Playing With Matches

by Carolyn Wall

  I did not find that bird lying dead on the road or any cow track, or paddling in somebody’s water trough. In town, I briefly checked the empty buildings and lots and asked around. He wasn’t poking through the canned goods at the Ninety-Nine Cent Store, and he sure wasn’t playing canasta with the ladies at the Oasis of Love.

  At about noon I found him—grinning, if a goose could grin—munching lettuce leaves and collards in Miz Millicent Poole’s garden. He had trampled her tomatoes and plucked early grapes from her vine and was honking in a victorious but sickly way, and I hoped he had a bellyache that beat all.

  Miz Millicent would not take kindly to the trodden mess. I’d not had much to do with her in these years because she was tall and pinched, the color of a parsnip, and she smelled bad. A strange odor came out through her pores and rose on her breath. Auntie told me once it was malaria. I asked if a doctor couldn’t do something for her, but Auntie said things had invaded Miz Millicent’s bloodstream, and they weren’t likely going anywhere.

  Miz Millicent’s red hair was thin and stringy so that her pink scalp showed through. Weekly, she put on a hat and sashayed down to First and Last Holy Word, where she supervised Sunday school teachers, picked hymns for the service, and bossed everybody. She told the Best Reverend what lesson us backsliding folks needed and, in all matters, which way was up.

  But on many days she was sickly, and Aunt Jerusha walked down the road with a slab of pound cake or half a sweet-potato pie. Auntie’d step up on the porch and tap lightly on the door. From the other side, Miz Poole spoke softly, weeping. But if I was there, and if she saw, she’d begin to screech, “Jerusha, don’t you bring that child in here! She got germs and vermin crawling. You don’t come in, little girl, you hear me, now?”

  Auntie’d give me a look that said I’d better back off and pretend to admire Miz Millicent’s hydrangeas, and nod my head at her bobbing zinnias like they were the finest I had ever seen.

  Secretly I thought Miz Millicent was a loon, and she scared the living daylights out of me.

  But today I was alone, and I had a clear purpose, and I spotted a broom on Miz Poole’s porch. It seemed like a fair thing with which to chase a goose from a garden, and I grabbed it up and rushed into the grapevines and, although we were near the same size, I beat that bird up one side and down the other. He flashed his wings and hissed and flew at me and I swung again, catching him upside the head. He turned to run, but I whacked and whaled until he flat fell over. Then I let go the broom and took hold of his neck. I jerked him across the road and into the field, and I laid down on that thing’s head, his one eye like a bright bead, taking my measure.

  I went back to Miz Poole’s and onto her porch and knocked on her door, intending to apologize for Augie’s behavior and her ruined fruit and torn vegetables, and to tell her I was sure Aunt Jerusha would make up for it all. I’d have laid my nose to the screen to see was I bothering her, but a vagueness of smoke had boiled up inside and was escaping through the screen. Then the door jerked open, catching my cheekbone hard, and her hand shot out and yanked me inside. Her eyes were a back-and-forth marvel of wild and jerky, and colorless in their gone-awayness. Smoke pricked my nose and made me cough. I looked around for a flame, but it was something else, a glass contraption. Something inside her had gone terribly wrong.

  She opened her awful mouth and screamed in my face, and I screamed too. I backed up. And up again, against the door, but her crook’d fingers reached out, curling for my shirt, the tip of my nose. If she caught me, I would surely roast in her oven.

  Her mouth came close. I could smell her bad teeth and her smoky breath, feel her thin lips on my ear. “Don’t you ever tell what you seen here, girlie. Don’t you ever speak my name—else you’re mine, you understand?”

  I nodded. True fact. I would never tell, I would never set foot in her yard or on her porch again. And never, ever would I look her in the eye.

  I didn’t run until I was well clear of her place, and then I picked my feet up and put them down in clouds of dust, and I didn’t stop until Auntie caught me in her arms, and I backed her into the rocking chair, where, big as I was, she held me and waited for an explanation.

  Auntie had the grace not to ask if I’d found Augie. In my heart, I felt Miz Millicent had probably wandered into the field, found Augie, and done him up for her supper. I couldn’t stop shaking, and my mind was a mess. Over and over I saw that smoke, and smelled that pipe. I knew there were things like what I’d just seen. But—this was the righteous Miz Poole with her hymns and her holiness, a woman who everybody minded and feared!

  “Look at me, Clea,” Auntie said. “Something happen down at the prison?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You go into town, then? Something there?”

  I shook my head.

  She held me closer. Tighter. “The church?”

  “No, ma’am.” Don’t you ever speak my name.…

  She held me out to look me over. “Somebody hurt you?”

  I shook my head.

  Whatever it was, we would rock it to death. “You go over to your mama’s, child?”

  “I didn’t, I swear.”

  “Hazzletons’? The Bishop place? Miz Maytubby all right?” By now Auntie was shaking too. “Talk to me, Clea! I can’t he’p you till I know! Something happen by the river?”

  “No’m.”

  She quit rocking. “You stop at Miz Millie’s, did you?”

  I held my breath while her mind switched gears, and her knowing rose up and filled the cracks in the walls.

  “She—told me never to speak it.” I clung to her strong shoulder and buried my face in Auntie’s neck while the rockers creaked.

  “Oh, baby girl. You saw somethin’ you shouldn’t have.”

  My stomach rolled like thunder does. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s a sickness, doncha know. After all these years, Millie Poole can’t help it. I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

  “But she’s so—”

  Auntie sighed. “I know. The addiction is where she finds her courage.”

  “It’s not courage, Auntie—she’s plain mean. And scary.”

  “Those things aren’t real, child.”

  Not real! I’d feared Miz Poole; now I feared her twice over. Uncle Cunny had helped me read Sherlock Holmes. I knew what opium was. Miz Millicent Poole was not an English detective; she was an addict and a junkie. I wondered if she’d made a pact with the devil.

  13

  Auntie never set eyes on that goose again.

  Although my world was growing bigger, it was also getting smaller. I was banned from going to Mama’s house. It seemed wrong that Auntie would lay down this rule, and for a while I stomped around upstairs with the distance of two long staircases between us.

  To Auntie’s credit, she filled my mind with plans for the upcoming Fourth of July picnic. Auntie pronounced it JOO-lie, and when I commented on this, Uncle tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the eye.

  I did know how to fry blueberry pies, and the day before the picnic, I washed and sugared a pan of fat berries, set the oil to heat, and stirred up flour in a bowl, cutting in bits of lard. Uncle Cunny, who loved my fried pies, peeked over my shoulder and rubbed his hands together. He was the only one who could make me smile.

  By suppertime, the house was filled with smoke from my frying, and hand-sized crescents with crimped edges rested on squares of waxed paper on every surface in the kitchen and the parlor, and on plates on the first twelve steps that led to the second floor. Uncle, who had eaten five pies, refused supper and sat groaning in his chair, fingering a cup of weak tea and rubbing his belly. Auntie finally brought him the Pepto-Bismol while I started a new batch.

  “Clea?” she said, looking things over. “Don’t you think we have enough?”

  I studied my handiwork, the steaming, lightly sugared half-moons, and replied, “One more batch.”

  “Then you’ll eat something,” she said. “I’ll slice us t
hat ham in the refrigerator and a tomato from the garden. Take a fork and score those cucumbers, will you? I’ve got the beets pickled with onion for tomorrow, and we’ll make potato salad in the morning. We’ll use mustard and vinegar—I don’t trust mayonnaise in the summer heat. Tonight, Cunny can have thin soup after he’s digested all those pastries.”

  With this last pronouncement, Uncle gave a big sigh.

  I’d been skeptical about holding a picnic in False River, the town’s main feature being cracked foundations, which were all that was left. There was part of a brick train station, and a weedy lot that was once the city park. It had a sand pit and two huge dead trees.

  But Uncle and his buddies had taken scythes and lawn mowers and turned the whole thing into a respectable rectangle of green. They erected several dining canopies for shade, while Mr. Hazzleton hammered a couple of booths, where cold drinks would be passed out. I knew what that meant. There’d be one with lemonade for us, and at the other, gents—and some ladies—could neaten their soda pop with gin.

  There was to be a great wooden tub of ice for striped watermelons, and long tables made of planks and old doors on sawhorses. The ladies would cover these with oilcloth while ladders went up for the hanging of red, white, and blue bunting.

  Most important, three gents from Greenfield were coming down with their instruments. In return for a fine dinner and a free outpouring of Mr. Hazzleton’s booze, they would play for the folks, and we might dance on the grass. I asked Uncle what instruments they would bring.

  “Well, the bass fiddle,” he said. I knew what that was, with its great, deep plunking. “A regular fiddle and a slide trombone.”

  I was picturing a golden horn winking in the sun, when Uncle gave Auntie a secret grin.

  “What?” I said.

  But Auntie just smiled.

  At one o’clock, she came downstairs in a pink flowered dress, with a bit of ribbon tying up her hair. She looked like a big, shiny doll.

  Uncle said to her, “My, you look pretty.” And he went and kissed her on the cheek. “Jerusha, you smell like a summer day.”

  “Go on with your smooth self,” Auntie said, but she took a paper fan and cooled herself. “It is a summer day. Now, quit actin’ the fool and get this stuff loaded up.”

  So we began to carry out the baskets and hampers and covered bowls. I got into the bed of Uncle Cunny’s truck and spread things around, then I sat down in the middle of the picnic food with my hands holding it all, while Auntie and Uncle climbed into the truck, and Uncle drove the road as slow as he could.

  There were already folks in the park when we arrived, and we had plenty of help laying out our stuff, Auntie preening and saying “Get on now” to every last compliment. But she was smiling something fierce. I hung back, with one eye on the Maytubby boys, who were kicking up sand, and a gaggle of kids playing chase in a nearby lot. Claudie and Plain Genie were there too. But mostly I watched Auntie. She wasn’t born here like the Reverend, but she’d adapted to False River like she’d been nowhere else. To look at her, and to listen and to know her, you’d never think she’d been with a circus. While I could imagine her feeding and watering chickens, and putting them to bed, I could not imagine her teaching them how to do tricks. I resolved to inquire further about that entire affair. Someday, I might even write about it. Meanwhile, I’d fry pies for everyone and be less like Mama and more like Auntie in both word and deed.

  By two o’clock, the picnic tables were loaded with platters of ham and spicy fried chicken. There was pot roast too, with tiny potatoes and onions, bowls of salad and cauliflower and corn casseroles, and at the far end were the desserts.

  The Reverend offered up a prayer that rose into the dead trees and caught on the pointy branches. The blessing wailed and boomed and spilled out over the people and the roads of town, and I’m sure the patients in the old folks’ home could hear and join in, and maybe the ones passing on the highway too. It settled like sweet rain over the food. Then all our amens floated up to join it. Renewed and hungry, we took our forks and our paper plates and walked the line.

  A time or two, Uncle and other men chased off a stray dog that came sniffing around, and while we sat on quilts, eating, a truck pulled up and three men got out with big black cases, and Uncle Cunny said, “Well, looks like the band is finally here.” They declined to eat until they’d played some, and they tuned up their strings.

  And play they did, firing us up with “Oh, Susanna” and other tunes I knew, and some that I didn’t. Auntie and the other women sat in metal folding chairs and tapped their feet and swayed with the rhythm. The band broke for dinner and paper cups of cool drink.

  When they were rested and ready to start up again, Uncle took from the seat of his truck a similar case, and pulled out an old brown guitar. If that wood had ever been shiny, it wasn’t now. He perched himself on the edge of a chair while I watched in wonder, and messed with the strings. Then the band lit up with a fast-and-classy “Down by the Riverside.” I especially liked this song, with its single line “Ain’t gonna study war no more.”

  Uncle played marvelously, with a plastic pick. He leaned into the music and over the guitar, and he set it afire with strumming born of his heart and soul. Like he had just then found a way to let himself loose.

  And then, of course, the dancing started, and Auntie was swept out of her chair. Uncle gave up playing to catch her up, and then danced with Claudie and Plain Genie, and finally me too.

  He smiled. “I got to get back to playin’, so I saved the best for last.”

  “Uncle Cunny,” I said. “You ever been married?”

  “No, ma’am, I have not. You lookin’ for a husband?”

  I blushed. “No, sir. Not a man in this world would want me for a wife.”

  “Child, why would you say a thing like that?”

  “ ’Cause it’s true. I hardly know who I am, Uncle Cunny.”

  The music had subsided into nothing, and I turned to look.

  There was my mama, stumbling through the sand on her spiky heels. “Don’t let me interrupt,” she sang out. “Hey, can anyone join—without an invite? I’m sure that was just an oversight, y’all bein’ such good neighbors.”

  I could see that she carried her own plastic glass and was drunk as a lord. I ran and grabbed her wrist. “Please, Mama, go back home,” I said.

  But she didn’t see me, didn’t hear. Times like this, I wondered if I was even there.

  “Len Hazzleton!” Mama called out. “You servin’ liquor over there? Come on, now, fill a lady’s cup.”

  Reverend Ollie was on his feet. “Miz Shine, why don’t you come here and sit awhile. Enjoy this fine music, let me fix you a plate.”

  “Don’t give me any of your horseshit, Ollie Green. I ain’t hungry, I come for a drink.”

  Miz Bertha Hazzleton was incensed. She stomped over to the counter and on around and took her mister by the ear, leading him out of our hearing. I knew what she was doing—she was laying into her man for even knowing my mama. So—Mr. Hazzleton had been over to visit her too.

  Unsure what to do, I ran to Auntie and sat in her lap, too big, too long, sticking out like a blinking sign.

  Mama waggled her fingers at the musicians and plucked her skirt up to her pretty thigh. The music started, and she pranced to the beat like a damn circus pony. This was not the waltz I’d seen her glide into when she was alone, this was high-stepping and stupid, and I wanted to lie down in that mowed grass and die. Then she spied me.

  “Baby girl!” she called. “Come on over here and light your mama a new cigarette.”

  A hundred eyes shifted from my mother to me.

  “Clarice Shine,” Aunt Jerusha said, rising from her chair, though she had first to unload me. Auntie was wide in the beam, and it was a sticky day, and it took her a minute too long to get loose from the chair. Mama put her hands on her tricky hips and let out a snort.

  I think the ground passed under my feet. Gone was the beating of my heart
, the squeeze box of my lungs. I was suspended in this time and place, but not quite.

  “That’s it, darlin’,” Mama said, her voice pealing like bells, and she pulled her blouse from her considerable breasts as though her skin was all sticky in the heat. She moved easy, like a cat, taking in the heavy food tables, and she pulled a box of matches from her skirt pocket. Her eyes were sharp and fixed on Auntie. “Fire me one up, Clea. Then go on and light one for yourself.”

  Auntie’s eyes, however, were wild and shifting, and she moved faster than I’ve ever seen. In one blink of an eye, her big hands scooped up a pie, and in another blink, that coconut cream landed SPLAT on Mama’s frilly blouse, the goo thick and yellow, oozing down her front. Mama let out a yell, the way soldiers might yodel when they charge into battle, and she took up a plastic pitcher bought from the Ninety-Nine Cent Store. She rushed at Auntie and dumped a gallon of sweet tea on her head.

  Black curls plastered to her face and neck, Auntie went down hard on her rump. She sat there, sputtering and bleating like a drowning man.

  All around me, horrid gasps rose up while Mama’s laugh was long and wheezy. The music faded.

  While other ladies struggled out of their chairs, Aunt Jerusha reached out and grabbed those white ankles, and in front of God and everybody, she took my mother down.

  But Mama cabbaged onto the corner of a tablecloth, and food crashed around them as they rolled and kicked. Auntie wallowed in Miz Hazzleton’s macaroni salad, but pretty soon had Mama thrashing on the bottom, those white legs winding around like snakes. They slammed into a second table. Slices of watermelon toppled off, and milky coleslaw. The ground was muck.

  Mama bit Auntie’s shoulder and drew blood. Then they went at it harder, their shoes coming off and buttons popping while they grunted and tussled on the ground. Mama’s toenails had been polished a shiny red, but now her feet were muddy, in the slop and the goo. The soles of Auntie’s pale, wide feet were slippery with pink frosting and molasses-baked beans.