Nightwoods by Charles Frazier Page B

to make a point, the skin of Mr. Stewart’s fingers, and the nails too, were scurfed chalky white from the chemicals he handled all day for experiments. Thinking how, from now on, it would be a fact that those fingers had been in her.
    She walked up to the Sheriff’s Department. Sat in the chair opposite Lit’s metal desk and told her story, looking him in the eye the whole time.
    Lit started trying to act a little fatherly, but Luce would have none of it. She said, We pass each other on Main Street and barely speak. I saw you last week outside the post office, and we sort of nodded to each other, like to an acquaintance. We never were close, not before or after Lola took off. Let’s do business and let it go at that.
    Lit said, Well, if that’s the way you want it, then I’ll tell you that this sort of charge is hard to make stick. You say one thing, he’ll say something else.
    —Of course he will.
    —You might not know it, but the last graveyard-shift girl, the one that only stayed here a few months, was sort of an amateur whore. Mainly, when her rent was coming due.
    —So what?
    —It doesn’t help, is what.
    Lit described how it worked. Some man hears something in the pool hall or barbershop or gas station, puts off paying his phone bill until late. Knocks on the door and steps inside. Says something smooth, like, I been a-thinking about you. Gives the girl the monthly payment, plus a gift. An item of jewelry or something else easy to hock. She didn’t take cash, just gifts. Fifteen minutes later he walks out the door to the sidewalk with an attitude like Adam cast out of paradise.
    —So what? Luce said.
    —I’m talking about expectations. Maybe there was a misunderstanding of some kind, Lit said.
    —I guess he misunderstood that I was the same kind of whore as the last night girl. But I don’t see how that changes anything.
    —Hard to convict. One says one thing and the other something else. Might help some if this was the first time.
    —First time I got raped? Luce said.
    —That wasn’t my point.
    —I got your point.
    —I was thinking about a jury. It can matter an awful lot to them, especially if a defense lawyer lays things out real vivid.
    —Good God.
    —I’m just saying, it’s a hard case.
    —I guess it is, unless criminals generally confess right off. But is there anybody in Central Prison serving time for rape?
    —White ones?
    —Yes.
    —A damn few, Lit said.
    —Maybe one or two, though?
    —You said you want business, but I can’t leave it at that. I’m saying, it won’t be easy on you if it goes to court. A little shit of a lawyer can do to you in a couple of hours what you won’t let go of for the rest of your life. People get all kinds of crazy ideas, and facts don’t matter much. Stewart’s got a place in this town. He wears a coat and tie to work, and you’re a nightbird living in a single room with a bath down the hall.
    On her way out the door, Luce said, You go straight to hell.
    A week later, her first evening as caretaker of the Lodge, Luce sat on the porch after a supper of light bread and yellow cheese. Paint flaked off the stair rails and pickets in dry petals, the bare wood weathered and bleached, and the grain raised. Rocking chairs equally weathered and skeletal, with sunken bottoms of twisted kraft paper woven in an intricate angular pattern by somebody now likely dead. What she had wanted was grilled cheese, but the whole tedious matter of lighting a fire in the cook stove for just a sandwich set harsh priorities.
    The day was slowly going dark and chilly. Luce wrapped a quilt around her shoulders and poured amber liquor from an important-looking bottle into a little stemmed crystal glass. Old Stubblefield had told her to use whatever she wanted, and she had found the bottle that afternoon as she’d searched through every room, every closet and corner, under every bedstead. Hours of searching. She hadn’t wanted to go to bed imagining hidden places and