Mother Country by Peggy Leon

Author:Peggy Leon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504023283
Publisher: The Permanent Press (ORD)

15

There would be fireworks. Not the normal 4th of July rockets, erratic and hesitant, that burst like a case of electric hiccups over the Taylor ball field. The Fourth of July was long past. Advertisements stapled to the walls of the market and the post office shouted BIG FIREWORKS DISPLAY THE FLATS AUGUST 2 COURTESY COPPER KING.

Courtesy of Copper King, there was the catch. The men of Sixth Street rumbled to each other, If the Copper King was paying, expect pink slips in pay envelopes come Friday. The Copper King knew and the men knew it would be harder to complain, to organize and protest if they came home to a wife with the remembered sparkle of fireworks in her eyes.

You’ll see, the wives would say to them. It’s just temporary. The pit needs you. The smelter needs you. You’ll see.

The women would pat their men’s shoulders and glow down on them the borrowed brilliance of fireworks. The men would stand up in disgust and head to the Taylor Club, pushing through children in the yard who swooped and screamed, fiery missiles of color. The men of Sixth Street were cynical about their employer, but they were usually right. They knew nothing about the price of copper or overseas suppliers. They gauged their future by one thin, green envelope, the pink slip or the grudging, paltry raise it might contain.

Still, there would be fireworks. Wet bottles of beer waited to be rescued from icy baths in tubs carried to the flats in the back of pickups. Young women would pick their way through the sage, their hips swishing in light, soft dresses as they looked for a spot to lay in twos and threes under the stars. Children would sizzle with white-hot joy. And later, maybe, there would be other fireworks, in dark bedrooms with willing wives, women already satiated with the flash and soft drift of light. So the men of Sixth Street put away their grumbling and waited with sly expectation for August 2.

Josie could have gone with her friends. They called, urging her, enticing her with tales of what boys were coming and stolen bottles of liquor.

No, she said. I’m taking my cousin, Becky. We’re having a last fling.

I knew what that meant. She would be handing me over to Aunt Anna soon. But for Josie that was only a small part of it. The moment the diploma had crossed her palm in June, Josie considered herself a college woman. She had left her classmates in the dust months ago.

She had me take the extra blanket from the hall closet, while she collected a paper bag from under the sink, walked out the back door and down the stairs to the cellar.

Take this, she said, returning and thrusting the full paper bag into my hands. Its ruffled edge was folded and refolded precisely. I could detect glass bottles, cellar-cool through the rough paper. I felt carefully, two Ball jars of Eli’s wine.

If Aunt Anna finds out … I began.

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