‘She kept the Library closed for a week . . . “out of respect for Mr Lavin” was how she put it, and when she opened up again, Little Red Ridin Hood was back on the door of the Children’s Room. A week or two after that, she told me she wanted me to make some new posters for the Children’s Room.’
He paused, then went on in a lower, slower voice.
‘There’s a part of me, even now, that wants to sugarcoat it, make my part in it better than it was. I’d like to tell you that I fought with her, argued, told her I didn’t want nothin to do with scarin a bunch of kids … but it wouldn’t be true. I went right along with what she wanted me to do. God help me, I did. Partly it was because I was scared of her by then. But mostly it was because I was still besotted with her. And there was something else, too. There was a mean, nasty part of me – I don’t think it’s in everyone, but I think it’s in a lot of us – that liked what she was up to. Liked it.
‘Now, you’re wonderin what I did do, and I can’t really tell you all of it. I really don’t remember. Those times is all jumbled up, like the broken toys you send to the Salvation Army just to get the damned things out of the attic.
‘I didn’t kill anyone. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. She wanted me to … and I almost did … but in the end I drew back. That’s the only reason I’ve been able to go on livin with myself, because in the end I was able to crawl away. She kept part of my soul with her – the best part, maybe – but she never kept all of it.’
He looked at Naomi and Sam thoughtfully. He seemed calmer now, more in control; perhaps even at peace with himself, Sam thought.
‘I remember going in one day in the fall of 1959 – I think it was ’59 – and her telling me that she wanted me to make a poster for the Children’s Room. She told me exactly what she wanted, and I agreed willingly enough. I didn’t see nothing wrong with it. I thought it was kind of funny, in fact. What she wanted, you see, was a poster that showed a little kid flattened by a steamroller in the middle of the street. Underneath it was supposed to say HASTE MAKES WASTE! GET YOUR LIBRARY BOOKS BACK IN PLENTY OF
TIME!
‘I thought it was just a joke, like when the coyote is chasing the Road Runner and gets flattened by a freight train or something. So I said sure. She was pleased as punch. I went into her office and drew the poster. It didn’t take long, because it was just a cartoon.
‘I thought she’d like it, but she didn’t. Her brows drew down and her mouth almost disappeared. I’d made a cartoon boy with crosses for eyes, and as a joke I had a word-balloon comin out of the mouth of the guy drivin the steamroller. “If you had a stamp, you could mail him like a postcard,” he was saying.
‘She didn’t even crack a smile. “No, Davey,” she says, “you don’t understand. This won’t make the children bring their books back on time. This will only make them laugh, and they spend too much time doing that as it is.”
‘ “Well,” I says, “I guess I didn’t understand what you wanted.”
‘We were standin behind the circulation desk, so nobody could see us except from the waist up. And she reached down and took my balls in her hand and looked at me with those big silver eyes of hers and said, “I want you to make it realistic.”
‘It took me a second or two to understand what she really meant. When I did, I couldn’t believe it.
“Ardelia,” I says, “you don’t understand what you’re sayin. If a kid really did get run over by a steamroller –
”
‘She gave my balls a squeeze, one that hurt – as if to remind me just how she had me – and said: “I understand, all right. Now you understand me. I don’t want them to laugh, Davey; I want them to cry. So why don’t you go on back in there and do it right this time?”
‘I went back into her office. I don’t know what I meant to do, but my mind got made up in a hurry. There was a fresh piece of posterboard on the desk, and a tall glass of Scotch with a straw and a sprig of mint in it, and a note from Ardelia that said, “D. – Use a lot of red this time.”
He looked soberly at Sam and Naomi.
‘But she’d never been in there, you see. Never for a minute.’
3
Naomi brought Dave a fresh glass of water, and when she came back, Sam noticed that her face was very pale and that the corners of her eyes looked red. But she sat down very quietly and motioned for Dave to go on.
‘I did what alcoholics do best,’ he said. ‘I drank the drink and did what I was told. A kind of … of frenzy, I suppose you’d say … fell over me. I spent two hours at her desk, workin with a box of five-and-dime watercolors, sloppin water and paint all over her desk, not givin a shit what flew where. What I came out with was somethin I don’t like to remember … but I do remember. It was a little boy splattered all over Rampole Street with his shoes knocked off and his head all spread out like a pat of butter that’s melted in the sun. The man drivin the steamroller was just a silhouette, but he was lookin back, and you could see the grin on his face. That guy showed up again and again in the posters I did for her. He was drivin the car in the poster you mentioned, Sam, the one about never takin rides from strangers.
‘My father left my mom about a year after I was born, just left her flat, and I got an idea now that was who I was tryin to draw in all those posters. I used to call him the dark man, and I think it was my dad. I think maybe Ardelia prodded him out of me somehow. And when I took the second one out, she liked it fine. She laughed over it. “It’s perfect, Davey!” she said. “It’ll scare a whole mountain of do-right into the little snotnoses! I’ll put it up right away!” She did, to, on the front of the checkout desk in the Children’s Room.
And when she did, I saw somethin that really chilled my blood. I knew the little boy I’d drawn, you see. It was Willy Klemmart. I’d drawn him without even knowin it, and the expression on what was left of his face was the one I’d seen that day when she took his hand and led him into the Children’s Room.
‘I was there when the kids came in for Story Hour and saw that poster for the first time. They were scared.
Their eyes got big, and one little girl started to cry. And I liked it that they were scared. I thought, “That’ll pound the do-right into em, all right. That’ll teach em what’ll happen if they cross her, if they don’t do what she says.” And part of me thought, You’re gettin to think like her, Dave. Pretty soon you’ll get to be like her, and then you’ll be lost. You’ll be lost forever.
‘But I went on, just the same. I felt like I had a one-way ticket and I wasn’t goin to get off until I rode all the way to the end of the line. Ardelia hired some college kids, but she always put em in the circulation room and the reference room and on the main desk. She kept complete charge of the kids … they were the easiest to scare, you see. And I think they were the best scares, the ones that fed her the best. Because that’s what she lived on, you know – she fed on their fright. And I made more posters. I can’t remember them all, but I remember the Library Policeman. He was in a lot of them. In one – it was called LIBRARY POLICEMEN
GO ON VACATION, TOO – he was standin on the edge of a stream and fishin. Only what he’d baited his hook with was that little boy the kids called Simple Simon. In another one, he had Simple Simon strapped to the nose of a rocket and was pullin the switch that would send him into outer space. That one said LEARN MORE ABOUT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE LIBRARY – BUT BE SURE TO DO