PAGE THREE

Rocket was seventeen and full of junk that I wasn't allowed to say until I got much, much older. But he was electric through and through, and that had always gone to his head. for fun, Rocket would make my hair stand on end like he'd rubbed it with a balloon, or hit Fish with a wicked zap from the other side of the room. But Rocket could keep the lights on when the power went out, and our family sure liked that, especially the littler Beaumonts.

Rocket was the oldest, with Fish and me following after. Born only a year apart, Fish and I were nearly the same height and looked a lot alike, both with hair like sand and straw-hair like Momma's. But while I had Poppa's hazel eyes, Fish had Momma's ocean blue ones. It was as if we'd each taken a little bit of Momma, or a little bit of Poppa, and made the rest our own.

I wasn't the youngest or the smallest in the family; broody Samson was a dark and shadowy seven, and doll-faced Gypsy was three. It was Gypsy who started calling me Mibs, when my full name, Mississippi, became far too much for her toothsome toddler tongue to manage. But that had been a relief. That name had always followed me around like one of Fish's heavy storm clouds.

The itch and scritch of birthday buzz was about all I was feeling on the Thursday before the friday before the Saturday I turned thirteen. Sitting at the dinner table, next to Poppa's empty chair and ready plate, I barely ate a bite. Across from me, Gypsy prattled endlessly, counting the make-believe creatures she imagined seeing in the room, and begging me to help her name them.

I pushed the food around my plate, ignoring my sister and daydreaming about what it would be like when I got my very own savvy, when the telephone rang right in the middle of pot roast, mashed potatoes, and mighty unpopular green beans. As Momma rose to answer, us kids, and Grandpa Bomba too, seized the chance to plop our mashers on top of our beans while Momma's back was turned. Samson tucked some of those beans into his pockets to give to his dead pet turtle, even though Momma always said he shouldn't be giving it any of our good food, seeing how it was dead and all, and the food would just go to rot. But Samson was sure as sadly sure that his turtle was only hibernating, and Momma hadn't the heart to toss it from the house.

We were all smiling to each other around the kitchen table at the smart way we'd taken care of those beans when Momma dropped the phone with a rattling clatter and a single sob-perfectly devastated. She sank to the floor, looking for all the world as if she were staring right through the checkered brown and blue linoleum to behold the burning hot-lava core at the very center of the Earth.

"It's Poppa," Momma said in a choked voice, as her perfect features stretched and pinched.