Ball of Fire Read Online Free PDF

on too many evenings. DeDe kept her voice down when she bawled him out; Ed was not so discreet, and Lucille overheard their arguments. She was distressed but not surprised to see her mother come home early on certain afternoons, laid low by the pains of a migraine headache. DeDe would draw the shades and remain bedridden, unable to move or talk until the pain had lifted. Fred Hunt no longer seemed his cheerful and anecdotal self; since the death of Flora he had spent hours at the Crescent Tool Company griping about conditions and urging workers to demand a bigger piece of the pie. DeDe heard about the agitation and disapproved. Stirring up trouble might well be a firing offense, and the loss of his salary would mean a backslide to penury.
    Lucille watched all this and said nothing. But she began to spend more time away from the house, performing stunts and taking dares from her new friends in high school, roller-skating across the freshly varnished school gymnasium floor, sitting on the front radiator of a classmate’s jalopy as it roared through the streets of Celoron, playing hooky whenever she was in a vagabond mood. She was a difficult student, bright but distracted. She fought with other girls—and sometimes with boys—and once got so angry with a teacher she threw a typewriter at her.
    But Lucille had absorbed too much moral training to go completely wild. She yearned for some direction in her life, and when it was not forthcoming at home or school, she imposed it on herself. One of her cronies, Pauline Lopus, was to remain in Jamestown for most of her life. More in awe than envy, she liked to look back to the days of 1925 when Lucille called her Sassafrassa for some reason, when her new friend seemed to be “the first girl in town who dared to talk aloud about her dreams—about one day being able to have nice cars, nice clothes, a nice home; about one day doing something and being somebody
special.
”
    Along with Pauline and another pal, Violet Robbins, Lucille founded a musical group called the Gloom Chasers Union. Pauline conducted, Violet played the piano, and Lucille provided the rhythm on a set of borrowed drums. It was not a success. Egged on by their leader, the girls then recruited two more members and founded an acting company. Their most memorable production was a version of
Charley’s Aunt,
adapted and directed by Lucille. She not only gave the story another spin by starring as a man who impersonates a woman, she dragged furniture from her house to use as scenery, sold the homemade tickets for twenty-five cents apiece, put makeup on the cast, and persuaded the school principal, Mr. Drake, to let them have the gym for the evening. The prompter was DeDe, who got so caught up in the plot and gags that she kept laughing, applauding, and losing her place in the script.
    Although tourism was off that summer, Celoron Park still needed extra help to get through July and August. Lucille talked her way into a job as short-order cook. “Look out! Look out!” went her spiel. “Don’t step there!” When the startled passerby stopped, one foot in the air as he stared worriedly at the ground, Lucille closed the sale: “Step over
here
and get yourself a delicious hamburger!” Off-hours were spent experimenting with makeup and fashion. Passing a shop window one day, she stopped to admire a leather hat in black and white. Over dinner she bargained with DeDe: the hat for hours and hours of extra work around the house. Her mother refused at first, then gave in to the entreaties. The delighted teenager wore the hat everywhere, including the kitchen as she washed and dried the dishes.
    DeDe’s response was not so lenient after Lucille attended her first dance at the Celoron Pier Ballroom. For the occasion DeDe made a taffeta dress and trimmed the hem with real fur, prompting envious sighs when Lucille’s classmates first clapped eyes on it. At the end of the dance, a drably dressed classmate went out of her way to