Sandra Newman: The Country of Ice Cream Star

MY NAME BE ICE CREAM FIFTEEN STAR. MY BROTHER BE DRIVER Eighteen Star, and my ghost brother Mo-Jacques Five Star, dead when I myself was only six years old. Still my heart is rain for him, my brother dead of posies little.

My mother and my grands and my great-grands been Sengle pure. Our people be a tarry night sort, and we skinny and long. My brother Driver climb a tree with only hands, because our bones so light, our muscles fortey strong. We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like ten guns, and we be bell to see. Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love.

We Sengles be a wandering sort. We never grown nothing from anything, never had no tato patch nor cornfield. Be thieves, and brave to hunt. A Sengle hungry even when he eat, even when he rich, he still want to grab and rob, he hungry for something he ain’t never seen nor thought of. We was so proud, we was ridiculous as wild animals, but we was bell and strong.

In my greats’ time, we come up from Chespea Water; was living peaceful by Two Towns until the neckface murderers come. Then we flee onward to these Massa woods. Here we thieve well. We live as long as Lowells — sometimes twenty years or twenty-one years. Every Sengle have a knife, and we together possess two guns. Driver got a gun that shoot, and Crow Sixteen a broken shotgun, still is good for scaring.

This day my story start, we been out scratching in the evacs. These evacs be house after house that face each other in twin lines. Houses shambledown and rotten; ya, the road between is broken through with pushing weeds. Get fifty houses in a street, and twenty streets in one hour’s walking. When these houses all was full, it been more people here than squirrels. Ain’t nobody living now.

Loot here be older, but is rich. We find every kind of thing — pharmacies, can food, clothes. Find cigarettes, be old with mushroom taste, but still can smoke. What I love most — can of Beef-a-roni. I eat that cold. I eat Beef-a-roni any way. The person invented Beef-a-roni, that person was a valuable genius.

This raid, it been Jermaine Fourteen, Asha Badmouth Fifteen and my brother Driver Eighteen, who been Sengle sergeant then. Ya, my favorite little, Keepers Eight, been there on scouting task. We come out with two horses, my own finicky spotten pony Money and Big Smoke who pull a sledge.

Ya, this been a feary day, because we find a sleeper house. Been two sleepers there, they lain together in a bed. One been grown, one eightish size. Both gone with years to stain and bones. Skeletons mix their ribs, their ghosty hair caught in one tangle.

In houses with these dead, we take no loot. It be unlucky wealth. Nor is good taboo to leave the house. Must rid it with clean fire.

Driver, Jermaine and Asha Badmouth gone to set the fire, while I keep hunting through the houses round with scrambly Keepers Eight. We scout the flooden cellars barefoot, then scratch upward through each room, until we meet the broken roof its sunlight. Then the nextdoor house.

This be grimy task. Ain’t matter how perfect anything look in a closet. When you take it up, dust fly. Hurt vicious in your eyes. Times, be flittering moths, look like they born from dust that instant. But the clothes, they often still all right.

That day, ain’t scarcely nothing worth the carry. Food is rotten, cloth be mold, books crumble like dry earth. Ain’t no metal but is rust. Keepers frustrate well, go swearing like a mally baby. Child be feroce to want, will rob the laces from a digger’s shoe. But this evac street be poory gone. We scratch out five houses, then slop tired in a raggity bed, upstairs of this cold house with scarce no windows. We waiting on the fire across the street to catch correct. Then we can go out staring, warm our face.

The only loot we find:

• 5 cans soup, 2 cans corn, 1 can condense milk, clean and bone. Other cans been rusten useless.

• 1 box allergic pharmacy, 1 Robitussin coughing drink.

• big coat for Asha Badmouth when her pregnant belly grow, ain’t prettieuse for nothing but it smell right.

• 1 bottle whiskey, 1 bottle gin. Other bottles unseal and the booze gone stank.

• these sleepers’ evac notice.

• a plastic baby, sort with arms and legs that you can turn. The painten eyes so worn, it make your eyes feel scary. Look the way dust in your eyes can feel.

A plastic baby be bad luck. The little children say it mean somebody going to die. Truth, littles always be inventing superstitions. One little say it, they all go believe and tell it onward. Sometimes, I think the digger gods was starting from a little’s maginations. “They got a man inside the clouds that punish you if you is lazy.” Dribble talk from ungrown heads. However that be, now my Keepers frighten.

On her neck, she wear the lastic string left from a candy necklace. Now, in fretting nerves, she wind the lastic round her pointer finger. Watch the fingertip swell bright, is like she strangle her own fear. Other hand got a cigarette. She been smoking this, and shake the ash on her own head. Be ash all in her bushy hair, for she believe ash kill nits. Keepers never had nits. This be proof to her it work.

And Keepers such a warry dirty cub, she hurt my heart. I ain’t know what other children feel, but I swear I feel more. See my Keepers frighten, and it feel like swallowing ice. Yo, the child so vally proud, it hurt her arrogance if I pet her, if I touch her any way. She sit on the scurfy bed and look her miseries, I going to want to pat her head. But cannot pat no proud eight’s head.

Ya, beliefs be catching. Soon my nerves go jittery self. Somebody going to die — yo sho, somebody always going to die. Ain’t been a year that I remember when nobody die. Only Keepers too little to die, every child I love too needful, and my Sengle people be too few.

“Damn you, Keeps,” I say. “This person can be dying anywhere. Can be some Mass Army dying. More of them that die is wonderful.”

“Nay, it got to be somebody I know. I find the baby.”

“Yo sho. Maybe it be Mouse.”

She startle, and look up joyeuse and warry-eyed. But, thought by thought, she quit believing.

“I ain’t never be so lucky.” Keepers gripe her mouth. “Bet you Mouse gone find a baby. He want me to die right now. He want me to die sick.”

Now we smell the kindling fire across the street, a hoarsen sweetness.

I say, “You going to stop with that now, foolish.”

“Ain’t no fool, I knowing right.”

“You act like Keepers Two, sometimes.”

“I ain’t. I act like Keepers Twelve.”

“Keepers Noisy, all it is.”

“You hate Mouse. Say you hate him and say I ain’t going to die. Somebody old like you die.”

“Damn, quit that,” I say. “Or next time Asha Badmouth stay with you.”

Keepers make a fart noise with her lips and swear again. I turn and grab the evac notice. Start to read it loud, try to distract her into reading practice. But she only shut her eyes and yell the evac notice words. Remember almost all. Then we both go laughing, yelling. Rival to say this faster-louder. Every Sengle know a notice of evacuation well.

When we finish, Keepers quit her screaming and pronounce, “Then sleepers gone evacuating and they go to Europe.”

“Certain, gone to Europe.”

“But where this Europe be?” she say. “You never seeing Europe.”

“Shoo, is farther distance, cross the ocean.”

Keepers frown in littlish scorn. She put the plastic baby on the floor, she done with dying. Dying finish now. “You ain’t know. I bet nobody cross the ocean never. Ain’t no Europe.”