Dirty White Boys

by Stephen Hunter

  “Open that glove box,” he said.

  She did and saw a small black gun.

  “That’s a Beretta 84 .380,” he said. “Thirteen shots. Safety’s on. Anything happens—”

  “Bud—”

  “I know it’s silly and not a thing will happen. But you know how my mind works. Anyhow, you take that gun and push the safety down with your thumb. Then all you have to do is pull the trigger thirteen times. That should make him really mad, so after that, you slug him with it.”

  “Bud, you are so strange. Do you really think there’s going to be another prison break?”

  “No. But like the man says, if you want peace, prepare for war. I’ll be back in an hour, okay?”

  “Yes sir, it’s not a problem.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes sir. I brought a paperback book along to read.”

  “Good.”

  They were expecting Bud, but if he anticipated any personal apology for the things that McAlester had unleashed, he got none: only professional courtesy, distant and cool but not rude. He checked his Colt Commander with an assistant warden, who took him into a bleak little office. There in three battered cardboard boxes were all that remained in the Big Mac of Lamar Pye, his cousin Odell, and Richard Peed.

  “No letters,” said the assistant warden. “Lamar and Odell haven’t gotten letters in years. Nobody cared about them or even knew about them. Until they broke out, they didn’t exist.”

  Bud nodded.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” said the assistant warden, “but if you think you’re going to find it there, I think you’ll be disappointed. How long do you want?”

  “Oh, an hour or so?”

  “That’s fine, Sergeant. Take your time. No rush. No one’s going anywhere.”

  Bud sat down and pulled over Odell’s box. It was mostly clothes, neatly laundered blue jeans and plaid shirts, a few prison denims of the sort that were no longer strictly mandatory. The underwear, all clean. No porn. He seemed not to have a sexual bone in his body. A model airplane, poorly assembled. Some kind of World War II ship, with glue smeared all over it. A shank, cut from a shoehorn, wickedly vicious. And, finally, a cigar box, just as a small boy in a fabled boyhood would have, a Huck Finn.

  Bud opened the thing: first off, he saw a faded picture of a farm woman, taken, judging from her hair, some time in the sixties. She had that severe, Depression-era look, no meat at all on her sinewy features, narrow eyes that expected no mercy from the world. Her taut mouth held a tension of sorts. She was hunched in a cheap coat, though the sun was shining. The picture was blurry, but in the background he saw white clapboard, a farmhouse perhaps. He turned the picture over, ODELL’S MAMA CAMILLA, ANADARKO, OKLAH 1967 it said, in bold, childish letters, though the writing could not have been Odell’s since the man was hopelessly retarded and illiterate.

  Next out came a coloring book. Bud opened it. Sometime early sixties, badly done, the crayon strokes violent and mixed, paying no attention to the lines. The book was drawn from a Walt Disney cartoon movie called Sleeping Beauty, full of thin, beautiful blond people. An act of cruelty, Bud thought, to give such a thing to a hulking, damaged boy like Odell, with the hole in his face and the nothingness in his mind: He could just look and wonder at what he could not have, ever. A woman’s flowery hand had written “Odell’s favorite book” inside the cover, and paging through, Bud finally came upon what must have been Odell’s favorite page. It was a dragon, rearing up ferociously, about to strike a handsome knight with a sword. Alone, it was not touched by a crayon; the image held too much power for young Odell to defile.

  That was it. So little for a human life, even an Odell Pye’s. He pulled the next box over, finding it heavy. It had to be Richard’s, because the heaviness soon revealed itself to be books. Richard was a reader: In the Belly of the Beast, In Cold Blood, The Pound Era, Thus Spake Zarathustra by somebody whose name Bud could not even figure out how to pronounce. The books looked a little like Russ’s, which somehow irritated him. Paging through them, Bud found lines highlighted in yellow marker. It was all gibberish, mostly about violence.

  Thus speaks the red judge, “Why did this criminal murder? He wanted to rob.” But I say unto you: his soul wanted blood, not robbery: he thirsted after the bliss of the knife. His poor reason, however, did not comprehend this madness and persuaded him: “What matters blood?” it asked; “don’t you want at least to commit a robbery with it? To take revenge?” And he listened to his poor reason; its speech lay upon him like lead; so he robbed when he murdered: He did not want to be ashamed of his madness.

  Crazy stuff. What the hell could it mean?

  He guessed Richard was trying to figure out what he was doing in here. Too bad, Richard boy. You made your decision, now you got to take the consequences.

  Bud put the little book down and went through a few heavy and glossy paperback books on art, mostly painting, again nothing pornographic. Some art supplies—sheaves of drawing and tracing paper, a small box with pencils, chalk, chunks of charcoal for sketching, but no sketches. No weapons, just shaving gear, all neat, and a toothbrush, the toothpaste neatly rolled up. A comb, a Bic razor, some Colgate shaving cream, soap in a plastic box. It all gave Bud the creeps for some reason, and he soon tired of Richard and his intellectual vanities.

  He pulled the last box over, PYE, L., it said on the outside. The clothes were neat in a professional convict’s way: jeans, a jean jacket, even a pair of cowboy boots, much polished, much worn. A stack of magazines: Guns & Ammo, Shooting Times, Gun World, and a profusion of stroke books. Bud paged through them: Penthouse and Playboy and a few more obscure ones that seemed to show women in stockings or women bent over, spreading their asses, exposing their tuliplike assholes or leaning back and ramming plastic or rubber dildoes into amazingly prehensile vaginas. Again, Bud felt slimy, as if Lamar were drawing him in, making him party to Lamar’s own inner horror. He set the magazines down, found a well-thumbed copy of The Picture History of the Third Reich. He found something called The Turner Diaries and another called The Last Clarion for the White Race. Aryan brotherhood shit.

  At last he came to an album of sorts. He pulled it out. LAMAR’S BOOK, it said in blocky letters, the same letters he recognized from the back of the picture of Odell’s mama. He opened it up, encountering a crumbling yellow news clipping from the Arkansas Gazette of August 1955.

  HERO TROOPER SLAYS TWO BEFORE DYING, the headline read, and Bud made out the murky one-column shot of a man identified as “Trooper Sergeant Swagger.”

  A State Trooper Sergeant shot and killed two suspected murderers on Route 71 north of Fort Smith yesterday afternoon, before dying himself of gunshot wounds inflicted by the two men.

  Dead were Sergeant Earl Lee Swagger, 45, of Polk County, a Marine Congressional Medal of Honor winner in the Pacific in World War II; and Jim M. Pye, 27, of Fort Smith and his cousin Buford “Bub” Pye, 21, also of Fort Smith.

  State Police give this account of the event:

  Yesterday morning two men answering the descriptions of Jim M. Pye and Buford Pye robbed an A&P in downtown Fort Smith, shooting two employees. They escaped in a white 1954 Ford. Authorities immediately began roadblock procedures, but the two assailants evaded the roadblocks.

  They were spotted by Sergeant Swagger on Route 71; he gave pursuit and managed to drive the vehicle off the road near Winslow. Attempting to arrest the men, he was shot in the lower chest and stomach.

  As the two men made their getaway on foot, Sergeant Swagger shot and killed Buford Pye. Then, he trailed Jim Pye for nearly three hundred yards into the corn fields where he exchanged shots again with his assailant.

  Pye was hit in the eye and the stomach and was found dead at the spot.

  Sergeant Swagger returned to the car to await medical attention but bled to death before help could arrive.

  He leaves a wife, Erla June, and a 9-year-old son, Bob Lee.

  Wow, thought Bud. They knew how to
build a lawman in those days.

  Wonder if I’d have the guts for that action?

  Rather than contemplate so melancholy a topic, Bud gave the page a turn. Next was a report card, from the Arkansas State Reformatory Middle School, dated June 1962.

  Lamar got a bunch of 3s and 4s in his subjects—As and Bs, that was—but some educator had written:

  Lamar shows great potential when his classes interest him, but his tendency for getting in fights or disruptive behavior threatens his academic achievement. He must learn impulse control. Additionally, he sexually assaulted two younger boys; he clearly has overly mature aggressive tendencies as well as serious resentment of authority. He had better be given therapy quickly before he develops serious personality pathologies.

  Of course he wasn’t; of course he did.

  The next page, another news clipping, from the Anadarko Call-Bulletin of January 1970:

  FARMER FOUND SLAIN ON PERKINSVILLE ROAD.

  The story simply related how a farmer named Jackson Pye—the third worthless Pye brother, Bud concluded—had been stabbed to death by a mysterious assailant as he walked home along a country road from a nearby tavern. There were no witnesses. The report also said he was survived by his son Odell.

  Another page: CONVENIENCE STORE ROBBERIES CONTINUE.

  Another: LOCAL MAN ARRESTED ON RAPE CHARGES.

  Another: BAIL DENIED TO VIOLENT OFFENDER PYE.

  Another: PYE ESCAPES FROM COUNTY LOCK-UP.

  Bud riffled through the pages: the raw verbs of crime headlines yelled up at him from the seventies, and the crimes, mostly robbery and theft, now and then a murder and a sentencing. Lamar had become the compleat career criminal, master of a dozen violent trades, his acts marked by brazenness, violence, and a certain nutty courage. Lamar had balls, no doubt about it.

  PYES CONVICTED IN PUSATERI KILLING read the last one, an account of how Lamar and Odell shot a motorcycle gang snitch in the head and dumped him, how he miraculously survived to identify them before dying.

  SENTENCE FIFTEEN YEARS TO LIFE FOR EACH KILLER COUSIN.

  The album was Lamar’s life, what he was proud of, his résumé. What would you do with such a man? How could he possibly be reclaimed? He came from criminal stock, he evinced antisocial behavior from an early age, was unnaturally aggressive, and took to the lifestyle of the professional criminal with extraordinary ease. He was born to be a criminal, that was all.

  Bud put the book down. There was nothing at all here, except a warning for any and all who dared mess with Lamar Pye without backup and lots of firepower. Put him in your sights and blow him away, that’s all.

  He glanced at his watch.

  He’d been at it three hours! Jesus Christ! And Holly was still waiting outside.

  He reached for the pile of slick magazines to reinsert in the box, but by their very slickness, they fell to the floor, skidding and opening. Bud cursed and bent to retrieve them and then noticed something strange. Across the rolling mountainous breasts of the Penthouse Pet of August 1991, there was inscribed some sort of figure. It wasn’t a drawing, but the impression of a drawing that had been done on a paper laid across it.

  Bud picked it up, tried to find some angle of light that would reveal its secret. That didn’t work; the image kept collapsing as the light changed. It occurred to him to do a tracing. He remembered that Richard had some light paper in the art supplies in his box and he quickly got it out. He laid the paper across Miss August, only slightly obscuring the thrust of her tits, the pronglike tightness of her nipples; with a piece of charcoal, he delicately rubbed the paper, just enough pressure to leave the charcoal everywhere except in the grooves, where it sank under pressure.

  When he was done, he looked at what he had brought out: It was the image of a lion.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Mar go bye-bye wif Rutie-girl.

  Dell go barn, see moocow. Plus Wi-chud. Moocow nicey-nice. Soft Smell toasty. Eyeballs browny like poop. Big eyeballs. So still. Eyeballs so brown. Touchy moocow, moocow go “Moooooooooooo,” Wi-chud go ‘‘Nonononono!

  Wichud girl!

  Wichud girly-girl, like Rutie-girl!

  Wichud always Boo-hoo, like girly. Wichud baby thing.

  Then … Rutie-girl back. No Mar. Where Mar? Mar go? Mar go away far?

  WHERE MAR?

  WHERE MAR?

  Dell feel bad. Dell hurt. Dell scarey-scare.

  WHERE MAR?

  ‘‘Mar be here,’’ Rutie-girl.

  Wi-chud. Where Mar?

  Rutie-girl, where Mar?

  Wi-chud go ‘‘Me no know,’’ nicey Dell.

  Dell go boo-hoo. No Mar. Dell go boo-hoo. Dell want Mar. Dell red. Red inside. Red Red Red Red.

  WHERE MAR! DELL WANT MAR!

  Wi-chud, you tellum or Dell go BONKY on head, Wi-chud.

  Wi-chud, crybaby girly, “No No Dell, No Hurty.”

  GO BONKY Wi-chud GO BONKY!

  Then … Mar!

  Mar new car!

  Car whitey!

  Dell be so happy-happy.

  ‘‘New car, new car,’’ Dell.

  “Yes, it is, Odell, and now we’re going to repaint it,” said Lamar, as he climbed from the dusty vehicle. “Richard, you’re a painter, ain’t you? Time to pull your weight, son. Let’s get this sucker repainted.”

  But Richard looked like somebody had just squeezed all the air out of him. He was the color of dead petunias.

  “What’s wrong, boy?”

  “Odell hit me! Twice!”

  “I don’t see no blood. If he really hit you, you’d be bleeding.”

  “But he hurt me.”

  “Odell, no bonky Richard. Richard nicey nice. Odell, go me sorry.”

  Odell’s face lit in contrition. Genuine pain seemed to briefly shine from his eyes.

  “Dell baddy bad,” he said.

  “See, he apologizes, Richard. Okay? Does that take care of it?”

  “Ah,” said Richard, “I suppose.”

  “Lamar, the baby has been upset at your absence,” said Ruta Beth. “I wonder if we could control him if you weren’t here.”

  “Don’t you fret that, hon,” said Lamar. “Now come on. We got work to do.”

  But Richard wondered. For just a second there, it looked as if Odell was going to lose it. His dull eyes inflated in fear and rage, and it was as if his whole chest swelled. He had grabbed Richard and slapped him hard atop the head twice. Richard had felt like a rag doll. The fear/hate of losing Lamar had turned Odell briefly psychopathic and frightening.

  It scared the shit out of Richard. In one of his “moods,” Odell could hurt anyone. He shuddered at the thought: Odell, alone in the world, without Lamar.

  “Come on, boy, get to work,” commanded Lamar.

  They spent the afternoon with cans of spray paint and Richard tried to lose himself in the work. He was surprised how much he enjoyed the simple task: It was freedom from lions, it was freedom from fear, it was freedom from Odell’s whimsy or the utter domination of Lamar. After a frenzy of taping over the trim, he sprayed the bright orange paint on the car in smooth, circular motions, almost as if it were an airbrush, amazed at how quickly the car picked up its new color and how good he was at it. He was much better than Lamar, a lot better than Ruta Beth, and completely better than Odell, who simply could not get the concept of smoothness and just hammered a spot onto a single sector of the car so clumsily that even Lamar saw the hopelessness of it and gave him another job. And pretty soon they had it: a nice orange car.

  The next day, Friday, Lamar said to him, “Okay, Richard, you come with me today. We goin’ pick up our second car.”

  “A second car?”

  “Yes sir. It will surprise you how a dumb Okabilly like me got this sucker planned out, Richard. We actually going to use three cars. Yep. You got to plan it right if you want to stay ahead of Johnny Cop. Them boys got their computers and their helicopters and their what-all. Gittin’ harder and harder to do an honest da
y’s stealing. But I think I got em buffaloed on this one, yes I do. Hey, boy, you’re a-running with the big dogs now. Ain’t it a toot?”

  “Yes sir,” said Richard.

  As they were pulling out of the farmyard in Ruta Beth’s Toyota, she came out and gave Lamar a little peck on the cheek.

  “You be careful, hon.”

  “I will. And you take good care of Odell. You watch him. He can wander off.”

  “Don’t you worry about Odell. Me ’n’ him going to have a good time. I’m going to work and he’s going to spin the wheel for me.”

  “Good. He feels useful then.”

  “Richard, you mind Daddy. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Richard.

  “Don’t be late, honey.”

  “We won’t be.”

  “You want the roast beef tonight?”

  “That’d be super,” Lamar said.

  They pulled out. Lamar was happy.

  “Damn,” he said. “She’s the best goddamn girl a man could find. I’m a lucky man, Richard. Yes I am.”

  They drove the mile down the red dirt road, turned left on 54, then, a few miles down, west on 62, toward Altus. The highway was flat across a flat land under a high western sky and a blaze of sun unfiltered by the thin clouds. The mountains jutted from the plains and the wind snapped across the earth. Now and then a tractor would slow traffic down or they’d meander through some one-horse town, a brick bank and hardware store, a strip mall with an auto parts place and a Laundromat, the inevitable 7-Eleven.

  “See,” said Lamar amiably, “trouble with those goddamned Seven-’Levens is that ever goddamned hour the manager sets a certain amount of the cash in the timelock vault. Through a little chute up top. So at any given time you can’t get but what the store’s taken in in the past hour. Ain’t hardly worth the goddamn trouble.”