Carnal Innocence

wet as she touched his side. “Somebody call the doctor.”
    “We’ll get him to the hospital.” Tucker knelt down. Burke and Carl were already reading Billy T. and the others their rights. “What do you say, Toby? Up to a ride?”
    He was holding his family, his good eye leaking tears as he gathered them close. “Guess I could stirmyself.” He tried a wan smile while Winnie wept against his chest. “You driving?”
    “You bet.”
    “We’ll get there fast anyway.”
    “There you go. Dwayne, give me a hand here. Della, you take the kids on down to Sweetwater. Caroline.” Tucker looked around as she stood and walked away. “Where are you going?”
    She didn’t look back. “To get a hose and put out this obscenity.”

c·h·a·p·t·e·r 26
    S creams shimmied on the hot air. High pitched howls echoed, chased by shrieks of wild laughter. Colored lights flashed and blinked and whirled, turning the fallow Eustis Field into a fantasy of motion.
    The carnival had come to Innocence.
    People readily dug out their spare change to be caught by the Octopus, whirled by the Zipper, and scrambled by the Round-Up.
    Kids went racing by, their shouts and squeals rising above the piping calliope music, their fingers sticky with cotton candy, their cheeks puffed out with corn dogs or stuffed with fried dough. Teenagers scrambled to impress one another by knocking down bottles, ringing bells, or—in the words of one daredevil—riding the Scrambler till they puked.
    Many of the older set settled for bingo at a quarter a card. Others touched by gambling fever lost their paychecks trying to outsmart the Wheel of Fortune.
    To anyone traveling over Old Longstreet Bridge, it would look like an ordinary summer carnival on the outskirts of an ordinary small, southern town. The lightsand the echo of that calliope might bring a tug of nostalgia to the travelers as they passed by.
    But for Caroline, the magic wasn’t working.
    “I don’t know why I let you talk me into coming here.”
    Tucker swung his arm over her shoulders. “Because you can’t resist my fatal southern charm.”
    She stopped to watch hopefuls pitching coins at glassware that could be had at any respectable yard sale for half the price. “It doesn’t seem right, with everything that’s happened.”
    “I don’t see what a night at a carnival’s going to change. Unless it’s to make you smile a little.”
    “Darleen’s going to be buried on Tuesday.”
    “She’s going to be buried Tuesday whether you’re here tonight or not.”
    “Everything that happened last night—”
    “Has been taken care of,” he finished. “Billy T. and his asshole friends are in jail. Doc says Toby and Winnie are doing just fine. And look here.” He pointed to where Cy and Jim were squished together in a cup of the Scrambler, eyes wide, mouths open in laughing howls as they were spun in mad circles. “Those two are smart enough to grab a little fun when it’s offered.”
    Tucker pressed a kiss to her hair and continued to walk. “You know why we call this Eustis Field?”
    “No.” A smile ghosted around her lips. “But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
    “Well, Cousin Eustis—actually, he’d have been an uncle, but there’re so many greats in there it gets confusing—he wasn’t what you’d call a tolerant man. He ran Sweetwater from 1842 until 1856, and it prospered. Not just the cotton. He had six children—legitimately— and about a dozen more on the other side of the sheets. Word was he liked to try out the female slaves when they came of age. That age being about thirteen, fourteen.”
    “That’s despicable. You named a field for him?”
    “I’m not finished.” He paused to light half a cigarette. “Now, Eustis, he wasn’t what you’d call an admirable man. It didn’t bother him at all to sell off his own children—the dark-skinned ones. His wife was a papist,a devoted one, who used to beg him to repent his sins and save his soul from a fiery hell. But Eustis just kept doing what came naturally to him.”
    “Naturally?”
    “To him,” Tucker said. Behind him, a bell clanged as some hotshot proved his strength and impressed his girl into rapturous squeals. “One day a young female slave took off. She had the baby Eustis had fathered with her. Eustis didn’t tolerate runaways. No indeed. He set out the men and the dogs, and rode out himself to hunt her down. He was riding across this field when he shouted out that he’d spotted