Stephen Hunter - Dirty White Boys

Bud looked at this Richard Peed. Under the puffy, pillow head of hair, he beheld a face remarkable in its softness. No harsh lines attended Richard Peed at all; he seemed raw material, unformed, callow, a child-man. His face was dough, waiting for experience to stamp an imprint upon it.

The eyes were fuzzy and slightly weak, and even in the picture, peering over the new rack of inmate's numbers and bled of all nuance by the harshness of the flashbulb, he radiated fear; he was a rabbit. The joint would kill him.

“What'd this he-man do?” a deputy sheriff asked.

“Rob a goddamned lemonade stand?”

But Bud could see the only mark against him was an assault with intent to kill, three to five. That almost never got a fellow time in a hard joint like the Mac. Any first-year law student could get a body with no priors out in two months.

“Well, because he was white and rich, they had to make a big show of going hard on him. But the deal was, he'd do his three months at the Mac, and then be transferred to the Federal playground at El Reno. What he did, though, was plumb right crazy sick,” said It. Henderson.

“He had this art show and he thought all the reviewers were going to say how great he was, only nobody came. His poor mama was 'giving him a hard time. So he stabbed her.”

If e. D. Henderson meant to shock his audience, he failed. All the men there had encountered more grotesque atrocities in the billy towns and black townships of Oklahoma, but Henderson wasn't quite done yet.

“Stabbed her, that is, in the eyes. Put his own mother's goddamned eyes out. Blinded her.”

Mother rabbit was learning about the wolves.

It was nearly eight, getting on to darkness. Bud Pewtie would not receive his phone call for a good six hours yet.

But in a van heading at just five miles under the speed limit west down State Route 1 toward Ada, the lesson progressed.

This rabbit's name was Willard. It said so on a little oval on his pocket. willard, in script.

Lamar thought: Whatever happens, I ain't never going to have to wear no shirt with my goddamned name in a little oval so all the square Johns can say, Oh, hello, Lamar, check the oil, Lamar, put that thing over there, Lamar, I take sugar in my coffee, Lamar.

Willard had already pissed in his pants. He couldn't stop weeping. But that's what rabbits did. That's why they were rabbits.

“Now, Willard,” said Lamar, "tell me again about your plant.”

“Mister, please don't hurt me, Christ, it's just a goddamned plant.”

“How many trucks?”

“Jesus, mister, I don't know, I never counted.”

“Now listen careful, Willard. I don't want to have to hurt you. Just tell me. How many trucks? Answer my questions or I'll have O’Dell hurt you like he done before.”

O’Dell had already broken four of Willard's fingers. He sat now, his big arm neck laced around Willard's scrawny, shivering neck, eating Twinkies. He'd eaten about fifty of them.

“Dink-ies,” he'd say occasionally.

“Richard,” called Lamar, "you just keep going straight on toward Ada. Don't do nothing stupid. You're right at the speed limit, son, I can feel it.”

Richard, driving the van, tried to appear nonchalant, but the rabbit's terror was like the smell of decaying flesh in the air, and it made him sick.

“Yes, Lamar,” called Richard. They rolled through jerkwater towns where Richard had always wondered how people made a living, across rolling green fields strewn with barrel like rolls of hay, across a landscape that could have been a portrait of Farmland, USA. He tried not to listen to what was going on behind him, but only concentrate on the speed limit, on staying right at sixty.

“Maybe twenty-five trucks,” Willard was saying, his voice wobbly and occasionally falsetto with fear.

“We got accounts all over South Oklahoma. We do all the grocery store deliveries, we got vending machine accounts in VFWs in every town over five thousand, we do cop stations—cops eat a lot of HoHo Cakes—we do gas stations, every place a man might eat a Twinkie or a HoHo Cake, that's where we are.”

“Dink-ies,” said O’Dell.

“Please, please, I got a wife and two kids. Sir, I never hurt nobody and never did no wrong.”

“Never you mind, Willard. You just work with me and I'll see if I can't cut you a little slack with O’Dell, okay?”

“Yes sir,” sobbed Willard.

“Twenty-five trucks? Now, when you pull in, they all park together or what? Is it fenced? You checked in? Does anybody pay any attention to you? You go into an operations shack, or what?”

“Y'all park together, sir,” said Willard, concentrating very hard.

“There ain't no fence or nothing. Nobody checks you in. The drivers go into the office with what stock they got left, and unload. Then they check out.”

“If you didn't check out, would anybody notice? Would it be a big thing? Who would know?”

“Oh, Christ. You're going to hurt me.”

“I am not going to hurt you, 'less you make me hurt you.

I want this shit, Willard. Willard, help me, goddammit. We can work together on this goddamned thing, can't we?”

“I guess round about eight, maybe they'd begin to wonder what-all the hell I been up to. Maybe if I don't git back by ten, that's when they call the cops. But drivers and vendor service guys, you know, they always go off, do the god damndest things.”

“But not you, Willard. You do good work.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now, Willard. You got any money?”

“Sir, I only got 'bout ten dollars on me, cash. And I got lots of quarters. Maybe five hundred dollars in quarters and loose change.”

“Ah,” said Lamar, calculating.

“What about a bank-card? You got a bankcard, Willard?”

“No sir. I only make fourteen thousand dollars a year. I don't have enough money for no bankcard.”

“Do you have any money at your house?”

“Please, sir, don't go to my house. I got two little girls.

Oh, Jesus, why is this happening?”

It was as if Willard's need to know why finally exasperated Lamar beyond endurance. He felt no man had the right to ask such elemental questions of him.

“Here's why, Willard. You see what it says here?”

He held out his big right fist, the one that said fuck.

Willard nodded.

“Yes, you do.”

And he held out his big left fist.

y o u I it said.

The fear radiated from Willard's eyes like heat. Lamar liked that in a man.

“Do you get it, Willard? Do it make sense now?”

Desperately, Willard nodded.

Yes. Now it makes sense. O’Dell, break his goddamned thumb.”

O’Dell ca key ca key good. Sweet. Cakey like mama, sweet.

Cakey, all ca key in whole wurl. Lookie ca key Lookie!

Truck full ca key Cakey white, ca key good brown, ca key milk like ca key

Mar like loud up sudden "O’Dell break his goddamned thumb.”

Hurty man O’Dell do. Hurty bad hurt hurt. Thumb no go.

Thumb no go! Thumb no go!

Thumb go like pop!

Pop go thumb.

Now me ca key Mar. Mar like now you go ca key

Willard screamed while O’Dell broke his thumb. He screamed so loud it irritated Lamar, who crawled forward, below eye level, to talk to Richard.

“How you holding up, Richard?”

“Do you have to hurt him so?” Richard asked.

“Hurt him? Hell, you ain't seen a thing, Richard, in your short life if you think that's hurting.” Lamar gave a little chuckle at the stupidity of Richard's observation.

“Anyway,” he continued after a pause, "I think you'll be wanting to hit the turnoff up ahead, into Ada, I do believe.

Then we look for Davis Street and when we head down, you give me a call.”