Lila: A Novel (18 page)

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 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.”

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.

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 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 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.

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.”

“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 dreamed 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 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.