Playing With Matches Read Online Free Page B

they laid us in one, and the nurses taped our good hands together, so we’d each know the other’n was still there.”
    Eulogenie’s hearing was bad, her eyeglasses repaired at one corner with a gob of dirty masking tape. I was also embarrassed for her name. For several months she’d gone without, until her mama heard that word at a funeral service. I took to calling her Plain Genie, which fit her better. I knew that hurt her feelings, but I didn’t care. I wanted Claudie to myself.
    Sometimes, in our playing, we two would drift over to Auntie’s place. But here’d come Plain Genie, hanging around, blinking her eyes and sucking her thumb. Auntie’d bring out jelly sandwiches for us all—Plain Genie too—and that irritated the living hell out of me.
    The twins never came to our house on Sundays, or on Wednesday nights, so they never met up with Miss Shookie, and I was glad. Claudie was dramatic about everything. If God sent her a letter stamped with all the seals of heaven, she would have rolled her big eyes. She did that a lot, and I could picture her watching Bitsy at dinner. Those eyes would’ve wobbled out of Claudie’s head.
    Down the road from us, the Maytubbys lived in one-half of a duplex. Because the other half was empty, they had spilled into it too, and when the landlord found out, he boarded up the other side.
    One afternoon, I sat with Claudie on their porch. Most of the Maytubbys were home that day, because Denver Lee was due to arrive anytime. Denver was the only Maytubby in the history of False River to go to college. I knew there was a boy younger than Denver, name of Roland, but they never so much as whispered his name.
    The oldest girl, Alvadene, was fourteen and twice over a mama. She sat on the porch too, rocking and nursing her son at one breast. The boy was pig-suckling and naked but for a hank of diaper in the awful heat. His little sister dug in the dirt with a spoon.
    After Alvadene, a girl had been born, but she died when she was one day old. A tiny hammered-wood cross was planted in the ground near the river. There was a gaggle of Maytubby boys too, and they all looked alike—shaved-headed and skinny and just now wrestling around in the yard, a tangle of knobby elbows and knees.
    Today, like a leper touched by Jesus, Miz Maytubby had risen out of her bed. In the house, a brown-sugar cake was baked and sitting on the table. Newspaper was tacked over the windows to keep out the sun.
    Auntie had told me the story about Denver Lee. Apparently, Mississippi Southwest sent a scout up one day to watch him play high school basketball. Here in False River, it wasn’t his grades that had kept him in class but his strong good looks. The coach’s daughter, Janelle, having checked out the contents of Denver’s pants, made a deal with her daddy. She’d do Denver’s homework, and for her keeping this fine, tall jump-man on the team, Coach would say nothing about their coupling behind the gym as long as she didn’t get pregnant and nobody saw them. Over time, however, Coach paid for at least two trips to Greenfield—one to have his baby girl “scraped” and another to get Denver shot full of antibiotics.
    On the basketball court, Denver Lee had pure-greased glide and lift. The college scout liked his looks and his moves, and said Come on down .
    But Denver would have to leave Janelle behind.
    “Go on and play ball for us,” the grown-ups told him, and Denver Lee said Okay . He’d make money and bring home a truck full, and they’d all be rich. But he never did.
    While Denver was away, his daddy passed of a weakened heart. Denver had a game that Saturday and couldn’t get home for the burying. That winter, he wrote to his mama, saying he’d met this new girl, liked the look and feel and smell of her, and they’d got married by a justice of the peace.
    Word got around.
    “That’s what them Maytubbys need,” Miss Shookie said during a Sunday gab on our upstairs gallery. “Another mouth