That’s exactly how Donita told her story in the fort that day. She talked about her house and Russell’s paintings and how Russell was in the hospital for three months before he died.
“Leukemia,” Donita told us. “That’s what he had. He was real brave about it, though. He said mostly he was sad about not having more time to paint his pictures. That’s what he loved doing best of all.”
Donita traced her finger along a picture of a small, white house with a flower garden blooming beside the front walk.
“On one wall of his room, he painted a scarecrow, just like the one in the garden,” she said, staring hard at that picture. “And on another wall, he painted a row of sunflowers and a big fat sun hanging over ’em. That was my favorite. And on the door, he painted a picture of our entire family, me and Mama, Russell and Rita, all dressed up like Christmas.”
Then she looked over to Murphy. “Bet you didn’t know I was going to tell such a sad story. You probably wouldn’t have asked if you’d known.”
“I wish I could see those paintings,” Murphy said to her.
“Well, I’ll be going back there one of these days to see ’em again myself. Mama’s still in that house, and Rita’s living with a family not three blocks away. Just as soon as Mama can get Russell’s medical bills paid off, she won’t have to work so much. And then she can take care of us better. That’s what happened, case you were wondering. Rita started a fire on the stove one night when Mama was working third shift. Social Services got called in, said Mama wasn’t fit to raise no children if she wasn’t ever home.”
Donita picked up a magazine and flipped through the pages without really looking at them. “I never saw anything like that fire,” she said after a minute. “It started out this tiny little flame you could probably spit on and put out, except it just sort of exploded before Rita knew what to do about it. Rita, she was all upset about ruining Mama’s kitchen, but me, all I could think about was that Russell would’ve loved to have seen that fire.”
“He wouldn’t mind your house burning down?” Ricky Ray asked.
“Nah, that ain’t what I mean,” Donita told him. “He just loved excitement. Loved big, dramatic things, and there ain’t nothing more dramatic than a fire. If you hung around with Russell, you started seeing the excitement in everything. He could find it, boy. He’d find it, he’d study it, and then he’d paint it.”
“He sounds like he was a born artist,” Murphy said. “You can always tell.”
“Yeah,” Donita said, nodding. “Yeah, I guess he was.”
I couldn’t tell if Donita was softening to Murphy or not. Sometimes telling a sad story can make you feel more open to other people, but Donita was stubborn. It might take more than Murphy wanting to see Russell’s paintings to make Donita like her again.
Murphy turned around slowly, examining the walls. “We ought to paint a mural in here,” she said. “I’ve been thinking for a while we ought to do something more in here to give it more of a feeling.”
“What kind of feeling?” Logan asked, giving Murphy one of those googly-eyed looks he hadn’t had much time to practice on her lately. “How can a fort have feelings?”
“Any place can have a feeling to it,” Murphy said, beginning to pace. “The library at school has a different feeling than the Elizabethton library, right? My dorm room feels a lot different from my old bedroom.”
“My old bedroom had brown carpet in it,” Ricky Ray said. “It felt a lot different from the floors at the Home.”
“That’s not quite what I mean,” Murphy said, stopping by the door and poking her head out for a second. “But imagine if we had wall-to-wall carpet in here. A soft, white carpet and big, silky pillows you could lean back against. You’d feel like you were in an ancient story, ‘Aladdin and the Magic Lamp,’ something like that.”
“This fort’s fine the way it is,” Donita said. But then her voice softened. “Though I suppose a mural might be nice. Maybe some sunflowers on it.”
“And a scarecrow,” Ricky Ray added. “I like scarecrows.”
Murphy turned around and faced us. “Okay, it’s my turn to tell a story. I’ve been trying to think up a good one for a while, and I think I’ve almost got it.” She turned to Ricky Ray. “I’ll need a helper, though.”
Ricky Ray nodded. “I’m good at helping.”
Murphy settled herself in front of the easy chair and patted the space beside her where she wanted Ricky Ray to sit down. Then she pulled a folded manila envelope from her back pocket and opened the clasp. Ricky Ray brought her the Book of Houses, and then sat down beside her chair, posture-perfect and ready to be of assistance.
“So once upon a time there was a castle in the middle of a forest,” she began, pulling a picture of a castle made of crumbling stone out of the envelope. She handed the picture to Ricky Ray, who ran a glue stick over its back, then stuck it into the book. She shook the envelope onto her lap and out fluttered a few trees. “That’s the forest,” she told Ricky Ray. “Paste it in next to the castle.”
She plucked a paper chair from the pile of pictures on her lap. “This is the throne upon which sat the queen. The queen was a sad queen, and a mean one, too. Her husband the king had died only a few months before. Ever since his death the queen had been a cruel ruler. She never listened to the king’s wisest advisor, a young woman named . . . ”
And here Murphy looked up and grinned. “A young woman named Bonita.”
Donita shook her head, like she couldn’t believe such foolishness, but a smile broke through to her lips all the same.
“Nor would the queen let the king’s court jester, Logarth, keep the court amused anymore. She had no time for silly jokes.”
“Oh, man,” Logan groaned, and Ricky Ray giggled.
“Even worse, the queen no longer allowed the court artist, Maddelina, to come paint magic pictures for the court’s delight, and she had banned everyone’s favorite puppy, Micky May, from the castle.”
“I’m a puppy?” Ricky Ray asked gleefully. He barked a few times for good measure, but Donita shushed him.
“Go on,” she told Murphy, pulling her chair a little closer to where Murphy sat.
Murphy handed Ricky Ray a picture of a wall with a small window placed in the upper right-hand corner. “One morning, a red bird appeared at the window next to the queen’s throne. ‘I will bring you three gifts,’ the bird told the queen. ‘One each morning for the next three mornings. Each gift will last into forever, and you will never feel lonely or sad again.’ ”
Ricky Ray had finished pasting the picture of the wall into the book. When he turned the page, he let out a gasp. “This is the last page! The book is almost over!”
“We can get a new book,” Logan assured him. “I’ll get my mom to buy me one.”
Murphy leaned over and looked at the book, then looked down at the pictures that remained in her lap. “I think we have enough room for the rest of the story,” she said.
“Well, keep telling it then,” I said. It was like I was caught in a spell, like I was sitting right next to the queen waiting for the bird to return.
Murphy smiled. “Okay, okay. Let’s see,” she said, then pulled out a picture of a piano. “The next morning the bird came to the window and whistled a beautiful song to the queen. ‘This song is now yours,’ the bird said. ‘Whenever you hum it, you will feel great happiness.’ The queen hummed a few notes, and sure enough, she felt wonderful. She couldn’t wait until the bird came back the next morning.”
“I hope the bird brings her some candy,” Ricky Ray said, taking the piano from Murphy and pasting it into the book.
“No, the bird brought the queen something even better,” Murphy said. “When he came back the next day, he whispered a beautiful poem into her ear. She memorized it immediately, and whenever she felt the least bit sad, she said a few lines of the poem under her breath, and she immediately felt as though she were running along a beautiful beach, blue skies stretching over her head.”
Murphy handed Ricky Ray a picture of a bookcase. She looked up and smiled. “That was the closest thing I could figure out for a poem,” she said. “Poems come in books, right?”
“So what did the bird bring the third day?” I asked, impatient for Murphy to get on with it.
Murphy looked down at her hands and shook her head. “I still haven’t figured that part out yet,” she admitted. Everybody groaned.
“Girl, you can’t be starting a story and not have the end to it,” Donita complained. “You better think hard tonight and come back tomorrow with something good.”
We packed up our stuff, and Donita, Murphy, Ricky Ray, and I began our hike back to the Home. I was quiet, thinking about Murphy’s story: what it meant, how it would end.
“Hey, Murphy,” Ricky Ray said, as we turned down Dewey Payne Road, “are you the queen in your story? Is that supposed to be you?”
“No way,” she said. “I’m not the queen type.”
I looked at her, wondering about that. She was bossy enough sometimes to be a queen, and she was pretty like a queen in a fairy tale would be. But I knew Murphy well enough by then to know she wasn’t the queen in her story.
No, Murphy could fly. Murphy was the red bird.