Lila: A Novel (13 page)

Lila thought once, when she was out walking, what if she saw someone ahead of her on the road and it was Doll. What if she called out her name, and the woman stopped and turned and laughed and held out her arms to her, wrapped her into her shawl. She would tell her, I have married a fine old man. I live in a good house that has plenty of room in it for you, too. You can stay forever, and we’ll work in the garden together. And Doll would laugh and squeeze her hand—“It come out right, after all! I ain’t dead and you ain’t in some shack just struggling to get by! I had to leave for a time, but I’m back now, I’m resurrected! I been looking everywhere for you, child!” She could tell herself what she would tell Doll, things that would help her stay in that life. A married woman with a good husband! It was worth all the trouble, every bit of it.

Doll’s eyes would shine the way they never did when anyone but Lila was there to see. Just that little room in the house in Tammany made her happy for all she was giving her child, her own dresser drawer and a lamp with a ruffled shade and school besides. Then she must have seen someone, or heard that someone was asking after them, and they left as soon as Doll could dry her hands and change her apron. She said she had wearied of Mrs. Marker’s hollering, but they ate the lunch she had made for Lila to take to school as they walked away from Tammany, through the woods, not along the road. Doll had a red stain, like a birthmark, on one side of her brow and on her cheek, and people who saw her didn’t forget her. That was why they couldn’t stay in one place. She never explained any of this to Lila. It was a part of everything they never spoke of. But it was clear enough when she thought back on it. They managed to stay in that town for months, almost a school year, Doll taking the risk so Lila could learn to read. Well, the old man’s house was full of books. She would work on her reading. Doll would want her to.

When she thought this way, she could almost begin to enjoy her life. She was stealing it, almost, to give it to Doll. People might think she liked the old man’s house and the Boughtons’ clothes and all the proprieties and the courtesies. They might think she liked the old man, too. But she just imagined how all of it would seem to Doll—a very good life, a comfortable life that she had because Doll had stolen her, and had taken care of her all those years. She lived for Doll to see. Lila made the old man smile for the pleasure in his eyes, because Doll would have been so happy to see it. When she put her arms around him, when she slipped into his bed, Doll would have smoothed the pillow and whispered to her, “He’s such a kind old man!”

Lila went along with him to Boughton’s house to drink iced tea on the porch and listen while they talked, and one afternoon as she listened she understood that Doll was not, as Boughton said, among the elect. Like most people who lived on earth, she did not believe and was not baptized. None of Doane’s people were among the elect, so far as she knew, except herself, if she could believe it. Maybe their lives had gone on, and some revival preacher somewhere had taken them in hand. But Doll’s life ended, and no one had rested his hand on her head, and no one had said a word to her about the waters of regeneration. If there was a stone on her grave, there was no name on it. A real name might have made her easier to find, or have added another crime to child-stealing, so she never even told
Lila
what it was. When Doll gave Lila her knife she said, “It’s only for scaring folks with. If you go cutting somebody it’s going to be trouble no matter what the story is.” So Doll might have been hiding already when Lila first knew her, sleeping in that miserable, crowded old cabin, coming and going in the night the way she did. Calling herself by that one name. Maybe she died with dark sins on her soul. Lila had heard the preachers talk that way. Or maybe the other crime was just some desperate kindness, like stealing a sickly child. And maybe it made no difference to the Lord, one way or the other.

The old man said, “We’ll be going home now. It must be close to suppertime.” He could tell when she was bothered, and Boughton could tell when he was concerned about her, so they said good evening without any of the usual joking and lingering and clearing away of glasses and spoons. He walked along beside her, silent in the way he was when he could not be sure what to say, or to ask. He opened the door for her. That house, so plain and orderly and safe. He said, “Boughton likes to talk about the thornier side of things. You don’t want to take him too seriously.”

She went into the parlor and sat down, and rested her head in her hands. He stood near her chair, keeping a respectful, patient distance as he always did when he hoped she would tell him what she had on her mind.

She said, “I just never thought about all them other people. Practically everybody I ever knew. Some of them been kind to me.”

He said, “I’m so glad they were kind to you. I’m very grateful for that.”

“But they never gave one thought to the Sabbath. You never heard such cussing and coveting. They stole sometimes, if they had to. I knew a woman who maybe killed somebody with a knife. She’s dead now, so I guess there’s nothing to be done about that.” She said, “Them women in St. Louis, I believe adultery is about the only thing they was ever up to. And there was no one to help them with any of it. Their sins. So I guess they’re all just lost? What happens to you if you’re lost?”

He said, “Lila, you always do ask the hardest questions.” There was a gentleness in his voice that made her think he wouldn’t tell her painful things in words that really let her understand them.

“I knew a man once who said churches tell folks things like that to scare them.”

“Some do.”

“So they’ll give them their money.”

He nodded. “That happens.”

“You never say nothing about any of it.”

“I don’t really know what to say about it.”

“But it’s true, then?”

“There are other things I believe in. God loves the world. God is gracious. I can’t reconcile, you know, hell and the rest of it to things I do believe. And feel I understand, in a way. So I don’t talk about it very much.”

“That’s the only time I ever heard you say that word, ‘hell.’”

He shrugged. “Interesting.”

“Does Jesus talk about it?”

“Yes, He does. Not a lot. Still.”

She said, “I don’t know. For a preacher you ain’t much at explaining things.”

“I’m sorry about that. Sorry if you’re disappointed. Again. But if I tried to explain I wouldn’t believe what I was saying to you. That’s lying, isn’t it? I’m probably more afraid of that than of anything else. I really don’t think preachers ought to lie. Especially about religion.”

She said, “I just wish I’d known a little more about what I was getting into. My own fault. I should’ve gone to them damn classes.”

He sat down on the sofa. “My fault, too. My fault entirely.” They were quiet for a while.

Then she said, “I know you didn’t mean no harm.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t do you any harm. I’m sure of that.”

Well, he didn’t know Doll and the rest of them. The loneliness that settled over her at the thought that they were lost to her. He buried his face in his hands, praying most likely. So she went into the kitchen and made sandwiches.

He’d wanted to get her baptized before she could take off and lose herself in some rough life and then be lost in whatever came after it. That was kind of him. Dipping his hand in that bucket, river water running up his sleeve while he blessed her with it. Bees buzzing, her catfish flopping in the weeds. He surely did look like he meant every word he said. The heavens torn asunder. A dove descending. There was no sign of all that except the look on his face and the touch of his hand. It wasn’t often in her life that anyone had been so set on doing her good as he was, after she had said she wouldn’t marry him, too. A preacher doing what preachers do to give you what safety they can. But it might not be a kind of safety you want, once you think about it. For a while Lila had liked the thought of resurrection because it would mean seeing Doll. The old man might have his wife and his child. She would have Doll, so that would be all right. There would be such crowds of people, but she would look for her until she found her if it took a hundred years. She understood the word “resurrection” to mean just what she wanted it to mean. The idea was precious to her. Doll just the way she used to be, but with death behind her, and all the peace that would come with that. A few blisters ain’t going to kill you. A little dust ain’t going to kill you. Nothing going to kill you ever again! Hanging couldn’t kill you! Doll would laugh at the surprise of it all, because she’d probably never heard of such a thing.

But Boughton mentioned a Last Judgment. Souls just out of their graves having to answer for lives most of them never understood in the first place. Such hard lives. And there Doll would be, whatever guilt or shame she had hidden from all her life laid out for her, no bit of it forgotten. Or forgiven. But that wasn’t possible. The old man always said that God is kind. Doll was so tough and weary, with that stain on her face, and the patient way she had when people looked at her—I never see it, but I know what you see. Whatever it was she did with that knife, who could want to cause her more sorrow? Lila hated the thought of resurrection as much as she had ever hated anything. Better Doll should stay in her grave, if she had one. Better nothing the old men said should be true at all.

He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “I must seem like a fool to you,” he said. “You must think I’ve never given a moment’s thought to anything.”

She was always surprised when he spoke to her that way, answering to her, when she had never read more than a child’s schoolbook. “I’d never think you was a fool,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “maybe. But I do want to say one more thing. Thinking about hell doesn’t help me live the way I should. I believe this is true for most people. And thinking that other people might go to hell just feels evil to me, like a very grave sin. So I don’t want to encourage anyone else to think that way. Even if you don’t assume that you can know in individual cases, it’s still a problem to think about people in general as if they might go to hell. You can’t see the world the way you ought to if you let yourself do that. Any judgment of the kind is a great presumption. And presumption is a very grave sin. I believe this is sound theology, in its way.”

She said, “I don’t know nothing about it.” Then she said, “I don’t understand theology. I don’t think I like it. Lots of folks live and die and never worry themselves about it.”

“Ah, of course!” He laughed. “You don’t like theology! I should have thought of that. Too many years alone, I suppose. Talking to Boughton. Or to myself. Preaching. I
am
a fool.”

“Well now, I didn’t say I won’t start to like it sometime.” She said this because she could hear sadness in his voice.

He laughed. “That’s kind of you. I suppose it’s a little late to ask, but what do you like?”

“I don’t know. Working.”

He nodded. “Work is a fine thing.” And he put his hands to his face. “Listen to me! Every word I say is just pure preacher! I could cite text!”

She said, “I expect you’d be used to it by now.”

*   *   *

That night, lying against the warmth of him, she said, “Maybe you don’t have to think about hell because probly nobody you know going to end up there.”

After a moment, he said, “I suppose there’s an element of truth in that.”

“Except me.”

“Lila,” he said, “I have to preach tomorrow. If you put more thoughts like this in my head, how am I supposed to get any sleep?” He drew her closer to him, stroked her cheek. “I’m going to keep you safe. And you’re going to keep me honest.” Maybe he couldn’t think she would go to hell, because he loved her. She thought, He’d have as good reason, or better, to love any one of the whole world of people who might have turned up on his doorstep. The thought of them made her wish it was morning, Doane and Mellie and the others. That long time when she had no notion of what time was. Lying down to sleep in the dew and darkness, being roused again in the dew and darkness, a fire for supper, a fire for breakfast, if Doane could get it started soon enough, a pot of beans, or ashy potatoes in their husks, and that bitter, urgent smell that comes in the wind, as if the world were scared to sleep and then sorry that the morning had to come. Waking up with her hair in tangles. They always said no whimpering, the grown-ups, and she would try to stop and then stop and sit there with Doll’s arm around her, the two of them eating from the same dish.

The next morning, before it was morning, she had gone to the river, and he had waked to an empty house. She put on her old dress, and she went to the river and washed herself in the water of death and loss and whatever else was not regeneration. But there was a child, she was almost sure of it, and what else could she expect, with that way she had of creeping into the old man’s bed when he never even asked her to. She had seen women bearing their children in a shed, at the side of a field, babies that the light of day shouldn’t have seen for a month or two but the women’s bodies just gave them up out of weariness. She and Mellie had found a woman like that once, alone in a cabin at a little distance from a huckleberry patch. They heard her crying, and Mellie said they’d better look in the door. Then Lila ran to find Doll, and when they came back Mellie was crying, too, because the woman had taken hold of her hands and wouldn’t let go of them. She said, “I was trying to help, now I guess I nearly got some busted fingers.” Doll talked to the woman so that she’d know there was someone there besides children, so she calmed a little and let Mellie go. Lila and Mellie drew some water from the well, and they gathered an armful of starwort and spread it on the grass to dry. Then they sat on the stoop and listened, because they couldn’t help it, and Doll talked to the woman, trying to comfort her. The woman knew the baby shouldn’t be coming yet. It was just a long, bloody struggle and at the end of it a little body to wash. Doll could be so gentle. They couldn’t help watching her. She swaddled it up in a flour sack. And then she walked the woman out to the porch and washed the blood and the sweat off her, and they couldn’t help watching that, either. The woman was so thin, except for the pouch of her belly. Her bare legs trembling. She kept saying, “My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He’ll be back.” But that’s the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There’s shame in that, so people lie. They helped Doll clean up around the place as well as they could, and did the milking, and fed the chickens, and she and Mellie found some meal and cooked it, and told her the starwort would help if she burned a little of it, and they left her their huckleberries. That poor baby just lay there on a bench, waiting for its father to see it, the woman said. Walking along in the dark, looking for their camp, they didn’t say a word. Well, Doll did say, “That’s how it is.”