Say she took that knife away, put it out of sight. Would he notice and wonder what it meant? Would he ask her what she had done with it, look for it in her dresser drawer? Under her pillow? Could she put it anywhere at all that he might not just come across it and think, This is strange, why has she hidden it here? She had thought it through a hundred times. That knife was the difference between her and anybody else in the world. Ugly old Doll hunched over in the firelight, spitting on her bit of whetstone, sharpening and wearing the blade till the edge of it curved like a claw, readying herself for whatever fearful thing she turned over in her mind while she was working at it. And, knowing that the fearful thing might take even Doll, who stole her and carried her away from whatever she could have had of place and name and kin, Lila watched her, hoping the knife would take on the witchy deadliness she was conjuring for it.
Fear and comfort could be the same thing. It was strange, when she thought of it. The wind always somewhere, trifling with the leaves, troubling the firelight. And that smell of damp earth and bruised grass, a lonely, yearning sort of smell that meant, Why don’t you come back, you will come back, you know you will. And then the stars, and Mellie probably awake, lying there thinking about them.
Lila could tell by the smell that the sheets had frozen on the clothesline. Then Mrs. Graham or whoever had the time had ironed them. But there was still that good, cold smell that made her think of the air after a lightning storm. New air, if there was such a thing, that the rain brought down, or the snow. She was still the preacher’s bride, and those women still starched her pillowcase, blessing his happiness, praying for it. All those years of his loneliness were a weight on their hearts. Then he took a wife and he fathered a child, even if it wasn’t born yet, and what else could they do? What more could they do? It made her think of the old days, when she lived her whole life just for the hours she spent at the movies, when everybody in the audience would sigh and weep and laugh for those beautiful ghosts in that unreachable place where people lived lives strangers could care about. She had a dream once that a woman’s giant face turned and her giant eyes stared at her, and Lila was scared to death because, sitting there in the dark, nobody along with everybody else, she knew she was real to that woman. The look meant, Should I know you? as if to say, Who are you to be watching me like that? Now here she was under the covers with this man anybody in Fremont County knew better than she did, knew when he was first a married man and a father. All of them probably wondered now and then how the two of them passed the time together, what in the world they could find to talk about, different as they were. All of them thinking how sad any sadness that came to him would be, how sweet any happiness, the poor old fellow. And here they were, the two of them, waking and sleeping through the long afternoon, in the crisp sheets that smelled like snow, the baby stirring a little sometimes, the old man young in his sleep and his comfort and she as still as could be, wanting nothing. Those women, looking on at their life, would say oh, and ah, when the curtains stirred and let whiter light into the pale room. Doll there, too, watching. Damn that knife.
She said, “We got to do something with that damn knife.”
He said, “I suppose.” She could tell by his voice he’d been awake for a while, lying still, too. “It’s handy to have around, though. Good for paring apples.”
“You been using my knife to pare apples?” She’d have turned to look him in the eye, except for the heft of her belly.
“Once or twice.”
“I never said you could use it.”
“Sorry. I don’t think I did it any harm. I believe you said you used to use it to clean fish.”
“That’s different.” Why was it different? Because it was the only knife she had. And she never slit a fish without thinking she hated the need to use it that way. Hating the need almost made it seem all right. Besides, it was a kind of a little murder, gutting a fish, so when she did it she thought back over her life, and there was something to that. The knife was a potent thing. Other people had houses and towns and names and graveyards. They had church pews. All she had was that knife. And dread and loneliness and regret. That was her dowry. Other women brought quilts and china. Even a little money sometimes. She brought hard hands and a face she could barely bring herself to look at in a mirror because her life was just written all over it. And that knife.
But thinking about her life was another thing. Lying there in that room in that house in that quiet town she could choose what her life had been. The others were there. The world was there, evening and morning. No matter what anybody thought, no matter if she only tagged after them because they let her. That sweet nowhere. If the world had a soul, that was it. All of them wandering through it, never knowing anything different or wanting anything more.
Well, that wasn’t true, either.
But one time
