Carnal Innocence

chicken, potato salad, and smoking barbecues. It was a day for flag waving and pie eating and drinking cold beer in the shade. There were those gathered close in mourning, and the law continued its grinding quest, but on this bright summer day, Innocence tossed a cloak of red, white, and blue over murder and celebrated.
    After the parade there were contests along Market Street and over in the town square. Pie eating, target shooting, foot racing, egg tossing, and—always a favorite—watermelon-seed spitting.
    In silent amazement Caroline gawked at the junior division pie-eating contest, where seven- to fourteen-year-olds buried their faces in blueberry, slurping and swallowing to the cheers of the crowd. Pie after pie was consumed, and more glistening tins shoved under purple-stained faces. Encouragement and gastronomic advice were shouted out as one by one the young entrants fell by the wayside. Groaning.
    “Look at Cy.” Caroline pressed a hand to her own stomach in sympathy. “He must have eaten a dozen by now.”
    “Nine and a half,” Tucker corrected her. “But he’s leading. Come on, boy, don’t chew. Just let it slide on down.”
    “I don’t see how he can breathe,” she murmured as Cy buried his face in number ten. “He’s going to be sick.”
    “’Course he is. That’s the way, Cy! Don’t hold back now. He’s got himself a nice rhythm,” Tucker said to Caroline. “He doesn’t just smash his face into it and hope for the best, he works in a nice steady circle from the outside in.”
    She didn’t know how Tucker could tell. All she sawwas a boy buried to the neck in blueberries while the crowd cheered and stomped. She told herself it was a silly game, messy and certainly undignified. But she was rocking back and forth from toes to heels, pulled in to the simple excitement.
    “Come on, Cy! Swallow it whole. Leave them in the dust. Look! He’s going for twelve. Oh, Jesus, he’s got it sewed up now. Just—” She glanced up at Tucker and found him grinning at her. “What?”
    “I’m crazy about you.” He kissed her hard and long as Cy, a little green beneath the purple splotches, was declared champion. “Plum crazy.”
    “Good.” She brushed her fingers over his cheeks and into his hair. “That’s good. Now maybe I should help the winner scrub blueberry juice off his face.”
    “Let him get his own girl,” Tucker decided, and pulled her along to the next event.
    They’d cleared the parking lot of the Lutheran Church for the target shoot. McGreedy’s had supplied the beer bottles, and Hunters’ Friend the ammo. The elimination rounds went quickly with frustrated hopefuls unloading their weapons and taking a place on the sidelines.
    Tucker was pleased to see Dwayne preparing for the second round. It had taken a lot of fast, hard talk to convince his brother to participate in the day’s events. He didn’t want any gossip until it was impossible to avoid it. And he wanted Dwayne to continue acting normally. In Tucker’s mind, normal equaled innocent.
    “Both Dwayne and Josie are entered,” Caroline commented.
    “We were all taught to shoot early. Old Beau insisted on it.”
    “What about you? You’re not after the grand prize of a smoked ham and a blue ribbon?”
    He shrugged. “I never cared much for guns. There goes Susie.” He waited until she’d blasted away three bottles with three shots. “Lordy, she’s a cool hand. Good thing she married a lawman. With that aim she could’ve taken up a life of crime.”
    “Cousin Lulu.” Concerned, Caroline put a hand onTucker’s arm. Lulu swaggered up with a pair of Colts snug in a leather holster riding low on her bony hips. “Do you really think she should—” She broke off as the old lady drew and fired. The three bottles seemed to explode as one. “Oh, my.”
    “She can handle anything from a .22 to an AK-47.” He watched, entertained, as Lulu twirled a Colt around her finger in three fast circles, then shot it back home. “But if she asks you to stand with an apple on your head, I’d decline. She’s not as young as she once was.”
    It ended with Lulu edging out Susie and a very annoyed Will Shiver. The crowd began to gather back on the street for foot races.
    “Sweetwater’s doing well for itself.” Caroline accepted the cold bottle of Coke Tucker passed her. “Aren’t you going to run?”
    “Run?” Tucker lighted a cigarette and flipped away the match. “Darlin’, why would I want to get all