Free Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson

feel them keeping eyes on her, more and more of them, whispering about her and looking at her through their windows. Doane had waked her early that morning, so she was wearing the shabby clothes she slept in and hadn’t combed her hair.
    When it was evening and again when it was night the preacher came to see how she was doing. The first time he brought a plate of food and set it down next to her, and the second time he brought a blanket. He said, “It can get chilly, sitting out here in the dark. If you’d like, I can spell you for a while. I’d sure like to have a word with these folks you’ve been waiting for. No? Well, I’ll ask again in an hour or so.”
    And then she was just sitting there on the steps, wrapped up in the blanket, the town all quiet and the moon staring down at her, and there was Doll with her arms around her, saying, “Oh, child, I thought I never was going to find you!” Lila couldn’t quite wake up from what she had been remembering, and Doll knew what she was remembering, so she kept saying, “Oh, child, oh, child, this never should have happened! I never thought anything like this was going to happen! Four days I was gone!” And she kept hugging the child and stroking her face and her hair. Late as it was, the preacher was still keeping an eye on her, because he stepped out the door just then. He said, “You’re the mother, I take it?” and Doll said, “None of your damn business.” She probably wouldn’t have spoke so rough if he hadn’t been a preacher.
    “Who are you?” he said. “I’d like to know who’s carrying off this child.”
    She said, “I spose you would. Come on, Lila.”
    But Lila couldn’t move. She wanted to rest her head on a bosom more Doll’s than Doll herself, to feel trust rise up in her like that sweet old surprise of being carried off in strong arms, wrapped in a gentleness worn all soft and perfect. “No,” she said, and drew herself away.
    The preacher said, “This better wait till morning. I’d like Lila to have a chance to think this over.”
    Doll said, “Mister, you ain’t nothing to her, and you ain’t nothing to me. Lila, you want to stay here?”
    So the girl stood up and let herself be hugged, and let herself be guided down the walk. The preacher said, “She can keep the blanket.”
    And Doll said, “ I take care of her. She has what she needs.”
    Lila would not cry. She could see Doll’s grief and pity and regret, and she took a bitter, lonely pride in the fact that she could see them and not forgive her and not cry.
    She was sitting there remembering those times, and then she thought she heard someone out in the road. Footsteps. The scatter of gravel. She had a knife, but it wasn’t much use in the dark, because folks couldn’t see it. It was good only for scaring them off. If you cut somebody you were in a world of trouble no matter what the story was. Still, she eased toward it, where it was stuck in the floor behind her bedroll. She didn’t hear anything more for a minute or two, and then she heard steps again, whoever it was walking away. She thought, He found out what he wanted to know. I’m here, and I have a fire and supper. That greasy old hen must have smelled like a kind of prosperity. The thought pleased her. Now he’ll think I don’t need nothing from him. If it was him.
    Doane must have decided that if the world was turning mean he might as well go along with it. He wasn’t a big fellow. He looked a lot like Hoagy Carmichael, though they didn’t know it at the time. But he always could look mean when he wanted, and Arthur would stand right behind him, at his shoulder, looking pretty mean, too, so someone might think if anything started he’d be right there to back him up. Before the times got hard they generally knew who they were dealing with, so they’d act that way only if a stranger came along and they didn’t like the look of him, if he showed up after dark, or if he just rubbed Doane the wrong way