However, by the end of the week, Cornell’s thoughts had begun to run to the more prurient and far more sinister. He would do this: He would send regrets to the Ludviks, though he would make sure that he could be seen walking in that direction (because he was certain that his house was being staked out, the two young sex addicts watching and waiting for the coast to clear). Then he would take a roundabout way home — the back way — a way not at all anticipated by Cal and Kieran. Finally, having given the kids sufficient time to invade his house, to place their ravenous naked bodies upon the bed in the spare room, he would enter and catch them — what was the phrase? — fragrante delicto. He would not scold the young ones. He would not judge them or punish them for doing what nature and youth dictated. But he would explain that there was still a price to be paid for their youthful skullduggery, and the price was this: that they should continue with their lovemaking with him there, sitting in his armchair, observing quietly from across the room, servicing his own brittle, superannuated sexual needs, but intangibly, at safe distance, in promiscuous peep-show proximity. They would do this for Cornell, or he would report them, if not to the police, then to their parents. Someone would be told — someone they would not want told, for why else did they sneak around so? This would be the deal that he would offer them, and they would have no choice but to accept it.
They came for their clandestine assignation that day, and Cornell arrived twenty minutes later, just as he had planned, ready to ambush them and then to name his extortionary terms. As he crept quietly down the hall toward the spare bedroom, he could hear them in there, could hear the noises of bodily abandon, the groans and moans of unfettered youthful sensuosity. He stopped just to the side of the open door, waiting a moment, not looking inside — waiting another moment and then another — putting off that which in his imaginings had given him intense anticipatory pleasure.
He pictured his own young self in that bed with the first girl he had ever lain with. They had both been frightened, but then lost all of their inhibitions and threw themselves into the act. He thought of how it should feel if someone had stepped into the doorway and revealed himself to be their interloper. And an old man — a man whose life would in due time be drawing to an end. A man for whom the incandescent sexual fire that characterized his youth had long burned itself to embers. How would he have felt in the presence of such a pathetic old man? The thought now disgusted him.
Cornell sank to the floor in the hallway, perhaps five feet from the door of the spare room. Here he sat and here he wept. There are old men who never cry — men who have seen enough pain in their long lives to build a carapace around themselves until death — and then there are old men who come to walk with softer steps through the emotional rooms of their lives. Cornell was of that second group, and so he cried for what he had lost and for that hurtful thing he had almost done in an effort to somehow compensate for that loss.
The sounds from the room stopped. A moment later, Cal emerged. He was naked, his penis still hard. Kieran, a couple of steps behind him, was wrapped in the blanket that this Sunday she’d succeeded in bringing along. Rather than demonstrating surprise over finding Cornell sitting upon the carpeted floor of the hallway, blubbering now like a lost child — rather than recoiling in shame and bowing their heads in Garden-of-Eden contrition, the teenaged boy and girl presented expressions of silent pity for Cornell. Cal reached down to help Cornell to his feet.
“We won’t do it again if you don’t want us to,” he said to the old man, almost matter-of-factly. “We figured you’d be cool with it. I mean, we didn’t ask on the chance you might not be, but — hey, you’re okay with it, right?”
Cornell stared at the naked teenage boy for a moment, not knowing at first just how to answer. Then the answer came, and there was an ease to it that surprised Cornelclass="underline" “I know you kids have no place to go. You can come here if you like.” And then he added: “When I’m out.”
Cornell wiped his eyes with the knuckles of both hands. Cal nodded. Kieran nodded too. She was holding the blanket as if it were an oversized sarong, one hand bunching the folds of the fabric together to cover her hips, her buttocks, her vagina, but not the creamy-white, sun-shy mounds of her young breasts.
Cornell stared at the breasts as if he had never seen such things before. And then, with no sense as to what his hand was doing, he reached out as if he desired to touch them. Kieran turned and looked at Cal.
Cal shrugged. He drew his lips together and then pulled them apart to say, “They’re your boobs, monkey.”
Hearing that which she needed to hear, Kieran took a step toward Cornell, placing herself within the vicinity of his outstretched fingers. She allowed Cornell to touch the nutty nipple of her right breast and then to cup his hand beneath it, holding it lightly in his palm. Then he drew his hand away and dropped it to his side.
“How long has it been, old man?” asked Cal.
“A very long time,” said Cornell in a near whisper.
Cal nodded. Then he led Kieran back into the room and shut the door. From what Cornell could hear, the two quickly picked up where they had left off. But Cornell didn’t stick around to listen. He went into the kitchen to make soup and sandwiches.
They’ll be hungry when they’re done, he thought to himself. Young people are always hungry.
And he nearly smiled.
1991 FILICIDAL IN MISSISSIPPI
Bianca Toland moved out on the morning of October 12, a Saturday. She had moved out before. Whenever Lloyd’s drinking got out of hand, she would pack up the bags and drive up to Southaven with the kids to spend a few days with her sister, Christine, and her brother-in-law, Buzz. This time she told her husband, in a note she left behind, that she meant business. She wasn’t going to come home — not she nor their son Shawn, who was eleven, nor Kimberly, who was six — until Lloyd took solid steps to end the drinking.
Buzz knew about a clinic up in Nashville. He had been there himself. As a recovering alcoholic, he was familiar with all of Lloyd’s tricks. He knew the ways that Lloyd was playing Bianca. He and Christine advised Bianca to give Lloyd this ultimatum and only to come back after he’d gotten the kind of serious help that could truly turn things around.
Bianca’s note to her husband, magneted to the refrigerator, said that since their two kids were presently visiting Bianca’s parents at their house in Germantown, she would have to come home on Sunday to pick up their clothes and other things. What Bianca didn’t realize, though, was that Grandpa Naughton hadn’t gotten the word that he was supposed to take Shawn and Kimberly to Southaven and drop them off with their mother and aunt and uncle. He took them instead down to Coldwater and left them with their father.
Lloyd didn’t seem himself when the old man and the two kids walked in. He was holding Bianca’s note in his hand, but he didn’t tell his father-in-law what he’d just found out.
Ned Naughton drove away thinking that Bianca was at K-Mart.
“Where’s Mama?” asked Shawn after his grandfather had gone.
“She’s moved out again.” Lloyd was sober. He was seeing things in the clearest way possible. He was weighing his options.