Playing With Matches

by Carolyn Wall

  Uncle Cunny came running, hollering, “Stop!”

  The other men, cowards that they were, held back, their cigars stubby and wet and going to gray ash, grins wicked on their faces.

  Miz Poole sat in a canvas-backed chair, and her red hair stood up in all directions. Aunt Jerusha lathered Mama’s face with a whole custard pie.

  I guess the basic shock had worn off, because they all crowded in then, ladies screaming and pulling Auntie off Mama, the gents getting hold of Mama’s arms and bare legs and blushing furiously, not knowing what to do next.

  “Get on out of here, Clarice Shine!” Auntie shouted. She was sucking in breaths and dark red in the face while the ladies all nodded, huffing, stiff-lipped and fiery-eyed.

  Miss Shookie waddled up. “Clarice, your kind lays a bad name on everything. We all know who you are, and what you do.”

  Millicent Poole surfaced. “—Your black soul’s seein’ hell,” she shrilled at my mama.

  “—Jezebel! You leave our men alone.”

  “—And our sons!”

  “We ought to rail you out of town!”

  And on it ran, till Mama spoke up. “Y’all afraid of me? Well, you got reason. Where you think your men goin’ when they run out for smokes?” Mama laughed. “ ’Fore long, one whore won’t be enough around here. So go on, then, take my girl! Raise up another’n in your goddamn midst!”

  All the ladies looked aghast. I knew that word. Webster said aghast denoted horror, a sharp halting of thought. For a while that awfulness hung in the air. And then everyone turned, and their eyes fell on me.

  This was the second time Mama had given me away. I stood there, hugging my elbows, my eyes on the ground. My jitteriness had smoothed. I had gone inside my head, to a place that was usually safer than this, but today even that was filled with sorrow.

  In the end, Mr. Hazzleton brought his Ford around and three or four men, looking sheepish, piled in with Mama.

  “Just seein’ her home, sugar!” They waved to their wives.

  By the end of the day, the park had emptied out, and banners hung in tatters. It was the worst Fourth of July in history. Half of False River was not speaking to the other half, and nobody at all was talking to me.

  14

  That night I heard folks. Teenagers, I thought, in their daddies’ trucks, driving back and forth over Mama’s lawn and in the field across the road. From the attic, I watched them lean out their truck windows and swill whiskey from glass bottles. Then they clambered out, took buckets from the back, and pried the lids. This time whole gallons. I could tell the color, easy, because when it hit Mama’s house, it ran like blood in the moonlight. And they sang, a kind of drunken chant. I climbed out on the porch roof and tried to separate the words.

  Clarice the ho’ tore down the do’

  The guards had come to town—

  Another roaring pass and more buckets tossed, the cans banging against the clapboard, rattling on the little porch. I closed my eyes tight. I could not imagine what daylight would bring.

  In a golden wig, she smelled like pig

  And wore her wedding gown …

  I curled up on the roof like a baby waiting to be born, and pressed my hands tight over my ears. I turned my back to a new night breeze that had risen and even closed my eyes to a curve of white moon. But I could not block out the revving of motors or the hard clump-bumping of those heavy trucks in the field. And I could not help hearing the wild, wild shrieking:

  The ho’ she screamed, and the dead all dreamed

  of a scabby roll in the hay …

  Laughing and wild screeching among those boys—until the retching. Then they bumped away, back to False River and whatever rocks they had crawled out from under.

  Beware the ho’ with the painted do’

  If you ever pass this way …

  Until the picnic, I’d thought my mama was an end-of-the-road secret. But it wasn’t so. Long ago, word had spread like a plague on the river, where it was carried down to every last person along the Pearl and probably the gulf. Everyone knew. In fact, for a long time—maybe since before I was born—they’d been privy to much more truth than me.

  There was no place to run, no air, no release. I crept back through my window, into my room. I lay on my bed and pulled the sheet over me, but the smell of wet paint was in my nose and my head.

  I made myself a deep and dark promise: I was never going back to school. I wasn’t welcome there—or anywhere. And it wasn’t because I was smart, or white.

  I was a Shine, and everybody knew it.

  15

  Summer was over, and autumn came. In the end, I lost the battle and went back to school. Still, I spoke to no one there, and I did not answer questions when asked but sat like a bump on the wooden seat. Finally, the teacher came around and talked to Auntie, and they both looked worried. Auntie asked me to try harder to take part in my learning. After that I did my homework and penciled answers on tests, but away from home, I hardly talked at all.

  In the evenings, I sat on Auntie’s upstairs gallery and took to watching the neighbors—the two Mr. Oatys in particular. They lived in a shotgun place, a distance along the road. They took care of their father, who drooled and talked in a way that never made any sense.

  Those brothers were funny old geezers. Every day they walked the mile or so into town and carried odd clanking jars in all their pockets—coats, vests, and pants. Nobody knew if the bottles were empty or full.

  One early morning, a haze lay around. The Oaty brothers drove by with two pigs in crates that slid around in the back of a borrowed truck. There was one black pig and one pink that they’d probably bought from the prison and were taking to the slaughterhouse in Greenfield.

  I had nothing to do yet as Auntie was laundering in the electric washer on the back porch. I could hear its hum, clunking as it changed cycles, and I wandered down to the river, and followed the loamy bank north and east, dragging a stick in the dirt. Wash was the one thing from which I was exempt, having been instructed to commence stripping beds one morning, and having worked into the tub the afghan that lay on Auntie’s bed. Her mother had knitted it from purest wool. The whole thing came out knotted and less than half its size, so that Auntie roared and stomped and beat me about the legs with a wooden spoon. I hid in the attic until better times, which meant dinner, when she’d settled down to a moan. Thereafter, the actual wash was not my job, although I was frequently called from a book to pin it on the line or to gather it in.

  I set out, with my book, for a particular place where I liked to read. Not far from home, Little Duck Creek meandered into the False River, and there I came upon the back of the Oaty place, no more or less down-at-the-heels than the rest. I liked the looks of a shed they had, with the door propped open. The dirt floor of that spot was wallowed out and lined with a blanket, and it made for comfy reading. I was settling in and idly keeping an eye turned to the back door of the house when something moved and caught my eye.

  There were times when it had proved to be in my best interest to mind my business, but I crept out of that shed among the willows and approached, stealthily. There was an opening beneath the house, the space set with bars, and, from between them, eyes in a pale, pale face stared out at me.

  I could not think of a word to say nor a thing to do but squat there in the yard and stare down at this small person—a boy, I thought, and not very old.

  “You workin’ at something under there?” I said. “Fetching a snake or a cat?”

  He just looked at me.

  “I say, what you doin’ down there?” And I put my face close to the bars, looking in upon a strip of soft light from the sun that was now lying low, and saw a filthy quilt and some other things scattered about.

  “You sleep under there?” I asked, incredulous.

  He said nothing but tilted his head like a curious dog.

  And sure enough, there was a pan, a kind of dog dish, and another that had run dry of water, and it came to me with
breathlessness and heartache that he did, indeed, live under this house. It was more than I could fathom, or stand, and I rose up on legs that were stiff as those bars and backed off like he had pox and it was spreading.

  And I ran as fast as I could, carrying home with me that terrible secret, that sudden burning knowledge of a dark underground prison, so hung up with stomach cramps that I pulled down my britches and squatted among the weeds, my bowels emptying in the high Thompson grass.

  I’d missed our meal, but Miss Shookie hadn’t missed me, and she was fussing with the supper dishes when I made a showing, and I figure she mistook my silence for remorse, because no one said anything to me that night. I kept silent for most of three days, taking Finn’s biscuits and honey, buttered sweet corn, and grits, just laying them under the tree, muttering, “You better get these before the ants carry them off,” and him scrambling down long enough to nab them.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he finally said. “You stopped talking altogether? Ain’t like you.”

  I went down on my knees under the tree and wrapped my arms around myself.

  “What?” he said. “What is it?”

  “Finn,” I said, “it’s almost my birthday. And if you’ll come outa that goddamn tree, I got something to show you.”

  “You watch your swampy mouth,” Finn said. “I know Miss Jerusha, an’ she’ll wash it out with soap.”

  “You’ll be saying worse,” I said, “when you see.”

  He eyed me sideways from where he swung like a monkey. Finn sure had this tree thing down. “This some trick?” he said. “You thinking to lure me down and—”

  “No trick,” I said. “You coming with me or not?”

  “Not,” he said.

  “You’re the sorriest thing ever, Finn. I got something I have to do, and I sure could use your help with this mission.”

  “You’re shinin’ me on,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I said, and walked away.

  Finn came down that tree like it was slicked with butter and landed on his feet, scooped up the cold potatoes, and crammed them in his mouth. “Mmrrrmph?” he said.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “I asked—” He took his time chewing and swallowing. “Where we goin’ and what’s so almighty important?”

  “You got to see this to believe it.”

  And I took off, this time in a straight line down to the Oatys’ house, thankful that nobody along the way questioned where I was going in such an all-fired hurry, and when we reached his short fence, I stood and looked over the pickets.

  “There,” I said. “Around there.”

  “I don’t see nothing.”

  “Under the house, can you believe. Lord, Lord, Finn, there’s a kid, smaller than me and starved half to death. If he’s not dead by now.”

  “This one of your stories, Clea?”

  “This is no made-up thing, you sorry piece of garbage. You got to get closer.”

  “What if the Oatys come out?”

  “They’ve gone to slaughter some hogs.”

  “Well, what if their daddy comes out with a strap? That ol’ man don’t talk plain, but he’s meaner’n twelve snakes in a barbecue pit.”

  “He won’t touch me or Auntie’ll be all over him when she sees. Come on, Finn. Don’t be a sissy.”

  The day had darkened, storm clouds clotting the sky like an angry face.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll rescue him alone.”

  “Wait,” Finn said. It was the first time I’d noticed his high-top tennis shoes, no socks, his tanned and dirty legs. Finn on the ground now, a real boy, a person. “Okay, I’m comin’.”

  “Then keep down and be quiet.”

  And there he was, that white, white kid, with his face close up and scared—scared of us, I saw. Had it been me under there, I’d have had a stranglehold on the bars, screaming and shaking them like tomorrow depended on it. Or maybe this kid had already given up on ever being rescued. Maybe he didn’t care anymore.

  “Holy—”

  “Hush,” I said. “You’re scaring the bejesus out of him. He’s real shy.”

  “He’s in a dang cage under there!” Finn said.

  “Well, not a real cage. You reckon he just plays under here?”

  “Behind bars?” Finn said. “He’s got a damn dog dish.”

  I held my tongue, squatted down, and reached a hand toward the bars, but the pale white boy shrank back, his tongue sticking out between his lips like a thing too big for his mouth. His eyes were huge and round, his spiky hair without color, and he had no eyebrows nor lashes.

  “Something’s bad wrong, Finn,” I said. “Listen to his breathing.”

  “He ain’t right, that’s for sure.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Born wrong, I guess,” Finn said. “Come out upside down, or strangle-held.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Never mind. You’re too young to know stuff like that.”

  “I’m not, either, and I wish you’d quit saying that. I’m old enough, and if you’d just tell me things, then I’d know.”

  “I ’spect he had his mama’s cord wrapped around his neck.”

  “Neck’s scrawny as a chicken’s,” I said. “Wouldn’t take much to cut off his wind.”

  “Hell, he prob’ly don’t even know what we’re saying.”

  I reached my hand inside the bars. “Come here, boy. There’s a shed over there, Finn. See if there’s a saw.”

  Finn came back with a funny look on his face. “There’s not one, and anyway, you can’t saw through those bars.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Walk around and see if you can find another way.”

  “Clea, you been reading in that shed yonder, haven’t you? That’s how you found him.”

  I made a face. I never lied to Finn. “I have. It was already a good spot, a hole dug out with blankets and all.”

  “Clea, you see that chain fastened to the wall?”

  I had not.

  “I think they kept the kid in there, too,” he said. “Probably at first. There’s a hammer in there, but listen. Things ain’t right here. If we don’t get him out fast, I’m goin’.”

  “Not me,” I said. “I’m not going without him.”

  “Well, other side of the house, there’s a crawl-through. It’s nailed over with plywood,” Finn said. “Maybe we can break in there.” He went to the shed that had once been my reading place but which now turned my stomach.

  He came back with a claw hammer and we both looked at the eighteen-inch piece of board. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “We can free this boy. Did I tell you my birthday’s coming, Finn? I’m going to be twelve. And I can do anything I want.”

  What I wanted was to beat the wood with that hammer till I got that kid out. So that’s what I did, Finn holding his breath, lest the old man come running. At first the boy didn’t want to be loose, so I had to flatten myself out on the ground and go in after him, which was bad because the place stunk so.

  He could hardly stand up, and he was wheezing something awful. I took his hand and led him home. Finn carried the hammer in case, he said, he had to fight off the Oatys.

  If Auntie was surprised to see the boy we called Wheezer, she never let on. This one took the cake. He was filthy. He froze up, clutching himself, when Auntie tried to take off his clothes, so she filled a dishpan with water and wiped him down the best she could.

  In his filthy rags, he sat at our table while Auntie, as an early birthday present for me, stirred up a pan of fudge clotted with walnuts.

  Turned out Wheezer loved fudge, but Auntie, who wanted to spoon-feed him oatmeal with milk, said Not too much, it could make him sick.

  He stayed the afternoon and through dinner. When Auntie had him full of mashed potatoes and gravy and chopped-up roast beef, she had no choice but to call Social Services and report the Oatys.

  Before dark, the children�
�s superintendent, Miss Pilcher, came in her county station wagon. She parked in front of Auntie’s house. Miss Pilcher was tall and high yellow and flabby of jaw. She had fatty eyes that trusted nobody and nothing, and no one liked her in return. She asked who had found “the boy.”

  I said I did, as Finn had eaten his dinner on the back porch step, where we all had joined him, and he’d long since gone up to his tree.

  Miss Pilcher gave me a look and said she could not let a minor sign the papers and stuck them under my auntie’s nose. But Auntie said she’d had nothing to do with the freeing of the young man who’d lived under that house.

  Miss Pilcher said Then what did Auntie expect her to do with “the boy,” and we all looked at each other while she flapped her chins and talked on about the foster care system being grossly overloaded. In the end she packed Wheezer, like freight, in the back end of her station wagon and took him away. He knelt with his face to the window and lifted one hand to me.

  I worried that with no one to take him in, Wheezer might soon be living under a bridge in Mobile or in a rough park in Birmingham. On the other hand, what if one day the foster care system unloaded itself, and had all kinds of room. Then what would happen to Finn—and to me?

  Later, we all went down to the Oatys’ place, including Finn and the sheriff, who had so far said nothing, and we looked around. The Oaty brothers acted sorely put out, claiming they had seen “no kid, no pale wheezing boy,” and they knew nothing about it. They got downright huffy and, while the older Mr. Oaty sat on the porch, drinking from a straw and dribbling on his baby bib, we all took turns crouching down for a look under the house. There wasn’t a sign that anybody’d been under there.

  My stomach turned over, and I cried out, insisting that was where we’d found him. My voice rose to a caterwaul, until Finn came up and took hold of my hand. “She’s right. That kid was livin’ in there.”

  After the sheriff grunted and sucked in his belly fat and crawled under there, he came out saying the earth was packed hard and warm, and there were chicken bones and other garbage scattered around. The Oatys lied and said they’d gotten real bad about throwing trash beneath the house.