Free Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall

“My daddy told me Clarice Shine has a red light and a real bad name.”
    “She doesn’t have any red lights. And anyhow, I’ll bet you don’t have a daddy.”
    At that, he went silent.
    “Finn?” I said. “Come on and tell me the truth, why don’t you?”
    He closed his eyes and was quiet for so long, I thought he’d gone to sleep on his perch. “He kilt a man. Where we was camping, about a mile downstream. In the night this fella was trying to rob us, and he held a knife to my throat—thing was this long .” He held his hands apart to show. “My daddy kilt him. Somebody saw, so they come to get him. Cops drove up where we was camping. They had these dogs—we heard ’em snapping big teeth.”
    “Oh, Finn.”
    “My daddy gave me his ball cap, and he said, ‘Son, you run over yonder and climb up in that big oak. You’ll be safe as long as you don’t come down.’ So I did. And they took him away. I been here ever since.”
    I could think of no words that might aid him or comfort either of us. But that night I carried Finn a sliver of pie, hoping Auntie wouldn’t miss it from the dish. He didn’t seem to mind that I woke him, and I’d brought along my blanket and pillow. Auntie found me under the tree in the morning.
    In the two days that followed, the rains came down and soaked everything till we lived in a world that was spongy underfoot and inside our lungs. Just before noon of the second day, two deputies pulled up in their black-and-white car, and got out and stood in our dooryard, looking up at Finn.
    “Don’t you bother him,” I said from some distance. I carried an umbrella. “He’s got our permission to live there, and he isn’t hurtin’ anyone.”
    The cops talked in hushed-down voices, saying the boy was fourteen and white, and who in the world would take him in, and the county sure as hell had no place to put him. And then I heard the rest of the story.
    Finn was kin to the Sarasons, who lived one county over, and they’d come looking for him, to tell him the court had given his daddy a free lawyer. That man spoke up for his daddy in front of the judge, but he couldn’t get him off, him being guilty as hell. The Sarasons sure as the devil didn’t want Finn.
    In the end, Uncle Cunny and some of his domino pals fetched a ladder and climbed up there to rig a canvas tarp over Finn’s head. I climbed up too. They hammered together a platform so Finn could lie down, and for the first time I got a look at the world from his angle. It felt cool and fresh. Up here, there was nothing but the shifting of leaves like silky green clouds, and the way my heart beat, and then skipped, and then beat again.
    Aunt Jerusha brought Finn a bar of Palmolive and a towel—plus a bucket of wash water and another to do his business in. I privately wondered what would happen when the shit bucket was full, and I resolved to be Finn’s friend and companion even when this part of the yard began to stink something awful.

12
    I n the side yard, Auntie kept geese, and they were mean as hell—three long-necked, splay-footed honkers bent on flying at me with their necks stretched and throats hissing, and beating me to death with their hard, vicious beaks. Trouble was, they ran loose on the place, and it was my job, twice a day, to round them up from the river or from the field across the road, and herd them home. Auntie’d had their wings clipped so they couldn’t fly away, but they tried, running across that yard like they were about to lift off, making noises like whole pits full of snakes, and they made my life miserable.
    On the other hand, they gave Jerusha no more grief than a trio of slugs. They adored her, and she them. In addition to feeding them a fistful of grain each day, she parched corn in the oven, and I guess those geese smelled it, because they stood at the back step like that meal was the Second Coming.
    The two small females were called Sophie and Robert. When I pointed out that Robert was a