Icy Sparks Read Online Free PDF Page B

by mistake, never by intention.”
    Patanni held up the jar of springwater and announced, “Let’s toast Louisa, the best damn nurse that ever was!”
    Matanni raised her eyebrows. “Virgil, shame on you for cursing!” she fussed, turning toward him.
    My grandfather nibbled at his top lip. “Tillie, you know I meant no harm,” he said. “God has given us so many tears. Can’t I direct a little laughter His way?”
    â€œBut Virgil,” she protested, “it’s been so long since we stepped into the Lord’s house.”
    â€œGoing to church is one thing,” Patanni calmly stated. “Respecting God is another.”
    â€œI bet Mama never cussed,” I said, “’cause she was more good than bad.”
    â€œThat girl didn’t know bad,” Patanni said.
    â€œThen she wasn’t at all like pokeweed,” I said.
    â€œOh, no,” my grandfather said, “she was a pasture rose, a solitary, sweet pink flower.”

    T he following day, I went hunting for pasture roses. Carolina roses, they’re also called, but I liked calling them pasture roses. If they bloomed in Kentucky, I reasoned, shouldn’t they be christened Kentucky roses? But if this wasn’t permitted, I’d label them pasture roses. Pasture roses belonged to no one and everyone.
    I strolled five miles down the dirt road that passed by our farm and came upon Mamie Tillman’s land. Dried out and dusty from overuse, an old cornfield lay fallow. Around the edges of the field, I searched for a smidgen of pink, some leftover trace of the June blooming rose, but I found nothing, just beggar’s-lice clinging to my overalls. A copse of pine trees stood at the edge of the field; and, wanting to find a cool place to rest, I walked over. In the center of the trees was a small, dark green pond, about twenty feet long and thirty feet wide, which narrowed into a little round pool of water from which jutted the tip of a very large rock. From three feet away, I studied the pond and wondered why I had never come upon it before. Little Turtle Pond, as it was called, had eluded me. Apparently I didn’t know every inch of Poplar Holler. This slimy green water and eyelike rock had escaped me.
    Suddenly footsteps crunched over pine needles from the other side of the pond. It was Mamie Tillman. The reclusive owner of this land shuffled toward me, her legs moving awkwardly. “Poor Mamie,” the townsfolk had said when her daddy died two years ago in a coal mining accident, “she ain’t got no one else.” Everyone had expected her to leave the area. But, oddly enough, she hadn’t. Instead, she had stayed put, living on “Lord knows what,” the townsfolk said, leasing out her tobacco patch, getting by alone. Fearful, I scurried behind a large black pine and tried not to breathe.
    Mamie Tillman had always been stout, but I noticed that she’d grown fatter. Her black hair was pulled back under a red handkerchief, and she wore overalls stretched over a red cotton shirt. She stopped by the pond’s edge and stood still for several minutes. Next, she lowered her arms to her sides, squatted down, and eased herself upon a flat white rock, where she sat with her legs thrust forward.
    I sucked in air, stared at her, and tried not to move.
    Carefully, she unfastened the straps to her overalls and placed the bib in her lap. She lifted up the shirt, tucked it under her bra, put her big-boned hands over her swollen stomach, and commenced rubbing. Her hands made slow circles over her flesh, then began to swirl faster and faster, harder and harder, until they ground red blotches into her skin.
    My mouth dropped open and my eyes widened as a dozen fiery suns flamed over her belly.
    Quick as her hands started, they stopped. Mamie Tillman returned her palms to her lap and began to cry—softly and gently—like a young kitten mewing. With every intake of