Lila: A Novel (8 page)

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 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 much matter which one it is. She’d thought it might be very nice to rest her head on his shoulder. And it was. 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, a breath. 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 getting 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.”

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 wool 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 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 right.”

“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.”

“That’s all?”

“And”—he laughed—“I 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 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 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 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.