The Country of Ice Cream Star Read online

  Also by Sandra Newman

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  Cake

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  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

  Copyright © 2014 Sandra Newmascn

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, a Penguin Random House Company, and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Chatto and Windus, a division of The Random House Group Ltd., London. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Newman, Sandra, 1965–, author The country of ice cream star / Sandra Newman.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-0-345-80743-4

  eISBN 978-0-345-80745-8

  I. Title.

  PS3614.E63C69 2014 813′.6 C2013-906389-7

  Cover art and design by Julia Connolly

  Map by Darren Bennett

  v3.1

  For Helen Trickett

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  In Massa: Tober 2–Vember 1

  1: My Trouble its Beginning: Tober 2

  2: Of Roos Before

  3: Of Tober 2, Prolonging

  4: Of Crow my Animose

  5: My Parley to the Christings

  6: Of Pasha Roo

  7: At Lowell Mill

  8: By Driver’s Hiding Meadow: Tober 3–15

  9: Of Nat Mass Armies

  10: Of Pasha roo His Lies

  11: By Hunts with Pasha Roo: Tober 15–29

  12: Tober 29 Its Feary Night

  13: Of the Radio Speech

  14: The Parley on The Roos

  15: Of Crow his Treachery

  16: Of Papa Tea

  17: Of Rooish Gift

  18: Of Taken Queen

  19: My Sergeant Time Beginning

  20: The Spring When I Love Mamadou

  21 Tober 31 Its Evil

  22: What Been at Tophet House

  23: Of Rescue Desperations

  24: Of Deema Roo

  25: Our Fleeing

  26: First Runner, Army Born

  27: By El Mayor his Sleeproom

  28: The Papa Sickness

  29: Of Stolen Children

  30: By Middy Night

  31: Our Last Departure

  Through Bandon Woods: Vember 1–28

  32: Our Journey: Vember 1–26

  33: The Simper, of her People

  34: Of Danger Its Arrival

  35: The Roading People

  36: To Marias

  37: My Questioning for Maria

  38: Of Medicals

  39: The Night Beyond our Life

  40: Of Proofing

  41: Of Anselm Weasel

  42: The Parley for my War

  43: Simón and the Maria Gone

  44: My Worst Apostle Met

  45: The Roos in Massa Woods

  46: The Gunroom Talk

  47: Last Talks of this Enormous Day

  Of Godding In Marias: Vember 29–Cember 25

  48: First Godding Days: Vember 28–Cember 10

  49: Of Spying Various

  50: Of Vanish People Their Appearance

  51: By Simón Zelote

  52: Of First Rebellions

  53: Nochebuena its First Murders

  54: The Search to Massa Woods

  55: The Metro Speech

  56: Felipe his Religions

  57: To Loisaida by our Warry Night

  58: The Roofen Conversation

  59: Of Quantico Its Wars

  60: Last Meeting of this Night

  61: This Morning Its Bonesse and Evil

  62: Of Navidad Its Final Griefs

  63: Pasha Roo his Wars

  64: By Quantico

  65: The Situation Room

  66: Of Rooish Prisoners

  The War at Quantico: Cember 26–January 6

  67: My War Begin

  68: Of Roos Their Company

  69: Of Battle Various

  70: Of Our Last Desperations

  71: Fort Myer, by the Newking

  72: The Flight from Arlington

  73: Of my Last War

  74: Of three Desires

  75: My Final Parley

  Acknowledgements

  IN MASSA

  Tober 2–Vember 1

  1

  MY TROUBLE ITS BEGINNING: TOBER 2

  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 next-door 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.’

  ‘Shoo, is Europe. Seen no maps?’

  ‘They pictures. Ain’t no Europe real.’

  ‘Bone, it ain’t no Europe. Sleepers all be hiding in the woods. They coming now, be angry how we robbing all their soup.’

  ‘They sleepers wanting us to have their soup. They leave it here. Nor it be no Europe. You lying and you ignorant and I be Keepers Twelve.’

  Truth, this Europe mostly be a tale for pacifying littles. Most older children think the sleepers all be dead, but ain’t no proof. If sleepers gone to Europe or to hell, they leave the same bad silence.

  What we knowing certain of them be a shorter list. We know their looks from pictures left on walls, from paper magazines. They had straight hair like fur. This grown in any different colors – yellow, orange, black and white. Skin was pinkish mostly, like a plastic baby or a roo. Some faces wrinkle up and baggy. Some lost most their hair. How Lowells say, this be from years – these sleepers living old as parrots.

  Yo, be seldom pictures where the children looking normal brown, with person hair instead of fur. What we think, these been our greater parents in the Times Before. Ain’t sleepers but is children right.

  We know the sleepers fled from sickness, a killing fever callen WAKS, some eighty years before. We know their goods, we guess some facts of their abandon life. But their evacuation be a rumor of a mystery.

  Most we can learn be from the evac notices themself. These notices all the same, is only numbers and the street names different. They say exactly this:

  NOTICE OF EVACUATION

  This is a final notice. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has ordered the evacuation of your street on MONDAY MARCH 15TH. A luxury air-conditioned bus is scheduled to stop at 1 SLEIGH ROAD at 3PM, MONDAY MARCH 15TH to transport residents to temporary shelter. Your temporary shelter is RAMADA INN, WESTFORD, MA. Residents should not drive cars to the temporary shelter or to the meeting place. An allowance of two pieces of luggage per household will be strictly observed. Each piece of luggage must be no more than 70 pounds. Both pieces together must be no more than 120 pounds. Additional luggage cannot be accommodated on buses and will be left at the roadside.

  Medical checks will be required before passengers are invited to board. Residents suffering from WAKS will not be allowed to board the buses. This is for passenger safety. WAKS sufferers and their families should report to the Department of Public Health at 617 256 2412 for further information. Abuse of a medical inspector, verbal or physical, will be punished with no less than 30 days in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

  Emergency Coordinator for Middlesex County,

  Victor Espinoza

  We got no knowledge of this WAKS, the sickness that destroy them. Been eighty years of quietness. No memory reach that fact. Some children think that WAKS be posie
s, but nobody know. Dead sleepers left so long, they got no skin to see no posies on. That body tell you nothing but: ‘You frighten like a digger, child. You shivering and weak to look at me.’

  And no one like to find a house with sleepers dead inside. Be a sleeper there, we burn the house with all its goods. Is glorieuse always when the house consume to fluffy ash and sticks, it make you happy in your eyes. The orange windows flaming out. Then it fall to its knees. Trees shivering around it, gladden with its crazy heat. And after, all be blackish fine. Inside a year, is growing flowers. Make you proud to be a Sengle, cleaner of the sicken world.

  So now we watch the fire begin, me and Keepers Eight Fofana, standing at our upstair window. The burning house stand kittercorner to ours, in easy view, and Driver and Jermaine and Asha Badmouth come out, done with kindling. They stand watching, by a pile of water bags and soaken blankets, kept in case the fire escape. Truth, no fire will spread this day. Is soggy wet from morning rain. Still Driver make each hold a bag and blanket. So be drill.

  House begin to look a little itchy, before the firelight come. As the flickering raise, it show clear in the bust-out windows. Is like it be a life we woke inside. Then the roof go staining black and fire squeeze through the stain. Fire make a hole and flames push through the roof like angry hair.

  The flame and sky two different kinds of bright. Sun look tame and sleepy while this fire go left and right so huge. It make us big and bright with nerves, although we Sengles, kin to burning. Keepers settle staring to the fire, her mouth agape. I settle to my fire trance.

  Then Driver look back and catch sight of us. He startle disapproving. Next, he stalking back toward our house, with angry face.

  Keepers look to me. I say, ‘Yo Driver going to give me talk.’

  ‘Heed him, sure,’ say Keepers. ‘Got to be obedient.’

  ‘Like you be.’

  ‘Ain’t be obedience, town go fall apart.’

  ‘You wise as something. Ain’t know if it be dirt or wood.’

  Keepers make a fart noise and she grin.

  I say, ‘You wise as dirty feet.’

  Then Driver there behind us in the open door. He nod me out, and I come peevish, sorry-tail. We go on down the hall, cause Driver guard his business from the littles. Everything a dignity for him.