He imagined Jimmy running into someone like Buddy Till and his machine gun. There’d be hair and blood all over everything and God help anybody who got in between. He shivered.
“That damned boy,” said Connie Longacre. “He always was too handsome for his own good. He spent too much time looking in the mirror. I never trust a man who loves what he sees in the mirror more than what he sees outside it. Edie, you needed a solid man, a real man. It’s too bad Earl here is already married and has a boy. Rance used to say Earl Swagger’s the best man Polk County ever gave birth to. And that was before the war!”
“Now, you stop that, Miss Connie,” said Earl. She loved to say provocative things and watch people’s jaws gape.
“Well, if I was a young woman, Earl’s the one I’d have gone after.”
“Edie, I have to talk to you. I have to ask you some official questions. They want me to stay here in case Jimmy heads this way.”
“That silly boy’s on his way to Hollywood if you ask me,” said Connie. “We won’t see him in these parts ever again. Well, I’ll leave you two alone for a bit. Have things to tend to. Go gentle with her, Earl.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Earl.
He and Edie went and sat by the window. Next to her he always felt cumbersome and awkward. He could feel his boots and his leather gun belt creaking. The Colt Trooper felt impossibly heavy.
He got out his notebook, turned past the ten pages of notes he’d taken on Shirelle Parker.
“Edie, has Jimmy been in contact?”
“No, Mr. Earl. The last time I spoke to him was three weeks ago. He seemed fine. He was looking forward to getting out. He was full of excitement. I got a very nice letter a week ago. He was full of excitement about the sawmill. Said he’d end up owning it before 1960!”
“He didn’t say nothing about making new friends in jail or anything?”
“No sir.”
“Sometimes a young guy like Jimmy, he can fall in with some hard cases and they can turn his mind. He didn’t mention anybody, a new friend or nothing?”
“No sir.”
“You should tell me, now. It ain’t a question of betraying. He’s killed some people. There’s a price to be paid. He has to pay it like a man. That’s the best that can be offered at this point. A safe surrender, a fair trial.”
“That’s what I want, Earl. I never, ever wanted anybody to get hurt. Oh, Earl, is it true? He killed four men?”
“They say. At least four witnesses identified him. And Bub.”
Edie looked off, into the sunlight, across the fields.
“Poor Bub,” she finally said. “He couldn’t hurt a mouse.”
Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, thought Earl bitterly. You fool. Why the hell did you have to go and do this thing for?
“You haven’t heard from him today?”
“I haven’t. The truth is, Mr. Earl, I don’t want to ever hear from him again. I can’t have this. It’s too horrible. I have to leave and start over.”
He saw that she was crying.
She turned.
“Mr. Earl, I have to tell you. I married Jimmy because I was bad. I let him—”
“You don’t have to tell me a thing. All that’s your business.”
“I was pregnant. I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t think. My baby had to have his father.”
A single track ran down from her left eye.
“No one knows but Miss Connie. It would kill my poor mother.”
“No one will ever know,” said Earl.
“No. I lost the baby. I miscarried a month ago. The baby’s gone. I lost my baby and now I’m married to a killer. Oh, Earl.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Earl said. “We can fix all that.”
The phone rang.
“Should I answer?”
“It’s probably for me.”
She went and picked it up, and no, it wasn’t for Earl.
“It’s Jimmy,” she said.
5
he boy sat on the porch with Bob and Julie.
“Can you get him something to drink, please,” Bob said. “He says he wants to write a book about my father.”
“Do you want some lemonade? A Diet Coke? We don’t have any alcohol in this house.”
“I’m a drunk,” said Bob. “Can’t have it around.”
“A Diet Coke,” said the boy.
Bob stared at him. What was he, some kind of emissary from the dead? Who could speak of his father to him? Bob found himself strangely agitated, not fearful exactly, but ill at ease, uncertain. Not that the boy looked difficult or dangerous. Quite the opposite: the boy wore wire-rim glasses and looked a little queasy. It was a look Bob had seen on boys he’d had to lead into battle. Why me? Why anyone? Why?
Julie came back with the Coke and a glass with ice. He felt that the can was cold and took a swig, bypassing the glass.
“Go ahead,” said Bob.
“My name,” said the boy, “is Russell Pewtie, that is, Russell Pewtie, Jr. I’m twenty-two years old and I spent two years at Princeton University before dropping out. It’s possible the name Pewtie rings a bell?”
“Not yet,” said Bob.
“My father is Russell ‘Bud’ Pewtie, Sr. Until three years ago, he was a sergeant in the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Big guy, old-boy type. Everybody liked him a lot. Decent man. He was famous for a bit. It was in all the magazines. They say they’re going to make a TV movie about him, one of those ‘Line of Duty’ things.”
“I must have missed it.”
“Well, it may have fallen through,” said the boy. “I don’t talk to my father anymore, so I wouldn’t know. What happened was, in June of 1994, a guy named Lamar Pye led two other men on a breakout from McAlester State Penitentiary in Oklahoma. Lamar was a powerful criminal personality, tough, violent, very smart, extremely aggressive. He cut a swath through southwestern Oklahoma they’re still talking about. Robbery, murder, kidnapping, the works. Now, for some reason, he and my dad—well, they were fated, somehow, mixed together. Lamar ambushed my dad, wounded him, though only superficially, but killed his partner. My dad took it personally. Twice he tracked Lamar down. He had a total of three shoot-outs with Pye. He killed his cousin, he killed a woman who’d thrown in with Pye and finally he killed Pye. Shot his face off, then shot him in the head.”
“Sounds like a brave man,” said Bob.
“Well,” said Russ, as if judgment were still pending. “He was seriously wounded. Shot in the lung, broke his collarbone, nerve damage crippled his right arm. But he recovered, and then one day he says to my mother, ‘I love you, I always will, goodbye.’ Leaves flat cold on a Wednesday morning. Moves across town to a little house near the airport. He was in love with and was carrying on with the woman who was his partner’s wife. Closer to my age than to his.”
“Excuse me, Russ,” said Julie, “where is this going? What does this have to do with my husband?”
“I got to thinking how much we lost to Lamar Pye. And we were lucky. We got out alive. Lamar Pye killed two men during the break out, he killed Ted Pepper, my dad’s partner, he terrorized a farmer and his wife and the woman died soon after, he kidnapped and terrorized a young woman, he killed seven people in a robbery before my dad finally ended it. We were lucky. There’s eleven people in the ground because of Lamar Pye. That was three months’ work. But Lamar took my family. He broke it up. Whatever happened, he enabled my father to leave my mother. It nearly killed my mother. I should tell you, to be quite honest, that I now truly hate my father. How he could do that to her after all those years he gave her? And so if all the Pewties survived Lamar, Lamar still killed the family. He couldn’t have done a better job with a shotgun.”