The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen Read Online Free PDF

not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst , ’” he intoned.
    â€œWe’ve come visiting!” roared Kookie. “Everyone’s got diphtheria back home, and school’s closed and Cissy and Tibbie’s got no place to live, so Miss May’s brung us to join the Bright Lights—we had to change trains four times! And this is Chad Powers, who come along for the ride. Where’s this shipwreck, then?”
    â€œKindly allow me to communicate, Habakkuk,” said Miss March reprovingly, but Curly was already at the window, dispensing quotations like rosettes. He and Miss March shook hands through the bars, while she explained about her mother in Des Moines and how she would not be stopping. Since Miss March was no taller than Cissy, prisoner and teacher were able to see only each other’s foreheads, and with their free hands, they brushed away sewage flies from their faces, only to feel them resettle time and again, like kisses.
    When Miss March asked him to lead the way to the shipwreck, Curly apologized: “Sadly, lady, I’m in here and you’re out there—on account of the profanity.”
    â€œAnd did you speak profanities, Mr. Curlitz?” she replied, tight-lipped.
    â€œCertainly not! I spoke the words of the Bard of Avon! But ‘mountainous error be too highly heap’d for truth to o’erpeer.’ That’s to say, they didn’t understand I was speaking Shakespearean—thought I was blaspheming.”
    â€œThen let us correct the error, Mr. Curlitz,” said Miss March decidedly. “Would you care for a coffee bean?”
    It was a tedious walk downriver, their path often blocked by bulrushes as tall as their heads, and by big hunks of driftwood washed up by the last flood. It was made more tedious by a fine, mizzling rain. Their boots sank into the soft black soil, and the footprints, as they pulled their feet free, filled up with shining brown water. The trees changed to a uniform, ghostly gray and hissed like the people at Olive Town Station running Powers out of town. The bulky luggage seemed ridiculous and irrelevant. Who, in this sodden waterworld, would ever need a change of petticoat, a portfolio, a book, a sunhat, a crutch? Curly tried his best to shelter Miss March under her umbrella, but the spokes only snagged on the vegetation and brought extra water cascading off the leaves. At one point a water rat ran across their feet and plopped into the river. At another, a section of bank subsided into the water like a suicide despairing.
    Miss May March had harangued the sheriff of Salvation so hard that he had shortened Curly’s sentence by four days and released him, just to get her off his doorstep. On and on she had raged about “sacred English literature,” “small-minded, small-town busybodies,” and “wilful ignorance.” Even Curly had been unable to poke a quotation in edgewise. As a result, he was on his way home to the bosom of the Bright Lights Theater Company. As he explained to everyone who would listen, he was now not merely the ticket seller: he was front-of-house/accounting/publicity/prompt/refreshments/property-manager/walk-on actor.
    â€œWell, of course, I shall be on my way to my mother’s in Des Moines, just as soon as I’ve delivered these children . . . ,” said Miss May March, unwilling to stray onto the insalubrious subject of acting.
    â€œThere it is!” Curly cried delightedly, breaking into a trot and pointing ahead with the umbrella. “The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne. ”
    And there it was, indeed.
    The poop was not of beaten gold, nor were the oars of silver, but the stranded boat was certainly a sight to see: a sight fit to stop Shakespeare dead in his tracks. Like the ziggurat of some long-dead civilization, the paddle steamer lay fringed around with vegetation, its full extent uncertain beyond the shifting curtain of rain: