Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [59]
“ ‘Goblin helps you to remember,’ she said gravely to me. ‘I think Goblin is very clever himself. Does Goblin know a word we don’t know, do you think? I mean a word you haven’t learned so far?’
“It was a startling moment. I was about to say no, when Goblin put his hand on mine and wrote in his jagged way the word ‘Stop’ and the word ‘Yield.’ And the word ‘School.’
“I laughed, I was so proud of him. But Goblin wasn’t finished. He then wrote in short jerky movements the words ‘Ruby River.’
“I heard Aunt Queen gasp. ‘Explain each of those words to me, Quinn,’ she said. But though I could explain ‘stop’ and ‘yield’ as signs we saw on the highway, I couldn’t read ‘school’ or ‘Ruby River.’
“ ‘Ask Goblin what they mean,’ said Aunt Queen.
“I did as she asked, and Goblin explained everything silently by putting the thoughts in my head. Stop meant to stop the car, Yield meant to slow down the car, School meant to go slow when we were near the children, bah! ich! and Ruby River was the name of the water over which the car drove when we went to school or shopping.
“An unforgettable expression of seriousness came over Aunt Queen’s face. ‘Ask Goblin how he learned these things,’ she said to me. But when I did this, Goblin just crossed his eyes, wagged his head from left to right and began dancing.
“ ‘I don’t think he knows how,’ I told her, ‘but I think he learned them from watching and listening.’
“She seemed very much pleased with this answer, and I was immensely glad. Her solemn expression had frightened me. ‘Ah, that makes a good deal of sense,’ she said. ‘And I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you have Goblin teach you several new words every day? Maybe he can start now with some more for us.’
“I had to explain to her that Goblin was through for the day. He never liked to do anything very long. He ran out of steam.
“Only now as I tell this do I realize that Goblin was talking coherently in my head. When did that start? I don’t know.
“But in the months to come I did what Aunt Queen asked and Goblin taught me pages of common words. Everyone, even Pops and Sweetheart, thought it was a good thing. And the kitchen crowd watched in awe as this process unfolded.
“In jerky letters, I spelled out ‘Rice,’ ‘Coca-Cola,’ ‘Flour,’ ‘Ice,’ ‘Rain,’ ‘Police,’ ‘Sheriff,’ ‘City Hall,’ ‘Post Office,’ ‘Ruby Town Theater,’ ‘Grand Hardware,’ ‘Grodin’s Pharmacy,’ ‘Wal-Mart’—defining these words as Goblin defined them in my head, and this defining came not only with the pronunciation of the words, which Goblin gave me, but with pictures. I saw the City Hall. I saw the Post Office. I saw the Ruby Town Theater. And I made an immediate and seminal link between the audible syllables of the word and its meaning, and this was Goblin’s doing.
“As I revisit this curious process, I realize what it meant. Goblin, whom I had always treated as grossly inferior to me and devilishly a troublemaker, had learned the phonetic code to written words and was ahead of me in this. And he stayed ahead of me for a long time. The explanation? Just what he had said. He watched and he listened, and given a small amount of indisputable raw material he was able to go quite far.
“This is what I mean when I say he is a fast learner, and I should add he’s an unpredictable and uncontrollable learner because that’s true.
“But let me make it clear that though the Kitchen Gang told me Goblin was a wonder for teaching me all these words, they still didn’t believe in him.
“And one night when I was listening to the adults talk in Aunt Queen’s room, I heard the word ‘subconscious,’ and again I heard it, and finally the third time I interrupted and asked what it meant.
“Aunt Queen explained that Goblin lived in my subconscious, and that as I grew older he would probably go away. I mustn’t worry about it now. But later I wouldn’t want so much to have Goblin and the ‘situation’ would take care of itself.
“I knew this was wrong, but I loved Aunt Queen too much to contradict