Dirty White Boys (43 page)

Never. Was gone. Couldn’t happen. That life was sealed off. He was “special,” he had been trained from an early age, smarter and more talented, and see what it had got him?

Why am I so damned smart?
he wondered, pityingly.
Why do I have to see through so much? Why couldn’t I be banal, like everyone else?

“What the hell are you crying about?” Ruta Beth said. “You want us arrested for being weird? They do that in small towns, you know.”

“No, it’s just that it’s so commonplace, the contents of a newspaper. There’s nothing
meaningful
in it. It’s so
ordinary.’’

“Goddamn, Richard, you are the goddamnedest weirdest man I ever did see. Don’t see what Lamar sees in you. Go on, look for the goddamned name.”

Richard pushed his way onward, his eyes roaming through the sports section, pulsing through dreary tales of dreary games played all across the city and surrounding counties. Why did boys love games so? It was a complete mystery to him. Take baseball, for example. What was the point? After all, if you hit the ball or you didn’t hit the ball, in the long run, what was achieved? It was one of those self-defining systems, full of—

TWO PEWTIE HITS TAKE LAWTON HIGH PAST EUREKA

He’d almost missed it. But there it was, the name Pewtie, big as life. There couldn’t be two of them.

“Sophomore Jeff Pewtie continued his hitting rampage,” the breathless copy read, “with a single in the first and a bases-loaded double in the fifth. Since being promoted to Lawton varsity in mid-May, the 15-year-old sophomore has hit an amazing .457.”

Richard rushed through the pages in search of this young Hercules’ labors and found them nearly every week. When Jeff didn’t deliver mighty clouts, his superb outfielding astonished the fans. Finally, yes, a picture: the boy being clapped on the back after delivering a game-winning hit, this just from last week! He looked carefully. The face was young and square and handsome, on a compact, muscular body, brimming with health and confidence. He looked hard into the bone structure and tried to match it with the sergeant’s photo from the papers earlier that week, after the shooting. After a bit, he came to see it: It was the shape of the nose and the distribution of flesh between the eyes, the subtle architecture of a face or, rather, of a genetic pattern reiterated, though in a slight variant mutation, father to son.

“That’s him,” he said.

“ ’Bout time,” said Ruta Beth.

“That’s the kid.”

Richard looked at the boy; a shiver came across him. What a perfect gladiator, how confident of his place in the world and expectant of the future. And what woe awaited him.

In the parking lot, they showed Lamar a page they’d ripped from the newspaper, with Jeff’s picture.

“You were right, Lamar. You were dead right. Now all’s we have to do is go to the school like you said, and do what you said, and in a day or so, we’ll—”

“Richard, goddamn, sometimes I don’t think you got a brain in that head of yours. Not a one. How careful you look at this?”

Richard hung his head in shame.

“Not very,” he said.

“Didn’t think so, Richard. Tell me, Richard, you ever looked at a
sports page
in your life? Or you only look at books with pictures of naked women in ’em?”

“I-I-I don’t like games,” Richard said sullenly, punching out his lower lip.

“Well, on most sports pages, they got what they call a
schedule
. Yes, indeedy, and all you need to do is lookiesee and there it is.”

“There what is?”

“The schedule. Of the games. Don’t you think this old hero cop Bud Pewtie going to want to see his kid play ball? I mean, really, don’t you think?”

“He would, Daddy,” said Ruta Beth.

“You damned betcha,” said Lamar. “And according to this here schedule … there’s a goddamn game
tonight.”

He looked at the two of them.

“Better git your mitts, boys and girls. We’s going to a ball game.”

B
ud got to the downtown police station—a two-story brick box on Fourth Street that only had a gaudy flower bed out front to break up its blankness—fast, made his inquiries, and was directed to Juvenile. He raced up the steps and down a bright green hall to discover the department, opened an opaque glassed door to find the same vision of a thousand American police stations: the cluttered bullpen room, the green walls, the bulletin boards littered with circulars that nobody ever looked at. And, in one corner, there was Jen standing next to an old friend, a police lieutenant named Howard, who had done ten years on the highway patrol with Bud before he’d missed out on a promotion and left the state agency with bitterness.

He walked up to them.

“Jen, my God, what the hell is going on? Is he all right?”

Jen just looked at him, something long and hurting in her eyes. Then she looked away.

“Now Bud, you’d best take it easy for now,” said Howard. “I wouldn’t let them put him in the tank with the scum. He’s in a solitary cell and nobody’s going to hurt
him, that I guarantee. We got two detectives working on statements and witnesses and I’ve talked to both the other boys’ mothers and I know the Juvenile Justice, and I think we can get everybody to agree to accept misdemeanor charges. Them boys was a part of it, too. Everyone’s trying to behave well under the circumstances.”

“Just tell me what happened, Howard. Jeff isn’t the kind of boy to assault strangers anywhere, much less in school. We didn’t raise him like that and he never been in fights or had any JD records or nothing.”

“Bud, he did attack those boys. In front of others. In class, actually. He’s a strong kid, you know. He punched the Jennings boy in the ribs and broke two and he broke the Chastain boy’s nose.”

Bud just looked at Howard in disbelief. He couldn’t begin to understand it.

“I just don’t—”

“They were the spray painters, Bud,” said Howard. “They were the ones painting ‘Long Live Lamar’ and ‘Odell Was a Martyr’ and ‘Go Lamar’ on the walls. Two real smart boys, one going to Norman, the other going East like your son Russell. You know, smart-asses, show-offs. Well, it seems they have that angry edge all the young people have these days. Wanted to ‘Question Authority,’ they called it. Mischief, I suppose. Most everybody knew it was them, maybe even Russell. But Jeff found out today in the locker room. He just walked from classroom to classroom till he found them, and started pounding on them. I’ll say this: They ain’t going to paint no more signs on no more school walls.”

“If you ask me, Jeff deserves a medal,” said Jen bitterly.

“No,” said Bud, “you can’t think like that. What he did was wrong, no matter the reason. He has to take his punishment like a man and not let it wreck his life. We need a
lawyer, a good lawyer. My record sure as hell won’t hurt. The main thing is to avoid the felony conviction. Hell, he’s only fifteen. You don’t want a felony conviction on your record; it’ll dog you for your whole life.”

Bud felt an immense melancholy settle over him. Poor Jeff: He saw in a flash how his mind had worked and how he’d set out to avenge the family honor. Frankly, what those two boys did made him sick. He gritted his teeth and swore to himself that he’d fight like hell to see that his boy got every damn break he could. But he hated it: the troubles of his life, that he himself had invented, dumped square in his poor youngest son’s lap.

He put his hand on Jen’s shoulder and she recoiled.

So he found a phone and called an assistant prosecutor he knew and got the name of the best defense lawyer in town, a name he recognized as a man who was known for a good deal of flamboyance and charisma—and publicity. Quickly he called, and when he was told that Mr. O’Neill was in conference, he said, “Now listen here, young lady. This is Sergeant Bud Pewtie of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, the cop that shot it out with the Pyes. I think Mr. O’Neill would appreciate the fact that an officer as famous as I am chose him to call in an hour of need and he’d want me to be put through right away.”

It worked; in a minute the lawyer was on the phone, and in five, he’d promised to be down there before four.

“Got him a lawyer,” said Bud. “Believe me, getting a good lawyer is nine tenths the battle. All the scum has the best legal talent around—no reason we shouldn’t.”

But Jen didn’t respond and just looked out the window.

Bud walked up to her.

“What the hell is wrong?” he said. “You are treating me like a piece of shit.”

“Where were you?” she finally said. “Just what the hell is going on?”

“I was—” He came up dry. “I was seeing—”

And then he realized his mistake.

He couldn’t say he’d driven out to see C. D. Henderson in his bitter retirement because he’d already lied and told her he was going to see C.D. to get the guns back.

He hit the wall. He came up blank. He was out of lies.

“I was just driving around, thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how used up I feel.”

“Oh, stop it, Bud. I’m not a fool. I can tell when something’s going on.”

She glared out the window.

Then she turned.

“You wait for the lawyer. You get Jeff out. I can’t stand this anymore. I’m going home.”

It took another hour for the lawyer to arrive, the paperwork to be signed, a quick hearing with the magistrate to be arranged, and then at last, Jeff was released. He looked so small, so pale and wan. They’d made him change clothes into those green prison beltless pants and shirt, and given him paper slippers. He looked like an intern. He wouldn’t meet Bud’s eyes, but the warder, a hearty black man who also knew of Bud, acted as host of the party, got Jeff’s clothes and took him into the men’s room where he could change.

Bud waited in the office and then Jeff was brought back, now looking somewhat better in his jeans and boots. But still he wouldn’t look at his father.

They walked down to the truck together.

“You know, Jeff,” Bud finally said, “I can certainly understand why you did what you did. A certain part of me
even says those boys had it coming. But you can’t assault them. That sets you on a path that can lead to self-destruction, a fine young man like you. It goes contrary to all your teaching.”

Jeff said, “Dad, I know.”

“Then why did—”

“No, I mean, I
know
. What you’re doing. It’s inexcusable.”

Bud looked at his son’s profile across the seat from him, saw the strong lean face, the delicate lashes, the intensity buried in the eyes.

“About her,” Jeff said.

Little thud in Bud’s heart. The world fell out of focus, and then came back.

“Jeff, I—” But again he came up dry.

“It was the phone, Dad. About three months ago, I heard you talking on the phone late at night. Low voice, hushed. The noise came up through the floorboards. The next morning I looked at the phone for an hour. And then I punched redial. Don’t you know about redial? How could you not know about redial? It dialed the number and the voice answered, a woman’s, and she said hello and I said hello, and I remembered her voice from the time you and Mom had them over for dinner. And I said ‘Mrs. Pepper?’ and she said yes and I hung up. And I heard you—every night, I heard you, heard that voice coming up through the vent. You had to call her from the house? You couldn’t call her from someplace else but you had to do it from the house?”

“Jeff, I—”

“You’re screwing this woman and then you’re coming home and acting like everything’s okay, and then at night you call her and make plans for the next day? And you’ve got it all figured out, I bet! How you and her are going off, and you’re just going to leave poor Mom and the rest of us.
And we have to pick up your pieces and go on, while you’re out partying. God, Dad, how could you do that to her? How
could
you?”

Bud swallowed hard.

“Jeff, these things aren’t so black and white as you make them out to be.”

“No, it is simple. You got tired of us. We bored you. So you went somewhere else. And every morning I had to wake up and wonder if this was the night you were leaving us.”

He had begun to cry. The tears ran down his cheeks. His nose began to issue terrible liquids. He hated to cry, Bud knew, hated losing control, but now he did and in seconds he was sobbing hysterically. Bud pulled over and put out a hand to touch him.

“No!” Jeff said, recoiling savagely.

“I’m sorry, Jeff,” Bud said. “I never meant to hurt you. I don’t think I ever would have left, not really. It wasn’t something I planned or dreamed about. It just happened.”

“Dad. Dad, Dad, Dad.”

“Jeff, one thing a son always has to learn is that his father ain’t a hero, he’s just another man trying hard and making mistakes like everybody else. Now I suppose I cut myself too much slack. My old man was a drunk and he beat me up a lot, too, and he drove my mama out early. So I always thought if I was better than
him
then I’d really accomplished something. But now I see that being better than that don’t mean shit.”

They sat there for a long while.

“Well,” Bud finally said, “at least I figured out what I’m going to do.”

He took a deep breath and faced the future.

“I’ll make it work. I can make it work. You know I can make it work.”

“Are you just
lying
again?”

“Jeff, I never told you no lies. Yes, I lied to your mother. Someday when you’re an aging man and a pretty young woman takes an interest in you and you can’t find it in your heart to say no, then maybe you’ll know what it is.”

The boy looked at him through a ravaged, swollen face and said nothing.

“Don’t you have a game tonight?” Bud asked.

He nodded.

“Will they let you play?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how’s this? I’ll take you to the game. When the game is over, I’ll go over to Holly’s and I’ll tell her the news. I owe her that much. I have to tell her straight up, you understand. Then I’ll go to home, and I’ll tell your mother what a bad husband I’ve been. And I’ll ask her to forgive me, and maybe she will and maybe she won’t. But the lying will be over, that I swear to you. All right? The lying and the cheating, it’s all over. Then pretty soon, when school is out, we’ll all go on a nice trip. We have some money saved up, but I think the whole family going on a trip, maybe that’s more important. I will set my house in order, Jeff, I swear to you.”