Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [92]
I stood still and watched her. She was fiddling with a long-handled fork, looking over every now and then at the other children. Her face was flushed pink and sweaty, and she looked swollen in her orange-and-white organdy dress. I remembered Mama saying Mrs. Pearl just didn’t know how to dress her daughter.
“She shouldn’t put her in all that embroidery. As fat as that child is, it just makes her look bigger.”
I agreed. Shannon looked like a sausage stuffed in a too-small casing. She also looked like she had been crying. Past the tables, Mrs. Pearl was sitting with half a dozen wispy thin women, two of whom were holding babies.
“Precious. Precious,” I heard someone exclaim in a reedy voice.
“You fat old thing.” One of Shannon’s cousins ran past her and stage-whispered loud in her ear. “You musta eat nothing but pork since you was born. Turned you into the hog you are.” He laughed and ran on. Shannon pulled off her glasses and started cleaning them on her skirt.
“Jesus shit,” I muttered to myself.
I had always suspected that I was the only friend Shannon Pearl had in the world. That was part of what made me feel so mean and evil around her, knowing that I didn’t really care enough about her to be her best friend. But hearing her cousin talk to her that way brought back the first time I’d met her, the way I’d loved her stubborn pride, the righteous rage she turned on her tormentors. She didn’t look righteous at that moment. She looked tired and hurt and ashamed. Her face made me feel sick and angry, and guilty about her all over again.
I kicked at the short wooden fence for a moment and then swung one leg up to climb over. All right, she was a little monster, but she was my friend, and the kind of monster I could understand. Twenty feet away from me, Shannon sniffed and reached for the can of lighter fluid by the grill. She hadn’t even seen me.
Afterward, people kept asking me what happened.
“Where were you,” Sheriff Cole said for the third or fourth time. “And what exactly did you see?” He never gave me a chance to tell him. Maybe because it was hard to hear over Mrs. Pearl’s screaming.
“Uh huh, and where were you?” He kept looking over his shoulder toward the grill and the sputtering fat fire.
I knew he hadn’t heard a word I said. But Mrs. Pearl had. She had heard me clear, and she flailed at the people holding her, trying to get her hands on me. She kept screaming “You!” over and over like I had done something, but all I had done was watch. I was sure of that. I had never gotten two steps past the fence.
Shannon had put her glasses back on. She had the lighter-fluid can in one hand and she took up that long-handled fork in the other. She poked the coals with the fork and sprayed them with the fluid. The can made a popping noise as she squeezed it. She was trying to get more of the coals burning, it seemed. Or maybe she just liked the way the flames leaped up. She sprayed and sprayed, pulled back and sprayed again.
Shannon shook her hand. I heard the lighter-fluid can sputter and suck air. I saw the flame run right up to it and go out. Then it came back with a boom. The can exploded, and fire ballooned out in a great rolling ball.
Shannon didn’t even scream. Her mouth was wide open, and she just breathed the flames in. Her glasses went opaque, her eyes vanished, and all around her skull her fine hair stood up in a crown of burning glory. Her dress whooshed and billowed into orange-yellow smoky flames. I saw the fork fall, the wooden handle on fire. I saw Mrs. Pearl come to her feet and start to run toward her daughter. I saw all the men drop their ice-tea glasses. I saw Shannon stagger and stumble from side to side, then fall in a heap. Her dress was gone. I saw the smoke turn black and