LESTER LOVES LILY
We got a lot in common—Lily and me. We like to eat raw corn right off the cob, and we like to play make believe. When we was kids, we’d take my rowboat way out in Lake Goddard, bring the cobs with us, shuck ‘em right there. Lily’d prop her scrawny legs on the boat’s edge, cocking ‘em from side to side, and after crunching into that corn, she’d say, “Daddy said them are chorus girl’s legs if he ever seen any.” Then she’d laugh, move her long honey bangs from her face, hook ‘em behind her ears. Later, we’d cannonball right into the drifting husks and into a secret world that lived just below the shine of the water. Them was good days back then, before we growed up.
I remember last time I seen her, she flopped her tanned arms on our front gate, set her pointed chin on ‘em. “Lester,” she said, “Just saying you love me, don’t make it so.” Sometimes she said I loved my mule more than her. Never could figure out why she was saying that—she knowed that weren’t so. That’s what I told her too. I said, “Lily, you know that ain’t so.” Now Molly was a special mule—could pull a wagon full of spent milk cans clear cross the field without even breaking a sweat—but Lily, she smells like peaches and makes them sum-shus brownies, all warm and gooey. Makes a fella’s insides flip.
That’s why I sure didn’t mean to do what I did. It all happened so fast. That blasted mark on her right cheek had me going. Something inside me just wanted to erase it, and Lily, she didn’t put up much of a fight. Just between you and me, I think she wanted it gone. She was hollering out my name when I grabbed that rope from the bottom of the boat and tied the knot. You know, that kinna knot that won’t come loose? With that knot, I’d have earned a Boy Scott badge for sure. Mama would’ve been so proud to sew it on my starched uniform.
Poor Mama; God rest her soul. Lily cried when she passed on. She crumpled right in the floor, sobbing like a baby. Got on my nerves, so I had to make her stop. After all, Mama wanted me to do what I did. She wasn’t happy no more, lying in the bed all the time with that raised mark on the side of her neck—you know, the one with the numbers? Mama smiled when I picked up that hammer; I saw her. Lily said she didn’t, but I know my mama. In her own way, she was thanking me. I know she was.
Lily yelled that I didn’t love my mama, that I didn’t love her neither. Said I couldn’t have loved them and did what I did. But I showed her that weren’t so. I went out and shot Molly right in her old head. Molly didn’t mind; she was a good old mule. She just looked at me with them trusting brown eyes, as if to say, “I understand, Lester.” But Lily didn’t. The whole time I rowed, I was hollering that I loved her. I said, “Lily, see how much I love you?” She kept whimpering, laying there atop the fishing line and lures, her pretty legs tucked under her.
She tried to run home to tell her pa, but I wouldn’t let her. I couldn’t. He wouldn’t have let us go out behind the barn and make love no more. So, I put her where no one would find her, just until I could get back to Kansas and untie that knot. When I get back, Lily and me, we gonna go out behind the barn for awhile just like old times. I’ll bring a mess of corn and she can bring the brownies.
Now it is fall. Bob sits shotgun, his red pen sticking out of his neck, while we travel down I-35 in the transport vehicle. I knowed Bob would like to meet my love, Lily, so I took him along for the ride. I liked this chubby guard, even though he’d curse at me in Spanish. “Tragar la
medicina,” he’d say. But on Saturdays, he’d play Monopoly with me on the facility grounds. And sometimes, he even let me be the iron.
On this day, after I bought Park Place, Bob cackled in his shrill voice, louder and louder. I covered my ears with my hands. Louder still, he began chanting, “Hail, Satan,” over and over again. I knowed what I had to do. It weren’t even hard to reach the pen in his breast pocket.
Now, I turn onto the dirt road I remember so well. With red and orange leaves blowing around the white van, I round the bend, and spot the barn. Lily, I’m coming for ya. Then I catch sight of myself in the rearview mirror and about choke. I mash on the brake; the van swerves to the right, then slides to a stop. I check the mirror again, up close. Sure enough, on my forehead is a red raised 666. A shiver shoots clear up my back, and sweat just pours down my face, but I know what must be done. Shifting up in my seat, I get a better grip on the wheel, and aim straight for the barn. I squeeze my eyes tight, and stomp hard on the gas, hoping, by God, Lily understands.
by Caroline Reichard
Thanks for reading!
