The old man said to her one evening that he would like to know a little bit about the woman who looked after her. He’d been telling her stories about his family. His grandfather used to talk to Jesus in the parlor, and they all had to be very quiet until they heard him at the front door saying, “Lord, I do truly thank You for Your time!” He was trying to get her to talk to him a little more, probably wanting company. He said, “My grandfather was a pretty wild old fellow. He shot a man. One that I know of. Then he was in the war, so there might have been others. He enlisted as a chaplain, but he had a gun, and he took it along with him.” People do want company, in the evening.
So she said, “The woman who took care of me, she called herself Doll. You know, like something a child would play with. I never knew no other name for her. A teacher gave me Dahl for a last name, but that was just a mistake. Doll used a knife on somebody, cut him. I believe she regretted it on account of the trouble it caused her. She was sort of looking over her shoulder all the time I knew her. It wasn’t so much the law that caught her. She ended up having to do it again, cut somebody. Nothing else to say. She was good to me.” That was more than she meant to tell him. “She give me that knife I had out at the shack.” Why did she say that? “I wouldn’t mind having it back.” That was just the truth. It was a pretty good knife.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Everything you had out at the cabin is in a couple of boxes in the attic. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that. I’ll bring them down for you.”
“Just the knife is the only thing I been missing.” She said, “Since I’ve got that Bible.” She didn’t mind if he remembered who she was for a minute, but she didn’t want to scare him too much, either. He did look a little concerned.
“Yes,” he said, “Ezekiel. Are you planning to copy that whole book?”
“Only the parts I like.”
He nodded. “Sometime I’d like to know which parts you like.” He said, “I don’t want to intrude, of course. It would be interesting to me. From the point of view of interpretation. I’d like to know your thoughts.”
She said, “I’m still thinking. Maybe I’ll tell you when I’m done.”
He laughed. “I’ll look forward to it. But you might never get done, you know. Thinking is endless.”
“It’s true I been taking my time about it.”
“There’s no hurry. Boughton and I have been worrying the same old thoughts our whole lives, more or less. There’s been a lot of pleasure in it, too.”
“Well, I been trying to work something out. Trying to make up my mind about something. So I’m going to want to finish with it.”
After a minute he said, “I’m trying not to ask what it is. You have every right to keep your thoughts to yourself. It’s clear enough that that’s what you want to do. So I’m not going to ask.” He laughed. “This is a real test of my character.”
She shrugged. “It’s just old Doll. That’s what it comes down to.”
“I see.”
She said, “You know that part where it says, ‘I saw you weltering in your blood’? Who is that talking?”
“It’s the Lord. It’s God. And the baby is Israel. Well, Jerusalem. It’s figurative, of course. Ezekiel is full of poetry. Even more than the rest of the Bible. Poetry and parables and visions.”
She knew he’d been wanting to help her with Ezekiel, so much that it made him downright restless. He’d been reading it over, just waiting for this chance to tell her it was poetry. Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year. That was practically the only poem she’d ever heard of, so she didn’t really know what to make of the help he wanted to give her. The rude bridge that spanned the flood. “Well, it’s true what he says there. It’s something I know about.”
“Yes. You’re absolutely right. I didn’t mean that it wasn’t true in a deeper sense. Or that it wasn’t describing something real. I didn’t mean that.” He shook his head and laughed. “Oh, Lila, please tell me more.”
She looked at him. “You ask me to talk. Now you’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not! I promise!” He took her hand in both his hands. “I know you have things to tell me, maybe hundreds of things, that I would never have known. Things I would never have understood. Maybe you don’t realize how important it is to me — not to be — well, a fool, I suppose. I’ve struggled with that my whole life. I know it’s what I am and what I will be, but when I see some way to understand—”
“Is that why you married me?”
He laughed. “That might have been part of it. Would that bother you?”
“Well, I just don’t know what I’d have to tell you.”
“Neither do I. Everything you tell me surprises me. It’s always interesting.”
“Like that I been missing that knife?”
“I’ll find it for you. First thing tomorrow.”
“That was Doll’s knife.”
He nodded, and he laughed. “Sentimental value.”
