Carnal Innocence

and watch balls being tossed, darts being thrown, wheels being spun. They each spent a quarter at the Duck Pond, where Jim won a rubber spider and Cy a plastic whistle.
    They debated having their fortunes told by Madame Mystique, then passed her up for a look at the Amazing Voltura, who absorbed a thousand volts of electricity while miniature light bulbs fizzed and popped all over her curvaceous body.
    “Pretty fakey,” Cy decided, and gave his whistle a toot.
    “Yeah, I bet they use batteries or something.”
    Cy scuffed his shoe in the dirt. “Can I ask you something?” “Sure.”
    “I was wondering. Well, how did it feel, stabbing John Thomas Bonny?”
    Frowning, Jim dangled his rubber spider by the string. He figured he could get at least one good squeal out of little Lucy with it. “It didn’t feel at all, I guess. I was all numb and my ears were ringing. I had Lucy hiding in the closet like Ma told me, but I figured he’d find her. And I didn’t know what they were going to do to my ma, and my daddy.”
    “Were they …” Cy wet his lips. “Were they really going to string him up?”
    “They had a rope, and guns.” Jim didn’t say anything about the burning cross. Somehow that was the worst part of all. “They kept saying he killed them women. But he didn’t.”
    “They were saying my daddy killed them, too.” Cy bent for something shiny, but it was only a piece of foil from a pack of cigarettes. “I guess he didn’t do it either.”
    “Somebody did,” Jim said, and the two boys gazed silently at the flow of people. “Might even be somebody we know.”
    “Almost has to be, if you think about it.”
    “Cy?”
    “Yeah?”
    “When I stuck that knife into John Thomas Bonny? Made me feel sorta sick at my stomach watching it go in. I don’t see how anybody could stick people again and again. Less they was crazy.”
    “Guess they are, then.” Cy remembered his father’s eyes, and thought he knew all about crazy. Shaking off the sense of dread, he dug in his pocket. “I still got three tickets left.”
    With a grin, Jim dug in his own. “The Round-Up.”
    “Last one there pukes on his shoes.”
    With a war cry, both boys dashed off, making a beeline for the whirling lights of the Round-Up. Both Cy and his innocent pleasure came to a skidding halt when Vernon stepped out in front of him.
    “Having yourself a high old time, ain’t you, boy?”
    Cy stared up at his brother, into the face that was a ghost image of their father, eyes glazed with anger as hard and cold as ice skimmed over a pond. He hadn’t seen Vernon since Austin’s funeral. There, his brother hadn’t spoken to him at all, only stared at him across the hole in the ground where their father would spend his eternity.
    The lights of the midway suddenly seemed to brighten, burning hot on Cy’s face while the rest of Innocence played in the dark.
    “I’m not doing anything.”
    “You’re always doing something.” Vernon stepped forward. From behind them Loretta clutched one child to the mound made by another and made a small sound of distress that was ignored by all. “Getting yourself a job over to Sweetwater on the sly. Spending all your time with this kind.” He jerked his head toward Jim. “Don’t matter to you that them colored’s plotting against white Christians, killing white women, and your own sister among ’em. You got bigger fish to fry.”
    “Jim’s my friend.” Cy didn’t take his eyes off his brother’s face. But he knew those big hands were fisted, just as he knew they would pummel him to the ground. And because they were blood, there were many who would turn away rather than interfere. “We weren’t doing anything.”
    “You got your colored friends.” Vernon’s lips twisted as he snagged Cy’s collar. “Maybe you helped them get Edda Lou out there in the swamp where they could rape and kill her. Maybe you held the knife yourself and murdered her same as you murdered Daddy.”
    “I didn’t kill anybody.” Cy shoved at Vernon’s hand even as he was dragged up to his toes. “I didn’t. Daddy was going to hurt Miss Caroline and she had to shoot him.”
    “That’s a filthy lie.” Vernon slammed his free hand against Cy’s head, and white stars exploded in front of the boy’s eyes. “You sent him out to die and they hunted him down like a dog. Used their godless money to coverit all up. You think I don’t know how it was? You think I don’t know how you fixed it so you