Playing With Matches Read Online Free PDF Page B

helicopter blades and the rest of her bopping up and down. Genie watched from among the oaks along the river.
    “First thing we got to do is have microphones,” Claudie said. And she took up a fat stick and broke it under her bare foot. She held one half to her chin. “What you wanna sing?”
    “Well—”
    “I can see you gonna be a joy kill,” she said. “You don’t got the beat.”
    “Which beat?” I said.
    “You don’t hear that music goin’ on inside you, girl?”
    “You mean—in my head?”
    I heard plenty of things—story ideas and clever ways to say stuff, words I’d read in a book. “I guess I could tell a joke,” I said. “I know this one about a horse and a piece of string.…”
    Claudie handed me my half of the stick. “Hold it up to your mouth, like this, and say somethin’. Go on, now.”
    So I did, and we spent a while with her belting out songs and me yammering into a stick, saying memorized things like “ ’Twas on the good ship Hesperus that sailed the stormy sea …’ ” and “For unto us a child is born” and “The war in Switzerland is ended, and now American troops are expected to …”
    Claudie held up her hand. “They’s a war?” she said.
    “There’s always a war. I’m like a radio announcer. Auntie said when she was a kid, they used to watch these newsreels before a movie, and—”
    “I ain’t ever been to a movie,” Claudie said. “So stop your showin’ off. Say something folks can understand. An’ make it about me.”
    “Okay.” I put on a haughty air. “Miss Maytubby from Atlanta, will you pass us the pork chops and the chutney, do you mind?”
    Claudie’s face was pure annoyance. “I ain’t from Atlanta, and I ain’t ever the hell had pork chops either.”
    My jaw fell slack. “You’ve never had pork chops? Ham? Sweet potatoes?”
    “I had sweet-tater pie,” she said. “Come to think on it, I never see y’all walkin’ down to the highway for free cheese or beans. Y’all must be rich.”
    “We aren’t rich,” I said. But it stuck in my mind to ask Auntie later. “Aunt Jerusha made a bunch of money in the chicken circus,” I said grandly. “Enough to live on for the rest of our lives.”
    “Anyway, you’re s’posed to introduce me first thing.”
    “I’ll be the master of ceremonies.”
    “Yeah,” Claudie said. “That. And you can sing along sometimes.”
    “How many songs are we gonna do?”
    “Three or four,” she said. “Enough to make it worth five cents.”
    “Right.” I nodded. This whole thing was beginning to seem better now, and I was counting up the people we might invite—Aunt Jerusha, Uncle Cunny and his friends, the Hazzletons, the Oaty brothers. Miz Maytubby and Alvadene.
    “We’ll ask the Sherrards and their sister-in-law, Miss Minnie Roosevelt,” I said.
    I wondered about Miss Shookie and old Bitsy, and if Reverend Ollie would come—and what about Miz Millicent Poole? Nobody liked that crazy woman with her wild red hair and white scalp showing through. Her dresses hung uneven, and her eyes were red-rimmed. Oft times her nose was dripping, and she made no move to wipe it. Knowing Miz Millicent, she might take it on herself to collect our money. It had come to me recently that she and my mother and I were the only white people on Potato Shed Road.
    “Let’s do this on Saturday night,” I said. “At six o’clock. We can sing and dance on our back porch and put chairs in the yard for the audience.”
    Claudie grinned, her big white teeth shining. “Now you’re gettin’ it, girl,” she said. “Let’s start with ‘Rock Around the Clock,’ I do that real good.”
    And she did. I was dumbfounded. For somebody who lived, as Miss Shookie said, in the lap of poverty, Claudie knew all the words, and the melodies too. She had the moves down perfect, the jiving and juking, and her feet pounded and ground the dirt while the top of her twisted separate from the bottom. It was better than what we did