Carnal Innocence

she’d broken Burns’s concentration. “Maybe I’ll see you in town later, Special Agent. I’m fond of stopping for a cold drink at the Chat ’N Chew after my manicure.”
    She left him with the distracting image of her hips swaying beneath that thin pink robe.
    Tucker tossed his cigarette into a brass bucket filled with sand. “You going to turn that recorder on?”
    Burns gave him a blank look, then shot to attention. “I’ll be asking Cy questions,” he began, but his gaze drifted to the kitchen door. “I have no objection to you being present, but I’ll tolerate no prompting.”
    Tucker gestured with his open hands and sat back.
    Burns switched on the recorder, entered the appropriate data, then turned to Cy with a solemn smile. “I know this is a difficult time for you, Cy, and I’m sorry for your recent loss.”
    Cy started to thank him, then realized he wasn’t talking about Edda Lou, but his father. He took refuge in staring at the table again.
    “I realize you spoke with Sheriff Truesdale last night, and your information was very helpful. We’ll have to talk about that again, but I think we’ll start with a few other things. Did your father ever mention Miss Caroline Waverly to you?”
    “He didn’t hardly know her.”
    “So he never spoke of her to you, or in your hearing?”
    Cy darted a look at Tucker. “He mighta said something on one of the days I brought him breakfast. Some days he said lots of things, like when his mood came on him.”
    “Mood?” Burns prompted.
    “Those hard moods he had, when he said God was talking to him.”
    “And did he have these moods regularly?”
    “Pretty much.” Cy chugged down Coke to ease his dry throat. “A.J. used to say that he just liked to beat up on people and used God as an excuse.”
    “He was often violent with you and other members of your family?”
    “He …” Cy remembered Tucker’s phrase. “He had a heavy hand.” That didn’t sound so bad somehow. It was almost like saying he had a head cold. “He didn’t tolerate no sass. The Bible says how you’re to honor your father.”
    Tucker said nothing, but he noted that Cy hadn’t said father and mother. He didn’t imagine Austin had drilled that part of the scripture into his son’s brain.
    “And he used this heavy hand when he had his moods.”
    Cy shrugged his thin shoulders. “He used his hands most all the time. It was just worse during the moods.”
    “I see.” Even Burns wasn’t unaffected by the casual way the boy described brutality. “And when you were bringing him food and supplies in the culvert, he had these moods.”
    “I had to do it.” Cy’s knuckles whitened on the glass bottle. “He’d’ve killed me if I’d gone against him. I had to do it.”
    “Agent Burns isn’t blaming you, Cy.” Again Tucker laid a hand, that soothing, comforting hand on his shoulder. “Nobody is. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “No, I’m not blaming you.” Burns’s voice roughened, and he coughed to clear it. The stark fear on the boy’s face appalled him. “No one would. I only want you to tell me if your father spoke of Miss Waverly.”
    “He said some things.” Cy blinked his eyes fast to close off tears. “He said how she was full of sin. How all women were. Like Lot’s wife. She got turned into a pillar of salt.”
    “Yes.” Burns folded his hands. “I know. Did he tell you why Miss Waverly was full of sin?”
    “He said how …” He shot Tucker a miserable look. “Do I have to say?”
    “It’d be best,” Tucker told him. “You take your time.”
    Cy took it by gulping down Coke, wiping his hand across his mouth, squirming in his chair. “He said how she was spreading her legs for Mr. Tucker.” His face went beet-red. “And how she was no better’na whore for it. It was time to cast the first stone. I’m sorry, Mr. Tucker.”
    “It’s not your fault, Cy.”
    “I didn’t know he meant he was going to hurt her. I swear I didn’t. He said stuff all the time. It got so you didn’t pay much mind to it, as long as he wasn’t hitting you. I didn’t know he was going after her, Mr. Burns. I swear I didn’t.”
    “No, I’m sure you didn’t. Your father hit your mother, didn’t he?”
    The frantic color in Cy’s cheeks ebbed away. “We couldn’t do nothing about it. She wouldn’t do nothing. She wouldn’t let the sheriff help, ’cause a woman’s supposed to cleave to her husband. The sheriff’d come by sometimes and