Playing With Matches

by Carolyn Wall

  The sheriff said he could also tell by the smell that somebody had regularly urinated and defecated under the place.

  The Oatys looked at each other and then at their pa. It was possible, they said, he had done that too.

  That night, I went out to sit under the tree and talk to Finn. The night was full of cricket sounds. I could not think what they’d witnessed that was good enough to sing about. This world was unfair, and people were sick and stupid and unkind to one another.

  “Sometimes they are,” Finn agreed from above.

  “It’s a waste of being alive!”

  “Ain’t always so,” he said. “Sometimes people are downright funny.”

  “Wasn’t nothing amusing about that kid.” I was indignant to the soul. “And that damned Miss Pilcher—I hate her, Finn. She ever comes back here, I swear I’ll …”

  Over my head, Finn’s branch was bouncing something awful, and when I looked up, his eyes were alight, and he was laughing.

  “There wasn’t one thing funny today, Finn,” I said.

  But he laughed some more and pointed toward the house.

  The light was on in my attic room. The window was raised and there, between the pulled-back curtains, stood my wide Cousin Bitsy. She lifted her shirt and presented her great bosoms for Finn and all the world to see. They were big as watermelons. Her broad, flat nipples were the color of creamed coffee.

  Finn rattled and roared and couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  I went into the house and said no more.

  16

  It was a strangely warm fall, with nothing happening that was near as exciting as the finding of that kid at the Oatys’. Nights, we lay awake on top of the covers, while below us the False River was a green sludgy wallow. It stank mightily.

  Our side of the big Pearl was Mississippi; the western bank was Louisiana. Occasionally, but not often, a sigh of wind might drift upriver from the Gulf of Mexico and cool off both sides. The Pearl itself was a wide and rolling body of water that did a mysterious thing. In no hurry to join the Intracoastal Waterway, it appeared to spread out into a lazy swamp. All along the Pearl River, dead trees stuck up like pointy fingers, and thick green scum settled on its surface. It smelled like vinegar and dirty socks but was still good for pulling a catfish or two. But the miles and miles of marsh were deceiving. The currents underneath both False River and the Pearl were amazingly strong.

  Autumn was our regular season for bad weather, most of which came up from the Gulf. With landfall, every storm seemed to sprout arms and legs that groped their way up first the Pearl, then its elbow, the False River, with whirling black clouds and rain that blew east to west. Wind ripped off shingles and shutters, and carried away lawn chairs and plastic swimming pools. It brought down thick branches of trees that had been growing in their places for aeons.

  Afterward, convicts came in their orange-striped suits that looked like pajamas, to repair the roof of the Oasis of Love Bingo Hall and Prison Camp Center. They straddled its peak, though they were chained at the ankle and issued hammers and nails while two guards stood by with batons and walkie-talkies in hand. Below, on the ground, stood two more guards with rifles. From time to time, the prisoners were allowed a cup of water from a jug.

  Everybody knew what kind of search would go on before these men were allowed back onto Hell’s Farm. Any tiny thing they had found and were smuggling back was called contraband and worth a miserable month spent in the basement of the Farm’s big house.

  One windy early September day, when the gale was fierce and flattening the weeds, Auntie and I were closing windows on the third floor in preparation for rain. We looked out and saw Mama bobbling across the field.

  Overhead, the black sky began to boil.

  Uncle Cunny stood down in the yard, where he’d gone to drag the domino table up on the porch. Mama held something flapping in her hand and was walking herky-jerkied, but not just with the wind, and Uncle left the table and went over to meet her.

  I ran down the stairs and out the back door and caught up.

  “Afternoon, Miz Shine. Can I help you with something?” Uncle Cunny said.

  “You, Cunny Gholar,” Mama said in her thick-tongued voice, more difficult to hear with the shrieking wind. “You get in your truck an’ go on home now. This got nothin’ to do with you.”

  “No? What’s that you got there?”

  Mama was holding on to a paper that was snapping and already ripped by the gale, and she made an attempt to flatten it, but it only tore more.

  “I want for that child, Cunny! I did a wrong, just givin’ her away. Now I’ve wrote me up a bill of sale.”

  Uncle Cunny and I stood still in that grass with our mouths dropped open. I looked up at him with eyes so wide they hurt.

  “You—what, ma’am?” he said.

  “I want for that child. She ain’t worth much. Two hun’ed dollars be fine.”

  I must not have been hearing right. Could things like this happen?

  “You tell Jerusha Lovemore she owes me for her.” She raised her voice more. “You come on out here now, J’rusha Lovemore! Two hun’ed dollars set it right!”

  “Miz Shine, you best go on home and get some rest,” Uncle Cunny said between his teeth. “I’m sure yo’ just under the weather now, and don’t know what you are saying.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said.

  Uncle looked at me and patted my hand. “Get back inside, Clea. It’s fixin’ to rain. I’ll be there directly.”

  And he let go of me, got Mama turned around, and they set off together, she leaning hard against him, her voice still carrying on the wind. Leaves were whirling around my feet.

  “Where you going, Uncle Cunny?” I called.

  “I’m seein’ a lady home,” he said.

  The rain came upon us, and I watched it soak them and slash all around as Mama stumbled and Uncle picked her up, and when I got wet from watching, I went in and slumped down in a corner of the parlor. The rain ran from me onto Auntie’s floor. I hunkered there with my hands over my head. Auntie tried to raise me up, tried to jerk me alive, but I would not stand or sit, nor look up, down, or sideways.

  Uncle Cunny came back then, and they talked in fierce voices and moved into the kitchen so they could holler and yell, and I heard Auntie cry out, “She guv her to me, fair and square!” And I thought I felt the floor move under my feet.

  Auntie and Uncle went out into the rain and were gone a long time, so long, in fact, that I got up with stiff knees, and, still wet, I climbed to the third floor, where I crawled under my bed and lay flat on my belly.

  A while passed, and I heard Auntie’s shoes on the stairs. She came in where I was and got down on her knees. “You can slide on out now,” she said.

  I did not reply.

  “She was drunk,” Auntie said, “and meant nothing by those ignorant words.”

  I closed my eyes tight.

  “Uncle Cunny took that paper from her and tore it in a million pieces, and it flew away across the river. Ain’t that good?”

  “It’s good,” I said. But I would not come out.

  Auntie let herself down, and she just lay there, on her side on the floor, with her head on an elbow and her wet stockings steaming, saying no more, just keeping me company.

  In the days that followed, even my breath shut down. I held it close to my chest, like my lungs and my heart were afraid to let go. I ate little and slept less. Conversations were few, and mostly with Finn. I was cold all the time.

  Sometimes I sat on the side porch and looked across the field at the house where I was born. One evening, when fall was tightening down into winter, I took up a towel to give a hand with the dish drying, and I asked Auntie, “Whatever happened to my daddy?”

  She paused with her hands deep in the suds. “He went off.”

  “But where? He went off where?”

  Auntie looked up and out through the window. “Just down the road. One day, he set out with a suit of clothes on his back,
and wearing his best black shoes. She never saw him again.”

  “What was his name, at least?”

  For a moment she was silent. “Nobody knows.”

  “Did he live with us, with Mama?”

  “Not really, baby. He was just passing through.”

  “He never married my mama?”

  Auntie missed only half a beat. “He did not.”

  “Auntie, Mama’s a ho’, ain’t that right?”

  “Isn’t,” Uncle said real soft. He still sat at the table, sipping his coffee. I guess he thought, with this one more time of correcting me, he could put off me hearing the answer—or Auntie’s giving it.

  “Isn’t she?” I said.

  “Child, do you even know what a whore is?”

  “I guess I do.” I ran the dish towel around the rim of a glass that was white and pebbled and saved just for my milk. “I’ve been over there and seen what all they’re up to, those guards from the prison, and others too.”

  Auntie looked sad. “You’ve gone and growed up before your time.”

  She meant I knew too much. But I didn’t know as much as Finn. He was the expert at everything. Almost.

  17

  The following Sunday, Miss Shookie came to get us in her car. At First and Last Holy Word, the Best Reverend Ollie was in fine form. He didn’t wait for the sermon to move souls, he took the pulpit, reared back with his eyes shut, and laid into the day: “Oh, mighty GOD!” His voice was a trumpet. “Let us SEE the enemy, Lord. Let us KNOW him by his wicked heart. Lift us HIGH, Lord, above the temptation to give in to him, oh, yes!”

  A bit stunned, the congregation murmured, “Amen.”

  “Make us STRONG, Lord, to serve you better in these daaaaaaaaays of tribulation. Make us more as we labor in your service, in your vineyards, in your temple, oh, YES!”

  Now we were in tune, and the church went in motion with raised arms and fluttery, floating hands, and the hallelujahs that swept on and on.

  “Yes, Jesus, oh, yes, Lord …”

  The Reverend bellowed, “Keep us NOT JUST AFLOAT! We’ll step OUT, Lord, as Peter did—”

  And here came the choir, all six of them humming and backing the prayer. I wondered how they’d known to do that: “Fishers of men, oh, fishers of men—”

  I didn’t think the Reverend was talking about regular fishing.

  “—Lift us to WALK on the stormiest seas!”

  Miss Shookie cried, “Oh, Jesus …”

  “Amen and —”

  “Lord, Lord,” said Auntie.

  Webster’s definition of amen was So it is.

  On this morning the Reverend was full of something, and I wasn’t just thinking the Holy Spirit. Everybody loved him. He was a good man with a fine and lucky life. But what did he know of stormy seas? Had he ever been afloat and alone, and not seen the shore? Had he ever found a hole in his goddamned boat?

  “Amen,” said the Reverend. And with that, we were primed, ready to be preached to, saved and re-saved. Dedicated once more.

  The choir sang. The congregation sang. I wondered what would happen if Millicent Poole suddenly led us in “Clarice the ho’ …”

  I drew a stubby pencil and tithing envelope from the rack in front of me and began to scribble. When Auntie saw me and swatted my hands, I went on writing, trying to remember the words.

  —And wore her wedding gown.

  That night I told Finn, “I’m gonna do something bad.”

  “I’ll help you,” he said.

  “How, when you won’t hardly get down from that tree?”

  “I would,” he said. “I did for Wheezer.”

  “Finn, why don’t you come down from there and live with Auntie? She’s told you you can.”

  Among the leaves, he shook his head.

  “Your daddy surely didn’t mean for you to stay there forever.”

  “Anyway, I see enough of you,” he said. “I couldn’t take any more.”

  That hurt my feelings. “What—you watch me through my window, do you? The way you watched Bitsy?”

  “I seen you once.” He looked away. “You ain’t got nothing, girl; you only twelve.”

  “So—you planning to sit there till I get me some shape and then take a picture?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t have to wait. Bitsy’ll take me down to the river anytime I want.”

  “Bitsy?”

  “Yeah, and she’s got more goods than you.”

  “Finn!”

  “What?”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m gonna do something bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Enough that they might take me away.”

  “Who?” he said, his green eyes widening. “What you gonna do?”

  “Well,” I told him, “you hang on to your tree.”

  18

  I kept the sash of my window greased with Vaseline.

  I found the drainpipe with my toes, and shinnied down till my foot touched the trellis. Auntie’s roses were climbers, gone wild up here and still thorny, although it was near winter now and all the flowers were gone. Silently I stepped down and down, and set my feet upon the cold December ground. There was a cowardly moon this night, with piled-up clouds like the sky was full of shuffling hunchbacks. The wind was up. I heard it rustling the grass and rushing the river along.

  I had worn narrow paths in the tall grass between Auntie’s place and Mama’s, and even in the pitch black I found one easy and made my way by whatever magnet leads us home.

  The lights were on in Mama’s house, ramping yellow slats from the windows to the weeds. If there were frogs croaking or night birds singing, I could not hear them. The whole world was lost to the racket and thump of tinny music from an old stereo player.

  I pulled open the creaking screen door and stepped onto the porch. The narrow cot was stripped bare to the mattress. I turned the knob and went into the kitchen.

  The music wobbled, uncertain then plunking made to sound like falling tears or rain, and I thought about Uncle Cunny’s lightning fingers on the strings of his guitar at the picnic, the groaning tables on that Fourth of July, Mama’s bill of sale flying up in the wind when Uncle tore it to shreds. I thought of how Auntie lay down on the floor.

  Over the years, the presence of me had given them all hell. The only thing worse was the presence of my mother.

  Mama to child, blood into blood.

  In the living room, cross-legged, Mama had an audience. Two guards in Farm gray were sprawled on the sofas. They all looked bleary with their drinking, their glasses in hand, sleepy-eyed, with smug smiles on their stubbly faces. Mama sat alone on the floor. The paint stains were still there.

  Her filmy pink dress lay at the foot of the stairs, one nylon stocking on the arm of a chair. I felt the same—a piece of me here, a shred of me there.

  My mother sat in her panties and bra, showing crotch and cleavage, the feather boa around her neck, the end hanging down on her bare silken back.

  “Mama?” I said.

  But her chin wagged and sagged to her collarbone.

  “Mama?”

  I hunkered down and looked at her face. Her eyes were half open, showing a vague light in the window, but the rest of her had gone away. A lit cigarette hung on her bottom lip. A fire waiting to drop down. I wondered how many hundred times in my life I’d be required to see that she was safe when she was drunk. My years—and hers—stretched out long in front of me.

  I took the cigarette from her mouth and puffed on it, carried it through to the porch. I lay down on the bare mattress with one arm under my head, the way Mama’s gents often did, and looked at the ceiling. I held the lipsticked butt in front of my face, flicked the ash away, and watched a thin trail of smoke rise up. There was nothing to think, because I’d thought it all, fretted and angered and grown pain in my belly till there wasn’t room for anything else. I put it away only when I was so tired that I couldn’t carry it. And then, minutes later, here it would come again—the who-am-I, t
he where-am-I, the work of keeping Mama away from everyone else, the never-ending fear that Auntie would grow tired of me, that Uncle would feel I was more trouble than I was worth.

  But if they came to their senses and put Clea Shine down, where would she stand? On what actual ground did my feet belong?

  I turned over on my belly and rubbed the glowing end of the cigarette on the floor.

  I thought I heard a thousand hands clapping. Around me, the skinny house shuddered and whined. Was I dreaming? No. The dry kitchen wall was a plane of fire, flames rocketing from the knotholes.

  Someone was screaming. I tumbled off the cot, trying to clear the fog and recall where I was. I scrambled across the floor toward the kitchen, but a man crashed through the door, his legs burning. I rolled away and twisted. His hair was gone, and his back was raw red and black char.

  I felt for the door and believed I was in the kitchen. Black smoke rolled over my head. Sparks were everywhere. In seconds, the fire had eaten the table and was licking at the cabinet doors. Someone was lying spread-eagle on the floor, face gone and fire lapping at his clothes. I tried to squeeze past. Flames raced along the kitchen ceiling and into the living room. Through the throat-burning smoke, I recognized Mama. She had passed out in her spot on the floor and toppled over. The boa was on fire.

  I lunged ahead, feeling for her. But now the front wall and the roof had caught fire, and I rubbed at my eyes while the ceiling groaned. Plaster and brittle beams of wood came down. And then the front door crashed open, and a rush of air ignited all that was left, and I was skidding across the floor, into smoldering weeds. I rose to my feet and was running. Running.

  I cowered down and hid in the grass by the river and cried and breathed, and didn’t breathe, and retched and hiccuped while wood and tall grass and everything that had been there before crackled and burned and was no more. Firemen roared up in pumper trucks, and I both watched and hid my eyes while firemen, and the man I knew to be the county medical examiner, carried out bodies in bags.