Lila: A Novel (23 page)

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 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 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. It wouldn’t be stealing if she paid the money back. That was her thinking at the time.

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 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 spared 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.

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.”

“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 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 of 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.