Playing With Matches Read Online Free

me,” she said. “Now, you git in this car, I’ll take you home. Jerusha let you run so goddamn wild—”
    But my own feet were planted solid in the dirt. “No, ma’am, Miss Shookie. This young man needs a firm chance, and anyway, I’m not getting in that smelly old thing.”
    “Don’t make me get outa this car, girl,” she said, looking pained. “All day, my knees been talkin’ to me—”
    She turned her attention to my companion. “So you fresh outa the joint, hey, boy? They give y’all’s clothes back to you, do they?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I told my gal Bitsy, here, they used them to stoke the fires of hell. You gone and made a liar outa me.”
    My jaw slacked. “Miss Shookie, the Christian thing to do—”
    Miss Shookie’s fat jiggled and rolled around. “Ain’t no Christians at Hell’s Farm, Clea June, and I know he’s broke as a church mouse already. By the time these mens set out on this road, they money’s spent.
    “And everybody knows where.”

5
    I waited for the ax to fall. But, to my amazement, Uncle Cunny helped that young man up in his truck and drove him clear to Jackson. There, he told us later, he bought him a grilled cheese at a soda fountain and saw him off on a bus.
    The weekend came around.
    As always, I wore one of Bitsy’s colorless castoffs to church. Those dresses hung on me but were ruffled and made of organdy, and that, Auntie said, counted for something.
    After church on Sundays, I learned more than I did at any other time in my life.
    That day, Miss Shookie was working alongside Auntie, cooking and sweating till their faces shone and their sweetly oiled hair was further kinked and matted to their shapely heads.
    The night before, Auntie had simmered greens with butter, vinegar, ham hocks, and black pepper. Over those pots of steaming collards and thick custards, the bickering grew worse, and before long they were stomping around the hot kitchen, hip-shoving and wagging fingers and rubber spatulas. The subject turned to the chicken circus. I took a quiet seat at the table. This was a subject I ached to know more about.
    It was said that Auntie had run away, when she was younger, and joined a traveling show. I could not imagine my steadfast Auntie doing such a thing, let alone what chicken circuses must entail. I visualized the dozen brainless guineas that belonged to the much-feared Miz Millicent Poole, down the road. I wondered if these were the same sort of fowl that had also joined the circus, and how in the world you made them mind , let alone do tricks. Auntie sometimes hinted there’d been trapeze artists, too, and midgets on stilts.
    Although I often begged for more information, both misses would turn on me. “You’re not old enough to hear such things.”
    At the table, today, they poured hot sauce on their chicken while their arguments and bellows rose to flat-out howls.
    Even Uncle Cunny, who’d been mopping up his creamed corn, could not break up the ruckus. He lifted a slice of meringue pie from the dish, and hid behind it.
    Bitsy said nothing. She was not my real cousin, of course, but was Miss Shookie’s own, and Aunt Jerusha’s true niece. Sweat always formed shiny on her face and neck. Even the backs of her hands were slick.
    I hated Bitsy; she was pushy and rude and smirky, and whined constantly. She had ashy elbows and knees and coppery spots on her face, and looked to be made from inner tubes. A day never saw light when she and her mama agreed on anything, and they brought their fussing to our dinner table. Today Bitsy sat, shoving in biscuits and peppery soppings.
    Ol’ Bitsy was a whiz at eating with her fingers and thick lips and big teeth, and not bad with a fork. In two minutes flat she could work through three helpings of sausage and dirty rice. She fisted chicken and pork chops and ham hocks till the juice ran down her arms and dripped from her elbows. Her eyes, whichseldom lifted from bowls of food on the table, were squinty in their