Playing With Matches

by Carolyn Wall

  “River’s dropping pretty fast,” Uncle says. “Come around the other side, Ernie, and tell us what you see. Can you get a ladder up?”

  Ernie motors around the house, shaking his head. There’s no good place to anchor a ladder. His report is what we know or suspect—the parlor is gone, but the corner timbers seem strong, kitchen’s intact, first-floor stairs missing; the second-floor steps to the attic look rickety but might be usable, although part of that wall’s been ripped away.

  The first order of business is Bitsy. None of us is hurt except Auntie, where she caught a shard of glass in her cheek. It looks to be an inch long, and it’s not deep. The bleeding has stopped.

  Ernie tosses up a pair of ropes, and Uncle and Wheezer and Thomas truss Bitsy like a Christmas turkey. I watch, dry-eyed, as they strain and lower her over the side. Ernie rolls her onto her back in the bottom of his boat, and people move their feet, and he says with some embarrassment that it might be wise to leave the ropes on her till he’s transported her safely. Then he’ll come back, double-check the stairs, and help us all down.

  Wheezer asks, “While you’re this far, Mr. Shiloh, could you carry me to the Farm?”

  “Damn mess up there, boy,” Ernie says. “Fence down in some places. Y’all hear the shots? If the electrics were working, the siren’d be going off right and left.”

  “Lord. Convicts are out, running wild,” says Shookie, mopping her face with her sleeve.

  But Wheezer’s mind is set, and he lowers himself over the lip of the attic floor, shinnies down a two-by-four and drops into Ernie’s boat, nearly tipping it.

  “Be back shortly,” Ernie says.

  “We’re fine,” we say, all but Harry, and watch him putt away. He motors on toward the Farm and clear through a space where the high fence used to be. Nobody stops them. Rolls of razor wire are out in the river. Finally, a guard comes and helps Wheezer climb in through an upstairs window. Then Ernie comes back, past our house, just him and the lost and wounded, and Bitsy.

  My cousin, Bitsy.

  Just past noon, the water has receded enough that we can see the muddy floor in the kitchen below.

  And the damnedest thing happens.

  We hear Ernie’s boat coming down what is probably the middle of the swollen river, but this time it’s crammed with people and high, wobbling stacks of cardboard boxes. A long ladder is strapped on top.

  He ties the boat up to what was once the front door, and a half-dozen ladies look up and smile. And smile …

  Sister Isabel!

  Sister Grace!

  And shy Camille—three in all.

  Luz’s mouth goes from merely open to wide. Her whole body is quivering. I am stunned and breathless and unable to move.

  Here is a fortress that will stand against even Millicent Poole and her demons.

  Sister Isabel sees me, holds up her arms, and cries out, “Sister Clea Gloria!”

  I nearly fall over the side in my anguish to touch them, to hold them, to know I’m not dreaming. They are really, really here. They’re wearing pants and men’s workshirts rolled to the elbow and rubber boots—and in the bottom of the boat are more boots!

  “We’ve been passing out food and blankets along your road!” Grace cries.

  Isabel says, “And water—don’t forget water; we have gallons—and there’s more! Sister, trucks are coming into Greenfield this morning. Praise God, I didn’t think we would ever get here!”

  I wonder about towns along the coast. Camille clasps her hands and tilts her head back so that the sun shines on her face. “Red Cross, the Salvation Army—so many helpers.”

  But False River has the Sisters of Mercy.

  Ernie has decided the old front-porch slab is the best place to anchor a ladder, and he raises it up, and while the sisters wobble in the boat, trying to steady it, he climbs up, steps in through the blown window, tests the bedroom floor, and comes to the foot of the stairs, where the wall is missing.

  He calls down, “Hand me up the hammer and bag of nails, ladies!”

  My darling Sister Isabel launches herself up the ladder. Ernie works awhile on the stairs, testing each until he and Isabel come up them, one by careful one, and they are in our arms. Or perhaps we are in theirs. I cannot let go of Isabel, nor she me, and then she gathers up Harry and Luz, whom she knows and who love her, and there are introductions all around.

  We take the pillowcases with what is left of our food, our water, and quilts, and are led down, careful to keep to the inside wall, crossing what was Shookie’s bedroom, and I am swinging my leg onto the ladder, looking down into faces I adore, and sadness sweeps over me:

  I should have loved Thomas as much as I love them. As much as I love Luz and Harry. At least that much.

  We step into the boat and put on rubber boots. There are small ones for Harry.

  Auntie’s floor was constructed on three concrete blocks, and, incredibly, the blocks have held. “Prob’ly with the weight of the house,” Ernie says.

  So we step up to where the parlor floor still is, under sodden carpet and six inches of mud and slime. Then we are all in the house, and there are more introductions, Uncle saying, “I will never remember your names, young ladies.”

  Camille blushes and tucks a stray wisp under the scrap of scarf that holds her blond hair.

  Auntie says, “Ernie, if you can drive this boat of yours back to the shed, there are rakes and shovels. I think we need those first.”

  “Can do,” Ernie says. “Then I gotta get this baby back in the river. Won’t be much longer—y’all will be on dry land. Muddy, for sure, but you can move around. Gents, help me unload these boxes.” There are sleeping bags and rolls of plastic.

  “Ernie,” I ask, “are you taking some of this to the prison?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not. Their help should be on the way.”

  We pile things on the kitchen counter, on the stove, and in the sink, and begin opening cupboards. There are still a few dishes and cans in the back. Thomas finds an old ottoman that has lodged itself against the house. He drags it up and shakes out a plastic bag that he lays over. A place, he says, for Miss Shookie to sit.

  He helps her to it, like a queen to her throne. I look away.

  Shookie worries about her knitting. She cries a little; she works her hands.

  I hunker down so I can see her eyes, swollen almost shut, and take her face in my palms. “I’m so sorry about Bitsy. For all your pain.”

  I also regret that I’ve always found Shookie to be a disagreeable old woman. Sister Benefactor always said Compassion begins at home. First, I suppose, one must realize they are home.

  Is acceptance in the Bible? Of course it is.

  Marie-Luz will read and absorb those verses, the way she knows the Dewey decimals. For now, she’s watching me. She comes and puts an arm around Shookie. “I’m going to bring you a nice cup of water,” she says.

  I say, “Later, Luz and I will go upstairs and find a nice dress for Bitsy to be buried in.”

  The water level goes down more. Before long, Ernie is back in his big-wheeled truck. He tells us that whole concrete slabs were lifted in town, and dropped across roads, making them impassable. Just here, along the lane, he saw a La-Z-Boy reclining up in a tree. In the field across the street where no cows ever grazed, several are dead and bloated, legs sticking straight up. In Greenfield, he says, trailer houses were whipped off their foundations, and cars were flung around like toy trucks.

  Thomas’s car is behind the church. Ernie doesn’t know if it’ll run, but he’ll bring his truck and tow it home, if Thomas wants. Ernie hasn’t seen the others. Thomas asks where the nearest garage is, and Ernie tells him maybe up in Worley’s Bend, north of here. He can take it there.

  “If it’ll wait a day or so, I’ll ride along, if you don’t mind. See what can be done with it. Pay for your time. And gas, of course.”

  Ernie’s agreeable.

  When we take a break and pass around a cup of water, I murmur, �
��Thanks for bringing Harry’s rabbit. And the books. You didn’t have to.”

  “I did have to,” he says. “They’re my kids too.”

  “Be some time ’fore y’all have electrics,” Ernie is saying as he gets into his truck. “Generators was all bought up last storm, but I’ll try to find y’all some candles, maybe a kerosene lamp.”

  Auntie has kept our matches dry.

  I run out and catch Ernie.

  “Please take me to Finn’s. I’m sure you can get through.”

  “Can’t do it,” he says. “I’d have to run up alongside Devil’s Creek, and I’d never find the road. They’re tellin’ folks to stay away from the Farm.”

  Auntie won’t even think about leaving. “This is to be your house someday,” she tells me. She spreads her hands, and her smile is sad. “It’s always been so. When we pass on, Cunny and I are leaving it to you. Not much to look at right now—”

  Oh, how I love this land, and the river—and this old house, with its parlor and rocking chair, where I’ve weathered more storms than memory can count.

  “Looks like we’ll have to rebuild the whole thing,” Auntie says.

  We shovel and eat canned pears and cold Campbell’s soup and fancy biscuits from a tin that survived. We rake at the rubbish and sweep the ceilings. Uncle builds a fire on some bed-springs that washed into our yard, and sets the coffee pot on top. We drink from cracked cups. Then we work some more.

  Auntie has a wheelbarrow, and we dump the muck across the road in the field that’s still underwater. There, these great leafy globs of vegetation will rot in the sun and go back to the earth.

  Far up in the yard—almost to Mama’s—Uncle Cunny digs a hole for a toilet. Perhaps I will start thinking of that as my land.

  “Let me help you there,” Thomas says. He gathers broken pieces of cinder block to get our backsides off the ground. They cut an opening that’s splintered and fit for no bottom, then file it down and lay it across, and we use two branches to string a curtain around. This is our latrine. For wiping, we’ll use an old catalog that’s right now drying in the sun. Ernie says he’ll see if he can scrounge up a bag of lime.

  When the mud is mostly gone from the kitchen counter and stovetop, and the parlor rug’s up and the floor is scraped clean, we use lumber that’s landed here to fix the holes in the walls in case more rain comes. This being August, that’s sure to happen. Best we can, we spread a blue plastic tarp on the roof. The Sisters of Mercy have cleaned and scraped and fetched and dragged and come up with sawhorses and wood for a table.

  There was a first-aid box in Auntie’s bathroom, and Sister Anne has tended to Auntie’s cheek. Thomas’s glasses are broken, and I bind the corner with adhesive tape. He looks the way I remember Plain Genie. I ask Ernie about her.

  “Fair, I guess,” he says. “Her kitchen’s tore up. I left her some supplies. She don’t talk much.”

  I know. But she’s alive.

  That night, we climb up the ladder and arrange ourselves on the second floor, which Uncle and Ernie have deemed to be safe. In case of looters, we haul our usables up with us. There’s a gentle breeze.

  I sit on the pallet I’ve laid for Luz and Harry and me, and take Luz gently through Call. I, myself, embrace all that I’m grateful for. I’ve used a lot of mental energy in the last twenty-four hours, looking back at who I used to be. But not as much as I spent, years ago, alternately loving and hating my mother.

  Mamas, through their strengths and weaknesses, pass everything on. They teach daughters, who teach their daughters, and so it goes, one set of hurts coming down to another. Then I look up at the stars and tilt my head and remember something my therapist once told me, to see the other side of that coin.

  There is no such thing as always doing our best. How utterly exhausting that would be. We just do what we do. And maybe it’s enough.

  I know where my mother did her best—and with whom. Just doing what she did was not enough for her child. Only I can break that chain, fix the past and the present. It pains me to think that Thomas is right.

  I’ll begin now.

  I snuggle next to Luz and stroke her hair. “I’m so sorry it’s sometimes hard for you to breathe.”

  She smiles a little and closes her eyes.

  The night is quiet, no crickets chirruping. Then—and maybe it’s just my girl’s labored breathing, but I think I hear music, honky-tonk in slow motion, ragtime on the wind. That once-fast plunking music has now become a slow, hurting waltz.

  The gulls are gone; we’re left with one unholy mess, no electricity, no running water. We slog up and down Potato Shed Road, seeing who needs what—candles, matches, drinking water, canned peaches. Things that will keep without refrigerators, and packaged tightly too, so as not to draw rats. Everything is draped in wet leaves and weed. Cars are on porches. Dogs are dead; we are quick to bury those. We build cook fires in yards, open tin cans, whisper blessings and encouragement, and set to untangling a fisherman’s net from somebody’s door.

  On Auntie’s property, it’s hard to find anything dry enough to burn, but Thomas and Uncle Cunny drag broken junk from the house—some of it ours. We burn what’s useless and save the nails. Sister Grace has been given a hammer and a plastic bag, and was put onto yanking nails from any drifting thing she can find. Sister Camille hums softly as she works—something Auntie used to sing, but I can’t remember its name or the words.

  Up and down the road, people we know, and do not know, look broken in the eyes, hauling branches and bits of flotsam to their bonfires. Some houses defy logic, their underpinnings washed out and whipped off to who knows where. First floors are gone, while the second floors are left standing. Who’d ever have thought the Pearl, and our placid False River, could have done so much damage?

  Genie Maytubby has lost part of her back wall, and her stove and furniture washed away.

  Ernie comes around three times a day in his big-wheeled truck. In spite of sheriff’s orders, he’s been past the Farm and over to Finn’s. He reports that the goat is gone, and so is the shack, the dog. He’s checked Devil’s Creek.

  “Likely drowned,” Ernie says.

  I pinch my lips together.

  “Or,” Auntie tells me, “he doesn’t want to be found. Clea, baby, you leave that boy be.”

  46

  Then Wheezer comes home, and somehow it’s Monday. I insist on holding class. He walks me down. His clothes are caked with mud, and I wonder, When was the last time he ate? He looks a little like he did the first time I saw him.

  Because the fence and gate are twisted and inoperable, guards are posted around the Farm’s perimeter.

  Most of the low buildings have been knocked off their blocks and tipped into the river. Two went over the bank of Devil’s Creek, which will have to be searched for bodies and dredged for debris before there’s more flooding.

  I wait for Wheezer to toll the count.

  He says, “Seventy-four dead, six of those shot. Eighteen more missing.”

  “My God.”

  “We’re keeping the eighteen under our hats, though they’re long gone by now.”

  “What’s happened to the big house?”

  “Beaten to hell. Foundation’s all cracked. Northwest corner broke off and went in the river. Took the kitchen and the infirmary with it. We dug six guys out with our hands. One was our doc, Clea. Here on his own time. Jesus Lord, if I ever wanted a drink, it was then. Now.”

  He sucks a deep breath and puffs out some air. “Corrections Department will send buses for the rest. Takes time when other prisons are full too, and have to shift things around. State sent us army rations, but we can’t let ’em open their own damn tins—meanwhile, they’re eating and sleeping on the ground. And we’ve got a makeshift infirmary set up here in the yard.

  “We’ve cleared out the big stuff that washed up—refrigerator, sofa, broken umbrellas, anything these guys could use to hurt themselves or each other, piled it up across the road. Might have Jerusha look,
see if some of her belongings are there—”

  There is most of one fence left. Where it’s lying over, the space has been patched with wire and, because there are no safe buildings, everything’s been moved out into the open. This means there are no classrooms, no cages, no tables left. Raoul, Wesley, Frank, and Willie G. sit in bandy-legged chairs in one corner of the yard. The best chair faces them. It is for me.

  Someone says, “Ma’am?”

  I look up at a new man, dark skin, orange stripes, and he’s barefoot, with his pants legs rolled up.

  He says, “Chaplain said I could join up.”

  “Of course. Here—take my chair.”

  “No, ma’am.” He folds himself down on the still-wet ground. “Name’s Roland Maytubby.”

  Maytubby? “Are you any relation to the Maytubbys down the road?”

  “Yes’m, they my kin. Genie’s my sister.”

  Lord, Lord. “Does she know you’re all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She came to the fence, and I talked to her ’fore they caught me and dragged me away.”

  “I—I used to play with your sister. Claudie.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  No judgment, no expectation on his face. Just waiting. The guard who brought him is stone-faced and beak-nosed.

  I lean toward them with knees together, pencils and paper on my lap, and elbows on my thighs, palms pressed as if I am praying. “All right. I read your stories from Friday—” Has it been only that long? “I admire you guys for knowing who you are, in the middle of—this.”

  Even if they don’t have a clue, I think. Even if they made up everything, and they’re shining me on.

  I spread my hands. “After I read them, I put them in the trunk of my car for safekeeping. Now nobody knows where my car is.”

  “Then we glad you din’ have to drive here,” Raoul says, trying for humor. Nobody laughs. “Hey, we got no bunks, no soap, no coffee, but we got a teacher, right—you ain’t washed away.”

  “I didn’t wash away.”

  “When you find our papers,” Wesley says, “go on and keep ’em. We got nowhere to put anything, no cells, no footlockers.”