said Lamar.
They were parked at a Denny’s Restaurant, just off the interstate ramp. The sign said Maurine Street. Its lot jammed with cars, the restaurant sat on a small podium of land like the king of everywhere, the remnants of a crowd visible through the double-glass doors out front and the windows that circled it like a bright necklace. At the entrance to the parking lot stood a proud art moderne sign, turquoise and red; at night, it would blaze like a beacon up to the interstate.
“I just see … a Denny’s,” said Richard.
“Ennys,” Odell said and giggled.
“Is there a problem here, Aunt Lucy?” said Lamar. “Aunt Lucy, you trying to take command of the outfit? You got a better idea?”
“But … wouldn’t a bank be better? It would certainly be more dignified.”
“Di-fied,” said Odell, rocking ever so slightly.
“Well now, let me explain,” said Lamar. “You got to keep up with the times. Bank robbing ain’t what it used to be. A, they keep the big money in the vault, with a timelock, so you only got what loose money’s up front, sometimes less’n a hundred or so bucks. B, you got the goddamned cameras all over the place. Aunt Lucy, are you listening?”
“Lamar, I’m sure you’re right.”
“Then you got silent alarms, you got money packs rigged to explode and cover you with red dye that don’t wash off for a week, you got private security services, sometimes you got guards. A bank can be a pickle.”
“I see.”
“Now, a Denny’s, in a little asswipe Texas city on a late Sunday afternoon? Let me tell you what you got. You got the big old breakfast money from about a thousand Texas Baptists. Them Baptists, they like to go to church and pray all morning, then stroll on down to Denny’s for breakfast. They shovel down the goddamn homefries and pancakes and eggs and bacon and syrup and butter and coffee like hogs at a trough. They bloat up and begin to belch and pick their teeth. Whole goddamn families. It makes ’em feel close to the Lord, don’t ask me why. So ’round about four, you got maybe ten, twelve thousand in small bills in the manager’s safe. You got no cameras. You got no guards. You got no heroes. You got nothing but a staff of assholes what hates their goddamned jobs and ain’t about to die for no Denny, whosoever the motherfuck he may be.”
“Enny,” said Odell, cheerfully.
“Daddy, I swear, you know everything,” said Ruta Beth. “You are so smart.”
“Now if you like, Aunt Lucy, we’ll drop you off and you can rob a bank while we do this here Texas Denny’s.”
“No, Lamar,” said Richard.
“Thank you, Aunt Lucy. Ain’t you the sweetest thang. All right, darlin’, let’s go for a little drive through the neighborhood, then park and you and me head in for a lookiesee. We’ll leave the two ladies in the back.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said.
Ruta Beth pulled the car out, turned right into a residential area, turned and turned again, passing by small white houses, well tended, with green lawns. Squares’ houses, and now and then a square could be glimpsed, hosing down a midsized car, pushing a mower, just bullshitting with another square.
Richard looked at them, seeing a lost world flee by. Once he’d had such contempt! The people! Fools and jerks, parvenus and philistines, without a brain in their head, nothing to sustain them but delusions like … baseball … family … work. Yet now their dreariness broke his heart; it looked so comforting.
“Git that long, sad look off your beautiful puss, there, Aunt Lucy,” said Lamar. “You git to looking that sad and I wonder if you ain’t about to make a break on us.”
“Lamar, I was thinking no such thing.”
“Yeah, I heard that before. He acts up, Odell, you conk him good.”
Eventually Ruta Beth swung around and they pulled into the Denny’s parking lot.
“Okay, you gals stay put for a bit. Odell, you tuck that big piece away case anybody looks in. We’re going to check the place out.”
Richard watched Lamar get out of the car, stop, and so casually stretch himself as he pulled on a jean jacket over the .45. Then he put his arm around Ruta Beth, and just as casually as a couple of high school kids on a date, the two of them sauntered into Denny’s.
Richard sat back, trying to relax. He felt absurd in the getup. And he was bored. But he couldn’t get out of the car, because in the open, the fraudulence of his disguise would be obvious. He looked over at Odell, who grinned at him with empty, happy eyes. Looking into Odell’s eyes could make you insane: they were guileless and remote, far removed from concepts such as cause and effect or right and wrong. He was simply a gigantic baby, who needed to be fed and wiped. Lamar brushed his teeth every night, talking to him in that sing-songy voice, baby talk and giggles. Yet in Odell there was a kind of innocence. He wasn’t evil. He had no choice at all in the matter; he’d probably have been better off in the prison, where at least he was feared and respected, which meant he was left alone; or in a home somewhere, if there’d been money to put him in a home where they could study the strange gaps in his mind that left him mute and empty, yet curiously able to perform small hand-eye tasks like driving or shooting. Left to his own ways and shielded from temptation, he probably wouldn’t hurt a flea.
Richard turned from Odell and found himself looking into the blank sunglasses of a deputy sheriff.
Lamar sat at the counter, sipping coffee. He looked like any middle-aged cowpoke, Texas style. Behind his shades, his eyes scoped the place out. It was done in green-and-brown zigzags, low-intensity colors to soothe people. He checked for entrances: the main one in the front right-hand corner of the building and, around to the side, an emergency exit, painted over. The windows gave a good view of the parking lot, however. His eyes went back to the counter, followed it to the register, which he saw was some kind of computer type deal. He figured when he went to the John, he could carefully check the register and see if there was a silent-alarm button or wire near the cash drawer, rare but not so rare it shouldn’t be checked out. Hell, who knew, in goddamned Texas there might be a sawed-off or a six-gun slung under the register. This damned state had guns everywhere! There was a mirror on the wall, too, probably okay, but he made himself a note to check it out. You put the point of a pencil up against it; if there was a gap between the pencil and its reflection you were okay, but if they touched, it was a one-way job, which would mean a watcher or maybe even a shooter on the other side.
The kitchen, as usual, was behind the counter, with a long Dutch window through which to slide the plates. Now it held two cooks; on Sunday, at least four, maybe six. All of them black. Would they make a fuss to save the bossman his insured money? Probably not, certainly not older guys. But a young buck, like the niggers on the yard, busting with come and wanting to show how dead tough they were? Hmmmm. Would bear watching.
He pivoted slightly to study the layout of the tables. Only one dining room, that was fine, but what wasn’t was the dogleg as the greedy bastards that ran the place had set six booths in the hallway that led to the bathrooms and the manager’s office as a no-smoking zone. Be hard for one man to cover both the main room, with its fifty or so tables, and the hallway, ninety degrees to the right. The register man could probably cover both; or he himself, as he took the manager back to his office, could cover the hallway. But where would he put his tail gunner? Best place would be in a window booth halfway down. That way, the tail gunner could watch for heroes in the crowd, and take them out if he had to, and also keep an eye tuned to the lot for cops. And there was that back way out, which pleased Lamar if it came to shooting. You never went into guns; you always went away from them, flanked them and dealt with them.
And then the problem with a goddamned wheelman. With only four players on the crew, and one of them shaky as hell and another a cherry, and the room big, there was no way he could have the wheelman out and running. Needed the crew inside, all of them, even dickhead Richard. Didn’t like that at all. Have to park right there at the entrance and run in; but a cop driving by might see the car, engine running, doors opened, empty. That’s the sort of thing that set them off. Have to run a test on the patrol runs. How often does Johnny Cop come a-moseying by? And only three days till Sunday. Best to wait until next Sunday. But Richard would crack, Odell would get dangerously bored, and who knew what might go down with Ruta Beth here?
He looked over to Ruta Beth, who had turned.
“Shit,” she said, “a cop.”
The deputy tapped on the window. He was just a boy, really, mid-twenties, with cornsilk hair and eyes that were too far apart behind the aviator’s shades. Actually, he looked a bit mean and surly, and he stared right at poor Richard. He gestured.
Richard just stared at him stupidly, his mind utterly blank with panic. In fact, he wet his pants; the warm urine cascaded over his crotch under the dress. He blinked back tears. Behind him, Richard could feel Odell tense and see one of his hands disappear as it slid under the blanket where the AR-15 lay. The buttstock of the rifle was in plain sight; if the cop looked at it and could get beyond the idea of the absurdity of an assault rifle in the back of an old Toyota with two old ladies, he’d have them cold.
Richard began to gibber. Strange noises came from his throat. “Ayah, ayah, ayah,” he began to chant through utterly dry lips. His mouth felt like a hole full of sand. Impatiently the cop repeated the strange gesture, and then tapped on the window.
“Wahl wn-duh,” said Odell.
More gibberish. Then it cleared magically in Richard’s head: Roll down the window.
His trembling fingers flew to the crank and he wound it down, feeling an idiot’s smile splay across his face. He was beyond panic, he was in some place where butterflies of pure fright flitted and danced.
“Howdy, ma’am,” said the young cop.
Mouth agape, Richard nodded moronically.
“It’s such a hot day, I was somewhat worried to see y’all sealed up like that. A dog can die in an hour locked in a car, yes, ma’am, seen it myself. You going to need some air.”
It was pure nonsense to Richard. Why didn’t the cop notice his whiskers, his thickish shoulders, the black hair on his arms, the broadness of his hands, or the goddamned rifle butt sticking out of the blanket between the two?
“Ya’ll from out of town? Oklahoma. Down here visiting?”
Richard’s tongue seemed to constrict; he wasn’t sure what he was about to spit out.
“Aunt Lucy! Oh, Aunt Lucy, don’t you git upset.”
He looked over and saw Ruta Beth flying down the steps toward him and Lamar hanging back but eyeing the situation carefully.
She ran to Richard and began to stroke his hand gently, saying to the cop, “You know, Aunt Lucy was as perky as a bumblebee until the stroke. Now she just sits in the rocker all day long with Mrs. Jackson and they rock and rock and rock. On Thursdays, we like to take them for a long drive. Only chance they ever git to be off the farm.”
The young cop stepped back, looking from Ruta Beth to Richard and back again, never once considering Lamar.
“Thursday’s Bill’s day off,” Ruta Beth continued. “He works at the Chalmers plant up in Oklahoma City. Lord, he’s a kind soul. My first, Jack Williams, Jr., why that man wouldn’t do a thing if it weren’t to his own advantage.” She turned dramatically. “Bill, honey, it’s okay. You can go back and get the ice cream.”
Lamar nodded, and headed back inside.
“They love ice cream,” Ruta Beth continued to the young officer. “But, lord, you can’t take ’em inside. They just can’t handle it, all the hustle and bustle. So we leave ’em in the car, git a quick Dr. Pepper, then bring ’em their ice cream. It’s the best part of the week.”
“Okay, ma’am,” said the young officer. “Just checking. The old lady evidently rolled up the window—”
“A
unt Lucy, you bad girl!”
“And I tried to make ’em see how quick they could run out of air on a hot day. Seen it happen to dogs all the time. Mama comes back from the grocery with her two kids and Fido’s done bought the ranch in the back seat. Terrible way for kids to learn about dying.”
“Well, I will talk to Aunt Lucy, you can believe me. She’s just got to learn.”
“Be seeing y’all. Hope you come back to Wichita Falls.”
“Well, I certainly hope we do, too.”
The cop passed Lamar, now emerging with two icecream sodas in paper cups, and tipped his hat. Lamar smiled and came around and climbed in.
“Here you go, Aunt Lucy,” he said loudly, and made a show of handing the cup to Richard, but at the last moment pulled it away.
“Aww,” said Richard.
“You blanket-head, Richard,” he hissed as he slid in. “Goddamn, you couldn’t think of nothing but to look at him like you swallowed a goddamned fish?”
“I’m not an actor, Lamar.”
“No, you ain’t,” he said, then, turning, “Honey, you saved our goddamned bacon on that one. You done just great. I think you got a future in this shit.”
“Lamar,” said Richard, “can I have my soda?”
“No, you may not,” said Lamar. “Odell gets one soda because he sat cool as a cucumber with a smile on his face, just like I told him, and Ruta Beth gets the other one, because she handled that Johnny Cop slicker’n motor oil. You don’t get nothing, Richard. Another second and I’d have had to pop that boy and we’re on the run again, for nothing, you dummy. Shit.” He gave Ruta Beth a kiss as they pulled out.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said.
“Wich-ud weewee,” said Odell.
“What’s that, Odell?” said Lamar. “Honey, did you understand him?”
“He’s saying Richard went weewee,” said Ruta Beth.
“Oh, Aunt Lucy,” said Lamar, “you are such a baby!”