Icy Sparks

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

  “O, my luve is like a red, red rose,” I replied, quoting Robert Burns.

  “Roses are red. Violets are blue,” he wrote back. “My name is Peavy Lawson, and I love you.”

  In a book of Victorian poetry, which Miss Emily had given me, I discovered a poem, “Tristram and Iseult,” by Matthew Arnold about the tragic love affair between Tristram, one of the most famous knights of the Round table, and Iseult, wife of King Mark. Filled with longing, I imagined myself as Iseult, separated from my own true love. “Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried,” I copied carefully. “Bound I was, I could not break the band. / Chide not with the past, but feel the present! / I am here—we meet—I hold thy hand.” I ended the letter with “Your loving Iseult.” Below the signature, I drew a cracked heart.

  Peavy replied, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. What are you talking about? It don’t matter ’cause I still love you. P.S. Is your middle name, Insult?”

  Twice a week we wrote to each other. When a letter of his arrived, I’d tenderly carry it to my room, hold the envelope up to the sunlight, and marvel at the curve of his y in Icy, at the sensual sweep of his s in Sparks.

  For Christmas, I sent him a present. “Christmas isn’t merry,” I wrote, “because you’re not here with me. But I made you something anyway. It’s an ornament for your tree, a papier-mâché heart. The yellow crack down the center stands for my own heart; it’s breaking for you. Do you like it? I put my name on one side and yours on the other. Two halves make a whole, sweetheart. Two halves of our heart beat as one. Hang this ornament from your tree, my brave knight, and when you look at it, be sure to remember me.”

  “The heart’s real pretty,” he replied. “I hung it near the top of our tree. Ain’t nobody, but me, knows it’s there. Do you like what I sent you? Uncle Ed took it last summer when we went to the hog show at the Crockett County Fair. That smile on my lips is there ’cause when he snapped it I was thinking of you.”

  “Happy New Year, my dearest, sweetest, handsomest Peavy!” I jotted down on New Year’s Eve. “Soon, we’ll be seeing each other again. Soon, spring will be here.” Then, with the help of Emily Dickinson, I giddily added the following verse. “‘If you were coming in the Fall, / I’d brush the Summer by / With half a smile, and half a spurn, / As Housewives do, a Fly.’ I’m always thinking of you, too.”

  Peavy responded immediately. “Icy,” he scribbled, “I thought we were going to see each other in the spring, the Saturday before Easter. Sorry about your fly problem. Tell your grandpa to check under the house for puddles.”

  I answered him, “At the same place! At the same time!”

  “The snow is melting,” he replied. “Soon the redbuds will be blooming. That’s how soon I’ll see you.”

  We spotted each other at the same time. As soon as I caught sight of him in his brown suit and yellow tie, my heart heaved, and my head seemed to float above my body. “Peavy!” I yelled, racing toward him in my new yellow cotton dress, with my arms flapping, my yellow handbag dangling from my forearm.

  “Icy!” he screamed back, running toward me, stumbling once but not falling in his glossy brown shoes.

  Simultaneously, we threw our arms around each other, pressing chest to chest. My pocketbook, slipping, hung weakly from my wrist. The tips of my shoes lapped over the tips of his. One of my barrettes, covered with yellow voile flowers, had slipped from the side of my upswept bun, and several strands of hair now hung loosely around my neck. My breath was wet and hot against his shirt. His shirt was stiff from too much starch. I leaned back and gazed at his face. His hair was slicked back, smooth and oily. The freckles across his nose had faded. Two blemishes stood out on his chin. I inhaled a powerful cologne.

  “Oh, Peavy!” I gushed, letting my arms drop to my sides. “You’ve bottled yourself for me.”

  He smiled broadly. A diamond of saliva plopped from his top lip onto the ground. His eyes, befuddled, clouded over.

  “Oh, Peavy! I just love your cologne,” I added.

  “You do?” he said. “It’s called Brut. It’s my brother’s.”

  “Are you a brute?” I asked teasingly. My eyes toyed with him. My mouth watered slightly.

  Tenderly, he touched his chest. “What do you think?” he asked. From his front shirt pocket, he pulled out a rose, the white rose which so many months ago I had sent him.

  “Peavy!” Once more, I wrapped my arms around him and urgently kissed his lips.

  “Icy!” he said, kissing me back.

  I could feel his teeth, scraping against mine, and his body, vibrating.

  “Now,” he urged.

  “Now, what?” My skin tingled all over.

  “Let me hold you.” His voice was high and shrill.

  “But you are holding me.” My mouth was cupped against his cheek; my lips felt drunk and heavy.

  “I want to hold you close,” he said breathlessly. “Behind those pines, over there.” He freed an arm and pointed to the spot where he had hidden that first time we met.

  My limbs felt weak. “If you want to.” My voice was tremulous.

  Tightly, he gripped my hand and, without talking, led the way. In a daze, I followed him. I would have done anything for this young man who carried my rose beneath his cold armor. The spring sun shone down, illuminating pennywort, inches high with its white funnel-shaped flowers, and star chickweed, with its five deeply cut petals, growing in the distance along the wooded slopes. To me, the star chickweed blossoms were guiding lights, fallen from heaven, showing us the way. As we neared the little group of pine trees, Peavy pointed at a clearing five feet away and smiled.

  “My Tristram!” I said, suddenly overcome with emotion. “Blame me not, poor sufferer, that I tarried! Bound I was, I could not break the band. Chide not with the past, but feel the present! I am here—we meet—I hold thy hand.” With these words, I firmly squeezed his palm.

  Hand in hand, we walked to the clearing, where he began cleaning away rocks and sticks. Thereupon, he ran back to the copse of pine trees, jerked off his coat, gathered up fallen pine needles, and tossed them on his jacket. Then, using his garment like a knapsack, he returned and scattered the pine needles all over the ground. “Our bed,” he said, his eyes as green as the new shoots popping up.

  “Our bed?” I said. Feelings of ecstasy mingled with those of fear.

  Taking both of my hands, he gently pulled me down. On our sides, several inches apart, we stared into each other’s eyes.

  “Icy.” His hand snaked toward me. “Icy.” His fingers tugged at one of the pockets on my dress.

  “P-Peavy,” I stammered, leaning toward him.

  “Icy,” he repeated in a quivering voice.

  “Peavy,” I whispered, and felt his fingers slide down my neck.

  “Icy,” he said, stroking my Peter Pan collar.

  My tiny breasts ached. “Peavy!” I moaned.

  His green eyes twitched and popped out of his head. “Oh, Icy!” he cried.

  Alarmed, I glanced down. His hand was on my bodice, cupping my breast. And although I liked his touch, it also terrified me, so much so that in that instant, I envisioned my real future—Peavy Lawson’s wiggly inside me, spewing forth pee-pee and sperm, babies leaping from my stomach, yowling and crying, a brown-weathered shack clinging to the side of a mountain and the bitter stink of coal fouling the air. I saw all of my hopes and dreams lying dead, lined up side by side, in the happenstance of one touch. “P-Peavy,” I stammered, feeling a croak building up in my throat and a jerk collecting in my muscles.

  “Oh, Icy!” Passionately, he squeezed my breast. “It feels so good!”

  Fiercely, I clenched my teeth and forced my lips together.

  “Icy! Oh, Icy!” he said, his eyes popping from his head.

  The croak shoved against my mouth. My eyes flew out.

  Blinking and breathing heavily, he clutched my breast. “My sweet Icy!” he groaned.

  At that moment, for the first time in a long time, I saw h
is froggy green eyes gazing at me and felt his muscle-hopping body pressing against mine. Disgusted, I stared at his amphibian, dead white skin and at his thin-lipped, fly-catching mouth, and I panicked. A convulsion of sheer terror shook me, and my whole body—arms, legs, neck, and torso—began to jerk.

  “Icy?” Peavy said, arching away from me. “Icy?” he said loudly.

  “C-R-O-A-K!” I roared.

  “Icy!” he said, jerking back.

  “C-R-O-A-K!” My body whipped to the left.

  “What the heck!” he said, leaping up.

  “C-R-O-A-K! C-R-O-A-K!” My limbs surged to the right.

  “By damn!” he said, looking down at me. Then, staring a hole right through me, his eyes bulging, his lips grinning, he guffawed like a thousand frogs disrupting the night. “You do beat all!” he yelled, slapping his thighs.

  “C-R-O-A-K!” I bellowed, jumping upward, landing solidly on the ground. I shot out my right leg and twirled around on my left. “C-R-O-A-K!” I screamed, turning around and around. “C-R-O-A-K!”

  “You’re crazy!” he said, laughing nervously. “A nutcase!” he added, scrambling backward.

  On a dime, I stopped spinning.

  “A loony person!” He snickered, pointing at me. “Just like everybody says!”

  In that instant, I breathed in deeply, gulped down all of my anger, and spewed it back out. “You frog-eyed piece of slime!” I snarled. “Why don’t you jump back into that pond where you belong?”

  There we stood—face-to-face.

  Out popped his eyes. “Monster!” he growled.

  “Frog eyes!” I cried.

  “I don’t need this!” He smacked his hands together.

  “You need a pond to swim in! You need some lily pads to hop on!”

  “I need me a normal gal,” he said angrily. “A gal people like. Someone like Emma Richards.”

  “Well, you can have her!” I shouted, my voice shaking. “Just get out of here!”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, plucking his coat off the ground. “You’ve made your blister.” He clicked around on his heels and began to walk way. “Now sit on it!”

  Chapter 31

  For weeks, I refused to discuss with my grandparents what had happened with Peavy Lawson. How could I tell them that Peavy and I had been kissing? How could I tell them that we had lain on the ground, side by side, and that I had let him touch my dress where my breast was? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t; so I didn’t tell them anything. Whenever either asked about him, I’d shrug and say, “We broke up.”

  I walked around the house with a perpetual scowl on my face, with my shoulders humped over as though I were a shriveled-up old spinster. At meals, I had no appetite. Mouthfuls of food got caught in my throat. I couldn’t swallow and lost weight. But none of this bothered me because I knew that the next phase—an even worse one—would soon come.

  Eventually, the emptiness in my life would beg to be filled; and, unable to control myself, I would begin to eat. In fact, just like Miss Emily, I’d live to eat. If Matanni cooked an apple pie, I’d eat all of it—each slice with a double scoop of vanilla ice cream. Patanni would get a worried look in his eyes. Like scavenging dogs, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, Patanni and I, our eyes darting back and forth, would slyly compete for food. Meanwhile, I’d grow larger and larger. Patanni would have to buy me a bigger bed. Matanni would sew me huge revival-tent dresses. When Patanni got a haircut, he’d hear the men at the barbershop say, “No God-fearing man will marry Icy Sparks. If she took to hugging him, he’d be squashed.” Whenever I’d pass, people on the streets of Ginseng would hold their hands to their mouths and snicker. This scenario would be my future. I only had to look as far as Miss Emily Tanner to see it unfolding before my eyes. Yes, she had been right all along.

  Upstairs in my lonely bed, the bitterness of Miss Emily’s life, forever living without another’s touch, overwhelmed me. And because in Miss Emily’s moon face I saw my own—the empty landscape of limbless, faceless people—my heart tore away from the rest of my body, and, like the uprooted stump of a tree, it floated inside me, disconnected from my soul. Lonely, desolate, my heart pumped only for itself and let me be. “Oh, Lord!” I cried, staring at the vacant ceiling. “God help me!” And closing my eyes, tenderly and ever so slowly, I began to stroke my face.

  “There ain’t no reason to celebrate my birthday,” I pouted, sitting on Matanni’s new oval-shaped braided rug, the corners of my mouth pulled down like someone suffering the aftermath of a stroke. “Even Maizy forgot about it this year,” I whined, “and she never does.”

  Miss Emily frowned back. “There is no reason to celebrate my birthday,” she corrected me.

  “Whichever way you say it,” I said, “it means the same.”

  Patanni tipped forward in his frayed easy chair and shot me a look.

  Grinning, Matanni turned and nodded at Miss Emily, who was sitting beside her on the sofa.

  Miss Emily nodded back, positioned her square hands on either side of her body, and, huffing, tried to hoist herself up. “Icy Gal,” she began, falling back onto the sofa, the cushions whooshing with her weight. “Give me your hand!”

  I crooked my head to one side. “Why?” I asked.

  “Shush!” Miss Emily pressed her fat index finger against her lips. “Your hand, please!”

  Cautiously, I thrust out my arm, slowly turned over my hand, and exposed the pink flesh of my palm. Looking around, I noticed that all three of them were leaning forward expectantly. Smiles as wide as watermelon slices cut into their faces. “What are you-all up to?” I asked.

  Dramatically, Miss Emily slipped a piece of paper between Matanni’s fingers. “Just this!” she said.

  “Just this!” my grandmother repeated; and, reaching over, she flamboyantly placed the slip of paper in my palm.

  I stared at the cream-colored paper, no bigger than a three-by-five index card, the top of which read, “Crockett County Telephone Cooperative,” typed in bold print. Then, in a neat, cursive hand below it was the message: “Dear New Customer, we will be installing your telephone during the week of June 7–12. Thank you for your order!”

  “A telephone?” I asked, anxiously glancing at Patanni.

  “Just for you,” he said grandly.

  “’Cause you’re a modern gal,” Miss Emily said.

  “A regular teenager,” Matanni added.

  In that instant, my arm began to quiver; and, like a maple leaf in the breeze, the piece of paper trembled in my palm. A regular teenager, I thought. “A regular teenager!” I said aloud. “A regular teenager!” I sneered, watching my hand shake, seeing the paper shimmy back and forth.

  “Icy!” Patanni said, alarmed.

  “Icy Gal!” Miss Emily said.

  “What’s wrong?” Matanni asked, rising.

  “Are you blind?” I asked as the slip of paper quaked spasmodically. “Can’t any of you see?” My hand lurched upward, and the paper fell to the floor below. “Don’t you understand?” I cried, restraining my arm with the other. “Who…who…in this great, big, wide world…is ever going to call me?”

  The minute I heard the car door slam, I thought, Lord, please don’t let it be Miss Emily! I was in no mood for another one of her lectures, especially the one about ingratitude, but when I looked out the parlor window, it was Mr. Wooten I saw, crunching over gravel, heading toward our house. “Geez!” I moaned, seeing the usual armload of books. I cranked on a smile, pushed myself up off the sofa, and dawdled over to the door.

  “Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes!” he said with a toothy grin. “With every birthday, you get a little bigger.”

  “Yessir,” I mumbled, moving to one side, letting him saunter in.

  “Where can I put these?” he asked.

  “Just drop them on the couch,” I replied. “I’ll tote ’em to my bedroom later.”

  “Whew!” he said, as the books fell from his arm, thudding against each other when they plopped up
on the sofa. “Mostly, these are math books. Miss Emily says you’re having some trouble with geometry.”

  “According to her, I’m always having some trouble with something,” I said, sighing, lowering myself into Patanni’s easy chair.

  “Where are your grandparents?” he asked, looking around, sitting on the sofa beside the books.

  With my index finger, I flicked a strand of hair out of my eyes. “In town—shopping,” I said. “I didn’t want to go.”

  “Well, now.” He leaned forward, cupping his hands over his knees. “How does it feel being fourteen?”

  “Same as thirteen,” I quipped. “Ain’t no difference as far as I can tell.”

  Mr. Wooten turned sideways and began to finger through the books. “I bought you this,” he said, slipping one out, proudly holding it up so that I could see the title. “It’s for your birthday.”

  “The Dollmaker,” I read aloud, “by Harriette Arnow.”

  “She’s from the mountains of Kentucky. A real Kentucky author,” he explained.

  “Thank you,” I said, none too convincingly. “I’ll enjoy reading it if I ever get through those math books.” I pointed to the landslide on the sofa.

  “What did Maizy send you this time?” he asked me. “I always liked that young woman.”

  “Not a thing,” I snapped. “Not even a card. I reckon she’s too busy tending to her husband and going to college.”

  “People do get busy,” he said, his voice serious. “She’s always remembered you before. Why are you so hard on her now?”

  Annoyed, I crossed my ankles and ignored him.

  “How about that telephone!” He opened up his mouth as though surprised.

  I glared back at him. “It’s ringing off the hook,” I sassed. “My calendar’s so filled up I don’t have time to do another thing.”

  Mr. Wooten coughed into his hand. His nose had started to run, and the rims of his eyes were turning pink. “It’s the pollen,” he apologized, pulling a handerchief out of his trousers pocket, blowing hard. “You got neighbors, Icy,” he said, wearily blowing again. “You don’t have to be so alone.”