by Nora Roberts
“Pretty much.” Cy chugged down Coke to ease his dry throat. “A.J. used to say that he just liked to beat up on people and used God as an excuse.”
“He was often violent with you and other members of your family?”
“He …” Cy remembered Tucker’s phrase. “He had a heavy hand.” That didn’t sound so bad somehow. It was almost like saying he had a head cold. “He didn’t tolerate no sass. The Bible says how you’re to honor your father.”
Tucker said nothing, but he noted that Cy hadn’t said father and mother. He didn’t imagine Austin had drilled that part of the scripture into his son’s brain.
“And he used this heavy hand when he had his moods.”
Cy shrugged his thin shoulders. “He used his hands most all the time. It was just worse during the moods.”
“I see.” Even Burns wasn’t unaffected by the casual way the boy described brutality. “And when you were bringing him food and supplies in the culvert, he had these moods.”
“I had to do it.” Cy’s knuckles whitened on the glass bottle. “He’d’ve killed me if I’d gone against him. I had to do it.”
“Agent Burns isn’t blaming you, Cy.” Again Tucker laid a hand, that soothing, comforting hand on his shoulder. “Nobody is. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, I’m not blaming you.” Burns’s voice roughened, and he coughed to clear it. The stark fear on the boy’s face appalled him. “No one would. I only want you to tell me if your father spoke of Miss Waverly.”
“He said some things.” Cy blinked his eyes fast to close off tears. “He said how she was full of sin. How all women were. Like Lot’s wife. She got turned into a pillar of salt.”
“Yes.” Burns folded his hands. “I know. Did he tell you why Miss Waverly was full of sin?”
“He said how …” He shot Tucker a miserable look. “Do I have to say?”
“It’d be best,” Tucker told him. “You take your time.”
Cy took it by gulping down Coke, wiping his hand across his mouth, squirming in his chair. “He said how she was spreading her legs for Mr. Tucker.” His face went beet-red. “And how she was no better’na whore for it. It was time to cast the first stone. I’m sorry, Mr. Tucker.”
“It’s not your fault, Cy.”
“I didn’t know he meant he was going to hurt her. I swear I didn’t. He said stuff all the time. It got so you didn’t pay much mind to it, as long as he wasn’t hitting you. I didn’t know he was going after her, Mr. Burns. I swear I didn’t.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t. Your father hit your mother, didn’t he?”
The frantic color in Cy’s cheeks ebbed away. “We couldn’t do nothing about it. She wouldn’t do nothing. She wouldn’t let the sheriff help, ’cause a woman’s supposed to cleave to her husband. The sheriff’d come by sometimes and she’d just tell him how she’d fallen off the porch or something.” His head dropped. Shame weighed almost as heavy as fear. “Ruthanne says how she likes it. She likes getting beat on. But that don’t seem right.”
Burns decided there was no use trying to explain the psychology and the cycle of abuse. That was a job for social workers and shrinks. “No, it doesn’t. Did he hit Ruthanne, too?”
He smirked, the way brothers do over their sisters. “She’s pretty good at getting out of the way.”
“How about Vernon?”
“They’d whip up on each other sometimes.” Cy made a quick, dismissive move of the shoulders. “Mostly they hung together. Vernon was Daddy’s favorite. He took the most after Daddy. Inside and out, my ma said. They were alike inside and out.”
“How about Edda Lou? Did your father hit her?”
“She was always butting him, daring him, like. She hit back at him. Once she split his head with a bottle when he used the belt on her. That’s when she moved out. She moved into town and never came around the house anymore.”
“Did he say things about Edda Lou, too? The way he did about Miss Waverly?”
A wasp circled down to investigate Cy’s Coke and was batted away. “We weren’t supposed to say her name. Sometimes he got worked up and said how she was a whore of Babylon. Vernon would try to get Daddy riled up about her. He wanted to go fetch her from town and bring her home so they could punish her. Vernon would say how it was their duty as her family and as Christians, but I don’t think he believed in that like Daddy did. Vernon just likes to hit people.” He said it simply, as if he’d just commented that Vernon liked ice cream sundaes. “Then Daddy found out she was seeing Mr. Tucker and he said how she’d be better off dead. And he beat Ma.”
Tucker pressed his fingers against his eyes and wondered if the guilt would ever pass.
“Cy, do you remember when your father and Mr. Longstreet argued?”
Tucker dropped his hands. He nearly laughed. The euphemistic “argument” still showed in fading bruises on his ribs.
“I guess I do. Daddy came home with his face ail busted up.”
“And what about two nights before that.” The night Edda Lou was murdered. “Do you recall if he had one of his moods?”
It was the first question Cy had to think about. His eyes lost some of their glassy fear as he considered. Absently, he took another swipe at the persistent wasp. “I can’t recollect for sure. When he got wind that Edda Lou was supposed to be pregnant, he was real fired up. But I don’t know which night that was.”
Burns prodded for a few minutes, trying to jog the boy’s memory without tipping him off to the reason. In the end. He backed off. He still had Ruthanne and Mavis Hatinger. Their memories might be keener.
“All right, Cy, just a few more questions. The knife you took to your father. Did he often carry it?”
“Only when he was going hunting and such. A buck’s too big to carry as a rule.”
“Could you estimate how many times he might have carried it in, say, the last six or seven months?”
“Four or five times. Maybe more. He was partial to squirrel meat.”
“Did he ever threaten you or any member of your family with the knife? Did he ever boast about punishing someone with it?”
“He was going to gut Mr. Tucker.” Cy covered his face with his hands, muffling his voice. “He said how I had to bring Mr. Tucker back down to the culvert, and he told me he was going to gut him like a rabbit. He was going to carve off his privates. ’Cause it was divine justice. He was going to cut him up like Edda Lou. And if I went against him, if I didn’t honor my father, then he’d cut out my eyes because the eye offended him. And the Lord says you’re supposed to. Please, Mr. Tucker.” He didn’t weep, but kept his hands over his face like a kid in a horror movie trying to block out the monster. “Please, I don’t want to think about it no more.”
“It’s all right, Cy.” Tucker rose to stand behind him. “Leave him be, Burns.”
Burns turned off the recorder, put that and his pad in his pocket. “I’m not heartless, Longstreet.” As he pushed back from the table he looked from the trembling boy to the man who stood as his protector. “And I’m very aware that there are more victims here than are buried in your cemetery.” He wished fleetingly that he was capable of offering compassion as easily as Tucker, with the touch of a hand. Instead, he nodded at the boy, and though his voice was stiff, the words were sincere. “You did everything that was right, Cy. There’s nothing more any man can do. You remember that.”
Tucker laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders and watched Burns walk away. For the first time since he’d set eyes on the FBI agent, Tucker felt a tug of respect.
“I’m going to get us a couple of poles, Cy. We’re taking the rest of the day off.”
“Now, fishing,” Tucker said as he balanced his pole between his knees and settled back against a cypress stump, “is the thinking man’s sport.”
“I never used this kind of stuff for bait before.” Cy sniffed again at the foil-wrapped package in Tucker’s bait box. “What’s it called again?”
“Pâté.” Tucker g
rinned and pulled his cap farther down over his eyes. “Duck liver in this case.” And wasn’t Della going to raise holy hell when she saw it was gone.
“Duck liver.” Cy screwed up his face and looked exactly the way a fourteen-year-old boy should. “That’s gross.”
“An acquired taste, my man. The cats’re crazy for it.” Tucker smeared some on a cracker for himself, popped it into his mouth, and washed it down with lemonade.
They had settled on the far side of Sweetwater Pond, under the dappled shade of a willow Tucker’s mother had planted before he’d been born.
“The cotton looks fine, Mr. Tucker.”
“Hmmm.” From under the shadow of his cap, Tucker looked at the fields. He spotted his overseer and several hands checking the rows for growth, for weevils. “We’ve got a good crop this year. The cotton runs this place.” He sighed a little. “And running cotton’s what spoiled this water here, so we’ll have to toss back whatever fish we catch. I’ve been thinking about getting some of those bugs.”
“Bugs, Mr. Tucker?”
“They got these bugs—scientists figured it out. They eat poison and pollution and the God-knows-what that seeps into water and ruins it.”
“Poison eating bugs?” Cy gave a snort of laughter. “You’re joaning on me, Mr. Tucker.”
The boy’s chuckle, however weak, lightened Tucker’s heart. “It’s the God’s truth. They put those bugs into the Potomac River and they ate it clean.” He looked wistfully out over the dark, deadly water of the lake. “I’ll tell you, Cy, it sure would mean something to me to see this water sweet again. My mama used to talk about having a bridge built over it. You know, one of those pretty arching things like they have in Japan. We never got around to it. I’m sorry for that, ’cause she’d’ve liked it.”
Cy didn’t know about Japan or arching bridges, but he liked listening to Tucker talk. As far as Cy could tell, he could talk about just anything and make it seem fine.
They fished for a while, drowsily, with Tucker’s voice soothing the air like breeze. Cy caught a fish, whooped over it, then tossed it back in.
“I always wanted to go off to places,” Tucker said while Cy baited his hook with Della’s prize pâté. “I had a scrapbook when I was your age, filled it with pictures out of magazines. Places like Rome and Paris and Moscow. I’m thinking it was a shame I never worked up the energy to go see them for myself.” He waited a moment. “You got yourself a wish, Cy? Something you thought about doing?”
“I wish I could go to college.” He turned red, waiting for the laughter. When it didn’t come, he let the rest out in a flood. “I like school. I’m good at it and all. Mr. Baker, that’s my history teacher, he says I got a curious brain and good study habits.”
“That so?”
“It’s kind of embarrassing when he says it in front of the class and all. But it feels good, too. He even said how maybe I could apply for a scholarship to the state university, but Daddy said I had to quit as soon as the law allowed and work on the farm. He said they taught godlessness in those colleges, and that I wasn’t …” He trailed off, remembering his father was gone.
In silence, Tucker yanked a fish out of the water. He held it there a moment, watching it flop and struggle against the inevitable. A boy could feel like that as well, he thought, bringing the catch in, gently removing the hook. He tossed it back in the pond with a splash. It wasn’t often that a fish, or a young boy, was given a second chance. It wasn’t often that a man was given the opportunity to offer that chance.
Cy was going to college, he decided. He’d damn well see to it.
“Mr. Tucker?” Cy felt the tears rising again and hated them. They made him feel like a whining girl.
“Yeah?”
“Do you figure I killed him?”
Tucker bit back a sharp denial. He took a careful breath, then pulled out a cigarette. “How’d you come up with that?”
“I didn’t do like he told me. I didn’t do it, and he ran off. He probably got crazy mad at me, and he went after Miss Waverly. Now he’s dead. I didn’t honor my father, and now he’s dead.”
Tucker struck a match, as if considering. “That may be the how and why of it, and it may not. But you’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do you think that particular commandment means you’ve got to honor your father by helping him kill an unarmed man?”
“No, sir, but—”
“You saved my life yesterday, Cy.” He waited until the boy’s gaze lifted to his. “That’s a plain fact. If you’d done what he told you to do, maybe he’d be alive, or maybe he’d have gone off after Caroline just the same. But I’d be dead. There’s no way around that one, is there?”
“No, sir, I guess not.”
“Austin killed himself. There’s no way around that either.”
Cy wanted to believe that, was desperate to. He fought to keep his voice from breaking. “I’m not sorry he’s dead. I’m not sorry. Now I’m going to hell and burn through all eternity because when the sheriff told me he was dead, I was glad.”
Christ, Tucker thought as he dragged on the cigarette. This was getting touchy, and when it came to the realms of heaven and hell, he would make a poor teacher. But the boy needed something more than platitudes.
“I’m not much on religion myself. That was a big disappointment to my mama. Maybe there’s a hell all right. Christ knows, there’s plenty of people who deserve to do time there. But when I think about it, when I sit down and think real hard about it, I can’t see people getting sent to hell for feelings they can’t help. How you act, how you are with other people, what you make of yourself—all that counts for more, I think.”
“But sinful thoughts—”
This time Tucker laughed, and tipping back his cap grinned at Cy. “Son, if you went to hell for thoughts, heaven would be a mighty lonely place to spend eternity.” He sobered and brushed at the boy’s hair. “I can’t say why your father did the things he did. But he was wrong. Hurting you and your ma, those things weren’t right, Cy, no matter how much he quoted scripture while he was at it. There’s no sin in feeling glad that’s behind you.”
The raw lump in Cy’s gut began to shrink. “My ma, she’s not going to be glad.”
“You can’t take on her feelings. You’ve got your own. There’s something I want to put to you, something I want you to think about.”
“Yes sir.”
“I know Della told you you could stay on here as long as you want.”
Panic widened the boy’s eyes. “I won’t be any trouble, Mr. Tucker. I won’t eat much, I promise, and I’ll work hard. I can—”
“Hold on. Nobody’s pushing you out.” Wondering how best to phrase it, Tucker tamped out his cigarette. “I figure Vernon will take over the farm and see to your ma’s needs. Ruthanne’s nearly grown.”
“She’s saving up to leave.” Cy bit his lip. “That’s a secret.”
“Nothing I like better than keeping a lady’s secrets. Now, I’m thinking you could keep working for me, part-time, when school starts up again. Part of your pay could go to your ma to help her out. And I could add room and board.”
Something swelled in his throat. He didn’t even recognize it as hope. “You mean I could move in to Sweetwater? For good?”
“Until there’s somewhere else you’d rather go. If it’s something you want. Cy, I’ll do what I can to make it happen. Your ma would have to agree to it, and there’d probably be some kind of legal work to make me a kind of guardian over you. You’d have to want it, though.”
Cy only stared, afraid to hope for so much. “I’d do anything you told me. I wouldn’t cause you trouble.”
“We’ll look into it. I guess I’d better come up with some rules so you can see what you’re getting into.” To give Cy time to compose himself, he heaped more pâté on a cracker. If he’d done nothing else right this day, he’d taken the boy’s mind off his misery. “No drinking till you’re of age.”
“No, sir.”
�
�No wild parties unless you invite me.”
A chuckle escaped Cy, and the sound had him blinking. “No, sir.”
“No flirting with my woman.” Women, he corrected himself silently. He’d meant women. Hadn’t he? But he was thinking of Caroline.
Cy’s color rose again, “No, sir.”
“And I won’t flirt with yours.” He winked at the boy and grinned. “Got yourself a girl, do you, Cy?”
“No, sir. Not exactly. I just look sometimes, is all.”
“You’ve got plenty of time to do more than look. Any girl in particular?”
Cy wet his lips. There was no way he could lie to Tucker. It wasn’t fear, he realized. Not the way it had been with his father. It was love. “I, ah, well, I kind of look at LeeAnne Hardesty. She grew breasts last year. It sure does make a difference.”
Tucker choked on the pâté. “By Christ, it does,” he agreed. He tiptoed onto boggy ground. “You’re just looking?”
“Well …” Face burning, Cy ducked his head. “Once in the lunch line she was behind me and somebody shoved her. Her breasts pushed right into my back. They sure were soft. And she put her arms around my waist a minute, just to get her balance back. And I …” He swallowed the shame. “I couldn’t help it. Mr. Tucker. I just couldn’t stop it no matter what.”
Tucker had an image of Cy tossing LeeAnne Hardesty down on the tiles of the cafeteria and tearing in. “What was it that you couldn’t stop?”
“Well, you know. It just happens sometimes, no matter how I try to stop it. It just gets … you know. The tool of Satan.”
“The tool of Satan,” Tucker repeated slowly. He would have laughed. In fact he was damn sure he’d have rolled on the ground and laughed fit to kill if Cy hadn’t had that guilt-stricken look in his eyes.
Austin Hatinger strikes again, Tucker thought, and blew out a long breath.
“I never heard it called that.” To hide the grin, Tucker spent a lot of time stroking his chin. “It seems to me since the good Lord put it between your legs, it has more to do with Him than the other one.”
“Evil thoughts and wicked women make it hard.”
