Marilynne Robinson - Lila

The sheriff said, “This your mother?”

Lila said, “No, just trying to help. She come to my door.” And Doll was watching her. Maybe Lila’d just gotten tired, but by then she’d started saying the first damn thing that came to mind, even if it was true.

“You have her knife?”

“I didn’t see no knife. I guess she wasn’t carrying it with her.”

“Well,” he said, “we’ll want to be sure about that. That thing must be sharp as the very devil.”

It would have been just like Lila to say, I got the nasty thing here in my stocking, right against my leg, the first place any girl in Missouri would have hid it. The first place I’d expect you to look. She might even have said, If you don’t mind, I’d be glad to be rid of it. But she took the trouble to lie because Doll was looking right at her. When the sheriff said, “Somebody go get the stretcher, I guess we got to get her over to the jail,” Doll closed her eyes and set her lips and folded her hands and was satisfied. She didn’t even turn her head to the side to hide the mark. She said, “If ever a man had it coming.” All the time she spent sharpening that blade she was probably thinking where it would be best to cut, just one or two strokes to get him bleeding. It all worked out the way she wanted, except he didn’t kill her, too. At least not right away. When they took her off to jail, Lila stayed behind to take the knife out of her stocking. She dropped it behind a rain barrel in an alley Doll must have passed through coming to find her. Anyone looking for it would have seen it. But it was there three weeks later, when Doll was gone and people had stopped talking much about her. So Lila slipped it back into her stocking.

Doll was very frail, not fit to stand trial, they said. After she’d healed a little, the sheriff put a rocking chair out on the sidewalk in front of his office and she sat there in the sun in the afternoons with a blanket across her lap, wearing a huge brown dress somebody had found for her. People came to look at her and she looked at them, calm as could be, a proud old savage, that mark like a bloodstain she chose not to wash away. They kept their distance, even though they were fairly sure her ankle was cuffed to the chair. Lila came as often as she could, and Doll turned that same look on her. And all she said to her was “I don’t know you.” Then somebody forgot to fasten the chain, or somebody wanted her to know that the law just couldn’t bring itself to deal with her, so she walked away one evening after supper, leaning on the cane they had given her, and lost herself in the woods or in the cornfields. They said she couldn’t have lasted long or made it far, but they didn’t find her, and Lila didn’t find her, and finally the snow fell.

I don’t know you! Why did she say that? They’d talked the whole night. Doll was still expecting to die, so she told her things. Then why did she turn that cold look on her? Sitting there, rocking on the porch, the molasses cookie Lila brought for her just there in her hands like she didn’t really notice what it was. She wished she could ask the old man about it all, but she’d have to tell him the whole story or he wouldn’t understand. And what would he understand if she did tell him? That Doll was wild when she was cornered, like some old badger. Nothing the least bit Christian about her when she was cornered. She’d better tell him other things first, maybe even how she stole Lila off that stoop. Why be loyal to a secret? What did it matter to anybody now? Talking to the old man about it would just be her giving in to the idea that it would feel better to say a few things out loud to somebody. Maybe she would even have to tell him that her first regret, when she found out Doll was gone, was that she hadn’t thought of some way to get that knife back to her. Off on her own like that, she’d need it so damn bad. Well, Lila thought, I am going to see him at the church, so I can put my head on his shoulder. He won’t ask me why. He’ll just stroke my hair.

That was the first time she walked down to meet him in the evening. And there he was, in his gray not-preaching coat and the white shirt she had ironed all over again since she did that better than anybody. When he saw her at the door, she could tell he was moved, almost saddened. She thought, A man this old knows there won’t be so many more evenings. Can’t go thinking about that. She decided then she would always come to find him and walk home with him. Not that the word “always” ever did mean much. He was surprised to see her there, concerned at first. Those thoughts of hers. He could see them in her face. She said, “I been missing you.” And he said, “Oh. Well then.” And he put his arms around her, just the way she knew he would, just the way she meant for him to do. She was like all the others who came to him with their grief, and that was all right. She didn’t mind. He was blessing her. He was doing that to people all the time. He rested his cheek against hers, too, and that was different. She felt his breath against her ear. She was his wife.

She’d had one dream a hundred times, and she had it again that night. It was still there after it woke her up. The hair as stiff as the cloth of the dress, all of it weightless and crumpled in on itself, the way anything is that lies out in a field through a winter. And there would be too little of it, because winter does that, parches things down to their husks. Maybe critters been at it. You wouldn’t dare touch it, it would fall to pieces. She was afraid to see the face, and the face was hidden, from shame at just lying out in a field like that, or because it was turned away from her, “I don’t know you.” Once, Mellie found a dog, what was left of it. She never could let anything be. She pushed at the carcass with a stick, and there were teeth lying there. Lila thought, What would it be like to have different dreams. Or no dreams at all. Well, he was praying for Doll. Lila would say, I got a real preacher speaking for you, speaking to the Almighty. And what would Doll say then? Child, why’d you want to do a thing like that! Best He forget all about me. Lying there with her cheek in the mud, stubborn as ever. Lila would say, Ain’t much else I can do, is there. You never let me find you. And Doll would say, I’m hiding real good here. That Almighty of yours can’t even find me. She’d be sort of laughing.

Lila thought, The dream, again. Seems like I can’t even close my eyes. Well, but she had this old man now, lying here beside her, and he didn’t give any sign at all that he was getting tired of having her around. And men don’t last so well. A woman said once that when men get a few years on them they’re harder to keep than a child. She said, They can look all right and then one day they’ll just drop in their tracks. Lila had seen it herself, out harvesting. And wouldn’t she feel like a fool if all she’d been thinking about was Doll, when here she was with this warm, breathing man beside her, for now at least. He was always worrying that she might be tired or cold. Or sad. He brought her a dictionary, and it was very interesting. She’d never even have known to want it. She could put her hand on his chest right now and feel his heart beating. Hair on his chest, all soft and silvery. She was going to put some thought to being kinder to him. He liked seeing them geraniums. “The woman’s touch,” he said. Well, she thought, I guess so. She didn’t know much about that.

That money of hers was still out there at the shack, most likely. She could buy him something with it. Wouldn’t have to spend it all. She’d just want the money in her hand to make sure somebody hadn’t come along and settled into the place and found where she hid it. It would be a hard life now with the cold coming on, but you never knew. If they’d found the money, they’d think it was theirs for sure and they might not want to give it up. She thought she could bring that knife along, and then she thought no. If he saw it was gone, he’d start wondering. Just showing a knife can be trouble, and here she was pregnant. What was she thinking about. She had no business at all carrying a knife. She wasn’t even supposed to be biting her nails. But the money was so much on her mind that she couldn’t go back to sleep. She remembered that the Sears catalogue was on the shelf in the kitchen, and then she had to get up and look through it. There was everything you could think of in there.