Chapter 2
When Kaleb Johnson was ten years old he had taken some change from the petty cash fund at the store. He had seen the money lying on the roll-top desk in that stark room where his father, the village grocer, prepared his accounts and without considering what might happen, he had dropped the coins into his pocket. Of course, he was accused; and he admitted what he had done without trying to make up an excuse. But from that day on, every day before school his father led him to the cellar and beat him with a razor strap, an act which the sadistic man enjoyed, though he claimed to be doing it in the name of God as rightful punishment for the boy's unpardonable sin. This continued until Kaleb was seventeen and an amazingly strong boy for his lean build.
The tight-lipped man with the clenched fist and furrowed brow was never able to live a day when his mind did not recall countless times those anguished memories, even now while he struggled to haul out the felled trees and brush which represented the morning's work. He had long ago accepted the idea that he would burn in hell for all eternity .. . not for the money he had stolen as a boy, but for the vengeful beating he had finally given his father on his eighteenth birthday, a beating that had led to the man's death shortly after.
Never had there been the slightest regret in his soul for what he had don. But he had done it and he must eventually answer for his sin with his eternal soul. Even so, he had pledged that his children would follow in the path of the Lord, and that he would spend the rest of his days doing menial labor while trying to stamp out evil wherever he saw it rearing its ugly, wicked head .. . and there was no doubt that he saw it in the worldly face and seductive body of that Falcon woman!
For the moment he was not sure about Tina -- her stepdaughter -- for there was a sweetness about her pretty young face that confused him. Even though she covered her nymphlike body with bits of cloth that were hardly garments, she did not parade herself before his sons or himself like a wanton hussy the way Jack Falcon's young wife had done for the past few days. Still, the way in which the girl stayed so near her brother indicated the worst kind of the devil's work. Why even at that very moment they were together, alone by the lakeshore.
Momentarily, the angular man paused to wipe his forehead and glance about for his son. He saw Brian bare to the waist dragging the tamarisk he had just felled. Lifting his angry eyes skyward, Kaleb judged the time of day by the location of the sun. His wide forehead wrinkled with worry. Bruin had been gone over an hour; he should be back. It took almost no time to pick up Anna and drive into Imperial for a few groceries and their mail.. . unless they were up to other things. God forbid! He'd kill them if he ever learned that such evil took place under his roof!
He ran his tongue across his parched lips and held tightly to the axe handle. Anna was strong-willed like he was, he figured, and not likely to be swayed by lust; but the boys, he was afraid, had inherited too much of the weak strain from their mother, a woman whose mere remembrance could hurl him into a fury!
Quickly he began to swing the axe once again with fierce and powerful strokes, the feverish pace and the heat of the sun helping him to sweat out the wave of rage that had suddenly overtaken him ...
She had died ten years ago when he was forty and she almost thirty. He had never said the word "love" to her in their seven years of marriage; he was a cursed man without right to feelings, and somehow he felt it was her lot to share his fate. But she had been a chicken-hearted bitch, leaving him when he had needed her most to lead their children according to God-fearing paths of the Almighty, as he had vowed that he would ...
He recalled how when she started getting the back pains, he had been sure she was trying to avoid performing her womanly obligations. For the first time ever in their lives together, he had heard her cry that night when he rammed his penis into her dry and constricted vagina ... by morning she was dead! Heart failure, the doctor said, but he knew the man knew better. She had taken an overdose of pills to escape her responsibility to him.
She had loathed him that much, ever since the day he had conned her father into an agreement to marry her by pretending to have big money. But her hatred hadn't bothered him; he expected that. And he had made her read the Bible. In return, all he had demanded was that she perform her wifely functions in the kitchen and in the bedroom; but the dirty bitch had deserted him by taking the sleeping pills. He was sure of that.
His rage mounting, Kaleb Johnson slashed the tamarisk with even greater fury. The vile woman with her selfish suicide had made him into an even more damnable man; for he blamed her for his occasional trips to Palm Springs some fifty miles to the north, and the foul lecherous thoughts that filled his head as he gazed at his own young daughter, Anna, when the need to relieve his frustrations became overwhelming. God damn the bitch! He hoped she would awake in her grave to die again, and again, and again, to punish her for the wretched sinner she had made of him!
Even the whores he bought in Palm Springs for fifty bucks a night reminded him of her, and he would fuck them harder and harder and harder -- unmercifully ... until his prick was sore and dry; and they would cry from the painful fucking. This, in a sense, gave him some sick pleasure, for the naked whore would become his wife whom he despised, and he could dole out her punishment in the way most revolting to her ... the frigid slut!
Once more, the tortured man paused, out of breath as he drew his muscular forearm across his forehead and raised his eyes to the sun. Where was that boy? God, could it be possible ... ? He looked toward Brian's tanned, muscular young body and watched the lean sinews as the boy worked industriously. Both he and his brother were filled with lust, he knew that, just as his daughter was cursed with the deceiving wantonness of her sex, however strong-willed she might be. Enough of her mother's genes were in the girl's body to weaken the strength of his own blood line. And as close an eye as he had kept on all of them, there could well be incestuous desire amongst them! In God's name, he could murder them all if he thought it was true! Still, he had never seen the slightest indication that it was ... it was hard to tell.
But where in hell was that boy . . . ?