Carnal Innocence

belonged to him.
    Madeline had pretended to be indifferent to him. He’d known, all those years ago he’d known, that she’d gone with Beau only to tease and torment him, as women did. She’d belonged to him. Only him. Her shocked denial when he’d made his declaration before shipping out to war had only been another pretense.
    If it hadn’t been for Beau, she’d have been waiting for him when he’d returned. That had been the beginning of the end for him.
    Hadn’t he worked his fingers raw, broken his back, sweated out his heart trying to make a decent life for the family he’d taken? And while he’d worked, and failed, sweated and lost ground, Beau had sat up in his fine white house and laughed.
    And laughed.
    But Beau hadn’t known. Despite all his money and his fine clothes and fancy cars, he’d never known that once, on a dusty day in high summer, when the air was thick and still, when the sky was baked white with heat, Austin Hatinger had taken what was his.
    He remembered still how she’d looked that day. And the picture in his mind was so clear, his hands trembled and his blood pumped hard and hot.
    She’d come to him, carrying a basket up to his porch, a big straw basket filled with charity for him, for his squawling son, for his wife who lay inside, sweating through the birthing of another child.
    She’d been wearing a blue dress and a white hat that had a filmy blue scarf trailing from the crown. Madeline had always been one for floating scarves. Her dark hair was curled under the hat so that it framed the creamy skin of her face—skin she could pamper with the lotions Beau’s godless money could buy.
    She’d looked like a spring morning, strolling up the dirt path to his sagging porch, her eyes soft and smiling, as if she didn’t see the poverty, the broken cinder-block steps, the dingy clothes hanging on the line, the scrawny chickens pecking in the dust.
    Her voice had been so cool as she’d offered him that basket filled with cast-off clothes Beau’s money had bought for the babies he’d planted in Austin’s woman. He couldn’t hear past it, to the weak whine of his own wife calling to him that it was time to fetch the doctor.
    He remembered how Madeline had started to go in, concerned for the woman who would never have laid in his bed at all if it hadn’t been for betrayal and deceit.
    “You fetch the doctor, Austin,” she had said in that cool, spring-water voice. The kindness in her golden eyes burned a hole in his gut. “Hurry and fetch him, and I’ll stay with her and your little one.”
    It wasn’t madness that had gripped him. No, Austin would never accept that. It was righteousness. Right and wrath had filled him when he had dragged Madeline off the porch. Truth had pounded through him when he had pulled her down to the dirt.
    Oh, she’d pretended that she didn’t want him. She’d screamed and she’d fought, but it had all been a lie. He’d had the right, the God-given right to push himself into her. No matter that she’d worn a mask that had wept and pleaded, she’d recognized that right.
    He’d emptied his seed into her, and all these years later, he could still remember the power of that release. The way his body had bucked and shuddered as the part of him that was a man flowed into her.
    She’d stopped her weeping. While he’d rolled over in the dirt to stare up at that white sky, she had gotten up, gone away, and left him with the sound of triumph in his ears and the taste of bitterness on his tongue.
    So he’d waited, day after day, night after night, for Beau to come. His second son had been born and his wife lay stony-faced in the bed, and Austin waited, his Winchester loaded and ready. And he’d ached with the need to kill.
    But Beau had never come. He knew then that Madeline had kept their secret. And had doomed him.
    Now Beau was dead. And Madeline. They were buried together in Blessed Peace Cemetery.
    It was the son now, the son who had brought the circle twisting back. From generation to generation, he thought. The son had seduced and defiled his daughter. The girl was dead.
    Retribution was his right. Retribution was his sword.
    Austin blinked and focused on the bars of light again. Bars that came through bars. They had shifted with oncoming dusk. He’d been sitting in the past for more than two hours.
    It was time to plan for today. In disgust he stared down at his loose blue pants. Prison clothes. He would be rid of them soon. He would