She said, “I’m interested in what I been reading. He talks a lot about whoring. Maybe I’ll read Matthew next.”
He laughed. “Oh, Lila! I could explain about that.” He put his head in his hands. “Not that it’s so easy to explain. I just hope it doesn’t upset you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I got my own thoughts.” Then she said, “By the way, I don’t use that word in front of folks. I know it’s practically cussing. Worse. I tell you, I surely didn’t expect to find it in the Bible. That’s interesting. There’s a lot in there I didn’t expect.”
He said, “It is interesting. I guess I’ll have to read the whole thing over again. It is amazing how I always seem to be thinking about the parts I like best. And there are a lot of them. But there is all the rest of it.” There in the darkness they were quiet for a while, and then he said, “I guess I’ve had my time of suffering. Not so much by Ezekiel’s standards. And there might be more to come. At my age, I’m sure there is. But at least I’ve had enough of it by now to know that this is grace.” His arm was across the back of the couch behind her, and he touched her hair. He was still so shy of her.
She said, “Well, that’s interesting.” She had to wonder what Mrs. Ames would think about it. Poor girl just trying to give him a baby. “I’ll reflect on it.”
* * *
Now that her belly was getting round she sat at the table in her room to do her thinking, but she still locked the door when he left the house, for the loneliness of it. He never came into her room, he never preached from Ezekiel, and he never asked her another question about Doll, even when he gave her back that knife. The morning after she mentioned it, it was just lying there on the breakfast table between the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl, the blade closed into the handle, looking harmless enough. She’d left it there. Seemed like he might want to know where it was, until he knew her a little better. Doll had whetted the blade till it was sharp as a razor and a little worn down, the polish gone off the edge of it. When Lila was alone, she opened it. Doll’s patience and her dread were all worked into that blade. She would be spitting on the whetstone and then there would be that raspy, whispery sound, Doll thinking her thoughts, working away at her knife, making it sharp as it could be. Never you mind. Then that one night she said, “Better you take it. Wash it down good, and hide it when you get a chance. Don’t you never use it unless you just have to.”
It was the only thing Doll had to give her, too good to be thrown away and much too risky to keep, but what else could she do? It had a handle made of antler, shaped just enough to feel right in her hand, smooth and stained with all the hands that had held it. Doll never was the first one to own anything, and she wasn’t the last, either, if she could help it. There was always something to trade for, even if it was only a favor of some kind, and everything came with a story about the woman who got it from a fellow who stole it from somebody else, which wasn’t really stealing, since she never used it, and he knew she took it from a cousin’s house when he was dead, and he had brothers, so she had no right to it, but he felt bad anyway, so he was selling it cheap.
Everything was as stained and worn by use and accident as a hand or a face. There were things you just had to respect, and that knife was one of them. Sometimes a stranger would settle himself at the fire, sitting on his heels the way folks do when they might want to move quick, and they’d study him to see what was at his back, what he carried with him, which was nothing at all and could be anything at all, like a shifting of the wind. And sometimes he had that Heck, I wouldn’t harm a fly! look that made Doane glance at Arthur, and then there would be the long, careful business of sending him on his way, meaning no offense, since he looked like the kind who might want to take offense, given the slightest chance. Snakes, knives, strangers, darkening in the sky — you felt some things with your whole body. What they might mean. It could be they were on their way to do harm elsewhere and you just saw them pass by, but how could you know? Maybe twenty people had owned that knife and only one or two had done any hurt with it. A wound can’t scar a knife. A knife can’t weary with the use that’s been made of it. Still.
She was sorry there was nothing left of that shawl. It would have been a different thing entirely to tell the old man Doll had left that to her. When Doane held it over the fire it burned so fast it was like a magic trick. It was gone before the heat could touch his hand. It was so worn then, threads that stayed together somehow, you could see right through it. Gray with enough pink here and there to show where the roses used to be. He didn’t know
