Icy Sparks Read Free Page A

his one cup, black with six tablespoons of sugar, and I drank my milk. All of us ate our oatmeal. I ladled honey on mine. Patanni preferred sugar. Matanni ate hers unadorned. No one resurrected Matanni’s mustache. That one big pop had unleashed all of the tension, and the space inside my head grew large again, plumped up with thoughts. We ate in silence, and I sat calmly, as though nothing had happened.
    Still, after that Saturday morning, during the summer of 1956, the urges claimed me. I was no longer Icy Sparks from Poplar Holler. I was no longer that little girl from Icy Creek Farm—our sixty-acre homestead, replete with two milk cows, a dozen chickens, and Big Fat, the five-hundred-pound sow. I was now a little girl who had to keep all of her compulsions inside. Whenever it became too much, after hours of hoarding blinkings and poppings that threatened to burst out in a thousand grotesque movements, I’d offer to get Matanni a jar of green beans from the root cellar, a pantry-sized room dug from a hill not twenty feet from the back door; and, once inside, I’d close the wooden planked door and let loose. Every blink that had been stored up spilled forth. Every jerk that had been contained leaped out. For ten minutes, I’d contort until the anxiety was all spent. Then I’d climb up on the footstool and grab the Mason jar.
    With canned beans in hand, heading toward the house, I thought, Secrets are evil, and wondered what secrets my grandparents kept hidden. I listened to the crickets sing. Covered in shadows, their legs contorted deep in the woods; chirping, they gave their secrets away. A wildcat cried, mourning over something forbidden. Down a dirt road cradled between two gnarled, unfriendly mountains, Poplar Holler guarded its mysteries. So far, mine were hidden in a root cellar. Clitus Stewart’s were tucked beneath his mattress. Mamie Tillman would throw hers into Little Turtle Pond. Everyone in Poplar Holler had secrets, even the animals, but I—Icy Sparks—knew that mine were the worst.

Chapter 2
    I f I could catch a ride into town, I went to the movies whenever I could. Immersed in celluloid fantasies, I became a rugged, square-jawed pioneer with a rifle, protecting my land, shooting bloodthirsty Comanches, or I was Running Deer, a Navajo Indian maiden, sitting cross-legged in front of a fire, cradling a baby in my arms. I became Shirley Temple, tap-dancing across the floor, or Joan Crawford, mysterious and dark, scheming for money, plotting out murder. As I sat in the second row of the Darley Theater in Ginseng, I longed to be anyone else. Even Ginseng’s Jeanette Owens in her wheelchair seemed luckier than I was. At least the townsfolk pitied her. They thought her brave, rolling through life, a sour grin plastered over her face. Lonnie Spikes, a twenty-year-old simpleton, elicited clucking sounds and slow, pendulous swings of the head. “Poor thing,” the townsfolk said. “He ain’t got no idea. ’Tis a blessing.” Each citizen slackened his pace to let Lonnie stumble by. He’d amble toward the Ginseng Post Office, where he’d sit for hours on the outside steps with his pants unzipped, his tongue lolling from his mouth, his eyes enameled over like those of a corpse.
    Clutching a Coke in one hand and a box of Milk Duds in the other, I scrunched back into the brown leather seat, my feet nervously rapping the floor, and waited for Coyote Sunrise to begin. The lights blinked three times. Joel McRoy, slouched in the chair behind me, kicked the back of my seat and said, “Icy Sparks ain’t nobody’s girlfriend.”
    â€œWho cares?” I answered, swallowing some Coke and munching ice.
    â€œPeavy Lawson does,” Joel said. “He likes you.”
    I twisted around and glared at him. “I’m only ten,” I snarled. “I don’t like boys.”
    â€œYou ought to like him,” Joel said.
    â€œHow