Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [51]
When the ride ended and Maddie set the children back on the ground, Dolores looked up at her, all open-faced.
Maddie said, Her name’s Sally, at least as long as I’ve had her.
Dolores nodded solemnly, like that name seemed perfect to her. She said, Sally Sally Sally. Then Frank said the name too, but just once.
THAT NIGHT AT BEDTIME, Luce said, Tell me something. What kind of weather suits you two best?
They stared at her as if she were a fool, and then they looked at each other. Neither of them said a word.
Luce said, I know you can talk. I heard it.
Nothing but blank faces from the kids.
—I’m the one that puts food on the table, Luce said. That’s not any kind of threat, simply a fact. It’s one of the things I do for you. I’m asking a question about weather. Do me a favor and answer, just because it would make me happy.
Wheels turned behind the dark eyes. Dolores finally said, very weary and put upon, as if the answer were obvious: Lightning.
—Good, Luce said. That’s a sort of weather. Now, Frank, your turn.
—Lightning.
—Still a good answer. So, Frank, next question. What’s your favorite color?
The boy turned his head to the side and did a little spitting thing like a smoker who rolls his own cigarettes getting a fleck of tobacco off his tongue.
Luce waited and waited.
She said, Frank, you’re being called on to name a color. There’s not a wrong answer, and nobody’s going to hold anything against you. So say one of them.
Without looking at Luce, Frank said, Black.
—Yes, that’s a color. And one of my favorites too.
—Fire color, Dolores said.
—Well, let’s call that red and orange and yellow. So good choices, and thank you both.
She touched them each lightly at the brow, just a graze of fingertips, and turned out the light near their bed and sat awhile in the dark, listening to the radio playing soft, enjoying the rare feeling of finishing a day knowing you’ve done about as good a job as you know how to do. Though with all that fire and lightning talk, maybe she’d better keep sleeping with one eye open.
WANTING TO KEEP language rolling forward, Luce figured bedtime stories would make a good starting point. She wished she had some family heirlooms to tell, but Luce had missed out on ancestors. No barking-mad great-grandfather to sit by the fireside of a frosty winter’s night passing down the folktales of their people, fishing his pink-and-white false teeth out of the bib pocket of his overalls so he could properly wheeze harmonica sound effects to a tale that involved a steam locomotive. As folkloric as it got for Luce were Lola’s Wild Turkey ravings and Lit’s bloody World War II stories.
Luce went scavenging through the lobby bookshelves and found a collection of violent Old World tales. Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. She read them all, front to back, trying to imagine which ones Dolores and Frank might find useful. Share lessons children had learned for centuries regarding power and vulnerability. People got beaten and killed awfully cavalierly in the old stories. The fragility of the human body, all the threat and fear loose out there in the dark, and also sometimes in the daylight.
She started with “The Boy and the North Wind,” figuring that at the very least she might get them to say, “Beat, stick, beat” with her when it came around in the tale. It was a glorious moment, and who wouldn’t want to own such a stick and strike down stronger enemies? But Dolores and Frank paid no attention to it, or to the one about the princess who vowed not to smile for seven years.
Eventually, though, by trial and error, Luce hit a rich vein. For a full two weeks, all the children wanted to hear at bedtime was “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Luce used suitably different voices for the small, medium, and large goats. For the troll, she spoke in a quiet menacing