"It ain't about land. I bet if you wanted to you could pull that story apart real easy. I bet the dates don't match, the money don't match, it don't quite work out. It's what you were told, it's what got your family involved, but it ain't quite right. It's a cover story. Not only because my daddy loved his own land and wasn't about to move for nothing."

"What's it about, then?" said Red.

"It's about a boy who didn't want to pay his speeding ticket."

There was another long pause as Red looked Bob up and down, his rage somewhat tamed by curiosity.

"What are you talking about?"

"On July 19, 1955, at 12:28 A.M A.M. my father issued a speeding ticket to a nineteen-year-old kid for traveling eighty-two in a fifty zone near a spot on Route 88 between Blue Eye and a town named Ink called Little Georgia. What my daddy didn't know was that the reason that boy was speeding was because he had just raped and murdered a little black girl named Shirelle Parker, fifteen years old, at Little Georgia, which was a red clay deposit.

"He'd picked her up in Blue Eye on the way back from a church meeting. And why'd she git in the car with a white boy when her mama had told her never never to get in no car with a white boy? Because that was a civil rights meeting, and she'd met a white person who believed in her and believed in her struggle. So she'd learned to get in no car with a white boy? Because that was a civil rights meeting, and she'd met a white person who believed in her and believed in her struggle. So she'd learned not not to hate white boys and it got her killed." to hate white boys and it got her killed."

Red stared at him.

"Who was the kid?" he asked.

Bob said, "A Harvard kid. Raised in Washington, D.C. The son of a powerful politician. Himself loaded with ambitions." Then he turned and pointed at the man on the bench.

"Him," he said.

Red turned and faced his friend, the son of his father's friend.

"Hollis?"

Hollis Etheridge stood.

"Hollis, you? You?" You?"

"He's lying," said Hollis.

"He went home in a panic and told his father. His father being Congressman Harry Etheridge, Boss Harry Etheridge, and being the sort of man he was, he couldn't see his boy's life being ruined by a little mistake with a black gal. So he moved quickly through his sources and came up with Frenchy Short, who moved the girl's body to get it away from Little Georgia and set up a frame on the lightest-skinned black boy he could find: a boy named Reggie Gerard Fuller, who was executed for the crime.

"The problem was the state trooper. They could get the ticket out of the court records but they couldn't get it out of the trooper's mind and they knew the trooper would put two and two together. They knew from the start they had to kill the trooper, but in some way that didn't look suspicious and didn't invite close examination of the trooper's last days, and for which there was a ready explanation and a convenient killer.

"That's how Jimmy Pye, the next Jimmy Dean, and Jack Preece, the sniper, come into it. All for him. For the next Vice President of the United States."

"There's no proof," said Hollis. "It's all lies. All political figures are used to rumors like this. You'd be laughed out of court. Red, it's nonsense. It's nothing. He doesn't have a thing."

"I have this," said Bob.

He held up the old book of tickets.

"Your signature. The time, the date, the place. Any crime-lab can authenticate the age of the ticket and the age of the ink. It's just as good now as it was then: it puts you at the site of the murder at the time of the murder. It'll put you in the chair today just as it would have forty years ago. And this time, your goddamn father ain't around to pull strings. And if my father'd had another day, he'd have seen the connection and put you on the row."

He lifted the gun and pointed it at Hollis's handsome head.

Hollis bowed.

"Please," he said.

"You know how much evil came out of that night? You know the people who died? You know the train of destruction you set in motion? You know the lives ruined, the lives ended, the lives embittered because of that night? Why? Why? Did she laugh?"

"I didn't mean to," he said. "She started to scream. I had to stop her from screaming. I never meant to."

Bob lowered the gun.

"My friend is a newspaper reporter," he said. "We'll go to the paper and publish this. We'll get the case reopened. There's been enough killing."

He slipped the .45 back into its holster and turned to face Red Bama, who now held the loaded Krieghoff.

Through the lenses, Russ watched Red Bama pick up the shotgun from a hundred yards out. He watched the man raise the shotgun, watched its barrels pivot lazily.

Do something! he told himself. he told himself.

Involuntarily his fingers closed on a trigger. But there was no trigger. He had no rifle.

Why didn't you give me a rifle! you give me a rifle! he screamed to Bob Lee Swagger, his eyes glued in horror to the binoculars. I he screamed to Bob Lee Swagger, his eyes glued in horror to the binoculars. I could have done it! could have done it!

"Red, thank God," said Hollis.

"Yes," said Red, "thank God," and he fired both barrels, one two, fast as they could be fired.

The No. 7 shot hit its target; it didn't have time to open or spread but delivered an impact similar to that of a nineteenth-century elephant gun, a tremendous package of weight and velocity and density; the first charge literally eviscerated the chest, the heart and lungs, the spinal column; the second hit just above the mouth and destroyed the skull, all the facial structures, the features, the hair. The body was punched backwards and came to sprawl in the bushes.

Gun smoke hung in the air.

Russ, watching from a hundred yards away, bent and puked.

"Nice shooting," said Bob.

"It'll cost me a million dollars," Red said, "to straighten this out. And it's the first fatal accident in the history of sporting clays." He shook his head. "He would have been Vice President, you know. It was set. He might very well have been President."

"Everybody has to pay. It was his turn," Bob said.

"Yes," said Red, "but do you know why I did it? To save me the trial? To save the humiliation? To save the legal fees? To avenge that poor girl, because he broke the rules and hurt a child? Maybe. But the real reason is that I now realize he not only killed your father, he killed mine. My father must have been the only man alive who wasn't an Etheridge but who knew the secret. And when Boss Harry died, son Hollis got to worrying about that. So: there you have it. Did we pay our fathers back for what they did for us? Not really. But I'll say this, Swagger: we sure as hell tried."

"Damned right," said Bob.

But Red had a last surprise for him.

He looked up, his eyes narrowed in sly concentration.

"And I know you think you're much smarter than I am, because you figured all this out and I didn't. So I give you that. But I have a surprise for you too."

Bob looked at him.

"When you go home, I want you to say hello to Julie and YKN4 for me."

There was a long moment.

"My family?" said Bob.

"The pay phone. We tracked your collect call. I had your wife and daughter, Swagger. I could have used them to get at you. You made a mistake."

Bob saw how it could happen.

"But I don't do families. That's my policy. Now you have no more business around me and mine and I'll have none around you and yours. You evened your scores, I evened mine. It's over, it's finished, it's done. We are free men, right?"

"That sounds like a deal to me," said Bob.

46.

State police investigators descended on the accident scene in their legions, along with hundreds of media types, and for a few days, the little sporting clays range in West Arkansas was the most famous site in America, leading all the network news shows. The newspapers were full of the Etheridge tragedy. A grand jury was swiftly empaneled by Sebastian County prosecutors.

But by the end of the week, no true bill of indictment was voted and prosecutors announced their acquiescence to the inevitable ruling of accidental death. There just wasn't any evidence to the contrary: Red Bama clung to his story, and his two bodyguards and the trapper, all of whom had witnessed the event, confirmed his account. He'd just loaded the Krieghoff when his cellular rang, and he turned to step out of the constricting cage to get it off his belt, momentarily forgetting that he held the loaded shotgun, and he banged the stock against the cage and somehow the gun fired, although investigators could not get the gun to duplicate the accident in the ballistics lab. But that is the tragedy of the firearm: so enticing, so alluring, so beguiling, so damned much fun is the gun, and yet when a mistake is made with it, the consequences are beyond all scale to the act itself. A man grows confused with a gun in his hand, turns and bumps and boomboom! boomboom! The end of a promising and already distinguished career. The end of a promising and already distinguished career.

Editorials appeared nationwide, lamenting the decease of Hollis Etheridge, former two-term senator, respected legislator, beloved husband, son of one of the most powerful politicians the state of Arkansas had generated, but a man who insisted on making it on his own, not riding his father's coattails. He was the kind of American who had done so much to help so many. His party's leaders issued proclamations; flattering posthumous profiles ran in all the big magazines and on TV shows; in the Arkansas State Legislature, a bill was introduced to rename the parkway now called solely after his father the "Hollis and Harry Etheridge Memorial Parkway," and it passed within a week, though no money could be found in the budget to remake the signs so that will have to wait until a better year.

As for Red Bama, after the grand jury refused to indict him, he joined his family in Hawaii for the remainder of the summer. They had a wonderful time, and returned in the fall, fit and tan and rested. His children prosper, even poor Nicholas; Amy is planning on Yale Law School and wants to go to work as a prosecutor and Red has told her he can arrange it and she still sniffs at him. But occasionally she wears that gold Rolex. He is, after all, her father. He is still married to Miss Runner-up but rumors persist he has been seen in out-of-the-way clubs with an actual Miss Arkansas of early nineties vintage.

Bob and Russ left Arkansas that very afternoon; they drove all night, after turning in the rental car and paying a healthy fee to get the green pickup, much battered, out of the airport parking. Late that afternoon, they were in Oklahoma City, where Russ still had his apartment in an old house.

Bob pulled up outside it.

"Okay, bub, here you be," he said.

"God," said Russ, "I can't believe it's over."

"Over and done," said Bob. "Or as done as it can be."

"Jesus," said Russ.

"You're a great kid, Russ. You write that book. I know it'll be a success."

"I never really got enough. Not enough facts, not enough documentation. But it turned out to be exactly as I thought it would be, didn't it? A profound endorsement of the genetic theory of human behavior. Good fathers, good sons. Bad fathers, bad sons, straight down the line. Like a laboratory experiment."

"Write it as a story."

Russ wondered: a story? Then he realized Bob meant as fiction.

"You mean as a novel?"

"That's the ticket. Make up the names, change the locale, that sort of thing. All them Johnnies do it, no reason you shouldn't."

"Hmmmmm," said Russ. That's a good idea." It was was a good idea. a good idea.

"And let me give you one last piece of advice, all right?"

Russ said, "Okay."

"Make peace with your father. You'll You'll be a lot happier. be a lot happier. He'll He'll be a lot happier. He's your only father. You only get one. I'd give anything for another few minutes with mine." be a lot happier. He's your only father. You only get one. I'd give anything for another few minutes with mine."

Russ laughed cynically. Then his bitterness came washing over him.

"Yeah, well," he said. "Your dad was a hero. He was a great man, a great American man. They don't come any better. But my dad's just a man. He's an asshole. He finally gave in to his selfishness. That's all there is."

Bob was quiet for just a second and then he said, "You know, you're a very bright kid. You were right on so many things. You were right about the Parker crime and how important it was. I was wrong, dead wrong. You were so smart, you saw so much, you were quick and brave. You'd make a hell of a marine."

"I-"

"But you missed something, Russ. You missed something big."

Russ turned. What could he have missed? What surprise was left?

"What are you talking about?"

"Ask yourself this: if the child who became Lamar Pye was born nine months after Jimmy's death ... when when did Jimmy get his young wife pregnant?" did Jimmy get his young wife pregnant?"

Russ paused, considering.

"He never made it back to Blue Eye," said Bob. "My father stopped him in that cornfield. Edie Pye never saw her husband alive from the last time she visited him in jail a month earlier."

Russ shook his head. What did ...? Where was this going?

"I think Miss Connie might have figured it out, but she was the only one. If she did, she didn't let on."

"I don't-" Russ began.

"Oh yes, you do," said Bob.

Russ looked up at Bob.

"My daddy was alone with Edie that last day for at least an hour. He liked her a lot. She liked him a lot. Later, when he left to go for Jimmy, he told me about two kinds of bad. Bad evil, where you decide to do wrong and say fuck it, and bad mistake, where you want to do the right goddamn thing but it gets clotted up and confused sometimes and before you know it, never meaning to, you done made a mess. He was talking about himself."

"You're saying ...?"

"That's right, Russ. Big bad old Lamar Pye? He was my brother."