Carnal Innocence

see him standing at Edda Lou’s window?”
    “He was working at the rooming house,” Will began.
    “That’s right.” Billy T. sneered. “Working on how he was going to get Edda Lou out to the swamp so he could rape and kill her. He done work for Darleen, too. She told me how he came to patch her roof.”
    “He done work out to the trailer court where Arnette and Francie lived, too,” Wood put in. “I seen him having a soda pop with Francie and laughing.”
    “That’s how they tic all together.” Billy T. took a last drag on his cigarette. “He got around them that way, and starting thinking how he’d like to do it to them. How he hated them for being women. White women. The cops don’t want to see it, but I do. I see it plain, and I’m not giving that black bastard the chance to kill another of our women.” He leaned forward, sensing the moment was right. “I got me some nice strong rope in the back ofmy car. Every one of us here’s got a rifle he knows how to use. I say we kick off our Independence Day by ridding Innocence of a killer.”
    He pushed back from the table and stood. “Anybody’s with me, get your gun and meet at my place. We got us a murderer to hang.”
    Chairs scraped against the scarred wooden floor. Men started out with an air of purpose tinged with vengeance, their pulses pounding with a sense of right sweetened by the anticipation of violence.
    As they trooped out into the hot, sweaty night, McGreedy noted that they looked as though they were hunting for trouble. But as they were hunting it elsewhere, he went back to drawing drafts.
    At the door, Wood glanced back to Will, who was standing by the empty table. “You coming, boy?”
    “You bet.” Will lifted his beer and sloshed it down his dry throat. “I’ll be right along.”
    With a nod that was as much warning as assent, Wood went off to fetch his Remington.
    “Oh, Jesus.” Will gulped down more beer. He didn’t want the other men to think he was pussy. That was the worst thing a man had to live down. But he was thinking, now, maybe there was something worse yet.
    Hanging somebody.
    He wasn’t quite drunk enough to see it as justice. Nor was he sober enough to see it as murder. What he saw was Toby March twitching at the end of a robe— eyes rolling and bulging, face going purple, feet kicking empty air.
    He didn’t have the stomach to watch, and that was the sad truth. And if he didn’t, he’d lose the respect of the men he drank with most every week. There was only one way to solve the problem as he saw it. That was to stop it before it happened.
    Wiping his mouth dry, he walked over to Dwayne.
    “Dwayne? You gotta listen to me.”
    “Go on, Will. I told you I’d wait another week on the rent.”
    “It’s not about that. You see those boys that just left?”
    Annoyed with the interruption to his drinking. Dwayne scowled into his beer. “I’m making it a point not to see anything.”
    “They’re going out to the March place. They’re going out there with a rope.”
    Slowly, Dwayne lifted his head and focused. “What do they want to do that for?”
    “They mean to hang Toby March. They’re going to string him right up, Dwayne, for killing all those women.”
    “Shit, boy. Toby’s never killed anything but a possum in his life.”
    “Maybe, maybe not, but they went off to get their guns. Billy T.’s dead certain Toby done it, and he’s fired up for a lynching.”
    “Shit.” Dwayne rubbed his hands hard over his face. “Then I guess we’d better stop them.”
    “I can’t do that.” Shaking his head, Will backed up. “They’ll ride me from now to next year if they think I chickened out. I’ve done all I’m going to.”
    People had come to expect sudden outbursts from Dwayne when a bottle was nearby. That was why no one did more than glance his way when he shoved the table aside and grabbed Will by the throat.
    “The fuck you have. Toby gets hurt tonight, I’ll see that you pay for it, same as the others do.”
    “Chrissakes, Dwayne. I can’t go against my own kind any more than I have.”
    “You want to keep that roof over your head, and the job that’s paying for it”—Dwayne lifted Will up on his toes and shook—“you get your ass over to the sheriff’s office. You don’t find Burke or Carl there, you go find them at home, and you tell them what you told me.”
    “Dwayne, Billy T. finds out I did, he’ll kill me.”
    “Bonny ain’t going to be killing anybody.” He