Carnal Innocence

for lunch. If you was to pick up a brush and get to work, might be I’d find one for you.”
    Cy yearned toward the lane. He could almost feel his body lean toward it even as his feet stayed planted on the glass-splattered hardtop.
    No son of mine is going to run with niggers.
Austin’svoice cut through Cy’s mind like a rusty blade.
If the Lord wanted us to truck with them, he’d’ve made them white.
    But it wasn’t that which had Cy turning away from the lane. It was the knowledge that if he spent the morning painting and eating tomato sandwiches with Jim and his daddy, he would never work up the nerve to walk the last mile to Sweetwater.
    His faded checked shirt was clinging to his skin by the time he turned through the iron gates. He’d walked nearly eight miles in the steadily spiraling heat, and wished now he’d taken the time for breakfast. His stomach growled ominously one minute, then churned the next, turning his sweat cold with nausea.
    Cy took a faded bandanna out of his back pocket and swiped at his face and neck. Maybe it was best he hadn’t had that breakfast, because he was pretty sure if there was anything in his stomach, it would be coming up quick. He’d missed supper the night before, too, half sick on his share of a lemon pie he’d gorged on at the fishing hole.
    The thought of that lemon pie had his stomach rising. It took two hard swallows to settle it down again. He looked longingly at the cool green grass beyond the line of magnolias. He could just stretch out there a minute, press his hot face into that sweet grass.
    But he thought someone might see him, and he’d never get the job.
    He put one foot in front of the other.
    He’d seen Sweetwater only a time or two before. Sometimes he thought he’d imagined how grand it was, with its white walls and tall, winking windows. But it was never as grand in his imagination as it was in reality. The thought that people lived there, ate and slept there, was an amazement to Cy, who had lived his whole life in a cramped shack with a dirt yard.
    Light-headed from heat and hunger, Cy stared at the house as the sun splashed on those white walls and winking windows. Vapors shimmering up from the gravel made it look as though it were underwater. An underwater palace, he thought, and had some vague recollectionof reading about mermen and mermaids who lived under the sea.
    He felt as if he were walking through water. His steps were slow and sluggish and the air he breathed in was like thick, warm liquid that filled up his throat instead of soothing it, A little nervous, he looked down at his feet and wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed to see his cracked and dusty shoes instead of a shiny green tail.
    The scent of flowers was strong as he rounded the peony bed where his father had recently kicked the shit out of Tucker.
    Cy hoped Miss Della would come to the door. He liked Miss Della with her wild red hair and colorful jewelry. She’d given him a quarter once just for carrying her bags from the market to her car. And since Miss Della had thick muscles in her arms, Cy knew she could have carried them herself and saved her quarter.
    If she came to the door, she might tell him to come on around back. When he got around to the kitchen, she’d give him a cold glass of lemonade, and maybe a biscuit. Then he would thank her, real polite, and ask her if Lucius Gunn was about, so he could ask the overseer about work.
    A little dazed, he found himself on the porch, facing the big carved door with its polished brass knocker. He licked his dry lips, lifted his hand.
    The door swung open before he’d reached the knocker. Standing in front of him wasn’t Miss Della but a small, elderly lady who wore orange lipstick and what looked like an eagle feather in her hair. Cy didn’t know that the shiny stones around her crepy neck were Russian diamonds. Her feet were bare, and she carried a set of bongos.
    “My great-granddaddy on my mama’s side was half Chickasaw,” Lulu told the gaping Cy. “Might have been a time when my ancestors scalped the hell out of yours.”
    “Yes’m,” Cy said for lack of anything better.
    Lulu’s orange-slicked mouth curved. “You sure do have a fine head of hair on you, boy.” She threw back herhead and let out with a screeching warwhoop that had Cy stumbling back.
    “I just—I just—I just—” was all Cy managed to get out.
    “Cousin Lulu, you’re scaring the spit out of that boy.” Tucker strolled