COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 17
AUGUST 2021
Her First Blaze An excerpt from Rodney Ross’ new novel, ‘Diversionary Fires’ di-ver-sion-ary: intended to distract attention from something more important. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s fire, there’s Tara Atwater, the character at the center of Diversionary Fires, the new novel by Rodney Ross. Left in her grandparents’ care while her reckless mother worked the Ohio carnival circuit, Tara learned the strange art of the diversionary fire in 1970 from grandmother Beryl, her mentor in flame. She grows too quickly into a mother who never knew her own, raising a son who will never know his father, along Ohio’s Fuego River, where everyone is disparaged as “water bugs.” She mows yards, empties bedpans and presses shirts and, when she dreams, it’s for her son, Dare. So, when Tara comes to hold the right combination of numbers to a record-breaking lottery, she has one problem before she can claim the winnings: What to do about the dead boyfriend, stabbed by her teenage son, on the kitchen floor? It was, after all, his ticket. Author Rodney Ross lives, writes and sweats in Rancho Mirage. His previous novel, The Cool Part of His Pillow, is now in its second edition from JMS Books (first published by Dreamspinner Press), won the LGBT Fiction category from both the Indie Excellence Awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards; was a silver medalist in the 2013 Global EBook Awards; and earned an honorable mention in the 2012 Rainbow Book Awards. Learn more at www.rodneytross.com. Here are portions of the first chapter of Diversionary Fires.
Teryl hated the Sturdivant man
from the get-go, even before he moved in across the street. That’s my house. She’d had the run of the vacant property since she came to live with her grandparents. It was her playground. Hopscotch was still faintly chalked on the driveway. Hidden somewhere was a box of Lemonheads. She’d even buried a pair of her drawers after accidentally soiling them. It was the nicest house on the block, although repairs were needed. The door of the attached garage had been only nine-tenths closed for over a year; a lush poison-something cloaked the chimney; and the front steps had chipped into little slate piles. Because it also featured a large barn-like shed
independent of the house, it always commanded a higher rent. Her ownership came to its end when a bundle of Mr. Sturdivant’s redirected mail to Hobart, Ohio, had been inadvertently left by the postman with her grandmother. With her lower lip tucked under, Beryl announced, “Boyohboy-ohboyohboy, how can you trust a man with a turd in his name?” From the change-of-address affixed to the bundled envelopes, he was moving from a town called Niles in Kentucky. “And what attracts all these Kentuckians here?” To Beryl, the only thing worse than dealing with a Kentuckian was being one. Teryl remembered a little about Kentucky. Kentucky was goldfish in plastic baggies, rolling over railroad tracks into the next town and a Ferris Wheel in a parking lot. Those were the days when she, her mother Cheryl and a man named Grover worked the fairs, living in a trailer with Monticello Attractions painted on both sides, one of a caravan that quickly set up carnivals, monster truck rallies and demolition derbies. Then Monticello Attractions said they couldn’t live in the trailer anymore. She was brought to Hobart to her grandmother Beryl, who she called Grandma Ber like bear, and Grandpa Merrill, who she called DewDad. “Quit your spying out the screen door, Teryl Lyn.” With her teeth out, Grandma Ber was almost unintelligible. In the three years that Teryl had resided at 912 O’Leary, she had watched Ber lose teeth to a dinner roll and corn on the cob (two on the same ear). When she broke one of her canines while eating cantaloupe, she had them all pulled. DewDad had dentures too. A can of Mountain Dew was always at-hand and the high sugar content had dissolved DewDad’s tooth enamel, then every tooth, which was why the nickname and the dentures. He wore the same black sunglasses as his singing hero, Roy Orbison, and the same dyed black hair, the color of a new tire. Most interpreted his nickname as DoDad, like he made things happen, but he was really a Don’tDad. Even what he did for a wage was a throwaway; he worked for a firm that manufactured paint stirsticks. Mostly, he sat outside their back door in a folding chair with his Mountain Dew, eating tablespoons of A1 Steak Sauce or watching UFOs seen only by him. Mr. Sturdivant climbed out his Chevrolet C10 pickup and disappeared into the mouth of the moving truck. Her grandmother put in her teeth. “He lives there now. Keep away.” The biggest worry for Teryl was what already lived there. Ber had forgotten about the family in the garage. Teryl had been skating on the driveway after supper, scissor-turning to dodge the cracks, when something colorless lumbered by. Its sagging belly barely managed to
squeeze under the garage door. Teryl peered under. Pink eyes on a sooty pointed face stared back. Teryl started transporting over remainders from supper, whatever Ber couldn’t repurpose. Tapping the plate forward to the far right side of the garage door was best. She knew when it neared from its very bad breath. Fingernails that looked like long, sharp grains of rice, the color of pencil lead, would snatch the paper plate inside. One evening, after watching from afar, Ber wanted an explanation. When told, she suggested, “Let’s look up your pet.” They went to a ragged animal book bought for a quarter at a rummage sale. Teryl flipped through pages the color of a used teabag until she recognized what Ber called a possum. Without a raccoon’s bandit mask to redeem them, they “sure are butt-ugly.” Ber tried to pronounce marsupial. “Just don’t get close to it. It’s got ticks and maybe rabies.” “It’s as fat as Mrs. Zimmer’s Himalayan.” “Your possum might be knocked up, then.” “Knocked up” was a term Teryl understood to mean baby, like when DewDad had men over for cards and they’d laugh about the horse-faced woman at Star Cafeteria “left in a predicament.” When the babies came, Teryl knew, the boys were jacks, the girls jills, and that they would attach to a teat within mama’s continued on next page CVIndependent.com