Carnal Innocence

quietly. “He’s afamily man. You only have to see him with his son to understand what kind of person he is.”
    “Believe me, Caroline, a murderer does not often look like a murderer. Particularly a serial killer. I could give you statistics and psychological patterns that would astonish you.”
    “Please don’t,” she said coolly.
    “I’m sorry you seem to be dragged into this affair again and again.” He smiled. “I’d hoped to come by and spend a quiet hour continuing our conversation of the other day. And of course, I’d hoped to persuade you to play for me.”
    She took three careful breaths. Perhaps, she thought, he couldn’t help being an insensitive, arrogant clod. “I’m sorry, Matthew, I’m taking a rest from performing.”
    “Oh.” His face crumpled in disappointment. “Well, perhaps sometime soon. I’m hoping to have some time at the end of the week. From the little research I’ve done, I’m told there’s an adequate seafood restaurant in Greenville. I’d love to take you.”
    “Thank you, Matthew, but I’m sticking very close to home for now.”
    He stiffened a bit at the brush-off. “Pity. Well, the work won’t wait, I suppose. I’d best get back.” He walked to the car, annoyed but not defeated. “I’ll take a raincheck on the iced tea if I may.”
    “Yes. Good-bye.”
    The moment his dust had cleared, she went inside. For the first time in days, she picked up her violin and played.

c·h·a·p·t·e·r 13
    O vernight, a slow, dreary rain had moved in, soaking the thirsty ground. By mid-morning it had moved on sluggishly to Arkansas, having done little more than turn the dirt to a slick mud that would bake dry by afternoon.
    Beside the open grave a huddle of people stood, ankle-deep in the tattered fog that was already burning off in the yellow glare of the sun. Some yards away a narrow line of oaks dripped with rain, a distracting monotone that reminded Cy of the rusty faucet in the bathroom that leaked day and night.
    Sometimes he would lie in bed at night thinking that steady drip, drip, drip would drive him crazy. Just like that Chinese water torture he had read about. He was Cy Hatinger, Secret Agent, and the water would drip, drip, drip on the center of his forehead, but he would never break, not even if the water wore right through the skin and bone and down to the brain.
    No, they would never break him. He was Bond— James Bond. He was Rambo. He was Indiana Jones.
    Then he would just be Cy, stuck in his musty-smelling room, and he would get up, stuff a raggedwashcloth under the leak so that the drip would muffle to a bearable plop.
    This time he didn’t try to block out the sound, but concentrated on it instead, using it to turn his mind away from where he was and what he was doing.
    The Reverend Slater seemed ancient to Cy, though in truth the good man was not yet sixty. But Cy’s young eyes saw only the thin puffs of white hair on a sunburned scalp, the roadmap lines that scored the wind-roughened face, and the loose skin of his throat that hung stringily from bony chin to concave chest.
    To Cy’s mind the reverend was too old to know much about life. Then again, today was for death, and there he was bound to be an expert.
    Reverend Slater’s voice rose and ebbed, flowing melodiously over phrases about salvation and eternal life, and that old standard—God’s will.
    Cy wondered what would happen if he stepped forward and snatched the Bible out of Reverend Slater’s hand.
    Excuse me,
he could say,
but that’s a big pile of horseshit. God didn’t have anything to do with Edda Lou getting all sliced up. How come we have to put it on Him that she’s going into the ground today? How come we just shuck it aside as the will of the Lord when we all know it was a man’s hand who held the knife?
    He was sick of having everything bad put off that way. If the hail came and sliced the young cotton plants to ribbons, it was God’s will.
    He knew where hail came from, and it all had to do with hot air hitting cold and turning rain into hard little balls of ice. Cy couldn’t picture God sitting up there on His golden throne and deciding it was time to pitch hail at Austin Hatinger’s pitiful cotton crop.
    Just as he couldn’t picture God willing that Edda Lou be hacked to pieces and tossed in the pond.
    He wanted to say so. The words almost burned on his tongue in their need to be spoken. He knew his mother would only cry harder and groan and sway. Ruthanne