Carnal Innocence

were considered.
    “What the hell good did some Yankee lawman do her?” Billy T. demanded. “Him and Burke and the rest of them’re running around in circles while somebody hacks up our women. Oh, we’re good enough to go out and look for bodies, but we’re not supposed to do anything to protect what’s ours.”
    “Probably raped ’em, too,” Will said to his beer. “Probably raped the shit out of ’em before he sliced ’em. You gotta figure it.”
    Wood Palmer, cousin to the undertaking Palmers, nodded sagely. “Them psychos always do. It’s ’cause they hate their mothers and want to screw them all at the same time, so they use other women.”
    “That’s bull.” Billy T. finished off his whiskey and signaled the waitress for another. His blood was already so pumped with alcohol, he could have opened a vein and fueled his gas tank. “It’s ’cause they hate women. White women.”
    “There ain’t been no black woman killed, has there?” his brother piped up. John Thomas had been drinking shooters for the best part of two hours, and was raring for hell. “Four women dead and not one of them colored.”
    “That’s a fact,” Billy T. said, and snatched up his whiskey the minute it was served. “And I guess that tells the tale.”
    Wood scratched the stubble of his beard while theothers grunted in agreement. What Billy T. was saying made good sense to him, especially filtered through a haze of tequila. “I heard tell their heads was nearly cut clean off and their sex organs was carved up. That’s psycho stuff.”
    “The cops want us to think like that.” Billy T. struck a match, watched it burn. There was fire in his blood tonight, and it needed someplace to spread. “Like they wanted us to think it was Austin Hatinger killed his own daughter. Well, we know it wasn’t.” As the match fizzed out between his thumb and forefinger, he shifted his gaze from face to face, and what he saw pleased him. “We know it was a nigger. But we got us a Yankee fed, a nigger deputy, and a sheriff who’d sooner lock up a white man than a colored.”
    Will cracked a peanut. He was drinking beer and drinking slow. Justine was already giving him grief about spending so much of his pay on drink and pool. “Come on, Billy T., Sheriff Truesdale’s okay.”
    “If he’s so okay, how come we got four women dead and nobody paying for it?”
    As all eyes turned on him, Will, sober enough to be prudent, decided to keep his own counsel.
    “I’ll tell you why,” Billy T. continued. “’Cause they know who did it, sure as Christ. They know but they don’t want any trouble from the N.A.A.C.P. or any of those other egg-sucking groups. It’s the niggers and the ever-fucking liberals responsible.”
    “They ain’t hardly talked to no coloreds either,” Wood muttered. “Don’t seem right.”
    “That’s ’cause it ain’t,” Billy T. said viciously. “But there’s been one they’ve talked to right enough.” He struck another match for the pleasure of watching it burn. “They’ve been over to talk to Toby March. That special fucking agent asked plenty of questions about him.”
    “Talking’s all they do,” Wood mumbled. “And we got another woman dead.”
    “Talk’s all they’re gonna do.” Billy T. nodded as the others began to shift restlessly in their chairs. He could feel it, the hate, the fear, the frustration allmelding together in a pot simmering with the summer heat and flavored by whiskey. “They’ll keep talking and asking questions, and he’ll do it again. Maybe one of our women next time.”
    “We got a right to protect our own.”
    “It’s time somebody put a stop to it. One way or the other.”
    “That’s right.” Billy T. wet his lips and leaned in. “And I think we know what needs to be done. It’s that March bastard doing it. They homed right in on him, then backed off. They even know he has a taste for white meat.”
    “He was sniffing around Edda Lou, that’s for sure,” John Thomas put in. “Somebody shoulda fixed him then. Fixed him good.”
    “And you know what he’s doing?” They all turned to listen to Billy T. “He’s laughing at them. Laughing at us. He knows they don’t want no race trouble down here in Mississippi that those Yankee papers can turn all inside out. He knows they’re going to look the other way ’lest they catch him with a knife in some white woman’s throat.”
    “It’s him all right,” his brother agreed. “Didn’t I