Lila: A Novel (17 page)

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?”

“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.”

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.”

“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?”

“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.”

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.”

*   *   *

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 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 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 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.