But a couple of weeks later, having thought pretty much of nothing except her, he'd just up and called her one day and made up some pretext about Ted's problems and one damn thing led on to another; it became It.
“Bud?”
It was Ted, in the next bunk.
“Yes, Ted?”
“Bud, I can't sleep. I'm gonna go sit in the car.”
“Ted, you need your sleep.”
“But I can't.”
“Ted, you have to be sharp. Is something bothering you?”
“I'll tell you about it sometime. Bud. You'll know what I should do.”
Bud watched Ted go on out. He tried to feel something for Ted. Shouldn't he feel awful, partnered up with the man whose wife he was sleeping with? But he didn't. Ted had made his own bed with his strange ways. Bud couldn't believe a bad thing about Holly, and some of the things she'd told him made him sick. Ted watched dirty movies on the VCR alone late at night. Ted didn't seem to even think about touching her anymore. Ted just didn't care; he was letting it drift apart.
Ted, partner, you made a dumb mistake. I wish I were man enough to help you out, but I got too much involved.
They were on the swing between 1-44 at Chickasha and Anadarko, where the Pye boys hailed from, and where they just might head (though Bud thought not; whatever Lamar was, he wasn't that dumb) when Ted finally broke his silence.
“Bud, I got a thing or two on my mind.”
“Well, that's no place for a thing or two. Spit ’em out.”
The young trooper's face seemed to knit up in pain as he struggled for the words. But then finally he relaxed a bit and just said it.
“Ah, Bud… something's been eating me alive for months now. I even went to a psychiatrist, through that employees' assistance program the Department of Public Safety runs. But you're the first real person I breathed a word to.”
“Well, then you'd best get it out. Just flat say it, and we'll pick up the pieces and see what we got.”
“It's this: I don't think I got the guts for this line of work. The pure guts.”
So that was it. The moment hung in the car. On either side, the countryside, like a green river, flowed by, rolling yet mountain less the wheat fields and pastures and alfalfa fields all green in the sunlight. Soon Anadarko would come up, an ugly, desolate little town, with its customary bright strip of cheesy fast-food mills, a mile off the dead center of town.
“It's a scary job, Ted. Every one of us feels it when we strap on the gun. You run into a crazy, a hopped-up Tulsa gang banger a bad Okabilly with an attitude, you could stop a slug. I feel it, too, specially in these crazy days, where every goddamned body has a gun.”
“No, Bud, you're just talking about duty anxiety. That's what the shrink said. But it's something deeper.”
“Well, okay, Ted, if you say so. But I think everybody in our profession feels the horse collar
“About a year ago, I had a bad ten-seventy. I got good radar on a Nova about twenty miles below Oklahoma City.
Pulled him over. It was around three in the goddamned morning. Not a soul about. Couldn't even see any lights on the horizon. I did a run through Dispatch and found there was no paper on the driver. Still, I don't know why, I was scared. A trooper in Maryland got one in the head just that way a few years back.”
“I remember, Ted. I went to his funeral.”
“Anyway, I approached the car.. .. It was four blacks.
You know, in the X caps, the workout suits, and, man, that car just reeked of grass. They'd been having a high old time, I like to got buzzed just standing there. So I ask for the license and the guy hands it over. And I feel these eight eyes on me. And I look. And they're just staring at me, the reefer smoke just pouring out of that car, and I'm all alone and I'm thinking… I'm dead. I'm sure they were hauling a load. And they were just staring at me, waiting for me to make a move, daring me to make a move. And then I saw the first gun. An AR-15, like mine, only with the shorty barrel. It came up on the off-driver's side. One of ’em gets out. He's got a fucking Uzi} I see the guy in the back seat fiddling with something I couldn't even ID! Some weird thing with ventilation holes in the barrel shroud, a red-dot scope, a goddamned banana magazine. And here I am with a Smith and six cartridges. Goddamn, Bud, my dad fought in Vietnam and his dad fought in Korea and World War II and on down the line us Pepper boys have stood up and been counted. And all of a sudden it came over me so hard I thought I'd faint: I don't have it.”
“Ted—”
“So anyway, I just handed the license back. Apologized for stopping. And watched them go away. They laughed. I could hear them laugh as they pulled away. I went back to the cruiser and I just cried. I sat there and I cried.”
Ted just sat there, face slack, eyes dull. Burnt out, used up. He'd let the thing eat him alive.
“Well, Ted, you're a fine young officer,” Bud finally said.
“I think it would be a shame to let a thing like that worry on you too much. Sometime you got to back down.
Those boys had you cold. What was the point of getting killed for nothing? They've probably killed each other by now anyway. Why not just pass it as done, and swear to do your best from here on out. That's all.”
“Bud, haven't you ever made a mistake? Don't you ever feel guilty? No, I don't suppose you do. You just are naturally the kind of man who goes through life without screwing up. God, I wish I could be like you. Sometimes I think Holly wishes I could be like you. Bud this and Bud that.
That girl has a thing for you, Bud. And for a while I hated you on account of it.”
“Ted, I—”
“No, Bud, it's not your damned fault. Well, anyway, that's it. You got it. I don't.”
“Well, Ted, the truth is, I have never done a courageous thing in my life. I don't have no idea how I'd be if there's lead flying about and I hope never to find out. And there's all sorts of things about me you don't know,” Bud said.
“All units, all units,” came the squawk over the statewide intercity net on the Motorola.
Both men suddenly started to listen.
“OSBI has just confirmed the location of the van thought to have been stolen by the inmate escapees Pye and Peed. It was found in the parking lot of a Hostess bakery and distributorship in Ada, where it had apparently sat for over thirty-six hours, unnoticed.”
“Goddamn,” said Bud.
“Body in the back identified as Willard Jones, twenty-four, of Ada. We think we're looking for victim's car, a blue eighty-seven Dodge Dart, plates Lima-x-ray-Papa five-niner-seven,” Dispatch said.
“Goddamn,” said Bud, "that old Lamar's a smart one.
Only place nobody'd notice a Hostess van is in the Hostess parking lot. He's outside the ring now. And nobody knows where the hell he's heading.”
A quiver passed through Bud.
Lamar was smart and he was bad. It was the worst news.
“Goddamn,” said Ted, "glad you made me wear this damned vest.”
CHAPTER 5
Richard knew he was smart. He read at three. He was in gifted and special classes all the way through school, with grades way off the charts and an IQ that always opened eyes. And his talent: eerie, vivid, almost supernatural. A special, precious kind of boy, who impressed all exposed to him, all the way through.
But Lamar was smart.
Put Richard on the street and he's dead. Put Richard in jail and he's dead. Put him in Russia, in ancient Rome, on Mars, in the Marine Corps, all those places he's dead.
Not Lamar. Lamar ends up running most of them, or in their prisons, running them. Lamar just knows. Always, always figuring. Show him a problem and he breaks it down fast and right, though not the way a normal man might: He breaks it down so there's more for him and less for you.