He was of no known sex, with his prissy, parched little lips, and his strangely disaffected way of moving, as if he heard everything a second later.
What a trio! These insane fools had killed her own husband as he lay on the ground and then terrorized Oklahoma for two months? They seemed like some hill clan, white trash who hadn't ever seen a toilet that flushed. She almost laughed. They were so unbearably squalid.
And she knew they'd kill Bud. That was the terrible part.
They'd take his life without hesitation and they'd take her life.
“What you looking at, baby girl?” Lamar suddenly demanded, bringing his face close to hers.
“What scum you are,” she said.
“You are the worst scum.”
“Lady,” he said, "you know, I could rape you. Did it for years and years to any woman I could find. Oh, the things I done. The law only knows but a third. They could punish me for a thousand years and be nowheres near even out on the deal.”
“But you won't.”
“Why's that?”
“
“Cause a tiny part of you is scared of Bud Pewtie. You only got the best of him once—then he got the best of you.
It's third time coming up and maybe you ain't quite the stud you think you are.”
Lamar laughed.
“Damn,” he said.
“You got a mouth on you! Half a mind to keep you around for comedy.
You could help Ruta Beth with the cooking. Ruta Beth, you need a helper?”
“No, Daddy,” said Ruta Beth, furiously.
“Sorry,” said Lamar.
“We ain't hiring today.” Then he laughed again, eyes glinting in the low light.
Bud put his lights out and flew by the dirt road entrance.
He saw nothing on 54 except the light of a beat-up old house a mile away against the darkness of the prairie, here and there the blotch of a grove of mesquites or scrub oaks, undulating prairies and crests and the far-off mountains.
He drove a half mile and slowed to a halt, careful not to let his brakes squeak. He tried to think. Did he want to park by the road and come in over the fields? Did he want to try to go down the entrance road, slow, lights out? He could probably get pretty close. But surely Lamar would have someone looking out. As for the walk in, it seemed so long.
He glanced at his watch. Ten to four. He wanted to make his move before they called and got no answer; going off the schedule just a little would set Lamar's hair to bristling;
he'd begin to sniff things out.
You have to move now and fast, he thought. You cannot fuck around. You have to go in and shoot Lamar in the first second. Without Lamar, they would fall apart, though he thought he'd have to shoot the girl, too; he had no illusions.
If she'd sold her soul to Lamar, she was a target and had to be hit.
And maybe Richard, too, though he had fewer worries about Richard: Richard had no guts and would quit in an instant if Lamar was gone.
Bud eased ahead another quarter mile and came to another long, straight dirt road that seemed to lead nowhere. It simply vanished in the darkness. He thought: It's only a half a mile down and roughly/ parallel I can drive down it, turn right, go into four-wheel, buck my way through the grass and scrub and any barbed wire I find. Then he'd close from the rear, shoot Lamar with the rifle from outside, kick in the door and take his chances with the girl and Richard. Maybe Holly would make it, maybe she wouldn't.
It was the best chance she had, as long as he, committed to it, went in hard and shot to kill.
Okay, he thought, time to go.
His vest.
He hadn't taken time to put on his vest!
I hope my luck holds, he thought, but he doubted it would.
Lamar watched the slow tick of the minute hand as it swept its way around the face of the big clock on Ruta Beth's mantel. Round and round it went, sucking seconds off the face of the earth, drawing Bud Pewtie nearer to his fate. He'd done his homework. At four. Bud would be in Anadarko; Lamar would bring him back toward Odette, looking for a signal; Bud would never know where it would be so he'd be looking hard, spooked and tired. They'd bring him on in to the farm. He'd sit in the truck cab, with his wife trussed up in plain view. Then, slowly, he'd have to get out and go toward her. That's when they'd take him down, hard, with buckshot in the legs, under the vest he was sure to be wearing; then Lamar would crown him once, twice, maybe three times with the shotgun butt and drag him into the barn. The hard work would be done in the barn. It would take most of the morning. No one would hear the screams.
Then when he was gone, Lamar decided he'd have the woman. Have her all the ways there were to have her; it excited him that she'd know it would be her last thing.
Maybe he'd give a taste to Richard. Didn't know yet. Then he'd kill her. Out of kindness, he'd decided to shoot her in the head.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“It's about time.”
He looked back toward the clock. Five till.
“Oh, give him a few more minutes, baby,” he said.
“Let him enjoy. He's got some things a-coming, like a freight train.”
Richard was very nervous. He kept licking his lips and trying not to look at the woman, whose helplessness and fear excited him. He'd never had such a response to a woman before; but he was also very frightened. This Pewtie was a tough customer; he'd stood up to and killed O’Dell, and not even the violent and fearless black inmates would stand against O’Dell.
As usual, it was his imagination that betrayed him. He could not quiet it. He saw that Lamar's great gift was his ability to concentrate and act, whereas he, Richard, was always bedeviled by rogue thoughts, erratic impulses. Suppose the buckshot didn't knock Pewtie down; suppose he got a gun into action? Suppose Lamar tripped as he rushed -toward him. It could go wrong a hundred different ways, although when Lamar planned something, it usually didn't go wrong. Lamar just got things done, that was all.
But this was the last hard thing for a while. Lamar had said they would leave, find new territory. Lamar wanted also to find a skin artist to get the tattoo finished, and he wanted Richard to work really hard at that. Richard didn't want to disappoint Lamar. Lamar was a god to him; Lamar stood above him and dominated the sky scape like a tyrant king. Richard had yielded in all totality, replacing a mother he feared and loved with a man he feared and loved.
I am a slave, he thought.
I love being a slave.
He looked at the girl again and felt a twitch in his dick.
Then he touched the heavy revolver in his belt and looked at King Lamar on his throne and swore eternal fealty.
Bud drove without his lights on, in low gear, guided by starlight, wishing there was a moon; but there was no moon. He watched the tick of the odometer and when at last the nine-tenths mark turned over into a new mile, he halted.
He got out and locked the Warn hubs on the front axle. It was as dark as a convict's dream. The wind, always the wind, snapped across the dry prairie. He looked, saw that the gulch between the road and the field didn't look bad, climbed back in. He eased into four-wheel drive, pushed slowly ahead, and felt just the faintest sense of resistance. A fence, wire; it went down with the sound of metal pranging against metal. He lurched ahead and the truck sank abruptly at a wretched angle, shimmied down a bank, and seemed to come to a rest.
Shit, Bud thought, dropping into low range and giving the gas a feather touch. The engine's muttering deepened and the truck bucked a bit, then began to pull itself out of the gully. It shuddered free with a last grind of tire against earth, and he was on clear ground; he zoomed up into the field and began to pick his way across it.
No resistance; the truck rumbled almost silently along and he steered by a compass on the dashboard, avoiding the stunted mesquite trees, bypassing the low hollows clotted with scrub oak. The prairie was boundless, but like the surface of the sea, its flatness was illusion.