The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (12 page)

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The Bodlers’ truck was parked in the driveway. Lily rolled her bicycle into the ditch, climbed the embankment, and at its crest she lay down on her stomach in the tall grass and looked across the field toward the little house, the garage and the mountains of junk. Smoke rose from a rusted metal bin only yards from the garage, black then gray as it caught the wind. She noticed the fender of a second truck and heard voices. The speakers were invisible, and the wind distorted the sound—unintelligible rumblings followed an isolated word or phrase that carried over the field oddly charged and amplified. She heard the word “rope” very clearly, then “burn” or “barn.” A figure emerged from behind the trucks. It was Frank, carrying a large black garbage bag in his arms, and at his heels Lily saw an old cane wheelchair come rolling forward from behind the truck. Dick was pushing someone. At first Lily thought it was a tall girl, but then after two or three seconds she realized it was Martin Petersen. He leapt up out of the chair, said something to Dick, and the two men lifted it into the back of the hidden truck and then began to secure the wheelchair with rope. Martin was standing in the back of the truck, his upper body visible against the sky as he leaned forward to receive the bulky black bag from Frank. Lily edged over in the grass to get a better view of them, but she kept her head low. Martin jumped down from the truck. She wished she could hear what they were saying and crawled forward in the grass. The three men were now standing close together. She saw Dick’s head turn to one side. He seemed to be looking over the field directly at her. Lily hugged the ground, and then she realized he couldn’t have seen her because he turned back to Martin. Frank must have been negotiating a price. He held out five fingers of one hand, and with the index finger of the other he touched each finger once. Martin had his back turned to her now, but Lily saw him dig into his pocket. The wind blew her hair into her face and flattened the grass in front of her. Frank talked, but Lily couldn’t hear the words. She heard Martin’s voice—an initial stutter that he quickly overcame—and then he said, “Private business, Frank.” Martin rubbed his face, and the gesture looked like one of Frank’s. He might not know it, she thought, but he’s imitating Frank. They shook hands and Martin clapped Dick on the shoulder. The touch seemed to rouse Dirty Dick from his stupor—his head bobbed up and down in acknowledgment—and he fumbled for Martin’s hand, which he didn’t shake so much as hold for several seconds. The physical contact among the three suggested an intimacy Lily couldn’t understand. Few people touched the Bodlers. Her father had, hadn’t he? Yes, he would shake hands with Frank at the door. Lily put her head down in the grass and closed her eyes. She imagined Pastor Ingebretzen bolting from the house, his black robe flying as Frank chased him into the road with an ax. Then she changed the image. No, the minister wouldn’t have worn vestments, just a black suit with his collar. She remembered old Pastor Ingebretzen. He had been a serious little man who quoted Scripture on every occasion, even to the Sunday school kids who rarely understood a word. He had been prone to pointing for emphasis during sermons, and once he had pointed his short, white finger at her, Lily Dahl. He had singled her out among all the children in the Sunday school class. “Stand in awe and sin not; commune with thy heart upon thy bed, and be still.” Years had passed before Lily figured out that the man must have pointed at random, that he hadn’t looked into her heart and seen smudges of sin, but had merely picked out a young face that looked particularly bored and punished it. At the time, Lily thought Pastor Ingebretzen had read her soul and knew that in her bed at night she suffered not only from guilt, but from awe. She had dreaded God, Satan, the Holy Ghost, and angels equally and had prayed that she be spared the appearance of each and all of them. She had even used the word “spared,” because it sounded biblical. At the sound of Martin’s truck, Lily picked up her head and watched him back out of the driveway. The wheelchair rolled and jumped once under its constraint as the truck left the gravel and turned right onto the highway—away from town and toward the little road he had drawn for her on the map. As she watched the truck grow smaller, she saw in her mind the delicate lines of the web he had drawn beneath his house, the inexplicable box at the Overland’s and the arrow to her grandparents’ house. It was like pointing at nothing, except maybe heaven.

Filthy Frank and Dirty Dick lingered in the driveway. They didn’t speak to or even look at each other. They stood inert and blank for a long time. Lily had hoped they would climb into the truck and drive away, but she understood that wasn’t going to happen when she saw Dick wander over to the fire. He reached up, picked a soft bundle from the nearest junk mound and dropped it into the bin. Whatever it was, it excited the flames and they rose high. Dick lifted his chin and stepped away from the heat, but when the blaze subsided, he moved close again and repeated what he had done before. This time, when he backed away from the leaping fire, Lily saw that he was laughing or that his expression suggested a laugh, but she heard no noise. It could have been that the crackle of the fire in combination with the wind hid the noise from her, but Lily was surprised that she heard nothing at all. He lifted his shoulders, threw his head back and opened his mouth wide as his head bobbed in silent hilarity. Then he drew something white from his pocket and threw it into the fire. The white thing had little effect on the flames, but Dick laughed the noiseless laugh anyway, as though a burnt bit of cloth were the most uproarious thing he could think of. Lily saw Frank shuffle toward his brother, stop beside him and raise his fist above Dick’s head. She braced herself for a blow, but instead of hitting his brother, Frank let his arm fall slowly in front of Dick’s face. Then Frank turned toward the house, and his brother trailed after him. The screen door slammed and Lily thought to herself that it was now or never.

She made a run for the garage. When her feet hit the driveway, she heard the gravel shift under them and thought, I’m making too much noise, but she didn’t stop until she arrived panting inside the garage, where she backed against the wall to hide herself. She listened for the house door. Nothing. She moved quietly in the direction of the suitcase. She remembered exactly where she had left it and guessed she could open it, return the shoes and shut it in a matter of seconds. Standing in the middle of the garage, she crouched down to reach out for the suitcase, which should have been wedged between two rain barrels, and found that it wasn’t there. She pushed aside cans, boxes and an old rake, expecting to discover it, but the suitcase wasn’t in the garage anymore. Lily paused, clutched the bag with the shoes in it to her chest and wondered what to do. Then she heard the screen door slam and the sound of footsteps. She ducked behind a large wooden crate and squatted on the floor. Through the slats of the crate she saw Dick shuffle past the garage toward the fire and stop beside the bin. Lily looked at the dark, motionless figure, his face blurred by the rising smoke, and waited. Behind him, she could see the Klatschwetter barn and silo. She noticed that the sky had clouded over and that the sun had sunk lower than she would have thought. Suddenly she worried about making rehearsal on time. But Dick was in no hurry. Lily sat down. She removed the shoes from her bag and laid them on her lap. She would have to leave them here in the garage. What choice did she have? The damp earth floor began to seep through her jean shorts and underwear, and she lifted her buttocks off the ground to adjust her position. As she moved, the shoes slipped. Lily turned to grab them, smashed her nose into the edge of a rusted wheelbarrow behind her, and then, reaching for her face, slammed her forehead into the tine of a garden rake. With a short gasp, she put her fingers to the spot, and removing her hand saw that it was covered with blood. “Oh shit,” she whispered to herself. She touched the gash in her forehead; it wasn’t deep. Then looking down she noticed spots of blood on her thighs. It’s my nose, she thought, and pinched it hard, but the blood leaked out anyway. She let go and began to wipe the blood from her legs, but it smeared on her skin and mingled with the dirt from her hands. The bad light made it hard to see, but she knew the blood was coming fast and hard. When she looked down for the shoes, she saw she had bled on them, too—a large red spot on one heel and three drops on the tip of the other. Lily grabbed her canvas bag and began to rub the shoes with the material. She spat on the cloth and rubbed, but as she leaned close to the shoes to clean them, she saw more blood drop onto her legs. Still, she didn’t give up, but held her nose with one hand and tried to clean with the other hand, but she could feel herself beginning to panic. The shoes were getting ruined. The white leather had turned rust-red and filthy with her attempts to clean it, and suddenly she wanted to cry. I can’t leave them here now, she thought. She watched as more blood dropped onto the toes, and covered the laces with her hands. Lily looked up and out through the slats of the crate toward the smoking can and saw that Dick had disappeared. Now, she thought, and carrying the shoes in one hand she made her way to the garage doors and stuck her head cautiously into the light. Without examining her hands very closely, she saw that the blood on them appeared much redder now that she was outside. She looked toward the house and saw nobody. Then she looked in the other direction, but neither Dick nor Frank was anywhere in sight.

Lily looked at the smoke rising from the can and thought, I’ll burn them. There’ll be nothing left of them. It was the perfect solution. She sprinted toward the fire, dropped the shoes into the ashes and then, feeling a surge of relief, fled toward the ditch and threw herself headlong into the grass. For several seconds she didn’t move. Then she turned around to look at the smoking bin. She saw no flames. They’re not burning, she thought. They’ll come out in the morning and find them, and they’ll see that they’re covered in blood. What if they’re hers? What if they took the suitcase inside for safekeeping because it belonged to her? Lily jumped to her feet, ran back to the fire and looked into it. Sure enough, the shoes had been charred and scorched, but not burnt up, and when she bent toward them to pick them up out of the ashes, she smelled something sweet and putrid that made her stand back for a moment. Then she plucked the shoes out of the fire. The hot leather burnt her fingertips, but she held on to the shoes and took off toward the ditch, where she threw herself into the grass for a second time and let the shoes fall to the ground. Then she looked at them and laughed—one short, miserable laugh at her own stupidity. When she picked up the two charred things to put them into her bag, they weren’t hot anymore, just warm. As warm as somebody with a high fever, she thought, and then she pushed her bicycle up the ditch into the road. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but her thumbs and index fingers throbbed as she gripped the handlebars. When she looked up, Lily saw that the sun had disappeared entirely under thick, gray clouds, an ordinary shift in weather that nevertheless caused her some amazement. She pedaled hard with her head down against the traffic and hoped the increasing gloom would hide her.

Halfway home, Lily saw a turquoise-and-white Pontiac come speeding toward her, and when the car was only yards away, she noticed Dolores at the wheel. She was driving with the windows open, a Loretta Lynn song blaring from the radio as the car’s headlights shone on Lily for a second or two. In that brief moment Lily saw Dolores look directly at her, but the woman’s face gave no sign of recognition. Maybe it’s her night with the twins, Lily thought. Rehearsal must have started without me. And thinking of the Arts Guild, Lily understood all of a sudden that she missed Hermia, as if Hermia were a close friend of hers. She felt a drop of rain on her neck as she drove past the Webster city limits sign. Then she felt another, and another.

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When Lily opened the back door and looked up the stairway to the landing, she saw Mabel step out into the hall and look down at her. The bare bulb shone down on Mabel’s gray hair and whitened it. “I’m glad it’s you, Lily,” she said, and then, focusing her eyes, she said with a little cry in her voice, “You’ve had an accident!”

After that, Mabel was all business. Her anxiety of only hours before had vanished, and Lily saw that she moved like a different person. Efficient and brusque, she ordered Lily to come to her apartment to get cleaned up and fed, and after Lily threw the bloody bag with the burnt shoes into her closet and called Mrs. Wright at the Arts Guild, who accepted her lie about falling off her bike, she obeyed.

Lily sat down on Mabel’s sofa and listened to the sound of water running in the bathroom. While she waited for Mabel, she looked for the Japanese couple but didn’t find them. Then Mabel was standing in front of her with a basin of water and a washcloth. She drew a chair close to the sofa, set the bowl on the floor and without another word began to wash Lily’s face. Mabel patted the cut on her forehead gently, lifted Lily’s hair and moved the warm cloth along her neck. Then she wiped Lily’s legs and dried them just as they were beginning to itch from the wetness. Even as it happened, Lily knew the washing marked a change between her and Mabel that could never be undone, and yet she didn’t resist it. The woman’s touch, the way her hand moved with the cloth, was so tender that Lily felt her throat tighten with emotion. When Mabel lowered Lily’s hands into the basin, the warm water aggravated her burns and she gasped. Mabel took both Lily’s hands in her own and turned them over—both thumbs and two of the fingers on each hand had blistered at their tips. Mabel looked up at Lily, her eyes steady, but she said nothing. She left the room and a few moments later returned with a fresh basin of water.

Then Mabel started to talk. She didn’t preface her remarks, didn’t give any reason for her sudden desire to tell Lily what she had never told her before. She just jumped in and said, “My father loved me, but he had no gift for affection. He rarely touched me, and when he did, his body was wood. I pity him now. It was my mother who held me and rocked me, me and my brother, and she had hands, Lily, that when they touched you, you felt the calm of every calm thing in the world, and when she died—I was younger than you, seventeen—it was as if all that was good and light had been snuffed out of my life. I left my father and my brother one day in the spring, after a year of plotting and planning. I ran off with Owen Hartwig, a freethinker from the
Aberdeen Weekly,
to get married.”