Free Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson Page B

you,” and he took the bag out of her hand. She couldn’t look at him, but she knew he was smiling.
    She said, “I got to go now.”
    “Wait. You’ll want your bag.” He reached into it and took out the beans, half a handful, and gave the bag back to her. She still could not look at him. He said, “You know, it might be best if you waited out the rain. We could sit here on the porch a little while. It doesn’t look like much of a storm. Or I could lend you my umbrella if you really do have to go.” Then he said, “I haven’t seen much of you lately. I hope I haven’t offended you somehow.”
    His voice was low and kind. After a minute she took a step toward him. Sometimes it just feels good to hug a man, don’t much matter which one it is. She’d thought it might be very nice to rest her head on his shoulder. And it was. She’d be leaving that damn town anyway.
    “Well,” he said. He patted her back.
    She said, “I guess I’m tired.”
    “Yes, well—” and he put his arms around her, very carefully, very gently.
    With her head still resting on his shoulder she said, “I just can’t trust you at all.” He laughed, a soft sound at her ear, a breath. She started to pull away, but he put his hand on her hair so she rested her head again.
    He said, “Is there anything I can do about that?”
    And she said, “Nothing I can think of. I don’t trust nobody.”
    He said, “No wonder you’re tired.”
    She thought, That’s a fact. She said, “You should know I pretty well give up on getting baptized.”
    “I thought maybe you had. Can you tell me why?”
    “I guess it don’t make a lot of sense to me.”
    “That’s all right. No hurry about it. Unless you’re planning on leaving town.”
    “That’s what I’m planning to do.”
    He was quiet for a while. Then he said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I am.”
    She stepped back and looked at him. “I don’t see what it would matter.”
    He shrugged. “We don’t have to worry about that now. It looks like we’re going to have a decent rain, after all. You could just sit here a while and help me enjoy it. Should I call you Lila?”
    “No reason why not.”
    He brought a sweater and put it over her shoulders. Right away she knew she was going to steal it. It was gray like his jacket and it had the same old wool smell, old wool and a little shaving lotion. She’d find a way to slip it into her bag. She could hardly wait till she got the chance. He’d know what she’d done. That don’t matter.
    So they sat there and watched the rain, he at one end of the porch swing, she at the other. After a while he said, “I’d like to know what you’ve been thinking about lately, since the last time we talked. You asked me why things happen the way they do, and I had to say I didn’t know. I still don’t. But the question is interesting.”
    “Oh,” she said, “you don’t want to know what I been thinking.”
    He nodded. “All right.”
    “I been wondering why I even bother. There must be a reason, but I don’t know what it is.” When she sat in the doorway at night with her knees drawn up and her arms around them so there was warmth against her belly and her breasts, she sometimes liked it all well enough, the stars and the crickets and the loneliness. She thought she could unravel the sounds the river made, the flow over the rocks where there was a little drop into a pool, the soft rush of the eddy. Now and then there were noises, some small thing happened and disappeared, no one would ever know what it was. She thought, All right, if that’s how it’s going to be. If there had not been that time when she mattered to somebody, she could have been at peace with it. Doane was just the world being the world. It was Doll taking her up in her arms that way. Live. Yes. What then?
    He said, “I’m glad you do. Bother.”
    And then she heard herself say, “You come creeping around my house at night? Because I think I heard you out there.” And she