Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall Page B

write about it. Meanwhile, I’d fry pies for everyone and be less like Mama and more like Auntie in both word and deed.
    By two o’clock, the picnic tables were loaded with platters of ham and spicy fried chicken. There was pot roast too, with tiny potatoes and onions, bowls of salad and cauliflower and corn casseroles, and at the far end were the desserts.
    The Reverend offered up a prayer that rose into the dead trees and caught on the pointy branches. The blessing wailed and boomed and spilled out over the people and the roads of town, and I’m sure the patients in the old folks’ home could hear and join in, and maybe the ones passing on the highway too. It settled like sweet rain over the food. Then all our amens floated up to join it. Renewed and hungry, we took our forks and our paper plates and walked the line.
    A time or two, Uncle and other men chased off a stray dog that came sniffing around, and while we sat on quilts, eating, a truck pulled up and three men got out with big black cases, and Uncle Cunny said, “Well, looks like the band is finally here.” Theydeclined to eat until they’d played some, and they tuned up their strings.
    And play they did, firing us up with “Oh, Susanna” and other tunes I knew, and some that I didn’t. Auntie and the other women sat in metal folding chairs and tapped their feet and swayed with the rhythm. The band broke for dinner and paper cups of cool drink.
    When they were rested and ready to start up again, Uncle took from the seat of his truck a similar case, and pulled out an old brown guitar. If that wood had ever been shiny, it wasn’t now. He perched himself on the edge of a chair while I watched in wonder, and messed with the strings. Then the band lit up with a fast-and-classy “Down by the Riverside.” I especially liked this song, with its single line “Ain’t gonna study war no more.”
    Uncle played marvelously, with a plastic pick. He leaned into the music and over the guitar, and he set it afire with strumming born of his heart and soul. Like he had just then found a way to let himself loose.
    And then, of course, the dancing started, and Auntie was swept out of her chair. Uncle gave up playing to catch her up, and then danced with Claudie and Plain Genie, and finally me too.
    He smiled. “I got to get back to playin’, so I saved the best for last.”
    “Uncle Cunny,” I said. “You ever been married?”
    “No, ma’am, I have not. You lookin’ for a husband?”
    I blushed. “No, sir. Not a man in this world would want me for a wife.”
    “Child, why would you say a thing like that?”
    “ ’Cause it’s true. I hardly know who I am, Uncle Cunny.”
    The music had subsided into nothing, and I turned to look.
    There was my mama, stumbling through the sand on her spiky heels. “Don’t let me interrupt,” she sang out. “Hey, can anyone join—without an invite? I’m sure that was just an oversight, y’all bein’ such good neighbors.”
    I could see that she carried her own plastic glass and was drunk as a lord. I ran and grabbed her wrist. “Please, Mama, go back home,” I said.
    But she didn’t see me, didn’t hear. Times like this, I wondered if I was even there.
    “Len Hazzleton!” Mama called out. “You servin’ liquor over there? Come on, now, fill a lady’s cup.”
    Reverend Ollie was on his feet. “Miz Shine, why don’t you come here and sit awhile. Enjoy this fine music, let me fix you a plate.”
    “Don’t give me any of your horseshit, Ollie Green. I ain’t hungry, I come for a drink.”
    Miz Bertha Hazzleton was incensed. She stomped over to the counter and on around and took her mister by the ear, leading him out of our hearing. I knew what she was doing—she was laying into her man for even knowing my mama. So—Mr. Hazzleton had been over to visit her too.
    Unsure what to do, I ran to Auntie and sat in her lap, too big, too long, sticking out like a blinking sign.
    Mama waggled her fingers at the