Carnal Innocence

California if he’d a mind to.
    Humming “California, Here I Come,” he veered off the hardpack to cross the edge of Toby March’s east field. He wondered if Jim would be over at Miss Waverly’s painting, and if he’d have time to scoot by and say hey.
    He crossed Little Hope stream, which was hardly more than a piss trickle at this time of year, and followed it down to the culvert.
    He remembered how he and Jim had scrawled their names on the rounded concrete in Crayolas. And how, in more recent times, they’d pored over every page of a
Playboy
magazine Cy had swiped from under his brother A.J.’s mattress.
    Those pictures had been something, he remembered. And for Cy, who had never seen a naked female, it had been an awe-inspiring experience. His pecker had gotten hard as a rock. And that night the old tool of Satan had cut loose in his first and fascinating wet dream.
    And hadn’t his mama been surprised when he’d done the laundry for her?
    Grinning a little over the memory—and wondering if he’d have the experience again anytime soon—he slid down the gentle bank of Little Hope and headed into the culvert.
    A hand slapped over his mouth, cutting off his cheerful whistle. He didn’t try to scream or struggle. He knew that hand, the shape, the texture, even the smell of it. His fear was much too deep, much too hopeless for screams.
    “I found your little hole,” Austin whispered. “Your den of sin with your filthy book and your nigger writing. You boys come down here to jerk each other off?”
    Cy could only shake his head. He grunted when Austin shoved him against the hard, rounded wall of the culvert. He expected the belt to flash, but even as he braced, he saw his father wasn’t wearing one.
    They take away your belt when they put you in jail, he remembered. Take it away so you can’t hang yourself.
    He swallowed. His father was crouched over because the culvert was too low to allow him to rise to his full height. But the position didn’t diminish him. If anything, it made him seem larger, stronger. With his back rounded, his legs bent and spread, his face and hands blackened with dirt, he looked like something horrible waiting to pounce.
    Cy swallowed again, his throat clicking. “They’re looking for you, Daddy.”
    “I know they’re looking for me. They ain’t found me, have they?”
    “No, sir.”
    “You know why, boy? It’s because I got God on my side. Those Christless bastards’ll never find me. What we got here’s a holy war.” He smiled, and Cy felt ice flow into his belly. “They put me in jail, and they left that murdering son of a whore free. She was a whore. Whore of Babylon,” he said softly. “Selling herself when she was mine.”
    Cy didn’t know what he was talking about, but nodded. “Yes sir.”
    “They’ll be punished. ‘They shall bear the punishment of their iniquity.’” His hands began to clench and unclench slowly. “All of them. Down to the last generation.” His eyes cleared and focused on Cy again. “Where’d you get that bike, boy?”
    He started to claim it was Jim’s, but with his father’seyes on him, feared the lie might burn his tongue off. “It’s just loaned to me, is all.” He began to shake, knowing there was no choice. “I got me a job. I got work down at Sweetwater.”
    Austin’s eyes went blank as he took a shuffling step forward. Clench, unclench went his big, blackened hands. “You went to that place? That viper’s den?”
    Cy knew there were worse things than belts. There were fists. Tears sprang to his eyes. “I won’t go back, Daddy. I swear. I only thought—” A hand closed over his throat, cutting off words and air.
    “Even my son betrays me. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.” He tossed Cy aside like a limp sock. The boy’s elbows banged painfully on the concrete, but he didn’t cry out. For a long time there was only the sound of breathing.
    “You will go back,” Austin said at length. “You’ll go back and you’ll watch. You’ll tell me what he does, which room he sleeps in. You’ll tell me everything you see and hear.”
    Cy swiped at his eyes. “Yes sir.”
    “And you’ll get me food. Food and water. You bring it here, every morning, every night.” He was smiling again when he hunkered down by his son. His breath was bad, foul as a grave. The light seeped through the opening of the culvert hit his irises and turned them almost white. “You don’t tell your ma, you don’t tell