Free Bedtime Story by Robert J. Wiersema

father’s name.
    I didn’t take it upstairs: I dug into it right there, angling it so the ceiling light would shine into it.
    At first, the box seemed like a disorganized mess, a hodgepodge of newspaper clippings, ribbons and trophies, yearbooks and photographs, report cards and a few envelopes that still held letters. It took me a while of digging through to realize that I was actually holding my father’s childhood in my hands, sifting through his memories, all the things he had chosen to preserve.
    At the bottom of the box, I found a handful of books—paperbacks in fairly poor shape, battered and spine-broken, obviously well read and deeply loved. I ignored the westerns (I still do), but there were four other books, books that promised adventure and daring, with bright pictures of knights and swordsmen, battles and beautiful maidens on their covers.
    I put everything else back into the box, but I carried those books with me out into the summer afternoon sunlight. It would probably be an exaggeration to say that those books, four fantasy novels by an author named Lazarus Took, saved my life, but they saved me in a way that only the experience of reading can. I devoured those books, one after another, then I went back and began to reread them, more slowly, with greater attention and devotion.
    I spent those weeks reading, lying in the field or perched up in one of the apple trees, up in the room that I was sharing with my brothers or in the privacy of the hayloft.
    Like the best books, the novels I found in my father’s box were capable of magic—they took me to another world, made me feelmore deeply there than I could allow myself to feel in the real world. While I was reading, I ceased to be little Christopher Knox—I became someone else entirely.
    And that’s what books should do for us. I haven’t thought about Lazarus Took in decades, but I still recall how it felt to read those novels, the impact they had on my life, on my heart. Everyone has books like that in their past, forgotten treasures from their childhood. What are yours?
    She cleared her throat, and I turned toward her.
    “This is good,” she said, gesturing with the paper.
    “Thanks.” I could feel my face warming.
    “I didn’t …” she began, and glanced away. “Why didn’t you tell me how important that book was to you?”
    I shrugged. I had been thinking about it since the day I found
To the Four Directions
at Prospero’s. “I wasn’t really able to put it into words,” I said lamely.
    Jacqui gestured with the paper again. “You seemed to do just fine with this.”
    “Yeah.” That was my curse: I was always better with words on paper than I was with actually talking to people. Especially the people closest to me.
    “You should tell David,” she said. “Maybe …”
    I shook my head. “No. I don’t want—” I broke off. “I don’t think it’s something that I want to talk to him about yet. My dad dying …”
    She nodded, and seemed about to speak, but we both heard a sound outside the kitchen door. Seconds later, David appeared, clutching his sandwich plate.
    “I brought my dishes down,” he said, with a wide smile. “What’s for dinner?”
    I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. How long, I wondered, had he been standing outside the room, listening?
    “So are you all brushed up?” I asked as I came through Davy’s door. He was sitting up in bed, covers draped over his lap, holding his newbaseball glove. “Had a pee?” He nodded. “Nolan fed?” I glanced over at the hamster cage.
    “Yes, Dad,” he said in the much-exasperated tone that was part of the routine.
    I stopped at the bookshelf by the door and picked up our leather bookmark. “So, what do you want to start next?”
    “What about the one you gave me? I brought it up from downstairs.”
    When I turned to him, he gestured with the baseball glove toward his bedside table where
To the Four Directions
lay beside the lamp.
    I stepped toward the