Once the doctors were done and Bud was washed and dried, he was rolled to a private room. There, Jen and Jeff waited. She came over and just touched him, lightly, on the arm; she didn’t look quite real, because with the patch he had no stereoscopic vision; she looked like a picture. And she was haggard, having been awakened from a sleep at nearly five in the morning with the sketchy news that once again her husband had been shot up. Fortunately, the news soon followed that he wasn’t hurt bad.
“Oh, Bud,” she said.
He smiled wanly, feeling his dry lips crack.
“Oh, Bud,” she said again.
Jeff stood aloof in the corner of the room.
“Where’s Russ?”
“He’s not coming,” she said, “He went up to the lake with his friends. I didn’t call him. They said you’d be all right.”
“That’s good. Let him enjoy the Princeton thing. This ain’t nothing.”
“When is it going to end?”
“It has ended,” he said. “I swear it.”
Presently, a nurse came along and shooed them out. They had to wait in the hall. He needed his rest; he was still in danger of shock and he’d need to be sharp the next day, anyway.
But, alone in the dark at last, he couldn’t rest. He lay there unsettled. He tried not to think about it. Images from the fight kept flashing back on him. He’d think he was done with it and then it would come back to him, blown up and in slow motion. The slack look on Odell’s face in that first second. Goddamn, must have beat him to the draw by just a fraction of an instant, that’s how goddamn close it was. It made him almost physically sick; he’d drawn the Colt and thumb-wiped the safety off and fired at a speed that had no place in time. But it was so easy to screw up a presentation like that; suppose he hadn’t gotten his grip right and hadn’t depressed the grip safety, or he’d missed the safety with the thumb, or he’d missed the shot. But goddamn, he’d put out the telling shot and it kept him fighting. Any single little muff in that complex of movements, and he was a goner.
He’d fired so much! Suppose he’d held back on the shooting? Maybe if he’d placed his shots better and aimed more. He remembered aiming once, at Lamar’s big hands on the Colt. How the blood exploded from them on the hit, the gun flying. Funny, in a gunfight they say that you concentrate on your opponent’s weapon and that hand and arm wounds are the rule, not the exception. That was it exactly, there.
It was such a close goddamn thing, is what it added up to. Physical violence with guns at close range always involved the fantastic, the unbelievable. Every shooting was a Kennedy assassination in replica, a twisted mess of events where everybody was operating in an ozone layer of stress and nothing made sense. Funny, Bud had done all that shooting and had all that shooting directed back at him, and he couldn’t remember hearing a single shot! But his ears rang like somebody was beating on them with a bat. He had no sense of how long it took, either. An hour? More likely three minutes, or two. All that shooting, so much shooting, and how few bullets actually found targets. Even the great Lamar hadn’t shot very well. So much for your gunfighter myth.
It was the flashes that haunted him. When the guns fired, they produced huge clouds of burning gas that in the dark blossomed like starbursts, blinding and disorienting everybody. Maybe that’s why in all the shooting, so few rounds had gone home? Who could see in the middle of the Fourth of July? But those flashes, cruelly flaring out in the dark, each blindingly white and hot, each a potential death sentence. He’d see them for the rest of his life, he thought; he’d never be finished with them.
But mostly, Bud couldn’t get Odell out of his mind. It was like something from some horror movie, the way Odell kept eating up the lead and coming for him. He’d seen the boy’s heart explode, seen his throat blown out, seen part of his brain fly away. But still Odell came, like some robot or something, outside of pain, beyond death. What kept him going, what reserve of pure animal fury? Or maybe it wasn’t fury. Maybe fury couldn’t get you through something like that. Maybe it was love. Only person in the world poor Odell cared about was Lamar, and by all reports Lamar cared back just as hard. That kept him going beyond the collapse of his nervous system. Finally finished him with the .380. And suppose he hadn’t had the belly gun? Conceivably, dying, Odell had enough strength left to crush the life out of him. Goddamn, that little gun sure was worth the money he’d laid out for it!
The next morning, a new doctor came in and gave him a onceover, and confirmed that he probably wasn’t going to die, at least not in the next thirty years. And then, one by one, the boys in suits came in. Colonel Supenski was there, representing the state police, as well as two highway patrol investigators and an investigator from the Jackson County sheriff’s department. But Lt. Henderson, of the OSBI, was missing.
The chief questioner was a tough, young state’s attorney.
How did he feel?
He felt fine.
Was he up to it?
He was up to it.
Did he want his own attorney present?
“Now hold on,” started the colonel—
“Strictly a routine question in a case involving death by force,” said the state’s attorney.
That settled, it began.
Slowly Bud told the story, trying to leave nothing out of the lead-up, except the detail of Jack Antelope Runs. Then the gunfight, in excruciating detail.
“Did you warn them before shooting?”
“Warn them? I was trying to kill them.”
“Strike that from the record, goddammit,” said Colonel Supenski. “He didn’t mean that.”
“Did you mean that, Sergeant Pewtie?”
“No sir. I was merely trying to survive. There wasn’t no time for a warning. I saw a weapon in the perpetrator’s hands and I established that he meant to harm me, and so I opened fire.”
It went on for several hours: where he’d been, what he remembered, where Lamar and Odell had been, and so forth and so on.
Bud had a curious moment here, as a realization reached him.
“You know, for three weeks I been packing three guns and spare magazines for each. I had fifty-eight rounds of ammunition, which I been bitching about like a old lady. Goddamn, if I’d had fifty-nine, Lamar would be dead meat today.”
The lawyers left about six. The boss, after conferring with the investigators, gave him the good news.
“I think you did a great job, Sergeant. Mr. Uckley agrees with me. No state indictments. You’re in the clear.”
“Thank you.”
That left Bud alone with the colonel.
“Okay, Bud,” said the boss, who’d been holding his piece for a long time. “I have to say this. You got guts to burn and what you brought off is a masterpiece of police work. We’re so very proud of you. But Bud, I told you, and it’s beginning to grate on me—this ain’t a goddamned private war. You ain’t a cowboy. You understand me? It’s modern times, we work in teams now. Bud, I cannot have a lone wolf operator working on some personal revenge agenda. I catch you on Lamar’s tail again, by God, I’ll prosecute you. I could even git you on carrying a concealed weapon, since by all lawful interpretation, you were not duly authorized to carry under those circumstances as you were formally on medical leave.”
“Yes sir. But I can only repeat: It ain’t personal. I never want to see that sonofabitch again, except when I testify against him.”
“You understand then that you’re on official administrative leave? You ain’t to be hanging around or going places where you might run into Lamar? You are formally relieved of police duties. It’s routine, it don’t mean a thing, but I do mean to see that you hew to that line.”
“Yes sir, that’s fine. I just want to go home, is all.”
“All right. I’ll believe you on that. Another thing, I got the prelim on Odell. Want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“You hit him thirty-three times, Bud. Four .45s, thirteen .380s and sixteen 9s, And most of ’em were good, solid tors
o hits. You even hit him three times in the head. The doc says the hollowtips opened up like they should. There wasn’t much of him left.”
“He took a basket of killing, that’s for sure.”
Bud shivered a bit.
“Now what you don’t know isn’t going to make you happy. I’ve had a report from our press officer who’s been watching the TV and seen the evening paper from Oklahoma City. The press people are all excited about you shooting Lamar’s fingers off. Like it’s a joke or something. Like you’re Annie Oakley.”
“Anyboy tell ’em how common hand hits are in gun-fights?”
“You can tell ’em anything you want, but they only listen to what they already know from movies. That’s how it is. But this stuff could make Lamar mad. We want to move you and your family to a safehouse.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“It’s best, Bud.”
“I have a boy hitting four hundred and another about to graduate with honors. I can’t take them out of their high school. It’s the time of their lives. They can’t never get it back.”
The colonel looked at him.
“Well,” he finally said, “maybe I’ll just assign a fulltime shift on your home. That be all right?”
“Most ’preciated.”
“I guess a tough old coot like yourself can look after himself.”
“Colonel, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Bud, what is it?”
“The old man. C. D. Henderson? Where’s he?”
“Well, they done retired him. He spent a lot of the state’s money and came up with nothing. You got more from a drawing of a lion than he did from half a million dollars worth of overtime. He had a bad drinking problem, you know? It was time. I hope I go out better, though, than he did. Bitter old coot. Sad, actually, how ugly it became.”
They kept Bud three more nights, and he got through them with his old pal the bottle of Percodan. At ten on the fourth morning, he was released to Jen’s care. The two of them drove home in her station wagon. His leg still throbbed, and though he no longer wore the eyepatch, the vision in the one eye was blurry. Moreover, it felt like every square inch of his body had a bruise or a cut on it.
“Now, you’re supposed to take it easy.”
“Ain’t any other way for me to take it. Plenty of naps, going to Jeff’s games, that sort of thing.”
“Bud, the season’s almost over. He’s only got tomorrow night.”
“Oh. Well, that’s another thing I didn’t do very well, is it? I didn’t pay attention to Jeff. Is that why he’s so grumpy lately?”
“Bud, what’s going on?”
“What you mean?”
“Something’s going on. You aren’t hardly there anymore. There in the house. Even when you’re there. You’re off somewheres else. You never talk to any of us. Like you’re saving your best stuff for somebody else.”
A flower of rage blossomed in Bud. He was at his worst when Jen was picking at his secrets. But he just clamped up.
“It’s just this Lamar thing. Hell, I’ve been in two gun-fights, had a partner killed, been on the road, into and out of hospitals, and killed a man myself. That’s were I been.”
“No, Bud, it’s something else. I’ve been watching you for twenty-five years. I know something’s going on. You have to tell me.”
Bud was acutely uncomfortable. Here was the perfect chance, he thought. Tell her. Work it out now, civilized, friendly-like. It didn’t have to be a mess, with screams and accusations of betrayal and tears. Begin to discuss it with her. Tell her: You met somebody, you care about her, it’s time to make the change. It’ll be all right. It’s a new chance for everybody.
But Bud couldn’t even begin to form the words. It was inconceivable to him.
“No,” he insisted, “things are fine. Just want to get rested up and read in the papers that they got Lamar. I swear to you.”
Her silence expanded to fill the air in the car and drive any other possiblity out.
They got home and Bud saw a state car parked out front.
“Been there long?” he asked.
“Yes. Two men from the OSBI. There’s another car out back. I asked them in, but they said they’d stay in the car and keep a watch out. Do you think he’d try anything against us?”
“Lamar? I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“If you say so.”
“Well, you can’t predict. But these boys out front’ll prevent anything bad from happening.”
Bud waved at the two—sullen youngsters, under huge cowboy hats, with hooded eyes—who nodded in return and went back to eyeballing the neighborhood.
Bud went in—he had a moment of bliss, walking in his own front door, even if each step felt as if it pulled him through a bucket of glass. Still, it felt good: to survive a goddamned gunfight and come back to this and see that everything was just as it had been, that Jen’s sense of order had made certain that it was neat, that it was still a house rank with the odor of boys. He felt as if a weight had been lifted.
He went to the gun safe in the downstairs closet, spun the dial, and the thing opened up: his guns, gleaming in the low light, three short of course, lay in there. He decided to get a short-barreled shotgun out just in case, removed it, slid five 12-gauge double-oughts down its tube, but didn’t crank the slide to jack a round into the chamber. He locked the door and laid the shotgun to rest against the wall.
“Honey, I got a shotgun out. You just have to throw the pump if it comes to it. In the closet. Next to the safe.”
“Okay, Bud.”
“Where’re the papers?”
“In the living room.”
“I’m going to take them upstairs.”
She didn’t answer.
Bud got them and took them upstairs. He slid out of his boots, took another Percodan, and lay back in his bedroom. He read all about it, saw himself referred to by name as a highway patrol undercover officer—now there was a joke!—and read quotes by the colonel and half-a-dozen other officials on what a good job he’d done. There was a murky official photo of him.
Generally, the press business was pretty favorable. It treated him as some kind of hero, and none of them mentioned that he was the patrolman jumped by Lamar and Odell three months back; that was good, it didn’t make it look like this “revenge” thing, as everybody seemed to think it would. Maybe the stupid reporters were too dumb to put it together but more likely, someone had said to them, don’t stroke this angle and, for once, they’d agreed.
But he didn’t like the games they played with the story of the fingers. They almost seemed to think it was funny, that he’d done it on purpose. If he’d been an expert shot, one bullet would have killed Odell, not thirty-three, and the second one would have killed Lamar.
Around one, he fell asleep. At three he awakened, saw that a note from Jen was on the bureau. She’d gone out on errands; Russ and Jeff would be back late; they wanted to go to the Meers Store tonight, was it all right? Or should they stay in?
Bud rolled over and dialed Holly’s number.
“Hi,” he said, “how’re you?”
“Oh, Bud, they say you’re a big hero! Bud, you’re famous!”
“Oh, it’ll go away, believe me. These buzzards forget as soon as they write something.”
“You’re all right?”
“I’m fine, I swear to you. I’m done with the eyepatch but I have scabs on my face and a bandage on my leg, where there’s still swelling and some pain, but I seem to be tougher than beef jerky. Lamar just can’t git me dead. I can’t git him dead either.”
“Bud, when can I see you? I want to be with you so bad. I want to help you through this.”
“No help needed. I’m fine. Honey, I told you—it just depends. A day or two, when the ruckus settles down. You can wait, can’t you? We’re so damned close.”
“Bud? You’re going to do this, aren’t you? You keep putting me off, but you’re going to be with me. I couldn’t stand to lose you, Bud. I just co
uldn’t. I’m so afraid you’re going to change your mind and go running back to what’s easiest.”
Bud had never promised he’d leave. He knew that. He couldn’t force himself to. He’d promised to consider it. The distinction may have been slight, but it was powerful in his mind; it was the difference between adultery and blasphemy.
At the same time there was such eagerness and, underneath, such despair in Holly’s voice. How could she love him so? Was she crazy? What would happen when she saw him as Jen saw him—a largely immobile and inert chunk of solitude, who didn’t give much and took a lot, and whose idea of a good time was to reload .270s for the fall? It scared him a little. He wasn’t quite sure he trusted it. But he didn’t have it in him to hurt her.
“Well, I’m working on it. When them boys was shooting at me, it was you I was thinking about seeing. Okay?”
“Good, Bud. I have to hear that.”
“Holly, soon. I swear to you.”
He hung up and got up. He walked around the empty house, feeling the ache in each step. He looked out the window at the black OSBI car with its two radio antennae and the slouchy young men. He was once again at complete loose ends, too agitated to sleep, yet not really able to go anywhere. He went downstairs and turned on the TV for the six o’clock news, to see if there was anything on Lamar.
There wasn’t. The big news was the Lamar cult. It had struck again that night at the high school.
Someone had painted ODELL WAS MURDERED in huge letters on the blank brick wall of the gymnasium. And next to that, LAMAR WILL BE BACK.
CHAPTER
25
Lamar thought he could get through anything. The hand wound coagulated and scabbed over, and no infection set in; it only hurt, hurt like the devil, but pain was no problem. And the disappointment that Lamar felt when he looked at his unfinished chest, with the outlines of a lion just barely sketched in, rough and crude, incomplete, was palpable, but a man who’s spent most of his life in prison has trained himself at least to patience, and so he knew that his disappointment, too, would vanish eventually, as all things did.