But there he was, in that box lying in the road, with those men sort of swaggering where they stood, shifting their weight, threatening by the way they kept their arms folded. The sheriff said, “He’s dead, all right. You got a point there. Now I believe he has a train to catch.” Doll’s head didn’t even reach the top of the chair, but there she was, proud in her captivity like some old Indian chief, and it was clear that the sheriff sort of took to her. He said, “When we set a date for the trial, you will be notified by mail.” So the men knew they might as well close up the box. They carried it away to ship it home, wherever that was, to let the old man rest among his kin, whoever they were. Doll glanced after them once, and then she closed her eyes.
When that woman at the house in St. Louis asked Lila what she would call herself, since none of them used their own names, she said, “Doll, I guess,” and the woman snorted, which is how she laughed. She said, “We already got a Doll. Had two of them till a couple months ago. The one ran off with some salesman. She’ll be back pretty soon. Think she’d have better sense. So you ain’t Doll. We don’t have no Rose just now. Put a little henna in your hair — Rose’ll do. Ruby. We’ll think of something.” Her knuckles were big, and her rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers. She was always turning them up the way they were supposed to be, and they wouldn’t stay because of the weight of the stones. Bright red, bright green, big as gumdrops. Lila and Mellie used to keep bits of broken glass they found in the road sometimes, and they called them jewels. Why was she thinking about any of this? She was so scared that day, in that parlor with the drapes closed at noon and that damn credenza with the vase of dusty feathers sitting on it. Looking like a coffin. There was a stirring under her heart, so she said to the child, “I won’t breathe a word to you about that place, but I guess you might know anyway. Because that fear has never left my body, has just hidden in it, waiting. You might feel it, down in your poor little bones. God bless ’em.”
She heard the Reverend at the door, and she went down to meet him. He was smiling up at her as if he still hadn’t gotten over the surprise of finding her, his wife, lowering herself down the stairs, with her hand on her belly so he would know she was being careful for the child’s sake. And then his arms around her and his cheek against her hair. “So,” he said, “how are you two?”
“Fine, I guess. We pretty much wasted the morning, daydreaming. I keep trying to read the Bible, but my mind goes wandering off. You wouldn’t want to know where. The things I find myself thinking about, with the Bible right there in my lap.”
“Well,” he said, “you know I’m always interested. If there’s anything you want to talk about.” He hung up his hat and his coat.
“One thing. Do you think the child knows what I’m thinking? I mean, by the way it makes me feel? Do you think it might get scared or something? Sad? Because I do worry about that. Now and then.”
He searched her face, abruptly serious.
“You don’t know nothing about me,” she said, because that was what he was trying not to think. “I got feelings I don’t know the names for. There probly ain’t any names. Probly nobody else ever had ’em. I tell you what, I wouldn’t wish ’em on a snake.”
“Well,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is there something I can do?”
“No. You haven’t even ate your lunch yet.”
He shrugged. “Lunch can wait.” Then he made his voice just as gentle as he could. “Lila, I know I’ve said this any number of times. But people do talk to me. About all sorts of things. Sometimes it helps. At least that’s what they tell me.”
She said, “Then for the rest of their life you’re gonna think about it. Every time you look at them. Hear their name even.”
“True.”
“Well, I spose it would have to be true, wouldn’t it. The worse it was, the more you’d remember. Maybe I don’t want you looking at me that way.”
“Fine,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
“I don’t know how those people go on living in the same town with you.”
“A few of them do leave the church. Maybe because they’ve told me more than they meant to. I’ve suspected that was part of it. In some cases.”
She said, “Now you’re looking at me. Probly thinking it’s worse than it is. Maybe it couldn’t even be no worse.”
He laughed. “I don’t know how this happened.
