Music of the Swamp Read Online Free PDF Page B

buzzers, squirting flowers, leaky fountain pens, play money, sneezing powder, itching powder, loaded dice, Mexican jumping beans, nose flutes, nose putty, glow-in-the-dark teeth, riding crops. There were Japanese lanterns and one million helium-filled balloons on strings.
    Most impressive of all was the ice cream. There was enough ice cream for a hundred hungry people. It was homemade and completely fresh. Fresh strawberry, fresh peach, fresh fig, I don’t know what else, but fresh, all of it fresh. Mrs. McNeer lifted the freezing-cold lid of each metal canister, and the perfect cream pulled into a long smooth curl. The clop-clop ofhooves sounded in my mind as I imagined the ice wagon leaving off its entire load at the McNeer doorstep so that this perfection might be accomplished.
    The problem with all this was that nobody came to the party.
    I went to the party, no one else.
    T HE AFTERNOON was hot. We sat for a long time in new lawn chairs, me, Mrs. McNeer, Dixie Dawn (swollen with tears), and John Wesley, his hairline threatening to grow down over his eyes. All of us sat in the chairs and waited and waited for someone else to appear.
    I could not even hate my parents for sending me here. I had not been sent. I came to this terrible place because I had to. I came because I had seen Mr. McNeer beat Dixie Dawn with the hoe. For that reason only. I was the only true guilty responsible witness to the sadness of their lives.
    The minutes were hours, as we waited. Mrs. McNeer said, “No one wants to be first at a party.” And she said, “Who said small-towners don’t know how to be fashionably late?” And she said, “Where could all those other scamps be?” And she said, “All the expense . . .” And, “Their parents practically promised me.”
    No one came. The afternoon lengthened. The sun moved down the sky. Mrs. McNeer made a few futile phone calls. Finally there was nothing more to say.
    One other person did come to the party. After a long while Roy Dale Conroy showed up. I am certain he had not been invited. He seemed only to happen past the house and to see us in the lawn chairs. He had been wading in a swamp and was wet to his knees and smelled like fish.
    I had brought a small gift, a jar of hard candy wrapped in tissue paper. Roy Dale had brought no regular gift, of course, but he tried to give Dixie Dawn a quarter and a dime he found in his pocket.
    Dixie Dawn refused to take the money, and then she refused to take the gift-wrapped package from me as well.
    Mrs. McNeer insisted that she take the candy and then thank me for it. She ignored Roy Dale altogether.
    Later Roy Dale offered the money to John Wesley, who took it and grinned like an ape and thanked him sincerely.
    We played as many of the games as the five of us could play. We ate as much of the food as we could eat. We filled up bags of party favors to take home. Gallons of ice cream went to waste. We sang happy birthday to Dixie Dawn and she cried like the Missouri and went inside and lay down on her bed under an oscillating fan.
    A ND SO it was over. Or I thought so.
    There was one more event on Mrs. McNeer’s bizarre pathetic agenda. A campout, a sleep-over. Boys only. That was the way Mrs. McNeer put the proposition to us. Good news!What fun! It’s all decided, your parents have agreed. A pup tent! Have you ever heard of anything so wonderful, so fun! You can’t escape, don’t try. Everyone is invited.
    W HAT CAN I say about my life that explains what it meant for me to lie hostage in a tent with these two companions?—Roy Dale and John Wesley. None of it is important. Only this day. The smell of gasoline at the pump, of souring cream, of defoliant and crisp leaves, a wagon pulling ice, noodles, broth, alcohol.
    When night finally came, the party seemed to have been going on for centuries. Mrs. McNeer lighted a couple of lanterns in the backyard. She spread clean soft quilts on the bottom of