Read Online Nightwoods by Charles Frazier - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charles Frazier
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damned if she was going to set the precedent of cooking before the sun came up.
She took the children out into the dark dewy yard and pointed at groups of stars. Particularly Orion, visible briefly before dawn for a few weeks during late summer like a portent of winter. When Dolores and Frank both looked at Luce’s finger instead of the sky, she moved behind them and aimed their eyes with her hands against the sides of their heads.
Just talking, figuring maybe a word now and then might register, she said, There, rising just above the ridge. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. The Hunter. He’s chasing that little patch of stars up ahead of him. The Seven Sisters. People with good eyesight can count them. Twenty-ten. Everybody else sees a few lights shining through haze. There’s a story goes with them.
Luce had gotten well into the narrative when she realized that the sisters’ suicides were coming up soon. Editing on the fly, she told it so they turned into stars without having to die first. But they were still pursued across the sky from early autumn into spring by Orion and his dangling sword. The important point was that for an awfully long time, even before people thought up the story, Orion and the sistershave gone around and around, night after night, and he still hasn’t caught them, and he never will.
NEXT AFTERNOON , the children disappeared. They had been sitting on the front porch playing the records and Luce was in the backyard feeding chickens and admiring the late-summer lushness of the woods all around. Poplar leaves already one degree off their highest pitch of green. And then she went into the garden and picked a few yellow squash for supper. More squash erupting than Luce and the kids could eat, and they all liked yellow squash an awful lot, especially tossed in cornmeal and fried crisp. They could eat it five days a week that way. And the other two days, stewed with green peppers and onions. Luce had six fat squash cradled in her arms and was setting them on the back porch when she realized she couldn’t hear the old songs anymore.
She found the porch empty and the Lodge too, best she could tell in a quick pass shouting their names. She ran down the lawn to the lake. Along the shore. Up the creek and over the ridge and back to the Lodge. Shouting all the time as she went. Red-faced and blowing air. Frantic and terrified.
Luce ran back to the house, but they hadn’t returned. She drank water from the spring dipper and walked the other way along the lakeshore and up the next creek and over the next ridge and back to the Lodge. Nothing. She was less frantic and more exhausted and shamed within herself, for she had let them go.
She had let her attention turn away for a moment, and suddenly they were nowhere. Bears and panthers out there in the mountains. Not to mention snakes. The children were capable of hiding behind a stout tree trunk and not making a move or drawing a breath while you walked ten feet away yelling your lungs out, calling their names to the world with evident desire to reunite with them.
Luce went back down by the lake, where they surely had no better sense than to drown themselves, and found them standing at the bankthrowing rocks at each other. She ran and tried to hug and kiss them and they would not look her or each other in the eye. They stood stiff against her hugs with their necks twisted around, as if something mildly interesting was happening down the road.
Luce followed their eyes and saw rising above the treetops a shape of black smoke against the ash-colored sky. It might have looked more like a funnel or a mushroom, but in her mind it was an exact projection of old Stubblefield’s empty house, which stood on the other side of the ridge.
CHAPTER 6
L IGHT RAIN MISTED west across the island. Cool for the season. The Atlantic olive drab, and either way you looked, a thin band of black seaweed wavered along the tideline into the distance like one long cursive
She took the children out into the dark dewy yard and pointed at groups of stars. Particularly Orion, visible briefly before dawn for a few weeks during late summer like a portent of winter. When Dolores and Frank both looked at Luce’s finger instead of the sky, she moved behind them and aimed their eyes with her hands against the sides of their heads.
Just talking, figuring maybe a word now and then might register, she said, There, rising just above the ridge. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. The Hunter. He’s chasing that little patch of stars up ahead of him. The Seven Sisters. People with good eyesight can count them. Twenty-ten. Everybody else sees a few lights shining through haze. There’s a story goes with them.
Luce had gotten well into the narrative when she realized that the sisters’ suicides were coming up soon. Editing on the fly, she told it so they turned into stars without having to die first. But they were still pursued across the sky from early autumn into spring by Orion and his dangling sword. The important point was that for an awfully long time, even before people thought up the story, Orion and the sistershave gone around and around, night after night, and he still hasn’t caught them, and he never will.
NEXT AFTERNOON , the children disappeared. They had been sitting on the front porch playing the records and Luce was in the backyard feeding chickens and admiring the late-summer lushness of the woods all around. Poplar leaves already one degree off their highest pitch of green. And then she went into the garden and picked a few yellow squash for supper. More squash erupting than Luce and the kids could eat, and they all liked yellow squash an awful lot, especially tossed in cornmeal and fried crisp. They could eat it five days a week that way. And the other two days, stewed with green peppers and onions. Luce had six fat squash cradled in her arms and was setting them on the back porch when she realized she couldn’t hear the old songs anymore.
She found the porch empty and the Lodge too, best she could tell in a quick pass shouting their names. She ran down the lawn to the lake. Along the shore. Up the creek and over the ridge and back to the Lodge. Shouting all the time as she went. Red-faced and blowing air. Frantic and terrified.
Luce ran back to the house, but they hadn’t returned. She drank water from the spring dipper and walked the other way along the lakeshore and up the next creek and over the next ridge and back to the Lodge. Nothing. She was less frantic and more exhausted and shamed within herself, for she had let them go.
She had let her attention turn away for a moment, and suddenly they were nowhere. Bears and panthers out there in the mountains. Not to mention snakes. The children were capable of hiding behind a stout tree trunk and not making a move or drawing a breath while you walked ten feet away yelling your lungs out, calling their names to the world with evident desire to reunite with them.
Luce went back down by the lake, where they surely had no better sense than to drown themselves, and found them standing at the bankthrowing rocks at each other. She ran and tried to hug and kiss them and they would not look her or each other in the eye. They stood stiff against her hugs with their necks twisted around, as if something mildly interesting was happening down the road.
Luce followed their eyes and saw rising above the treetops a shape of black smoke against the ash-colored sky. It might have looked more like a funnel or a mushroom, but in her mind it was an exact projection of old Stubblefield’s empty house, which stood on the other side of the ridge.
CHAPTER 6
L IGHT RAIN MISTED west across the island. Cool for the season. The Atlantic olive drab, and either way you looked, a thin band of black seaweed wavered along the tideline into the distance like one long cursive
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