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By Root 885 0

on the door to the Children's Room about a month before Mr Lavin died, and I remember her takin one little boy by the hand and leadin him over to it. "Do you see that little girl?" Ardelia asked him. "Yes," he says. "Do you know why that Bad Thing is getting ready to eat her?" Ardelia asks. "No," the kid says back, his eyes all big and solemn and full of tears. "Because he forgot to bring back his library book on time," she says. "You won't ever do that, Willy, will you?" "No, never," the little boy says, and Ardelia says, "You better not." And then she led him into the Children's Room for Story Hour, still holdin him by the hand. That kid - it was Willy Klemmart, who got killed in Vietnam - looked back over his shoulder at where I was, standin on my scaffold with a paintbrush in my hand, and I could read his eyes like they were a newspaper headline. Save me from her, his eyes said. Please, Mr Duncan. But how could I? I couldn't even save myself.'

Dave produced a clean but badly wrinkled bandanna from the depths of one back pocket and blew a mighty honk into it.

'Mr Lavin began by thinkin Ardelia just about walked on water, but he changed his mind after awhile. They got into a hell of a scrap over that Red Ridin Hood poster about a week before he died. He never liked it. Maybe he didn't have a very good idea of what went on durin Story Hour - I'll get to that pretty soon -but he wasn't entirely blind. He saw the way the kids looked at that poster. At last he told her to take it down. That was when the argument started. I didn't hear it all because I was on the scaffold, high above them, and the acoustics were bad, but I heard enough. He said somethin about scaring the children, or maybe it was scarring the children, and she said somethin back about how it helped her keep "the rowdy element" under control. She called it a teachin tool, just like the hickory stick.

'But he stuck to his guns and she finally had to take it down. That night, at her house, she was like a tiger in the zoo after some kid has spent all day pokin it with a stick. She went back and forth in great big long strides, not a stitch on, her hair flyin out behind her. I was in bed, drunk as a lord. But I remember she turned around and her eyes had gone from silver to bright red, as if her brains had caught afire, and her mouth looked funny, like it was tryin to pull itself right out of her face, or somethin. It almost scared me sober. I hadn't ever seen nothin like that, and never wanted to see it again.

' "I'm going to fix him," she said. "I'm going to fix that fat old whoremaster, Davey. You wait and see."

'I told her not to do anything stupid, not to let her temper get the best of her, and a lot of other stuff that didn't stand knee-high to jack shit. She listened to me for awhile and then she ran across the room so fast that ... well, I don't know how to say it. One second she was standin all the way across the room by the door, and the next second she was jumpin on top of me, her eyes red and glaring, her mouth all pooched out of her face like she wanted to kiss me so bad she was stretchin her skin somehow to do it, and I had an idea that instead of just scratchin me this time, she was gonna put her nails into my throat and peel me to the backbone.

'But she didn't. She put her face right down to mine and looked at me. I don't know what she saw - how scared I was, I guess - but it must have made her happy, because she tipped her head back so her hair fell all the way down to my thighs, and she laughed. "Stop talking, you damned souse," she said, and stick it in me. What else are you good for?"

'So I did. Because stickin it in her - and drinkin - was all I was good for by then. I surely wasn't paintin pitchers anymore, I lost my license after I got clipped for my third OUI - in '58 or early '59, that was - and I was gettin bad reports on some of my jobs. I didn't care much how I did them anymore, you see; all I wanted was her. Talk started to circulate about how Dave Duncan wasn't trustworthy no more ... but the reason they said I wasn't