Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson Page A

could do—you can’t get blood from a turnip. Doane said it might be interesting to try, and Arthur nodded. But the man just shrugged—hard times—and Doane took the apples, after he had spilled them out on the grass and had the children look them over, so the farmer could take back any that were soft or bruised or too wormy and give them others that were sound. They had to carry the apples in two gunnysacks, since that was after they lost the wagon. They ate apples for breakfast and apples for supper, and still the sacks were a burden to carry, with everything else. So when they found out from people walking along the road that they were going to a camp meeting, Doane decided they would go there to sell what apples they could. The whole business made him disgusted, but he had the children to do the work for him, to talk a few cents out of the old women before they felt the spirit and put anything they had into some damn preacher’s pocket. He made them all clean up as well as they could and told them to behave, and then he just leaned against a tree with his arms folded while they chose the prettiest apples and shined them up a little against their pant legs, and took off into the thick of the crowds.
    They’d have hung back with Doane and watched those poor fools getting all worked up over nothing if they hadn’t had the apples to sell, which obliged them to talk to people and try to act as though they belonged there. Lila followed along after Mellie, who could somehow make those apples seem like something you would want. Lila carried them, her arms full, because Mellie had already come up with a baby somewhere, a nice baby with a big red bow in its hair. Mellie and the baby handed the apples around as if they were doing a kindness, and people gave Mellie their pennies and nickels, and then she sent Lila back to give the money to Marcelle—Doane was acting like he had nothing to do with any of it—and to get more apples.
    Families were pitching tents all over in the woods around the clearing. There were campfires, and people drifting from one to another, laughing and talking, shaking hands and slapping backs, sharing their pickle and crackers and taffy, sometimes singing together a little, since there were banjos and mouth organs and a guitar and a fiddle scattered here and there among the tents. Some of the women and girls were wearing nice dresses. Children in little packs stormed around from one place to another just burning off the excitement of it all. The ground where the meeting would be held was pretty well covered in sawdust, which made it seem strangely clean and gave it a good, pitchy smell. If men spat their tobacco on it you wouldn’t notice. There was a stage set up with yellow bunting across the front of it, and there were some wooden chairs on it. And of course they were by a river, and there were people there fishing in it, a little downstream.
    Lila and Mellie had seen Arthur’s boys feeding their apples to the horses and mules and then sneaking down to the river to skip rocks, so Mellie gave back the baby and they went, too. Arthur was there already, skipping rocks, and when he saw his boys he said he was going to tan their hides if they didn’t tell him what they’d been up to. So they started scrapping, without Doane to make them stop. Some of the men tried after a while, when Arthur started bleeding from a cut over his eye, and that got the three of them mad at those men and the fighting went on until an old preacher came tottering down the rocky slope and stepped in among them. He asked what had happened, and then he said that Arthur and his boys seemed not to be in the right spirit for a meeting of this kind and it would be best for them to move along. He was a scrawny old fellow with a croaky voice, but though they dragged their feet about it and glowered past him at the others, they were glad enough to oblige him, since more and more men and boys were coming to take the other side. They