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Fire Baton
- University of Arkansas Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Fire Baton Wobbling in heels, I twirled cold steel capped with fake pearl down candycane-lit streets. One parade, in Rural Retreat, I hit Krystle Grubb. She cried. It was that undignified. How frozen, runny-nosed in child-sized hookers’ clothes we’d be, I hadn’t thought— beseeching till Mom bought me lessons. All my eyes were dazzled that July, the nights a still-astounding darkness rose from the ground, the hollows first. And just above dark, in the dusk of Pine Ridge, majorettes, star-crowned in high school, met to practice fire baton. They knew their craft. Their wands or brands burned at both ends and flew. The smoothest spins in both hands, keeping time with drums and flames, defined 29 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 29 my beautiful. Not cute. Their hands reached, resolute, into the fire and showed no wavering. Their code hid rising blisters, tics, and every cicatrix. 30 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 30 ...