Carnal Innocence (17 page)

Caroline thought about it. “Thank you.”

“Yankee!” Lulu set up a screech that could have shattered crystal. “Christ in a sidecar, she’s a Yankee.”

“Only half,” Tucker said quickly. “She’s Miss Edith’s granddaughter.”

Lulu’s eves narrowed. “Edith McNair? George and Edith?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Caroline said with her tongue in her cheek. “I’m staying the summer in my grandparents’ house.”

“Dead, aren’t they? Yes, they’re dead, but they were Mississippians born and bred, so that counts for something. That your hair, girl, or a wig?”

“My …” Automatically, Caroline lifted a hand to her hair. “It’s my hair.”

“Good. Don’t trust bald-headed women any more than I trust Yankees. So we’ll see. Tucker, you take my cases in and get me a brandy. I need you to call that Talbot boy about my car. Lost my muffler somewhere in Tennessee. Maybe it was Arkansas.” She paused at the base of the steps. “Well, come on, girl.”

“I
was …
I
was just leaving.”

“Tucker, you tell that girl when
I
offer to have a brandy with a Yankee, that Yankee better drink.”

With that, Lulu clumped up the steps in her army boots.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Tucker asked as he switched off the purring ignition.

“Something,” Caroline agreed, and decided she could use a brandy at that.

C
y Hatinger’s palms were sweating. The rest of him wasn’t exactly Arrid-dry either, as they said in the commercials. His armpits dripped, despite his conscientious use of Ban Roll-On. He had hair there now, had for the best part of a year. Between his legs, too. The fact both thrilled and embarrassed him.

His sweat was the sweat of youth, clear and mostly inoffensive. It came from a combination of the thick morning heat and his own fear and excitement. What he was doing would bring his father’s holy, belt-flashing wrath down on him.

He was going to ask the Longstreets for work. Of course, his father was in jail, and that comforted him some. The fact that it did brought on hot little flashes of guilt that made him sweat more.

Aren’t you glad you use Dial? he thought. Don’t you wish everybody did?

He didn’t know why he was thinking in commercials, unless it was because his mother left the flickering old TV on day and night. For company, she would say, wringing her hands and looking at him dully out of
red-rimmed eyes. She cried just about all the time now, and hardly seemed aware of him or Ruthanne at all.

He might come across her sitting on the sagging and faded sofa. Still in her bathrobe in the middle of the day, a basket of laundry at her feet while she sniffled and watched
Days of Our Lives.
At this point Cy wasn’t sure the tears were for herself or in sympathy for the trials and tribulations of the people in that mythical town of Salem.

To Cy the Hortons and the Bradys of Salem were more real than his mother, who wandered the house like a ghost each night while the TV droned on through Leno’s monologue or reruns of sitcoms or commercials for gadgets like the Clapper, that magical boon to society that allowed you to turn on lights or turn off TVs and all you had to do was applaud.

It was like congratulating an electrical appliance, and Cy found it creepy.

He could imagine his mother with one, weeping in the front room and clapping her hands together while the lights jumped and the TV flipped on.

“Thank you, thank you,” the dusty screen would say. “And for my next number, here’s the Reverend Samuel Harris to show all you sinners the way through those gates of paradise.”

Oh, yes, his mama was right fond of all those religion programs with their hypnotic-voiced Reverend this or that, shouting down sin and bartering salvation for social security checks.

After he’d come home from fishing with Jim the day before, he’d followed the sound of organ music and hallelujahs through the kitchen and into the front room, where his mother stared glassy-eyed at the screen. It had scared him more than a little, because for a minute—just a minute—the face of the TV preacher had become his father’s face, and his father’s all-seeing eyes had stared right at him.

“Got hair between your legs and evil thoughts in your mind,” his father had accused. “The next step is fornication.
Fornication!
It’s Satan’s tool between your legs, boy.”

As he walked along the dusty verge of the road, Cy
adjusted Satan’s tool, which seemed to have shriveled up in memory of his father’s voice.

His father couldn’t see him, Cy reminded himself, and swiped his forearm over his sweaty brow. He was in jail and would likely stay there for a while. Just like A.J., who had gone from shoplifting packs of cigarettes and Mars Bars to grand theft auto. The minute the cell doors had clanged shut behind his oldest brother, his father had said he’d no longer had a son named Austin Joseph. Now that his father was in the same kind of pickle, Cy wondered if that meant he no longer had a father.

The sweet relief of that possibility had another flash of guilt slicing through his gut.

He wasn’t going to think of his father. He was going to think of getting this job. Cy knew his mother would have forbidden him to set foot on Sweetwater. That pale, pasty look would have come over her face—the look she got when his daddy decided she needed punishment.

What sins had his mother committed? Cy asked himself as his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. What sins that needed to be washed away in her own blood?

And when black eyes or split lips or bruised ribs had saved her from Satan, she would tell the neighbors how she’d fallen. If the sheriff came by, she would get that horrible, terrified smile on her face and insist, over and over, that she’d taken a tumble down the porch steps.

No matter how often or how viciously those thick fists rained down on her, his ma would stay at his daddy’s side.

So Cy knew she would have forbidden him to go to Sweetwater. That was why he hadn’t told her.

She noticed so little these days, outside her television world and those whining calls to the lawyer, that Cy had had no problem slipping out of the house that morning. He hadn’t even hurried down the hardpack, knowing if she looked out and saw him walking down the road, her eyes would flick over him, then flick back to the screen.

After three miles on the hardpack, he’d hit the
gravel on Gooseneck Road, and had been lucky enough to catch a ride for two miles with old Hartford Pruett in the cab of his Chevy pick-up. That left a four-mile walk to Sweetwater.

He’d worked up a powerful thirst by the time he reached the crushed mailbox and splintered pole at the McNair place. He could feel the heat beating up through the soles of his shoes. His throat was dry as a picked bone. Through the morning silence he could hear Jim’s daddy singing about the sweet by and by.

The longing rushed through him so fast he could only stand helpless. He knew—because Jim had told him—that his friend had felt his daddy’s big, callused hand across his butt. He knew that once when Jim had been four and had wandered off into the swamp, his daddy had found him and had laid a switch across his legs that had made the young Jim dance a jig all the way home.

But Jim’s father had never come wheeling down with his fists or locked Jim in his room for two full days with nothing but bread and water. According to him, his daddy had never once, not once, raised a hand to his ma.

And he had seen for himself the way Toby’s hand could come down to lay gently, and somehow proudly, on Jim’s shoulder. The way they would walk off together with fishing rods over their shoulders. And even though they weren’t touching, you could tell they were.

His throat ached miserably, and Cy fought back an urge to walk down the lane to watch Jim and his daddy slap paint on the boards of Miss Edith’s place. He knew Toby would turn and smile, his teeth white as the moon against his dark skin—skin scarred by Cy’s own father nearly twenty years before.

“Look who’s here, Jim,” he would say. “Looks to me like that boy’s ready to paint. We got us some nice tomato sandwiches for lunch. If you was to pick up a brush and get to work, might be I’d find one for you.”

Cy yearned toward the lane. He could almost feel his body lean toward it even as his feet stayed planted on the glass-splattered hardtop.

No son of mine is going to run with niggers.
Austin’s
voice cut through Cy’s mind like a rusty blade.
If the Lord wanted us to truck with them, he’d’ve made them white.

But it wasn’t that which had Cy turning away from the lane. It was the knowledge that if he spent the morning painting and eating tomato sandwiches with Jim and his daddy, he would never work up the nerve to walk the last mile to Sweetwater.

His faded checked shirt was clinging to his skin by the time he turned through the iron gates. He’d walked nearly eight miles in the steadily spiraling heat, and wished now he’d taken the time for breakfast. His stomach growled ominously one minute, then churned the next, turning his sweat cold with nausea.

Cy took a faded bandanna out of his back pocket and swiped at his face and neck. Maybe it was best he hadn’t had that breakfast, because he was pretty sure if there was anything in his stomach, it would be coming up quick. He’d missed supper the night before, too, half sick on his share of a lemon pie he’d gorged on at the fishing hole.

The thought of that lemon pie had his stomach rising. It took two hard swallows to settle it down again. He looked longingly at the cool green grass beyond the line of magnolias. He could just stretch out there a minute, press his hot face into that sweet grass.

But he thought someone might see him, and he’d never get the job.

He put one foot in front of the other.

He’d seen Sweetwater only a time or two before. Sometimes he thought he’d imagined how grand it was, with its white walls and tall, winking windows. But it was never as grand in his imagination as it was in reality. The thought that people lived there, ate and slept there, was an amazement to Cy, who had lived his whole life in a cramped shack with a dirt yard.

Light-headed from heat and hunger, Cy stared at the house as the sun splashed on those white walls and winking windows. Vapors shimmering up from the gravel made it look as though it were underwater. An underwater palace, he thought, and had some vague recollection
of reading about mermen and mermaids who lived under the sea.

He felt as if he were walking through water. His steps were slow and sluggish and the air he breathed in was like thick, warm liquid that filled up his throat instead of soothing it, A little nervous, he looked down at his feet and wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed to see his cracked and dusty shoes instead of a shiny green tail.

The scent of flowers was strong as he rounded the peony bed where his father had recently kicked the shit out of Tucker.

Cy hoped Miss Della would come to the door. He liked Miss Della with her wild red hair and colorful jewelry. She’d given him a quarter once just for carrying her bags from the market to her car. And since Miss Della had thick muscles in her arms, Cy knew she could have carried them herself and saved her quarter.

If she came to the door, she might tell him to come on around back. When he got around to the kitchen, she’d give him a cold glass of lemonade, and maybe a biscuit. Then he would thank her, real polite, and ask her if Lucius Gunn was about, so he could ask the overseer about work.

A little dazed, he found himself on the porch, facing the big carved door with its polished brass knocker. He licked his dry lips, lifted his hand.

The door swung open before he’d reached the knocker. Standing in front of him wasn’t Miss Della but a small, elderly lady who wore orange lipstick and what looked like an eagle feather in her hair. Cy didn’t know that the shiny stones around her crepy neck were Russian diamonds. Her feet were bare, and she carried a set of bongos.

“My great-granddaddy on my mama’s side was half Chickasaw,” Lulu told the gaping Cy. “Might have been a time when my ancestors scalped the hell out of yours.”

“Yes’m,” Cy said for lack of anything better.

Lulu’s orange-slicked mouth curved. “You sure do have a fine head of hair on you, boy.” She threw back her
head and let out with a screeching warwhoop that had Cy stumbling back.

“I just—I just—I just—” was all Cy managed to get out.

“Cousin Lulu, you’re scaring the spit out of that boy.” Tucker strolled up to the door, his grin indulgent. “She’s only fooling.” It took him a moment to place the boy, then most of the grin faded. “What can I do for you, Cy?”

“I … I came down looking for work,” he said, then pitched forward in a dead faint.

Something was dripping down Cy’s temples as he surfaced. For a horrible moment he thought it was his own blood from where the crazy woman had scalped him. He struggled weakly against the syrupy world of unconsciousness and tried to sit up.

“Just hold on, boy.”

It was Miss Della’s voice, and Cy was so relieved to hear it that he nearly floated off again. But she slapped her hand lightly against his cheeks until he opened his eyes.

She was wearing painted wooden earrings in the shape of parrots. Cy watched them swing as she cooled his face with a damp cloth.

“Passed clean out,” she told him cheerfully. “Tucker hadn’t been quick enough to catch you, you’d’ve bashed your head good on the porch.” Cupping a hand behind his neck, she lifted a glass to his lips. “I was coming down the steps and saw it myself. Don’t believe Tucker’s moved that fast since his daddy found out he broke one of the panes in the sun room.”

From over the back of the sofa Lulu leaned down, nearly into his face. She smelled like a lilac bush, Cy discovered.

“Didn’t mean to scare you green, boy.”

“No, ma’am. I was just … I think I had too much sun is all.”

Hearing the mortification in the boy’s voice, Tucker
stepped forward. “Stop fussing over him. He’s not the first one to pass out in this house.”

Della turned to spit at him, but caught the gentle warning in Tucker’s eye and understood. “I got work to do. Cousin Lulu, I’d be obliged if you’d come up with me. I’m thinking of changing the curtains in the Rose Room.”

“Don’t see why.” But Lulu was interested enough to tag along.

When they were alone, Tucker sat down on the coffee table. “Cousin Lulu’s developed an interest in her Indian heritage.”

“Yes, sir.” Since Cy felt he’d humiliated himself beyond redemption, he got shakily to his feet. “I guess I’d best get on.”

Tucker looked up at the pale face with its two flags of embarrassment riding high on bony cheeks. “You came a long way to talk about work.” Best part of ten miles, Tucker thought. Christ in a sidecar, had the boy hoofed it in all this heat? “Why don’t you come on back with me to the kitchen? I was about to get some breakfast. You can join me and say your piece.”

Cy felt a splinter of hope prick through the haze. “Yes, sir. I’d be obliged.”

He did his best not to gawk as he followed Tucker down the hallway with its gleaming floors. There were paintings on the walls, richer, more elegant than anything he’d seen before. He had an urge to touch one but kept his hands close to his sides.

In the kitchen with its rose-colored counters and shiny white tiles, the light was golden and cool.

Cy’s stomach juices started churning the minute Tucker opened the door of the Whirlpool refrigerator and revealed shelf after shelf of food. When he took out a platter of ham, Cy’s eyes nearly fell out of his head.