Read The Country of Ice Cream Star Online
Authors: Sandra Newman
The Country of Ice Cream Star
Also by Sandra Newman
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The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done
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How NOT to Write a Novel
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The Western Lit Survival Kit: How to Read the Classics Without Fear
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.
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
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
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.
