Lila (2014)
by Marilynne Robinson
1.
The child was just there on the
stoop in the dark, hugging
herself against the cold, all cried out and nearly sleeping. She
couldn't
holler anymore and they didn't hear her anyway, or they might and that
would
make things worse. Somebody had shouted, Shut that thing up or I'll do
it! and
then a woman grabbed her out from under the table by her arm and pushed
her out
onto the stoop and shut the door and the cats went under the house.
They
wouldn't let her near them anymore because she picked them up by their
tails
sometimes. Her arms were all over scratches, and the scratches stung.
She had
crawled under the house to find the cats, but even when she did catch
one in
her hands it struggled harder the harder she held on to it and it bit
her, so
she let it go. Why you keep pounding at the screen door? Nobody gonna
want you
around if you act like that. And then the door closed again, and after
a while
night came. The people inside fought themselves quiet, and it was night
for a
long time. She was afraid to be under the house, and afraid to be up on
the
stoop, but if she stayed by the door it might open. There was a moon
staring
straight at her, and there were sounds in the woods, but she was nearly
sleeping when Doll came up the path and found her there like that,
miserable as
could be, and took her up in her arms and wrapped her into her shawl,
and said,
"Well, we got no place to go. Where we gonna go?"
3
If there was anyone in the
world the child hated worst, it
was Doll. She' d go scrubbing at her face with a wet rag, or she'd be
after her
hair with a busted comb, trying to get the snarls out. Doll slept at
the house
most nights, and maybe she paid for it by sweeping up a little. She was
the
only one who did any sweeping, and she'd be cussing while she did it,
Don't do
one damn bit of good, and someone would say, Then leave it be, dammit.
There'd
be people sleeping right on the floor, in some old mess of quilts and
gunnysacks. You wouldn't know from one day to the next. When the child
stayed
under the table they would forget her most of the time. The table was
shoved
into a corner and they wouldn't go to the trouble of reaching under to
pull her
out of there if she kept quiet enough. When Doll came in at night she
would
kneel down and spread that shawl over her, but then she left again so
early in
the morning that the child would feel the shawl slip off and she'd feel
colder
for the lost warmth of it, and stir, and cuss a little. But there,
would be
hardtack, an apple, something, and a cup of water left there for her
when she
woke up. Once, there was a kind of toy. It was just a horse chestnut
with a bit
of cloth over it, tied with a string, and two knots at the sides and
two at the
bottom, like hands and feet. The child whispered to it and slept with
it under
her shirt.
Lila would never tell anyone
about that time. She knew it
would sound very sad, and it wasn't, really. Doll had taken her up in
her arms
and wrapped her shawl around her. "You just hush now," she said.
"Don't go waking folks up." She settled the child on her hip and
carried her into the dark house, stepping as carefully and quietly as
she
could, and found the bundle she kept in her corner, and then they went
out into
the chilly dark again, down the steps. The house was rank with sleep
and the
4
night was windy, full of tree
sounds. The moon was gone and
there was rain, so fine then it was only a tingle on the skin. The
child was
four or five, long-legged, and Doll couldn't keep her covered up, but
she
chafed at her calves with her big, rough hand and brushed the damp from
her
cheek and her hair. She whispered, "Don't know what I think I'm doing.
Never figured on it. Well, maybe I did. I don't know. I guess I probly
did.
This sure ain't the night for it." She hitched up her apron to cover
the child's
legs and carried her out past the clearing. The door might have opened,
and a
woman might have called after them, Where you going with that child?
and then,
after a minute, closed the door again, as if she had done all decency
required.
"Well," Doll whispered, "we'll just have to see."
The road wasn't really much
more than a path, but Doll had
walked it so often in the dark that she stepped over the roots and
around the
potholes and never paused or stumbled. She could walk quickly when
there was no
light at all. And she was strong enough that even an awkward burden
like a
leggy child could rest in her arms almost asleep. Lila knew it couldn't
have
been the way she remembered it, as if she were carried along in the
wind, and
there were arms around her to let her know she was safe, and there was
a
whisper at her ear to let her know that she shouldn't be lonely. The
whisper
said, "I got to find a place to put you down. I got to find a dry
place." And then they sat on the ground, on pine needles, Doll with her
back against a tree and the child curled into her lap, against her
breast,
hearing the beat of her heart, feeling it. Rain fell heavily. Big drops
spattered them sometimes. Doll said, "I should have knowed it was
coming
on rain. And now you got the fever." But the child just lay against
her,
hoping to stay where she was, hoping the rain wouldn't end. Doll may
have been
the loneliest woman in the world, and she was the loneliest child, and
there
they were, the two of them together, keeping each other warm in the
rain.
5
When the rain ended, Doll got
to her feet, awkwardly with
the child in her arms, and tucked the shawl around her as well as she
could.
She said, "I know a place." The child's head would drop back, and
Doll would heft her up again, trying to keep her covered. "We're almost
there."
It was another cabin with a
stoop, and a dooryard beaten
bare. An old black dog got up on his forelegs, then his hind legs, and
barked,
and an old woman opened the door. She said, "No work for you here,
Doll.
Nothing to spare."
Doll sat down on the stoop.
"Just thought I'd rest a
little."
"What you got there? Where' d
you get that child?"
"Never mind."
"Well, you better put her back."
"Maybe. Don't think I will,
though."
"Better feed her something, at
least."
Doll said nothing.
The old woman went into the
house and brought out a scrap of
corn bread. She said, "I was about to do the milking. You might as well
go
inside, get her in out of the cold."
Doll stood with her by the
stove, where there was just the
little warmth of the banked embers. She whispered, "You hush. I got
something for you here. You got to eat it." But the child couldn't
rouse
herself, couldn't keep her head from lolling back. So Doll knelt with
her on
the floor to free her hands, and pinched off little pills of corn bread
and put
them in the child's mouth, one after another. "You got to swallow."
The old woman came back with a
pail of milk. "Warm from
the cow," she said. "Best thing for a child." That strong,
grassy smell, raw milk in a tin cup. Doll gave it to her in sips,
holding her
head in the crook of her arm.
"Well, she got something in
her, if she keeps it down.
Now I'll put some wood on the fire and we can clean her up some."
6
When the room was warmer and
the water in the kettle was
warm, the old woman held her standing in a white basin on the floor by
the
stove and Doll washed her down with a rag and a bit of soap, scrubbing
a little
where the cats had scratched her and on the chigger bites and mosquito
bites
where she had scratched herself, and where there were slivers in her
knees, and
where she had a habit of biting her hand. The water in the basin got so
dirty
they threw it out the door and started over. Her whole body shivered
with the
cold and the sting. "Nits," the old woman said. "We got to cut her
hair." She fetched a razor and began shearing off the tangles as close
to
the child's scalp as she dared-- "! got a blade here. She better hold
still." Then they soaped and scrubbed her head, and water and suds ran
into her eyes, and she struggled and yelled with all the strength she
had and
told them. both they could rot in hell. The old woman said '
"You'll want to talk to her
about that."
Doll touched the soap and tears
off the child's face with
the hem of her apron. "Never had the heart to scold her. Them's about
the
only words I ever heard her say." They made her a couple of dresses out
of
flour sacks with holes cut in them for her head and arms. They were
stiff at
first and smelled of being saved in a chest or a cupboard, and they had
little
flowers all over them, like Doll's apron.
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2.
It seemed like one long night,
but it must have been a week,
two weeks, rocking on Doll's lap while the old woman fussed around them.
"You don't have enough trouble,
I guess. Carrying off a
child that's just going to die on you any way."
"Ain't going to let her die."
"Oh? When's the last time you
got to decide about
something?"
"If I left her be where she
was, she' da died for
sure."
7
"Well, maybe her folks won't
see it that way. They know
you took her? What you going to say when they come looking for her?
She's
buried in the woods somewhere? Out by the potato patch? I don't have
troubles
enough of my own?"
Doll said, "Nobody going to
come looking."
"You probly right about that.
That's the spindliest
damn child I ever saw."
But the whole time she talked
she'd be stirring a pot of
grits and blackstrap molasses. Doll would give the child a spoonful or
two,
then rock her a little while, then give her another spoonful. She
rocked her
and fed her all night long, and dozed off with her cheek against the
child's
hot forehead.
The old woman got up now and
then to put more wood in the
stove. "She keeping it down?"
"Mostly."
"She taking any water?"
"Some."
When the old woman went away
again Doll would whisper to
her, "Now, don't you go dying on me. Put me to all this bother for
nothing. Don't you go dying." And then, so the child could barely hear,
"You going to die if you have to. I know. But I got you out of the
rain,
didn't I? We're warm here, ain't we?"
After a while the old woman
again. "Put her in my bed
if you want. I guess I won't be sleeping tonight, either."
"I got to make sure she can
breathe all right."
"Let me set with her then."
"She's clinging on to me."
"Well." The old woman brought
the quilt from her
bed and spread it over them.
The child could hear Doll's
heart beating and she could feel
the rise and fall of her breath. It was too warm and she felt herself
struggling against the quilt and against Doll's arms and clinging to
her at the
same time with her arms around her neck.
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8
They stayed with that old woman
for weeks, maybe a month.
Now it was hot and moist in the mornings when Doll took her outside,
holding
her hand because her legs weren't strong yet. She walked her around the
dooryard, cool under her bare feet, smooth as day. The dog lay in the
sun with
his muzzle on his paws, taking no notice. She touched the hot, coarse
fur of
his back and her hand was sour with the smell of it. There were
chickens
strutting the yard, scratching and pecking. Doll had helped to start
the
garden, and how had she done that, when the child thought there had
always been
someone holding her? But the carrots were up. Doll pulled one, no
bigger than a
straw. "It's soft as a feather," she said, and she touched the
child's cheek with the little spray of greens. She wiped the dirt off
the root
with her fingers. "Here. You can eat it."
There was an ache in the
child's throat because she wanted
to say, I guess I left my rag baby back there at the house. I guess I
did. She
knew exactly where, under the table in the farthest corner, propped
against the
table leg like it was sitting there. She could just run in the door and
snatch
it and run off again. No one would have to see her. But then maybe Doll
wouldn't be here when she came back, and she didn't know where that
house was
anyway. She thought of the woods. It was just an old rag baby, dirty
from her
hand, because mostly she kept it with her. But they put her out on the
stoop
before she could get it and the cats wouldn't even let her touch them
and then
Doll came and she didn't know they would be leaving, she didn't
understand that
at all. So she just left it where it was. She never meant to.
Doll took the child's hand away
from her mouth. "You
mustn't be biting on yourself like that. I told you a hundred times."
They
put mustard on her hand once, vinegar, and she licked them off because
of the
9
sting. They tied a rag around
her hand and when she sucked
on it the blood came up and showed pink. "You might help me with the
weeding. Give you something to do with that hand." Then they were just
quiet there in the sunlight and the smell of earth, kneeling side by
side,
pulling up all the little sprouts that weren't carrots, tiny plump
leaves and
white roots.
The old woman came out to watch
them. "She don't have
no color at all. You don't want her getting burned. She'll be
scratching
again." She put out her hand for the child to take. "I been thinking
about 'Lila.' I had a sister Lila. Give her a pretty name, maybe she
could turn
out pretty.''
"Maybe," Doll said. "Don't
matter."
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4.
But the old woman's son came
home with a wife, and there
really wasn't enough work around the place for Doll to be able to stay
there
anymore. The old woman bundled up as many things as Doll could carry
and still
carry the child, who wasn't strong enough yet to walk very far, and her
son
showed them the way to the main road, such as it was. Then after a few
days
they found Doane and Marcelle. Doll might have been looking for them.
They all
said Doane had a good name, he was a fairminded man, and if you hired
him you
could trust him to give you a day's work. Of course it wasn't just
Doane. There
was Arthur with his two boys, and Em and her daughter Mellie, and there
was
Marcelle. She was Doane's wife. They were a married couple.
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5.
There was a long time when Lila
didn't know that words had
letters or that there were other names for seasons than planting and
haying.
Walk south ahead of the weather, walk north in time for the crops. They
lived
in the United States of America. She brought that home from school.
Doll said,
"Well, I spose they had to call it something.''
10
Once, Lila asked the Reverend
how to spell Doane. Wat had he
thought she meant? Done? Down? Maybe
don't, since she didn't always
sound her t's? He was never sure
what she knew
and didn't know, and it pained him for her sake when he guessed wrong.
He paused and then he laughed.
"Mind putting it in a
sentence?"
"There
was a man
called himself Doane. I knew him a long time ago.
“Yes, I see,” he said. “I knew
a Sloane once S-L-0-A-N-E.''
Old as he was, the Reverend
still blushed sometimes. "So it might be the same. With a D."
"When I was a child. I was
thinking about old times the
other day." She wouldn't have told him even that much except that she
saw
the blush deepen when she said once she knew a man.
He nodded. "I see." The
Reverend never asked her
to talk about old times. He didn't seem to let himself wonder where she
had
been, how she had lived all the years before she wandered into the
church
dripping rain. Doane always said churches just want your money, so they
all
stayed away from churches, walked right past them as if they were
smarter than
the other people. As if they had any money for the churches to want.
But the
rain was bad and that day was a Sunday, so there was no other door way
for her
to step into. The candles surprised her. It might all have seemed so
beautiful
because she'd been missing a few meals. That can make things brighter
somehow.
Brighter and farther away. As if when you put your hand out you would
touch
glass. She watched him and forgot she was in the room with him and he
would see
her watching. He baptized two babies that morning. He was a big,
silvery old
man, and he
11
took each one of those little
babies in his arms as gently
as could be. One of them was wearing a white dress that spilled down
over his
arm, and when it cried a little from the water he put on its brow, he
said,
"Well, I bet you cried the first time you were born, too. It means
you're
alive." And she had a thought that she had been born a second time, the
night Doll took her up from the stoop and put her shawl around her and
carried
her off through the rain. She ain't your mama, I can tell.
It seemed like that girl knew
everything. Mellie. She could
bend over backward till her hands were flat on the ground. She could do
cartwheels. She said, "I know that woman ain't your mama. She telling
you
things your mama would have told you already. Don't go sucking on your
hand?
Like you was a baby? You probly an orphan." She said, "I used to know
an orphan once. Her legs was all rickety. Same as yours. She couldn't
talk
neither. That's probly why she was an orphan. She sort of turned out
wrong."
Mellie was curious about them,
if the others were not. She
would drift back to walk with them, and she would put her face close up
to the
child's face, to stare at her. "She got that sore on her foot. That's
one
thing. Put some dandelion milk on it. I got some here. I bet I could
carry her.
I could." She'd be eating the bloom of a dandelion, the yellow part, or
chewing red clover. She was pretty well brown with freckles, and her
hair was
almost white from the sun, even her eyebrows and eyelashes. "I hate
these
old coveralls. The boys about wore 'em out and now I'm wearing 'em.
They're
mostly just patches. Doane says they're better for working. I got a
dress. My
ma's going to let the hem down." And then she'd be off, walking on her
hands.
Doll said, "She likes to
pester. Don't you mind."
Lila didn't talk then. Doll
said, "She can. She just
don't want to." It was partly that Doll gave her anything she needed.
She
still woke her up in the night sometimes to give her a morsel of
12
cold mush. And Lila never even
knew there was such a thing
as cussing, till that old woman told her. It just meant leave me alone,
most of
the time. Once, she told that old woman she wisht she was in hell with
her back
broke, and the old woman yanked her up and gave her a swat and said,
You got to
stop that cussing. She d gone off somewhere and come back with a little
bottle
of medicine for the sore on the child's foot that didn't heal, and it
did smart
when she put it on, but it hurt her feelings that the child would be
hateful
about it. Lila didn't know where to hide so she just went into a corner
and
curled up as small as she could with her eyes shut tight. The old woman
said,
"Oh, mercy! Doll, come in here! She's back in the corner again. Was
there
ever such a child!"
Doll came in and knelt down by
her, smelling of sweat and
sunshine, and lifted her into her lap. She whispered, "What you doing
now,
biting on that hand like a little baby!" The old woman brought the
shawl,
and Doll put it around her. And the old woman said, "She's your child,
Doll. I can't do a thing with her."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6.
They never spoke about any of
it, not one word in all those
years. Not about the house Doll stole her away from, not about the old
woman
who took them in. They did keep that shawl, though, till it was worn
soft as
cobwebs. But she felt the thrill of the secret whenever she took Doll's
hand
and Doll gave her hand a little squeeze, whenever she lay down
exhausted in the
curve of Doll's body, with Doll's arm to pillow her head and the shawl
to
spread over her. Years after she had become an ordinary child, if there
were
going to be people to deal with, Doll would whisper in her ear, "No
cussing!" and they would laugh together, enjoying their secret. They
didn't even mention the nights they spent bedded down
13
beyond the light of
Doane's fire, or the days walking behind Doane's people at a distance,
as if they only
happened to be going along on the same road.
The could keep to themselves
because they had a bag of
cornmeal and a little pot to cook it in. Every night Doll made a fire.
As she
walked she'd be looking for things they could eat. She caught a rabbit
in her
apron and killed it with a stone, and cooked it that night with a mess
of
pigweed. She found a nest of bird's eggs. She found chicory and roasted
the
roots, which were medicine, she said, a cure for the bellyache. Then
finally
one morning she took up the child and walked after Doane's people into
a field
of young corn and started pulling weeds in the rows where their hoes
couldn't
reach, and they didn't say a thing to her about it. The child stayed
beside
her, holding on to her skirt. When Marcelle brought a pail of well
water for
the others, she brought it to them, too. Doll thanked her, and held the
cup to
the child's lips, and then she wiped her hand on her dress and dipped
her
fingers into the cup to wet them and rinse dust from the child's face.
Cold
drops ran down her chin and throat and into the damp of her dress, and
she
laughed. Doll said, surprised,
"Well, listen to you now!"
Marcelle was standing there,
watching them, waiting to get
the cup back. "I guess she been poorly for a while?"
Doll nodded. "She been poorly."
"She could ride in the wagon.
You got a lot to carry.
"I keep her by me."
"Then set your bedroll in the
wagon."
Doll never did put herself
forward, but the next morning,
when she had everything bundled up, Doane came and took it and set it
on the
wagon bed. He said, "We got some spuds in the ashes, ma'am. If you care
to
join us."
And after that she and Doll
were Doane's people, too, most
of the time, for as long as the times were decent. That would have been
about
eight years, counting backward from the Crash,
14
not counting the year Doll made
her go to school. Their own
bad times started when the mule died, two years or so before everyone
else
started getting poorer and the wind turned dirty. It seemed like the
whole
world changed just at that time, the mule gone first, which made the
wagon
useless. They couldn't even sell it, and they had to leave most of
their things
behind. The creature died on a lonely piece of road where they would
not have
been in the first place if it had shown any sign at all of what was
about to
happen to it. It just sank down on its knees and went over on its side
while
Arthur was trying to put it in the traces.
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7.
Lila heard about the Crash
years after it happened, and she
had no idea what it was even after she knew what to call it. But it did
seem
like they gave it the right name. It was like one of those storms you
might
even sleep through, and then when you wake up in the morning
everything's
ruined, or gone. Most of the farmers that used to know Doane and
Marcelle sold
up and left, or just left, and the ones who stayed didn't want any
help, or
couldn't pay for it. But there were those few years when it seemed that
they
knew who they were and where they should be and what they should be
doing.
There were those few years when the child began to be strong and to
grow, when
Doll was still herself, when Mellie still pestered and played her
pranks like
some half-grown devil trying to mind its manners. Evenings Doane might
be away
from the camp a while, somewhere trading one thing for another for some
small
mutual advantage or settling terms with somebody for the work they
would do.
When he came back again he'd look for Marcelle, never saying a word,
but when
he saw her he would go and stand near her, and then whatever else might
have
been on his mind you could tell he was pretty well at peace.
15
They all thought it was a fine
thing to live the way they
did, out in the open like that, when the weather was tolerable. It
seemed true
enough as long as the good times lasted. If they were tired and dirty
it was
from work, and that kind of dirt didn't even feel like dirt. Work meant
plenty
to eat and a few pennies for candy or ribbons or a dime for a minstrel
show
when they passed through a town. They never camped by a stream without
bathing,
and washing their clothes if the weather was good and they could stay
long
enough to let things dry. That was before the times when they began to
be
caught in the dust, and it would make them cough and cough, and the
wind would
blow it right through the clothes on their backs. But in those days
they were
proud people. If they could, they patched and mended and hemmed
whatever needed
it. They looked after what they had. Anybody could see that.
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8.
Lila did like to work in the
Reverend's garden. He hardly
ever set foot in it. It used to be that somebody from the church would
come in
now and then to keep the weeds down. When she came there at first to
tend the
roses and clean things up, she had made a little garden in a corner and
planted
a few potatoes, just for herself. A few beans. She didn't see any
reason to let
a sunny spot like that go to waste, and the soil was good. It had been
a while.
She loved the smell of dirt, and the feel of it. She had to make
herself wash
it off her hands.
Now that she was the Reverend's
wife she had made the garden
much bigger. She could get all the seeds she wanted. She still liked to
eat a
carrot right out of the ground, but she knew that wasn't what people
did, so
she was careful about it. She thought sometime she might just let the
boy try
it, to see how it tasted. (Two or three times she had even had the
thought of
stealing him, carrying him away to the woods or off down the
16
road so she could have him to
herself and let him know about
that other life. But she imagined the old man, the Reverend calling
after them,
"Where are you going with that child?" The sadness in his voice would
be terrible. He would be surprised
to
hear it. You wouldn't even know your body had a sound like that in it.
And It
would be familiar to her. She didn't imagine it, she remembered that
sadness
from somewhere, and it was as if she would understand something if she
could
hear it again. That was what she almost wanted.)
No, it was just a dream she had
had a few times, two or
three times, a kind of daydream. And it was the dream that stayed in
her mind,
not any real thought of taking the child away from his father. If he
knew what
she was thinking he would probably say, Soon enough you'll have him all
to
yourself. Sometimes she wished he could know her thoughts, because she
believed
he might forgive them. Because the Good Lord would forgive them,
practically
for sure, she thought. If the old men knew anything about the Good
Lord. If
there was a Good Lord. Doll had never mentioned Him.
Lila's thoughts were strange
sometimes. They always had
been. She had hoped getting baptized might help with it, but it didn’t.
Someday
she might ask him about that. Well, Doll always said, Just do what
you're told
and be quiet about it, that's all anybody ever going to want from you.
Lila had
learned there was really more to it than that. But she was very quiet.
He
didn't ask much of her, though. Anything, really. In those first weeks
she
could tell he was just glad to find her there at the house when he came
home,
or in the kitchen when he came down from his study. Even a little
relieved.
Maybe he knew her better than she thought he did. But then he might not
have
been so glad to find her there. She wished sometimes he would tell her
what to
do, but he was always so careful of her. So she watched the other wives
and did
what they did, as well as she could figure it out.
17
There was so much to get wrong.
She came to that first
meeting at the church after he had asked her to come, and when she
walked into
the room, all ladies there except for him, he stood up. She thought he
must be
angry to see her, that he was going to tell her to leave, that she
should have
understood it was a joke when he invited her. So she turned around and
walked
out. But two of the ladies followed her nght mto the street to tell her
how
happy they were that she had come and how they hoped she could stay.
Kindness
like that might have made her angry enough to keep walking if she
hadn't had
that idea in her mind about getting baptized. And when they came back
in, he
stood up again, because the kind of gentleman he was will do that when
ladies
come into a room. They almost can’t help it. How was she supposed to
know? They
have to be the ones to open a door, but then they have to wait there
for you to
go through it. To this very day, if the Reverend happened to meet her
out on
the street he took off his hat to her, even in the rain. He always
helped her
with her chair, which amounted to pulling it out from the table a
little, then
pushing it in again after she sat down. Who in the world could need
help with a
chair?
People have their ways, though,
she thought. And he was
beautiful for an old man. She did enjoy the sight of him. He looked as
if he'd
had his share of loneliness, and that was all right. It was one thing
she
understood about him. She liked his voice. She liked the way he stood
next to
her as if there was a pleasure for him in it.
Once, he took her hand to help
her up the steps at
Boughton's house, and Boughton winked and said, "'There are three
things
which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not,"' and they
both laughed a little. She thought to herself, No cussing. But the
Reverend
could see it bothered her when they talked that way, making jokes they
knew she
would not understand. So when they were home again he took the Bible
off the
18
shelf and showed her the verse:
The way of an eagle in the air; the way
of a serpent upon a rock; the
way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a
maiden. That
was the joke. A man with a maiden. They were laughing because he was an
old
preacher and she was a field hand, or would be if she could just find
her way
back to that time. And she was old, too. For a woman being old just
means not
being young, and all the youth had been worked out of her before it had
really
even set in. So Lila had been old a long time, but not in a way that
helped.
Well, she knew it was a joke. People were still surprised at him, that
he had
married her.
She could see it surprised him,
too, sometimes. He told her
once when there was a storm a bird had flown into the house. He'd n
ever seen
one like it. The wind must have carried it in from some far-off place.
He
opened all the doors and windows but it was so desperate to escape that
for a
while it couldn't find a way out. "It left a blessing in the house,"
he said. "The wildness of it. Bringing the wind inside." That was
just when she began to suspect she was carrying a child, so it
frightened her a
little to realize that he knew she might leave, that he might even
expect her
to leave. She only remembered afterward that the first time she crept
into bed
beside him it had been the dark of the moon. It was the black-haired
girl who
told her about that the one who called herself Susanna. She had three
or four
children, all staying with her sister or her mother, she said, so maybe
she
didn't know as much as she thought she did. Still, here Lila was with
something
more to worry about. The old man could have been telling her she should
leave,
she didn't belong in his house. Maybe that's how a gentleman would say
it. If
he wanted to, he could say, This was your idea, you're the one who said
I
should marry you. Maybe a gentleman couldn't say it. Sometime he might
be
angry, though, and forget about his manners, and that would be hard to
live with.
Doll always said, Just be quiet.
19
Whatever it is, just wait for
it to be over. Everything ends
sometime . Lila thought When you know it will end anyway, you can want
to be
done with it. But if you're carrying a child,
you’d best have a roof over your head. Any fool
knows that.
One evening they went to old
Boughton s house and the two
talked about people she didn't know and things she
didn’t understand. What else was there, after
all? And so on enough they forgot she was listening. They had read
about
missionaries back from China, about how they had converted hundreds,
and that
was a drop in the' bucket compared to all the people who had never
heard a word
of the Gospel and probably never would hear one. Boughton said it
seemed to him
like a terrible loss of souls, if that's what it was. He was not one to
question divine justice, though sometimes he did have to wonder. Anyone
would.
Which was really not the same as questioning. And the Reverend said,
When you
think of all the people who lived from Adam to Abraham. Boughton shook
his head
at the mystery of it. "We're a
drop in the bucket!" he said. "It's an easy thing to forget!"
The next day was a Sunday, and
she had waked up early and
slipped out of the house and walked away past the edge of town and
followed the
river to a place where the water ran over rocks and dropped down to a
pool with
a sandy bottom. She could watch the shadows of catfish there once the
sun came
up. She sat on the bank, damp and chilly, smelling the river and barely
hearing
the sound of it, hidden in the dark, not because she thought anyone
would be
there, but because she always liked the feeling that no one could see
her even
when she knew she was alone. The old man would wake up to an empty
house, and
he would dress and shave as he always did, and make his coffee and
toast and
gather up his papers and go off to church by himself to preach his
sermon as he
always did, and sing the hymns and pray the prayers and speak afterward
with
ladies who
20
wouldn’t ask how she was or
where she was, because they knew
his marriage was a sorrow to him, one more sorrow.
She meant to do better by him.
He was always kind to her.
But she felt strange in the church. And the night before, lying beside
him in
the dark, she had asked him a question abou?? China. He tried to
explain and
she tried to understand. He said, "I believe in the grace of God. For
me,
that is where all these questions end. Why it's pointless to ask them."
But he seemed to be telling her that Boughton might be right, that
souls could
be lost forever because of things they did not know, or understand, or
believe.
He didn't like to say it, he had to try different words for it. So she
knew he
thought it might be true. Doll probably didn't know she had an immortal
soul.
It was nothing she ever mentioned, if she ever thought about it. She
probably
wouldn't even have known the words for it. All
those people out there walking the roads all those
years, hardly a one
of them remembering the Sabbath. Who would know what day of the week it
was?
Who wouldn't take work when there was work to be done? What use was
there in
calling a day by a certain name, or thinking of it as anything but
weather?
They knew what time of the year it was when the timothy bloomed, when
the birds
were fledging. They knew it was morning when the sun came up. What more
was
there to know? If Doll was going to be lost forever, Lila wanted to be
right
there with her, holding to the skirt of her dress.
She had put on her own dress,
not one of the nice ones from
the Boughtons' attic or the new ones from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue,
and her
own shoes. No need to worry she might dirty them. When she stepped out
the door
she felt that good chill, the dark of the morning she used to wake up
to every
day. The trees stirred in the darkness, and birds made those startled
sounds
they do when the stars are gone and there is still no sun rise. The
river
smelled like any river, fishy and mossy and shadowy,
21
and the smell seemed stronger
in the dark, with the chink
and plosh of all the small life. She eased herself down to the edge of
the
water and put her hands in it. She took it up in her cupped hands,
poured it
over her brow, rubbed it into her face and into her hair. Then she did
the same
thing again, wetting the front of her dress. And again. Her hands were
so cold
she felt them against her face as if they weren't hers at all. The
river was
like the old life, just itself. Nothing more to it. She thought, It has
washed
the baptism off me. So that's done with. That must be what I wanted.
Now, if I
ever found Doll out there lost and wandering, at least she would
recognize me.
If there could be no joy for her in whatever was not life, at least she
might
remember for one second what joy had felt like. Lila thought about that
for a
while, seeing Doll walking ahead on some old dusty road, nothing on
every side
of her, and calling out her name so she would turn, and then running
into her
arms. No, Lila would be sitting on those steps, after it was dark, long
after,
and then Doll would be there, all out of breath, saying, "Child, child,
I
thought I was never going to find you!" When the sun had been up a
little
while she decided she could go back to the Reverend's house. Maybe no
one would
see her. They would all be in church.
She put on the blue dress she
had found in the mail order
catalogue he gave her. It was the first time she had taken the dress
out of the
box it came in. And she put on the white sandals and she brushed her
hair. In
St. Louis one of the girls had said to her, Just pretend you're pretty
so they
can pretend you're pretty. The old man would come home, or stay in his
study at
the church. Someone might invite him to dinner, which they ate in the
middle of
the day on Sunday. And he might say yes rather than come back to his
own house,
which would still be empty, or where he would find her and have to
think of a
way to speak to her. When she did something wrong, something that made
22
him unhappy, he was embarrassed
by it, and he would smile
and say, “Perhaps
you could help me understand
… you are so quiet
. . .” But she
would not know how to explain and if
she told him how strange and alone she felt, and wanted to feel he
would wonder
why she stayed with him at all. Now that there might be a child she’d
best try
to act like she belonged there, at least for a while. Her hands still
smelled
like river water, and her hair. She still felt a little more like who
she was
That was a help.
She could read. Doll had seen
to that. She might sit on the
porch with a magazine and wait for him there. Then he could ask her
what she
was reading, or she could tell him that there was a word she didn't
understand,
as there certainly would be. So she was sitting with a copy of The
Nation in
her lap when after church would have ended, she saw the Reverend
walking up the
road , Boughton beside him, the two of the them talking together as
they always
did, and listening to each other, as if, so far into their lives, some
new
thing might still be said, something not to be missed. Boughton saw her
first and
said a word to the Reverend, who glanced up, and then they stopped in
the road
to say good bye and the old man came on al one. His body still had the
habits
of largeness and strength, as if he had learned to be a little slow
when he
moved, out of consideration for whatever might be around him, whatever
he might
bump or displace, Still he was slower than usual, taking his time,
approaching
his own door with a reluctance she saw and regretted, since this time
might be
the time that he would not forgive her, or at least the time that he
would have
decided he did not want her to stay.
He took off his hat as he came
up the steps. Then he stood
there a moment, turning the brim of it in his hands, just taking her
in. "The Nation," he said, as if
that
was as strange as anything else that had happened to him lately.
23
So she said, "I got to do more
reading.It's something I
been meaning to do for a while now.
After a moment he said, "Yes,
well, that's always
worthwhile, I guess." His voice was mild, almost amused. He shifted his
weight, the way he did when something surprised him a little.
So she said, "Seems like I'm
carrying a child."
She had not meant to tell him that, but she couldn’t very well wait
until he
decided to be angry to tell him., or until he told her he just wanted
his life
to himself again, as she expected him to
any day. If that happened, her pride would make her
leave,without a
mention of it, and there was no telling what would become of her and
the child,
if there was a child.
He said, “Really.” He sat down
on the porch swing beside
her, at a little distance from her. He said, “Is that a fact.” Then he
said,
“This is not at all how I thought this day would end.”
She had not looked at his face
yet. She was watching the
wind move the trees. It was a soft evening wind, and the trees were
darkening,
filling with shadows. It would be time to stop working, not soon but
sometime.
A wind like that used to mean the day isn’t endless, sometime there’ll
be
supper and talk and sleep. So many things they knew together and never
spoke
about at all.
He said, “So, then, you’ve
decided to stay.”
“I never did plan on leaving.”
For a town it wasn’t such a
bad place. The trees were big enough that it was almost like living in
the
woods. There was no reason not to make another garden. She could plant
some
flowers.
After a minute he said, “When
you go off like that, you
might leave a note. I don’t always know what to think. You left your
wedding
ring.”
"I just forget to put it on
sometimes."
“Yes. I guess I knew that.”
“I’m always wearing that locket
you give me.”
24
It seemed strange to her to
wear a ring. It was a gold ring.
She might harm it in some way. It might slip off her finger and be lost.
“Lila,” he said, “I’m glad to
know you aren’t planning to
leave. But if you ever change your mind, I want you to leave by
daylight. I
want you to have a train ticket in your hand that will take you right
where you
want to go, and I want you to take your ring and anything else I have
given
you. You might want to sell it. That would be all right. It’s yours,
not mine.
It doesn’t belong here-- I mean it wouldn’t--” He cleared his throat.
“You’re
my wife,” he said. I want to take care of you, even if that means
someday
seeing you to the train.” He leaned forward and looked into her face,
almost
sternly, so she would know he meant what he said.
She thought, We would be safe
here. He would be good to a
child. But if he was going to put her on a train, where would the child
be
then? Would he expect her to leave it behind when she left? Or did he
think
there wasn’t going to be any child? Well, sometimes you expect you’re
going to
have a baby, then nothing comes of it. You can set your heart on it.
“I can’t yet know for sure,”
she said. “Whether there’s
going to be a baby.”
“I understand that.”
“You might think it’s a story I
made up to smooth things
over. If it don’t turn out to be true.” She didn’t want to to have to
worry
about what he might think if a day came when he stopped trusting her. When that day came. She was sure it
would.
He said, very gently, “I would
never suspect you of such a
thing,” as if a lie like that would be too low for her to even think
about.
She thought, If it was
a lie, and if it had come to mind, I just might have
told it. It surely did
smooth things over. She said, “I ain’t what you seem to think I am. I
done some
things in my life. Like I told you”
25
The truth would come when he
would understand that, too.
Better that he shouldn’t be too surprised. She knew he would not ask
for more
particulars, not now.
He was quiet, and then he said,
"You are the only
person in the world I want to have sitting here beside me. That isn’t
what I
think, it’s what I know. I guess it doesn’t explain anything. Have you
had
supper?”
“Some bread and jam.”
He patted her knee, “I wouldn’t
call that supper. We have to
take care of you.” The kitchen was empty, so he went to the neighbors
and came
back with a bottle of milk and a can of baked beans. He laughed. “We’ll
do
better tomorrow.” She knew about that other wife and that other baby.
If she
had given herself some time to think, she’s have realized they would be
on his
mind.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.
She was there in Gilead in the
first place because once when
she was walking along the road, probably hoping to get to Sioux City,
tired of
walking, tired of carrying her suitcase and her bedroll, she had
noticed a
little house sitting a way off by a cluster of cottonwood trees, a sort
of
cabin someone had built and abandoned along with the fields around it.
So she
thought she'd take a look. Then she knew for sure it was abandoned
because
people had camped there and left clutter behind, and broken up the
stoop for
firewood, and no one had ever fixed any of it or cleared it away. The
people who
left the mess might come back and tell her it was their place-just look
at the
beer cans and the snoose tins, who you think put them there? She had
seen that
happen before. You seen them spent cartridges out by the trees? You
think it
was squirrels dropped them? Nothing to do then but move on.
26
But she had been there for
weeks and so far no one come. She
knew how to get by so long as nobody bothered her. Plenty of fish in
the river.
There were dandelion greens. Mushrooms. You can chew pine sap if you
want to.
You can eat the roots of things. Cattails. Wild carrot. Nettles are
very good
if you know how to pick them and cook them. Doll said you just had to
know what
wouldn’t kill you. Most folks don’t eat squirrel, but you can. Turtles.
Snakes,
if need be. Lila couldn’t really live that way for very long, only
until the
weather turned cold. But she wanted to stay in one place fr a while.
The
loneliness was bad, but it was better than anything else she could
think of. It
was probably loneliness that made her walk the mile or so into town
every few
days just to look at the houses and stores and the flower gardens. She
never
meant to talk to anybody. She had a dress she wore and a dress she
saved, and
she was wearing the good one, the clean one, the one she kept a little
nice so
she could go walking where people might see her, when she got caught in
the
rain that Sunday and stepped into the church, just to save her dress.
And there
was the old man, speaking above the sound of the rain against the
windows. He looked
at her, and looked away again. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
They didn’t really ask for
money. They passed a plate, but
nobody made you put anything in it. She began counting up the days, so
she
would know when it was Sunday again. She lost count once. People living
the way
she was could go crazy. She began to wonder if that had already
happened to
her. She thought, If I'm crazy, I may as well do what I feel like
doing. No
point being crazy if you have to worry all the time about what people
are thinking
anyway. There were ten or twenty good reasons why she would not go to
church.
Doll never did. The place was full of strangers. She had only the one
dress to
wear. They all knew the songs, they knew what they were supposed to do
and say
and what it meant. They all knew
27
each other. The preacher said
things that bothered her, she
couldn't make sense of them. Resurrection. But she guessed she liked
the
candles and the singing. She guessed she didn't have a better place to
be.
She was probably crazy, and she
was probably leaving, so she
decided she would talk to that preacher. There were a hundred reasons
why she
would never go to his house, in that same old dress, and ask him a
question.
She was never one to put herself forward. But there was no way to keep
the mice
out of that shack. The fields around it were going all to tansy. In St. Louis they gave
them tansy tea, and
she hated the smell of it. So she had decided to leave. Then why not
ask him?
He would just say, That crazy woman came to my door with something on
her mind,
and then I never saw her again after that. Soon enough he'd forget it
ever
happened. He wouldn't know what to tell her. But who else was she ever
going to
ask?
When he saw her at the door he
looked surprised and not
surprised, as if he had no reason to expect her and there she was
anyway. He
was in his shirtsleeves and house slippers, looking older than he did
in the
.pulpit, and she thought she had come too early in the morning. But
what did it
matter.
He said, "Hello. Good morning,"
and waited, as if
he expected her to explain herself Then he said, "Please come in."
When she stepped inside the house, he began to apologize for how bare
it was.
"I'm not much for keeping things up. I suppose you can see that.
Still--"
and he gestured at the sofa, which was covered with papers and books.
"Let
me make a little space for you here. I don't have much company. You can
probably see that, too." She didn't know then that it would have
embarrassed him to have her there, a woman alone with him, a stranger.
But he
didn't want her to leave, she did know that. "Can I get you a glass of
water? I could make coffee, if you have a few minutes." She had a day,
a
week, a month. She said, "I got nowhere to be."
28
He smiled at her, or to
himself, as if he saw that the
mystery of her presence might just be something a few dollars could
help with.
He said, "Then I'll make coffee."
She stood up. "I don't even
know why I come here."
She recognized that smile. She had hated people for it.
"Well-- We could talk a little.
Sometimes that helps. I
mean, helps make things clearer-- "
She said, "I don't much like to
talk."
He laughed. "Well, that's fine,
too. A lot of people
around here feel that way. But they do enjoy a cup of coffee."
She said, "I don't know why I
come here. That's a
fact."
He shrugged. "Since you are
here, maybe you could tell
me a little about yourself ?"
She shook her head. "I don't
talk about that. I just
been wondering lately why things happen the way they do."
“Oh!” he said. “Then I am glad
you have some time t spare.
I’ve been wondering about that more or less my whole life.” He brought her into the
kitchen and seated
her at the table, and after he had
made
coffee they sat there together for a while, saying practically nothing.
Yes,
the weather had been fine. He traced a scratch on the table with his
finger.
And then he began to tell her about the brother and sisters who died
before he
was born, and how his mother said once that the stairs were scuffed by
the
children's shoes because she could never keep them from running in the
house.
And when she found a scrawl in a book, she said, "One of the children
must
have done it." There was a kind of fondness and sadness in her voice
that
he heard only when she mentioned them. So when he found a scratch or a
mark on
something, he still thought, “One of the children must have done it.” His brother Edward, the
oldest, was spared
the diphtheria that took the rest of them. So Edward knew the children,
and he
had stories about them. One, closest to him, was named John, a family
name.
Once, he heard his brother call him Non-John, thinking he was too young
to
understand. Because Edward missed the
29
brother he had lost, he always
did miss him. He was-- very
loyal to him. Their mother and father and grandfather seldom mentioned
those
children. They could hardly bear to think of them. "There's been a good
deal of sorrow in this old place," he said. "Some of it mine. Some I
used to wish were mine. So I sort of live with the question. Why things
happen.
I guess this isn't much help."
She liked to hear people tell
stories. The saddest ones were
the best. She wondered if that meant anything at all. Of course, when
people
talked about themselves that way, they were usually trying to get you
to talk
about yourself in the same way. That would be what this preacher
wanted. But
she and Doll had a secret between them. The old woman who took them in
said,
"Doll, you know you can go to jail for stealing a child. And I can go
to
jail for helping you do it." She said, "You're flirting with the
worst kind of trouble." So Lila couldn't think of breathing a word,
even
now. Stealing a child, when Doll had come to her like an angel in the
wilderness. The Reverend talked about angels, and the notion helped her
to
think about certain things. She was swept up and carried away, with
that old
shawl around her.
He said, "I don't often talk
about this. I don't often
talk to anyone who doesn't know about it already. You've come here to
ask me a
question; and I've been going on about myself."
She said; "I liked that story."
He looked away from her and
laughed. "It is a story,
isn't it? I've never really thought of it that way. And I suppose the
next time
I tell it, it will be a better story. Maybe a little less true. I might
not
tell it again. I hope I won't. You're right not to talk. It's a sort of
higher
honesty, I think. Once you start talking, there's no telling what
you'll
say."
She said, "I wouldn't know
about that."
30
"Apparently not. I do. I've
spent my life talking- But
you have that question. Maybe you could help me understand it a little
better.
Tell me how it came to be on your mind. In a few words."
She said, "I got time to myself
I think about
things."
"Yes. Clearly you do.
Interesting things."
"I spose everybody thinks about
'em."
He laughed. "Right. But that's
interesting, too."
"On Sundays you talk about the
Good Lord, how He does
one thing and another."
"Yes, I do." And he blushed. It
was as if he
expected that question, too, and was surprised again that the thing he
expected
for no reason was actually happening. He said, "I know that I am not--
adequate to the subject. You have to forgive me."
She nodded. "That's all you
going to say."
"No. No, it isn't. I think you
are asking me these
questions because of some hard things that have happened, the things
you won't
talk about. If you did tell me about them, I could probably not say
more than
that life is a very deep mystery, and that finally the grace of God is
all that
can resolve it. And the grace of God is also a very deep mystery." He
said, "You can probably tell I've said these same words too many times.
But they're true, I believe." He shrugged, and watched his finger trace
the scar on the table.
After a minute she said, "Well,
all right.' I better go
now." She didn't always remember yet to say thank you for the coffee,
thank you for your time and your trouble. He walked her to the door and
opened
it for her, and she forgot to thank him for that. He looked tired, and
as
though he was sorry the conversation had ended. He said, "Thank you for
coming by. It has been interesting. For me." Then he said, "Whatever
it is, or was, that you didn't tell me, I regret it. Very much."
Still, she believed she must
have turned him against her,
when she thought back on it. Showing up at his door like that. But the
next few
days people she didn't know would stop her on
31
the road and offer her work,
even a spare room. One lady
invited her for a supper at the church, and she went, hoping the
Reverend
wouldn't be there. They said they expected him, but he didn't come.
That was
the lady who told her about the wife and the child, speaking very
softly out of
respect for the sadness of the story. She said it was something he
never talked
about to anyone. Reverend Boughton, of course, but no one else. "He
forgets things, like he did the supper tonight," she said. "He's
always been that way."
If she stayed in Gilead, she
could earn some money. She
could buy some things at the store. Soap, and thread, and a box of
salt. She
could be in out of the weather when she wanted. All they asked her to
do was a
little gardening, a little washing and ironing, and she could do those
things
as well as anybody. So it wasn't really charity. They didn't bother her
with
talk. They gave her Sundays to herself If she left she had nowhere to
go
especially, except not St. Louis. She decided she might as well stay
for a
while, putting a little aside to make things easier when she changed
her mind.
It was one of those Sundays, after church, that she thought to walk up
to the cemetery.
She found the wife and child there, sure enough. The grass was mowed,
but
nobody had thought to prune the roses.
He had given a sermon, "'Let
your light shine before
men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is
in
heaven.' " He said it meant that when you did a good thing it should
seem
to come from God, not from you. It should not feel to other people like
your
goodness, and it should not feel that way to you, either. Any good
thing is
less good the more any human being lays claim to it. She thought, All
right,
that's why he told these other people to help me out. That's why he
can't look
at me. You'd think he was ashamed of something. Ever since that morning
I went
to his house and he could see well
32
enough I was on hard times,
he's hardly said a word to me.
Well, that's all fine, except it don't seem honest I spose he wants me
to think
it's God been putting money in my pocket, when it's just him. It might
even be
his money they been paying me with. Church money. Doane said they did
things in
churches to make people believe what they told them.
That was the day she walked out
with a pew Bible. They would
have been so happy to give her one that she couldn't bear the thought.
They'd
take it wrong. She wasn't getting religion, she just wanted to know
what he was
talking about. For her own reasons. And someday, when she had decided
to leave
she'd probably bring it back. It made her feel better to be interested
in
something. That much less time for the thoughts that worried her.
But she wanted him to know she
wasn't such a fool as he
might have thought she was. Since he did seem to think about her. So
she began
tending that grave. There was writing on it. We
wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief Must be
from
the Bible. Let's see if he thinks it was God who scraped the moss off
the
headstone and put the ivy there. Who cut back the yew shrubs so some
light
could get through. Who would make the roses bloom. And she had noticed
that the
garden behind his house was running to weeds, so she began tending
that, too.
Once, he found her working there-- looking after her potato plants,
though he
didn't seem to notice. Picking the beetles off and dropping them in a
tin can.
He said, "You have done so much. It looks wonderful. I would like to
give
you something for it.'' He had his wallet in one hand, his hat in the
other.
She said, "I owe you a
kindness.''
"No," he said. "No. You
certainly don't owe
me anything.''
"I best decide that," she said.
"Yes. Well, if there is ever--
anything at all. That
you need-- If you ever want to talk again, I might do better this
time."
He shrugged. "I can't promise, but I'll try."
33
She said,
"I
ain't making any promises," and he laughed. Then she said, “I’m
thinking
about it. Thank you. He was a beautiful old man. His brow was heavy,
but his
eyes were kind. Why should he care what she thought, whether she stayed
or
left, w hat became of her? She knew what she looked like, with her big
hands
and her rangy arms, and her face that had been burned a hundred times,
more,
and her scorched hair and her eyes the sun had faded. In St. Louis they
had
made a sort of game of it, trying to pretty her up. Everything looked
wrong.
Just pretend you're pretty. Mainly
she'd cleaned up around the place, helped the others with their clothes
and
their hair. When she tried to pretend, they'd laugh. He did have a way
of
looking at her, when he looked at her at all. She had to admit it. But
if she
let herself start thinking like that, he would begin to matter to her
and the
times she had let that happen, those two or three
times, nothing had come of it but trouble.
She had a habit now of putting questions to him in her mind. What do
you ever
tell people in a sermon except that things that happen mean something?
Some man
dies somewhere a long time ago and that means something. People eat a
bit of
bread and that means something. Then why won't you say how you know
that? Do
you just talk that way because you're a preacher? This kind of thinking
made a
change in her loneliness, made it more tolerable for her. And she knew
how
dangerous that could be. She had told herself more than once not to
call it
loneliness, since it wasn't any different from one year to the next, it
was
just how her body felt, like hungry or tired, except it was always
there,
always the same. Now and again she had distracted herself from it for a
while.
And it always came back and felt worse.
But she began to think about
getting herself baptized. She
thought there might be something about that water on her forehead that
would
cool her mind. She had to get through her life one way or another. No
34
reason not to take any comfort
the world seemed to offer
her. If none of it made sense to her now, that might change if she let
it. If
none of it meant anything, after all, no harm done. Then he told her
that they
would be having a class, and she would be very welcome to join them.
She was
still making up her mind, just walking past the church because she
thought she
might be early or she had come the wrong evening, because she had
walked past
twice before and had not seen anyone going in. She never really knew
the time,
and she could lose track of the days. But then there was the preacher
coming
along the street toward her, so she just stood there where she was and
waited.
Nothing else to do. He had taken off his hat when he saw her, so he
probably
meant to speak to her. She had not thought what she might say to him,
had not
expected to speak to him at all, only to sit in the row farthest from
him and
listen and keep her questions to herself.
He said, "Good evening. I'm
happy to see you
here."
And she said, "I figure I
better get myself baptized.
No one seen to it for me when I was a child." Realizing as she heard
herself say the words that after all her thinking she felt almost in
the habit
of speaking her mind to him, Didn't she know better than to let herself
think
like that? Hadn't she told herself a hundred times? This is what was
bound to
come of it. He didn't even look quite the way he looked to her in her
thoughts,
and still she had spoken to him as if she knew him. That's what came of
living
the way she did.
"Well," he said. "Yes. We'll
take care of
that. Certainly."
Everything she said seemed to
surprise him a little. No
wonder, when it surprised her, too. She thought, How do I know what
I'll be
saying with all them church people watching me? She said, "I can't come
tonight. I got to work." And she turned and walked away, instantly
embarrassed to realize how strange she must look, hurrying off for no
real reason
into the dark of the evening. The lonely dark, where she
35
could only expect to go
crazier, in that shack where she
still lived because it was hard for her to be with people. It would be
truer to
say hid than lived, since about the only comfort she had in it was
being by
herself. If she didn't go back now, before the full ache of shame set
in, she
knew she would never set foot in that church again. The best thing
about church
was that when she sat in the last pew there was no one looking at her.
She
could come a little late and leave a little early, when she wanted to.
She
could listen to the sermon and the singing. People might wonder why she
was
there, but they never asked. And it was just interesting to hear the
old man
talk about being born and dying and the rest of it , things most folks
are
pretty quiet about. Not much else was keeping her in that town. So she
decided
she would go back to the church and walk in the door the way she meant
to do in
the first place. But when she did walk in, he stood up, so she left,
and those
ladies followed her out into the street. They must have been talking
about her.
S o what? They could have let her go if they'd wanted to. If she felt
like a
fool, so what? He stood up like he did before, and he smiled and said,
"I'm glad you could be here, after all." She said, "Thank
you." And after that it was easier. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.
Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob. At least she was beginning to learn a little.
If she thought about the
preacher so she wouldn't think
about other things, she could just as well be remembering the old
times, when
she had Doll. No point wondering about that cabin Doll took her from,
or who it
was that had kept her alive when she was newborn and helpless. She had
picked
up the Bible and read at the place it fell open, and she found this: In the day thou wast born thy navel was not
cut, neither wast thou washed in water to 'cleanse thee ... No eye
pitied thee.
And she fell to thinking that somebody had to have pitied her, or any
child
that lives. I passed by thee, and saw
thee weltering in thy blood. Lila had seen children born.
They were just as
naked and strange as some
36
bug you would dig up out of the
ground. You would want to
wash the child and wrap it up in something to hide it, out of pity.
Hard as she
tried, all she could remember were skirts brushing against her, hands
not so
rough as other hands. That might have been the one who made her live.
What did
it matter. In the evenings when it was too dim to read she wrapped
herself in
her blanket , huddled u p in a corner so that her face and her feet
were
covered, and thought or dreamed, slept or lay awake. If Doll was her
mother she
wouldn't have had to steal her, so Lila knew that much. What could
matter any
less than where she came from? Well, she thought, where I'm going might
matter
less. Or maybe why I'm here by myself in the dark wondering about it.
She
didn't mind the dark or the crickets or even the scurry of mice,
really, and it
pleased her to think that the s tars were there, just outside an open
window.
In the dark of the morning, in her nightdress, with her bar of soap,
she walked
down to bathe in the river. No one could see her. She could hardly see
herself
She liked the smell of the soap. She felt the stones and the silt at
her feet,
but there was a good sting of cold in the water sliding over her skin.
It made
her take gasping breaths that left the taste of air in her throat. Doll
used to
say, "Now you're just as clean as a body can be."
Then she would put on the
nightdress again, walk back to the
cabin, brush the litter of leaves and sticks off her feet as well as
she could,
wrap herself in her blanket , and lie awake, her body slowly warming
the damp
of the dress, and she would think about the way things happened. One
night,
because she had found those words in the Bible, thinking about how it
could
have happened that she was born and had lived. Sickly as she was when
Doll took
her up. Then how to imagine whoever it was that had bothered with her
even that
much, to keep body and soul together. It was nothing against Doll to
think
there had to have been someone there before her, someone who held her
37
and fed her. She thought of the
preacher's wife, that girl
with her newborn baby in her arms. The woman who told her about them
said, "She
just slipped away, and in a few hours the baby followed her." And the
preacher was left all alone. What had become of Mellie, who was never
scared?
She could ask him about that. Mellie' d poke a snake with a stick just
to get a
better look at it. Once, she climbed from a fence railing onto the back
of a
young bull calf, hanging on with her arms around its neck. Doane saw
what she
was doing and came over to the fence and climbed up and lifted her off
the
thing before it could really decide how to get rid of her. It had
scraped her
leg against a post and left it raw enough that the flies bothered it,
but she
just said she had a notion that if you rode a bull every day from the
time it
was young you could ride it when it was growed. Then you could go
anywhere and
folks would say, Here she comes, riding on that bull. Doane said,
"Well,
that ain't your bull. Four, five days we'll be gone from here." And she
said, "I coulda stayed on that thing if you'd let me. I know that
much." He laughed. "You know, if he'd decided to, he'd of broke that
leg. For a start. Then, when you're useless, who's sposed to look after
you?" She said, "My leg don't even hurt that bad!"
He was always telling her she
was going to break her neck
sometime and they'd have to just go on and leave her lying beside the
road. She
never paid any mind to that at all. And she never broke her neck,
though
sometimes she did seem to be trying to. She saw some town girls
skipping rope
and found a piece of rope herself and figured out how to do it better
than they
did, crossing her arms, hopping on one foot. She tried a sort of
handspring,
but without her hands, since they had to be holding the rope. She'd
fall in the
road and come right back up again, and she'd say, "I pertinearly done
it
that time." A skinny, freckled child with her white brows drawn
together
and her raggedy white hair flying, meaning to
38
make herself the best rope
jumper there ever was. If she saw
an outhouse she'd go into it, looking for a catalogue, and if she found
one
she'd come back with a few pages and study them for days, trying to
decide what
things were and what they were good for. She'd say, "I can't quite make
out the words yet. I'm working on it." Doll called it all tomfoolery,
and
she'd say to Lila, "I'm glad you don't go acting like that," even
before Lila was strong enough to have tried to, even though i,he never
showed
any sign of wanting to. She was Doll's girl, always at her side if she
could
be. Mellie had walked the same roads every summer, and she could wander
away
without getting lost. She would try now and then to make a chum of
Lila,
telling her she knew where there were huckleberries, or that she would
show her
how to catch a fish in her bare hands,
but Lila always wanted Doll near her, at least in
her sight.
What could the old man say
about all those people born with
more courage than they could find a way to spend, and then there was
nothing to
do with it but just get by? And that was when the times were decent.
She had
always been jealous of Mellie because the others took pleasure from her
pranks
and her notions. She was always making them laugh. Once, Mellie said,
"I
believe my knees have been skint my whole life. My elbows, too." Doane
laughed and said, "Then I guess you must of been born that way. If ever
anybody
was." And where would a girl like that find any kind of life that asked
more of her than just standing up to hardship? Something an animal
could do
better, a mule. Doll said, Whatever happens, just be quiet and it'll
pass, most
likely. But those weren't thoughts Lila wanted to have, and when she
began to
think that way she might as well get up and wait for the dawn to come.
She
might as well start deciding where she would go for work that day, what
house
she hadn't gone to for a while. They always gave her work, even if it
was only
something a child could do, like cutting kindling, and she didn't want
to
burden anyone by coming there too often.
39
That morning Mrs. Graham had
some clothes for her, a skirt
and two blouses that she said her daughter had left when she moved to
Des
Moines. They'd just been hanging in the closet. Lila might as well have
them if
she could use them. Lila thought, This is the very worst part of being
broke.
Everybody can see how broke you are. It seems like this whole town is
making a
project of knowing every damn thing I don't have. If I left here, I
could wear
these things and nobody would give it a thought. If I stay, I'm walking
around
in somebody else's old clothes, somebody's charity. Mrs. Graham was
watching
her face, a little pleased with herself, and regretful, and
embarrassed. She
said, "You needn't take them if you don't have any use for them, dear.
I
just thought they might be your size."
Lila said, "They look about
right. I could probly use
them. Sure." She should have said thank you, she knew it, but she never
asked anybody for anything except work, and if they gave her something
else
they did it for their own reasons. She wasn't beholden to them, because
being
be holden was the one thing she could not stand. She wouldn't even look
at the
clothes, though she knew Mrs. Graham hoped she would. So they must be
all
right, she thought. Nothing too wore out anyway. And then she did Mrs.
Graham's
ironing, thinking about those clothes and how she would probably wear
them to
church, since that would feel better, at least, than wearing the same
old
dress. Even if the preacher noticed, and that made her feel beholden to
him,
and they all knew it. So when she was done at Mrs. Graham's house she
took the
bag of clothes and walked up to the cemetery. There was the grave of
the John
Ames who died as a boy, with a sister Martha on one side and a sister
Margaret
on the other. She had never really thought about the way the dead would
gather
at the edge of a town, all their names spelled out so you'd know whose
they
were for as long as that family lived in that place. And there was the
Reverend
John
40
Ames, who would have been the
preacher's father, with his
wife beside him. It must be strange to know your whole life where you
will be buried.
To see these stones with your own name on them. Someday the old man
would lie
down beside his wife.
And there she
would be, after so many years, waiting in
sunlight, all covered in roses.
She couldn't stay in the shack
when the weather changed. There
would be no way to keep warm. Wind came through the walls and rain came
through
the roof. That woman had offered her a spare room, but she might have
changed
her mind since the week or so when everybody in the church was offering
her
something. If she was going to leave town, she should do it before
travel got
too hard. She would probably have to decide between a bus ticket and a
winter
coat. And her shoes were about gone. No point thinking about it. She
would
decide one way or another for one reason or another, save up what she
could
while she could, and whatever she did, she'd get by, most likely.
Lila had lived in a real house
before . Not the one in St.
Louis. A respectable boarding house in the town of Tammany, Iowa. Doll
took a
job there s o Lila could go to school for a year, long enough to learn
how to
read and do some figures. Mrs. Marker, whose house it was, did the
cooking, but
Doll did the cleaning and laundry and looked after the poultry and the
gardens,
and Lila helped with all of it. Doll wanted her to know what it was to
have a
regular life. Not that Doll knew much about it herself, but Mrs. Marker
would
yell about everything she did wrong, so she got better at it with time,
until
school was almost out. Then she told Lila, "I'm tired of listening to
that
woman. She can hang her own damn wash." And they just gathered up what
was
theirs and walked away.
Lila liked school. She liked
sheets and pillowcases. They
had a room of their own, with curtains and a dresser. They ate their
supper at
a table in the kitchen, where Lila did her lessons while Doll washed
the
41
dishes. Doll never did
complain, so Lila was surprised when
she said they were going to leave, but she didn't say a word and she
didn't
look back, though the house had seemed pretty to her. It was where she
had
learned to tend roses. But that was their pride, to tolerate whatever
they
could and not one bit more, to give no sign of wanting or regretting,
and for
the children to show the grown-ups respect in front of strangers. It
was spring,
so there would be work, and Doll knew more or less where to look for
Doane's
people. They were two days finding them and a week waiting to be asked
to eat
with them again. Things were always different after their year in
Tammany. It
was as if they had been disloyal and were never quite forgiven for it.
When
Lila read a sign to Mellie, GENERAL STORE, Mellie would say, "Well,
anybody can see that's a general store, so what them words going to
say? County
jail? It don't look like nothing else but a store, does it?" If Lila
read
DRY GOODS or NOTIONS AND SUNDRIES, Mellie would say, "Ah, you just
making
that up. It don't even mean anything."
But Lila could read, and Doll
was glad of it, no matter what
anybody thought. She said it would come in useful. Maybe it would
sometime.
Mostly Mellie was right-it told her what she'd have known anyway. No
HELP
WANTED HERE. It had been good for knowing the names of towns that were
too
broke and forgotten to need names, which is why you had to read the
sign to
find it out. Still, when she was getting a can of beans and a spool of
twine at
the store, she had bought herself a tablet and a pencil. She was just
curious
to know what she hadn't forgotten yet. She had turned down the corner
of that
page, and she copied out those words. And
as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut,
neither
wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee; thou wast not salted at all,
nor
swaddled at all. No eye pitied thee, to do any of these things unto
thee, to
have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field,
for that
thy person was abhorred, in the day that thou wast born. And when I
42
passed
by thee, and
saw thee weltering in thy blood I said unto thee, Though thou art in
thy blood,
live; yea, I said unto thee, Though thou art in thy blood, live. She thought,
First time I ever heard of
salting a baby. She made the letters slowly and carefully, not so
easily even
as she had made them as a child, but she told herself she would write a
little
every day. Practice, the teacher said, when her lessons were so
clumsy-looking
beside all the others that she was shamed almost to tears. You just
need a
little more practice.
And she began to look forward
to morning. As soon as there
was light enough, she sat at the door with the tablet on her knee and
wrote.
She copied words, because she wasn’t sure how to spell them, and this
was a way
to learn. Who would ever know if she spelled them wrong? Nobody ever
came
around. Still it shamed her to to think how ignorant it might look to
her if
she weren’t too ignorant to know any better. So she wrote,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth
was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Waste
and
void. Darkness was on the face of the deep. She would like to ask him
about
that. She wrote it all again, ten times.
She enjoyed a morning when the
heat is coming on and she was
still a little cold from washing in the river. At dawn the chant of the
crickets and grasshoppers and the tree toads and cicadas was already
slow. It
was as if the heat and the sunlight were taking more than they were
meant to
take, more damp, more smell, just because they could. They were so
strong, and
nothing else was really awake yet. There was a feeling of something
like injury
about the earth smell and the dew smell, the leaf smell. The tansy
didn’t
bother her so much anymore. Doane said deer hate tansy, and maybe that
was why
they hadn’t found the squash growing by the cabin, just a few seeds
left lying
by the stump other people had used to chop wood and clean fish and gut
rabbits.
She planted them, and now there were big, tented blooms, yellow as
could be,
and big vines trailing over the
43
ground. She hoped the old man
did not know where she was
staying, and she knew he would never come three if he did. But if he
ever did
come, she hoped it would be in the morning. Those little white moths
fluttering
over it made that raggedy old meadow seem almost like a garden.
When they were children they
used to be glad when they
stayed in a workers' camp, shabby as they all were, little rows of
cabins with
battered tables and chairs and moldy cots inside, and maybe some dishes
and
spoons. They were dank and they smelled of mice, and Marcelle made
everybody
sleep outside except when it rained, but they always had a cabin, and
they kept
everything they carried in it during the daytime. And Lila and Mellie
and the
boys, when they weren't working, played that it was their house or
their fort
or their cave. They would search it for anything that might have been
left
there, and if they found half a bootlace or a piece of a broken cup
they would
make up stories about what it was and why they were lucky to find it.
Once,
Arthur's boy Deke found a penny that had been left on a railroad track
and
squashed flat. He held it up to the door and put a nail through it.
Somebody
sometime had nailed a horseshoe above the door of a cabin they had for
a week,
and they fdt this must be important. They were wary of the strangers
and
hostile to their children, except for Mellie, who always wanted to play
with
the babies and would be just sociable enough to get their mothers or
sisters to
let her. Mellie playing mumblety-peg and tending a grubby infant
between turns,
hum-hum-hum, rocking it in her bony arms, playing at mother and child.
They would all be working in
the orchards, picking apples or
cherries or pears. They would be up in the tops of the trees all day
long, and
they would never spill a basket or break a branch. It was work children
did
best. They were given crates of fruit that was too ripe or bruised, and
the
children ate it till they were sick of it and sick of the souring smell
of it
and the shiny little
44
black bugs that began to cover
it, and then they would start
throwing it at each other and get themselves covered with rotten pear
and
apricot. Flies everywhere. The y'd be in trouble for getting their
clothes
dirtier than they were before. Doane hated those camps. He'd say,
"Folks
sposed to live like that?" But the children thought they were fine.
She would tell the old man, I
didn't use to mind tansy. I
still like an apricot now and then. She pretended he knew some of her
thoughts,
only some of them, the ones she would like to show him. Mellie with her
babies.
Doll smiling because she had a bit of sugar candy from the store to
slip into
Lila's hand when the others weren't looking. Any one of them could walk
through
that field, plucking at the blue stem and the clover, thinking their
own
thoughts, natural as could be. They had passed through so many other
places
just like it, a whole world of weedy, sunny, raggedy fields with no
names to
them. Only that one name the United States
of America. If they could be there the way they were
in her mmd, before
the times got hard, then he could know them. She would want him to know
them.
No. Why did she let herself
think that way? If he saw this
place he would just be embarrassed at how poor she was, how rough she
lived. He
wouldn't quite look at her, he'd try not to look at anything else, and
he
wouldn't say much at all. She'd be hating him and hoping he knew it.
Then when
he was gone she would have all that kindness to deal with. And she
hadn't even
saved up enough yet for a bus ticket. Maybe that is the one thing she
could
bring herself to ask them for. A ticket out of town. She'd probably
have one in
her hand before she finished asking.
So she started copying again. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters. And God said,
Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was
good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the
light
Day, and the darkness he called Night. She wrote it out ten
45
times. If she could make
herself write smaller, she wouldn't
fill up the tablet for a while. She wrote Lila Dahl, Lila Dahl, Lila
Dahl. The
teacher had misunderstood somehow and made up that name for her.
"You're
Norwegian! I should have known by the freckles," she said, and wrote
the
name down on the roll. "My grandmother is Norwegian, too," and she
smiled. At supper, when Lila told her what had happened, Doll just
said,
"Don't matter." That was the first time she ever thought about names.
Turns out she was missing one all that time and hadn't even noticed.
She said,
"Then what's your last name going to be? 'Cause it can't be Dahl, can
it?" and Doll said, "That don't matter, either."
She couldn't keep the Bible and
the tablet in her suitcase,
because that was the first thing anybody would steal. Her bedroll would
be the
second thing. She had put the money she was saving in a canning jar
under a
loose floorboard, but it was too dirty down there for anything else. It
was
really just the clumsiness of the writing she wanted to hide, because
she
thought, What if he saw it? Then she thought, That's what comes of
spending all
this time by myself. So she set them on top of the suitcase, thinking a
thief
would probably just clear them off there and leave them lying on the
floor,
since they weren't worth anything. And anybody who would steal from her
was probably
twice as ignorant as she was and wouldn't take any notice of them
anyway.
The thought came to her that
very morning. Why was she
always walking into Gilead? There were farms around. One of them must
need
help. Anyone who saw her could tell she was used to the work. Those
folks in
Gilead knew her too well. She was tired of it. And when she asked
herself that
question and answered it-- No good reason-- she felt as though she had
put a
burden down. It used to be when they were with Doane and Marcelle and
they had
to pass through a town, they'd clean up the best they could first, and
then
they would walk along to-
46
gether, looking straight ahead,
as if there could not be one
thing in the whole place that would interest them. Town people thought
they
were better. They all knew that and hated them for it. Doane or
Marcelle might
go into a store to buy a few things they
needed and a little bag of candy or a jar of
molasses but the rest of
them just kept walking till they were out in the country again. Somehow
Mellie
would have figured out hopscotch, never seeming to watch the girls that
were
playing at it in the street, and that would be all she and Lila thought
about
for days afterward. They left a trail of hopscotch behind them, Mellie
always
thinking of ways to make it harder. The 'd
be jumping along in
the dust,
barefoot, with licorice drops in their mouths, feeling as though they
had run
off with everything in that town that was worth having.
Walking into Gilead, she felt
just the way she had felt in
those days, except now she was alone. Doane used to say, We ain’t
tramps, we
ain’t Gypsies, we ain't wild Indians when he wanted the children to
behave. She
asked Doll one time, What are we, then? and Doll had said, We're just
folks.
But Lila could tell that wasn't true, that there was more to it anyway.
Why
this shame ? No one had ever really explained it to her, and she could
never
explain it to herself Thou wast cast out
in the open field. All right. That was none of her doing. She
had worked
herself tough and ugly for no thing more than to stay alive, and she
wasn't so
sure she saw the point of that. Why did she care what people thought.
She was
nothing to them, they were nothing to her. There really was not a soul
on earth
she should be worrying about at all. Especially not that preacher. Doll
would
be glad to see her no matter what. Ugly old Doll . Who had said to her,
Live.
Not once, but every time she washed and mended for her, mothered her as
if she
were a child someone could want. Lila remembered more than she ever let
on.
47
Those thoughts. Still, she
would go down the road until she
saw a farmstead, and then she'd just look for someone to talk to and
ask.
Simple as that. And she'd take some sort of hard work that would wear
her out,
and then she'd sleep. No dreams and no thinking. No Gilead.
And things did turn out well
enough. At the first house she
went to there was an old farmer with a sickly wife and a son in the
army. There
was nothing they didn't need help with. They told her right away that
they
didn't have much money, and she told them she didn't expect much, so
that was
all right. It took her most of the day to clean up the kitchen. She
would have
liked to work outside, but the woman said -- she'd always taken pride,
and now
with her health gone bad on her-- so Lila scrubbed it clean, every inch
of it.
And she did some of the wash, in the yard, at a silver metal tub on two
sawhorses. She had a big brown block of homemade soap and a washboard,
and she
had to heat water on the kitchen stove and carry it outside. It did
wear her
out. She could hardly lift her arms to pin the clothes to the
clothesline. The
wash would have to stay on the line overnight, but there was no sign of
rain
and so much wash to do that she had to make a start on it.
She was back the next morning.
The farmer had brought in
eggs for their breakfast, and there was ham. They told her she had
answered
their prayers, and what was she supposed to say to that? After a few
days they
gave her a ten-dollar bill and a plucked chicken and a decent pair of
shoes.
And they said they were pretty well out of money until they got a check
from
their son who was sometimes a little late with it but almost never
forgot. And
they gave her a carpetbag with some old clothes in it. So that's the
end of
that, she thought. Well, it ain't the only farm.
48
There was a red blouse in that
carpetbag. It looked almost
new. It had long sleeves and a collar and a ruffle down the front.
Never in her
life before had she worn anything bright red. As soon as she took it
out, as
soon as she had tried the length of a sleeve against her arm, she
decided she
might as well take a day off tomorrow and go over to town, maybe with
ten
dollars in her pocket, just for the feeling of having a little money.
Tired as
she was, she didn't sleep. She bathed in the river in the morning dark,
then
she sat m the doorway waiting for enough light to let her do her
copying. And there was evening and there was
morning,
one day. She didn't feel like spending much time on it. But
she did write
it out again and again, as she always did. Lila Dahl, Lila Dahl.
Practice. And
then she fell asleep. She had been sitting there in the morning
sunlight when a
sweet weariness came over her, and she had to lie down just for a
little while.
When she woke up the sun was high, the day half gone. But it is hard to
regret
sleep like that, even though it was looking forward to the day that had
kept
her awake all night. She combed out her hair and put on Mrs. Graham's
skirt and
the red blouse.
At the store she bought some
threepenny nails so she'd have
a way to hang things up if she wanted to. The one nail someone else had
put in
a wall had that chicken hanging from it by the twine around its
drumsticks.
She'd roast it when she got home. She brought a box of matches. A can
of milk.
Then she thought she might walk past the church. There was a hearse
idling
there and just as she was about to go by, the church doors opened and a
coffin
came out, four men carrying it, easing it down the stairs. Then the
preacher
came out after it, his black robe fluttering in the breeze, his Bible
in his
hands, his big, heavy old head bowed down. She knew it must be some
friend of
his who was dead. He had so many, one of them was always dying. The men
slid
the coffin into the hearse, but the preacher glanced up and saw her
there and
stopped where he was, on the step. The mourners stopped behind him,
weeping,
and not quite sure what to do since they seemed to think they shouldn't
step
around him. So they wept and
49
hugged each other, and he just
stood there, looking at her.
The look was startled. It meant, So you're here, after all! How could
you let
me think you had left! As if there was something between them that gave
him the
right to be hurt, the right to be relieved. And she hadn't even missed
church
lately. So he was aware of her all the other days, knew somehow that
she was
close by, or that she was not, and it grieved him that she had been
gone from
Gilead even a little while. The widow or the mother or whoever she was
said a word
to him, and he nodded and went on. She saw him standing near the
hearse,
holding the mourners' hands, touching their arms, murmuring to them.
What do
you say to them, she thought, when they stand around you like that,
like they
just need to hear it, whatever it is? I want to know what you say. She
couldn't
walk up to them, stand there with them hearing the words he whispered,
waiting
for him to touch her hand. She didn't even have much to cry about. That
woman
put her head on his shoulder, sobbing, and he put his arm around her
and held
her there. He pushed her hair away from her face. Lila blushed to think
how
good it must have felt to her, to rest her head that way.
Well, Lila thought, can't stand
here staring. He ain't going
to look my way again. The hearse had to follow the road up to the
cemetery, but
the old man and most of the mourners took the path. She wanted to wait
for him
somewhere so she could speak a word to him, but what would she say? I'm
back, I
ain't going nowhere? That probably wasn't even true. She couldn't just
stay
around because she thought it might matter to him. Then the cold
weather would
come and he'd be thinking about something else entirely. Somebody else
to feel
sorry for. Her stuck in Gilead with no reason to be there and no place
to stay,
knowing he would never look at her that way again, if he ever really
did even
once. Staying on anyway because the thought of him was about the best
thing she
had. Well, she couldn't let that
50
happen. Doll said, Men just
don't feel like they sposed to
stay by you. They ain't never your
friends. Seem like you could trust ‘em, they act
like you could trust
‘em, but you can’t. Don’t matter what they say. I seen it in my life a
hundred
times. She said, You got to look after your own
self. When it comes down to it you’re going to be doing
that anyway.
Lila had money in her pocket.
She went back to the store and
bought a pack of Camels. On the way home she stopped and lighted one,
cupping
her hand around the flame, that old gesture. But it had been a long
time, and
whatever it is about cigarettes went straight to her head. Like I was a
child!
She thought. Oh! Well., I just got to do this more often. Here I am
walking
along the road all alone smoking a cig. They got hard names for women
who do
that kind of thing. I got to do it more often.
She had a habit of gathering up
sticks, firewood, wherever
she saw it, and she had a lot of it, so she could make a fire that
would be hot
enough when it burned down to roast that chicken. It was good of those
people
to pluck it and gut it before they gave it to her. She could put a
stick
through it and prop it up somehow, and spend the evening tending it,
and eat it
in the dark, in the doorway. She might go over to that farm the next
morning
and do some chores for them, because they gave her too much for the
work she’d
done. It didn’t set right. That would be Sunday morning.
It wasn’t the only time she
felt like this, it surely
wasn’t. Once, Doll went off by herself for a few days, after things
started
getting bad. When they were looking anywhere for work they must have
wandered
into a place Doll knew from before, and she had gone off on some
business of
her own and left Lila behind with the others. She’d never done that,
not once.
Lila had never spent an hour out of sight of her, except the time she
spent at
school, and then she hated to leave her and couldn’t wait to get back
to her,
just to touch her. Doll was always busy with one hand and hugging her
against
her apron with the other.
51
That time she left Doane's camp
she didn't tell any of them
where she was going, but she did say she would be back as quick as she
could .
Lila had never really noticed before that the others didn't talk to her
much .
She was always with Doll. Once, Marcelle called them the cow and her
calf, and
Doane smiled. That was after Tammany, when feelings were sore and even
Mellie
wouldn't have much to do with her. Lila just kept very quiet and helped
with
whatever she could . By the second day she already felt them hardening
against
her, and by the third nobody looked at her, but they looked at each
other.
There was something they all understood and she should understand, too.
On the
fourth day, early in the morning, Doane said to her, Come along, and
Arthur was
with him and Mellie , and they walked down the road into some no -name
town,
right straight to the church. Doane said , Lila , now you sit on them
steps and
somebody will come along in a while. You stay there. Mellie don't need
to stay.
You mind and you'll be all right. Hear me, Lila?
She remembered Mellie peering
at her the way she did when
Lila had gotten a swat or a bee sting, curious to see if she would cry.
She
remembered them walking away, Arthur and Doane talking between
themselves and
Mellie tagging along after, and nobody looking back. They took Mellie
along to
calm her, like you would take an old dog along to quiet a horse or a
cow you
were going to sell, and Mellie understood, and it made her feel
important. So
Lila spent a long day in that no-name town, not even sure whether Doane
meant
they would come back for her, or Doll would , or whether they left her
on the
church steps because that's where you ended up if you were an orphan.
She
walked up and down the street, two blocks , so she was always close
enough to
the church to see if anyone came looking for her. After a while a woman
noticed
her and brought her a piece of bread and butter. "You waiting for your
mama, honey? " she said , and Lila couldn't even look at her, couldn't
answer her. Af-
52
ter a while the woman came back
again. She said "I got
more work than I can do today. I I'll give you a dime if you’ll sweep
up in
front of my store.” Lila said "Well I got to stay by the church. That’s
what they told me.” So, the woman went and found the preacher. He was
skinny
and young. He looked like Arthur’s Deke playing at preacher. He bent
down to
ask her where her mother was, and whether she had a mother, maybe a
father, any
family at all. She and Doll never answered questions like that. She
said, “I
figure I should just wait, I guess,” and the preacher said, “You’re
welcome to
wait here if you want to, and if you get tired of waiting then you can
let us
know. We’ll find a place for you to sleep, if you decide you need one.
We’ll
get you some supper.” It was Doane who always told them not to trust
preachers.
This is how you turned into an orphan. Then they put you in a place
with other
orphans and you can never leave. High walls around it. That’s what
Mellie said.
So she just shook her head, and he stood up and spoke with that woman
about
keeping an eye on her. And she could feel them keeping eyes on her,
more and
more of them, whispering about her and looking at her through windows.
Doane
had waked her early that morning, so she was wearing the shabby clothes
she
slept in and hadn’t combed her hair.
When it was evening and again
when it was night the preacher
came to see how she was doing. The first time he brought a plate of
food and
set it down next to her, and the second time he brought a blanket. He
said, “It
cna get chilly, sitting out here in the dark. If you’d like, I can
spell you
for a while. I’d sure like to have a word with those folks you’ve been
waiting
for. No? Well, I’ll ask again in an hour or so.”
And then she was just sitting
there on the steps, wrapped up
in the blanket, the town all quiet and the moon staring down at her,
and there
was Doll with her arms around her, saying, “Oh, child, I thought I never was going to find you!” Lila couldn’t
53
Quite wake up from what she was
remembering, and Doll knew
what she was remembering, so she kept saying, “Oh, child, oh, child,
this never
should have happened! I never thought anything like this was going to
happen!
Four days I was gone!” And she
kept
hugging the child and stroking her face and her hair. Late as it was,
the
preacher was still keeping an eye on her, because he stepped out the
door just
then. He said, “You’re the mother, I take it?” and Doll said “None of
your damn
business.” She probably wouldn’t have spoken so rough if he hadn’t been
a
preacher.
“Who are you?” he said. “I’d
like to know who’s carrying off
this child.”
She said, “I spose you would.
Come on, Lila.”
But Lila couldn't move. She
wanted to rest her head on a
bosom more Doll’s than Doll herself, to feel trust rise up in her like
that sweet old
surprise of being carried
off in strong arms, wrapped in gentleness worn all soft and perfect.
“No,” she
said, and drew herself away.
The preacher said, “This better
wait till morning. I’d like
Lila to have a chance to think this over.”
Doll said, “Mister, you ain’t
nothing to her, and you ain’t
nothing to me. Lila, you want to stay here?”
So the girl stood up and let
herself be hugged, and let
herself be guided down the walk. The preacher said, “She can keep the
blanket.”
And Doll said, “I
take care of her. She has what she needs.”
Lila would not cry. She could
see Doll’s grief and pity and
regret, and she took a bitter, lonely pride in the fact that she could
see them
and not forgive her and not cry.
She was sitting there
remembering those times, and then she
thought she heard someone out in the road. Footsteps. The scatter of
gravel.
She had a knife, but it wasn’t much use in the dark, because folks
54
couldn’t see it. It was good
only for scaring them off. If
you cut somebody you were in a world of trouble no matter what the
story was.
Still, she eased toward it, where it was stuck in the floor behind her
bedroll.
She didn't hear anything more for a minute or two, and then she heard
steps
again, whoever it was walking away. She thought, He found out what he
wanted to
know. I'm here, and I have a fire and supper. That greasy old hen must
have
smelled like a kind of prosperity. The thought pleased her. Now he'll
think I
don't need nothing from him. If it was him.
Doane must have decided that if
the world was turning mean
he might as well go along with it. He wasn't a big fellow. He looked a
lot like
Hoagy Carmichael, though they didn't know it at the time. But he always
could
look mean when he wanted, and Arthur would stand right behind him, at
his
shoulder, looking pretty mean, too, so someone might think if anything
started
he'd be right there to back him up. Before the times got hard they
generally
knew who they were dealing with, so they'd act that way only if a
stranger came
along and they didn't like the look of him, if he showed up after dark,
or if
he just rubbed Doane the wrong way for no reason anybody needed to
know. Doane
always kept them safe and they trusted him. They knew he had a knife.
Everybody
else had one, too, but the way they thought of his knife made them
think he
probably had a gun. He could be as dangerous as he might ever need to
be, they
were sure of it. They never saw a gun, and he used his knife to whittle
and to
cut his meat just like they did. Still. Sometimes Arthur's boys would
start
scuffling, then they'd get serious about it and they'd start scrapping,
trying
to do some harm. If Arthur stepped into it they'd just go after Arthur.
But
Doane would say, "That's enough," and they'd stop. Arthur might cuff
them a little because he was their father and he had to teach them
respect, but
the fight was over when Doane said, "Enough." He'd say, "Someday
you're going to hurt yourselves so bad you won't be good for nothing,
and then
we'll just leave you lying alongside the road."
55
Lila worked as hard as any of
the children. She didn't make
them laugh the way Mellie did, but she never complained, she never took
more
than her share. She knew better than to mention school. But when hard
times
came they left her behind. There were people Doane just didn't take to.
And now here she was, sitting
in the dark, wishing the
crickets weren't so damn loud, thinking she might tell that old
preacher not to
come creeping around her place at night. That would put an end to it,
all of
it. Then she'd know for sure what he thought of her. She'd say it in
church,
where all them ladies would hear. Better wait till she could get a bus
ticket.
There'd be no more work for her after she did something like that. But
when
folks are down to the one thing that keeps them alive, that one thing
can be
meanness. It makes you feel like you're there, you're doing something.
He is
such a beautiful old man. All that kindness would be gone out of his
face, and she
would see something else, not beautiful, not the face he had worn all
the years
when he had only good people to deal with. That wife never meant to
leave and
take the child with her. So he didn't really know much about being
left. Lila
thought, Maybe I can teach him a new kind of sadness. Maybe he really
does care
whether I stay or go.
The next morning she didn't
dare go to church. The way she'd
been thinking, she might say anything. But she began to worry about the
little
garden she had planted and how the beans would be getting yellow and
tough and
stringy if she didn't pick them. Sunday morning was the best time to
sneak into
that garden, because the preacher would be preaching and everybody else
would
be at one church or another or sleeping in. It was hard to tell just
what time
it was because the sky was dark with clouds. That meant it might rain,
and
she'd get caught in it and have to come back when she was halfway
there, or get
all the
56
way to Gilead and then have to
be there looking soaked and
pitiful. She grabbed the carpetbag from the nail it was hanging on and
smoothed
her hair and took off toward town almost running, just to beat the
weather,
just to make up for a late start. At the preacher's house she let
herself in
through the gate and went around the side of the house to the corner
against
the fence, and when she just began picking beans she heard raindrops
hitting
the leaves. She was going to take the few she had and get home the best
she
could, but when she reached the gate she looked down the street and saw
the
preacher coming. She thought, A crazy woman would do something like
this. She
had known some crazy women, and any one of them would probably have had
better
sense. There was more shame in life than she could bear.
He took off his hat. He said,
"Well, good morning! Or
is it afternoon?"
She held out the bag to him. "I
thought you might be
wanting some beans." Oh, she wished she could die. How many were there
in
that bag? Eight? Ten?
He said, "That's very kind of
you," and he took
the bag out of her hand. She couldn't look at him, but she knew he was
smiling.
She said, "I got to go now."
"Wait. You'll want your bag."
He reached into it
and took out the beans, half a handful, and gave the bag back to her.
She still
could not look at him. He said, "You know, it might be best if you
waited
out the rain. We could sit here on the porch a little while. It doesn’t
look
like much of a storm. Or I could lend you my umbrella if you really do
have to
go." Then he said "I haven’t
seen much of you lately. I hope I haven't offended you somehow."
His voice was low and kind.
After a minute she took a step
toward him. Sometimes it just feels good to hug a man, don't
57
much matter which one it is.
She’d thought it might be very
nice to rest her head on his shoulder. And itr was. d . She'd be
leaving that
damn town anyway.
"Well " he said. He patted her
back.
She said, “I guess I’m tired.”
“Yes, well--” and he put his
arms around her, very
carefully, very gently.
With her head still resting on
his shoulder, she said, “I
just can’t trust you at all.” He laughed, a soft sound at her ear. She
started
to pull away, but he put his hand on her hair so she rested her head
again.
He said "Is there anything I
can do about that?”
And she said, "Nothing I can
think of. I don’t trust
nobody.”
He said, “No wonder you’re
tired.”
She thought, That’s a fact. She
said, “You should know I
pretty well give up on being baptized.”
“I thought maybe you had. Can
you tell me why?”
“I guess it don’t make a lot of
sense to me.”
"That's all right. No hurry
about it. Unless you’re
planning on leaving town.”
“That’s what I'm planning to
do."
He was quiet for a while. Then
he said, “I’m sorry to hear
that. I am.”
She
stepped back and
looked at him. “I don’t see what it would matter.”
He shrugged. “We don’t have to
worry about that now. It
looks like we’re going to have a decent rain, after all. You could just
sit
here a while and help me enjoy it. Should I call you Lila?”
“No reason why not.”
58
He brought a sweater and put it
over her shoulders. Right
away she knew she was going to steal it. It was gray like his jacket
and it had
the same old wood smell, old wool and a little shaving lotion. She'd
find a way
to slip it into her bag. She could hardly wait till she got the chance.
He' d
know what she'd done. That don't matter.
So they sat there and watched
the rain, he at one end of the
porch swing, she at the other. After a while he said, "I'd like to know
what you've been thinking about lately, since the last time we talked.
You
asked me why things happen the way they do, and I had to say I didn't
know. I
still don't. But the question is interesting."
"Oh," she said, "you don't want
to know what
I been thinking."
He nodded. "All right."
"I been wondering why I even
bother.. There must be a
reason, but I don't know what it is." When she sat in the doorway at
night
with her knees drawn up and her arms around them so there was warmth
against
her belly and her breasts, she sometimes liked it all well enough, the
stars
and the crickets and the loneliness. She thought she could unravel the
sounds
the river made, the flow over the rocks where there was a little drop
into a
pool, the soft rush of the eddy. Now and then there were noises, some
small
thing happened and disappeared, no one would ever know what it was. She
thought, All right, if that's how it's going to be. If there had not
been that
time when she mattered to somebody, she could have been at peace with
it. Doane
was just the world being the world. It was Doll taking her up in her
arms that
way. Live. Yes. What then?
He said, "I'm glad you do.
Bother."
And then she heard herself say,
"You come creeping
around my house at night? Because I think I heard you out there." And
she
looked at his face. It was startled and hurt. Shamed. She couldn't look
away.
He rubbed his eyes. "Yes. Well,
I'm sorry if I worried
you. I don't sleep well, and sometimes I walk around the streets at
59
night, past the houses of
people I know. It's an old habit
of mine." He laughed. "I pray for them. So it's harmless at
worst."
"You come all the way out there
to pray for me?
Couldn't you do that at home?"
"I did wonder if you had left
town. If you were all
nght.”
"I guess everybody knows I been
living in that shack.
If you knew where to come to do your praying."
He shrugged. "Some people know.
People notice
things."
"I hate this town."
"I doubt it's so different from
other places."
She laughed. "I hate other
places. Worse, probly."
And he laughed. "Well, just so
you understand what I
was doing out there. So you don't feel uneasy about it." .
"I never said I understood. You
tell me you was
praying. I don't understand that at all."
"Ah!" He shook his head. "It
would take me a
good while to figure out what to say about that. Days! And I pray all
the
time." Then he said, "Here is what I don't understand. How did you
know it was me? It was a dark night, and I didn't come near the house."
She shrugged. "Who else would
go to the trouble?"
He nodded. "Thank you. I don't
know why. But that's
kind of you to say, I believe." Then he said, "You do have other
friends here."
"No I don't. Folks just do what
you tell them to
do."
He laughed. "Some of them.
Sometimes. I suppose.”
For a while the rain was heavy,
loud on the roof, spattering
onto the porch. She gathered the sleeves of the sweater against her.
"Are you warm enough?"
"Plenty warm. But I want to
know what you said in that
prayer."
"Well." He blushed. "I prayed
that you were
safe and well. And-- not unhappy."
60
"That's all?"
"And "-- he laughed-- "! did
mention that I
hoped you would stay around for a while."
"And get myself baptized."
"I guess I forgot to mention
that. Sorry."
"It's nothing to me. I'll be
making up my own
mind."
"Of course."
"But if you prayed for it, most
likely I would make up
my mind to do it."
"Maybe. Depending. I don't
know."
"If you want me to do
something, seems it would be
easier just to ask me."
"If I did ask you, would you do
it?"
She shrugged. "Maybe. I don't
know." And he
laughed.
Then she said, "That all you
prayed for?"
"No. No, it isn't." He stood
up. "I think
I'll make some coffee."
Well, she'd stayed too long and
the rain didn't show any
sign of ending. So she said, "I'll be going now," after he'd gone
into the house, so he might not have heard. And she slipped the sweater
into her
bag. She was a block away when he caught up with her. He was carrying
an
umbrella.
He said, "I'm afraid it's too
late for this to do you
much good. But please take it."
She said, "Don't need it." "Of
course you
don't," he said. "Take it anyway." So she did. He said,
"I'm glad you came by. I'm always happy to find you creeping around my
house." And she almost had to laugh at that. She could put the umbrella
over her suitcase and her bedroll. That's how bad the roof leaked. She
just
might forget to return it for a while. She was going to use that
sweater for a
pillow. She thought, What would I pray for, if I thought there was any
point in
it? Well, I guess the first thing would have to be
61
that there was some kind of
point in it. The wind was
blowing the rain against her and lifting the umbrella almost out of her
hands
so she closed it. A little rain never killed anybody.
She thought of a story she
would like to tell the old man.
Once, when she was still a child, she and the others went to a camp
meeting. Doane
had been paid mostly in apples for some work they had done. The farmer
said it
was the best he could do-- you can't get blood from a turnip. Doane
said it
might be interesting to try, and Arthur nodded. But the man just
shrugged--
hard times-- and Doane took the apples, after he had spilled them out
on the
grass and had the children look them over, so the farmer could take
back any
that were soft or bruised or too wormy and give them others that were
sound.
They had to carry the apples in two gunnysacks, since that was after
they lost
the wagon. They ate apples for breakfast and apples for supper, and
still the
sacks were a burden to carry, with everything else. So when they found
out from
people walking along the road that they were going to a camp meeting,
Doane
decided they would go there to sell what apples they could. The whole
business
made him disgusted, but he had the children to do the work for him, to
talk a
few cents out of the old women before they felt the spirit and put
anything
they had into some damn preacher's pocket. He made them all clean up as
well as
they could and told them to behave, and then he just leaned against a
tree with
his arms folded while they chose the prettiest apples and shined them
up a
little against their pant legs, and took off into the thick of the
crowds.
They'd have hung back with
Doane and watched those poor
fools getting all worked up over nothing if they hadn't had the apples
to sell,
which obliged them to talk to people and try to act as though they
belonged there.
Lila followed along after Mellie, who could somehow make those apples
seem like
something you would want. Lila carried them, her arms full, because
62
Mellie had already come up with
a baby somewhere, a nice
baby with a big red bow In Its hair. Mellie and the baby handed the
apples
around as if they were doing a kindness , and people gave Mellie their
pennies
and nickels, and then she sent Lila back to give the money to Marcelle
-- Doane
was acting like he had nothing to do with any of it-- and to get more
apples.
Families were pitching tents
all over in the woods around
the clearing. There were campfires, and people drifting from one to
another,
laughing and talking, shaking hands and slapping backs, sharing their
pickle
and crackers and taffy, sometimes singing
together a little, since there were banjos and mouth
organs and a guitar
and a fiddle scattered here and there among the tents. Some of the
women and
girls were wearing nice dresses. Children in little packs stormed
around from
one place to another just burning off the excitement of it all. The
ground
where the meeting would be held was pretty well covered in sawdust
which made
it seem strangely clean and gave it a good, pitchy smell. If men spat
their
tobacco on it you wouldn't notice. There was a stage set up with yellow
bunting
across the front of It, and there were some wooden chairs on it. And of
course,
they were by a river, and there were people there fishing in it a
little
downstream.
Lila and Mellie had seen
Arthur's boys feeding their apples
to the horses and mules and then sneaking down to the river to skip
rocks, so
Mellie gave back the baby and they went, too. Arthur was there already,
skipping rocks, and when he saw his boys he said he was going to tan
their
hides if they didn't tell him what they'd been up to. So they started
scrapping, without Doane to make them stop. Some of the men tried after
a while
when Arthur started bleeding from a cut over his eye, and that got the
three of
them mad at those men and the fighting went on until an old preacher
came
tottering down the rocky slope and stepped in among them. He asked what
had
happened, and
63
then he said that Arthur and
his boys seemed not to be in
the right spirit for a meeting of this kind and it would be best for
them to
move along. He was a scrawny old fellow with a croaky voice, but though
they
dragged their feet about it and glowered past him at the others, they
were glad
enough to oblige him, since more and more men and boys were coming to
take the
other side. They walked off into the woods like men who don't forget an
insult
just because they might have to wait a while to settle up. Then they
walked
around to the back of the crowd, Arthur with blood down the front of
his shirt
and Deke with a bloody nose, but other than that as respectable as
anybody.
None of them wanted to leave, but they knew Doane would want to. They
kept
moving around because he wouldn't go to the trouble of finding them
all. He'd
probably ask Mellie to find them, so she was careful to stay out of his
sight.
Doll and Marcelle had gotten a fire together and were making a supper
of their
own, which could only be the pone and fatback they'd been eating their
whole
lives, it seemed like, maybe a little more of it than usual, since
those woods
smelled like every good thing and people like to have a part in
whatever is
going on. Mellie had found herself another baby, and its mother brought
them
sweet bread with blueberry jam in the middle of it and icing on it.
People were
roasting ears of corn and handing them out to anybody who passed by,
even if
they passed by more than once. There was hot fry bread with sugar on it.
Evening was coming, a mild,
clear evening. Men were hanging
lamps in the trees, along the big old oak branches that reached out
over the stage,
and lighting them, and the banjos and fiddles that had come along in
the crowd
began to agree on a song, and the people began to sing it-- Yes, we'll gather at the river, The
beautiful, the beautiful river. And then some preachers came
up onto the stage
and sat down on the chairs, except for one, who came to the front of it
and
raised up his hands. Every-
64
body got quiet. He shouted, “We
are gathered here to praise
the Lord, the God of our salvation!” And they shouted back, “Amen!”
For a minute there was just the
sound of the crickets and
the river and the wind creaking the ropes those lamps were hanging
from.
Then, “We are gathered here to
rejoice in the Lord, who
knows the thoughts of our hearts!”
“Amen!”
Quiet again. And then, “We are
gathered here to rejoice in
the Lord, for His mrcy endureth forever!”
“Amen!”
Then all the preachers stood up
and began singing the song
about the river, and the whole crowd sang with them. Deke found Mellie
and
said, “He’s looking for you,” then stepped into the crowd again. Mellie
handed
back the baby and told Lila, “You don’t know where I am,” and slipped
away.
Somewhere she had come up with a kerchief to tie over her hair because
it was
so white that it would make her easy to see, wven when the sun was
almost down.
So Lila just stayed there watching the lanterns sway and the light and
the
shadows move through the trees, huge shadows and strange light under a
blue
evening sky. The preachers went on and the crowd shouted their Amens
and they
all sang Bringing in the Sheaves.
She’d heard the song a number of times since then and she didn’t yet
know what
sheaves were. She had some ideas about salvation, and mercy, but the
old man
never mentioned sheaves.
“The great gift of baptism
which makes us clean and
acceptable-- “ “Amen!”
Doll put her arm around her and
said, “You come on now.
Doane says so.” They were gathering up their things, to get away from
the
noise, so they could get some sleep and nobody would be tramping
around,
stepping over them. If Arthur and
65
the boys didn't show up just
then, they'd find their camp
soon enough. But nobody knew where M ellie was. So the rest of them had
to go
off down the road while Doane stayed there watching for her. Lila
thought those
lamps in the trees were the most beautiful things she had ever seen,
and that
fiddle was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, and it didn't
seem
right that Doane who said he hated it all, should send them away while
he
stayed behind . But in those days they still minded him, and there was
comfort
in it.
Mellie turned up finally when
the preaching was over. She
came walking up the road, tagging after Doane. She was drenched head to
foot.
Her pant legs were scraping from the wet. She said, "I fell in."
Doane said "Was it one of them
preachers pulled you
out?"
"Don't
matter.
I'm just glad somebody did. I
coulda
drownt.”
"Was it one of them preachers
told you to step into the
river in the first place ?"
"Them rocks is slippery. I fell
in."
"So I guess you got yourself
saved."
"I
never said
that ."
"I got a dollar says you're
still the same rascal you
always been."
"Well," she said, "if you even
got a dollar,
it's because I sold some of them damn apples."
He laughed. "Sounds like I won
my bet already."
She said, "There wasn't no bet.
I fell in."
If Lila told the old man that
story he would laugh, and then
he would probably wonder about it . She would tell him that Mellie
always had
to try whatever it was she saw other people doing. She was just
curious. For
the next few days she might have been check ing to see if there was any
change
in her, because she would be mean for no reason, pinching and poking
when no
one was bothering her at all. Or she might have been
66
letting Doane see that she
wasn't saved and didn't want to
be, either. Was she baptized or not? Say she walked into the water to
be dunked
and prayed over like the other people, just to see what it felt like.
It was
only her nature, poor ignorant child. What would the Good Lord have to
say
about that? If Lila had gone with her, she would probably have done the
same
thing, because she generally did what Mellie did, if she could do it.
So there
would have been the singing, and the lantern light sweeping out over
the nver,
and some man with his hands under her back and her head, lowering her
down into
the water and lifting her out again, and then wiping the water away
from her
face as if it were tears, Hallelujah! Lila had seen it done any number
of
times. There were always meetings and revivals.
Clean and acceptable. It would
be something to know what
that felt like, even for an hour or two.
Well, she might start going to
church again. Then she would
feel better about taking her beans and her potatoes, and besides, she
had let
the weeds get out of hand. It's best to weed after a good rain. The
next day
was a Monday, and she could always find somebody who wanted help with
the wash.
And she'd be done by evening, so she could stop by the preacher's and
do a
little gardening, and have a nice supper afterward. If he walked out
along her
road, he'd see she was all right.
She read over the page she had
been copying from. There were
the same words over and over-- He
saw
that it was good, And the evening and the morning. So she turned to the
page
she had dog-eared, and found the beginning of that book the Book of
Ezekiel. Now it came to pass in the thirtieth
year,
in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the
captives
by the river Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of
God. She
wrote it ten times. Her bedroll had been hanging from a nail, so it
wasn't
really damp, and she had that sweater for a pillow. People start work
early on
wash day. She'd be awake in the dark as she always was. She'd practice
her
writing at dawn and be in Gilead while it was still barely morning.
67
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.
She had bathed and waked the
second time as she warmed
herself in her blanket, thinking about things, and when there was light
enough
she took her tablet into her lap and opened her Bible beside her on the
floor.
She wrote, And I looked, and, behold, a
stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, with a fire infolding
itself,
and a brightness round about it, and out of the midst thereof as it
were
glowing metal, out of the midst of the fire. Well, that
could have been a
prairie fire in a drought year. She had never seen one, but she had
heard
stories. And out of the midst thereof
came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their
appearance: they
had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one
of them
had four wings. Well, she didn't know what to make of that. A
dream
somebody had, and he wrote it down, and it ended up in this book. She
copied it
ten times, still trying to make her letters smaller and neater. Lila
Dahl, Lila
Dahl, Lila Dahl. She had four letters in each of her names, and he had
four
letters in each of his. She had a silent h
in her last name and he had one in his first. There were graves in
Gilead with
his name written out on them, and there was no one anywhere alive or
dead with
her name, since the first one belonged to the sister she never saw of a
woman
she barely remembered and the second one was just a mistake. Her name
had the
likeness of a name. She had the likeness of a woman, with hands but no
face at
all, since she never let herself see it. She had the likeness of a
life,
because she was all alone in it. She lived in the likeness of a house,
with
walls and a roof and a door that kept nothing in and nothing out. And
when Doll
took her up and swept her away, she had felt a likeness of wings. She
thought,
Strange as all this is, there might be something to it.
68
Doll was gone those four days,
she told Lila finally, to see
how the folks at the old place were getting on. The times were so hard
by then
that she was having trouble keeping the child fed and keeping clothes
on her
back, and she had the thought that things might be better where her
people
were, farther east. She'd expected some of the worst of them might have
died
off She said, "Somebody shoulda shot that Hank long since." Who was
Hank? "Never you mind." Doll had to be careful, so she asked around
the neighborhood-- that took a while, since folks don't like to talk to
outsiders-- and she walked past the old place a few times to see for
herself. She said,
"It seemed about the same.
Nothing you could go back to." Lila said, "If things'd been better,
would you a gone back there, too?" And Doll said, "I couldn't. They
know I taken you in the first place, so if I come back with you there'd
be hell
to pay." Doll told her this because Lila wasn't the same to her after
what
happened while she was gone. She said, "I done it because I wasn't
finding
no way to look after you." If Doane had ever bothered to explain, he'd
have said the same thing. They were just figuring out where to leave
her. For
her own good. Where to tell her, stay, and wait, and somebody will come
along.
So after that she couldn't love Doll like she did all those years. For
a while
she couldn't. She'd never thought she might be sitting on that stoop
again, at
night probably, watching Doll sneak off into the woods. One way or
another, it
comes out the same. Can't trust nobody.
They found Doane and the others
again. It was evening, after
supper, and there was a fat, soft, embery fire in the middle of the
clearing.
Doll picked up the skillet and tossed it into the fire. Flame roared up
and
embers flew. "How could you do that!" she said. "Leave my child
sitting on the steps of some church! I might never a found her! I told
you I
was coming back!" She was yelling at Doane mainly, but there was no one
there she didn't glare at. Only Mellie glared back.
69
Doane said, "You was gone a
while. We sorta gave up on
you."
"Now, why would you do that! I
keep my word! Has there
ever been a time I didn't, in all the years?"
Doane said, "Well, Doll, you
can hold your grudge or
you can come along. If you're going to be around, I don't want to hear
another
word about this. None of it."
Marcelle said, "We kept your
stuff."
"I just bet you did!" Doll
said, and Doane gave
her a look.
He said, "We thought about
dropping it in the fire. But
Marcelle wouldn't stand for it. It mighta been the best thing." He
walked
over and picked up Lila's bedroll. That shawl was wrapped around it. He
pulled
it loose, and he smiled, and he went over and sort of dangled it over
the fire,
and the flames climbed right up it toward his hand. So that was gone.
They
stayed with Doane's people, Doll having no better idea what to do. They
never
said another word about what had happened. It was just like before, and
everything
was different. You best keep to yourself, except you never can.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.
Mrs. Graham wanted help with
her wash. She was a cheerful
woman. Friendly. She enjoyed talking. She never seemed to notice that
Lila
didn't enjoy talking, or listening, and that was all right. They'd
worked
together times enough that Lila knew how she wanted things done, and
that
seemed to make the day go faster. Mrs. Graham made them a nice lunch of
tuna-fish sandwiches with chocolate cake for dessert. She had a nice
house.
There were white curtains in the kitchen with strawberries along the
hem.
Little green stitches to look like seeds. The washing machine was on
the back
porch. It was a good machine, electric, you didn't even have to crank
the
wringer. Lila didn't let herself look into the parlor, at the piano and
the
sofa and the rest, which reminded her a little of St. Louis except that
none of
it was so big and fine, and the drapes were open.
70
At the end of the day she had a
five-dollar bill and a
waterproof coat with a hood. Lila said, "The Reverend told you to give
me
this," and Mrs. Graham said, "Well, he worries about you, dear. He's
a good-hearted man. And it was just hanging in the closet, no use to
anybody." She smiled shyly, kindly. Lila didn't ask whose closet it had
been hanging in, how many women in the church or in Gilead had been
asked if
they could spare a coat before this one turned up, or how there could
be no one
else but her who could use it. Maybe no one was as broke as she was,
but there
were some people who must come pretty close. He should be worrying
about them,
too. Well, all right, she thought, so all I got to do now is save up
for that
bus ticket, save up a little traveling money. I can't wait to get out
of this
town. She folded the coat and put it into her carpetbag, the
five-dollar bill
in a pocket, and then she walked up to the cemetery. The roses on the
grave
were blooming, and the weeds were, too. She said,
"Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Ames. I
been staying away too
long. I never meant to let this happen." She loved them. The likeness
of a
woman, and in her arms the likeness of a child.
It was evening when she opened
the gate to the preacher's
garden. She picked some beans and groped under the plants for some
potatoes.
There was light from an upstairs window and no other light in the
house. Let
him be-- all right. That seemed like a decent prayer. Let him stop
making me
feel so damn broke all the time. That was a good one. Better to tell
him that
one herself She could do it right now if she wanted. Maybe she hadn't
been as
quiet as she thought, because he knew she was there. He opened the
front door
as she was walking to the gate. He said, "I've written you a note. I
thought I might give it to you. Well, of course I will give it to you.
There
wouldn't be much point-- " He laughed. "I hope-well, obviously. I
mean, if there
71
is anything in it you find
disagreeable, that will be
despite my best efforts. To the contrary. If you see--" He handed her
an
envelope. "Good evening. It's a fine evening." He went back into the
house. The envelope wasn't sealed, and when she was out of sight of his
house
she opened it just enough to see that there was no money in it, only
the note.
She had to laugh at a pinch of something like disappointment. She was
close now
to having enough money to be able to leave. Maybe it was more than
enough. A
couple of weeks ago she'd have thought it was. The more you have, the
more you
want. If he had given her money, there'd have been anger and shame to
get her
on that bus. She could have stopped thinking about it.
One other time she had been
given a note, for Doll from that
teacher. Lila read it to her because, Doll said, her hands was all wet
and
soapy. It said that she was a smart girl and would benefit from further
schooling, and that the teacher would be happy to do whatever she could
to help
make this possible. "Lila is an unusually bright child." Doll said,
"Benefit," and Lila told her it meant that it would do her good to
stay in school another year. Doll said, "I already knew you was bright.
I could've
told you that." That was all she said. It was so easy for Lila to
forget
that Doll had broken the law when she carried her away, and had set off
a
grudge, too, which was a good deal worse. And for a long time. she
hadn't
realized that the life they lived with Doane was one that would make
them hard
to find. Because people like them don't talk to outsiders. And they all
know
that if somebody is on your trail, you can just slip into a cornfield.
Once,
Doll must have thought she saw somebody from the old place. She'd kept
Lila
with her a whole day in a hayloft, quiet as could be. That was before
the corn
was high. But to spend almost a year in a town was dangerous if anyone
happened
to be looking for them. Doll knew those people and Lila
72
didn't, so if Doll thought they
might try to catch her for
the sheer devilment of it, Lila guessed they really might have tried.
But that
was nothing the two of them mentioned even between themselves.
She
has made
remarkable progress. Lila knew that note by heart. No point
reading Doll
the parts she wouldn't understand. She was glad that teacher couldn't
see her
now. What was this old man going to tell her in his note? Don't matter.
A
letter makes ordinary things seem important. He was wearing a necktie.
Expecting her, maybe, because she'd been at Mrs. Graham's and might be
wanting
to thank him for the coat. Or maybe he waited for her every evening.
She found
herself sometimes listening for his steps in the road. People talk
themselves
into these things, and then nothing comes of it. They don't even want
to
remember there was a time when it mattered to them. They hate you for
mentioning it. Those women in St. Louis, the young ones, there was
always
somebody they were waiting for, or trying to get over. And the older
ones would
just laugh at them. They'd be laughing at her now. He probably had a
meeting at
the church, so he was wearing a necktie. You fool, Lila. Whatever it
said, it
would be kind. And if it wasn't, he'd have found the kindest way to say
it.
St. Louis. Much better to be
there in the shack by herself.
In the evening, with her potatoes roasting outside. Doane used to push
a spud
out of the fire with a stick, and they'd toss it one to another until
one of
them could stand to hold on to it, and then it was his. One of Arthur's
boys,
always. They'd just go to sleep when it got dark. She should buy some
candles,
maybe even a kerosene lamp, so she could read and practice her writing
if she
felt like it. But light did draw bugs. And it was better if no one saw
the
shack at night. Not that people passing by wouldn't notice her fire.
But light
made you blind in the dark and there might be something you really
needed to
see out there. The evening was peaceful. But she
73
couldn't stop wondering about
that letter. She might just
light a cigarette. She might strike another match to read the first few
words.
They were: Dear Lila (if I may), You asked me once why things happen
the way
they do. Well, she wasn't really expecting that. I have felt
considerable
regret over my failure to respond to your question. She shook out the
match. He
wasn't asking for his umbrella back anyway.
The next morning she took her
tablet and copied, as neatly
as she could, You must have thought that
it has never occurred to me to wonder about the deeper things religion
is
really concerned with, the meaning of existence, of human life. You
must have
thought I say the things I do out of habit and custom, rather than from
experience and reflection. I admit there is some truth in this. It is
inevitable,
I suppose. She wrote it ten times. Well, what did old Ezekiel
say next? And their feet were straight feet;
and the
sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot; and they
sparkled like
burnished brass. She wrote this ten times. Salted babies,
sparkling calves'
feet. Strange as it was, there was something to it. Well, there was the
strangeness of it. That old man had no idea. Let us pray, and they all
did
pray. Let us join in hymn number no matter what, and they all sang. Why
did
they waste candles on daylight? Him standing there, talking about
people dead
who knows how long, if the stories about them were even true, and most
of the
people listening, or trying to listen. There was no need for any of it.
The
days came and went on their own, without any praying about it. And
still,
everywhere, meetings and revivals, people seeing the light. Finding
comfort
where there was no comfort, just an old man saying something he'd said
so many
times he probably didn't hear it himself.
It was about the meaning of existence, he said. All
right. She knew a
little bit about existence. That was pretty well the only thing she
knew about,
and she had learned the word for it from him. It was like the United
States of
America-- they had to call it something. The evening
74
and the morning, sleeping and
waking. Hunger and loneliness
and weariness and still wanting more of it. Existence. Why do I bother?
He
couldn't tell her that, either. But he knows, she could see it in him.
Why does
he want more of it, with his house so empty, his wife and child so long
in the
ground? The evening and the morning, the singing and the praying. The
strangeness of it. You couldn't stop looking. He would walk up the hill
to that
sad place and find them all covered in roses. If he knew, and if he
didn't
know, who had made them bloom that way, he would think it was strange
and
right. There was no need for roses.
Marcelle chose that name for
herself after she heard some
women talking in a beauty parlor. When he started turning mean, Doane
began
calling her Marcelle in a way that let you know it wasn't her real
name. When
he did that, it made her cry sometimes. She pretended, but she always
had, and
they had always wanted her to. Lila and Mellie loved to watch when she
opened
the little box where she kept her powder and rouge and lip rouge, her
eyebrow
pencil. She almost never opened it, it was so precious. The stale sweet
smell
of it. Sometimes she let them brush out her hair. They did all think
she was
pretty. They felt a little pleasure and a little envy at the way Doane
favored
her. He would take her arm to help her through a muddy place in the
road. Once,
he bought ribbons at a carnival and tied one in her hair and one in a
bow
around her neck, and wound one around her wrist and one around her
ankle,
kneeling right on the ground to do it and setting her foot on his bent
knee.
Doll said, "They're married people." Lila had no particular notion of
what the word "married" meant, except that there was an endless,
pleasant joke between them that excluded everybody else and that all
the rest
of them were welcome to admire. It was that way before times got hard.
After
that, Doane seemed almost angry at Marcelle because there wasn't much
he could
spare her. Still, he looked for her and he stood beside her, even
75
when he had no word to say.
There are the things people
need, and the things people don't need. That might not be true. Maybe
they
don't need existence. If you took that away, everything else would go
with it.
So if you don't need to exist, then there is no reason to think about
other
things you don't need as if they didn't matter. You don't need somebody
standing beside you. You don't, but you do. Take away every pleasure--
but you
couldn't, because there can be pleasure in a sip of water. A thought.
There was
no reason for Doane to tie a ribbon on Marcelle's wrist, and that was
why she
laughed when he did it, and loved him for it. Why they all loved them
both.
There was no reason to let an old man dip his hand in water and touch
it to
your forehead, as if he loved you the way people do who would touch
your face
and your hair. You'd have thought those babies were his own. All right,
she
thought. All right.
I have worried that you
might think I did not take your question as seriously as I should have.
I
realize I have always believed there is a great Providence that, so to
speak,
waits ahead of us. A father holds out his hands to a child who is
learning to
walk and he comforts the child with words and draws it toward him, but
he lets
the child feel the risk it is taking, and lets it choose its own
courage and
the certainty of love and comfort when he reaches his father over-- I
was going
to say choose it over safety, but there is no safety. And there is no
choice,
either, because it is in the nature of the child to walk as it is to
want the
attention and encouragement of the father. And the promise of comfort.
Which it
is in the nature of the father to give. I feel it would be presumptuous
of me
to describe the ways of God. Those that are all we know of Him, when
there is
so much we don't know. Though we are told to call Him Father. And I
know it
would be presumptuous
76
to speak as if the
suffering that people feel as they pass through the world were not
grave enough
to make your question much more powerful than any answer I could offer.
My
faith tells me that God shared poverty, suffering, and death with human
beings,
which can only mean that such things are full of dignity and meaning,
even
though to believe this makes a great demand on one's faith, and to act
as if
this were true in any way we understand is to be ridiculous. It is
ridiculous
also to act as if it were not absolutely and essentially true all the
same.
Even though we are to do everything we can to put an end to poverty and
suffering.
I have struggled with
this my whole life.
I still have not
answered your question, I know, but thank you for asking it. I may be
learning
something from the attempt.
Sincerely,
John Ames
Well, he forgot he was writing
to an ignorant woman. She'd
have hated him for remembering. Still, she'd have to study this a
little. A
letter written to her. Lila, if I may.
Then what was she supposed to
do? Write him a letter? She'd
shame herself Those big, ugly words on a piece of tablet paper, nothing
spelled
right. But then she'd shamed herself before and he never seemed to
mind.
Planting her spuds in his flower garden. Knocking at his do or before
the sun
was well up to ask him her one question. Throwing her arms around him.
Taking
off with his sweater. It should have pained her to remember, but every
time she
rested her head on that old sweater she was just glad for it all. She
had even
thought about putting it in the fire, because it worried her how it
kept him on
her mind. Then maybe she could catch that bus. She certainly did wonder
about
herself. He should be thinking she's crazy for sure by now. No sign of
it in
that letter, though. She thought, How can he forget what I am?
77
But she hadn't yet put things
right with those people who
gave her the chicken. She could spend the morning there and then go
down to the
river and wash out some of her clothes. She'd better get started. Doane
used to
say that if you start after sunrise, you've wasted the day. The woman
was still
just as sick ly, so Lila cleaned house for a while and then she chopped
weeds
for a while in the kitchen garden, and then, when no one was looking,
she put
the hoe in the shed and walked away. Now they were even.
She liked to do her wash.
Sometimes fish rose for the
bubbles. The smell of the soap was a little sharp, like the smell of
the river.
In that water you could rinse things clean. It might be a little brown
after a
good rain, soil from the fields, but the silt washed away or settled
out. Her
shirts and her dress looked to her like creatures that never wanted to
be born,
the way they wilted into themselves, sinking under the water as if they
only
wanted to be left there, maybe to find some deeper, darker pool. And
when she
lifted them out, held them up by their shoulders, they looked like pure
weariness
and regret. Like her own flayed skin. But when she hung them over a
line and
let the water run out, and the sun and the wind dry them, they began to
seem
like things that could live. At the church once they read the story
about how
the Queen of Egypt came down to a river and found a baby floating in a
basket,
and after that it was her baby. Live. The mother was supposed to kill
the
child, but she couldn't. She put it in the river, and the queen lifted
it out.
But then it grew up and turned into a man, and he decided he didn't
want to be
her child. Or maybe she had died, and her father didn't take to him,
but that's
not in the story. Well, Lila thought, I hope she did die before he
could treat
her that way. She should have been able to trust
78
him. Here I am thinking that
way again. Can't trust nobody.
That's what I'm thinking all the time. If I'm ever going to try it, it
might as
well be now, when I can leave if I have to and I'm still young enough
to get by
for a while. When it won't much matter if it don't work out.
So.
She'd get herself together as
well as she could, walk to the
church, to that little room where people came when they wanted to talk
to him,
and she'd knock on the door. And then she would say to him that she did
want to
get baptized after all and she was sorry she forgot to come to them
classes.
Then he'd say something. She would tell him that was a real nice
letter. He'd
say something else. And what would any of it amount to? She saw them
all
talking to each other all the time. Laughing. Doll used to say, "No
cussing!" and they would laugh because of all the things they knew and
nobody else did. But if you're just a stranger to everybody on earth,
then
that's what you are and there's no end to it. You don't know the words
to say.
She went to Mrs. Graham's to
see if she needed help with the
ironing, and she did. That took the morning and most of the afternoon.
She
wanted some things from the store, so she had to walk past the church.
He was
out in front of it, with his hands on his hips, looking up at the roof.
But he
turned and saw her and said, "Good afternoon." She nodded and kept on
walking. He caught up with her and fell into step beside her, a little
out of
breath. He said, "I'm glad to see you."
"Why?"
He laughed. "Well, that's what
people say sometimes.
Besides, I am glad to see you."
They walked on like that, right
past the store. She said,
"Why?"
He laughed again. "You ask such
interesting
questions."
79
"And you don't answer 'em." He
nodded. It felt
very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet,
like
something you could live without but you needed any way. That you had
to learn
how to miss, and then you'd never stop missing it. "I quit coming to
them
classes. So I guess I don't get baptized."
"Yes, I've given that some
thought. There are things we
do hope the person being baptized will understand well enough to
affirm."
"Affirm? I don't even know that
word. I can't half
understand that letter you give me. I'm an ignorant woman. Seems like
you can't
understand that."
He stopped, so she did. He
looked into her face. "I
think I would understand it if it were true. But I don't believe it is.
So I
don't see the point in acting as if I do." He shrugged. "Knowing a
few words more or less--"
"It ain't that simple."
He nodded. "It isn't the least
bit simple. But if you
are at church this Sunday and you want to accept baptism, then-- I will
do it
with perfect confidence in the rightness of it. That's all I can say."
She said, "I got to get some
things at the store."
So they turned and walked back into Gilead.
He said, "I suppose you still
don't trust me at
all."
"I just don't go around
trusting people. Don't see the
need."
They walked on a while.
"The roses are beautiful. On
the grave. It's very kind
of you to do that."
She shrugged. "I like roses."
"Yes, but I wish there were
some way I could repay
you."
She heard herself say, "You
ought to marry me." He
stopped still, and she hurried away, to the other side of the road, the
flush
of shame and anger so hot in her that this time surely she could not go
on
living. When he caught up with her, when he touched her sleeve, she
could not
look at him.
80
"Yes," he said, "you're right.
I will."
She said, "All right. Then I'll
see you tomorrow."
Why did she say that? What was she planning on doing tomorrow? He just
stood
there. She could feel him watching her. Of all the crazy things she had
ever
done. It was that feeling that she had had walking along beside him
that put
the notion in her mind. It comes from being alone too much. Things
matter that
wouldn't if you had a regular life. Just walking along beside that old
man,
past the edge of town, not even talking most of the time, with the
cottonwoods
shining and rustling and shading the road. She never really looked at
him, but
he was beautiful, gentle and solid, his voice so mild when he spoke,
his hair
so silvery white. If she ever thought of herself marrying anybody, it
would
have been a man who was young enough not to mind a day's work. Bemg a
preacher
was a kind of work, though. And he had that house to live in. Gardens
around
it. Gone to weed.
What was she thinking about? It
was never going to happen.
She might be crazy, but he wasn't. She tried to remember that he said
those words--
You're right. I will-- in a way that really meant, That's the strangest
thing
anybody ever said to me in my whole life. It wasn't hard to hear them
that way,
except from him. He always seemed to say what he meant. Near enough.
But she
could see how it might've been different this time. She lifted the
loose plank
and took out the jar where she kept her money. She had the five dollars
Mrs.
Graham paid her since, upset as she was, she didn't trust herself to go
into
the store and buy the tin of deviled ham she'd had on her mind. So all
together
it came to about forty-five dollars. If she hadn't been buying things,
cigarettes, margarine, there'd have been more. Still, forty-five
dollars would
take her a long way on a bus. She could go to California, where there
wouldn't
be winter to worry about. Crops coming in all year long. Doane and
Marcelle had
always talked about going to
81
California. That was a nice
thing to think about. She could
do it on her own. Nobody to trust. She knew
he wouldn't come to her place,
and she couldn't go to his.
He might be looking for her, since it was tomorrow, or he might not be
looking
for her. She would go into town in the next few days to get her ticket,
so if
he happened to see her he wouldn't make much of it. She might never
know--
maybe he meant what he said, but if he didn't, and she saw him again,
she
wouldn't be able to stand the shame. Or she would, and that would be
another,
harder shame. It would be best if she could just say, I'm leaving, like
I was
meaning to do the whole time.
So she spent the next day at
the river. She sat down on a
rock and dropped a fishing line into the water. She had brought her
tablet and
pencil and her Bible. Ezekiel said: And
they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and
they
four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings were joined one
to
another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight
forward.
As for the likeness of their faces, they had the face of a man; and
they four
had the face of a lion on the right side; and they four had the face of
an ox
on the left side; they four had also the face of an eagle.
Doane would be
saying, What did I tell you. But it made as much sense as anything
else. No
sense at all. If you think about a human face, it can be something you
don't
want to look at, so sad or so hard or so kind. It can be something you
want to
hide, because it pretty well shows where you've been and what you can
expect.
And anybody at all can see it, but you can't. It just floats there in
front of
you. It might as well be your soul, for all you can do to protect it.
What
isn't strange, when you think about it.
The shadows had moved and the
bugs were beginning to bother,
so she found a sunnier place. There were huckleberries. If she could
only
forget why she was there, she'd be fairly pleased with herself. One big
old
catfish would make it a good day. That letter was in the Bible. She
tore it in
half and put a rock on it, in a wet enough place that the ink would
bleed. Dear
Lila (if I may).
82
She thought sometimes that if
she decided to do it she could
cut off her hand. There was a kind of peace in that. In one way, at
least, she
could trust herself, crazy or not. She might burn that sweater while
she was
cooking her catfish. She might burn the Bible, for that matter. Old
Ezekiel
would nestle down into the flames. He seemed to know all about them.
The
umbrella would fit in her suitcase, crosswise.
She decided to go to church the
next Sunday. If she came
late and left early, if she sat in the last pew, he would never be near
enough
to speak to her or to pay her any notice. She wouldn't mind seeing him
one last
time, standing there in the pulpit, in the window light, talking to
those
people about incarnation and resurrection and the rest. She'd hear a
little
singing. After that she would never step into a church again.
When she came up the bank from
the river, she saw him
standing in the road, about halfway between her and that damn shack. So
there
she was, Bible in one hand, catfish jumping on a line in the other,
barefoot,
and he turned and saw her. He started walking toward her. She couldn't
think
what else to do so she waited where she was. He didn't speak until he
was dos:
to her and then he didn't speak, still deciding what to say.
He said, "I know you don't like
visitors, but I wanted
to talk to you. I wasn't actually coming to your house. But I hoped I
might see
you. I want to give you something. Of course you are under no
obligation to
accept it. It belonged to my mother." He was holding it in his hand, a
locket on a chain. "I should have found a box for it." Then he said,
"We spoke about marriage. I haven't seen you since then. I don't know
if
you meant what you said. I thought I'd ask. I understand if you've
changed your
mind. I’m old. An old man. I'm very much aware of that." He shrugged.,
"But if we're engaged, I want to give you something. And if we’re not,
I
want you to have it anyway."
"Well," she said, "I got my
hands full."
83
He laughed. "So you have! Let
me take something. A
Bible!"
"I stole it. And don't go
looking at my tablet."
"Sorry. Ezekiel." He laughed.
"You are always
surprising."
"I stole your sweater. Was that
a surprise?"
"Not really. But I was glad you
wanted it."
"Why?"
He said, "Well, you probably
know why."
She felt her face warm. And the
fish kept struggling,
jumping against her leg. She said, "Damn catfish. Seems like you can
never
quite kill 'em dead. I'm going to just put it here in the weeds for a
minute." And there it was, flopping in the dust. She wiped her hand on
her
skirt. "I can take that chain now, whatever it is."
He said, "Excellent. I'm --
grateful. You should put it
on. It's a little difficult to fasten. My mother always asked my father
to do
it for her."
Lila said, "Is that a fact,"
and handed it back to
him .
He studied her for a moment,
and then he said, "You'll
have to do something with your hair. If you could lift it up." So she
did,
and he stepped behind her, and she felt the touch of his fingers at her
neck,
trembling, and the small weight of the lockit falling into place. Then
they
stood there together in the road, in the chirping, rustling silence and
the
sound of the river.
He said, "So.
Are we getting married, or not?"
And she said, "If you want to,
it's all right with me,
I suppose. But I can't see how it's going to work."
He nodded. "There could be
problems. I've thought about
that. Quite a lot."
"What if it turns out I'm
crazy? What if I got the law
after me? All you know about me is what anybody can tell by looking.
And nobody
else ever wanted to
marry me.”
He shrugged. "I guess you don't
know me very well,
either."
84
"It ain't the same. Somebody
like me might marry
somebody like you just because you got a good house and winter's
coming. Just
because she's tired of the damn loneliness . Somebody like you got no
reason at
all to marry somebody like me."
He shrugged. "I was getting
along with the damn
loneliness well enough. I expected to continue with it the rest of my
life.
Then I saw you that morning. I saw your face."
"Don't talk like that. I know
about my face."
"I suspect you don't. You don't
know how I see it. No
matter. A person like you might not want the kind of life she would
have with
me. People around. It's not a very private life, compared to what
you're used
to. You're sort of expected to be agreeable."
"I can't do that."
He nodded. "They're not going
to fire me, whatever
happens. I'll have my good house, till they carry me out of it."
"I can take care of myself."
"I
know that. I
meant, if you're not like most pastors' wives, it won’t matter. I've
been here
my whole life. My father and then me. I won't be here so much longer.
No one
will want to trouble me. Or you." He said, "You have to understand, I
have given this a great deal of thought. What an old country preacher
might
have to give to a young woman like you. Not the things a man her age
could give
her, a worldlier m an. So I would be grateful for anything I could give
you.
Mayb e comfort, or peace, or safety. For a while, at least. I am old."
She said, "You're a pretty
fine-looking man, old or
not."
He laughed. "Well, thank you!
Believe me, I would never
have spoken to you this way if I didn't think my health was reasonably
sound.
So far as I can tell."
"You wouldn'ta spoke to me like
this if I hadn't
mentioned it all in the first place."
"That's true. I'd have thought
it would be foolish of
me to imagine such a thing. Old as I am."
85
She thought, I could tell him I
don't want to b e no
preacher's wife. It's only the truth. I don't want to live in some town
where
people know about me and think I'm like an orphan left on the church
steps,
waiting for somebody to show some kindness, so they taken me in. I
don't want
to marry some silvery old man everybody thinks is God. I got St. Louis
behind
me, and tansy tea, and pretending I'm pretty. Wearing high-heel shoes..
Wasn't
no good at that life, but I did try. I got shame like a habit, the only
thing I
feel except when I'm alone.
She said, "I don't think we
better do this."
He nodded. His face reddened
and he had to steady his voice.
"I hope we will be able to talk from time to time. I always enjoy our
conversations." .
"I can't marry you. I can't
even stand up in front of
them people and get baptized. I hate it when they're looking at me."
He glanced up, preacherly.
"Yes, I hadn't thought of
that. I should have realized. I haven't always performed baptisms in
the
church. If there are special circumstances- All I would need is a basin
of some
sort. I could take water from the river."
"I can't affirm nothing."
"Then I guess we'll skip that
part."
"I got a bucket. No basin.''
"That will do fine."
"You wait here. I got to comb
my hair.''
He laughed. "I'm not going
anywhere.'' She
changed into a cleaner blouse and combed
and braided her hair and put on her shoes. She'd do this and think
about it
afterward. She went out on the stoop and picked up the bucket, which
would be
clean enough after a rinse. The old man was in the field picking
sunflowers.
She walked to the road. He brought her his bouquet. "I like flowers at
a
baptism," he said. "Now we'll fetch a little water.'' There was a
kind of haste in his cheerfulness. She had hurt him, and he couldn't
quite hide
it. He took the bucket from her and helped her down the bank as if she
hadn't
gone
86
to the river for water a
hundred times by herself, and he
sank the bucket into a pool and brought it up, brimming, and poured
half of it
back. The crouching was a little stiff and the standing, and he smiled
at her--
I am old. "I don't need much at all," he said. “ A few waterskeeters
won't do any harm." He was dressed in his preacher clothes, and he was
careful of them but he liked being by the river, she could tell. "What
do
you think? Up there in the sunshine or down here by the water?" Then he
said "Oh I left the Bible lying on the grass. I could do it from
memory.
But I like to have a Bible, you know, the cloud of witnesses." She
didn't
know. "Since there aren't any others." She still didn't know. No
matter. He was glad to be doing this, and not just so he could put
aside that
talk they'd had. So it must mean something.
She said, "I like the
sunshine." He helped her up
the bank, and he found the Bible, and he opened it and read, "Then
cometh
Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him ...
And
Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and
lo, the
heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending
as a
dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying,
This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' These are the words of
John, who
baptized for the remission of sins, and who baptized Our Lord: 'I
indeed
baptize you in water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is
mightier
than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you in
the Holy
Spirit and in fire.' The sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an
inward
and spiritual grace. Dying in Christ we rise in Him, rejoicing in the
sweetness
of our hope. Lila Dahl, I-"
"But that ain't my name."
"What is your name?"
"Nobody ever said.''
''All right. It's a good name.
If I christen you with it,
then it is your name."
87
"Christen?"
"Baptize."
"All right."
"Lila Dahl, I baptize you-" His
voice broke.
"I baptize you in the name of the Father. And of the Son. And of the
Holy
Spirit." Resting his hand three times on her hair. That was what made
her
cry. Just the touch of his hand. He watched her with surprise and
tenderness,
and she cried some more. He gave her his handkerchief. After a while he
said,
"When I was a boy, we used to come out along this road to pick black
raspberries. I think I still know where to look for them."
She said, "I know where," and
the two of them
walked across the meadow, through the daisies and sunflowers, through
an ash
grove and into another fallow field. There were brambles along the
farther
side, weighed down with berries. She said, "We don't have nothing to
put
them in," and he said, "I guess we'll just have to eat them." He
picked one and gave it to her, as if she couldn't do it for herself. He
said,
"We could put them in my handkerchief. I'll hold it."
"You'll get stains all over it."
He laughed. "Good."
She spread it across his open
hands and filled them, and
then she tied the corners together. Fragrance and purple bled through
the
cloth. He said, "I'll carry it so it doesn't stain your clothes, but
it's
for you, if you want it. You can steal my handkerchief. If you want to
remember. The day you became Lila Dahl."
She said, "Thanks. I figure
I'll remember anyway."
They walked up to the road.
"Well," he said.
"It's almost evening. And we forgot all about your catfish, didn't we.
And
your Bible, and your tablet. I'll help you gather them up. It might
rain. And
then I'll be going."
"Wait," she said. "I was
wondering. Can you
still get married to somebody you baptized?"
88
He raised his eyebrows. "No law
against it. Why do you
ask?”
"I don't know. Seems like I
just want to rest my
head-"
He said, "I'd like that, too,
Lila. But I think we made
a decision."
"No. No." She wasn't crying.
She couldn't look at
him. "I want this so damn bad. And I hate to want anything."
"'This?"
"I want you to marry me! I wish
I didn't. It's just a
misery for me."
"For me, too, as it happens."
"I , can’t trust you!"
"I guess that's why I can't
trust you."
"Oh," she said, "that's a fact.
I don't trust
nobody. I can't stay nowhere. I can't get a minute of rest."
"Well, if that's how it is, I
guess you' d better put
your head on my shoulder, after all."
She did. And he put his arms
around her. She said, "The
second you walk off down that road I'll start telling myself you’re
gone for
good and why wouldn't you be, and I'll start trying to hate you for it.
I will
hate you for it. I might even leave here entirely."
He said, "I expect I'll be
having a few sleepless
nights myself. A few more, that is. I was thinking, if you moved into
town we
could sort of keep an eye on each other. Talk now and then. That should
make
things better. Boughton will marry us. “I’ll talk to him about 1t.
We'll do it soon.
To put an end to the worrying."
"But don't you wonder why I
don't even know my own
name?"
"You'll tell me sometime, if
you feel like it."
"I worked in a whorehouse in
St. Louis. A whorehouse.
You probably don't even know what that is. Oh! Why did I say that."
89
She stepped away from him, and
he gathered her back and
pressed her head against his shoulder.
He said, "Lila Dahl, I just
washed you in the waters of
regeneration. As far as I'm concerned, you're a newborn babe. And, yes,
I do
know what a whorehouse is. Though not from personal experience. You're
making
sure you can trust me, which is wise. Much better for both of us."
"I done other things."
"I get the idea." He stroked
her hair, and her
cheek. Then he said, "I really better go home. If I find a place for
you,
will you move into town? Yes? And I'll talk to Boughton. Promise you
won't be
out here trying to hate me. If that's something you can promise." He
went
off and came back with her Bible and tablet and that muddy catfish,
which he
had dropped into the bucket, along with the bouquet of sunflowers. He
said,
"With a catfish you just never know." He looked at her. "Sleep
well," he said gently, like benediction, as if he meant grace and
peace.
So now she was going to marry this old preacher. She couldn't see any
way
around it that would not shock all the sweetness right out of him.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12.
The hotel belonged to an old
friend of Boughton's, and Lila
had a room there free of charge. Such a dead little town, half the
rooms were
empty. Reverend Ames came by most nights for supper on the veranda
under the
big ceiling fans, bringing Boughton along often enough. Mrs. Graham
brought
clothes, from the Boughtons' attic, she said. He had four daughters.
They were
very good quality clothes, they might as well get some use. The
mothball smell
will air out. Lila hated the hotel, the drapes and sofas and the great
big pink
and purple flowers on the wallpaper and the rugs. Dressing nice for the
evening.
90
Sometimes she would walk out to
that farm to help, to sweat.
and get her hands dirty. So she could sleep at night. They might give
her a
little money, depending. But she was back before supper and washed up
before
the old men came. And smelling like mothballs. She learned about
propriety
without anybody ever telling her there was a word for it. "He's very
protective of you," Mrs. Graham said, which meant she sat next to him
but
not close to him, that he touched her elbow but did not take her hand.
That she
was about as lonely as she had ever been.
On her way to the farm she
might look in on the shack.
Nobody there but the mice and the spiders. She'd sit on the stoop and
light a
cigarette. Her money was still in the jar under the loose plank. She'd
stuffed
that handkerchief into it, too, because It reminded her of a wound and
trying
to blot it up or bind it. The field was turning brown and the milkweed
pods
were dry and prying themselves open. Everything in that shack she had
not
hidden was gone, every useless thing. He had come there and gathered it
all up,
she was sure, to save it for her. Some visiting Boughton had brought
him out
there in his father's car no doubt, since the odds and ends, the pot
and bucket
and bedroll and suitcase and the rest, would be far too much to carry.
So much
that she would have left it behind when the winter drove her out. Maybe
the
Boughtons helped take her things to the car. She hated to think they
had been
there. If he had asked, she'd have said don't do it, so he didn't ask.
She
never thought of emptying the shack, even though the winter would ruin
whatever
was left in it. If a farmer decided to plant the field, he would
probably knock
it down or burn it. Still, she had thought of it as hers. Her things
had been
her claim on it. The money wasn't safe-- only the Reverend would not
think to look
under a loose board, but it was hers while it was there. Her knife was
gone.
What did the old man think about that knife? Why did she wonder?
Everybody
needs a knife. Fish don't clean themselves.
91
And she went up to the cemetery
to look after Mrs. Ames and
her child. She meant to ask the old man sometime what would happen when
they
were all resurrected and he had two wives. He had preached about that,
which
probably meant he had been wondering, too-- they won't be male or
female, they
won't marry or be given in marriage. Jesus said that. So the old man
wouldn't
have a wife at all, not even one. This girl and her child, after so
many years,
would be like anyone else to him. He might be as young as he was when
she left
him. Lila could see sometimes what he'd been like when he was young.
The girl
would still be holding that baby he had hardly even had a chance to
hold. And
there would be no change in her, and no change in him, as if dying had
never
happened. It would be a strange kind of heaven, after all they'd been
through,
and all the waiting, if he did not feel a different peace when he stood
beside
them. Lila could watch them, and love them, because old Doll would be
there to
say, "It don't matter." Don't want what you don't need and you'll be
fine. Don't want what you can't have. Doll would be there, ugly with
all the
trouble of her life. Lila might not know her otherwise.
A month in that hotel, and then
the wedding. Mrs. Graham
told her the Reverend probably wanted people to understand that the
marriage
was a considered decision, since men his age could sometimes be a
little
foolish. Lila said, "Well, it seems pretty foolish anyway," meaning
that if she was as good as married, she might as well have some of the
comforts
of it. Mrs. Graham smiled and nodded and said, "He's just trying to
make
the best of things. For your sake, too." Lila hated Boughton. Once or
twice she saw him taking a long look at the old man as if he was
wondering
about him, as if he might say, Are you really sure about this? Damn
knives and
forks. And he was always talking about foreign policy. Then the old man
would
say something just to remind him gently that Lila might not have an
interest in
foreign policy, which,was true enough, since
92
she'd never even known there
was such a thing, and Boughton
would start talking about theology. Then it would be something about
somebody
they had both known forever. They would be laughing at the thought of
something
that had happened when they were boys, and then the old man would turn
to her and
say "Are you comfortable here? Is your room comfortable?" because he
couldn't think of anything to say to her, either. He couldn't go up to
her room
to see for himself because of propriety. He blushed when she said she'd
be
happy to take him upstairs, and she had to laugh at herself, which made
it
worse. Boughton tried to change the subject. Mrs. Graham and her
husband were
there, too, ready to talk foreign policy out of the plain goodness of
their
hearts. They had dinner at the hotel a few times so that Mr. Graham
would know
her well enough to give her away. That was the strangest thing she'd
heard of
yet. But she had her days to herself
They were married in the parlor
of Reverend Boughton's
house, with the Boughton children there except for the one. They even
brought
Mrs. Boughton downstairs in a pretty dress and put her in her chair.
The girls
bent down to tell her it was a wedding, John's wedding, and wasn't that
nice?
Then they left her to her smiling quiet, since it always upset her to
feel that
more was wanted of her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13.
They went to the old man's
house after the wedding and the
dinner Boughton's daughters had made for them. Lila had never
understood the
whole business of knives and forks, that there was a way you were
supposed to
use them. But he sat beside her, close to her, her husband, all their
kind
feelings toward him now owed to her, too. There was a big white cake
with
frosting roses on it, and the sisters laughed about how many they had
made and
how few of them turned out to look at all like the pictures
93
in the magazine. Or anything
else. Cauliflowers. Mushroom
clouds. Gracie knocked one on the floor and got so frustrated she
washed her
hands of the whole thing and went for a walk, but Faith got the trick
of it,
just in time, before people began to arrive. Then there she was with
frosting
in her hair. There was frosting all over the kitchen . Teddy said he
caught
Glory licking her fingers. They were all laughing, all so used to each
other,
so fine-looking, the brothers, too. Lila could hardly wait to leave.
Then there they were in that
quiet house. Everything of
hers, everything she had been given, had been brought from the hotel
and hung
in the front closet. There was food in the icebox and the pantry and on
the
kitchen table, and there were little gifts on the counters, embroidered
tea
towels and pillowcases and aprons, and a needlework picture of apples
and pears
and grapes with the words Bless This House. There were flowers in every
room.
The windows were all opened to let the day in. Everything that could be
polished shone. "The church," he said, and smiled as if to say, I did
warn you. She stepped out on the back porch, just to look. They had
weeded the
garden.
She'd thought, I'll do this
first and think about it
afterward. Now afterward had come and she had no idea what to think. I
am
baptized, I am married, I am Lila Dahl, and Lila Ames. I don't know
what else I
should want. Except for the shame to be gone, and it ain't. I'm in a
strange
house with a man who can't even figure out how to talk to me. Anything
I could
do around here has been done already. If I say something ignorant or
crazy
he'll start thinking, Old men can be foolish. He's thought it already.
He'll
ask me to leave and no one will blame him. I won't blame him. Marriage
was supposed
to put an end to these miseries. But now whatever happens everybody
will know.
She saw him standing in the parlor with his beautiful old head bowed
down on
his beautiful old chest. She thought, He sure better be praying. And
then she
thought, Praying looks just like grieŁ Like shame. Like regret.
94
He showed her the house, where
things were to be found.
There was a room upstairs he said would be her study if she liked. The
carpetbag with the tablet and Bible in it was there on a table by the
window, beside
a bowl of zinnias. Or she could have another room if there was one she
liked
better. The house had been built for a big family. The rooms weren't
large, but
there were several of them. His own study was just down the hall. If
there was
anything at all she wanted to change, she should certainly feel free.
The house
was as it had always been, more or less, at least since his father and
mother
lived in it. But there was no reason to keep it that way. He said, "It
is
so wonderful to have you here, in this house. I hope you'll be very
happy. Of
course.
She said, "I expect I will be.
Happy enough. It's
yourself I'd be worried about."
He laughed. "I think I'll be
fine," he said.
"I seen you praying."
"A habit of mine. No cause for
concern."
·”Well," she said, "if you
decide sometime I'm a
bother, you can just tell me."
He laughed. "Dear Lila, we're
married! For better and
for worse!"
"I spose so. We'll see about
that."
He took her hands and studied
them, her big, hard hands.
He said, "If you say so, I
guess we will."
She had probably said a mean
thing to him. For weeks she
wished she could take it back. All it meant was that she still didn't
trust him
and he'd be a fool to, trust her. And that was only the truth. He might
as well
know it was her nature to feel that way, nothing she could change. She
was just
as lonely as she had ever been. The only difference was that now this
kind old
95
man was sad and embarrassed
about it, still not even sure
how to talk to her. If she was quiet for a while he would come down
from his
study to look for her in the kitchen or the garden-- to get a drink of
water or
to enjoy the weather, he said. If she had walked out to the farm, to
the shack,
the sight of her coming in the door stung his eyes. It was to comfort
him, and
herself, that she slipped into his bed that first dark night.
Lila thought once, when she was
out walking, what if she saw
someone ahead of her on the road and it was Doll. What if she called
out her
name, and the woman stopped and turned and laughed and held out her
arms to
her, wrapped her into her shawl. She would tell her, I have married a
fine old
man. I live m a good house that has plenty of room in it for you, too.
You can
stay forever, and we'll work in the garden together. And Doll would
laugh and
squeeze her hand-- "It come out right, after all! I ain't dead and you
ain't in some shack just struggling to get by! I had to leave for a
time, but
I'm back now, I'm resurrected! I been looking everywhere for you,
child!"
She could tell herself what she would tell Doll, things that would help
her
stay in that life. A married woman with a good husband! It was worth
all the
trouble, every bit of it.
Doll's eyes would shine the way
they never did when anyone
but Lila was there to see. Just that little room in the house in
Tammany made
her happy for all she was giving her child, her own dresser drawer and
a lamp
with a ruffled shade and school besides. Then she must have seen
someone, or
heard that someone was asking after them, and they left as soon as Doll
could dry
her hands and change her apron. She said she had weaned of Mrs.
Marker's
hollering, but they ate the lunch she had made for Lila to take to
school as
they walked away from Tammany, through the woods, not along the road.
Doll had
a red stain, like a birthmark on one side of her brow and on her cheek,
and
people who saw her didn't forget her. That was why they couldn't
96
stay in one place. She never
explained any of this to Lila.
It was a part of everything they never spoke of. But it was clear
enough when
she thought back on it. They managed to stay in that town for months,
almost a
school year, Doll taking the risk so Lila could learn to read. Well,
the old
man's house was full of books. She would work on her reading. Doll
would want
her to.
When she thought this way, she
could almost begin to enjoy
her life. She was stealing it, almost, to give it to Doll. People might
think
she liked the old man's house and the Boughtons' clothes and all the
proprieties and the courtesies. They might think she liked the old man,
too.
But she just imagined how all of it would seem to Doll-- a very good
life, a
comfortable life that she had because Doll had stolen her, and had
taken care
of her all those years. She lived for Doll to see. Lila made the old
man smile
for the pleasure in his eyes, because Doll would have been so happy to
see it.
When she put her arms around him, when she slipped into his bed, Doll
would
have smoothed the pillow and whispered to her, "He's such a kind old
man!"
Lila went along with him to
Boughton's house to drink iced
tea on the porch and listen while they talked, and one afternoon as she
listened she understood that Doll was not, as Boughton said, among the
elect.
Like most people who lived on earth, she did not believe and was not
baptized.
None of Doane's people were among the elect, so far as she knew, except
herself, if she could believe it. Maybe their lives had gone on, and
some
revival preacher somewhere had taken them in hand. But Doll's life
ended, and
no one had rested his hand on her head, and no one had said a word to
her about
the waters of regeneration. If there was a stone on her grave, there
was no
name on it. A real name might have made her easier to find, or have
added
another crime to child-stealing, so she never even told Lila what it
was. When
Doll gave Lila her knife she said, "It's only for scaring folks with.
If
you go cutting somebody it's going to be trouble no
97
matter what the story is." So
Doll might have been
hiding already when Lila first knew her, sleeping in that miserable,
crowded
old cabin, coming and going in the night the way she did. Calling
herself by
that one name. Maybe she died with dark sins on her soul. Lila had
heard the
preachers talk that way. Or maybe the other crime was just some
desperate kindness,
like stealing a sickly child. And maybe it made no difference to the
Lord, one
way or the other.
The old man said, "We'll be
going home now. It must be
close to suppertime." He could tell when she was bothered, and Boughton
could tell when he was concerned about her, so they said good evening
without
any of the usual joking and lingering and clearing away of glasses and
spoons.
He walked along beside her, silent in the way he was when he could not
be sure
what to say, or to ask. He opened the door for her. That house, so
plain and
orderly and safe. He said, "Boughton likes to talk about the thornier
side
of things. You don't want to take him too seriously."
She went into the parlor and
sat down, and rested her head
in her hands. He stood near her chair, keeping a respectful, patient
distance
as he always did when he hoped she would tell him what she had on her
mind.
She said, "I just never thought
about all them other
people. Practically everybody I ever knew. Some of them been kind to
me."
He said, ''I'm so glad they
were kind to you. I'm very
grateful for that."
"But they never gave one
thought to the Sabbath. You
never heard such cussing and coveting. They stole sometimes, if they
had to. I
knew a woman who maybe killed somebody with a knife. She's dead now, so
I guess
there's nothing to be done about that." She said, "Them women in St.
Louis, I believe adultery is about the only thing they was ever up to.
And
there was no one to help them with any of it. Their sins. So I guess
they're
all just lost? What happens to you if you're lost?"
98
He said, "Lila, you always do
ask the hardest
questions." There was a gentleness in his voice that made her think he
wouldn't tell her painful things in words that really let her
understand them.
"I knew a man once who said
churches tell folks things
like that to scare them."
"Some do."
"So they'll give them their
money."
He nodded. "That happens."
"You never say nothing about
any of it."
"I don't really know what to
say about it."
"But it's true, then?"
"There are other things I
believe in. God loves the
world. God is gracious. I can't reconcile, you know, hell and the rest
of it to
things I do believe. And feel I understand, in a way. So I don't talk
about it
very much."
"That's the only time I ever
heard you say that word,
'hell.' "
He shrugged. "Interesting.''
"Does Jesus talk about it?"
"Yes, He does. Not a lot.
Still.''
She said, "I don't know. For a
preacher you ain't much
at explaining things.''
"I'm sorry about that. Sorry if
you're disappointed.
Again. But if I tried to explain I wouldn't believe what I was saying
to you.
That's lying, isn't it? I'm probably more afraid of that than of
anything else.
I really don't think preachers ought to lie. Especially about
religion.''
She said, "I just wish I'd
known a little more about
what I was getting into. My own fault. I should've gone. to them damn
classes.''
99
He sat down on the sofa. "My
fault, too. My fault
entirely." They were quiet for a while.
Then she said, "I know you
didn't mean no harm."
He shook his head. "I didn't do
you any harm. I'm sure
of that."
Well, he didn't know Doll and
the rest of them. The
loneliness that settled over her at the thought that they were lost to
her. He
buried his face in his hands, praying most likely. So she went into the
kitchen
and made sandwiches.
He'd wanted to get her baptized
before she could take off
and lose herself in some rough life and then be lost it whatever came
after it.
That was kind of him. Dipping his hand in that bucket, river water
running up
his sleeve while he blessed her with it. Bees buzzing, her catfish
flopping in
the weeds. He surely did look like he meant every word he said. The
heavens
torn asunder. A dove descending. There was no sign of all that except
the look
on his face and the touch of his hand. It wasn't often in her life that
anyone
had been so set on doing her good as he was, after she had said she
wouldn't
marry him, too. A preacher doing what preachers do to give you what
safety they
can. But it might not be a kind of safety you want, once you think
about it.
For a while Lila had liked the thought of resurrection because it would
mean
seeing Doll. The old man might have his wife and his child. She would
have
Doll, so that would be all right. There would be such crowds of people,
but she
would look for her until she found her if it took a hundred years. She
understood the word "resurrection" to mean just what she wanted it to
mean. The idea was precious to her. Doll just the way she used to be,
but with
death behind her, and all the peace that would come with that. A few
blisters
ain't going to kill you. A little dust ain't going to kill you. Nothing
going
to kill you ever again! Hanging couldn't kill you! Doll would laugh at
the
surprise of it all, because she'd probably never heard of such a thing.
100
But Boughton mentioned a Last
Judgment. Souls just out of
their graves having to answer for lives most of them never understood
in the
first place. Such hard lives. And there Doll would be, whatever guilt
or shame
she had hidden from all her life laid out for her, no bit of it
forgotten. Or
forgiven. But that wasn't possible. The old man always said that God is
kind.
Doll was so tough and weary, with that stain on her face, and the
patient way
she had when people looked at her-- I never see it, but I know what you
see.
Whatever it was she did with that knife, who could want to cause her
more
sorrow? Lila hated the thought of resurrection as much as she had ever
hated
anything. Better Doll should stay in her grave, if she had one. Better
nothing
the old men said should be true at all.
He came into the kitchen and
sat down at the table. "I
must seem like a fool to you," he said. "You must think I've never
given a moment's thought to anything."
She was always surprised when
he spoke to her that way,
answering to her, when she had never read more than a child's
schoolbook. ''I'd
never think you was a fool," she said.
"Well," he said, "maybe. But I
do want to say
one more thing. Thinking about hell doesn't help me live the way I
should. I
believe this is true for most people. And thinking that other people
might go
to hell just feels evil to me, like a very grave sin. So I don't want
to
encourage anyone else to think that way. Even if you don't assume that
you can
know in individual cases, it's still a problem to think about people in
general
as if they might go to hell. You can't see the world the way you ought
to if
you let yourself do that. Any judgment of the kind is a great
presumption. And
presumption is a very grave sin. I believe this is sound theology, in
its
way."
She said, "I don't know nothing
about it." Then
she said, "I don't understand theology. I don't think I like it. Lots
of
folks live and die arid never worry themselves about it."
101
"Ah, of course!" He laughed.
"You don't like
theology! I should have thought of that. Too many years alone, I
suppose.
Talking to Boughton. Or to myself. Preaching. I am a fool."
"Well now, I didn't say I won't
start to like it
sometime." She said this because she could hear sadness in his voice.
He laughed. "That's kind of
you. I suppose it's a
little late, to ask, but what do you like?"
"I don't know. Working."
He nodded. "Work is a fine
thing." And he put his
hands to his face. "Listen to me! Every word I say is just pure
preacher!
I could cite text!"
She said, "I expect you'd be
used to it by now."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14.
That night, lying against the
warmth of him, she said,
"Maybe you don't have to think about hell because probly nobody you
know
going to end up there."
After a moment, he said, "I
suppose there's an element
of truth in that."
"Except me."
"Lila," he said, "I have to
preach tomorrow.
If you put more thoughts like this in my head, how am I supposed to get
any
sleep?" He drew her closer to him, stroked her cheek. ''I'm going to
keep
you safe. And you're going to keep me honest." Maybe he couldn't think
she
would go to hell, because he loved her. She thought, He'd have as good
reason,
or better, to love any one of the whole world of people who might have
turned
up on his doorstep. The thought of them made her wish it was morning,
Doane and
Mellie and the others. That long time when she had no notion of what
time was.
Lying down to sleep in the dew and darkness, being roused again in the
dew and
darkness, a fire for supper, a fire for breakfast, if Doane could get
it
started soon enough, a pot of beans, or ashy potatoes in their husks,
and that
102
bitter, urgent smell that comes
in the wind, as if the world
were scared to sleep and then sorry that the morning had to come.
Waking up
with her hair in tangles. They always said no whimpering, the
grown-ups, and
she would try to stop and then stop sit there with Doll's arm around
her, the
two of them eating from the same dish.
The next morning, before it was
morning, she had gone to the
river, and he had waked to an empty house. She put on her old dress,
and she
went to the river and washed herself in the water of death and loss and
whatever else was not regeneration. But there was a child, she was
almost sure
of it, and what else could she expect, with that way she had of
creeping into
the old man's bed when he never even asked her to. She had seen women
bearing
their children in a shed, at the side of a field, babies that the light
of day
shouldn't have seen for a month or two but the women's bodies just gave
them up
out of weariness. She and Mellie had found a woman like that once,
alone in a
cabin at a little distance from a huckleberry patch. They heard her
crying, and
Mel lie said they'd better look in the door. Then Lila ran to find
Doll, and
when they came back Mellie was crying, too, because the woman had taken
hold of
her hands and wouldn't let go of them. She said, "I was trying to help,
now I guess I nearly got some busted fingers." Doll talked to the woman
so
that she’d know there was someone there besides children, so she calmed
a
little and let Mellie go. Lila and Mellie drew some water from the
well, and
they gathered an armful of starwort and spread it on the grass to dry.
Then
they sat on the stoop and listened, because they couldn't help it, and
Doll
talked to the woman, trying to comfort her. The woman knew the baby
shouldn't
be coming yet. It was just a long, bloody struggle and at the end of it
a
little body to wash. Doll could be so gentle. They couldn't help
watching her.
She swaddled it up in a flour sack. And then she walked the woman out
to the
porch and washed the blood and the sweat
103
off her, and they couldn't help
watching that, either. The
woman was so thin, except for the pouch of her belly. Her bare legs
trembling.
She kept saying, "My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He'll
be
back." But that's the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got
only
strangers to rely on. There's shame in that, so people lie. They helped
Doll
clean up around the place as well as they could, and did the milking,
and fed
the chickens, and she and Mellie found some meal and cooked it, and
told her
the starwort would help if she burned a little of it, and they left her
their
huckleberries. That poor baby just lay there on a bench, waiting for
its father
to see it, the woman said. Walking along in the dark, looking for their
camp,
they didn't say a word. Well, Doll did say, "That's how it is."
So what she had to do was stay
in that house and let the old
man look after her, and when the time came, the church women who would
be so
glad to put a living child into his arms. They could bring all the
cakes and
casseroles they wanted for as long as they wanted, and he would be
happy to
have something he could talk to her about. Lila thought of herself as
old,
nearly safe from childbearing. She might not have given in so easily,
otherwise, to the comfort of him, the feeling of him next to her, so
much
better than resting her head on that old sweater she stole from him. No
point
in worrying about that now. There would probably be a child, and that
would
probably be a good thing. But only if she stayed. At least now she knew
he
would let her stay, however crazy she might be, or ignorant, or lost.
If there
was going to be a child. So she went back to his house and put on her
new dress
and waited for him on the porch.
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104
15.
The thought of a child made him
older. He never slept much
or well, but now he hardly seemed to sleep at all. She wore her ring
and tried
to stay near the house, but if it helped at all it just worried her to
think
how sad he would be if she did a wrong thing and upset him. The more
she might
seem like a wife to him, the more he would fear the loss of her. One
morning
she found him in the kitchen before the sun was up, looking stooped and
rumpled,
stirring oatmeal. She touched his shoulder in a way he took as a
question, and
he said, "I don't know about myself, Lila. Such a night. I'm almost
afraid
to pray. I find myself praying now that I'd be able to accept"-- he
shook
his head-- "things I can't bear to think about. It's against my
religion
to say it would be too hard. But I'm afraid it would be." He shook the
oatmeal off the spoon into two bowls and set them on the table. "I
cooked
it too long. It's pretty sticky. But it's good for you. Here's some
milk."
He gave her a spoon and a napkin, sat down across from her, clasped his
hands,
and prayed briefly over his oatmeal. ''And much the worst of it is that
all the
real hardship falls to you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk this way."
She said, "Women have babies.
All the time. I figure I
can." To comfort him she could have said it might all turn out just
fine,
it usually did, but she was as much afraid as he was to think that way.
She
couldn't tell him she had unbaptized herself for fear he thought it
would harm
the child. Why did she do it that morning? She could just as well have
done it
after the baby came. Then if something went wrong she wouldn't have to
wonder
whether she was to blame for it. It was dread at the thought that made
her ask
him right then if once you been baptized you could ever just wash it
off you,
and he smiled and said no.
"Even if you wanted to?"
"Well, that's probably about as
close as you could ever
come. But no. You don't have to worry about that." She was relieved, in
a
way.
105
She'd heard people say that a
sad woman will have a sad
child. A bitter woman will have an angry child. She used to think that
if she
could decide what it was she felt, as far back as she remembered, she
could
know that much, at least, about the woman who bore her. Loneliness. She
pitied
the woman for her loneliness. She didn't want this child of hers to
feel afraid
with no real reason. The good house, the kind old man. I got us out of
the
rain, didn't I? We're warm, ain't we? In that letter he had said
there's no
such thing as safety. Existence can be fierce, she did know that. A
storm can
blow up out of a quiet day, wind that takes your life out of your
hands, your
soul out of your body. The fire went up
and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out
of the
fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as
the
appearance of a flash of lightning. She had copied this
fifteen times. It
reminded her of the wildness of things. In that quiet house she was
afraid she
might forget.
She thought, An unborn child
lives the life of a woman it
might never know, hearing her laugh or cry, feeling the scare that
makes her
catch her breath, tighten her belly. For months its whole life would b
e all
dreams and no waking. The steps in the road, the thought of the knife,
then the
dread sinks away for a while, and how is a child to know why? She could
only
guess what all it was that Doll was afraid of, or ashamed of, but she
lived her
fear and her shame with her, taking off through the woods with an apple
thumping in her lunch bucket and Doll wearing a big straw hat she must
have
hoped would shade her face enough to hide it a little. More than once
Doll took
her hand to hurry her along and wouldn't let her catch her breath and
never told
her why. She always stayed back from the firelight even when the night
was cold
and even when there were no strangers there to see. Doane and the
others saw,
of course, but Lila was the only one she ever really trusted to look
into her
face. Well, child, Lila thought, I will see you weltering in your
blood. And
mine. Lonely, frightened, my own child. If the wildness doesn't carry
us both
away. And if it does.
106
She looked after the gardens.
She walked up to the cemetery
to see to Mrs. Ames and the child, and now the boy John Ames and his
sisters.
No need to go out looking for ironing to do, the Reverend told her.
There was a
woman who had taken in his laundry for years, so there was no need for
Lila to
do that kind of thing at all. She should take care of herself That was
the best
thing she could do. Everything would be seen to.
She had that room he called her
study. The Bible was there,
and her tablet, and a drawer of new pencils and erasers and pens and
tablets.
There were books with pictures of other countries in them, China,
France, some
of them from the library. Most evenings the Reverend walked with her
after
supper, her arm in his, pausing to speak to everyone he knew, however
slightly,
to say, This is my wife Lila. Every courtesy owed to him was owed to
her also,
now that she was his wife, and he wanted to be sure they, and she,
understood
this. When anyone spoke to her, she nodded and said nothing. Who ever
it was
always changed the subject to the weather, the corn crop. If they
walked out
past the edge of town he would put his arm around her waist, still shy
of her
and pleased to be alone with her, knowing she was relieved to be alone
with
him. She knew he was thinking and praying about how to make her feel at
home.
She had never been at home in all the years of her life. She wouldn't
know how
to begin. But the shade of the cottonwoods and the shimmer of their
leaves and
the trill of the cicadas were comfort for her. The pasture smell.
Elderberries
grew in the ditches by the road, and they picked them and ate them as
they
walked. Sometimes it was dark when they turned back toward Gilead.
Once, he
noticed a bush glimmering with fireflies. He stepped into the ditch and
touched
it, and fireflies rose out of it in a cloud of light.
107
When he was in the house she
kept the door to her room open.
She sat at the table and did her copying and paged through the books ,
he had
given her, since she knew he might look in from the hall. And over the head of the living creature there was
the likeness of a
firmament, like the terrible crystal to look upon, stretched forth over
their
heads above ... And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings
like the
noise of great waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a noise of
tumult like
the noise of a host: when they stood, they let down their wings. She
shut
the door and locked it when the Reverend left the house, and then she
sat in
the corner on the floor and hugged her knees to her chest and closed
her eyes
and thought.
There were other people on the
road Doane knew, who would
share the fire and add whatever they could to supper and talk with him
about
where work was needed and where there had been flood or hail or
grasshoppers or
foreclosure. They would scratch out maps on the ground-- the bridge is
out here
so you'd best take this road south of it-- and they'd tell stories
about the
farms they'd worked, stinginess or meanness or stupidity they'd seen or
heard
about, and who was fair or more than fair. This was after the dust
began to
blow to the south and west, and the people who would have been working
those
farms began to drift into the parts Doane knew, and Doane's people were
obliged
to wander a little to find work. Doane said those folks would work for
just
about nothing. How was a man supposed to make a living? And finally he
said,
Hell, if they're so set on Nebraska they can have it, and Kansas to
boot. He
was going back to Iowa and east from there. He was tired of eating sand
anyway.
Even before the worst of the
dusters there was grit drifting
around everywhere. They slept with damp cloths over their faces, and
when they
woke up they had to shake sand out of their hair and their blankets and
clothes. People who lived in houses said they had begun stuffing wet
rags into
every crack they could find and sweeping their floors five times a day.
But
there was no living outside when the dust began drifting north. Doane
had
waited a little too long for things to get better, so
108
when they started east there
were other people on the road
who had the same idea, and others ahead of them, already taking any
kind of
work there was. Doane said he had seen hard times, but this just did
beat all.
Arthur said they should have started east sooner, as if the thought had
just
come to him, and Doane said he didn't want to hear it. What use was
there in
saying something like that. A couple of good rains and they'd have been
right
where they'd have wanted to be. And don't say nothing if you got
nothing useful
to say.
It wasn't like Doane to speak
to Arthur that way, or it
hadn't been up till then. But Doane had never before had much trouble
keeping
everybody fed, and it weighed on him. Things got worse, and pretty soon
he was
cross as a snake. Arthur and his boys took off, thinking they could do
better
on their own. It would have been hard for them to do worse, and at
least they
wouldn't have Doane bossing them around when nobody ever said they were
working
for him any way. But they were back with him in a few days. They got
lonely and
they were fighting all the time. Doane didn't say a word to them about
it,
except that they were more than welcome to their share of nothing. That
was
when he began to sort of hate Marcelle. She'd gone out into a bottomy
field
where she knew there would be nettles, and somebody else had already
gathered
them all. Doane told her she was ugly when she cried and he didn't want
to look
at her. That was when Doll went off on her own and was gone for four
days.
Doane and Arthur got work
clearing some young trees and
brush off a field that had been abandoned and was going to be turned to
pasture. They all helped, limbing the trees and stacking and burning
the brush,
and they were paid in potatoes and dried beans, which is how things
were then.
So when Doll came back there was a fire and supper, people fed and
tired, and
her child gone. They said they didn't
109
know the name of the place
where they left her, some shabby
little town down the road a few miles. She probably didn't even wait
long
enough to let herself cuss. She just ran and walked and ran and walked
down the
road the way they would have come, through one shabby little town, so
closed up
for the night that no one answered the doors she pounded on, and then
on to the
next town. And there the child was, sitting on the church steps. Doll
might not
have seen her except that the church door was open and there was a
light from
inside because that preacher was watching out for her. Lila was so sure
he had
wanted to make an orphan of her that only years later did she think he
might
have been a kind man. An orphan is what she was, and she knew it then,
and she
thought that preacher must somehow know it, too, and b e ready with the
frightening word that would take her life away from her if only he
chose to say
it. And there was a voice above the
firmament that was over their heads; when they stood, they let down
their
wings. She didn't want to know what the verse meant, what the
creatures
were. She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your
whole
body. Guilty. And there were voices
to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who
would hear
them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because they
knew they
were not the ones the words were spoken to.
She had never heard anyone talk
this way about existence,
about the great storms that rise in it. But when she saw these words
she
understood them. A time came when Doane couldn't figure a way to keep
them fed.
His good name meant nothing because along these new roads he was just
one more
dirty, weary man with dirty, weary women and children straggling after
him. He
couldn't very well keep his pride when he couldn't even ask for work
without
seeming to ask for pity. Those years of saying, if he had to, Be fair
to me and
I'll be fair to you, and being twice as careful to live up to his side
of the
deal as
110
he was to make sure the other
fellow lived up to his, all
that was gone, and still they trailed after him, trusting him because
they
always had. They got work once pulling the tassels off corn, miserable
work at
best, out in the field with all the dust and heat and the grasshoppers
getting
on you and the itchiness of the silk and the edges of the corn leaves
rasping
against you. But by that time they almost weren't up to it. They went
so slow
they didn't finish the rows they were supposed to do, even though they
worked
until dark, till they could hardly lift their arms. And then they
weren't paid
but half what had been agreed on, because they didn't finish. Mellie
cussed and
cried where the man could hear and Doane slapped her. That was the
first time
he ever did any such thing. What does it matter if some ignorant man
nobody
would even notice loses the pride he has been so careful of all his
life ? If
somebody said to him, No work here, mister-- that's just how it was, no
harm
intended. But it was also a great voice they heard everywhere, saying,
Now,
those half-grown children will be hungry and you'll have the shame of
it and
there's nothing you can do but wish at least you didn't have to look at
them.
And he did seem to begin hating the sight of them. But they were
bitterly loyal
to him for the insult he suffered because his pride had been their
pride for so
many years.
When he finally took to
stealing, it was a big dog that
caught him at it. So he went to jail with his pant leg slit open to
make room
for the bandage and the swelling, and no stick to help him walk because
it
would have been a weapon. They scattered after that. Marcelle stayed as
near to
the jail as she could manage to, and so did Mellie, and Em, who was
never good
for much and by that time needed Mellie to look after her. Arthur and
his boys
had been stealing a little, and meant to do a little more stealing, so
they
took off. People
remembered Doll for her
face, and that made it a problem for them to travel together. It
111
was the same whether the boys
were recognized or she was and
they were seen with her. So then it was just Lila and Doll. Arthur and
his boys
had no sense at all, and still it was a lonely thing to have them gone,
too.
How could it be that none of it
mattered? It was most of
what happened. But if it did matter, how could the world go on the way
it did
when there were so many people living the same and worse? Poor was
nothing,
tired and hungry were nothing. But people only trying to get by, and no
respect
for them at all, even the wind soiling them. No matter how proud and
hard they
were, the wind making their faces run with tears. That was existence,
and why
didn't it roar and wrench itself apart like the storm it must be, if so
much of
existence is all that bitterness and fear? Even now, thinking of the
man who
called himself her husband, what if he turned away from her? It would
be
nothing. What if the child was no child? There would be an evening and
a
morning. The quiet of the world was terrible to her, like mockery. She
had
hoped to put an end to these thoughts, but they returned to her, and
she
returned to them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16.
Every Sunday after that one she
went to church, her hand at
the crook of the Reverend's arm. Every Sunday she had swelled a little
more,
and people could think what they liked about it. He was fairly pleased
with
what he had planted, and shy as well. An old fellow like him, he said,
had to
expect a few remarks of one sort and another. He was kind to her in
every way
he could think of, always trying to find out what she liked and
disliked and
ready to spare her any annoyance, even though that meant seeing a
little less
of Boughton. Did she feel annoyance. Before she knew the name for it?
Would she
have felt she had the right to it? He did say that why things happen
the way
they do is essentially a theological question, at least a philosophical
question, and she said she supposed he was right, since he would know.
112
Once, when they were out
walking, he asked her what was on
her mind, because she had been so quiet, and she said, "Nothing,
really.
Existence," which made him laugh with surprise and then apologize for
laughing. He said, "I'd be interested to know your thoughts on it."
"I just don't know what to
think about it at all
sometimes."
He nodded. "It's remarkable,
whatever else." He
picked up a few rocks from the road and tossed them at fence posts,
hitting
them sometimes.
"Remarkable," she said,
considering the word. She has made remarkable
progress. It had
begun to seem to her that if she had more words she might understand
things
better. And it would take up the time. "You should be teaching me."
"I suppose. If you like."
The corn was head high,
rustling its heavy, dusty leaves,
and for a while anyway it had nothing to do with her. He would hardly
let her
clear the dishes.
"I never meant to be ignorant
my whole life. But there
was never much I could do about it." That was true enough. And they
might
have something to talk about besides how she was feeling from one day
to the
next. She was about to start making things up, Just for the sake of
conversation.
He said, "I guess I should have
realized. But I've
never for a moment thought of you as ignorant, Lila. I couldn't if I
tried."
"Well, once you start teaching
me you're going to find
out."
"We'll see."
She said, "I had to learn that
word 'existence.' You
was talking about it all the time. It took me a while to figure out
what you
even meant by it."
He nodded.
She said, "There's a lot I
haven't figured out. Pretty
well everything."
113
He took her hand and swung it
as they walked, a happy man.
"I feel exactly the same way. I really do. So this will be very
interesting," he said. "You'll talk to me. I'll find out what you
think."
She shrugged. "Maybe." And they
laughed. If there
was one thing she wished she could save from it all, it was the way it
felt to
walk along beside him.
He said, "You know, there are
things I believe, things
I could never prove, and I believe them all day, every day. It seems to
me that
my mind would stop dead without them. And here, when I have tangible
proof"-- he patted her hand-- “when I'm walking along this road I've
known
all my life, every stone and stump where it has always been, I can't
quite
believe it. That I'm here with you."
She thought, Well, that's
another way of saying it ain't the
sort of thing people expect. She had heard the word "unseemly." Mrs.
Graham talking to someone else about something else. No one said her
belly was
unseemly, no one said a word about how the old man kept on courting
her, like a
boy, when she was hard and wary and mainly just glad there was a time
in her
life when she could rest up for whatever was going to happen to her
next. She
felt like asking why he couldn't see what everybody else had seen her
whole
life. But what if that made him begin to see it? First she had to get
this baby
born. After that she might ask him some questions.
She might tell him some things,
too. Why she maybe thought
of marrying him. Once, Doll wanted her to marry another old man. What
would he
think of that? Doll heard somewhere about a widower who might be
looking for a
wife. She sent Lila to his house, with ribbons in her hair. The times
were so
bad then, and Doll wouldn't stay anywhere long, so she couldn't marry
him
herself. He had new overalls on, and his hair combed to the side, and
he was
sitting there on the porch waiting for her. The shanks of his legs were
just
two white bones with hair on
114
them, and his boots were big
and worn and one not quite like
the other. They made her think of two very old dogs from the same
litter. He
told her his wife was dead and his children were gone, that he owned
his house
and a few acres outright, and that he would enjoy a little help around
the
place and a little company. She couldn't say a thing. Then his voice
rose and
he said, “None of this was my idea. I'm a decent man. Have been all my
life.
You can ask anybody. That woman with the mark on her face, she knows
it, too.
She's been talking to the neighbors. She said she couldn't take care of
you
anymore. I should have just told her in the first place it was
ridiculous.
Well, you wait here a minute." He went into the house and came back
with a
silver dollar. He held it out to her and she took it. "Now, goodbye,"
he said. Then she went to find Doll. She said, "He give me this." She
wasn't crying. Doll said, "You shouldn'ta took it." And then she
said, "He would've been good to you. That's what matters. You got to do
the best you can, and be grateful for whatever comes of it." And, after
looking at her for a moment, mildly and sadly, she said, "If there was
just something about you."
By then she was helping Doll,
not being taken care of by
her, and that was one of the reasons Doll wanted to be rid of her. Poor
child,
she would say. She had to lean on Lila's arm just to walk up a rise in
the
road. She couldn't do any heavy work at all. There was no strength left
in her.
So she was anxious to get the girl settled somehow, before the things
could
happen that did happen.
I'm a decent man. The Reverend
could have said the same
thing to her. Not because she was young anymore but because she was
rough and
ignorant. And then what would she have done? What could have made her
take such
a chance? Sometimes she thought she wanted the worst thing to come
finally, a
shame that would kill her. Why else did she say, You ought to marry me?
Did she
think he would laugh?
115
Maybe she didn't want him to
say, I will. She never thought
he would. She didn't believe him when he did. Maybe she meant to go
back to
that leaky old cabin and feel ache and sting down to her bones and
nothing
else. To put everything else away from her, because that ache was,
first and
last, where she came from and what waited for her. Maybe she slipped
into his
bed to see if she really was the wife of this decent man, not just a
stray he
had taken in out of pity. And now she had this belly, and he was always
at her
elbow saying, This is my wife, this is Lila, my wife. You see, Doll, I
did what
you said. So many times she had thought, if she had just said a word to
that
old man, if she hadn't stood there staring at his boots, Doll could
have stayed
somewhere nearby, and Lila would have taken food to her and made sure
she was
warm, sneaking out at night to find her. They'd have laughed with the
pleasure
of the secret.
The Reverend let her think her
thoughts, waiting until she
looked up from them to speak. He said, "You still don't trust me at
all."
And she said, "No. Can't really
say that I do. No
reason you should trust me, either. There are things I ain't told you."
He nodded. "I know. Maybe you
should just tell me those
things, whatever they are, and you' d see that I didn't care about
them, and
then you could trust me."
She said, "Not till I get this
baby born."
He laughed and put his arm
around her. "Well, isn't it
a beautiful evening? Hardly a cloud. Are you warm enough?" He took off
his
jacket and put it over her shoulders. "We might not be having many more
warm nights." Then he said, "'The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech,
and
night unto night showeth knowledge.' "
"I guess that's the Bible.''
When he was happy he was
always saying something from the Bible.
116
"Psalm 19. 'There is no speech
nor language; their
voice is not heard.' "
"That's another thing I don't
understand.''
"Maybe nobody does, entirely.
But it's beautiful.''
Pretty nearly anybody must
understand more than she did. She
said, "What is the firmament?" It was easier to ask questions,
walking along in the dark like that, her arm in his, in the warmth of
his old
black coat, his preacher coat.
"The sky the way it looks to
us. As if there were
something like a dome over us, like a glass bowl turned over-"
She thought, Then I guess there
ain't. He told her that the
moon is much closer than the sun, falling stars aren't really stars.
She and
Mellie had wondered about those things, why some stars came unstuck and
the
others didn't, where they landed when they fell, whether all of them
would fall
down sometime, even the moon. It was nice to be talking about the
stars. She
could hardly think of them apart from the sound of cicadas and the
smell of
damp and clover, whispering with Mellie because they should have been
asleep.
Children come up with these notions, and then after a while they forget
to
wonder about it all, because what does it matter, what does it have to
do with
them, things are what they are. So the only ideas she had were a child
's
ideas, and she knew how they would sound to him. He'd try not to smile,
and his
voice would be very kind. But he seemed to know she had to be told
everything,
that she wouldn't know hat to ask. The earth goes around the sun. It
spins and
it tips. All right.
Once, when she was new at the
school in Tammany, the teacher
asked her what country they lived in. The corn was tall, the sun was
hot, the
river was high for that time of year, so she said, "Looks to me like
pretty decent country." That is what Doane would have said about it.
And
the children laughed, and
117
some of them leaned out of
their desks to wave their arms,
and they whispered the answer loud enough that the teacher would hear
even if
she didn't call on them. "The United States of America!" Yes, the
teacher said, the United States. What state? What county? And Tammany
was an
Indian chief who was kind to William Penn. Every day Lila stood off by
herself
during recess and lunch, but that day the teacher asked her to stay in
to help
her clean the blackboards, so she wouldn't be teased, probably. She
said,
"You mustn't be sad over a little thing like that, Lila. You'll catch
up
soon enough."
Lila said, "Don't seem like it.
Maybe I won't. Maybe I
don't even want to."
And the teacher said, "Well, I
want you to. And I'm
going to see to it."
The teacher was just a girl
herself, a gentle girl. She
helped Lila read and write, add and subtract, the things she would most
need to
be able to do, because Lila was the kind of child who would leave
school the
minute she could, or the minute her mother decided she had to. The
teacher let
Lila stay in the classroom working on her spelling and numbers when the
other
children played outside. She was glad to be by herself with something
to do.
She hated the other children because they had laughed at her, because
they were
town children, because she would never stay there anyway and they knew
it. The
teacher said she was a bright girl, and called on her to spell words or
do sums
in front of the class as soon as she knew Lila would probably get the
right
answers. That was all that made her bother learning them, but it made
her like
learning them because she was good at it. At the front of the room
there was a
map of the United States of America. A painting of George Washington. A
flag
with forty-eight stars and thirteen stripes. These things had a kind of
importance about them that Lila had never even heard of before. She'd
thought
the world was just hayfields and cornfields and bean fields and apple
orchards.
118
The people who owned them and
the people who didn't. And
towns. Doll wanted to give her another kind of life. She didn't know
how to go
about it, rough and ignorant as she was, but she did try.
She heard herself say, "There
was a woman who took care
of me. She wanted me to marry an old man. But I couldn't. A young girl
just has
other ideas. She told me there wasn't no more for me to expect."
He said nothing. They walked
the rest of the way home,
neither speaking a word. She felt the old loneliness seize on her from
one
heartbeat to the next, the old, hard awkwardness of her body. How could
a child
stay alive in a body that felt so dead? Best that it shouldn't. There
was no
place for her to be alone now except in his house. She would leave the
next
morning, before he was awake, before it was light. There was nothing
left in that
cabin. She'd take a blanket off her bed, and a kitchen knife. Maybe her
money
was still out there where she hid it.
He opened the door for her and
switched on the light. His
face was slack and his lips were pale. He took the coat from her
shoulders and
hung it up. Then he just stood and looked at her. He said, "I'm at a
loss.
But you're right." His voice broke, so he cleared his throat. "You
should stay here until the baby comes. After that, of course, you can
do
whatever you think is best."
What could she say? She said,
"You know how I stole
that sweater? I done it because it had your smell on it."
He laughed. "Why, thank you,
Lila. I mean, I guess
that's a sort of compliment."
"Then I was sleeping with it
for a pillow."
"I'm honored."
"I used to make believe you was
there and I was talking
to you. I was thinking about you all the time. Seemed like I was going
crazy."
"And I was thinking about you.
And wondering about
myself. So what do we do now?"
119
She shrugged. "Just what we
been doing, I'd say."
"So maybe I'm not just any old
man?"
She said, "You surely ain't."
"Well. That's a relief." Then
he said, "Do
you still pretend you talk to me? Now that I'm here and all? Do you
ever think
of telling me the things you used to imagine you were telling me?"
"Asking, more like. And you
just seen what happens.
Whenever I talk."
He said, "I liked the part
about the sweater. That was
worth all the rest of it."
So she put her arms around him.
So she put her head on his
chest. "You're a good-hearted man," she said, enjoying the feel of
his shirt.. Of him stroking her hair.
"I believe that's true enough,
most of the time. And
very trustworthy. So there's no need to cry."
She said, "Yes, there is. I
just now come near scaring
myself to death."
"Hmm. We can't let that happen.
We're supposed to be
taking care of you." He kissed her forehead and touched tears off her
cheeks, and then he said he had to go to his study to finish a little
work. She
thought, You mean, to do a little praying. Because I come near scaring
you to
death, too. So. you have to talk me over with the Lord. Better Him than
Boughton, I suppose.
But she had told him the truth
about something, and it had
turned out well enough. Now all she had to do was give up the other
thought,
that if she had minded and married the first old man, maybe Doll would
be
alive. He was probably about as ignorant as they were. At least he
might not
have known any more about the Judgment than they did. Then even if Doll
had
died, Lila wouldn't have to think of her standing there all astonished
and
ashamed, in the same raggedy clothes she was probably buried in, if she
was
buried, because why would they even bother to straighten her back and
take the
weariness out
120
of her face if they was just
going to say "Guilty"
anyway? That voice above the firmament. Doane was nothing but an
ignorant
little thief, his clothes all filthy with his own blood. The judge
said,
"I guess that dog got the better of you, fella. Looks like he took a
pretty good bite. You got anything to say for yourself?" And what could
he
say? It was all the pride he had left just to say nothing. Doll had her
pride,
too, ugly as she was. She cared for a child: Yes, she stole it-away
from death,
probably. Away from loneliness. And she brought it up to be a fairly
decent
woman who wasn't afraid of a day's work. The way they used to laugh
together!
It was better than anything. But all that wouldn't count, because Doll
cut
somebody. Maybe more than once. So there was nothing she could say for
her
self, no t a thing. When Lila pictured it in her mind, it was a
preacher
looking down from the firmament, judging. That would be hell enough for
Doane,
no matter what came after it.
Always the same thoughts. The
Reverend was still in his
study, but he believed there might be comfort for her in lying down in
his bed,
and there was. She took his pillow and gave him the other one, and that
felt
better. When he came in he must have thought she was asleep, because he
whispered, Bless your heart. He lay down with his arm across her waist,
and she
touched his hand to her lips. If he took it for a kiss, that was his
business.
He settled closer against her, and that felt very nice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17.
It was October when the child
began stirring. Lila had
pinched off some sprigs of ivy and put them in water glasses to sprout
roots,
and when they did she had taken them up to the cemetery for the boy
John Ames
and his sisters. She was clearing away leaves from them when she felt
the child
move. She said, "Well, child! I been waiting on you." The sun was
brightly
mild. There was the crisp sound of maple
121
leaves just ripe enough to
fall, and leathery oak leaves
that would cling until a wind took them, and the smell from the fields
of all
the life that had burned through all those crops until it spent itself
down
like a fire. It was almost the smell of smoke. She said, "This town's
called Gilead, child. That's a Bible name. We going to stay here till
you're
born. I figure we're safe here. We'll see what happens." She said,
"I'm going to be a little bit more careful about what I say, that's one
thing." The old man would have liked to be told that she felt the child
moving, but she wouldn't tell him yet. It lived in her and knew her,
and if her
thoughts were dread or regret or anger or anything that stirred her
heart, it
knew her thoughts.
She had forgotten how it felt
not to be by herself, as she
was still, till that very moment, no matter what the old man said or
did. Kind
as he was. She put her hand on her belly and she said, "You got a pa
who
is a preacher. His brother and sisters are here, and his mother and
father, and
his wife and her baby. The whole family lying here together. We come up
now and
then to see to them because who else do we have? Just Doll, and I don't
know
where to look for her. I might figure it out sometime. I'm going to get
me some
crocus bulbs. There's folks who bring in the best corn crop you could
imagine,
but they're just useless when it comes to a flower garden. You can see
that,
looking around up here. Irises would be nice, too." Three women came up
the path. Lila said, "I spose they'll think I'm talking to myself"
She nodded to them, and then she walked down the hill and through the
quiet
evening streets to the preacher's house. Gilead was the kind of town
where dogs
slept in the road for the sun and the warmth that lingered after the
sun was
gone, and the few cars that there were had to stop and honk until the
dogs
decided to get up and let them pass by. They'd go limping off to the
side,
lamed by the comfort they' d had to give up, and then they'd settle
down again
right where they were before. It really wasn't much of a town. You
could hear
the cornfields rustling almost anywhere in it, they were so close and
it was so
quiet. She said"You'll like it here well enough, child. For a while."
122
The old man came out on the
front porch and smiled at her
with his head to one side, the way he did when there was something he
wasn't
going to ask her, so she said, "We been up to the graveyard, looking
after
things a little." She said we and he didn't ask about it, so she said,
\'Me and the child. Seems like there's two of us, now it's moving
around a
little."
"Two of you," he said. "That
makes three of
us, I believe. The three of us should probably have our supper." And he
held the door for her.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18.
Doll would have loved that
kitchen. It was all painted
white, and the curtains were white. Sunlight came in in the morning.
Lila
polished it every day, the way Doll did that kitchen in Tammany. It was
strange, but if Lila pretended she was just there to do the cleaning it
made
things easier. She knew how to do it, and she could stop thinking about
what
else might be expected of her. Like cooking. She took cuttings from
some red
geraniums she saw at the cemetery. "The frost going to kill them
anyway.
No reason they should go to waste. You never want to waste things," she
told the child. She put them in glasses on the windowsill to root, and
they
looked so beautiful that she brought her Bible and her tablet
downstairs so she
could work at the kitchen table.
The old man was always making
them toasted cheese sandwiches
and canned soup, and then worrying over whether she was eating what she
ought
to. Ladies from the church brought in supper from time to time, so he
probably
mentioned his worries. Somebody had left a cookbook on the counter,
most likely
Mrs. Graham, since she was the one who was a close enough friend to
Lila to
help out in ways that might
123
offend her if someone else
tried them. Well, she knew she
wasn't really Lila's friend, but somebody did have to help her
sometimes, and
Mrs. Graham took it on herself, which was kind. Just as well not to
chew your
fingernails, dear. This is what they call an emery board, it's really
just a
piece of sandpaper. It'll keep your nails from snagging on things.
Well, who thought of that? And
little tiny scissors. One of
the girls in St. Louis had trimmed her nails and painted them, what
there was
of them, while another put her hair up in rags to curl it. They plucked
her
eyebrows almost down to nothing, and then drew them back in with a
pencil. They
got the idea to pierce her ears with a darning needle right then, when
they
were thinking about it. Laughing the whole time. They put powder on her
face to
try to hide the freckles, and purple lipstick, and pink rouge. She just
sat
there and let them do whatever they liked because she was so young and
such a
fool. And because they were playing the Victrola. They enjoyed the
Victrola.
Best forget all that.
It was strange to wonder what
she had really forgotten.
Never you mind. Doll must have said that to her hundreds of times, and
all it
did was make her wonder and remember and keep it to herself. Where did
you go
that time you left me? How long did it take you to get there? Never you
mind.
Lila would have asked who was there at that house, still there after so
many
years. Her mother? Was she born there? Were there other children born
after
her? But she knew what Doll would say. Lila knew how desperate she must
have
been even to think of taking her back there. Maybe she'd begun to doubt
that
she was right to carry her off in the first place, since she was having
such
trouble finding any way to live. So it was best to forget all that,
too. Not to
wonder. Why should she wonder? When she felt the baby stir she
remembered sleeping
on Doll's lap, restless in her arms with the warmth and damp, and
dreaming.
124
The old man had said, "Why
Ezekiel? That's a pretty sad
book, I think. I mean, there's a lqt of sadness .in it. It's a
difficult place
to begin."
She said, "It's interesting. It
talks about why things
happen." Well, the old man said, and cleared his throat. That was a
special situation. God had a particular relationship with Israel,
certain
expectations. Moreover I will make thee a
desolation and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee,
in the
sight of all that pass by. So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an
instruction and an astonishment, unto the nations that are round about
thee,
when I shall execute judgments on thee in anger and in wrath, and in
wrathful
rebukes. She copied the verses ten times. Her writing was
getting smaller
and neater. Lila Ames. The old man worried over her reading in the
Bible just
at that place. So she told him she had looked at Jeremiah and
Lamentations and
thought she probably liked Ezekiel better. He nodded. "Also very
difficult." Then he told her that it is always important to understand
that God loved Israel, the people in these books. He punished them when
they
were unfaithful because their faithfulness was important to the whole
history
of the world. Everything depended on it, he said.
All right. She was mainly just
interested in reading that
the people were a desolation and a reproach. She knew what those words
meant
without asking. In the sight of all that pass by. She hated those
people, the
ones that look at you as if they want to say, Why don't you get your
raggedy
self out of my sight. Ain't one thing going right for you. Existence
don't want
you. Doll couldn't hide her poor face anymore, the way she did when
they were
all together and Doane did their talking for them. People would try to
figure
out that mark. A wound, maybe a scar? It was an astonishment to them.
They
would stare at it before they realized what they were doing, and Doll
would
just stand there waiting till they were done, till they
125
looked past her and spoke past
her. And then she would try
to sell them what little she had in the way of strength. Or they could
just
swap something for it, if that was easier. In those days it seemed to
Lila that
they were nothing at all, the two of them, but here they were, right
here in
the Bible. Don't matter if it's sad. At least Ezekiel knows what
certain things
feel like. That voice above the firmament. He knows the sound of it. There is no speech nor language. But it
was asking a hard question all the same, something to do with the
trouble it
was for them to hold up their heads, and where the strength came from
that made
them do it no matter what.
The old man said to her one
evening that he would like to
know a little bit about the woman who looked after her. He'd been
telling her
stories about his family. His grandfather used to talk to Jesus in the
parlor,
and they all had to be very quiet until they heard him at the front
door
saying, "Lord, I do truly thank You for Your time!" He was trying to
get her to talk to him a little more, probably wanting company. He
said,
"My grandfather was a pretty wild old fellow. He shot a man. One that I
know of. Then he was in the war, so there might have been others. He
enlisted
as a chaplain, but he had a gun, and he took it along with him." People
do
want company, in the evening.
So she said, "The woman who
took care of me, she called
herself Doll. You know, like something a child would play with. I never
knew no
other name for her. A teacher gave me Dahl for a last name, but that
was just a
mistake. Doll used a knife on somebody, cut him. I believe she
regretted it on
account of the trouble it caused her. She was sort of looking over her
shoulder
all the time I knew her. It wasn't so much the law that caught her. She
ended
up having to do it again, cut somebody. Nothing else to say. She was
good to
me." That was more than she meantto tell him. "She give me that knife
I had out at the shack." Why did she say that? "I wouldn't mind
having it back." That was just the truth. It was a pretty good knife.
126
"Well, yes," he said.
"Everything you had out
at the cabin is in a couple of boxes in the attic. I'm sorry I forgot
to tell
you th I'll bring them down for you."
"Just the knife is the only
thing I been missing."
She said "Since I've got that Bible." She didn't mind if he
remembered who she was for a minute, but she didn't want to scare him
too much,
either. He did look a little concerned.
"Yes," he said, "Ezekiel. Are
you planning to
copy that whole book?"
"Only the parts I like."
He nodded. "Sometime I'd like
to know which parts you
like." He said, "I don't want to intrude, of course. It would be
interesting to me. From the point of view of interpretation. I'd like
to know
your thoughts."
She said, "I'm still thinking.
Maybe I'll tell you when
I'm done."
He laughed. "I'll look forward
to it. But you might
never get done, you know. Thinking is endless."
"It's true I been taking my
time about it."
"There's no hurry. Boughton and
I have been worrying
the same old thoughts our whole lives, more or less. There's been a lot
of
pleasure in it, too."
"Well, I been trying to work
something out. Trying to
make up my mind about something. So I'm going to want to finish with
it."
After a minute he said, "I'm
trying not to ask what it
is. You have every right to keep your thoughts to yourself It's clear
enough
that that's what you want to do. So I'm not going to ask." He laughed.
"This is a real test of my character."
She shrugged. "It's just old
Doll. That's what it comes
down to."
"I see."
She said, "You know that part
where it says, 'I saw you
weltering in your blood'? Who is that talking?"
127
"It's the Lord. It's God. And
the baby is Israel. Well,
Jerusalem. It's figurative, of course. Ezekiel is full of poetry. Even
more
than the rest of the Bible. Poetry and parables and visions."
She knew he'd been wanting to
help her with Ezekiel, so much
that it made him downright restless. He'd been reading it over, just
waiting
for this chance to tell her it was poetry. Hardly a man is now alive
who
remembers that famous day and year. That was practically the only poem
she'd
ever heard of, so she didn't really know what to make of the help he
wanted to
give her. The rude bridge that spanned the flood. "Well, it's true what
he
says there. It's something I know about."
"Yes. You're absolutely right.
I didn't mean that it
wasn't true in a deeper sense. Or that it wasn't describing something
real. I
didn't mean that." He shook his head and laughed. "Oh, Lila, please
tell me more."
She looked at him. "You ask me
to talk. Now you're
laughing at me."
'I’m not! I promise!" He took
her hand in both his
hands. "I know you have things to tell me, maybe hundreds of things,
that
I would never have known. Things I would never have understood. Maybe
you don't
realize how important it is to me-- not to be-- well, a fool, I
suppose. I've
struggled with that my whole life. I know it's what I am and what I
will be,
but when I see some way to understand-"
"Is that why you married me?"
He laughed. "That might have
been part of it. Would
that bother you?"
"Well, I just don't know what
I'd have to tell
you."
"Neither do I. Everything you
tell me surprises me.
It's always interesting."
"Like that I been missing that
knife?"
"I'll find it for you. First
thing tomorrow."
"That was Doll's knife."
128
He nodded, and he laughed.
"Sentimental value."
She said, "I spose so."
"Well," he said, "before I give
it back to
you, promise me one thing. Promise me you know I would never laugh at
you."
She said, "You laughing at me
now."
"Only in a certain sense."
" 'A certain sense,' now what's
that sposed to mean?
The way you talk!"
"I only meant-- " He looked at
her. "Lila
Dahl, you're deviling me!"
She laughed. "Yes, I am."
"Just sitting there watching me
struggle!"
"I do enjoy it."
"Hmm. That's good! Because
you'll see a lot of
it."
They laughed.
"But I did mean to ask you
something,'' she said.
"There's a baby cast out in a field, just thrown away. And it's God
that
picks her up. But why would God let somebody throw her out like that in
the
first place?"
"Oh. That's difficult. You see,
the story is a sort of
parable. You know how in the Bible the Lord is spoken of as a
shepherd,or the
owner of a vineyard, or a father. Here He is just some kindly man who
happens
to pass by and find this child. In the parable He isn't God in the
sense of
having all the power of God."
"But if God really has all that
power, why does He let
children get treated so bad? Because they are sometimes. That's true."
"I know. I've seen it. I've
wondered about it myself a
thousand times. People are always asking me that question. Versions of
it. I
usually find something to say to them. But I want to do better by you,
so
you'll have to give me a little more time. A few days. I don't really
know why
I think that will help, but it might." He touched her hand. "
'Because I love you more than I can say, If I could tell you, I would
let you
know.' That's poetry, but it's also true. It is.''
129
"That's a nice poem."
"'The winds must come from
somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay.' It's kind of sad, really."
"I was never one to mind that."
"Me either, I suppose.'' He
said, "In my tradition
we don't pray for the dead. But I pray for that woman all the time.
Doll. And
now I have a name for her. Not that it matters. Except to me."
"There was a girl named Mellie.
She's probly still
alive. And Doane. I don't know about him.''
"I'll remember them, too."
"But it's Doll I mainly worry
about.''
"Yes."
"Well," she said, "you keep on
praying. It
might ease my mind a little."
And he said, "Thank you, Lila.
I'll do that.''
He sat beside her until the
room was dark. She was wondering
what he might want to say, and what she might say if she began talking.
She was
sitting there with her hands folded in the lap of her dress, the Sears
dress
with flowers on it. There was a little mirror on the wall across from
them,
bright blue with the evening sky, and there were lace curtains behind
them, and
the chill of the window, and beyond that trees and fields and the wind.
To have
a man sitting beside her still felt strange, one she liked and pretty
well
trusted, but a man just the same, in those plain dark man clothes he
never gave
a thought to and smelling a little of shaving lotion. There was warmth
around
him that she could feel though she didn't touch him. His ring on her
hand and
his child in her belly. You never do know.
She said, "Now, why would they
want to salt a
baby?"
130
"Hmm? I looked that up in the
Commentary. It said they
did it to make the baby's flesh firm. Too much salt would make it too
firm.
That's Calvin. The way he talks about it, they must still have been
doing it in
the sixteenth century. Four hundred years ago."
"I didn't even know he was
dead. Calvin. The way you
and Boughton talk about him."
He laughed. "Well, maybe the
old preachers need to
reflect on that. But Calvin can be very useful. About salting babies
and so
on.''
"Does he say anything about why
a child would be
treated so bad in the first place?"
"Well, he says, basically, that
people have to suffer
to really recognize grace when it comes. I don't know quite what to
think about
that."
"What
about them
children nobody ever finds?"
"My question exactly. In
fairness to Calvin, he had
only one child, and it died in infancy. A little boy. It was a terrible
sorrow
to him. He knew a lot about sorrow."
"A baby like that one in the
Bible, just born, it
wouldn't feel what it was to have somebody take it up. Or it wouldn't
remember
well enough to know the difference. So there wouldn't be no point in
the
suffering."
"That's true. But this is a
parable. God had rescued
Israel out of slavery in Egypt, so they would know the difference.
Between
suffering and grace. Ezekiel talks a good deal about the captivity. In
fact, he
was writing from the captivity in Babylon, another one. So I see
Calvin's
point, if I look at it that way. I mean, the Old Testament does pretty
well
depend on the idea that Israel would know the meaning of grace, because
they
had suffered."
"So God let them suffer in
Egypt. And they go on
suffering afterward.''
131
He shrugged. "That seems to
have been the case. You
know, I wouldn't mind if you were reading Matthew, along with Ezekiel.
Just a
suggestion."
She said, "I'm interested in
what I been reading. He
talks a lot about whoring. Maybe I'll read Matthew next."
He laughed. "Oh, Lila! I could
explain about
that." He put his head in his hands. "Not that it's so easy to
explain. I just hope it doesn't upset you."
"Don't worry about it. I got my
own thoughts."
Then she said, "By the way, I don't use that word in front of folks. I
know it's practically cussing. Worse. I tell you, I surely didn't
expect to
find it in the Bible. That's interesting. There's a lot in there I
didn't expect."
He said, "It is interesting. I
guess I'll have to read
the whole thing over again. It is amazing how I always seem to be
thinking
about the parts I like best. And there are a lot of them. But there is
all the
rest of it." There in the darkness they were quiet for a while, and
then
he said, "I guess I've had my time of suffering. Not so much by
Ezekiel's
standards. And there might be more to come. At my age, I'm sure there
is. But
at least I've had enough of it by now to know that this is grace." His
arm
was across the back of the couch behind her, and he touched her hair.
He was
still so shy of her.
She said, "Well, that's
interesting." She had to
wonder what Mrs. Ames would think about it. Poor girl just trying to
give him a
baby. "I'll reflect on it."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19.
Now that her belly was getting
round she sat at the table in
her room to do her thinking, but she still locked the door when he left
the
house, for the loneliness of it. He never came into her room, he never
preached
from Ezekiel, and he never asked her another question about Doll, even
when he
gave her back
132
that knife. The morning after
she mentioned it, it was just
lying there on the breakfast table between the cream pitcher and the
sugar
bowl, the blade closed into the handle, looking harmless enough. She'd
left it
there. Seemed like he might want to know where it was, until he knew
her a
little better. Doll had whetted the blade till it was sharp as a razor
and a
little worn down, the polish gone off the edge of it. When Lila was
alone, she
opened it. Doll's patience and her dread were all worked into that
blade. She
would be spitting on the whetstone and then there would be that raspy,
whispery
sound, Doll thinking her thoughts, working away at her knife, making it
sharp
as it could be. Never you mind. Then that one night she said, "Better
you
take it. Wash it down good, and hide it when you get a chance. Don't
you never
use it unless you just have to."
It was the only thing Doll had
to give her, too good to be
thrown away and much too risky to keep, but what else could she do? It
had a
handle made of antler, shaped just enough to feel right in her hand,
smooth and
stained with all the hands that had held it. Doll never was the first
one to
own anything, and she wasn't the last, either, if she could help it.
There was
always something to trade for, even if it was only a favor of some
kind, and
everything came with a story about the woman who got it from a fellow
who stole
it from somebody else, which wasn't really stealing, since she never
used it,
and he knew she took it from a cousin's house when he was dead, and he
had
brothers, so she had no right to it, but he felt bad anyway, so he was
selling
it cheap.
Everything was as stained and
worn by use and accident as a
hand or a face. There were things you just had to respect, and that
knife was
one of them. Sometimes a stranger would settle himself at the fire,
sitting on
his heels the way folks do when they might want to move quick, and
they'd study
him to see
133
what was at his back, what he
carried with him, which was
nothing at all and could be anything at all, like a shifting of the
wind. And
sometimes he had that Heck, I wouldn't harm a fly! look that made Doane
glance
at Arthur, and then there would be the long, careful business of
sending him on
his way, meaning no offense, since he looked like the kind who might
want to
take offense, given the slightest chance. Snakes, knives, strangers,
darkening
in the sky-- you felt some things with your whole body. What they might
mean.
It could be they were on their way to do harm elsewhere and you just
saw them
pass by, but how could you know? Maybe twenty people had owned that
knife and
only one or two had done any hurt with it. A wound can't scar a knife.
A knife
can't weary with the use that's been made of it. Still.
She was sorry there was nothing
left of that shawl. It would
have been a different thing entirely to tell the old man Doll had left
that to
her. When Doane held it over the fire it burned so fast it was like a
magic
trick. It was gone before the heat could touch his hand. It was so worn
then,
threads that stayed together somehow, you could see right through it.
Gray with
enough pink here and there to show where the roses used to be. He
didn't know
what it was, why they kept it. It was useless, except for the use they
made of
it, remembering together. There wasn't much that felt worse than losing
that
shawl. There is no speech nor language;
their voice is not heard. That's true about things. It's true
about people.
It's just true. So the knife was lying there where the old man had put
it, on
the kitchen table next to the sugar bowl, which was missing its cover
and a
handle because one of the children broke it, the boy John Ames. His
mother and
father remembered the day. The children were at home and inside because
of a
blizzard, and they were all in the kitchen because it was the warmest
room in
the house. There was bread baking. Days like that make children
rambunctious,
eager to be out in the snow. The old man said he always
134
wished he remembered that day,
too. Not that there weren't
always more blizzards, more days in the kitchen. But they made his
father
serious and his mother sad, so there wasn't much pleasure in them. Lila
told
the child, "The world has been here so long, seems like everything
means
something. You'll want to be careful. You practically never know what
you're
taking in your hand." She thought, If we stay here, soon enough it will
be
you sitting at the table, and me, I don't know, cooking something, and
the snow
flying, and the old man so glad we're here he'll be off in his study
praying
about it. And geraniums in the window. Red ones.
Don't go wanting things. She
said that to herself. Doll
hated snow.
She was still thinking about
Ezekiel, as much as anything.
The man takes up the baby that's been thrown out in the field. Then washed I thee with water; yea, I
thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with
oil. The
blood is just the shame of having no one who takes any care of you. Why
should
that be shame? A child is just a child. It can't help what happens to
it, or
doesn't happen. The woman's voice calling after them from the cabin,
Lila
probably made that up. She could never ask. Doll said, Nobody going to
come
looking for her. And for a while nobody did. There must have been
someone Lila
hoped would call after them, someone a little sorry she'd be gone.
Why did it matter? Doll had
washed away her shame, some part
of it, when she took her as a child. And then that night, when she
hadn't even
seen her for a month, didn't even know she was in the same town, Doll
came to
her all bloody. The scrawnier Doll got, the more time she'd spent on
that
knife, whetting it long after it was as sharp as it ever would be.
Sometimes
Lila would hear that sound, be waked by it, when Doll had trouble
sleeping.
Doll carried it open, tied to her leg, so there wouldn't be
135
any problem in using it fast if
she had to. When Doll came
to her finally, white and trembling, it took Lila a lot of washing even
to find
her wounds, because she had been hiding all day until it was dark, with
her
dress loosened so the blood wouldn't dry the cloth onto the cuts. And
the blood
wasn't all hers, either. Probably most of it wasn't. The poor old woman
seemed
positively ashamed she hadn't died. She said, "I do hate to trouble
you,
child." She said, "When him and me went to it, I thought that would
be the end of me for sure. I expected I might die this morning, or die
on the
way over here. I don't know." So Lila tried to be gentle and Doll tried
to
be brave, and there was just blood all over everything.
The sheriff came the next morning. He said,
"I never thought I'd see a woman your age mixed up in a knife fight,"
and Doll mustered the strength to say, "He wasn't no spring chicken
hisself." He laughed. "Looks like you won for sure. He lost, no doubt
about that. Too bad for the both of you." He was amusing himself with
the
strangeness of it all, and Doll knew it. But her face and hands were
washed and
her hair was brushed, and the rags were hidden away under the bed so
some of
the awfulness was put out of sight. Lila had slit Doll's dress open
with that
filthy knife, and then pinned it closed again over the bandage, so she
was
covered, at least. They brought a stretcher for her.
The sheriff said, "This your
mother?"
Lila said, "No, just trying to
help. She come to my
door."
And Doll was watching her.
Maybe Lila' d just gotten tired,
but by then she'd started saying the first damn thing that came to
mind, even
if it was true.
"You have her knife?"
"I didn't see no knife. I guess
she wasn't carrying it
with her."
"Well," he said, "we'll want to
be sure about
that. That thing must be sharp as the very devil."
136
It would have been just like
Lila to say, I got the nasty
thing here in my stocking, right against my leg, the first place any
girl in
Missouri would have hid it. The first place I'd expect you to look. She
might
even have said, If you don't mind, I' d be glad to be rid of it. But
she took
the trouble to lie because Doll was looking right at her. When the
sheriff
said, "Somebody go get the stretcher, I guess we got to get her over to
the jail," Doll closed her eyes and set her lips and folded her hands
and
was satisfied. She didn't even turn her head to the side to hide the
mark. She
said, "If ever a man had it coming." All the time she spent
sharpening that blade she was probably thinking where it would be best
to cut,
just one or two strokes to get him bleeding. It all worked out the way
she
wanted, except he didn't kill her, too. At least not right away. When
they took
her off to jail, Lila stayed behind to take the knife out of her
stocking. She
dropped it behind a rain barrel in an alley Doll must have passed
through
coming to find her. Anyone looking for it would have seen it. But it
was there
three weeks later, when Doll was gone and people had stopped talking
much about
her. So Lila slipped it back into her stocking.
Doll was very frail, not fit to
stand trial, they said.
After she'd healed a little, the sheriff put a rocking chair out on the
sidewalk
in front of his office and she sat there in the sun in the afternoons
with a
blanket across her lap, wearing a huge brown dress somebody had found
for her.
People came to look at her and she looked at them, calm as could be, a
proud
old savage, that mark like a bloodstain she chose not to wash away.
They kept
their distance, even though they were fairly sure her ankle was cuffed
to the
chair. Lila came as often as she could, and Doll turned that same look
on her.
And all she said to her was "I don't know you." Then somebody forgot
to fasten the chain, or somebody wanted her to know that the law just
couldn't
bring itself to deal with her, so she walked away one evening after
supper,
leaning on the cane they had given her, and lost herself in the woods
or in the
cornfields. They said she couldn't have lasted long or made it far, but
they
didn't find her, and Lila didn't find her, and finally the snow fell.
137
I don't know you! Why did she
say that? They'd talked the
whole night. Doll was still expecting to die, so she told her things.
Then why
did she turn that cold look on her? Sitting there, rocking on the
porch, the
molasses cookie Lila brought for her just there in her hands like she
didn't
really notice what it was. She wished she could ask the old man about
it all,
but she'd have to tell him the whole story or he wouldn't understand.
And what
would he understand if she did tell him? That Doll was wild when she
was
cornered, like some old badger. Nothing the least bit Christian about
her when
she was cornered. She'd better tell him other things first, maybe even
how she
stole Lila off that stoop. Why be loyal to a secret? What did it matter
to
anybody now? Talking to the old man about it would just be her giving
in to the
idea that it would feel better to say a few things out loud to
somebody. Maybe
she would even have to tell him that her first regret, when she found
out Doll
was gone, was that she hadn't thought of some way to get that knife
back to
her. Off on her own like that, she'd need it so damn bad. Well, Lila
thought, I
am going to see him at the church, so I can put my head on his
shoulder. He
won't ask me why. He'll just stroke my hair.
That was the first time she
walked down to meet him in the
evening. And there he was, in his gray not-preaching coat and the white
shirt
she had ironed all over again since she did that better than anybody.
When he
saw her at the door, she could tell he was moved, almost saddened. She
thought,
A man this old knows there won't be so many more evenings. Can't go
thinking
about that. She decided then she would always come to find him and walk
home
with him. Not that the word "always" ever did
138
mean much. He was surprised to
see her there, concerned at
first. Those thoughts of hers. He could see them in her face. She said,
"I
been missing you." And he said, "Oh. Well then." And he put his
arms around her, just the way she knew he would, just the way she meant
for him
to do. She was like all the others who came to him with their grief,
and that
was all right. She didn't mind. He was blessing her. He was doing that
to
people all the time. He rested his cheek against hers, too, and that
was
different. She felt his breath against her ear. She was his wife.
She'd had one dream a hundred
times, and she had it again
that night. It was still there after it woke her up. The hair as stiff
as the
cloth of the dress, all of it weightless and crumpled in on itself, the
way
anything is that lies out in a field through a winter. And there would
be too
little of it, because winter does that, parches things down to their
husks.
Maybe critters been at it. You wouldn't dare touch it, it would fall to
pieces.
She was afraid to see the face, and the face was hidden , from shame at
just
lying out in a field like that, or because it was turned away from her,
"I
don't know you." Once, Mellie found a dog, what was left of it. She
never
could let anything be. She pushed at the carcass with a stick, and
there were
teeth lying there. Lila thought, What would it be like to have
different
dreams. Or no dreams at all. Well, he was praying for Doll. Lila would
say, I
got a real preacher speaking for you, speaking to the Almighty. And
what would
Doll say then? Child, why'd you want to do a thing like that! Best He
forget
all about me. Lying there with her cheek in the mud, stubborn as ever.
Lila
would say, Ain't much else I can do, is there. You never let me find
you. And
Doll would say, I'm hiding real good here. That Almighty of yours can't
even
find me. She' d be sort of laughing.
Lila thought, The dream, again.
Seems like I can't even
close my eyes. Well, but she had this old man now, lying here beside
her, and
he didn't give any sign at all that he was getting tired of having her
139
around. And men don't last so
well. A woman said once that
when men get a few years on them they're harder to keep than a child.
She said,
They can look all right and then one day they'll just drop in their
tracks.
Lila had seen it herself, out harvesting. And wouldn't she feel like a
fool if
all she'd been thinking about was Doll, when here she was with this
warm,
breathing man beside her, for now at least. He was always worrying that
she
might be tired or cold. Or sad. He brought her a dictionary, and it was
very
interesting. She'd never even have known to want it. She could put her
hand on
his chest right now and feel his heart beating. Hair on his chest, all
soft and
silvery. She was going to put some thought to being kinder to him. He
liked
seeing them geraniums. "The woman's touch," he said. Well, she
thought, I guess so. She didn't know much about that.
That money of hers was still
out there at the shack, most
likely. She could buy him something with it. Wouldn't have to spend it
all.
She'd just want the money in her hand to make sure somebody hadn't come
along
and settled into the place and found where she hid it. It would be a
hard life
now with the cold coming on, but you never knew. If they'd found the
money,
they'd think it was theirs for sure and they might not want to give it
up. She
thought she could bring that knife along, and then she thought no. If
he saw it
was gone, he'd start wondering. Just showing a knife can be trouble,
and here
she was pregnant. What was she thinking about. She had no business at
all
carrying a knife. She wasn't even supposed to be biting her nails. But
the
money was so much on her mind that she couldn't go back to sleep. She
remembered that the Sears catalogue was on the shelf in the kitchen,
and then
she had to get up and look through it. There was everything you could
think of
in there.
140
When she heard him stirring the
way he did when he was
waking up, she put the catalogue back on the shelf and set the table.
Ham and
eggs and a pot of coffee. Nothing hard about that. Toast and jam. He
came
downstairs whistling, scrubbed and shaved and combed. "Ah," he said,
"wonderful! And how are you two this morning?"
She said, "I guess this child
of yours don't want me to
sleep. Maybe he don't like my dreams or something."
He helped her with her chair.
"You're having bad
dreams?
Here, I'll get the coffee." He
poured her a cup.
"Do you want to tell me about them?"
"They're just dreams. You must
have bad dreams
sometimes. Maybe you don't, being a preacher."
He laughed. "I have had more
than my share, it seems to
me." And he said, in that low, gentle voice he used to speak to widows,
and knew that he did, "Sometimes it does feel better to talk about
them."
"Who you been talking to about
them all these years?
Old Boughton, I suppose."
He nodded. "Boughton."
"Jesus, I suppose."
"Jesus. "
"You never told me nothing
about your dreams.
Anything."
"I guess it's been a while
since I had any dreams worth
talking about. Something's chasing me and I don't know which way to
run. Then I
wake up. That's all most of them amount to. I'm just running like the
devil. I
haven't really run like that since I was ten years old. And then I wake
up with
my heart pounding."
"And that's what you tell
Jesus."
He laughed. "The Lord is very
patient. Something I
learned from my grandfather. Well, from watching my grandfather. I used
to
wonder when I was a boy how the Lord could just listen to him going on
the way
he did. I suspected sooner or later He might stop coming around. I sort
of
hoped He would. I was a little scared of Him."
141
"Maybe He's what you was
running away from. In your
dream." Now, why did she say that?
He
shrugged.
"What a thought. Now, wouldn't that be something." He toyed with his
fork, considering.
She said, "I'll tell you the
truth, I'm scared of Him.
I'm always dreaming that Doll's trying to hide from Him. That's why she
don't
want no grave, so He can't find her."
"Well," he said, "that's a very
sad dream.
I'm sorry about it. You probably never would have dreamied such a thing
before
you came here and started listening to me. And Boughton."
"Don't worry about it. My
dreams was already bad
enough. It would have just been something else. There's nothing good
about her
dying the way she did, Lord or no Lord."
He looked at her, and he nodded.
"I didn't mean nothing by that.
No offense."
"No, no, I'm just thinking."
It seemed she was going to say
any damn thing. "You're
kind of like your grandfather. You think the Lord is living here, in
this
house. It's Him I might be offending. It don't scare me, though, to
have you
thinking that. Couple of dreams is all."
"Well, my thinking about these
things isn't really the
same as my grandfather's. I suppose I should say my experience is
different
from his."
"But I know you still think you
might offend Him.
Jesus."
He nodded. "True enough."
She said, "I don't know what
started me talking like
this. I don't want to go on with it, I truly don't."
"That's fine. I just want to
say one thing, though. If
the Lord is more gracious than any of us can begin to imagine, and I'm
sure He
is, then your Doll and a whole lot of people are safe, and warm, and
very
142
happy. And probably a little
bit surprised. If there is no
Lord, then things are just the way they look to us. Which is really
much harder
to accept. I mean, it doesn't feel right. There has to be more to it
all, I
believe."
"Well, but that's what you want
to believe, ain't
it."
"That doesn't mean it isn't
true."
She thought, Don't go hoping.
Let's see what comes of this
child. Let's see how long I keep this old man. What a body might hope
for just
ain't in the way of things, most of the time. Never for long. She said,
"I
might try thinking about that. It's a nice idea." And he said his
grace,
and she bowed her head. Why did she talk to him that way? So that she
could say
when it ended she always knew it would. Not very long after he kissed
her cheek
and left for the church she put on her coat and walked down to the
store as if
a wedge of cheese and a box of crackers were all she had in mind, and
then
strolled along down the road, on past the edge of town, past the fields
of dry
cornstalks. It was a good coat, new and heavy and too warm for the
weather,
since the winter was a little late coming on, but she told herself it
would be a
kind of waste not to get all the use of it she could. It was a nice
dark blue.
You could see pelicans by the
hundreds sometimes. It was
late in the season for them, but winter was late, so she might still
see some.
There was a wide place in the river where people went to look at them,
so
that's what she'd say if anyone asked her where she was going. She'd
seen those
birds all her life and never had a name for them, because they had
nothing to
do with getting by. She'd never once heard of anybody eating one.
Ducks, for
sure, but never pelicans. They were white as anything could be, flying
up off
the water together and spreading their wings so wide you couldn't
believe it,
and then settling together on the water again, sliding along. They'
just came
when the weather started to change, and then they were gone till the
next year.
It was the old man who told her what they were called. There was one of
them
carved into Mrs. Ames's gravestone. After Lila stopped a t the shack
she'd go
on down to the river so she could tell him where she'd been without
lying.
143
She'd never thought before how
strange a cornfield can look
so late in the year, all the stalks dead where they stand. The country
had
always just been work waiting to be done. Now she saw the dim shine of
sunlight
on the leaves, and how the stalks were all bent one way, the tops of
them. The
wind had bent them and then left them rigid, with their old tattered
leaves
hanging off them. But it was as if they had all heard one sound and
they all
knew what it meant, or were afraid they did, and every one of them
waited to
hear it again, to be sure, every one of them still with waiting. She
said,
"It don't mean nothing," speaking to the child. "It's the
wind."
The shack was there, the field
in front of it filled with
the same old weeds, blanched and beaten down or poking up this way and
that.
The path she had worn from the road was pretty well overgrown. Somebody
had
been there, had come and gone just enough to bruise the grass. Somebody
might
still be there. She knew it wasn't smart to look in the door. You can
get in a
setto so fast you don't even know what happened. Nobody harder to deal
with
than a thief, once he decides you're trying to steal from him. She had
this
baby now to think about. So she stood a way off and picked up a rock
and threw
it against the wall. It made a good, solid thunk. Nobody looked out the
window
or the door. She found two more rocks and threw them. Nobody. So she
decided it
would be safe to look inside.
She could see from the stoop
that there wa s a blanket in
the corner. That wa s about it. A few empty tin cans. Her canning jar,
empty.
Well, she should have known. She would look under that loose plank, to
be sure.
One jar does look just like the next one. But there was nothing there
except
the Reverend's
144
handkerchief with the raspberry
stains on it. She shook off
the dirt and cobwebs and put it in the pocket of her coat. She said to
child,
"What a day that was." Him out there in the field picking sunflowers
for her. After she told him she wouldn't marry him. Maybe someday she'd
be
saying, Once, back in Iowa, your papa gathered flowers for me, from a
field
that was all gone to weeds. Before you was even born. She never thought
a
preacher would act that way. Every morning when he left for the church
she
stood on the porch and watched him walk down the road. He'd turn around
to wave
at her. If she kissed her fingers and held up her hand-- she had seen
women do
that-- he would clutch his hat to his chest and tilt his head to the
side like
a lovestruck boy in a movie. And she'd hear herself laughing. It would
have
been nice to give him a present. He wouldn't expect that.
She was sitting on the stoop in
the sun, just for a minute,
thinking about things. How good the sunlight felt on a chilly morning,
and how
familiar that old parched wood smell was, and how strange it seemed to
be at
peace where she had been so lonesome before, to be more at peace than
in the
old man's house, kind as he always was. She opened her coat to the sun
so the
baby could feel it warming her lap. She might even have fallen asleep,
because
there was a boy standing at a distance watching her, there for a while
at least
without her noticing him, she could tell by the way he was shifting his
weight
from one foot to the other, shifting a little bundle he had from one
hand to
the other. When she saw him he looked away. She said, "Morning."
He said, "That there's my
shack. I been using it. Got
my stuff in it." He was small, but he had hair on his face. He looked
like
something that came up in a drought and bloomed the best it could and
never got
its growth. There was a crack of sadness in his voice, or worry, and
that made
it seem like a boy's voice, younger than the rest of him. Still, you
never
know. He looked pretty desperate. Best let him have the money.
145
She said, "I was just sitting
here for a minute,
catching my breath. I was going down to the river to look at them
birds."
She stood up and found her little bag of groceries. "I'll be going.
Didn't
mean to trouble you."
He said, "Mainly folks don't
come here."
"I know. I was using this shack
most of the
summer."
"Oh. You was using it. Why'd
you come back? Maybe you
left something here?"
"This," she said. She took the
handkerchief out of
her pocket. "I know it don't look like much. But since I was walking
by."
He glanced at the shape of her
now that she was standing,
and then he looked away. "Maybe you ain't done resting. Don't matter to
me. Nothing here I need. I was going to be doing something else
anyways."
He took a few steps back.
"Well, I was tired a little
while ago, so I rested. And
now I'm hungry. I got some cheese and crackers here. Plenty for both of
us, if
you'd like to join me."
"No," he said, "I best not."
Maybe he thought it was all she
had. She said, "I'm real
hungry, and I never could eat in front of folks. So I guess you're just
going
to let me starve."
He laughed, and he came a few
steps closer to her. She could
tell he hoped she would persuade him.
She said, "Sit here on the
stoop. The sun is
nice." No point saying he looked cold. She flattened out the paper bag
and
put the cheese on it and unwrapped it and opened a packet of crackers.
She
broke off a piece of cheese, and he came close enough to take it from
her
fingers. His hands were as dirty as could be, too big for him and brown
with
callus. His pants didn't reach his ankles and his shoes were all broken
down.
He was the kind of people Doane used to tell them they were not, the
kind that
didn't wash. Doll was after her with a wet rag all the time so she
wouldn't
slip away into that tribe, the ones who never touched a
146
comb to their hair and who
always had shadows of grime on
their necks and wore unmended clothes till they were falling off them.
They
probably were her tribe, and that was why Doll kept such a close eye on
her and
never even told her where she came from. They ain't people you want
hanging
around. That's what she'd have said about a boy like this. No matter.
Here he
was licking his grimy fingers. She said, "Take some more."
And he said, "Don't mind if I
do." He was happier
than he wanted to be, with the food and the kindness. He sat down on
the lowest
step and put his little bundle on the ground beside him.
He had wandered there from
somewhere south, probably
Missouri, maybe Kansas. "I guess I'm heading the wrong way, this time
of
year. I shoulda thought about that, I guess." He laughed and glanced at
her, shy of her. "I don't want to go back the way I come, that's for
sure.
So, I don't know. I'll do something." He laughed. He said, "There was
some trouble down there, so I guess I won't be going back." He shook
his
head, but he looked up at her as if he wouldn't entirely mind her
asking him
about it. Maybe he was just surprised by it, lonely with it, not used
to the
idea that any important thing could be true of him. She thought, He
should be
careful. She was a stranger, and in his mind she was like someone who
would
listen and not blame him too much. His mother, maybe.
She said, "Well, sounds like
you better keep it to
yourself, whatever it was."
"Yeah," he said, and laughed.
"I
better." After a minute he said, "You ever had a dog? I did once.
Then he took off after a rabbit or something and he never come back. So
how you
come to be living here?"
"Same as you. Drifting." She
said, "Then this
man wanted to marry me. So I said all right."
"Sounds like you making that
up."
147
"I spose it does. And he's a
preacher."
The boy laughed. He could tell
things by looking at her,
too.
"I ain't joking. He's a big old
preacher."
"Well," he said, "maybe so.
That his child
you got there?"
"You bet it is."
"So you're all right."
"Yes, I am."
"Because," he said, "I was
thinking you was
maybe back here looking for that money I found. Was you the one hid it
there?"
"That was my money."
"Then how much was it?"
"It was almost forty-five
dollars. Three fives, a lot
of ones, and change. I had it in that canning jar, with the
handkerchief. You
can keep it."
He nodded. "That's about the
most money I ever seen in
my life."
"I was saving up. Thinking
about California."
"If I give you half, that would
still mean I had about
twenty bucks."
"That's all right. You can keep
it all. I was just
going to buy some kind of a present for my old preacher. But he don't
need
nothing. He' d be the first to say. Better you keep it."
"I got it hid away in a good
spot."
"Figured you might."
"Well, it would be safe there,
if somebody was meaning
to steal it." He looked up at her. Kindness was something he didn't
even
know he wanted, and here it was. It made him teary and restless, and he
was trying
to seem to repay it by pretending he'd hid the money partly for her
sake.
She said, "Can't be too
careful."
148
"First thing I done when I seen
that board was loose
was I looked under it. First thing anybody's going to do." She thought,
It
comes with the whiskers, that idea that they know how things are. They
get a
lot of happiness out of it.
He was looking out over the
field, as if there were
something to see out there. "Yeah," he said. "I knew a fellow
had a hunting dog. It'd do any damn thing he said. A hundred things."
She said, "You planning on
getting a dog?" He had
never cut that beard, never shaved. It was reddish and curly at the
edges, and
then it was straight and brown, what there was of it. And his hair was
reddish,
matted like sheep's wool. He'd scratch at it. And his skin was milky
white.
She'd seen that before. Like the sun just didn't shine on him the way
it did on
most people. His big hands were lying on his knees, palms up, and he
was
looking at them as if he'd never really gotten used to them.
He glanced up at her. He might
have been about to say, The
way I am ain't your business. It was you told me to sit down here. And
that was
true enough. So she looked away. He shrugged. "Thought about getting
one." Then he said, "I been thinking I might give that money to my
pa. He'd be glad to see me then, that's for sure." He laughed. "He
was always telling me I was too puny to be worth keeping. Well, he'd
think I
stole it, anyhow. He'd tan me for it, too. Like he never done any
stealing.
Buthe'd be glad to have the money."
She said, "Then you'll be going
back where you come
from, I guess."
He said, "Probly not. My pa and
me was fighting, and I
hit him with a piece of firewood. I don't know. I think I killed him.
If I
didn't, he would have killed me, soon as he woke up. So I just took
off."
He looked at her. That dirty, weary child face with a beard stuck on it
like a
mean joke. "I don't know where I'll go. I don't even know where I am
now!" He laughed.
She said, "Well, you're in
Iowa. And the winter here is
even worse than it is everyplace else. So you better not try staying on
in this
shack. You must be freezing already. For sure you won't last till the
spring."
149
He shrugged. "Might not anyway.
Might not want to. I
hated my pa about half the time, but I sure never thought I'd end up
killing
him."
"Maybe he ain't dead."
"I sure did mean to kill him. I
hit him three or four
times. Hard as I could. Him laying there." Tears were running down his
cheeks. "I think back on how it was, and I figure I must have killed
him.
I remember the sound it made when I hit him." He rested his head on his
folded arms and wept.
After a while she said, "Well,
you got to get some warm
clothes and some good shoes. The preacher keeps things like that in a
box
somewhere. I can bring them out here tomorrow. Then you spend that
money on a
bus ticket."
He said, "After what I done to
him, I know he wouldn't
let me come back anyways."
"Then you figure out where else
you want to go."
"This is the first time I ever
been away from
home," he said. "First time. I can't hardly even sleep nights."
"I guess you better get used to
it."
He laughed. "Don't think I
will." He looked at
her. His face was a mess of grief, so she gave him the handkerchief.
"You have folks?"
"My pa. That's all. So." He
shrugged and gazed out
at the field again, calm for no reason except that he was done crying.
"You
ever talk to a killer before?"
"One. That I know of. She
really did kill somebody,
too. No doubt about it."
"Why'd she do it?"
"He'd have killed her. That's
as much as I know. She
got the jump on him, so they said she murdered him. I keep the knife
she used
right there on the old man's kitchen table."
150
"Why?"
"She was a friend of mine.
About the only one I had.
She give it to me."
"The preacher know about that
knife?"
"I told him."
He nodded. "So you never turned
against her after what
she done."
"I did regret it."
He was quiet for a while, and
then he said, "I tell you
what happened. My pa was drunk, and he was yelling at me about nothing,
some
little thing I done, so I said I was going to run off and leave him. He
followed me out to the road, and he was saying 'Git!' and throwing
sticks and
rocks at me, the way you'd chase off a dog. I come back to the house
later and
he was laying there asleep, and I took a piece of firewood, about yay
big." He made a circle with his hands. "It just come over me."
"I can see how it might."
He looked at her. "So now I
don't know what I'm going
to do."
"Well," she said, "you stay
here tonight, and
then tomorrow I bring you some clothes, and you get yourself a ticket
somewhere. And you better start telling yourself you don't know if you
killed
him, 'cause you don't. No point making it worse than it has to be. And
you sure
better stop talking to strangers about it."
He shook his head, and he said,
very softly, calmly, "I
think I'll just go back there. Tell 'em what I done." He said, "I'd
like to take that money, if you're sure you don't mind. Some of it,
anyways. At
least I'd have something to give him. If he's still alive. I'd have
that."
Then he said, "They hang that friend of yours?"
"No. They might've been
thinking about it, but she got
away."
"You know, I'm kind of hoping
they hang me. Then I'd
just be done with it."
151
She said, "You shouldn't be
talking that way. You ain't
half grown. That's no way for you to talk." She put her hand on his
shoulder.
He smiled up at her. "I figure,
if my own pa got no use
for me-- " Then he said, "I'm growed. This is all there's going to
be. Nothing much."
"I don't know about that. You
look like you been
working. I bet you been doing your share."
He shrugged. "I guess I tried."
He smiled at her
kindness, and looked at his hands again. "You know, I just wish I'd
stayed
there with him. Maybe I could've helped him somehow. I don't even know
why I
bothered running off. Didn't have no place to go. I knew that right
along. I
was always thinking about leaving, all them years. Never did. Sure
wisht I had
now. Scared to, I guess."
The wind was coming up,
bringing cold with it. That would
happenin for good one day soon. The cold would set in, and there it
would be
for months and months. The boy crouched over his folded arms. The coat
he was
wearing was no use at all, and his poor, filthy ankles were bare.
She said, "How long you been
here?"
"I come here, to this place, a
couple days ago."
"Well, it ain't sposed to be
this warm. It might change
any time. It could snow tomorrow."
He nodded. "I feel it at night."
She said, "That's probably why
you ain't
sleeping."
"It's a fair part of it."
"Well then, I think you best
come to my old man's
house. Just for the night. He'll find some clothes for you and get you
some
breakfast. He's got a couple spare rooms."
He shook his head. "He ain't
going to want me in his
house. You know that."
152
"He does whatever I ask him.
Hasn't said no to me yet
any way."
"What you ever ask him for?"
"You're right. Nothing much."
She laughed. "I
did ask him to marry me."
"'Cause you got that baby?"
"Nope. I wasn't even thinking
about no baby. At the
time."
"Well," he said, and he glanced
up, hoping he
wouldn't have to offend her, "I guess I just rather stay here."
That's how it is, she thought.
Keep to yourself So long as
you can do that, you're all right. Then somebody finds you in a corner
somewhere, and you ain't even there to hear them say, What a pity. And
that
seems better than asking for help. She said, "I understand that. I do.
I
know how you feel around strangers. I feel the same way. So you can
trust
me."
"No," he said. "I mean, I trust
you.
Still."
"Then I guess you better keep
my coat."
He looked at her, startled and
hurt, and laughing.
"What? I can't wear no woman's coat!"
She said, "I don't mean you
should wear it. I mean you
should use it like a blanket. Sleep under it. Nobody's going to see."
He shook his head. "Nah. I'd
probly spoil it. You going
to need it yourself anyways."
"I'll get it tomorrow."
He picked up the little bundle.
"You best be going
along now. It's getting cold. And I best get out of this wind."
She said, "That's where you
keep the money. Tied up in
a rag."
"I like to keep it by me."
"That's fine."
"You sure you don't want some
of it?"
153
"I'm sure." He stood there,
waiting for her to be
gone, skinny and dirty, and a good child all the same. Nobody's good
child.
"I don't want the rest of them crackers, either," she said.
"All right. Well, good talking
with you." He
nodded and stepped away from her, and then he watched her out to the
road.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
20.
She buttoned her coat and
turned up the collar, because by
now the wind was bitter, and she walked about halfway to Gilead. Then
she said,
"This won't do." So she went back to the cabin. It was barely warmer in
there than the weather outside. The boy was curled up in the corner
where she
had slept, the one that was intact enough to give some shelter, and he
was
wrapped in that sad old scrap of a blanket, the little bundle under his
head.
He looked at her, but he didn't move. She took off her coat and draped
it over
him. "Just for tonight," she said. "So maybe you can get some
sleep." He didn't say anything, he just settled himself under it. She
pulled the collar up around his ears. She said, "Feels good, don't it?"
And he laughed.
And then there was the walk
back to Gilead, through the
bright day and the sharp wind. The stiff leaves of the cornstalks
rustled and
stirred, and a few pelicans were sailing and turning overhead, though
she could
hardly bear to look up at them, with that wind at her throat. She
wondered if
she might get so cold even the child would feel it. She felt it stir.
She said,
"Don't worry about it. You ain't going to have this kind of life. Once
we're home we'll be fine." But she thought to herself, This might not
be
the smartest thing anybody ever did. Best think of something else. But
not
that. Not looking for Doll in the snow. Not getting lost in that
cornfield. She
had followed footprints into it, so why couldn't she just follow them
back out
again? But they ended where the snow ended, at the edge of the field,
and
farther in, there
154
was just frozen ground. Anybody
knew how lost you could get
in a cornfield, and there she was, thrashing around, scared to death,
the
stalks so close and so high over her head that she couldn't tell where
she was,
and it was only luck that she got back to the road finally. Covered in
dust and
sweat. She couldn't have been in her right mind then, while she was
looking for
Doll. And what did she mean to do if she found her? She had some
thought of
covering her up, to keep her warm. As if anything could keep her warm.
And then
the next day there was real snow, hours of it, and no point trying to
find her
after that.
There was the time they were
sitting by the fire, their
faces hot and their backs freezing and the fire sizzling and popping
and
smoking because it was damp, sappy pine branches mostly. Lila had a
bowl of
fried mush, scraps of it, dark the way she liked them, because when
Doll was
doing the cooking she kept the crispy pieces for her. Mellie was right
there
beside her, close as she could get, watching that mush, and Lila was
eating it
a bit at a time. Mellie said, "I seen something go crawling into that
bowl. I did. Its legs was all"-- and she did a spidery thing with her
fingers that made gooseflesh pass over Lila's arms and across her
scalp. Lila
said, "Wasn't no spider," and Mellie said, "Not saying it was.
Just saying what I seen," and she did the thing with her fingers again.
Lila said, "I'm telling Doane."
"Why? What you going to tell
him?"
"That you trying to get me to
throw my supper in the
fire."
Mellie said, "No need for that.
I never mind a spider.
You can always spit it out. They taste funny, so you'll know to do it.
And you
feel them little legs. I swallowed one once and I ain't dead. I'll eat
that
mush for you if you don't want it."
So Lila just sat there with the
bowl in her lap, thinking
about spiders, and Mellie sat there beside her, watching, breathing on
her.
Doll saw that Lila hadn't eaten her supper and told her she would
thrash her
155
if she didn't, which was just
to let Mellie know there was
no use trying to talk her out of it. Lila felt Doll's hand on her
shoulder.
That meant, Mellie's the clever one, but you've got me here looking out
for
you.
Mellie whispered, "She always
saying she going to
thrash somebody. She ain't going to, though."
And Doll said, "Most likely I'm
going to thrash
you." But it was true, she never would do it. She was a kind, quiet
woman
as far as anybody ever knew. That knife was a secret she kept, not
easily, not
always, like the mark on her face. She just forgot to hide them both
from Lila
because she knew the girl loved her. One time Doane saw her cutting
Lila's hair
with that knife, and he stopped and watched the strands fall, whiff
whiff
whiff, and he said, "Well, I'll be danged."
Lila was halfway to Gilead by
now. The sky was gray and the
wind was acting like it owned the place, tossing the trees, and the
trees all
moaning. Somehow there was always the notion that one day would lead to
the
next, mild today meant mild tomorrow, a sunny morning meant a decent
afternoon.
And then winter would take over everything before you knew what was
happening.
It would be there like the world after sleep, a surprise and no
surprise.
Whatever happened to Mellie? She could be anywhere doing anything. She
could be
in jail. Lila had heard there were women who flew bombers across the
ocean so
they could be used in the war, and she had thought of Mellie. Wherever
she was,
even in jail, she'd be better at it than anybody ever had been, and all
wrapped
up in herself, twice as interested as anybody else in whatever notion
she had
just come up with. She was probably all right. But Lila had seen plenty
of
times how a bird will hatch or a calf will be born, and pretty soon
they know
things they couldn't be taught, they're up on their legs scratching or
suckling, and their eyes are all bright with it. The world is so fine.
That's
when children can play with them, because their eyes are bright, too,
and
156
they're finding out how clever
they are. Then pretty soon
the critters are just critters, livestock. And the children are just
folks
trying to get by. Could be even Mellie is just some woman somewhere,
with that
look in her eyes that says, I don't want to talk about it. Lila told
the child,
"Don't worry yourself. I'm going to do the best I can. Just like Doll
done
for me," she said, and she laughed. Poor old Doll. Then she was
thinking
about that man-boy, crouching under her woman's coat and sure to be
wretched
with cold anyway. He'd have frozen right to death before he'd let
anyone see
him wearing it. She should have made him come with her. Somehow. No.
His pride
was going to kill him. Well, she thought, worse things can happen.
If she had some of that money
she'd get a ticket to the
matinee, and maybe a box of popcorn. She could warm up there in the
dark,
watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
again, but warm, at least. Then she could go on home. She didn't want
to walk
into his office at the church looking as miserable as she was, knowing
it would
worry the old man. She'd seen that movie with him. He'd read the book,
and he'd
read about the movie in one of his magazines, so he'd been waiting for
it. In
the theater, in the dark, he'd held her hand. That was the best part
about it.
She was thinking, I don't need to watch raggedy-looking men eating
beans. I
seen that plenty of times. Nice as it was to be sitting there with him,
she was
sort of glad when the men started shooting each other, so the movie
would have
to end. She liked movies where people wore nice clothes and tap-danced,
but
they were never the ones he'd read about in his magazines.
If she had some of that money,
she'd go into the diner and
have a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. If she had some of that
money,
she'd go into the dime store and look at dress patterns or something.
She could
do that anyway, but she thought people had begun to notice her, out in
the cold
that way, when
157
anybody in her right mind would
at least have a coat on. She
had almost forgotten the dread that someone might speak to her, and
here it was
again. She wouldn't let that happen if she could help it. It was like
old
times. No money and nothing to do about it, and people watching her.
But there
was the church. That was like old times, too. Stepping in out of the
weather.
She could just sit in a pew and wait till she stopped shivering and her
fingers
stopped aching. Then she'd find him in his office, and he'd say, Oh, my
dear,
and put his coat over her shoulders, and they'd walk to the house, and
make
some supper, and she would tell him she was fine, fine. She'd just gone
for a
walk. She was too cold to stop trembling yet, so she put her hands
between her
knees and waited. Her toes ached. No point thinking about it. It always
was
quiet in there. You could hear any shift or creak anywhere in the
building, and
when the wind was blowing the way it was then, the church strained
against
itself like some old barn. You could practically hear nails pulling
loose. And
still it was quiet somehow. It was drafty, too, but that boy could have
stretched out on a pew under a blanket or two and slept right through
the
storm, and who would have minded. If she'd had any idea how bad it was
going to
be, she'd have made him come with her.
It took her that long to
realize the old man could ask
somebody with a car to drive out there and bring him to town. She never
got
used to that. He could just say a word and whatever needed to be done
got done,
most of the time anyway. Even if it meant Boughton starting up his
DeSoto. But
when she did go to his office he wasn't there. Of course he wouldn't be
hiding
from her, but that was the first thought she had. The room just felt
like he
should be in it. The whole church felt that way. People who live in
rooms and
houses don't know about that. It seems natural to them. You might pick
up
something belonging to somebody and feel for a minute how theirs it is,
particularly if you hate them enough. But a whole
158
roomful of somebody's days and
thoughts and breath, things
that are faded and they don't see it, ugly and they don't care, things
worn by
their habits it seems strange to walk in on that when you're almost
nothing
more than a cold wind. She did wish she could at least find ! way to
tell him
how hard it was, the ache you feel walking out of a cold day into a
warm room.
And here she was angry at him for being somewhere else, almost crying
about it.
Because here was his whole long life and it had nothing to do with her
unless
he was there with her to say, This is Lila, Lila Ames, my wife.
Well, she thought, standing
here worrying about it doesn't
make much sense. He'll be at the house. And the thought she wouldn't
let
herself have was How long has it been since I felt the child stirring?
Every
woman she ever knew had stories about some child that was lost or
didn't come
out right because its mother ate too much of something, or took a
fright, or
took a chill. But there was nothing else to do but go on to the house.
She said,
"It's just a few blocks. Then we're home."
He wasn't there, either. The
house was empty. Probably
someone had died, or was about to die. Plenty of times he was called
away to do
what he could where comforting was needed. The last time it happened he
came in
the door after midnight, grumbling to himself He said, "Asking a man to
apologize on his deathbed for the abject and total disappointment he
was in
life! That does beat all." He took off his hat. " So I took them
aside, the family. And I said, If you're not Christian people, then
what am I
doing here? And if you are, you' d better start acting like it. Words
to that
effect." He looked at her. "I know I was harsh. But the poor old
devil could hardly get his breath, let alone give his side of things.
There
were tears in his eyes!" He hung up his coat. "I've known him my
whole life. He wasn't worse than average. Wouldn't matter if he was."
And
then he said, "You shouldn't have waited up for me, Lila. The two of
you
need your sleep," and he kissed her cheek and went up to his study to
pray
over the regret he felt because he'd lost his temper. Anger was his
besetting
sin, he said. He was always praying about it. She had thought, If
that's the
worst of it, I'll be all right.
159
She wasn't warm yet, so she
decided to go upstairs and lie
down in his bed until she heard him at the door. She'd just slip off
her shoes
and pull up the covers and wait. She thought it would comfort the
child. But
the cold of her body filled the space it made under the blankets, a
hollow of
cold. Maybe that's how she felt to the child. Winter nights Doll would
pull her
against her, into her own shape, and she would pull the quilt up over
her and
her arm would be around her, and Lila would only feel warmer for the
cold that
was everywhere else in the world. She was probably thinking of this
when she
gave that boy her coat, tucked him in. And then he laughed just the way
she
might have laughed all those years ago, for pleasure that seemed like a
piece
of luck, a trick played on misery and trouble. Now here she had this
child of
her own, and maybe it felt the cold. Maybe it feared it was being born
to a
woman who couldn't be trusted to give it comfort. Maybe it would have
the look
that boy had, as if the life in him had decided to cut its losses when
it had
just begun to make him a man's body. She thought, Then I'll steal you,
and I'll
take you away where nobody knows us, and I'll make up all the
difference
between what you are and what you could have been by loving you so
much. Mellie
said, "Her legs is all rickety," and Doll just kept her closer and
seen to her all the more. Even Doll said, "If there was just something
about you," looking at her the way other people did because she
couldn't
go on protecting her from other people. But Doll always made up the
difference
the best she could. Lila would, too. And there'd be no old man to say,
I see
what you've done to my child. No old man. It would happen sometime
anyway. She
pulled up her knees and hugged her belly, and she felt it moving.
160
The sound of the front door
woke her. Boughton was talking
with him, and she could hear worry in their voices. Boughton always
came along
when there might be something difficult to deal with, on a cane now
half the
time, but still as willing as could be to help out a little. He was
there when
Mrs. Ames died and the Reverend was off somewhere doing something.
Once, after
Boughton had gone on through a long evening about the Rural
Electrification Act
and its implications, the old man said, "He prayed with her. He closed
her
eyes." We wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief. We
because
Boughton was there, just trying to help out. She heard him saying,
"I'll
wait down here a minute, John," and the old man starting up the stairs
alone. What did they think had happened? No, better ask what had
happened.
She'd done something she shouldn't. She knew half of it and he would
probably
tell her the rest. She stood up and slipped on her shoes and smoothed
her hair
and her dress.
When he came into the room, she
felt a surge of relief at
the sight of him that made it harder for her to do what she meant to
do, which
was nothing. Stand there and hear him out. She couldn't leave, now that
she'd
given her money to that boy. Well, she'd figure a way if she had to.
She was
thinking, I'm gone the minute he talks down to me, no matter what. And
just
that morning she'd been feeling so safe.
He spoke down the stairs,
"She's here. She's
fine," and Boughton said, "Tomorrow, then," and let himself out.
Then the old man said, "That's true, isn't it? You are fine?"
She said, "Far as I know."
He nodded. "Me, too. Far as I
know." He sat down
on the edge of the bed. "A little winded, maybe." He covered his face
with his hands. A moment passed, and then he patted the bed beside him
and
said, "Come, sit down." He cleared his throat to steady his voice. He
said, "So. I'll tell you about my day, if you'll tell me about
yours."
161
She shrugged and sat down
beside him. "I been out
walking."
"So I gather." A longer moment
passed, and then he
said, "Someone came by my office and told me he'd seen you at the
cabin.
He mentioned it because the weather was turning bad. So I got Boughton
to drive
me out there so I could spare you the walk home. But we missed you
somehow."
She said, "Who told you?"
"George Peterson. He's not in
the church. They all know
better by now."
They all knew better than to
tell him about her comings and
goings. She'd have to think about that.
He said, "You weren't there,
but your coat was, and
there as a fellow underneath it. When I saw it, I thought it was
probably you
under it. I said your name and there was no answer, so I turned it
back, and
this fellow jumped up with a knife in his hand." He laughed and rubbed
his
eyes. "I never had such a scare. Or felt so relieved. I thought
Boughton
might die on the spot. Then he pushed past us and ran off, and we were
just too
floored to do anything much but look at each other. We started worrying
about
where you were and how he got your coat. We couldn't very well ask him.
So we came
back here." He laughed. "Boughton must have been doing forty the
whole way. He's so scared of that car he's always got two wheels in the
ditch,
but he was Barney Oldfield this evening."
She said, "Well, I was just
here resting."
"So I see. But perhaps you
could clarify things a
little. I'm curious. And I feel as though I owe Boughton the rest of
the story.
Nothing urgent about it, of course."
"Part of the time I was sitting
in the church, trying
to warm up a little."
162
He nodded. "I guess that's how
we missed you."
"And I give him that coat. The
use of it. Just for the
night. I never thought you'd be out there."
He nodded. "That was very
generous."
"Well, I didn't know it would
turn so cold."
"I'm sure he was glad to have
it. The use of it. So you
walked home in the cold without a coat."
"I felt sorry for him. A boy
like that. He was so
miserable he wasn't even sleeping nights. He thought it was because
he'd killed
somebody, but I thought it might be that he just wasn't comfortable.
Partly,
anyway."
"Well," he said. "He'd killed
somebody."
"He thought he probably did.
Sounded to me like he did
and he didn't want to be sure of it. It was just his pa. I mean, he
wasn't out
looking for somebody to kill. He lost his temper, I guess."
He laughed. "That happens."
"He wasn't going to hurt
anybody. All he wanted to do
was go back where he come from. So they could hang him."
"I see. Of course I had no way
of knowing that, did I.
You can imagine what I thought, finding your coat there. And he was a
pretty
rough-looking individual, from what I saw of him." He said, "I have a
lot of memories these days. And I have some pretty bad dreams. I talked
to
Boughton about it, and he said he has them, too. So we couldn't be very
sensible in the circumstances, I suppose. Maybe we could have talked to
him if
we hadn't brought so much dread into the situation. Lila, I haven't
wanted to
bring this up, but I would appreciate it a great deal if you were very
careful
with yourself. Just to spare two old men a little wear and tear."
She said, "I will give it some
thought."
He laughed. "Yes. Do it for my
sake. Oh, what a shock I
had." And he lay back on the bed with his arms across his face.
163
After a while she said, "He had
a little sort of bundle
with him. Did he take that when he run off?"
"There was something like that
lying on the floor. We
left it there. Why?"
"Well, it's just that he'll
likely come back for
it." Maybe she shouldn't have said that. "If he seen that you wasn't
chasing him, he's probly already come and gone."
"I take it you don't want to
talk to the sheriff about
this."
"Wouldn't be much point."
He laughed. "If you say so."
She said, "I'm not much for
talking to a sheriff That's
a fact. But if he turns himself in, they might not hang him. If some
law
catches him, for sure they will. But he'll need that money to get home.
He
don't have a decent pair of shoes."
He said, "Now you're crying."
"I'm tired is all." She said,
"I was thinking
we might bring him here and let him sleep the night at the church. That
was before
he run off."
He handed her his handkerchief.
"Well, Lila, I'll talk
to Boughton again. I guess we could go back out there. Maybe talk to
him th.is
time. You can stay home." He sat up and stood up like the weariest man
in
the world, steadying himself against the bedpost. She knew she should
tell him
not to trouble himself.
She said, "I better go along.
He won't be scared of me.
He'll never come with us. He'd never get in the car with us now. But we
could
take him some things. If we hurry."
"All right. Then you put some
things together and I'll
go get Boughton."
So she put socks and long
underwear and a flannel shirt in a
pillowcase, and a pair of the preacher's old shoes. None of it would
fit the
boy, but it was better than nothing. She bundled a piece of ham in wax
paper
and put it with the rest, and some apples, and took two wool blankets
out of
the cupboard. She
164
Put on the blue coat, which she
found draped on the newel
post, and went out to the DeSoto. Boughton said, somberly, "I believe
they
call this aiding and abetting. I know they do." He said, "Nobody will
have to get out of the car. I'll honk the horn. We'll just pull up to
the stoop
and drop it all out the window. I'm going to keep the car running."
When they stopped in front of
the cabin, Lila stepped out.
She called, "Hey. You there? We brought you some clothes and some
blankets. I'll just set them inside here in case it snows." The
Reverend
stepped out, too, and gave her a flashlight, and took the parcel, and
took her
arm. He said, "I'll go in."
"No, I will. He's touchy, all
right, but he ain't
scared of me." She said, "We don't want to corner him. He'll get
himself in worse trouble."
He laughed. "We can't have
that, can we. Whatever you
say. Let's just be quick about it."
She set the things inside the
door, and then she swept the
flashlight across the room. She said, "It's still there. His money. He
ain't come back for it."
"Well, he won't come back as
long as we're here. It's
good that he hasn't come back already. This way he'll find what you've
left for
him."
"Oh, maybe," she said. "I don't
know, I
don't." The old man's voice was so low and so weary. Then all the way
home
they were silent. She could feel thoughts passing between the two men,
who had
grown old in their friendship. She's going to be a world of trouble,
John. And:
Let's see what she has to say before we judge. And: Old men can make
foolish
decisions. And: Let's leave that to another time. And: No matter what
happens,
I'm on your side. And: You are, you always are, even when I'm not.
Still, the
longer he thought about it, the graver he was. That night she lay
beside him,
wondering if he ever would sleep. He didn't take her hand, and she
didn't dare
take his. But the child was there. She could feel what must be the
press of its
head below her rib, the press of its foot against her hip. She thought,
Seems
like you're about as strong as you ought to be.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
165
20.
The next morning the Reverend
came downstairs dressed for
Sunday. She still forgot to pay attention to the days of the week
sometimes,
but she was pretty sure it was Thursday. He told her once that his
preacher
clothes helped him remember himself, helped with that worry of his
about anger.
So here he was, remembering himself before he'd even had breakfast. He
said,
"Good morning."
She said, "Morning." There was
nothing to do but
wait for him to say what was on his mind. She poured coffee into his
cup, so he
sat down.
Then there was a knock at the
door, and he went to answer
it. She heard him talking with someone. When he came back to the
kitchen he
said, "That was Boughton's boy Teddy. He's been out to the cabin
already,
to leave some things that might have a better chance of being the right
size.
Boughton is too stove up in the mornings to do much himself, and Teddy
wanted a
look at things anyway, since he's almost a doctor. He thought the
fellow might
be needing his help. No sign of him, though. Everything is the way we
left
it." He said, "I'm sorry about that. Sorry we scared him off."
She said, "Nobody's fault."
He was standing there with his
hands on the back of his
chair, looking at her, tired and serious. She could almost see what he
had been
like as a young man. He said, "There are people you seem to know the
first
time you see them. And other people you might spend your whole life
with and
never really know. That
166
first day you walked into the
church, that rainy Sunday, I
felt as though I recognized you somehow. It was a remarkable
experience. It
was."
"But you don't really know
nothing about me," she
said, since he couldn't bring himself to say it. She was about to hear
those
words again: I don't know you.
He said, "Well, in one sense
that may be true."
"I'd say it's true." She wasn't
going to be
standing there waiting for it.
"Not in a way I thought would
matter. And it doesn't
matter now, Lila. Not really."
"I guess that's good, because
there ain't much to tell.
I don't know who my folks were, I don't know my own last name."
He said, "I understand that. It
makes no difference to
me. None at all."
"Well," she said, "if there's
something else
you want to ask me about, you might as well do it."
He said, "Yes." And then he
said, "It makes
me uncomfortable, you can see that. But I feel as though I need to
know-how
things stand. I can't help wondering why you went back there. What you
were
doing there."
"I was just going to look at
the pelicans on the river,
and seeing the shack reminded me that I left some money hidden under a
plank in
the floor. I could see the place was empty. I looked for the money and
it was
gone. I thought it would feel good to rest a little anyway, so I sat
there on
the stoop in the sunshine and I guess I fell asleep. Then I woke up and
that
boy was standing there looking at me."
"You didn't know him at all."
"Never seen him in my life
before. That's the
truth."
167
"Yes, of course. Of course."
Then he said, "I
hate to seem to be questioning you, Lila. But when I heard you had gone
out
there, I thought it might mean you weren't happy. You know, here, with
me. I
knew from the beginning that things might be difficult, and I thought I
could
accept whatever happened. But it never crossed my mind there might be a
child.
I thought I had learned not to set my heart on anything. But I find
myself
thinking about that child-- much of the time. So the idea that you
might want
to leave-- it would be extremely difficult for me to live with that."
She said, "I ain't leaving.
Farthest thing from my
mind." If this was not entirely true, it was true enough. "I just go
off to look at pelicans and everything goes haywire. I don't know. I
thought I
might as well get some use out of that money. Took me all summer to
save it
up."
"I only asked because, if there
was anything I could do
to make you want to stay-- "
She said, "My child is going to
have a big old preacher
for its papa, and live in a good, warm house, and eat ham and eggs
three times
a week. And it's going to know all them hymns by heart. You'll see."
"Well," he said, "that will be
wonderful.
Wonderful." Then he sat down to his breakfast. He said his grace to
himself, behind his trembling hands, and she thought it would be good
if she
could tell him she had meant to buy him a present with her money, but
that
would sound like a lie, and then he wouldn't trust her the way he
wanted to.
She said, "That boy out at the
shack, he was just an
ugly, dirty, lonely little cuss, half scared to death. And I was
thinking he
could've been any child that had nobody to take him up and see to him."
He looked at her. Then he said
softly, "I did know you. I do know you," and his eyes filled with
tears.
168
"That's good, I guess." She
shrugged and turned
away. "Maybe I ain't so hard to know as some people. No reason why I
should be. More coffee?" She couldn't talk to him the way he was
talking
to her. That boy out at the cabin, he knew her. Married? To a preacher?
Sounds
like you making that up. That his child you got there? Meaning no harm,
knowing
no better. It seemed almost as if she had lied to the preacher when she
said
she didn't know that boy. He had been at the edge of her sight all
those years,
orphaned, his whole life just that terrible little ember of pride,
meanness and
kindness all that he had to shelter it with, and the injured
fearfulness that
comes when anybody at all might do you the worst kind of harm, just by
the way
they look at you. This old man is beautiful and kind and very patient,
she
thought, and if he looked at me that way I might just die of it. Well,
but for
now he is mine to touch if l want to. So when she brought his coffee
she put her
arms around his neck and she kissed his hair. Might as well take
pleasure where
you can.
He stroked her hands. Then he
said, "I've been
thinking, Lila-- at my age I can't really hope for a call to another
church,
but maybe we could move to another house, at least. The church could
rent this
one, to cover the cost. It would give us a fresh start. We could get
rid of
some things around here that I've been looking at for too long and just
start
over."
She said, "Well, I tell you one
thing. That's the last
time I'm going out looking for pelicans."
"So you're all right here?"
"I'm just fine."
"You don't mind all the scars
and scratches? All the
departed souls who left them behind? You don't mind if the Lord's in
the
parlor?"
"I believe I'd be lonesome
without them."
He said, "I think you're being
kind. I'm going to let
you do it, though. I'm pretty sure I'd miss them."
" 'Course you would." She
rested her cheek against
his hair.
She thought, The child knows
about this, too. Not just the
dread I feel sometimes. Not just the cold.
169
It was probably Mrs. Ames he
was thinking about. He never
said her name. One so lovely. There was a wedding picture in his study
he never
showed to her and never hid from her. Him with his collar standing up,
beside
him a pretty girl in an oldfashioned dress, one hand in the bend of his
elbow,
the other holding a bunch of roses. The big front bedroom he kept for
guests
who never came, that would be where they made the child, and where
Boughton in
his unimaginable youth had stood weeping while he prayed, touching
water to the
tiny head. Two young men in that room, one of them Jesus. One of them
hardly
knowing what to think, the other knowing, leaving it to Boughton to
find words
if he could. Well, that was a thing she did not understand. But
Boughton had
taken up that child while it was still in its blood, held it and
blessed it
from his very heart, and she did understand that. She wished she could
have
done the same for that boy at the shack, done right by him, filthy
thing that
he was, all trembling at the thought of what he was. Teddy had gone out
looking
for him, walking the empty woods alone so the boy wouldn't be afraid to
be
found. One day was all Teddy had to give to him, because he was
studying to be
a doctor, just home to check on his mother and old Boughton. Lila
couldn't go
off wandering in the cold, what with the child she was carrying. So the
boy
would be on his own.
She went up to that bedroom
with her Bible and sat in the
rocking chair by the window. There was just the faintest shadow of dust
on the
dresser, but once she noticed it, it bothered her, so she found a cloth
and
wiped it off. Now that winter had come and there wasn't much to do
outside, she
had started tending to the house a little, even though women from the
church
came in every week or two to take care of things, as they had done for
years
because he was alone, and as they still did because now they were
looking after
his wife and his child, doing all the heavy work, hoping to protect
him. But
there was always more dust, drifting down from somewhere.
170
When she told the old man that
she thought she might start
reading the Book of Job, saying it "job," which is exactly the way it
is spelled, he had all he could do to keep from laughing. He had to
wipe tears from
his eyes. He told her it was a man's name, so it was pronounced
differently,
and this made her a good deal less interested in it. But she had to
read it so
he could pretend she wasn't just making an ignorant mistake in the
first place,
though he knew perfectly well that she was. He said, "You really do
have a
way of finding the very hardest parts-- for somebody starting out. For
anybody.
That's fine. They're Scripture, too." And then he could let himself
laugh
a little, which must have been a relief.
So she meant to sit in the
rocking chair by the window with
Job open in her lap and see what she could make of it. She did why dust
fell so
evenly, more like rain than like snow, since the wind pushed snow into
drifts.
Well, the air in a good house is so still. There was the clock ticking,
steady
as could be, and time passing, and no sign of anything else happening
at all,
but then in two days there would be the shadow of dust again, any where
you
happened to look for it. She wiped it away, the room was perfect for a
little
while, and then she fell to thinking. Rocking for the sound it made,
and
thinking.
The clock struck eleven. He
always came home for lunch. If
she met him at the door he put his arms around her. If there was rain
on him he
still might not even wait to take his coat off first before he kissed
her
forehead or her cheek, and she liked the coldness and the good smell.
He never
asked her how she had spent the morning, but she told him sometimes.
Reading a
little. Thinking about things. She felt good, and the baby was moving
around
more than ever, elbows and knees. The old man would look into
171
her face for sadness or
weariness, and she would turn her
face away, since there was no telling what he might see in it, her
thoughts
being what they were. She'd been thinking that folks are their bodies.
And
bodies can't be trusted at all. Her own body was so strong with
working, for
what that was worth. She'd known from her childhood there was no use
being
scared of pain. She was always telling the old man, women have babies,
no
reason I can't do it. But they both knew things can go wrong. That's
how it is.
Then there'd be poor old Boughton again, if he could even make it up
the stairs
this time, and there'd be Jesus, still keeping His thoughts to Himself
And
she'd be thinking, Here's my body, dying on me, when I almost promised
him I
wouldn't let it happen. It might make her believe she was something
besides her
body, but what was the good of that when she'd be gone anyway and
there'd be
nothing in the world that could comfort him. She guessed she really was
married
to him, the way she hated the thought of him grieving for her. It might
even
make him give up praying. Then he'd hardly be himself anymore.
Well. There
was a man
in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and
upright,
and one that feared God, and turned away from evil. All
right. And there were born unto him seven
sons and
three daughters. But she kept thinking, What happens when
somebody isn't
herself anymore? I seem to be getting used to things I never even knew
about
just a few months ago. Not wondering what in the world I'm going to do
next,
for one thing. Maybe it'll be something the old man liked about me that
will be
gone sometime, and I won't even know what it was. She found herself
thinking
she might stay around anyway. She thought she'd always like the feel of
him,
she'd probably always like to creep into bed beside him. He didn't
seemed to
mind it.
172
That boy, never meaning to kill
his father, looking at his
hands, almost wishing he could be rid of them. Rid of himself. She'd
felt that
way, too, plenty of times. That night or morning when she was trying to
clean
away all the blood, and Doll, who probably wasn't in her right mind,
saying,
"He wasn't your pa. I'm pretty sure. Maybe a cousin or something. An
uncle, maybe." And here was his blood all over Lila's hands and her
clothes some in her hair. She had brushed a strand away from her eyes,
and it
fell back, wet and heavy. So much blood she knew he was dead, whoever
he was.
So, whoever he was, he took it with him. It died in his body. Doll
said,
"A grudge was all it come down to. They should've let me be. After all
these years."
Lila said, "What was his name?"
"Which one? There's just so
damn many of 'em." And
she gave Lila a look, puzzled and scared and tired of it all. Rolling
her eyes,
too old and spent to lift her head, still trying to settle on any sort
of plan,
what to do next.
The name of the man she was
fighting with.
"You expect me to know? There
must be a dozen of 'em.
One meaner than the next." She said, ''I'm the only ma you ever had.
You
could've just died entirely, for all they was doing for you." Lila
knew.
She remembered. But what was their name?
"There was that one-- I cut his
hamstring. Years ago. I
thought that might put an end to all the trouble he was causing me. But
it give
him a dreadful limp and his brothers got all riled up about it, so I
just had
more to worry me. His cousins. They thought they could catch me easy
enough, a
scar-faced woman with a child in hand." She laughed. "I guess it
weren't so easy after all."
The folks at that cabin?
"Don't matter. They wasn't your
folks. You was just
boarded out there." She said, "Your pa got the idea he should take
you back from me, after he'd left you behind like that. Then the whole
bunch of
'em was looking for me, whenever any of 'em could spare a little time.
Where
was they when you was just scrawny and naked? Folks like a grudge.
That's all
it comes to."
173
Lila said she wouldn't mind
knowing a name, though.
"What? You going to go looking
for 'em?"
No. No point in it.
"That's the truth. I think they
pretty well forgot
about you anyway. Me laming that fellow was what mattered to 'em.
Because he
was so young, I suppose. Well, they shouldn'ta sent him after me. It
was just
the revenge they was after. This last one never asked me where you was.
Not
that I give him much chance."
So he might have been her pa.
"He wasn't your pa. He didn't
look like him, far as I
could tell. It'd been a while. It was pretty dark." So Lila had that
blood
all over her, and it was the first time she had heard a word about her
father.
And here was Doll, probably dying. For months Lila had had a decent
room and a
job clerking in a store, and she'd been thinking just that day how good
it was
of Doll to make sure she could read and figure. Now all that was done
with. The
more she tried to wash the blood away, the more of it there was. Blood
had
soaked into the rug and stained the floor. She wished everything was
done with,
every damn thing. That she could be rid of herself. Somebody was going
to find
her like this. But there was Doll to see to. She'd ripped her other
dress into
rags before she even thought how fouled the one she was wearing was.
Oh, what
to do next. How to live through the next damned hour. That has to be
the worst
feeling there is. She hated the way she could stand just anything. It
was her
body going on. Her body, her hands remembering how Doll used to comfort
her.
She shouldn't be thinking about
any of this. Here I go,
scaring the child. She said, "Your papa's going to be coming home
pretty
soon. He just loves you so much." When she hugged her belly the child
might feel her holding it in her arms. It might feel safe. She said,
"Now,
you going to go kicking that book off my
174
lap? What's your papa going to
say about that?" She had
a child now, this morning, whatever happened. She had a husband. Maybe
loneliness was something she'd get over, sooner or later, if things
went well
enough. That night on the stoop was the first time Doll ever took her
up in her
arms, and she still remembered how good it felt. Those shy little
presents,
made of nothing. The rag baby. That shawl she could have used to keep
herself
warm at night, but she put it over Lila when she came in and only took
it away
again just before she went out the door in the dark of the morning.
Maybe she
never would have been so fierce if she hadn't been set on keeping the
child
she'd stolen. She could probably feel the life coming into the child,
sleeping
in her arms day and night. And the child could feel it , too. Now
motherhood
was forcing itself into Lila's breasts. They ached with it .
Here she was thinking again.
Well, this Job was a good man
and he had a good life and then he lost it all. And,
behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the
four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are
dead. She'd
heard of that happening, plenty of times. A wind could hit a town like
Gilead
and leave nothing behind but sticks and stumps. You'd think a man as
careful as
this Job might have had a storm cellar. It used to be that when the sky
filled
up with greenish light Doane would start looking around for a low place
where
they could lie down on the ground if the wind started getting strong. A
barn
was nothing but flying planks and nails if the wind hit it. The house
fell upon
the young men, and they are dead. Any tree could fall. The limbs would
just fly
off, even the biggest ones. There was that one time the wind came with
thunder
and rain and scared them half to death. The ground shook. There was
lightning
everywhere. Leaves and shingles and window curtains sailed over them,
falling
around them. Mellie lay on her back to watch, so Lila did, too, wiping
filthy
rain out of her
175
eyes. There were things never
meant to fly, books and shoes
and chickens and washboards, caught up in the wind as if they were
escaping at
last, at last, from having to be whatever they were. The rain was too
heavy
sometimes to let her see much, and they all complained a little
afterward about
the cold and the mud. Doane combing leaves and mud out of Marcelle's
hair with
his fingers, and both of them laughing the way they always did in those
days,
whenever things could have been worse. But for the next few days they
heard
that farms had been swept away, children and all, and for a while they
minded
Doane more than they usually did. Nobody knew what to say about sorrow
like
that. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a
flash of
lightning. She never expected to find so many things she already knew
about
written down in a book.
So Job gets all covered with
sores. Dogs licking them. That
could happen. Dogs have that notion of tending to you sometimes. Maybe
flies
do, too, for all anybody knows. Strange the story don't mention flies,
when the
man is sitting on a dung heap. She'd seen maggots in raw places on a
horse's
hide, and Doane said they were good for healing. Just the sight of them
makes
your skin crawl, though. Horses spend their whole lives trying to keep
the
flies off, flicking their tails and shivering their hides. Squinting
their
eyes. You'd think a horse would know if they were good for anything.
There were flies bothering her
that day, after Doll came to
her all bloody. You'd think the cold might have killed them, even
houseflies,
but there they were. That mess had roused them, and they were nuzzling
at the
stains on the rug, clinging to her skirt. She'd brush them away and
they'd come
right back. She had a coat that was long enough to cover the worst of
it, so
she put it on and put what money she had in her pocket and went off to
a
secondhand shop in a back street where a woman sold clothes cheap. The
sheriff
had already taken Doll away. The men that had come with him were a
while
finding a stretcher, so
176
he said, Hell with it, and
picked her up in his arms and
carried her. "She don't weigh no more than a cat," he said, and the
old woman folded her hands and seemed a little pleased with it all,
looking at
the sky.
It was still early enough that
Lila had to pound on the shop
door. She was so desperate to get out of the dress she was wearing, it
didn't
matter what she found there if she just had the money to pay for it.
And then
the woman said to her, when she had taken a look at her, tried to get a
look at
her face, So what happened? You had a baby? Lila said, No, I didn't,
and the
woman studied her sidelong, the blood on her skirt where it showed
below the
hem of her coat, on her shoes, thinking she knew better, and said,
Never mind.
None of my business. Then she handed her a dress she said looked about
right.
That'll be three dollars. Not much wear. Lila gave her the money and
one cent
more for a parched bit of soap, and was leaving, since she couldn't try
the
dress without taking off her coat. The woman said, Wait, and wrote
something on
a scrap of paper and handed it to her. She said, There's a lady in St.
Louis
takes in girls who've got trouble. You look like you could use some
help. Lila
knew what that was about, but she put it in her pocket just the same.
She
thought, I suppose now I know what's going to happen next. Not that she
could
go anywhere so long as Doll was still living. But she thought a minute
and then
she stepped back inside that shop and said, "Then how'm I supposed to
get
to St. Louis?" She generally didn't look at anybody directly, because
Doll
never did, and the woman was a little while deciding about her, but
then she
opened a cash box and gave her a ten-dollar bill. "You show me a bus
ticket, and I'll get you a suitcase, maybe a few things to put in it."
So,
Lila thought, maybe I can do old Doll a little bit of good. Maybe even
figure
some way to get Doll on a bus. lt wouldn't be stealing if she paid the
money
back. That was her thinking at the time.
177
Soon she would hear the old man
at the front door. He'd come
in smelling all clean from the cold, his cheek would be cold, and his
lips. If
she put her face against the lapel of his coat, it would be cool, but
if she
slipped her hand under it, there would be the starch of his shirt and
his
warmth and his heart beating. She'd been thinking about herself hiding
that
filthy dress under her coat the best she could, all sweaty even in the
cold,
knowing anybody who saw her would think what that woman did. Guilty of
the
saddest crime there is. Nobody surprised to know she had that scrap of
paper in
her pocket. Old shame falling to her when it had been worn to rags by
so many
women before her. She could almost forget that the shame wasn't really
hers at
all, any more than any child was hers, not even a child cast out.and
weltering
in its blood, God bless it. Well, that was a way of speaking she had
picked up
from the old man. It let you imagine you could comfort someone you
couldn't
comfort at all a child that never even had an existence to begin with. God bless it. She hoped it
would have broken
her heart if she had done what that
woman thought she had, but she was hard in those days. Maybe not so
hard that
she wouldn't have left it on a church step. How did that woman know it
wasn't
back at her room, bundled up in a towel and crying for her, waiting for
her
voice and her smell, her breast? The sound of her heart. God bless it.
And she
so desperate to give it comfort, aching to. Frightened for it, just the
sight
of so much yearning reddening a little body, darkening its face almost
blue.
Maybe that was weltering.
She told the old man she'd been
thinking about existence,
that time they were out walking, and he didn't laugh. Could she have
these
thoughts if she had never learned the word? "The mystery of
existence." From hearing him preach. He must have mentioned it at least
once a week. She wished she'd known about it sooner, or at least known
there
was a name for it. She used to be afraid she was the only one in
178
the world who couldn't make
sense of things. Why that shame
had come down on her out of nowhere. It might have been because for
once she
felt almost like somebody with something to say about herself, a girl
with such
an ordinary kind of trouble that there would be a bus ticket ready and
a
suitcase, a place to go because there was no place else to go. Knowing
what to
do next, even if it was the one thing Doll warned her against more than
any
other thing. "You think my face always looked like this?" Lila hid her
own face half the time anyway. It wasn't much to look at. What matter
if it had
a scar, too . That's how she felt then, with the paper in her pocket
and nobody
in the world but poor old Doll, who was probably dying. If the Reverend
had
seen her then, she thought. Well, she'd have crossed the street to make
sure
that didn't happen. She'd have hidden her face in her hands. And he'd
have
followed her, and he'd have taken some of the shame away just by the
way he
touched her sleeve, "Lila. If I may." Strange to imagine him there,
all those years ago, in that miserable damn place. She'd be young and
he would
not be old. He'd have on his preacher clothes, newer then, and his
shoes would
be polished for her sake, and he'd know the stain on her dress just
meant she'd
had to be kind. She wouldn't even have to tell him about it. And he'd
walk
along beside her, her hand in the crook of his arm. If only she'd known
then
what comfort was coming, she'd have spa red herself a little. You can
say to
yourself, I'm just a body that thinks and talks and seems to want its
life, one
more day of it. You don't have to know why. Well, nothing could ever
change if
your body didn't just keep you there not even knowing what it is you're
waiting
for. Not even knowing that you’re waiting at all. Just there on the
stoop in
the moonlight licking up tears.
179
She remembered how she felt
that morning that she went
walking by the jail, just to see if she could find out how Doll was
doing, and
there she was, bundled up in an Indian blanket, rocking in the chair
the
sheriff had set outside his office door for her, looking at the trees.
The wind
was taking the last few leaves. There was a little crowd of people
watching
her, since she was a curiosity, and a couple of men who were angry as
could be
to see her sitting there peaceful and at ease for all they could tell,
though
Doll never did give a stranger a sign that anything troubled her. The
sheriff
was standing on the step, talking with those men, already irritated
with them.
One of them shouted, "You ought
to be hanging
her!"
"Doubt I can do that. She don't
weigh nothing."
"Then shoot her."
The sheriff laughed. "I guess I wasn't brought up that
way. To go shooting
old women."
"Well, I'd be more than happy
to do it for you."
The sheriff said, "Now,
shooting a big fellow like you,
I wouldn't have a problem with that at all. And you're about exactly
the right
size for hanging. Fine with me either way. You might want to keep that
in
mind."
"This town is a disgrace to the
whole damn country,
that's what it is! You're a disgrace to that damn badge! I never heard
of such
a thing in my whole life! Setting a killer outside where she can rock
and watch
the world go by, like somebody's dang grandma. If that don't beat all.
And this
ain't the only crime she ever done." He glanced at Lila. "She stole
our baby girl, just took off with her. It was out of pure spite that
she done
it. We been looking for the two of them all these years."
The sheriff shrugged. "I
wouldn't know about that.
She's in enough trouble without adding to it. Just now she's gaining
strength
for her trial. Judge's orders . Gotta try her, you know. You're getting
ahead
of yourself with all this talk about hanging."
"The judge tell you not to lock
her up?"
"The judge don't give a damn."
"Well," he said, "this ain't
over. Not by a
long shot."
180
"Never said it was."
From time to time one of the
men would glance over at Lila,
though Doll never looked at her, not even when Lila went up to her and
put that
molasses cookie on her lap. She just said, "I don't know you," and
let the cookie lie there by her hand. So how those men would have known
to
watch her Lila had no idea. It might be she took after that family of
hers
she'd never heard of until a week ago. They looked at her as if they
were asking
which side she was on, and what was she supposed to do? They didn't
even bother
to tell her their names or say hello. When they decided she wasn't
going to
help them get their vengeance on Doll, maybe tell the sheriff that
she'd been
stolen by her as a child, they started looking at her with a kind of
scorn,
even laughing a little between themselves, like they couldn't believe
this was
what all the fighting had been about. It's just amazing how anybody at
all can
hurt your feelings if they want to. And she was wearing that dress
she'd bought
without even looking at it. It was tight across the shoulders. It had
red
pockets like hearts, with ruffles around them, and it was checked like
a
tablecloth. She kept her coat on, but still. Why you should have to
stand there
feeling ridiculous with a bloodstain still on your shoe, just at the
time when
other people are out to insult you, and not one part of it is your
fault or
your choice, that's the kind of thing she didn't understand. Because
you do it
to yourself. Why should she have cared for one minute what those people
thought
of her? Or cared that they never so much as spoke to her. She
remembered a hot
blush of something like anger, but more like damned old shame.
Then they came back, them and
two others carrying a pine
box, and set it down on the street right in front of where Doll was
sitting.
They took off the lid so the sheriff and all of them could see what was
inside,
that old man, bundled up in a sheet, just as pale as the moon. And one
of them
looked right at
181
Lila when he said, "You see
what she done to him. She
bled him like a hog." Doll just kept on rocking, looking at the trees.
Lila did glance into the box, since everybody else did and she didn't
want to
stand out. To keep her from drawing attention-that must have been why
Doll
acted like she'd never even seen her before, wouldn't meet her eyes.
Somebody
might notice. A grudge can pass from one person to the next just
because it
hasn't burned itself out yet. So you don't want to stand too close to
it. None
of it needs to make any sense. And Lila did have that knife, and now
she meant
to keep it. The dead man's lips were white as could be. So was the arch
o f his
nose. It was a picture that stayed in her mind forever, no matter what,
with
the thought that he was her father, though that was more than she knew.
With
another thought, too, that maybe the grudge had meant more to Doll than
the
fact that he was Lila's father, and she didn't meet her eyes because
she was
ashamed to. Ah, well.
But there he was, in that box
lying in the road, with those
men sort of swaggering where they stood, shifting their weight,
threatening by
the way they kept their arms folded. The sheriff said, "He's dead, all
right. You got a point there. Now I believe he has a train to catch."
Doll's head didn't even reach the top of the chair, but there she was,
proud in
her captivity like some old Indian chief, and it was clear that the
sheriff
sort of took to her. He said, "When we set a date for the trial, you
will
be notified by mail." So the men knew they might as well close up the
box.
They carried it away to ship it home, wherever that was, to let the old
man
rest among his kin, whoever they were. Doll glanced after them once,
and then
she closed her eyes. When that woman at the house in St. Louis asked
Lila what
she would call herself, since none of them used their own names, she
said,
"Doll, I guess," and the woman snorted, which is how she laughed. She
said, "We already got a Doll. Had two of them till a couple months ago.
The one ran off with
182
some salesman. She'll be back
pretty soon. Think she'd have
better sense. So you ain't Doll. We don't have no Rose just now. Put a
little
henna in your hair-- Rose'll do. Ruby. We'll think of something." Her
knuckles were big, and her rings hung loose on the bones of her
fingers. She
was always turning them up the way they were supposed to be, and they
wouldn't
stay because of the weight of the stones. Bright red, bright green, big
as
gumdrops. Lila and Mellie used to keep bits of broken glass they found
in the
road sometimes, and they called them jewels. Why was she thinking about
any of
this? She was so scared that day, in that parlor with the drapes closed
at noon
and that damn credenza with the vase of dusty feathers sitting on it.
Looking
like a coffin. There was a stirring under her heart, so she said to the
child,
"I won't breathe a word to you about that place, but I guess you might
know anyway. Because that fear has never left my body, has just hidden
in it,
waiting. You might feel it, down in your poor little bones. God bless
'em."
She heard the Reverend at the
door, and she went down to
meet him. He was smiling up at her as if he still hadn't gotten over
the
surprise of finding her, his wife, lowering herself down the stairs,
with her
hand on her belly so he would know she was being careful for the
child's sake.
And then his arms around her and his cheek against her hair. "So," he
said, "how are you two?"
"Fine, I guess. We pretty much
wasted the morning,
daydreaming. I keep trying to read the Bible, but my mind goes
wandering off.
You wouldn't want to know where. The things I find myself thinking
about, with
the Bible right there in my lap."
"Well," he said, "you know I'm
always
interested. If there's anythng you want to talk about." He hung up his
hat
and his coat.
"One thing. Do you think the
child knows what I'm
thinking? I mean, by the way it makes me feel? Do you think it might
get scared
or something? Sad? Because I do worry about that. Now and then."
183
He searched her face, abruptly
serious.
"You don't know nothing about
me," she said,
because that was what he was trying not to think. "I got feelings I
don't
know the names for. There probly ain't any names. Probly nobody else
ever had
'em. I tell you what, I wouldn't wish 'em on a snake."
"Well," he said. He cleared his
throat. "Is
there something I can do?"
"No. You haven't even ate your
lunch yet."
He shrugged. "Lunch can wait."
Then he made his
voice just as gentle as he could. "Lila, I know I've said this any
number
of times. But people do talk to me. About all sorts of things.
Sometimes it
helps. At least that's what they tell me."
She said, "Then for the rest of
their life you're gonna
think about it. Every time you look at them. Hear their name even."
"True."
"Well, I spose it would have to
be true, wouldn't it.
The worse it was, the more you'd remember. Maybe I don't want you
looking at me
that way."
"Fine," he said. "Whatever you
say."
"I don't know how those people
go on living in the same
town with you."
"A few of them do leave the
church. Maybe because
they've told me more than they meant to. I've suspected that was part
of it. In
some cases."
She said, "Now you're looking
at me. Probly thinking
it's worse than it is. Maybe it couldn't even be no worse."
He laughed. "I don't know how
this happened. I hardly
even step through the door and I seem to be in a whole world of
trouble."
"Well," she said, "I ain't
going to talk
about it. I'm going to make you a sandwich."
184
"That's wonderful." He sat down
at the table and
picked up the newspaper he had read at breakfast. He glanced over it a
little.
Then he said, "I like to look at you, Lila. Lila my wife. There's a lot
of
pleasure in it for me. Of course I also like to talk with you."
"Well, that's probly because I
never tell you
nothing." She thought, Anything. I can talk better than this. I guess I
just don't want to.
"You've told me a couple of
things. I don't think
either one of us is any the worse for it."
She almost said, There was a
man. Why did she feel so mean sometimes?
He would say, Well, yes, of course I assumed. Well, of course I knew--
and he'd
blush because he'd said that. There would be tears in his eyes, the
poor old
devil. What else could he say? He went and married her, and now he has
to make
the best of it. But she felt those words in her mouth and her heart was
thumping. And she could have said something else. Probably worse. There
was a
child. She never did lie to him and he knew it, so there were things
she had to
be sure not to tell him, things she could never say. She wanted to rest
her
head on his shoulder, but he was looking through the paper again. She
could
pull a chair up next to him and he'd probably put his arm around her.
So she
came and stood beside him, against him, and touched his hair. She said,
"I
never even thought of telling anybody what was on my mind, all those
years. Not
Doll, not any of 'em. I don't even think I knew people did that."
"Have I told you everything
about myself? I suppose I
have. Not much to tell, really."
She said, "Well, you never told
me what you're scared
of. There must be something, with all the praying you do."
He laughed. "You can probably
guess." He glanced
up at her. "I'm afraid to death some fine young man you knew once will
show up at the door and you'll pack your bag. Just the things you
brought with
you. And you'll leave a note for me that says, Goodbye, Reverend. I
won't be
coming back."
185
"Will I take your mama's locket
when I go?"
"No. But you'll have to ask the
young man to help you
undo the clasp. Then when I see it there, I'll know. That you' d left
with
somebody."
She shook her head. "Most
likely I'd take it."
He said, "I'd be grateful if
you did."
"Well, I believe you would.
You're just the strangest
man. I guess this better all happen after the baby comes?"
"I suppose so."
"It would have to. I never knew
a man who would want to
take on another man's child like that. I mean, before it was even born.
Then I
guess he'd make me leave it here anyway."
"I hope he would. I mean, I
hope you would let me keep
it. I'd work something out, hire a woman to take care of it. People
would help.
We'd be all right."
After a minute she said, "Well,
I never made you that
sandwich."
But she sat down at the table
across from him. He met her
eyes. "You sure been thinking about this." She heard her voice break.
He said, "I have to believe I
wouldn't die of it. For
the child's sake. And for yours, if you ever wanted to come back. But I
do feel
that a child should have a living father, if the old codger can manage
it.
Someone to fall back on. As long as possible." He shrugged. "I think
through things. It calms me. Otherwise I don't react as well as I could
have.
As I would have wanted to."
They'd been married a year, no,
almost a year and a half,
and he was still just as lonely as ever, and that scared her. So she
said,
"It's nice you think some man somewhere's going to bother to come
looking
for me. No chance of that happening, Reverend. You got me all to
yourself. If
that's what you want."
He said, "I guess I want it too
much to believe I have
it."
186
She said, "I feel the same way,
pretty much."
He nodded. "That's good to
know."
"I never thought I'd be living
in a house like this,
that's for sure. I mean a house where I was the wife and anybody cared
if I
stayed or left."
He nodded. "I hope sometime
you'll feel-- a little more
at home, Lila. I hope sometime you'll move things around a little in
here.
These old pictures my mother put up-- I probably haven't looked at some
of them
in fifty years. Most of them she just cut out of magazines. Well, you
can see
that, the way they've faded. My grandfather made the frames for them. I
think
it was mainly a way she had of keeping him out of her kitchen. He
always wanted
to be doing something. My point is that things don't have to stay the
way they
are. If you want to change them."
She said, "You ever heard of a
credenza?"
He laughed. "A credenza. I've
seen the word somewhere,
I suppose. I'm not quite sure I know what one is."
"Well, I'm glad if you don't."
He nodded. "Happy to oblige."
"That's one thing I don't ever
want around here."
"It might be hard to find one
in Iowa. So that's
good." He said, "Because this is your house, Lila, no credenza will
ever come under its roof!"
"Now you're laughing at me."
"I've made a solemn promise! I
gave you my word. I've
never been more serious." He was at the cupboard, rummaging.
"Sometimes I just laugh because I'm surprised. But I'd better have a
little lunch. I get cranky on an empty stomach. Can't risk
disheartening some
poor sinner. You never know when one might wander in. Just a peanut
butter and
jelly sandwich will make me worthier of my calling. Till supper anyway."
"I was going to do that, then
we got talking."
187
"I'm glad we got talking. I'm
always glad when we talk.
I have so much to learn. Here I could have wandered in someday with a
credenza,
meaning no harm-" Then he looked at her. "I'm sorry!"
"It don't matter." She had put
her hands to her
face. "I was just thinking."
He stood looking at her. "Well,
why don't you come down
to the church with me. It's quiet today. Some people are coming from
Des Moines
to talk with me about a funeral. I didn't really know the fellow, he
just
happened to die here, and I have to have something to say about him.
But you
could wait for me in the sanctuary. Do your thinking there."
She shook her head. "It ain't
that kind of
thinking." She said, "It's on my mind now, so I might as well get it
done with. It's so different here it makes me remember other places I
been. I
guess I have to do that. Sort things out a little. Seems like I don't
even know
myself, everything's so different."
"Yes. Well, as soon as I can
get away I'll be home.
Unless you want the afternoon to yourself."
"I'll come to find you like I
always do."
"All right." He kissed her
forehead. "Five
o'clock, then."
It came over her, before he had
even closed the door behind
him, the thought of that house in St. Louis. It was just pure misery.
Misery
must have been what she was looking for, because she felt it the minute
she
walked in that door. The twilight of the parlor made her feel as if she
had
stepped into deep water with her eyes open. Breathing came hard and
sound
reached her a heartbeat after she should have heard it. She could
hardly speak.
Nothing was the way it was-in daylight, but the place had its own ways
and you
got used to them. Like death, if something comes after it. That first
day there
were girls fighting over a hairbrush. Mrs. got up from her chair and
went and
took the brush away from them and put it in the credenza. When they saw
her
coming they shrank away from her, watching her.
188
"Now," she said when she came
back to Lila,
"you get a safe place to live, so long as you act right. Any trouble
and
you're gone. I don't like drinking or yelling. I don't want you out on
the
street. This is a respectable house. Quiet. Our gentlemen like it that
way." She called them gentlemen. And the girls were supposed to be
ladies.
But they were always fighting
over something, a pair of
shoes or a scrap of ribbon. And Mrs. would be slapping or pulling hair.
The
gentlemen brought in liquor, so they didn't have to steal it out of the
cabinet
unless they just wanted to. Mrs. went off sometimes to visit her sister
and
left the woman they called Peg in charge, and she'd let them drink if
they let
her boss them around a little. Then they'd fight over nothing at all,
and cry
for their mothers, and say they were going to leave that place and that
life
and never look back, and the gentlemen would say, "Sure you will,
sugar.
Just not tonight." But they never opened the shades or stepped out the
door, and they never touched the credenza. Then they were glad when
Mrs. came
back. She'd yell at them for their cheap carousing and say she was
going to
toss them all out, and she'd add what she said was the cost of the
liquor to
the amount of money she said they all owed her already, and they'd just
be glad
she was back anyway, and they'd be so quiet and so careful to mind her
that she
had to calm down sometime. They'd be begging her to let them brush out
her
hair. A few of them had lived there since they were almost children,
one or two
of them probably feeble-minded. And two or three of them were just like
Lila,
no better and no worse. All crowded into two rooms, sleeping on cots so
that
the other rooms stayed nice for entertaining.
If
one of them got
sick they'd all get sick, or say they were, and Mrs. would close every
blind
and turn off every light, so the gentlemen would know they couldn't
have
company, she said, but really to make
189
everything miserable enough to
get back at them if they ever
dared pretend. When a house is shut up like that in the middle of a
summer day
the light that comes in through any crack is as sharp as a blade. And
there
would be a pot of potato soup simmering from morning to night, and the
steam
from it would bring out the tobacco smells and the sour old liquor
smells in
the rugs and the couches and the drapes. And she'd put the poker deck
and the
checkerboard in that damned credenza, and anything else that could help
the
time pass. Not that they could have seen the spots on the cards, dark
as it
was. In a day or two they'd start saying they were better, and could
they open
a window a crack. Just the darkness made some of them cry. Then when
she had
turned on some lights and opened a window or two and they had put the
place to
rights, she would open the credenza and pass out the things she had put
in it,
the darning egg and the harmonica, and they'd be happy to have them
back, as if
she had done them a kindness. That credenza was the shape of a coffin,
with
little legs on it, and flowers of lighter-colored wood on the front of
it, some
of them peeling off, some of them gone, just the glue left. It was
always
locked. Any one of the girls could have figured a way to break into it,
but
they never did. One time Mrs. found some letters that belonged to the
girl they
called Sal and locked them up, for safekeeping, she said. That girl was
begging
for them until finally she just gave up, and that was when Mrs. got
around to
letting her have them back for a while. Lila had hidden her knife in a
gap
between boards in a closet floor. There were boxes stacked in that
corner and
the knife was underneath them, so she thought it was safe. Mrs. had
nothing
that mattered to take from her, nothing of hers to lock away.
Lila was called Rosie because
no one else was Rosie, and the
pink dress fit her well enough. Sal and Tilly showed her how to tie her
hair up
in rags so it would curl. They rinsed it with henna first. Mrs. charged
190
her a quarter for the henna and
five dollars for a pair of
pink high-heeled shoes that were half worn out but she'd never find any
cheaper. She could pay a couple dollars a week for the dress. Buying it
would
put her too far in debt, but she could rent it. So she was seven and a
quarter
dollars behind already, sitting there with her hair in rags and them
about to
punch holes in her ears with a darning needle. Then there was room and
board,
but that could wait till she'd made her start Mrs. said. Once you're
bringing
in some regulars. Lila was just listening to all this, trying not to do
the
arithmetic. She should have walked out right then, but the other girls
stayed
there and put up with it, the damn credenza and the ugly gentlemen and
all of
it. After a while she was one of the older girls, and when a young one
came to
her all upset, she would say just what they all said, Don't you come
crying to
me and What did you expect when you come here? Then Lila would be
patting the
girl's hands or putting her hair in pin curls just to quiet her down.
When they
weren't working or fighting they were usually setting each other's hair.
That one day Mrs. asked her,
"Do you have any little
treasures you want to keep safe? Anything you want to give me?"
And Lila said, "I got a knife.
That's the only thing. I
been wanting to give you my knife." The words were just there, and she
said them, and she meant them, too.
"Bring it to me. Let me keep it
for you, dear. We don't
want a knife lying around the house."
So Lila went to the closet and
found it still hidden there
and took it and handed it over, amazed as she did it, thinking, This is
it. I'm
here now. This is the life I'm going to have. Mrs. just looked at it
lying
there in her hand like it was an ugly thing, so Lila said, "Somebody
killed my father with it." And then, because she didn't want to lie to
the
woman, she said, "He might've been my father." Mrs. smiled a little.
She said, "I see." And Lila watched her lock it away. Well, she's got
me now. And what sense did that make. But she felt that way, and it
gave her a
kind of ease.
191
Standing right there by the
credenza , with the key still in
her hand, Mrs. looked Lila over like she'd never seen her before and
said,
"You ain't a pretty girl, but you might try smiling, Rosie."
"Yes, ma'am. Yes, I will."
Talking to her like
that, calling her ma'am. It was a thing Lila blushed to remember, how
much she
was giving that woman. Doll's knife. But why shouldn't she stop being
Lila Dahl
and take another made-up name and let herself be glad there was someone
telling
her what to do every minute, no matter if she hated it. She could smile
if she
had to. People smile. When she was trying on that pink dress, Mrs. had
the girl
Lucy come in and pick up the dress she'd been wearing and her shoes and
leave
her an old flannel nightgown. Lucy said, "I guess you won't be going
nowheres now." Lila blushed to remember how hurt she was that Mrs.
thought
she might run off. She'd thought, Now I gave her my knife, she's got it
locked
up, the one thing in the world I had that was mine. And she was glad
that she'd
given it up, that Mrs. didn't have to find it and take it from her the
way she
did that girl's letters. Lila had tried to think of anything else she
could
give her. As soon as she started earning a little money. My locket.
What was
she thinking? It was the old man's locket. She didn't even have it yet
when she
lived in that house. But if she had-- she blushed at the thought that
she'd
have asked for her help with the clasp, and that she'd have been glad
to feel
her lift it from her neck, to see it lying in that claw of a hand. She
loved it
that much. Lila said out loud, "You poor child, your mother is a crazy
woman."
192
The dress they gave her to wear
had net under the skirt of
it, like tiny little chicken wire, and the top just covered what it had
to, and
the rest was bare. Then those pink shoes she could hardly walk in. Peg
would
sing, You're all dressed up to go dreaming, and laugh, which was a mean
thing
to do because some of them just loved that song. It was bare feet and a
raggedy
old nightgown, except when there were gentlemen. Mrs. never even looked
at her.
She treated her like she was nothing at all. Lila tried smiling.
They'd be dressed up the best
they could and dancing to the
Victrola when the gentlemen started coming in, one uglier than the
next, but
all of them feeling rich because they could pay for an evening. There
was one
the girls were scared of because he was always drunk and mad and
telling them
he'd see to it that they all died in jail, telling them that he'd had
his
wallet stolen one time and when he figured out who'd done it he swore
he would
beat her within an inch of her life. Mrs. never made him go away. Ten
dollars
meant that much to her. It was the other gentlemen who put him out the
door if
anybody did, because some of them liked a little talk.
How could she tell the old man
about things she didn't
understand herself? First there was Doll saying, I don't know you, and
then
there was that box with somebody in it that could have been her father,
and all
those cousins or whatever they were turning their backs on her, as if a
bad
joke had been played on them that she wasn't any more than she was. And
then
looking for Doll everywhere, creeping down through cellar doors, even,
hoping
she might be out of the weather, then walking out into the cornfields
where a
person could hide or be lost till the buzzards found them.
There was one man they called
Mack. He didn't have much of
anything wrong with him, but he liked to come by, and the girls liked
to have
him there because he teased them and brought them chocolates and they
thought
he looked like a man you might want around even if he wasn't paying. He
was
always
193
laughing or about to laugh, and
it didn't matter if there
was something a little mean about the way he did it. He was a
workingman, you
could tell, but he knew some ballroom dancing, the waltz and the fox
trot, so
they'd put the Victrola on and he'd dance with every one of them, even
with
Lila. The parlor wasn't big enough for more than three couples, but
they'd.
push the chairs back and dance themselves winded. Sal said once, "This
is
what it sposed to be like!" They
all loved Mack, but he favored one girl, the short, plump one they
called
Missy. And after a while he'd start up the stairs and she'd go tagging
after
him, because that's how it was.
Lila was horribly in love with
that man. You can't go on
forever thinking about nothing at all, and he had a nice face and that
laugh,
and what harm was there in it since she could hardly even bring herself
to look
at him. But he could tell somehow, and he started teasing her about it.
Rosie,
Rosie, give me a smile, he would say, and she couldn't do that at all
because
she just wanted to hide her face. Rosie, give me a peck on the cheek,
just a
little one, making a joke of her when he was the only thing she cared
about in
this world and he seemed to know it. When just a few gentlemen came,
Lila was
always left sitting, and if Mack saw her there he'd say, "Rosie here is
the kind of girl a man could want to marry. There are good-time girls
and there
are girls you' d want to take home."
Missy would say, "Why, she's
tough as a mule. I guess
you might take her home if you needed some plowing done."
And he'd say, "A man wants a
girl the other fellas
ain't gonna come hankering after."
And she'd say, "Well, I guess
that's old Rosie, all
right. There's nobody comes hankering, that's for sure."
But it made Missy jealous that
he said those things. Once,
she flew at Lila for nothing and pulled her hair all this way and that
so the
pins fell out and the other girls laughed as if it was something they'd
been
wanting to do themselves and hadn't gotten around to it yet.
194
Lila never knew people could be
so mean. She was mean, too,
because the sadness in that house was like a dream that made everything
strange
and wrong. Mack could run his finger along her cheek and she would feel
the
warmth rising to follow it. He would touch her neck sometimes, and it
would
make the tears come every single time he did it, no matter who else was
watching. It was terrible, and it was mostly what she lived for. The
other
girls laughed at her, and they were jealous because he paid even that
kind of
attention to her. So she made a kind of plan. There was an old man who
was
supposed to come before sunrise to stoke the coal furnace. Sometimes he
did,
and sometimes he just wandered in when he felt like it. There was
nothing any
of them hated more than getting up to a cold house. Lila liked that
kind of
work a lot better than what she'd been doing, or trying to do. She owed
Mrs.
more money by the day, and she couldn't think of any other reason she
was kept
on, except to make everybody else feel like they were better. She
couldn't walk
in those damn shoes and she couldn't keep "that look" off her face. A
couple of times Mrs. slapped her for it, but that didn't help. Once,
Mack
touched her tears with the tip of his finger and then touched the wet
to her
lips. "She's a sweet girl, Missy. See that? Like a little child." She
couldn't look at him. She couldn't even breathe. And there he was
watching her,
smiling.
So the next morning she went
down cellar in her nightgown
and bare feet, and stood there in the darkest dark with her back to the
furnace
for the warmth. If she stoked it too early, Mrs. would be after her for
the
coal she wasted, and if she waited too long, the old man might come to
do it.
If he did come she decided she'd shake the shovel at him a little and
he'd
probably run off the best he could, scrawny as he was. Mrs. had to pay
him
something, but Lila would be working off a debt, so Mrs. would see it
was best
to let her have her way. Then she'd scrub down the kitchen, which
needed it
something terrible. It was high time somebody beat those rugs.
195
Just standing there in the dark
felt so good to her. She'd
get all black and filthy with the coal dust, and when she came upstairs
who
knew what they would say, and that was all right, because she had this
time to
be quiet with herself. How long had it been. She was standing there,
leaning
against the warmth with her eyes closed, and she began to have bright
dreams
about waking up before dawn with Doll's arm for a pillow and the sound
of a
fire and Doane talking with whoever else was awake first. It was always
Doane
who got the fire going, and then Arthur would start the coffee when
they had
it. And Doll coaxed her awake. They would fry whatever there was, the
light
coming up and the birds singing. Dew on everything, beaded on cobwebs
so it
fell like a little rain when you broke one. Then Doll looked at her and
said,
"You're standing in a coal hole." No, Lila must have said that. She'd
started talking to herself and they teased her about it. She knew
nothing about
anything but fieldwork and making change. And housekeeping, from the
time in
Tammany. When she lived in that town where they didn't hang Doll and
she worked
in the store, sometimes she would walk out at night, because then you
can see
into people's houses. The accounts always came out just right when she
was
working there, never a penny short. She was saving up a little money.
There was
nothing wrong with working indoors when a place was as clean as that
and
smelled so good. Ham and coffee and cheese and apples and flour. Spools
of
ribbon and bolts of pretty cloth. She'd watch how the women were
dressed and
what they did with their hair, listen to the way they talked. She'd
really
wanted to know those things. Well, she'd been learning some things
lately,
that's for sure.
"You're standing there in the
dark in a filthy old cellar."
196
I like it down here. That was
her talking to herself again.
I ain't cut out for this life.
Doll said, "I tried to tell you
about it. Didn't I tell
you?"
No, you didn't. Just to stay
away from whorehouses. Just
that you got that scar. Any way, I had a decent job, and then you come
bleeding
all over everything, fouling the place.
She nodded. "I shoulda give
that more thought. But
where's my knife? Why you let that woman have my knife?"
It's the only thing I had to
give her.
That don't make sense. Lila was
the one who said that. But
Doll would have said it. If Lila had had the knife and a gold watch and
chain,
she'd have handed them all to that woman, seen them lying there in her
hand and
wished there was something else to give her. It was a bitter sorrow to
her that
Mrs. hardly even bothered with her anymore. Never smeared rouge on her
face or
told her she might try smiling. The gentlemen come here for a good
time. You
look at them like you hate them.
She hated them, for a fact.
They were the worst part of the
whole damn situation. It was them that made her think sometimes she'd
like to
have that knife back. No, because she couldn't go anywhere so long as
it was
locked away. Safekeeping. There was a picture in there of Peg's sister,
and
Mrs. only let her look at it once in a while. She'd say, Peg, I was
going to
let you look at that photo, but the way you been acting lately-- Then there would be
Please, and I'm sorry,
and I won't do it again if you just tell me what it was I done, and
Mrs. would
say, Like you don't know! Next time I'll just toss it in the fire.
Begging only
worked sometimes, not quite never, but they did it anyway, till she
slapped
them for it.
Lila said, "I never knew there
was such a place."
197
And Doll said, "Didn't I warn
you." No, you
didn't. But I guess you must have told me something. How else did I
know to
come here to just purely hate my life, hate everything about it,my damn
body,
my damn face, the damn misery in my heart because I got nothing to care
about.
How did that Mack get in there to devil me the way he does, when I
never meant
him one bit of harm? She thought, If I could hate him, too, that would
make
things easier. Nothing was supposed to be easier, she knew that. Once,
when
Mrs. was gone, somebody left a door unlocked and a preacher got in. He
said a
word or two about hell before they pushed him back out. She'd heard
about it
before anyway, at a camp meeting. Maybe that's how she knew to come
here,
thinking it might be where she belonged. But it was taking so long.
Worse every
day, because it was the same every day. It wasn't the end of anything.
And she
was beginning to think now and then about sunshine, and the smell of
the air.
Trees. She thought, I'm just doing that to devil myself
Well, she better start
shoveling the coal. She was only used
to a wood fire. So she'd have to be careful not to put too much in too
fast.
Stir the coals and then build up the fire so she could see what she was
doing.
She knew a boiler could burst if something happened, it got too hot or
heated
up too fast. Then the coals would fly everywhere and the whole damn
house would
burn down, probably. She could fill it up, leaving just enough room for
her to
crawl in after and close the door. Boom! She'd go flying, a flaming
piece of
her right into that girl's face, that Peg, and another one into Rita's
lap,
where she was always picking at her fingernails until they were bloody,
and
another one into the room where they kept the dress-up clothes when the
gentlemen weren't around. And Mack would see her, all fire like that,
and he'd
probably be laughing, thinking he'd done it. He'd touch her cheek and
the fire
would come away on his hand and he'd probably just lick it off He'd
say, Now,
that's the kind of girl a man would marry! Telling that damn lie again
just to
see 1f she could burn any hotter than fire.
198
Doll said, "You're standing
here in a cellar, barefoot
in the dark, talking to yourself This ain't how I brought you up."
Lila said, I got that plan
about working around the place.
"You know how I got this scar?
A girl just as crazy as
you're getting to be heated up an iron skillet as hot as she could make
it, and
then when I come in the kitchen she hit me with it. Broke the bone in
my cheek
and who knows what all. I was as good as dead for a long time, and when
I woke
up, I had this face for the rest of my life."
Lila thought, How do I know
that? Did she tell me sometime?
"You was a sickly child, and I
told you old stories
because my voice was a comfort to you. You remember."
I'm talking to myself Seeing
things in the dark. Slipping
away. Maybe it don't matter.
Doll said, "Well, I tell you
what. If I was still
living I wouldn't waste it standing around in no cellar wishing I was
dead. You
sure never learned that from me. I'm surprised you can hold up your
head."
Most times I can't.
Do it anyway. That was her way
of speaking.
There she was, missing Doll
again. For so many years she had
belonged to somebody. The cow and her calf. That was all right, because
Doll
wanted her there beside her. The way they used to laugh together, half
the joke
being that nobody else would know what the joke was. Now here she had
this
preacher, maybe the kindest man in the world, and no idea what to do
with him.
And here she had his baby, and what did she know about bringing up his
child?
She was reading the Bible, thinking she might understand what he was
talking
about sometimes, what he and old Boughton were laughing about, arguing
over,
but
199
her mind would go off on its
own and she'd be back in the
cellar, farther away than ever. Or she'd be slipping off with that
child in her
arms, and she'd be whispering right in her ear, her cheek against the
child's
hair, telling her what there was growing by the road that was good to
eat and
what was good to heal a sore, and they'd be whispering and laughing
together
when they found a way to get out of the rain, singing old songs
together, the
ones everybody knew that still felt like secrets when you taught them
to a
child. Sometime they'll begin singing, and these are the words, you
know them,
too. Shall we gather at the river.
She had thought about all that,
stealing off with a child,
in the house in St. Louis. She came up. out of the cellar that first
morning
and went straight to the kitchen, filthy as she was, and began
scrubbing.
Everything was greasy, and there was food scorched onto the pots and
pans so
they gave off smoke every time they were put on the stove. Everything
was dusky
with old smoke. Mice in the pantry. Mrs. came in and watched what she
was doing
for a minute or two. Lila saw that shrewd look on her face she expected
to see,
as if the whole thing were her idea. A cleaning woman came in now and
then and
wiped up just a little, since Mrs. hardly paid her anything at all. But
Lila
was working off a debt, so there was still a savings for her, small as
it was.
"The floor needs mopping," Mrs. said, which meant what Lila was doing
was all right with her. After a few days she decided to look around in
the
closets and drawers to find her own dress, and then she could go
outside to
beat the rugs. It made things nicer, so there was pleasure in it.
She hadn't been at that kind of
work more than a month
before she heard them saying Missy was going to have a baby. "She's so
fat
she didn't know it herself." Laughing, of course. "She was bawling
all day yesterday, Mrs. is so mad at her. She don't want to tell where
her
sister is, so Mrs. got to get rid of it, and she don't like that one
bit!"
200
"I guess we won't be seeing
Mack around for a
while."
"She'll just take it to the
nuns is all."
"You ever see one of them nuns?
I never did."
"Best not to wonder about it.
There used to be an old
man come around in the middle of the night."
"And then he took 'em to the
nuns."
“Can't say he didn't. I
wouldn't bet no money on it,
though."
What else he going to do with a
baby, fool?"
"Well, you going to believe
what you want to believe,
fool."
And the other girl started
crying. No end to the meanness.
That was when Lila started
thinking she might just steal a
child for herself Nobody would mind. She could pick it up and walk out
the door
with it, for all they cared. Just so long as she waited til dark. And
left
through the back door. People don't like to think about babies coming
out of a
house like that so she' d be careful and wait till the street was
empty. The
gentlemen didn t want to hear one word about babies. But that would
just make
everything easier. Mrs. would think it was her own idea. It would save
her
trouble, maybe a little money. So that would make up for most of
whatever Lila still
owed her. And the child would never be an orphan, because Lila would
always be
there looking after it, keeping it beside her. No tangled hair, no
rickety
legs. No cussing. She could hardly even sleep nights for the thought of
it.
She'd be out in the weather again, hugging a baby under her coat,
watching for
the minute that child would laugh, watching it play with a milkweed
pod, a bit
of string. Don t take much to please a child, if that's what you want
to do. If
Missy ever happened to find out what had come of her, she would be glad
Lila
took her, because Lila would show her every good thing she could think
of,
everything Doll had shown her. She would teach her how to get by. There
was
nothing so hard about it if you could read a little and you knew how to
make
change. All at once Lila was only there at that house waiting to
201
leave it, waiting to take a
child out into the good, cold
night and show it the moon and the stars. Or out into the rain. It
wouldn't
matter. All at once it was only the child that mattered to her, and all
that
sadness and meanness wasn't her life at all. She could just walk away
from it,
taking with her one thing that would be worth the very worst of it. The
surprise of it all made her laugh. She thought, Well, when was the last
time I
did that?
Lila had thought about what it
might be like having a child
of her own, but it never happened. Something must have gone wrong
sometime and
her body just wouldn't do it. Maybe that was what came of being a
feeble child
herself, that her body didn't wish that kind of life on anyone else. Or
it
could have been all the hard work. Once, in the old days, Mellie had
gotten
very curious about Arthur's boy Deke, so Lila was, too. Doane told him
to stop
bothering those girls, which really meant those girls should stop
bothering
him. When Doll found out what they'd been up to, she told them they
were asking
for a world of trouble messing around with boys. By then Mellie had
found out
whatever it was she wanted to know and had gone on to something else,
trying to
play an old fiddle somebody gave her. It had taken Lila a little
longer. But no
trouble had come of it for either one of them, maybe because Doane had
put an
end to it, maybe because Lila, at least, couldn't have that kind of
trouble if
she wanted to.
No matter. There was another
way to get a child. If it
happened to be one nobody else wanted around, then it was a good thing
to take
it up, tend to it. Who could know that better than she did. At the time
she was
thinking about this, making her plan, she'd had no idea there was
anything
about that written down anywhere. All she knew about the Bible was what
she
heard at the revival meetings she went to sometimes, in those days
after Doll
told her to go out on her own and live as she could, and she was so
202
lonely that the crowds and the
singing were a comfort to
her. The preaching and praying were just something she put up with
because she
liked the rest of it. The best time to get a bag of popcorn. At one of
those
meetings she met a couple of girls who were on their own, too, and the
three of
them wandered around together for a while, looking for work, finding it
sometimes, sharing what they had, going to the matinee, to the dance
hall.
There was a lonely kind of excitement about it because they knew it
would only
last for a while. Then one of them took up with a fellow and married
him, the
other one got a job working nights in a bakery, and Lila started
clerking in a
store. Things worked out more or less the way they had hoped, and that
was the
end of that.
Doll must have been following
her from place to place
somehow, even though Lila didn't know herself where she would be from
one day
to the next. Doll wouldn't have wanted Lila to see her panhandling, but
it was
hard to think how else she'd have been getting by. It might just have
happened
that Doll was in that town and saw her there, and watched to see where
she
lived. And it might just have happened that Doll and that old fellow
had their
knife fight there, close enough to Lila's room that Doll could come to
her when
she had to. It could have been that the man, maybe her father, meant to
find
Lila, and Doll threw her husk of a body and her dreadful knife into
making sure
that didn't happen. What might he have said to her, to Lila? She could
only
imagine him white as he was in that box, whiter at the bone of his
nose. He'd
stand there all slack in his joints like a zombie, stupefied by how
dead he
was, mumbling a little, and she would feel so sorry and so relieved
that he
couldn't tell her what it was he came to tell her. Things like that
happen in
movies. That was probably where she got the idea. He might have wanted
to tell
her that he and her poor dear mother hadn't meant to leave her long,
but
something happened.
203
They were on the way to find
her, and-what could he say?--
the train went off a cliff and all their arms and legs were broken, and
when
they came to, they didn't even know their own names. Years in the
hospital. And
while he was telling her some such thmg Doll would come flying out of
nowhere
to cut him one more time. No wonder her thoughts were strange,
considering what
she had to think about.
But as long as the one thing on
her mind was Missy's baby,
she was just plain happy. The best of everything she remembered became
the whole
dream of what she could look forward to. So when the memory of some
pleasant
day she had put out of sight came back to her, even the taste of a
clover
blossom or the smell of the wind at evening, the pleasure of it was a
sort of
shock, and if she forgot that she shouldn't be talking out loud, she'd
say,
"Yes, yes," as if time could be coaxed into getting on with itself.
She made a little garden out behind the house, a row of peas and a row
of
carrots, and planted some marigolds by the front steps. There wasn't
really
enough sunshine, the binldings were so close, but she wanted the feel
of real
dirt on her hands, not just the grime and mess she was always dealing
with. The
dirt would clean away the feeling and the smell of it. She walked a
long way to
find a store that sold seeds, the farthest she had been from Mrs. since
she
came there. It made her light-headed. Mrs. had begun talking about
attracting a
better class of customer now that the place had a little polish, and
she mostly
let Lila do whatever she wanted, pretending she was the one who had
thought of
it. The other girls wouldn't even go down the block to buy a loaf of
bread
because they thought people looked at them, but Lila didn't really care
about
that. She always felt strange in a town, but that was all right. It
reminded
her of the way she and Mellie used to steal a look at their reflections
in a
store window, waving their arms and making faces if they thought nobody
was
watching, laughing at the laughing
204
ghosts of themselves for just
the minute their pride let
them risk, then walking on, thinking they had done something anyone
else would
notice or give a thought to, and laughing. Sometimes Lila walked away
from that
house as if she might just keep walking, block after block after block,
imagining
the night when she really would leave. Then she'd turn and go back to
the house
again, not because of Mrs., just waiting for the baby.
She hated to remember how swept
up in it all she had been,
how ridiculous she would have seemed to anyone who knew what she'd been
thinking. That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can
know you
if you don't let them. Oh, they noticed that she was acting different,
and they
tried to guess the reason for it, how she could. have a boyfriend when
she was
so tough and wore out and never even curled her hair now that she was
just a
cleaning woman. Never you mind. He's some old bum on the street. No
business of
yours. Probly found him picking through a trash can. They were just
mean no
matter what, so she didn't even listen.
Lila spent her time waiting,
working so far as anyone could
see, but really just passing the time. Sometimes, when Missy didn't
want to go
downstairs, bringing a little supper from the kitchen. Missy didn't
like her
any better for it, but that was all right. She was so sad there was
nothing she
liked, nothing and nobody. Mack didn't come around, and she never
mentioned
him. She knew better than to trust him at all, but he had favored her
for a
long time, and she must have missed him. It got so that Lila had to
open the
seams of the biggest nightgown she could find, and pin up the hem of
it, too,
since Missy was no taller than a child. She'd bring a basin of water
for her
feet, thinking whatever comforted Missy might comfort the child. She
tried to
sleep lightly enough to hear, over the noise there always was in that
house at
night, any sound that might mean the birth was coming. Then one morning
she
came up from
205
the cellar, and there was Missy
with a coat she'd never seen
before thrown over her and holding a carpetbag, standing at the door
with a
short, plump woman who had one hand on the doorknob and the other on
Missy's
elbow. "My sister," she said. "We're leaving. We don't want no
part of this place."
The sister said, "Then let's
go, Edith. The sun will be
up."
But Missy just stood there,
looking at the credenza. Lila
said, "Something of yours in there?" The lower edge of the door hung
an inch or so below the bottom shelf. She could just pull at it and pop
the
door open, it was so dry and shabby. She knew this from all the times
she'd
tried to polish it. So she did, and it opened, and she said, "Take
what's
yours." She saw Missy pause over the sad little odds and ends and then
take at least half of them, even Doll's knife. "Well," she said,
"that ain't yours, that knife. I don't know about the rest."
The sister said, "She don't
want any of it. Put it
back. You don't want nothing from this damn place, Edith, not one
thing."
Lila said, "Where you going?"
"None of your business," the
sister said. "A
long way from here, that's for sure." So Missy left without whatever it
was that had kept her lingering, and Lila had Doll's knife in her hand
again,
the shape and weight of it so familiar she felt as if it had always
been there.
Mrs. would yell when she saw what had happened to that cabinet. The
little
tongue of the lock had pulled right through the wood, splintering it.
But Lila
just stood there thinking, I never will see that baby. I've been almost
feeling
it in my arms, singing to it, and I'll never even see it. How could I
have been
so sure Missy would have it here, that she never would tell anybody
where to
find her damn sister? I never even believed she had a sister. Why did I
think I
knew how things would happen? It was because time was about to bring
her back
to the old life, where it seemed as though she could do what was asked
of her.
She had a dream sometimes that she was
206
running along a road and there
was Doll ahead of her,
waiting for her, and she just ran into her arms, and she thought, It's
over
now, I'm not lost anymore, and the dream had all the sweetness of a
mild day in
summer. If you could smell in dreams, it would be the smell of hay on
the
softest breeze and sunlight warming the fields. She thought that was
going to
be waiting for her, that life, and she never even stopped to wonder
about
herself for thinking that way. I been crazy for a long time, she said.
The morning Missy left, Lila
found a suitcase in a closet
and put a few things in it, a hairbrush and a towel and a nightgown,
slipped
the knife into her stocking, and left the house. She walked until the
sun came
up, and until there were people in the street. There was just no end to
the
city. So she went into a hotel and asked if they could use a cleaning
woman.
And then the years passed. She didn't mind so much. It was just work.
No need
to smile at people you'll never see again. The other women would tell
her to
ease up a little. You start doing that, they going to start expecting
it. Lila
heard them talking about her, and they meant for her to hear. She don't
have
another job to go to when she done here. She don't have no children to
look
after. Nobody going to be hanging on her skirts, fussing for their
supper.
But there's no pleasure in work
if you don't break a sweat.
Out in the fields you feel any little breeze. You know it's coming, you
hear it
in the trees, you almost can't wait for it, and then there it is, like
a cold
drink of water. Well, when she finished with her rooms Lila went to
help
another of the women finish hers. She didn't think of it as helping, it
was
just a way to pass the time. She'd hear them talking about their
mothers and
their children, so she kept to herself as much as she could. One woman
gave her
a jar of cream for her hands, and Lila couldn't even say thanks. She
thought
about doing it, but then pretty soon it was so long ago she gave it to
her that
it would probably seem strange to mention it. There was a
207
time when I just quit talking,
she said to the child. I'd go
a day, a week, and never say a word, except to myself. To Doll
sometimes. I'm
probably talking to myself right now. No, you're there, I feel you
there.
She had a room on the third
story of a rooming house with a
window that looked out on the street, and in the evening she would
watch people
pass by. She noticed when babies started walking, when an old man began
to use
a cane. At first there was a sway-back mule that pulled a wagon of odds
and
ends along the street, standing patiently while the junk man lowered
the
tailgate every block or so to let people see what he had to sell. At
the end of
the second winter they were gone. Somebody opened a sandwich shop. Now
and then
a new car came down the street. There were always papers blowing along
the
pavement, men talking and smoking by the streetlight. There were
drunks, at
night mostly. Sometimes she'd hear laughing or shouting or singing
until
morning, and she didn't mind it. Just people doing what they do.
She went to the movies. Every
payday she put aside the money
it would cost her to go two times a week, and then she got by on
whatever was
left after the rent. Those women were right, no children to feed. She
could
live on just about anything, but for a child you had to find something
nourishing. So at least she always had a movie to think about. And when
she was
sitting there in the dark, sometimes, when it was crowded, with
somebody's arm
or knee brushing against hers, she was dreaming some stranger's dream,
everybody in there dreaming one dream together. Or they were ghosts all
gathered in the dark, watching the world, seeing all the scheming and
the
murder and having no word to say about it, weeping with the orphans and
having
nothing to do for them. And then the dancing and the kissing, and all
of the
ghosts floating there just inches from a huge, beautiful face, to see
the joy
rise up in it. Like sparrows watching the sun come up, all of them
happy at
once, no matter that the light had nothing much to do
208
with them. Another day eating
bugs, that was what it
amounted to. Or maybe they ate the bugs so that they could watch
another
sunrise. Well, the movie was beautiful, even when it scared her. The
music they
played before the feature made it seem like something so important was
about to
happen that she could hardly stay in her chair. She could have watched
that
lion roar all day. Then the movie. If it wasn't very good, it was still
all
there was in her mind for an hour or two, a week or two. She might look
like
some woman going about her work, sitting by her window, but she'd be
remaking a
story in her mind. If they decided not to kill the old man but just
took off in
his car. They could pay him back afterward. She took most of the
killing out of
the movies, and most of the fighting. She kept the dancing and the
weddings. But
the best part was always to be sitting there in the dark, seeing what
she had
never seen any where before, and mostly believing it. If she had been a
ghost
watching Doane and Marcelle, so close she could have seen the change in
their
eyes when they looked at each other, it would have been there for sure.
She
imagined a wedding for them, both of them young, Marcelle with her arms
full of
roses. What to imagine for Doll. That she had never cut that old man.
That
she'd never held a knife or spat on a whetstone. That she was wearing a
new
shawl that was really the old one on the day whoever owned it first had
bought
it. She couldn't wish that scar away, or how Doll never forgot to hide
her face
from anyone but Lila. The ghost couldn't really be part of the dream.
Lila
would just be there, so close, seeing that tender, ugly face. Just her.
Nobody
else would even want a dream like that.
That was all the life she had
for a long time. Three
Christmases passed. She helped put up some garlands in the lobby one
night, and
a year later, and a year after that. Garlands. Tinsel. Everything has a
name.
Everybody else knows the name and they think you're stupid if you don't
know
it. Don't matter. The third
209
Christmas passed, then the
dirty part of a winter, then it
was spring, and summer, and when she was walking home to her room one
afternoon
with her hair still tied up in a rag, thinking she might wash up a
little and
get a hot dog and walk down to the river looking for a breeze, she saw
two men
unloading some crates from the back of a truck and one of them was
Mack. He saw
her, too, and laughed, and said something to the other man, who glanced
at her
and then sort of shook his head the way people do when they don't want
a part
in something mean. She thought Mack took a step or two after her, but
then she
thought she heard him say, Lila, too, when he never knew her real name.
How
could it be that she had never told him her name? There was ringing in
her
ears. She almost thought she felt the brush of his fingertips at the
side of
her neck. The worst part of it all was that she knew better. He only
teased her
so Missy would be jealous. But she felt the rush of blood into her damn
cheeks
and even that damn sting in her eyes. And walking on away from him was
like
walking into a strong wind, or walking upstream in a river, and she
hoped and
hoped he couldn't see how hard it was for her, if he happened to be
watching.
The very worst part was that he would still know even if he wasn't
watching.
She thought she heard him laugh. Probably about something else. He'd
probably
already half forgotten he saw her.
So she left St. Louis. It
wasn't just that one thing. It was
her whole life. She had told herself that she went to the movies just
to see
people living, because she was curious. She'd more or less decided that
she had
missed out on it herself, so this was the best she could do. And it
wasn't so
bad. The women at work would talk about their children who used to be
so sweet
when they were little, and now they’d rather drink than eat, the boys
and the
girls, and they couldn't keep their mitts out of their mother's
handbag. She'd
be thinking how strange it was in that movie Dorian
Gray that when the man's picture turned ugly
210
from all his wickedness, the
pants in the picture turned
baggy, too. She couldn't make much sense of it. Half the people in the
movie
were dressed like Fred Astaire and the other half looked like they'd
been
sleeping in their clothes their whole lives. When that man goes off
into the
poor part of the city, he turns evil and ends up looking like he's been
sleeping in his clothes. The more he goes there, the worse he is. Warts
all
over him. Maybe somebody stole his hat and the rest of it. Swapped with
him.
That could happen. Or somebody saw him there stripped naked and took
pity on
him, since every inch of that town he lived in was always soaking wet.
What was
she thinking about? It was the painting that changed. She couldn't
remember if
the man died in his good clothes and only the rest of him was ugly. Him
lying
there and the others clucking their tongues. Too bad he happened to
have a
knife to kill himself with. Then he was too dead to use it to make them
stop
staring, and that was a shame. She was wearing Doll's knife in her
garter the
day she saw Mack, but she probably wouldn't have used it even if it
hadn't
meant putting herself in reach of him, probably looking into his face.
That
damn face. Well, her life just rose up on her, and before she even knew
quite
what was happening she was walking away, struggling to keep from making
a fool
of herself, her heart beating in her ears. The life she'd decided she
would
never have was there the whole time, trapped and furious, and in that
minute
she knew that if a man she ought to hate said one kind word to her,
there was
no telling what she might do. Come along, Rosie. Give me a little
smile, come
along. He'd forgotten he ever saw her, and she was up in her room with
the
window shade pulled down, stuffing everything she had into her
suitcase.
She walked over to the bus
station to see where she could
get to with the money she had. Wherever she went, she'd get there after
the
stores were closed, and the rooming houses. To get out of the city
would
211
take all her money, and then
she'd have noplace to spend the
night and no supper. She went outside to sit on a bench and think about
it. A
car pulled up to the curb, and the driver, a young woman, called to her
to ask
her where she was going. Lila said, "Iowa," and the woman said,
"Me, too!" as if she had been hoping to hear that very word.
"Get in. I saw you sitting there with your suitcase and I thought, I'd
sure appreciate some company. That's really why I came by here. It's
not on my
way." Lila wasn't sure what to think about sitting for hours beside
someone who might expect her to talk or to give her more money than she
had,
but the woman said, "It'll save you the price of a ticket. I'll be
driving
all night, and I'd rather not do that alone." She was a tidy, freckly
little woman with her hair in a knot. She was wearing a starchy white
blouse
she must have spent an hour ironing, it was so perfect. At the movies
you could
find yourself sitting next to anybody at all, some man with polished
shoes and
creased pants, some woman with rings on her hands, hugging her purse.
They might
tip their bags of popcorn toward her, she would hear them breathe and
sigh as
if they were sharing a pillow with her. Sometimes she could feel them
looking
at her, but she never looked at their faces or said anything to them.
She'd
just wait until the show began and they could forget each other. Now
she would
probably be sitting beside this stranger for hours with no way to stop
thinking
about her, which meant there was no way she could stop thinking about
herself.
Still, it would make some things easier. The woman said, "Where you
going?"
Lila thought she might try to
get to Tammany, but the woman
had never heard of it, so when she asked if it was near Des Moines Lila
said
yes, thinking that must be where the woman was going herself. It turned
out she
was going to a town called Macedonia, off somewhere in the cornfields,
so she
left Lila at a gas station in Indianola, which wasn't too far from Des
Moines.
Lila had no reason to be in Des Moines. In
212
fact, she didn't want to be in
any town that was big enough
for an bod to know where it was. She had in mind one of those no-name
places
along a county road. A store and a church and a grain elevator. There
must be a
thousand of them, all just alike, and farms spreading out beyond them.
But that
woman had brought her clear from St. Louis, so she was glad for twelve
hours of
riding in a car. It stalled as often as it slowed down. Going up a hill
was a
trial every time. The woman said she was glad to have someone to talk
to
because driving made her sleepy, but then she was too nervous to talk.
Every
now and then she would say she was scared the car was going to break
down, and
she sure didn't want to be sitting there in the middle of nowhere all
by
herself. This was meant as a kindness to Lila, to make her feel
welcome, but it
was also true. She leaned into the steering wheel and peered out at the
road as
if that would help.
Lila was glad to be seeing the
country again, the fields
looking so green in the evening light. Knee-high by the Fourth of July.
So it must
be June. Every farmhouse in its cloud of trees. There is a way trees
stir
before a rain, as if they already felt the heaviness. It all just went
on and
on, the United States of America. It was so easy to forget that most of
the
world was cornfields.
The woman said, "My mama's
sick, and there's nobody to
help her out. I've got to get there fast." It was the first time she
had
driven any distance to speak of. "I got a letter from her. She never
mentions a problem, she never wants to worry me. She doesn't have a
telephone,
so I thought I'd better bring a car in case I need to find a doctor. It
might
not even run after I get there. If I get there. I only bought it
yesterday.
Dang thief that sold it to me, I'd like to give him a piece of my
mind."
It began to rain. She was afraid to stop the car for fear it wouldn't
start
again, and they drove all night, except once when they needed gas. Then
the man
at the station had to push the car out onto the road. There was enough
of a
213
slope that the engine caught
and they went on again, with no
light at all but the headlights, and they didn't show much but rain.
The woman
said, "I think I'd be scared if I were you, putting your life in my
hands," and Lila said, "I don't much care what happens." Then
she could feel in the dark that for a minute the woman was wondering
about her,
about to ask her a question, then thinking better of it. Lila thought,
Maybe
she suspects I'm the kind of woman who might keep a knife in her
garter. Might
sleep in her clothes. The woman said, "Do you hear that?" There was a
soft thumping sound. "Is that coming from the motor?"
"Don't sound like nothing."
"You know about cars?"
"A little." She knew they had
four wheels and a
running board, and that she wasn't used to riding in one. But there was
no
point worrying when they couldn't even stop to see if there was a
problem, and
wouldn't know what to look for if they did stop. In the dead of night,
without
so much as a paper match to see by. And the rain would have put that
out.
"I don't have a spare tire.
There was one in the trunk,
but I sold it for gas money."
"There's nothing the matter
with your tires." Lila
thought the woman could use a little comforting. It was kind of her to
pick her
up, even if she had her own reasons. It could take days of hitching
rides to
come as far as they had come in one day. If the car broke down she'd be
hitching again, and that was just what she expected to be doing in the
first
place.
The woman said, "You're so
quiet, sometimes I think
you're sleeping. Or praying."
"Nope. I'm just sitting here
wide awake."
"Good. It wouldn't matter,
really, if you're tired. But
I do feel better-- "
''Sure." Then Lila said, just
to say something,
"You seen that movie Double
Indemnity? Driving along in the dark like this reminds me of
it."
214
"I can't go to the movies. It's
against my
religion."
"Oh." One more thing she didn't
know about.
"I shouldn't have called that
man a thief. I shouldn't
have said dang."
"Something wrong with saying
dang?"
"Well, it's practically
swearing. Anybody knows what
you really mean by it."
Lila said, "I didn't even know
there was such a thing
as practically swearing."
"In my church there is.
Nazarene. We're pretty
strict."
This is exactly why Lila kept
to herself. She thought, It's
a good thing I didn't get a chance to take that child. I'd have nothing
to tell
it about getting along. Don't lie more than you have to, don't take
what ain't
yours.
The woman said, "No drinking,
no smoking, no dancing,
no makeup, no jewelry. They're not too pleased with women driving cars.
No
stealing or killing, either, but that's not what they talk about most
of the
time. I don't mind it. I grew up in it."
"You give 'em your money?"
The woman laughed. "A dime on
the dollar. That's
usually about what it amounts to. Tithing. One-tenth of nothing. But we
have a
nice potluck every now and then. We try to look out for each other.
It's
cheaper than insurance. You have a church?"
"Nope."
"You might visit a couple of
them. Just look in the
door. If you're living away from your family, a church can be a help."
"I ain't living away from my
family."
After a minute the woman said,
,"We're a mission
church. So I'm supposed to try to bring you to Jesus. But I won't if
you don't
want me to. Try, I mean. Some people think it's irritating when I do
that. I
guess I'm not much good at it."
215
Lila said, "I wouldn't mind
talking about something
else."
"Sure. That's fine." They were
quiet for a while.
"So you've got family in St. Louis?"
"No, I don't." She would think
that was what Lila
meant. I ain't living away from my family. She was quiet again. Lila
could feel
her wondering, and she almost said, I was working in a whorehouse
because the
woman who stole me when I was a child got blood all over my clothes
when she
came to my room after she killed my father in a knife fight. I've got
her knife
here in my garter. I was meaning to steal a child for myself, but I
missed the
chance and I couldn't stand the disappointment, so I got a job cleaning
in a
hotel. You can't say dang or go to movies, and look who you got sitting
next to
you hour after hour. Look who you been offering half of your spam
sandwich. She
was laughing and the woman glanced at her. So she said, "You can try
bringing me to Jesus if you want to. Might pass the time."
The woman was quiet for a
while. The windshield wipers were
groaning and the rain was pounding the glass. She said, "I'd better
not.
I' d better be trying to see the road." She said, "You've got to come
to it in the right frame of mind. Otherwise it's just talking for the
sake of
talk. Passing the time. I might be making excuses here. Lord forgive me
if I
am. But you strike me as a woman with a lot of bitterness in her soul.
I don't
mean any offense. I might just make things worse."
Lila said, "I doubt you could
do that." She was
beginning to wonder how well the woman knew where the road was. She
would steer
away from the shoulder when they started hearing gravel.
"I'm a stenographer." Her voice
was high with
nerves. "I learned shorthand in night school. I'm pretty good at it--
I'm
not good at much else."
216
"Well, you're lucky you got the
one thing." She
had no idea what that thing was.
"My mama made me finish high
school. I was so mad at
her about that. Now I guess I'm glad she did. I wanted to quit and get
married.
He was five years older. She said, If he loves you he'll wait. He
didn't. Wait.
So I guess he didn't love me. He went into the army and came back with
some girl
he met in England. I was upset at the time. Cried my fool head off. Are
you
married?"
"Nope." I'm good at chopping
weeds. I can change
sheets well enough. I was bad at whoring. Lila didn't say anything, but
she
almost did. Why would she do that? The woman didn't mean any harm. She
wasn't
going to put her out beside the road for anything she said. If she
hitched up
her skirt to show her the knife, that might be different. She thought,
I'm
crazy, and laughed. She thought, I've got to stay away from people.
The woman was saying, "I always
thought I'd have kids.
A dozen of them. And now look at me. My mom said once the war was over
and the
boys came home I'd find somebody. She's still telling me I'll find
somebody.
I'm beginning to have my doubts."
Lila said, "I just wanted the
one child. I didn't
figure on-- " and then she stopped herself There she was any way,
rubbing
her eyes. The woman glanced at her and said, "Well, God bless!" It
was just being out in that great, sweet nowhere that was making her
remember.
Sometimes they saw a light, mostly it was just darkness and rain. But
she
didn't have to see it to know. She could smell it. The window wouldn't
roll up
right to the top, so night air came whistling in, a little rain with
it, but
how could she mind. The woman was helping her regret the child she
never had.
Lila had thought, That would be the same child who wasn't the reason my
dress
was all bloody, who didn't get me sent off to St. Louis with a slip of
paper in
my pocket, who wouldn't be carried out into the secret night under my
coat, who
wouldn't wake up to daylight and the birds singing.
217
Well, here she was in the
Reverend's quiet house, as calm
and safe as the good old man could make her. She hugged her belly. "I
been
waiting on you, child," she said. "You be good to your poor mama this
time. No slipping away on me. Don't you go slipping away."
At the bus station in St. Louis
that little woman had pulled
over and rolled down her window and asked her where she was going, and
that was
one good thing. Then she wasn't at the service station at lndianola an
hour or
so when a fellow offered her a ride in his pickup truck, a shy fellow
with
rough skin and a bad cough, wanting company. Probably his girl had left
him and
he wanted just anybody beside him, because he didn't talk at all.
Company does
sort of settle people sometimes. They don't have to know anything about
you
except that you're sitting there.
He let her out where he turned
off from the main road, and
she walked along for a while till she was just about as tired of
walking as she
could stand to be, no cars passing at all, and she saw that old shack
off in
its meadow of weeds. Good things happen three at a time, and here was a
place
where she could take her shoes off and put her suitcase and her bedroll
down.
That road, followed a river, so there wouldn't be much else to want.
She could
wash the dust off, get a drink.
Those first few days, clearing
out the shack and washing at
the river, finding dandelion greens and ferns still coming up and wild
carrot,
finding a rabbit burrow. Life is hard in the spring, and still it all
felt like
something she had almost died for the want of.
She found a patch of violets blooming and lay down
there, and ate every
single flower, one by one, the way Mellie used to do. Mellie sitting
there
Indian-style with a blossom perched on the tip of her tongue like a
toad with a
butterfly, thinking about something
218
else, some plan for the next
ten minutes. Once, when she had
that look on her face, Marcelle said, "Now what's she getting up to?"
and Doane said, "She's just hatching a couple more freckles." Lila
told the child, "I believe I really was a little crazy then, because
things I remembered seemed so real to me. I don't wonder at it. I just
hope
nobody saw me acting that way." There was a time, when she was riding
along in that car with the window down a crack, smelling the dark, wet
fields,
that she thought when she got the chance she might just lie right down
on the
ground in some lonely place and let the world take her life away. She
felt that
way when she saw those violets and remembered the old times, and she
did lie
down, but then the ants started bothering. There always was something
bothering, and you had to be scratching and shifting around. The world
don't want
you as long as there is any life in you at all.
But a place like that, just
waiting, unless somebody came
along and said it was his. She'd left the bottles and tins where they
were
except in the one corner, so it wouldn't look like she meant to take
the place
if she didn't have the right. But she did spread out her bedroll and
lie down,
and next thing she knew, it was almost morning. She could hear the
birds
singing. What is it they know, when the sky is still dark? Mellie said
if just
one of them saw just one bit of light, it'd wake up the rest of them
and then
they'd all go at it, making sure none of them stayed asleep. That's
what she
did herself when she woke up first, no matter how early it was. Hum,
hum, hum.
I just wisht I knew where they put them matches. They got to be
somewheres
around here. Hum, hum, hum. I was thinking I'd get breakfast started.
Tripping
over Lila's foot once or twice. What would one bit of light look like?
A star.
The birds would never be sleeping at all. Mellie would say, That's all
right, I
know what I know.
219
She thought for a few days that
she must have come to the
end of her life, because it felt so much like the beginning of it. She
was
waiting for something to happen and nothing did. Then she started
thinking
about the movies again, until she was afraid she would get tired of
them, that
she'd wear them out and wouldn't have them anymore to go back to. And
then she
decided she'd take a look at that town they'd passed through. Well, she
had the
money she didn't have to spend on a bus ticket, so she could walk into
town and
buy a few things.
She'd noticed there was a movie
theater, which you wouldn't
really expect in a town that size. She strolled by to see what was
playing. To Have and Have Not.
She'd seen it.
That's the worst part about a small town. Well, pretty soon she
wouldn't even
know how long something had been showing in the city. Not that she
should be
spending money on a movie now anyway. Fishing line, fishing hooks, a
pot,
cornmeal, some matches. The man at the counter looked at her like Well,
I never
seen you around here before, meaning to be a little friendly, and she
looked at
him like Mind your own damn business. That same man gave her a big jar
of
cloves for a wedding present, wrapped in white paper. "Helps with the
toothache," he said. He played third base and the Reverend pitched,
back
in the old, old days. At first she just hated having to deal with
anybody. Then
she got used to seeing how the gardens came along. Sometimes people
would nod
when she passed. She made up her mind about which house was the
prettiest. That
wasn't the one where she stopped to ask the lady if she might be
looking for
some help. Mrs. Graham. She was working in her garden and Lila saw her
there
and thought she might as well ask. There are women who take pride in
how kind
they are and jump at every chance, their eyes all shining with it so
you can't
help but notice. You keep clear of them if you can, but they do come in
handy.
Sometimes you want a bowl of soup. She said, "Why, yes, dear, I am!
Yes, I
am looking for help!" Just like that. She didn't give herself a minute
to
decide. Lila thought, I should mention the knife in my garter
220
and see what she says then. But
that was just a joke she
made to herself. She said, "I've done housework and farm work. I'm good
with growing things."
"Well, that's fine!" The woman
rubbed her hands on
her apron. "I'm behind on the weeding! I was hoping for a little rain
yesterday or today, but nothing, so I thought I might as well get to
it! If you
could help with the onions," as hasty about it as if she might miss an
opportunity. So Lila at least might have a door she could come to,
someone who
knew her name. The woman made such a point of not looking her over that
Lila
could see what she must have thought of her. "Lila! What a pretty
name!"
It was a good-looking garden,
though. A garden never really
belongs to somebody else if you're the one that takes care of it. The
soil was
nice as could be, and the plants had all those good smells. Just
brushing by
the tomato plants, getting that musk on them, made her clothes seem
clean. She
was still waiting to hear somebody say the name of the place. It was
painted on
the water tower, so coming to town she walked along looking up at that
word,
wondering what it was supposed to sound like. Of course it was a Bible
word.
The old man would tell her that.
She said to the child, "Now I
been in Gilead a pretty
long time. A lot longer than I expected. And you're going to be born
here. If I
leave I'll take you with me, I will for sure. I'll tell you the name of
the
place, though. People should know that much about themselves anyway.
The name
of your father. Could be I won't ever leave. The old man might not give
me
cause." And then she almost laughed, because she knew he never would.
She
said, "That old man loves me. I got to figure out what to do about
it."
221
She never stayed away from
church anymore, for one thing. It
still reminded her of that first time, when she was sitting there, rain
dripping off her hair, down her neck, cold rain soaked into her shoes,
hoping
he wouldn't notice her. He was going on about baptism. A birth and a
death and
a marriage, he said. A touch of water and these children are given the
whole of
life. The sacraments remind us. She was thinking what sense did that
make, but
his eyes drifted across the congregation and rested on her face, as if
he
thought she might know what he meant and could say yes, it was true,
what he
meant if not the words he could find to put it in. Jesus drank from our
cup and
shared our baptism, he said, which meant He suffered and died like
everybody
else. And she was thinking how strange it was for them to be there
singing
songs to somebody who had lived and died like anybody. Doll would say,
That's
the way it is. They could as well be singing about Doll. And then she
was
thinking of that song they used to like in St. Louis, what a night to
go
dreaming, and his eyes drifted back to her again, and he looked at her
until he
remembered not to. When she thought about it afterward she knew she
couldn't
have counted to five before he ' looked down at his papers and then at
the
people in front of him. Still.
Now that she was his wife he
looked at her whenever he
mentioned something they might have talked about, to let her know he
thought
about the questions she asked him, or questions she knew he asked
himself.
Sometimes he gave the sermon to her to read before he preached it. One
morning
he read to her at breakfast, something he had written during the night.
"Very rough," he said. "Half of it I've crossed out. And this
was supposed to be the clean copy." He cleared his throat. "So.
'Things happen for reasons that are hidden from us, utterly hidden for
as long
as we think they must proceed from what has come before, our guilt or
our
deserving, rather than coming to us from a future that God in his
freedom
offers to us.' My meaning here is that you really can't account for
what
happens by what has happened in the past, as you understand it anyway,
which
may be
222
very different from the past
itself If there is such a
thing. 'The only true knowledge of God is born of obedience,' that's
Calvin,
'and obedience has to be constantly attentive to the demands that are
made of
it, to a circumstance that is always new and particular to its moment.'
Yes.
'Then the reasons that things happen are still hidden, but they are
hidden in
the mystery of God.’ I can't read my own writing. No matter. 'Of course
misfortunes have opened the way to blessings you would never have
thought to
hope for, that you would not have been ready to understand as blessings
if they
had come to you in your youth, when you were uninjured, innocent. The
future
always finds us changed.' So then it is part of the providence of God,
as I see
it, that blessing or happiness can have very different meanings from
one time
to another. 'This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss,
but that
each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be
recognized for
what it is. Sorrow is very real, and loss feels very final to us. Life
on earth
is difficult and grave, and marvelous. Our experience is fragmentary.
Its parts
don't add up. They don't even belong in the same calculation. Sometimes
it is
hard to believe they are all parts of one thing. Nothing makes sense
until we
understand that experience does not accumulate like money, or memory,
or like
years and frailties. Instead, it is presented to us by a God who is not
under
any obligation to the past except in His eternal, freely given
constancy.'
Because I don't mean to suggest that experience is random or
accidental, you
see. 'When I say that much the greater part of our existence is
unknowable by
us because it rests with God, who is unknowable, I acknowledge His
grace in
allowing us to feel that we know any slightest part of it. Therefore we
have no
way to reconcile its elements, because they are what we are given out
of no
necessity at all except God's grace in sustaining us as creatures we
can
recognize as ourselves.' That's always seemed remarkable to me, that we
can do
that. That we can't help but do it. 'So joy can be joy and sorrow can
be
sorrow, with neither of them casting either light or shadow on the
other.'
"
223
As he was reading, sitting
across from her in his robe and
slippers with his hair rumpled and his glasses unpolished and a silvery
shadow
on his jaw, he glanced up at her from time to time. He said, "It's very
rough. I had a thought in the middle of the night, and I had to get up
and
write it out. Half the time when I write something that way it turns
out the
next morning to be nonsense. The sobering effects of daylight. But this
still
makes sense to me. It seems obvious, if anything. I believe. Of course
it's
early yet."
"Well," she said. "Near as I
can tell, you
were wanting to reconcile things by saying they can't be reconciled. I
guess I
know what you mean by reconcile."
He laughed. "Yes, clearly you
do know. And I see your
point. An excellent point." He was pleased with her. He'd mention it to
Boughton.
She said, "You been worrying
about Mrs. Ames."
That poor girl.
"Yes. Yes, I have. I had an
idea that I would be
eternally loyal to her. I said as much to her. That was important to me
for
many years. The bride of my youth, and so on. After a while it may have
been my
loyalty I was loyal to. But I did the best I could."
"Then I come along."
"Yes, you came along. Thank the
Lord."
She said, "If you thought dead
was just dead, then you
wouldn't have to worry about any of this."
"I guess that's true. It could
be true. When I talk
with people who aren't religious, I'm often surprised by what they tell
me,
though. I'm not sure anyone has ever said that to me, dead is just
dead.
They're loyal, too. Not like I was. But that was unusual. I believe I
may have
taken a certain pride in it."
224
"You're still loyal. You're up
all night writing to
her."
"Well, yes. In a way I suppose
that's true. And writing
to you. You asked me that question."
"It don't matter. She must have
been a sweet
girl."
He nodded. "She was. She was."
He said, "So
you covered her grave with roses. That was a wonderful thing."
She shrugged. "No folks of my
own."
"I can't tell you what I felt
when I saw that. I don't
think there's a name for it."
"You didn't know it was just me
doing it."
"Just you," he said. "If it had
been a
miracle, if an angel had done it, then there'd have been no one to walk
with in
the evening, no one to give that old locket to."
"No one to come creeping into
your bed."
He laughed and colored. "True
enough."
"No baby."
"Also true."
They were quiet for a while.
Then he said, "God is
good."
"Well," she said, "some of the
time."
''All of the time."
She said, "I've been tramping
around with the heathens.
They're just as good as anybody, so far as I can see. They sure don't
deserve
no hellfire."
He laughed. "Well, that baby
you talk about, cast out
and weltering in her blood, the Lord takes her up. He looks after the
strays.
Especially the strays. That story is a parable, about how He bound
himself to
Jerusalem when He told her, 'Live.' It's like a marriage. More than a
marriage."
''And then she takes to
whoring."
"That means she starts
worshipping false gods. Idols.
And He's still faithful to her. To their marriage. That's the important
point.
Because in the Bible, marriage-- " He said, "I used to think it was
supposed to be eternal. Like the faithfulness of God.''
225
"What do you think now?"
He was quiet for a minute. "I
think I'm married to Lila
now. Extremely married to her. And faithful as I know how to be. Not
that that
can mean much, I'm so old. And you'll want to make another life for
yourself
when I'm gone. I'll want you to do that. Especially if there's a
child."
He shook his head. "Since there will be a child."
"No," she said. "I'm going to
have just the
one husband." One was more than she'd ever expected.
"Well, you know, that's good of
you to say, but it's
not always wise to make promises. There can be a lot more involved in
keeping
them than it seems at the time."
She said, "That's not a
promise. It's just a
fact."
He laughed. "Even better."
And then he went upstairs to
make himself into the
presentable old preacher all those people had passed on the street
every day of
their lives, seeing him change and never thinking of it because his
life never
changed, all those years she was off somewhere or other getting by any
way she
could. And her life was just written all over her, she knew it without
looking,
because that's how it was with all the women she used to know. And
somehow she
found her way to the one man on earth who didn't see it. Or maybe he
saw it the
way he did because he had read that parable, or poem, or whatever it
was.
Ezekiel. The Bible was truer than life for him, so it was natural
enough that
his thinking would be taken from it. Maybe it never was normal
thinking, since
there were preachers in this house his whole life, quarreling about
religion
and talking to Jesus.
It could be that the wildest,
strangest things in the Bible
were the places where it touched earth. Doane said once that he saw a
cyclone
cross a river. It took the water in its path up into itself and crossed
on dry
ground, and it was just as white as a cloud, white as snow. Something
like that
would only last for a
226
minute, but it showed you what
kind of thing can happen. It
would shed that water and take up leaves and branches, cats and dogs,
cows if
it wanted to, grown men, and it would change everything they thought
they knew.
Those women in St. Louis, they stepped into a place that looked like
any old
house and there was Mrs. and the damn credenza and the dress-up clothes
that
smelled like sweat and old perfume. And all you had to do was pierce
your ears
and rouge your cheeks and pretend not to hate the gentlemen more than
they
would stand for. It was as if that house had been picked up by a black
cloud
and turned around and dropped down again in the very same spot.
Everything in
it was still there, but it was changed, wrong, and from then on
everybody in it
knew too much about the worst that could possibly happen, even if they
couldn't
say what it was. Then it might be that she seemed to him as if she came
straight out of the Bible, knowing about all those things that can
happen and
nobody has the words to tell you. And I
looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, a great
cloud, with a
fire infolding itself, and a brightness round about it, and out of the
midst
thereof as it were glowing metal, out of the midst of the fire.
It says
right there that even fire isn't hot enough to give you any idea.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
21.
It got to be Christmas time.
They put a big wreath on the
church door. Snow fell. People came to the house with plates of cookies
and sat
in the parlor for fifteen minutes talking about nothing. Lila's belly
was
rounder every day. The women told her that since she carried high it
would
probably be a boy. That wasn't how she'd imagined, but all right. One
lady
brought her two pleated smocks, one red and one green, both with
rickrack
around the pockets, which made her think of that dress she'd bought
cheap, as
she thought at the time. She wondered how much Mrs. figured she'd left
still
owing her. That woman would know down to the dime.
227
The deacons brought in a pine
tree and set it up, so she
offered them some of the cookies their own wives had brought the day
before,
and they sat in the parlor for fifteen minutes. And then the Reverend
went up
in the attic and brought down a box with ornaments in it. He said,
"It's
been-- I don't know how many years!" There was a tree in the church,
and
that used to be all he needed, those years when he was alone. He spent
an hour
untangling the strings of lights, and then he plugged them in, and when
they
didn't come on he started working through them to find the bad bulbs.
He said,
"This used to take a lot of the charm out of Christmas for me. When I
was
young and impatient." Finally they did light up, and he strung the tree
with them and turned off the lamps. "I'd almost forgotten," he said.
The room did look very pretty. "Next year we'll have somebody here to
help
us enjoy it." At the bottom of the box there were ornaments made of
thread
spools and colored paper and walnut shells. The children. "Nothing here
we
can use," he said . "I'll stop by the dime store tomorrow." And
then he carried the box up to the attic again.
She just watched. He was
thinking about next year, daring to
say out loud that they'd have brought a new little Christian into the
world who
would take these things in with his baby eyes and believe them to be
the way
things are. For unto us is born this day in the City of David a Savior.
A day
so very long ago. Who is David? What is a Savior? He might never think
to ask.
It would seem to him that he'd known it all from the beginning. That's
why we
have to hang lights all over everything, and tinsel. That's why we sing
all
those songs. It was very nice, in some ways. People would come to the
door,
singing. The Methodists and the Catholics and the Lutherans, people
they barely
knew.
228
Sometimes in St. Louis a few of
the gentlemen would stand
outside singing, things that didn't sound much like Christmas. Mrs.
closed the
house for the holiday, out of respect, she said, but also because she
thought
she might get shut down for good if she didn't. She kept the shades
drawn and
the lights off so no one would come to the door. She made the girls
live on
cold beans and cheese sandwiches so no cooking smells could drift into
the
street. She took the radio into her own room and turned it so low they
could
barely hear it. Those men knew they could devil her half to death and
she
couldn't even open the door to yell at them for it. So Christmas for
the girls
was just pinochle in the twilight of the drawn shades and then, when
the sun
went down, fighting and weeping and telling old stories everybody had
heard and
nobody believed except the ones who were just plain simple. Peg would
be
singing along with the dirty songs they could hear from the street
sometimes,
in that way she had of pretending she was in on the joke. Doane never
said a
word about Christmas, and Doll didn't either. They were always just
somewhere
trying to get through the winter. It was better for Lila while she
worked at
the hotel, but she never really liked it. Now here she was with an old
man
dreaming about his baby and humming "Silent Night." He was happier
than he wanted to be. Someone knocked at the door with a plate of
cookies, and
when he brought it in, he said, "Gingerbread!" as if that was
supposed to mean something to her. Somebody had put frosting buttons
and
collars and smiling mouths on them, as if they had the child there with
them
already.
She kept thinking, Wait. Don't
hope, just wait. She couldn't
help thinking how hard it would be for him to do these same things ever
again
if there happened to be no child. She had washed baptism off herself as
well as
she could. She had walked in the cold through those raggedy old
cornfields that
looked as though they had heard the first word of Judgment and couldn't
believe
what they heard and couldn't
229
doubt it,either. She had thought a
thousand times about the
ferociousness of things so that it might not surprise her entirely when
it
showed itself again. She wished she could warn him, even though he knew
about
it, too, and dreamed about it. This child must know about it because it
lived
there under her scared, wild heart. It might not want the world at all.
She
could show it things that might seem wonderful to her because it meant
you
could live so the world wouldn't find you. Maybe heaven would be like
that,
with fields and fields of nettles and chicory, things anybody could
take
because nobody else would want them. Then if the thief on the cross
went to
heaven he could just thieve forever to his heart's content, nobody the
worse
for it. She pictured him as the boy at the shack, nails through those
big,
dirty hands. Her heart felt like a weight that would burden the child.
She
thought to him, It won't be that way for you. I promised your papa
you'd know
all the hymns.
The old man kept moving the
lights around, trying to get
them even. "My grandfather said this was paganism, bringing in greenery
in
the middle of winter, making fires. He said there were people in Maine
when he
was growing up who wouldn't have a thing to do with it. It's true, no
one
really knows anything about when Jesus was born, the time of year. But
there's
just a certain amount of exuberance that people have to burn off now
and then,
Christians and pagans. I like the idea-- Druids rejoicing just because
they
felt like it. We took up where they left off. That's all the sense it
has to
make." Even his hair was rosy in that light. "Spring would seem like
a better time to celebrate a birth. But it's even better for
resurrection.
Everything coming back to life. And Jesus did die sometime around the
Passover," talking away because she wasn't talking at all. But if she
just
sat there watching, eating a cookie now and then, he was happy enough.
He'd
been alone for a long time.
230
He said, "A baby is born and
the sky fills with angels.
That seems about right. Calvin says every one of us has thousands of
angels
tending to us. There's an old hymn about the human body-- 'Strange that
a harp
of thousand strings should keep in tune so long.' Because the body is
so
complicated. Lots of work for those angels. For Calvin, angels are the
effective attention of God, not separate creatures." And on he went.
Well, that's all fine, she
thought. But I know there's more
to it, and so do you. She just wished it was over and she had a child
or no
child and she could stop thinking how hard it would be for him to keep
up all
this talk if it came down to old Boughton again, struggling up those
stairs to
weep and pray and dampen a small brow, his bony self half a step from
the grave
and still without a sensible word to say about any of it. But then her
husband
smiled at her, and she could see in his face that he had had every one
of these
thoughts, that he knew everything about them. These thoughts were
waiting and
familiar, like a house where you knew you belonged though you just
hated to go
there and doubted once you were there you'd ever leave. He said, "You
and
I-- " and shrugged.
She had to agree. There was
night everywhere and snow, under
a big moon. Beyond the few lights of Gilead the great white nowhere
that the
wind had all to itself, the frozen ponds and stricken cornfields and
the ragtag
sheds and shacks. The wind would be clapping shut and prying open
everything
that was meant to keep it out, bothering where it could, tired of its
huge
loneliness. Had she ever seen a windmill that hadn't lost half itself
to the
wind, like a blown milkweed? Maybe Doll was out there in some place so
much the
same that it was like dreaming to remember she was far away, far beyond
any
number of places with different names but all just the same. And that
boy. And
Mrs. Ames with her baby. And here were the two of them together in this
warm
light, the same dread feeding on the same hope, married.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
231
22.
There was snow on the ground
when the baby came. It will
snow in April sometimes, so there's nothing surprising about a blizzard
or two
in March. Still, it gave them a scare. One day they heard spring
peepers, those
same two notes, again and again, one higher, one lower. Then in the
middle of
the night it began to storm, and the next day they sat in the kitchen
for the
warmth and played gin rummy and listened to the wind howling. No one
came to
look in on them because the drifts were too deep to walk through and
the wind
was fierce. People can get lost in a storm like that and just die in
the road
outside their own gate the way they might if they were wandering
through a
country they'd never seen before, where nobody knew them at all, nobody
was
waiting for them. The old man would pretend he wasn't praying, and then
his
head would sink down on his chest and she would have to wait until he
remembered to deal the cards. The deck would just spill out of his
hands as if
he'd gone to sleep or died. Then he'd say he ought to clear a path to
the road
and even get up from his chair, but the road was so deep in drifts
there'd be
no point in it. There'd be nowhere to go if he ever got to the road.
The
telephone wires were down and the electrical lines, too, but they had
the
woodstove and a kerosene lamp and Mrs. Somebody's meat loaf to warm in
the oven.
It would have been nice except that she was so pregnant and he was so
old.
She said, "I guess you better
discard."
"Yes, I guess I'd better.
Sorry." But then he'd be
studying her face, as if he'd never seen her before and there she was
in his
kitchen, and he had no idea what she might do next.
232
She said, "I feel fine. We're
both just fine." And
every time she took a breath she thought, when she was almost at the
bottom of
it, Will I tell him if it hurts, if there's some new kind of pain?
Could he
stand to know it, when there was almost nothing he could do? And then
she'd
breathe again, deeply, carefully, hoping he would not notice. You
always seem
to need to touch the place it might hurt to touch. And not just once,
either.
Well, of course she felt different. Every day she felt different from
the day
before. There was somebody crouched under her ribs, shifting and
fidgeting,
growing. It was strange if you thought about it. She'd seen sows and
ewes
carrying young and birthing them. Hooves. That would be something. This
was
like a burden that had shifted and rubbed too long in one place. If
there
wasn't quite room for her to breathe without an elbow being in the way
of it,
then a little pain wouldn't mean a thing, especially since she would
breathe
again, then again, feeling for it. The old man was watching her.
She said, "I guess it's my
turn." It was a little
bit like a stitch in her side from running. It would go away if she
stopped
thinking about it, sooner if she could lie down. "Gin," she said.
"I don't think your heart is in this card game, Reverend."
He said, "I wouldn't mind it if
the wind died down a
little. I never imagined it would be this bad. Just yesterday I saw
crocuses
coming up alongside the house."
She thought, He'll be worrying
about old Boughton, too,
wondering if he's trying to look after Mrs. Boughton all on his own,
hobbling
around in the cold with all his joints froze up till he can't strike a
match.
His children, except the one, were probably stuck in drifts along every
road
from wherever they lived to Gilead, trying to get to him, and he'd have
that to
worry about. The first break in the storm there'd be men and boys with
shovels
digging people out, but with the wind the way it was, they'd have to
wait.
That wasn't pain, she thought.
The child just arched his
back.
233
The old man said, "I'm not too
sure about Boughton's
roof. He loses track of the time, the years. There must be three feet
of new
snow. I'm not sure it's good for that much weight. I hate to think of
him
trying to light a lamp. Trying to deal with kerosene. Cold is such a
torment
for him."
She meant to ask him sometime
how praying is different from
worrying. His face was about as strained and weary as it could be.
White as it
could be.
He said, "I thought once we
made it to March we were
probably all right." Then he said, "As far as the weather is
concerned." And then he said, "Of course we'll be all right. I didn't
mean we won't be." His old head sank down again.
So she fell to wondering how
his dread was different from Doane's,
in those days when he began to realize that he had no way to look after
them,
stragglers who had no claim on him at all except that they had always
trusted
him. What would he have done with the hens that dog caught him stealing
except
to pluck them and gut them and roast them, handing the drumsticks
around to the
young ones as if it were just any ordinary supper in ordinary times,
nothing so
wonderful about it. He did have three silver dollars in his pocket,
too, and he
wouldn't say a word about where they came from. He never did anything
with what
he had except to keep things together as well as he could. But stealing
is
stealing, Doll said, especially if you get caught at it.
Now here she was again,
worrying over people who were long
past help. You can't even pray for someone to have his pride back when
every
possible thing has happened to take it away from him. She thought,
Everything
went bad everywhere and pride like his must have just drifted off the
earth,
more or less, as quiet as mist in the morning, and people were sad and
hard who
never were before. Looking into each other's faces, their hearts
sinking. If
she ever took to praying it would be for that time and all those people
who
must have wondered what had become of them, what they had done to find
234
themselves without so much as a good
night's rest to comfort them. She
would call down calm on every one of them, on the worst and the
bitterest ones
first of all. Doane and Arthur walking away; Mellie, too, never looking
back,
leaving her an orphan on the steps of a church. Without the bitterness
none of
that would have happened. If Boughton dropped a lamp and set his house
on fire,
what would the Reverend say about that? He was looking at her then with
as much
fear in his eyes as she had ever seen anywhere, even counting those
poor
raggedy heathens who never thought the Almighty would have the least
bit of
interest in them.
That wasn't a pain, but he saw
her pause over it, consider
it, whatever it was. It was like listening for a sound you might only
have
thought you heard. She said, "He's frisky today. I guess he wants to be
out in the snow."
He smiled at her. "I hope he
can wait for another day
or two."
That wasn't a pain, either. She
said, "I might just go
upstairs and lay down a while."
He stood up. "Yes." He said,
"It's really
cold up there. Those leaky old windows. I can put more blankets on the
bed, but
they'll be cold, too. I should have thought to bring them down by the
stove. I
don't know where my mind has been. I could have set up a cot here in
the
kitchen. This kind of weather-- I didn't give it a thought. You'd think
I'd
know better." He might have said that if the child came then, he'd be
earlier than they expected, or than he expected and she let on that she
did.
No, he'd never think that way.
"Well." She stood up from her
chair, and that felt
better.
"I'm just thinking I might lay
down."
235
"Yes." He put his arm around
her and brought her
slowly up the stairs to his room. He took off her slippers and found a
pair of
his socks to put on her feet and then helped her into his bed,pulling
the
blankets up to her chin. His, she
thought, because it reminded her of that old gray sweater, when she
loved how
his it was. Loneliness and mice and the wind blowing and then that
woolly old
thing against her cheek, smelling like him. She'd put her head on his
shoulder
that one time when he hardly knew her name. She laughed to remember.
"What?"
"Nothing. It just does feel
good. Cold and all."
"I'll put the skillet to warm
on the stove. I can use
it to take some of the chill off. There used to be a warming pan around
somewhere. A perfectly useful thing. But I suppose it's ended up in the
attic."
"Don't you go up in that attic."
"No, I won't. The skillet
should work well
enough."
"I'd rather you just crawl
under the covers here until
I get warm. That's the best thing you can do for me." The windows were
rattling and the curtains drifting a little on the cold air, and the
room was
full of the light of a snowy afternoon.
So he did. "Here we are," he
said. "It's as
if we've floated out
to sea on an iceberg. The two
of us all on our own."
"The three of us."
"Oh, my dear."
She said, "Reverend, it seems
to me you're about to
cry."
He laughed. "I won't if you
won't."
"Fair enough."
They were quiet for a while. He
said, "I guess you're
all right?"
"I think he must be sleeping."
Then he said, "It's all a
prayer. You don't think to
say, Let tomorrow be like today, because usually it is. For all
purposes."
"Well I wouldn't mind if
tomorrow was a little
different from today."
"That s a prayer, too.
236
"Now wait. It has to be
different no matter what. One
more day just like this one will be worse. More worrying, for one
thing. That
wears on a person. So it will be different even if nothing changes.
Nice as it
is right now."
"True. It is nice now."
"Old Boughton struggling
through one more day."
"Ah!"
"Me trying to figure out what
this child is up to. Not
that I mind so much what he decides, so long as he waits till the road
is
plowed."
The old man sighed. "It's all a
prayer."
"For you it is. I tried praying
a couple times and
nothing came of it."
"You're sure nothing came of
it?"
"Well, how do you know anything
ever does come of it?
Boughton's roof won't fall because it's stronger than you think it is.
He won't
even try to light a kerosene lamp because he knows what might happen if
he did.
He's sitting in his morris chair, bundled up in that old buffalo robe,
waiting
for his children to come and take care of us all. And they will,
whether he's
praying or not. On snowshoes if they have to." Why did she talk to him
like this? Here she was snuggled up against him, wearing his socks. She
said,
"The best things that happen I'd never have thought to pray for. In a
million years. The worst things just come like the weather. You do what
you
can."
He said, "Family is a prayer.
Wife is a prayer.
Marriage is a prayer."
"Baptism is a prayer."
"No," he said. "Baptism is what
I'd call a
fact."
"Because you can't just wash it
off."
He laughed. "Nope. Not with all
the water in the West Nishnabotna."
237
Well. So he knew what she'd
done, unbaptizing herself. She
probably had that river smell all over her that afternoon and he
figured it out
when she asked him later. And now the river was frozen and snowed
under, and
she wished she could see it, all pillowed like that, tucked in. By the
time it
thawed she would have her body to herself and she could walk in it
barefoot if
she wanted to, on those slippery rocks. She and Mellie used to pretend
they
were herding minnows, with their pant legs rolled up above their knees
and wet
anyway. Here she was, forgetting that there would be a child. It
frightened her
when she forgot. She must have started awake.
"What?" he said. The worrying
had worn him out. He
gave a sermon once about the disciples sleeping at Gethsemane because
they were
weary with grief. Sleep is such a mercy, he said. It was a mercy even
then.
"I've just never had the care
of a child."
"We'll be fine." He nestled
against her. That
sound of settling into the sheets and the covers has to be one of the
best
things in the world. Sleep is a mercy. You can feel it coming on, like
being
swept up in something. She could see the light in the room with her
eyes
closed, and she could smell the snow on the air drifting in. You had to
trust
sleep when it came or it would just leave you there, waiting.
She was thinking about the
spring, how clear and stinging
cold the water would be with snow still on the rocks and the sandbars.
And
summer. She might take the baby with her to the river. Little as it
would be.
Just to pick a few raspberries. And she might put it down in the grass
by the
road, just for a minute, just while she was picking berries. And then
she
forgot to come back soon enough, how long was she gone? and had to put
it in a
pail of river water because you never know. He would say, Why did you
do this?
Looking at her as if he didn't recognize her at all.
238
That woke her up. Her first
thought was, I have to get that
knife off the table. She'd been having her worst dream, with the
Reverend's arm
carefully across her where her waist would be with the Reverend
breathing at
her ear. She thought, There's a whole world of water in the West
Nishnabotna.
It's not the Mississippi, but it never begins and it never ends. Wife
is a
prayer. Because I'm his wife. I better think about that.
Sometimes when they were
together in the kitchen, when he
was drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper, he would fiddle with
that
knife, taking it up in his hand. He might have done the same with a
piece of driftwood,
with any harmless thing, just feeling how smooth it was, the shape wear
had
given it. She never got used to seeing it in his hand, but she never
said a
word about it except one time when he opened the blade. She said,
"Maybe
you shouldn't do that," and was surprised herself when she heard the
words. She said, "It's awful sharp," thinking probably that the knife
was like a snake, that it was in its nature to do harm if you trifled
with it.
She used to keep it by her when she slept, open, stuck into the floor
so she
could just grab it if she needed to. It was such a mean-looking thing,
and if
she had ever used it on anybody it would have been the knife that did
it,
because it was that kind of knife. Some dogs bite. So you keep them
away from
people. You can't just get rid of them for being the way they are. And
now and
then you can be glad to have them around, to snarl the way a good dog
never
does.
Say she took that knife away,
put it out of sight. Would he
notice and wonder what it meant? Would he ask her what she had done
with it,
look for it in her dresser drawer? Under her pillow? Could she put it
anywhere
at all that he might not just come across it and think, This is
strange, why
has she hidden it here? She had thought it through a hundred times.
That knife
was the difference between her and anybody else in the world. Ugly old
Doll
hunched over in the firelight, spitting on her bit of whetstone,
239
sharpening and wearing the
blade till the edge of it curved
like a claw, readying herself for whatever fearful thing she turned
over in her
mind while she was working at it. And, knowing that the fearful thing
might
take even Doll, who stole her and carried her away from whatever she
could have
had of place and name and kin, Lila watched her, hoping the knife would
take on
the witchy deadliness she was conjuring for it.
Fear and comfort could be the
same thing. It was strange,
when she thought of it. The wind always somewhere, trifling with the
leaves,
troubling the firelight. And that smell of damp earth and bruised
grass, a
lonely, yearning sort of smell that meant, Why don't you come back, you
will
come back, you know you will. And then the stars, and Mellie probably
awake,
lying there. thinking about them.
Lila could tell by the smell
that the sheets had frozen on
the clothesline. Then Mrs. Graham or whoever had the time had ironed
them. But
there was still that good, cold smell that made her think of the air
after a
lightning storm. New air, if there was such a thing, that the rain
brought
down, or the snow. She was still the preacher's bride, and those women
still
starched her pillowcase, blessing his happiness, praying for it. All
those
years of his loneliness were a weight on their hearts. Then he took a
wife and
he fathered a child, even if it wasn't born yet, and what else could
they do?
What more could they do? It made her think of the old days, when she
lived her
whole life just for the hours she spent at the movies, when everybody
in the
audience would sigh and weep and laugh for those beautiful ghosts in
that
unreachable place where people lived lives strangers could care about.
She had
a dream once that a woman's giant face turned and her giant eyes stared
at her,
and Lila was scared to death because, sitting there in the dark, nobody
along with
everybody else, she knew she was real to that woman. The look meant,
Should I
know you? as if to say, Who are you to be watching me like that? Now
here she
was
240
under the covers with this man
anybody in Fremont County
knew better than she did, knew when he was first a married man and a
father.
All of them probably wondered now and then how the two of them passed
the time
together, what in the world they could find to talk about, different as
they
were. All of them thinking how sad any sadness that came to him would
be, how
sweet any happiness, the poor old fellow. And here they were, the two
of them,
waking and sleeping through the long afternoon, in the crisp sheets
that
smelled like snow, the baby stirring a little sometimes, the old man
young in his
sleep and his comfort and she as still as could be, wanting nothing.
Those
women, looking on at their life, would say oh, and ah, when the
curtains
stirred and let whiter light into the pale room. Doll there, too,
watching.
Damn that knife.
She said, "We got to do
something with that damn
knife."
He said, "I suppose." She could
tell by his voice
he'd been awake for a while, lying still, too. "It's handy to have
around,
though. Good for paring apples."
"You been using my knife to
pare apples?" She' d
have turned to look him in the eye, except for the heft of her belly.
"Once or twice."
"I never said you could use it."
"Sorry. I don't think I did it
any harm. I believe you
said you used to use it to clean fish."
"That's different." Why was it
different? Because
it was the only knife she had. And she never slit a fish without
thinking she
hated the need to use it that way. Hating the need almost made it seem
all
right. Besides, it was a kind of a little murder, gutting a fish, so
when she
did it she thought back over her life, and there was something to that.
The
knife was a potent thing. Other people had houses and towns and names
and
graveyards. They had church pews. All she had was that knife. And dread
and
loneliness and regret. That was her dowry. Other women brought quilts
and
china. Even a little money sometimes. She
241
brought hard hands and a face
she could barely bring herself
to look at in a mirror because her life was just written all over it.
And that
knife.
But thinking about her life was
another thing. Lying there
in that room in that house in that quiet town she could choose what her
life
had been. The others were there. The world was there, evening and
morning. No
matter what anybody thought, no matter if she only tagged after them
because they
let her. That sweet nowhere. If the world had a soul, that was it. All
of them
wandering through it, never knowing anything different or wanting
anything
more.
Well, that wasn't true, either.
But one time she and Mellie cut
across a field, and just beyond
it there was a little valley, budding cottonwood trees letting morning
light
pass right through, new ferns and new grass all bright with it. In a
few days
it would be the valley of the shadow, but that day there were only
traces of
shade, the light just blooming, dandelion yellow in all that green.
When you
see something like that, it doesn't seem like anything you've ever seen
before.
She and Mellie were whispering. It would be their valley. They'd think
of a
secret name for it. Soon enough they heard Doane calling for them, and
they had
to leave it behind, and it felt like a broken promise when they did.
Remembering always felt almost
guilty, a lingering where
there was no cause to linger, as if whatever you loved had a claim on
you and
you couldn't help feeling it no matter what. There was nothing to do
but leave,
and still. That Mack. There was a time when she would have been so glad
if he'd
asked her for anything at all. If he had said one word to her, there in
the
street that day. The old man always pretended he was worried that some
fellow
would show up at the door. When she told him there was nobody coming
for her,
Mack was that nobody. She could just see the smile on his face, him
standing at
the
242
Reverend's door, his eyes all
sly with the evil he was
doing. He'd have his hands on his hips, looking around at the
neighborhood as
if he couldn't quite believe people really lived that way. Cigarette
hanging
out of his mouth, laughing to himself No decent man would look at every
single
thing in the world as if it had a price tag on it and he knew it wasn't
worth
half that much because he could see what the paint hid, where the rot
was. He'd
flip his cigarette into the bushes and say, So it's Mrs. Ames now, and
laugh.
He'd say, Good to see you, Rosie, hardly looking at her, and light up
another
cigarette and glance away from her like anything else would be more
interesting, because nothing had changed at all. She'd probably shut
the door
on him, and then if he left she'd be thinking about him more than she
usually
did.
Or he might sit down on the
step to finish his smoke, and if
the old man happened to come walking up from the church, he'd tell him
he was
looking for a little work. If he happened to get a lift out of town,
people
always appreciate a dollar or two to help pay for the gas. The Reverend
would
nod, he could do something or other around the place, and he would say,
Thanks,
smiling, and then as soon as the old man had come inside to look for
his wallet
he would drift away because it was a lie that he wanted work or money.
He would
have said a few words to the old man just to make her worry about what
he might
say. He'd have been sitting there smoking, his back to her, making sure
she
remembered that the two of them were not strangers and never would be,
either.
That's just how it is. If she ever saw that child of Missy's, it would
be the
child she'd hoped to steal. No matter that it had never seen her face.
If she
heard it was in trouble, she would say, Come here to me, then. I used
to dream I'd
have you to comfort. That's how I kept myself alive for a while one
time.
243
You. What a strange word that
is. She thought, I have never
laid eyes on you. I am waiting for you. The old man prays for you. He
almost
can't believe he has you to pray for. Both of us think about you the
whole day
long. If I die bearing you, or if you die when you are born, I will
still be
thinking, Who are you? and there will be only one answer out of all the
people
in the world, all the people there have ever been or will ever be. If
we find
each other in heaven, we'll say, So there you are! We'd be perfect in
heaven,
no regrets, no grudges, nothing to make you turn a cold eye on me the
way you
might do someday when you're old enough to really see me. When I tell
you that that
knife is the only thing I have to leave you. Then I'd be all hard and
proud,
like it didn't even matter what you thought. What else can a person do?
And it
would be the only thing that mattered, because no one else could say
"you" and mean the same thing by it. But there would be years when
the child would just want to sit on her lap. He'd favor her over
anybody. He'd
be crying and she'd pick him up, and then it would take him a minute to
be done
crying, but that would be all that was left of it, because she had her
arms
around him. Comfort. That's strange, too. When she used to lie there
almost
asleep, with her cheek on the old man's sweater, the night all around
her
chirping and whispering, the comfort of it was a thing she'd have
promised
herself the whole day long.
Thinking that way made her want
to turn onto her back, to
feel how good it was to be lying there, her body resting at a kind of
simmer,
the baby nudging a little, just so she'd know it was there. She could
feel her
body resting, the way you can tell that a cat asleep in the sun knows
it's
sleeping. The pleasure of it is just too good to go to waste. When she
stirred,
the old man sat up out of the covers. "Night!" he said. "Well. I
guess the wind has died down. We slept through supper. How are you
feeling? Can
I get you a sandwich?" He fumbled for his glasses. It always took him a
minute to collect himself. That's what he
244
would say. Let me collect
myself. Give me a
minute here. Everything seemed
strange when she thought about it. Where had he been? Nowhere at all,
even
lying there beside her. His hair was all pushed to one side, that
longer hair
that was meant to hide his baldness a little. He looked as though he
had waked
out of a dream, or into one, that made him feel he had to do something
important and couldn't take the time to figure out what it was.
"You," she said.
He laughed. "Who else?"
She said, "Nobody else in this
world."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
23.
There was more snow after that
one, sugar snow, the old man
called it, because his grandfather said that in Maine the last snow
fell while
the sap was running in the maple trees and they were catching it in
buckets and
boiling it into syrup. If he had ever visited Maine, it would have been
in the
spring. His grandfather talked about the wood fires and the sweet fog
in the
air and fresh syrup poured over fresh snow, the one earthly delight he
would
confess a craving for. "They ate it with a dill pickle. Afraid to enjoy
it
too much, I suppose." He was happier than he wanted her to see,
relieved
even though he knew it was too soon to trust that they were safe yet,
and
worried that he was too ready to be happy and relieved. After breakfast
he set
a little glass bowl on the porch railing to catch some snow as it fell,
and
when he saw it had stopped falling, he took the bowl out to the
rosebushes to
pluck snow that had caught in the brambles. He brought it inside and
set it on
the windowsill so the sun would melt it. It was pretty the way the
light made
kind of a little flame, floating in the middle of the water, burning
away in
there cold as could be. It was for christening the child, she knew
without
asking. If the child came struggling into the world, that water would
be ready
for him. If it had to be his only blessing, then it would be a pure
245
and lovely blessing. That was
the old man getting ready to
make the best of the worst that could happen. Not my will but Thine. In
his
sermons he was always reminding himself of that prayer. She would wake
up at
night and find him sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, his head
in his
hands. Maybe he never really slept.
Then there was a day of pangs
and a night of misery, and
after that the baby, scrawny and red as a skinned rabbit. When Boughton
saw it
he said, "Oh!" It was pity, startled out of him, and then he said,
"My babies were always big, brawny fellows, except the one. And he grew
up
to be as tall and fine-looking as any of them. I always thought so. You
can't
tell by-- you can't tell." Boughton had to be there because he was
always
there when he thought he might be able to help, bony old thing that he
was,
eyes full of tears. And the old man wanted him there, too, to help him
when he
decided he should bring that little bowl of water up the stairs. They
didn't
say so, but she knew. Teddy came the minute he could, probably afraid
his
father would die of grief. He was almost a doctor, there to keep an eye
on the
other fellow, his father said. She heard the phone ringing and the soft
voices.
People from the church. All the Boughtons would be coming from
everywhere.
Except the one. She wondered if she'd ever see the one. What did he do
to make
them all turn against him? "Well," the old man had said, "it was
really more the other way around." She didn't tell him she sort of
understood how that could happen.
The nurse washed the child and
tied the cord, and Mrs.
Graham and Mrs. Wertz bathed Lila and changed the bed with her in it.
You could
tell they'd done it a hundred times, they were so quick and gentle. It
made her
feel calm lying there in her clean nightgown, all the sweat wiped away
with
lavender water. How could she feel so calm? Had she died? All this
quiet, as if
no one could believe the saddest thing
246
that could happen really did
happen. Her old man was sitting
there beside her, his hand on her hand, white as death. She thought,
How many
years has this cost him, how many will it cost? This was the moment
before
everything changed, and there was nothing else to do but watch and
listen. The
house was as quiet as a held breath.
She said, "Well, you should
give me that baby
anyway."
He looked up at her and smiled.
"Yes. Yes, the doctor
has been checking him over a little. But he'll be wanting his mama.
He's had a
tough night." He said, "And so have you, precious Lila." So much
regret.
She said, "You're praying for
him."
He laughed and wiped his eyes.
"Troubling heaven. You
may be assured of it."
"Boughton, too."
"Boughton, too. Every last
Boughton, in fact."
"Except the one."
He laughed. "I'm sure we would
have his very best
wishes." His face was so white and weary.
"Well now, don't you stop
praying."
"I don't believe I could stop.
For more than a minute
or two."
"You might mention yourself,"
she said. "And
Boughton. And the other one."
The nurse brought the baby and
put him against her side.
Such a little thing, he could get lost in the covers. But there he was,
all
bundled up like a cocoon. The nurse said, "Now he's happy." Nothing
about giving him the breast. Teddy was leaning against the wall with
his arms
folded, just watching, not saying a thing, but when the old man lifted
his head
and glanced at him, he nodded, so slightly, and they all knew what that
meant.
The old man got up from his
chair. "I'll get it. I
don't know. It seems better than tap water, I suppose." He was a long
time
on the stairs, going down and coming back up again, with the little
bowl of
water trembling in his hands. She didn't see any light in it.
247
Boughton said, "John, let me
hold that for you."
The old man took his Bible from
the top of the dresser and
opened it and read, "'But thou art he that took me out of the womb;
thou
didst make me trust when I was upon my mother's breasts. I was cast
upon thee
from the womb; thou art my God since my mother bare me. Be not far from
me; for
trouble is near; for there is none to help."'
There was a silence. Boughton
said, "Yes. I'm a little
surprised you chose that text, John. It's a fine text. I just wouldn't
have
expected it. Don't mind me."
"No, you're right. I've had
that psalm on my mind
lately, I guess."
"Those verses in 139, 'For thou
didst form my inward
parts: thou didst cover me in my mother's womb'-- very fine." He said,
"The darkness is as light to You," and he shook his head.
"Excuse me." He began groping for his handkerchief, holding the bowl
in his weaker hand, and the water spilled, enough of it falling on the
baby to
make him mad, to judge by the look on his face and the sound he made.
Teddy laughed. "That was quite
a howl." He came
over to the side of the bed. "I think he's been playing possum."
Boughton said, "Yes, well, I
don't think that was an
actual baptism, though. I do apologize. There's still a little water
left in
the bowl here."
And Lila said, "We're going to
get this wet blanket off
of him, first of all." Teddy unbundled him and gave him to her, and
there
he was, a little naked man, not a Christian yet, needing comfort, then
lying
against her naked side where she unbuttoned herself so he could feel
the
softness of her breast. That wound when they cut him away from her,
that dark
knot, but never mind. He bumped his face against her side and pursed
his mouth
and found her breast with his wavering fist. She turned on her side to
help
him.
248
Teddy said, "Well, look at
that! He's pretty
spry."
Boughton was so upset with
himself that all he could think
of to say was "There is some water here. It hardly takes any at all."
Then he said, "It's snowing again. That's good, I suppose, if you want
snow. I never saw such a spring."
Teddy took the bowl out of his
trembling hands and set it
aside and put his arms around him. "Here," he said. "Just rest
your head for a minute. You're all worn out." And he did rest his head
against Teddy's chest, his sweater, crooked and small as he was, her
old man
watching the way he did when she knew he was thinking, that's how it
would be
to have a son. And then he turned back the sheet and looked at the son
he had,
so small he could fit in her two hands, but alive just the same, and he
laughed. The tip of his finger on the little bird bone of your shoulder.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
24.
So that other life began,
almost the one she used to imagine
for herself when she thought she might just slip a baby under her coat
and walk
away with it. She knew better than to waste that time. There isn't
always
someone who wants you singing to him or nibbling his ear or brushing
his cheek
with a dandelion blossom. Somebody who knows when you're being silly,
and
laughs and laughs. So long as he was little enough to carry, she could
hardly
bring herself to put him down. She thought, I know what happens next.
Old
Boughton will tell you that story a hundred times. He will say he
performed a
miracle and that was why we had to name you after him, because he
really was
your godfather, yes! If anybody in the world has ever had a godson! And
that is
why you love the snow so much! You were christened with it! And you
will wonder
what such an old, old man could have to say to you, what it could mean.
Putting
his face down close to yours, making his eyes big, and you just staring
at the way
his flesh hangs off his skull,
249
and how there are always
whiskers in the creases of it. It's
all strange. People never really believe they were taken from their
mother's
womb and laid on her breast. I could see your eyes behind your eyelids,
and veins
through the skin of your belly, and they were that blue that was never
meant to
be seen. It is so strange that it belongs in the Bible, with the
seraphim and
the dry bones. The day you were born there was just wind enough to stir
the
curtains a little, and there was just light enough to make it seem like
evening
all day long. And there was quiet enough to make it seem as though
sound had
passed out of the world altogether, leaving the wind behind to sweep up
after
it. And then you with your big belly and your skinny legs, like a wet
cat, not
half looking like the makings of a child. I'll never tell you that. It
was a
month before your father had the courage even to hold you in his lap.
But when
you were just two weeks old we took you to the church to be christened
for
sure, because Boughton kept on worrying until it was done. Your father
said it
was intention that mattered, and that didn't matter, either, because a
newborn
child is as pure as the snow. Boughton said if they did not act on the
intention when circumstance allowed them to, then the seriousness of
the
intention was questionable.
"Robert, I hope I never have to
be that serious again
in this life."
"I can say that you were
distracted from it. Your
intention. I know what Calvin said as well as you do! Better! Don't
even bother
me with it!" Maybe you will remember how they sound when they argue
about
something, Boughton thought it was all his fault, or he would have been
the
cause of any harm that came from it, which was just as bad. So when you
were
two weeks old we took you down to the church one cold Sunday, the first
time
you felt the air on your face. I carried you inside my coat, and I
250
could see you peeking out at
things. There you were, right
against my heart, with a shawl around us both. Nobody but the two of us
knew
how plump and beautiful you were, because nobody knew what a pitiful
thing you
had been just a few days before, except Boughton, who was still scared
to look
at you and couldn't think of a thing except making a Christian out of
you while
we had the chance. Teddy told him to stop coming around so much,
worrying
everybody, and mostly he minded. Teddy had to be back at school, but he
called
every day and then every other day and then once a week, and then we
all forgot
to be frightened of you. You turned into a perfectly fine baby. Maybe
your
father has enough years left in him to see you turn into a perfectly
fine boy.
And maybe not. Old men are hard to keep.
Lila knew what would really
happen next. One day she and the
child would watch them lower John Ames into his grave, Mrs. Ames on one
side
and his father, John Ames, on the other, and his mother and that boy
John Ames
and his sisters, a little garden of Ameses, all planted there waiting
for the
Resurrection. She knew it was ridiculous, but she always imagined them
coming
up some June day, right through the roses, not breaking a stem or
bruising a
petal. Shaking hands, patting backs, too taken up with it all to notice
her
flowers. Except Mrs. Ames, who might stoop down and pick one to show
that baby,
This is a rose. See how cool it is, how nice it smells. Holding it away
from
the baby's hand because in the world as they left it there' d have been
thorns.
That day might come in a thousand years. But soon, before he was half
grown,
the boy would be standing beside her and he would ask where their
places were,
his and hers, because the plots were all taken up, and she would say,
It don't
matter. We'll just wander a while. We'll be nowhere, and it will be all
right.
I have friends there.
251
She would keep every promise
she had made, the boy would
learn "Holy, Holy, Holy" and the Hundredth Psalm. He'd pray before he
ate, breakfast, lunch, and supper, for as long as she had anything to
say about
it. Every day of every year they lived in Gilead she would be
remembering what
happened that very day, reciting it to herself in her mind so sometime
she
could say, One time when you weren't even walking yet he took you
fishing with
him. He had his pole and creel in his hand and you in the crook of his
arm and
he went off down the road in the morning sunshine, striding along like
a
younger man, talking to you, laughing. He came back an hour later and
set the
empty creel on the table and said, "We propped the pole and watched
dragonflies. Then we got a little tired." And what a look he gave her,
in
the sorrow of his happiness. He might as well have said, When he is old
enough
to understand, tell him about the day we went fishing. So she said,
"You
might as well be writing things down." Coming from him it would mean
more.
That was one of those days that is so mild and bright you know you'll
never see
a better one. The weather just flaunting itself. She might wait for
another day
like it to tell the boy how his father couldn't wait to have a son,
because if
you just say a day was fine, nobody makes much of it.
She could tell him how the old
man looked standing in the
pulpit, his hair pure white, his face all serious and gentle. He had
looked
into those faces in the pews for so many years, and couldn't look at
any one of
them without remembering the day he buried a mother, christened a
child,
soothed a parting as well as he could. And sometimes rebuked where he
should
have comforted-- mainly when he was young, he told her. But he never
forgot
that he'd done it, and he said no one who heard one of those stories
ever
forgot either. So he spoke with a tenderness he wasn't even aware of
anymore,
that you could read if you knew how, like reading the bottom of a river
from
its pools and flows. He had paused over the word "widow" even before
he knew her name, there were so many of them, but it was harder for him
now.
The word "orphan" troubled him after she told him a little about
where she came from, and then after he had a child, he could hardly
even say
it. His preaching was a sort of pattern of his mind, like the lines in
his
face.
252
That old black coat he always
wore to preach in was the one
he put over her shoulders one evening when they were walking along the
road
together and he was throwing rocks at the fence posts the way a boy
would do,
still shy of her. But on a Sunday morning, with the sermon in front of
him he'd
spent the week on and knew so well he hardly needed to look at it, he
was a
beautiful old man, and it pleased her more than almost anything that
she knew
the feel of that coat, the weight of it. She'd be thinking about it
when she
should have been praying. But if she ever had prayed in all the years
of her
old life, it might have been for just that, that gentleness. And if she
prayed
now, it was really remembering the comfort he put around her, the
warmth of his
body still in that coat. It was a shock to her, a need she only
discovered when
it was satisfied, for those few minutes. In those days she had all the
needs
she could stand already, and here was another one. So she said
something mean
to him. That's how she used to be and how she might be again someday,
if she
was ever just barely getting by and somebody seemed to be about to make
it
harder just by making it different. They'd had their wedding by then,
but she
wasn't married to him yet, so she still thought sometimes, Why should
he care?
What is it to him? That was loneliness. When you're scalded, touch
hurts, it
makes no difference if it's kindly meant. Now he could comfort her with
a look.
And what would she do without him. What would she do.
Doll was hard that way. All of
them were. Talking to
strangers was putting yourself within the reach of sudden harm. What
might they
say? What might they seem to be thinking? Then you were left with it
afterward,
like remembering a bad dream, and nothing to do about it except to hate
the
next stranger a
253
Little more. Those times she
used to think, I have a knife
in my garter, and you don't know how you're pressing up against the
minute I
decide to use it. Doll told her, Don't cut nobody with it. You don't
want all
that to deal with. Just give them a look at it. Most of the time,
that's
plenty. But there were times when the merciless knife was a comfort to
her.
Even when she only thought somebody might have looked at her the wrong
way,
she'd tell herself she had that furious old knife and it had done the
worst
already. That was before she had a child to look after. You have to
stay out of
trouble for the sake of your child. She still actually thought like
that, when
she let her thoughts sink down to where they rested. She had never
taken a dime
that wasn't hers or hurt a living soul, to speak of.
But that's what her heart was like sometimes,
secret and bitter and scared. She had stolen the preacher's child, and
she
laughed to think of it. Making him learn his verses and say his prayers
would
be like a joke, when they were off by themselves, getting by as they
could. She
did steal that Bible, and she'd keep it with her, and she' d show him
that part
about the baby toiling in its blood, and she'd say, That was me, and
somebody
said, "Live!" I never will know who. And then you came, red as blood,
naked as Adam, and I took you to my breast and you lived when they
never
thought you would. So you're mine. Gilead has no claim on you, or John
Ames
either, or the graveyard that has no place for you anyway.
Oh, if the old man knew what
thoughts she had! She could make
a pretty good meat loaf now and a decent potato salad. He told her he'd
never
liked pie very much anyway. She could keep the house nice enough.
People
passing in the road stopped to admire her gardens. The boy was as clean
and
pretty as any baby in Gilead. A little small, but that could change.
And the
old man did look as though every blessing he had forgotten to hope for
had
descended on him all at once, for the time being.
254
She couldn't lean her whole
weight on any of this when she
knew she would have to live on after it. She wouldn't even want to see
this
house again after they left it, or Gilead, at least till the boy had
outgrown
the thought that they belonged there. So she thought about the old
life. She
never really hated it until Doll came to her all bloody and she went to
St.
Louis. But it was a hard way to bring up a child. And she would tell
him he was
a minister's son, so he might blame her because she couldn't give him
what his
father would have given him, the quiet gentleness in his manners, the
way of
expecting that people would look upto him. She surely couldn't teach
him that.
Still,
there was this
time, this waking up when the baby started fussing, this scrambling
eggs and
buttering toast in the new light of any day at all, geraniums in the
windows,
the old man with his doddering infant in his lap, propped against his
arm,
reading him the funny papers. So one morning, standing at the sink
washing the
dishes, she said, "I guess there's something the matter with me, old
man.
I can't love you as much as I love you. I can't feel as happy as I am."
"I know," he said. "I don't
think it's
anything to worry about.
I don't worry about it, really."
"I got so much life behind me."
"I know."
"It was nothing like this life."
"I know."
"I miss it sometimes."
He nodded. "We aren't so
different. There are things I
miss. "
She said, "I might have to go
back to it sometime. The
part I could go back to, what with the child."
"Yes," he said. "I've given
that some
thought. I know you'll do the best you can. The best that can be done.
I'll be
leaving you on your own. We've both always known that. I can't tell you
how
deeply I regret it."
255
"You have told me, plenty of
times. But for now,"
she said, "things are good. If hard times are coming, I' d just as soon
wait to start worrying. That's not really the problem." The problem is,
she thought, that if someday she opened the front door and there, where
the
flower gardens and the fence and the gate ought to be, was that old
life, the
raggedy meadows and pastures and the cornfields and the orchards, she
might
just set the child on her hip and walk out into it, the buzz and the
smell and
the damp of it, the breath of it like her own breath, her own sweat.
Stepping
back into the loneliness, a dreadful thing, like walking into cold
water,
waiting for the numbness to set in that was the body taking the care it
could,
so that what you knew you didn't have to feel. In the dream it was
always
morning, and the sun already a little too hot. She was glad she had
seen the boy
brand new, red as fire, without a tear to give to the world, no ties to
the
world at all, just that knot on his belly. Then he was at her side, at
her
breast, a human child. The numbness setting in. But it never sinks
right to the
bone. That orphan he was first he always would be, no matter how they
loved
him. He'd be no child of hers, otherwise. She said, "What is it you're
missing?"
He shrugged. "Pretty well
everything. You. This old
fellow." He patted the baby's leg. "Evening. Morning."
"You aren't as old as you think
you are,
Reverend."
He said, "It's just arithmetic.
That's what it comes
down to. Boughton has married four or five of his children. Baptized a
dozen
grandchildren by now. And maybe I'll teach this fellow to tie his
shoelaces.
The years of a man's life are threescore years and ten, give or take.
That's
how it is." He said, "I feel like Moses on the mountain, looking out
on the life he will never have. Then I think of the life I do have. And
that
starts me thinking about the life I won't have. All that beautiful
life."
He shrugged. "I guess I'm pretty hard to please."
256
"I'm going to make us some more
coffee. Did I ever say
that? That I love you? I always thought it sounded a little foolish.
But the
way you talk, sometime I might regret putting it off."
"I believe you said it a minute
ago. You can't love me
as much as you do love me. Something to that effect. Which I thought
was
interesting." He said, "All those years, were you as sad as you were
sad? As lonely as you were lonely? I wasn't."
"Me neither. I'd have died of
it."
"I had the church, of course,
and Boughton. I had my
prayers and my books. 'And my ending is despair, Unless I be relieved
by
prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all
faults.'
Quite a life, really. A very good life. But there was such a silence
behind it
all. Over it. Beneath it. Sometimes I used to read to myself out loud,
just to
hear a voice.''
"You do that now.''
"Do I? Well, by now it's just
habit."
"And I think about Doll.'' Then
she said, "I'm
keeping that knife. I'll put it out of sight somewhere, but I'm keeping
it.''
"Fine."
"It ain't very Christian of me.
Such a mean old knife.
I hate to think he could want it sometime, but he could.''
The old man nodded.
Here she was practically
calling herself a Christian,
because when the Reverend had baptized their infant at the church that
day and
put him into her arms, he touched the water to her head, too, three
times. He
turned his back to the people and murmured to her, "I don't really know
what
I'm doing here. I should have asked you first. But I wanted you to know
that we
couldn't bear-- we have to keep you with us. Please God.'' That late
new snow
made the window light very cool and pure, and she was a little faint
from
standing, so soon after the birth. Mrs. Graham took her into the study
to wait
with her for the service to end.
257
She sat down in the preacher's
chair and held the baby
against her, and she thought, Did I say, It's all right with me, I
guess?
thinking that if she'd said it she wasn't sure she'd meant it, and if
she
hadn't said it she was sorry she had not. The old coat he had put over
her
shoulders when they were walking in the evening was as good to remember
as the
time Doll took her up in her arms. She thought it was nothing she had
known to
hope for and something she had wanted too much all the same. So too
much
happiness came with it, and happiness was strange to her. He said, We
have to
keep you with us. In that eternity of his, where everybody will be
happy, how
could he feel the lack of her, the loss of her? She had to think about
that.
Sometime she would ask him about it. It must always be true that there
are the
stragglers, people somebody couldn't bear to be without, no matter what
they'd
been up to in this life. That son of Boughton's.
And then there were the people
no one would miss, who had
done no special harm, who just lived and died as well as they could
manage.
That would have been Lila, if she had not wandered into Gilead. And
then she
thought, I couldn't bear to be without Doll, or Mellie, or Doane and
Marcelle.
Even Arthur and his boys-- not that they had mattered so much to her
when she
was a child, but because fair was fair and none of them ever had any
good thing
that the others didn't have some right to, even Deke. If there was
goodness at
the center of things, that one rule would have to be respected, because
it was
as important to them as anything in this world.
She thought maybe, just by
worrying about it, Boughton would
sweep up China into an eternity that would surprise him out of all his
wondering. God is good, the old men say. That would be the proof.
Can a soul in bliss feel a
weight lift off his heart? She
couldn't help imagining-- Oh,
here you
are! Your dear weariness and ugliness as beautiful as light! That boy,
weeping
over what he was, his big, dirty
258
hands that had done something
he couldn't quite believe, and
then there he would be, fresh from the gallows, shocked at the kindness
all
around him, which was the last thing he expected. He'd had the idea
"father." That was what made him so desperate that his father in this
life never said a gentle word to him. And there that mangy old father
would be,
too, because the boy couldn't bear heaven without him. He'd say, See,
you was
lucky to have me for a son, after all! Look what I done for you! And,
Ain't
this better than anything! Better than money! He'd be as proud of
heaven as if
he'd come up with it all on his own.
So it couldn't matter much how
life seemed. The old man
always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of
understanding,
and eternity isn't one of them. Well, this world isn't one either. Most
of the
time she thought she understood things better when she didn't try.
Things
happen the way they do. Why was a foolish question. In a song a note
follows
the one before because it is that song and not another one. Once, she
and
Mellie tried to count up all the songs they knew. How could there be so
many?
Because every one was just itself.
It
was eternity that let her think this way. In eternity people's lives
could be
altogether what they were and had been, not just the worst things they
ever
did, or the best things either. So she decided that she should believe
in it,
or that she believed in it already. How else could she imagine seeing
Doll
again? Never once had she taken her to be dead, plain and simple. If
any
scoundrel could be pulled into heaven just to make his mother happy, it
couldn't be fair to punish scoundrels who happened to be orphans, or
whose
mothers didn't even like them, and who would probably have better
excuses for
the harm they did than the ones who had somebody caring about them. It
couldn't
be fair to punish people for trying to get by, people who were good by
their
own lights, when it took all the courage they had to be good. Doane
tying that
ribbon around Marcelle's ankle. If that wasn't good or bad, it was
something
she was glad to have seen.
259
Mellie singing to soothe some
borrowed baby. That's what she
was thinking. The Reverend couldn't bear to be without her. Nothing
against
Mrs. Ames and her baby. Eternity had more of every kind of room in it
than this
world did. She could even think of wicked old Mack in the light of that
other
life, looking it over, wondering what the catch was, what the joke was,
somehow
knowing that she had brought him there. And his child. She couldn't
bear to be
without them. It was eternity that let her think like that without a
bit of
shame.
There was no end to it. Thank
God, as the old men would say.
But the baby started fussing
and Mrs. Graham took him and
jostled him a little in her arms and let him suck her finger such a
good boy,
such a good boy-and Lila heard the final hymn and the benediction. Then
the
Reverend came in, looking a little worried as he always did when he
thought he
might not have been attentive enough, and then she realized how tired
she was.
But she knew she would come back to what she'd been thinking about. And
also to
"the peace that passeth all human understanding," which was the
blessing he said over his flock as they drifted out into Gilead, the
small,
frail, ragtag work of their hands.
So when she told him she meant
to keep that knife and he
nodded, she could explain to herself why she meant to keep it. There
was no way
to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots
of
bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace
had to
fall over them. Doll hunched in the firelight whetting her courage,
dreaming
vengeance because she knew someone somewhere was dreaming vengeance
against
her. Thinking terrible thoughts to blunt her own fear.
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That's how it is. Lila had
borne a child into a world where
a wind could rise that would take him from her arms as if there were no
strength in them at all. Pity us, yes, but we are brave, she thought, and wild,
more life in us than
we can bear, the fire infolding itself in us. That peace could only be
amazement, too.
Well, for now there were
geraniums in the windows, and an
old man at the kitchen table telling his baby some rhyme he' d known
forever,
probably still wondering if he had managed to bring her along into that
next
life, if he could ever be certain of it. Almost letting himself imagine
grieving for her in heaven, because not to grieve for her would mean he
was
dead, after all.
Someday she would tell him what
she knew.
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