Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [22]
In recompense for such moments of terror, there were lots of framed pictures hung around the room to admire at your leisure. Pale stunned Washington, with his strange white side hair, and sad wise Abe, with his weary, baggy eyes and patchy beard like a bum. Also, Blue Boy, who would have been stomped into a mudhole at recess if he’d shown up with even a trace of the attitude he expressed on his smug face, not to mention that outfit. The State provided many free storybooks, especially the ones concerning Jack climbing the beanstalk and the Pied Piper leading the children away to a happy land inside a mountain. There was also a record player and stack of records, including a set of 78s with an accompanying picture booklet telling the compelling story of Peter and the Wolf. Though you could play them only on rainy days when recess was impossible and the class was half crazy by midmorning from the physical pressures of confinement.
Also in the category of reimbursements was this: sometimes the teacher had about all she could take of education and would request that the students read quietly while she went up the hall to have a smoke in the lounge. In her absence, everybody went wild. The deep country boys, the ones from kerosene-lit cabins way up some dark holler, would dance on the teacher’s desk just to show it could be done. Little rebel boys three feet tall in blue jeans with cuffs turned up nearly to their knees so they’d be able to wear them for a few years. And too, if you’re counting happy moments, once a month they all marched quietly in a line down the hill through a stand of dark pines to the town library, where each one got to check out two books all their own for two entire weeks.
Yet, as much as she began to enjoy school, Luce figured that she must never forget the main lesson she was learning, which was very simple. The way they get you is, you trade your freedoms for entertainment.
—LOOK AT THIS, Luce said, holding up a curved meerschaum pipe with wizened bearded elf faces carved on the yellowed bowl. It was like a small saxophone. The children didn’t particularly look, but they didn’t not look either. They were liking the dusty clutter of the Lodge’s upper floors, and the pilfering.
Docent Luce had taken them exploring, digging into leather trunks left in attic spaces under the eaves and in storage closets. Foretime lost-and-found stuff like tarnished silver-and-ebony brooches the women thought so little of that they left them strewn in the bureau drawers. Tan floppy-thighed jodhpurs and black boots with rusting eyelets threaded with rotting laces. Which suggested that rich people must have come costumed to the mountains back then.
They found a gramophone with a brass horn shaped like a morning glory blossom and a stack of records in brown paper sleeves. There was still a record on the platter, and Luce blew the dust away and turned the crank and lowered the needle. From the brass cone a man’s voice sang “Pucker Up Your Lips, Miss Lindy,” the sound scratchy and thin. The children focused on watching the record spin and the needle ride the groove. They sprawled on their sides on the floorboards with their heads propped on their hands and seemed relaxed and soothed by the crackling music, ghostly from the past. When three or four notes of the chorus came back around, they’d hum along faintly, blank-faced.
Luce went through the entire