Carnal Innocence

to lend money when he had more than enough. But that didn’t change the color of the bills.
    Unlike his father, Beau, Tucker didn’t compound the interest daily or lock in his desk drawer a little leather book filled with the names of the people who owed him. Who would keep owing him until they plowed themselves under instead of their fields. Tuckerkept the interest to a reasonable ten percent. The names and figures were all inside his clever and often underestimated mind.
    In any case, he didn’t do it for the money. Tucker rarely did anything for money. He did it first because it was effortless, and second because inside his rangy and agreeably lazy body beat a generous and sometimes guilty heart.
    He’d done nothing to earn his good fortune, which made it the simplest thing in the world to squander it away. Tucker’s feelings on this ranged from yawning acceptance to an occasional tug of social conscience.
    Whenever the conscience tugged too hard, he would stretch himself out in the rope hammock in the shade of the spreading live oak, tip a hat down over his eyes, and sip a cold one until the discomfort passed.
    Which was exactly what he was doing when Della Duncan, the Longstreets’ housekeeper of thirty-some years, stuck her round head out of a second-floor window.
    “Tucker Longstreet!”
    Hoping for the best, Tucker kept his eyes shut and let the hammock sway. He was balancing a bottle of Dixie beer on his flat, naked belly, one hand linked loosely around the glass.
    “Tucker Longstreet!” Della’s booming voice sent birds scattering up from the branches of the tree. Tucker considered that a shame, as he’d enjoyed dreaming to their piping song and the droning counterpoint of the bees courting the gardenias. “I’m talking to you, boy.”
    With a sigh, Tucker opened his eyes. Through the loose weave of his planter’s hat, the sun streamed white and hot. It was true that he paid Della’s salary, but when a woman had diapered your bottom as well as walloped it, you were never in authority over her. Reluctantly, Tucker tipped the hat back and squinted in the direction of her voice.
    She was leaning out, all right, her flaming red hair peeking out from the kerchief she’d tied around it. Her broad, heavily rouged face was set in the stern, disapprovinglines Tucker had learned to respect. Three strings of bright beads slapped against the sill.
    He smiled, the innocent, crafty smile of a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Yes’m?”
    “You said you’d drive into town and bring me back a sack of rice and a case of Coca-Cola.”
    “Well, now …” Tucker rubbed the still-cool bottle over his torso before bringing it to his lips for a long swallow. “I guess I did, Della. Figured I’d ride in once it cooled off some.”
    “Get your lazy ass up and fetch it now. Else there’ll be an empty plate on the table at dinner tonight.”
    “Too damn hot to eat,” he mumbled under his breath, but Della had ears like a rabbit.
    “What is that, boy?”
    “I said I’m going.” Graceful as a dancer, he slid out of the hammock, polishing off the Dixie as he went. When he grinned up at her, the hat tipped rakishly on his sweat-curled hair, and the light of the devil in those golden eyes, Della softened. She had to force herself to keep her mouth pursed and stern.
    “You’re going to root to that hammock one day. See if you don’t. A body’d think you were ailing the way you’d rather lie on your back than stand on your feet.”
    “Lots more a man can do lying down than nap, Della.”
    She betrayed herself with a loud, lusty laugh. “Just make sure you don’t do so much you end up getting hauled to the altar with someone like that slut Sissy, who snagged my Dwayne.”
    He grinned again. “No, ma’am.”
    “And bring me back some of my toilet water. It’s on sale down at Larsson’s.”
    “Toss me down my wallet and keys, then.”
    Her head withdrew, then popped out a moment later just before she flung both objects down at him. Tucker snagged them out of the air with a deft flick of the wrist that reminded Della the boy wasn’t as slow as he pretended to be.
    “Put your shirt on—and tuck it in,” Della ordered, as she would have had he been ten.
    Tucker lifted it from the hammock, shrugging into it as he walked around the front of the house, where a dozen Doric columns rose from the covered porch to the lacy ironwork of the second-story terrace. His skin was clinging to the