Lila

Written by Marlene Poches

Warning: Story contains slight gore and death

Crossing paths with a box turtle is not uncommon when you venture off the beaten path in Appalachia. I usually see them after heavy rains during spring and summer, bumbling across the forest floor in search of earthworms, mushrooms, berries, and the like. As the weather turns cooler, I am more likely to trip over one making its way to the upper field of our farm, where they bury themselves in the loose soil and leaf litter along the tree line to hibernate. They are always mildly aloof, regardless of how well I blend with the landscape, and rarely welcoming unless I make an offering of lettuce or apple. Once in a while, however, one will look at me in the same familiar way that Lila did, my childhood turtle that I had rescued off Highway 3 after a hit and run. Her shell had been cracked and the toes of her right leg smashed. It had taken the rest of that summer for her to recover. My little Lila might still be with me today if not for Danny, the angry boy from the next street over.

Danny wasn’t your average low country Bubba, friendly and all. He was rotten to the core. If he wasn’t poking things with a stick, he was pulling wings off flies or chasing down skinks to rob them of their shiny turquoise tails. We all cringed when he unwrapped that BB gun on his eleventh birthday. He named it “Red” and carried it everywhere he went. Having been born into a Tennessee homestead family that believed in using all its natural resources to stock the fridge, the local squirrels were now the “chicken of the trees” to Danny. He took his work seriously and made a significant dent in the local population. Nothing exercising free will was safe within a five-mile radius of our three-street neighborhood. It was when he started killing songbirds that we knew he had crossed a line he would never step back over.

It was the summer of ’76 and Sean and I had just left the dump, an old abandoned concrete public swimming pool located far behind a condemned building on property nobody wanted. Once the property was fully reclaimed by the woods and vines, locals started dumping their garbage in the pool as a convenience. The creek that eventually formed below it was the perfect place to chase down crawdads, frogs, and other slimy things.

As we were heading home down the dirt path, through the kudzu and chiggers, we heard strange music in the distance. Getting closer, we could make out the words,

Fire on the Mountain. Run, boys, run! The Devil’s in the house of the rising sun. Chicken’s in the bread pan picking out dough. Granny, does your dog bite? No, child, no.

Then there was Danny, rounding the corner with a big silver boom box in his right hand, Red in his left, and a dozen or more squirrel tails sticking out of a knapsack on his back.

Sean made a puffing sound filled with disgust.

“You better keep those wigglers still in your pocket, cause here comes Danny,” he whispered.

I quickly stuffed my hands in my pockets, attempting to look casual.

“Where you two comin’ from? The dump? See any critters?” Danny shouted over Charlie Daniels’ high speed devil music.

Even though I heard him just fine, I yelled back, “Can’t hear you!” and pointed at his boom box.

Danny put the boom box down and turned it off to the dying sound of “Cause I’ve told you once you son of a bitch, I’m the best there’s ever been...”

My eyes got wide at the last words.

“You don’t like Charlie Daniels?” he sneered, like I was some backwards child.

“Momma doesn’t let me listen to music with cuss words,” I replied all sassy. “She says there’s just no need for it. Only heathens and white trash listen to music that can’t be played in church.”

My words, having gone right over Danny’s head, fell meaningless under his investigative gaze.

“You two comin’ from the dump? Anything interesting runnin’ around?”

Sean slowly scuffed his foot through the dirt. Lying didn’t come easy for him. “We skipped the dump today. We went over the creek and past the McGarvey farm instead.”

“What for?” Danny asked, taking his knapsack off then fishing out his carton of BB’s to reload Red.

“There was a new girl this morning,” I chimed, savin’ Sean from any more sinnin’. “Momma said we should stop by and say hello since we don’t get many visitors here. Thought she might want to do something instead of just sittin’ round bored while the grownups talk,” I grinned, crossing my fingers in my pockets.

“You mean a real girl, unlike you?” Danny laughed. “I hadn’t heard of a new girl. What was her name?” he asked, leaning in like he didn’t believe me.

“It was Sally,” I said, clipping my words short and feigning irritation amidst my bald-faced lie. “Sally Mander. She was visiting from Alabama and wearing the prettiest polka dot dress I have ever seen. We snapped beans and toasted sunflower seeds together. I have some left over in my pocket if you want to try them.” Carefully shifting my slimy passengers to one side, I made ready with some of the sunflower seeds Momma had given me earlier that morning as a snack.

“I don’t eat seeds. I eat the things that eat seeds. You and all those critters you rescue should keep that in mind,” Danny mocked, but with a glint of cruelty in his eyes.

“You’re just not right, Danny. Something went wrong when you hatched. Come on Sean, we gotta go.” Walking around him, we did bread and butter and joined back up in the opposite direction of wherever Danny was heading. Not looking back, I could feel his eyes on my back until we made it to the corner.

“Sally Mander? I thought you had lost your mind,” Sean laughed, bumping my shoulder, his red hair challenging the sun. “You’re lucky he’s dumb as rocks.”

Stopping, I carefully pulled one of the salamanders out of my pocket and unstuck a sunflower seed off its belly, then examined its spotted back and large alien-looking eyes. It stared back at me, uncomprehensive that its living conditions were being upgraded to a 20-gallon terrarium.

“That was close,” I said quietly, so as not to scare the salamander. “He would have hurt them for sure. We better get them back to my house. Salamanders don’t like being set out and probably want something better to eat than Mamma’s sunflower seeds. Besides, your skin is pinking up ‘round those freckles of yours. I guess you and Sally here have something in common when it comes to being sensitive to sunlight.” I giggled. The thought of my best friend as a red-headed salamander, with pink skin and wearing a brown polka-dotted dress, was just too much.

It was the next day that Danny killed Lila. I don’t know if he finally figured that Sally Mander was a lie, but he had it out for me from the first inning. All the neighborhood kids were there for our Tuesday baseball game and I was pitching. It always made me nervous when Danny came up to bat. Almost every hit he made was a homer, and the bases were loaded. I gave the ball everything I had, except the accuracy it needed. My fastpitch broadsided Danny’s head with the most awful sound. He went down on one knee then slowly looked up at me with eyes set afire. Standing, he walked the bases and then the game was over. I could feel the heat coming off him. It didn’t matter that I felt bad or that I apologized after the game. I had humiliated him and that was unforgiveable.

Later that afternoon, when he spotted me with Lila digging for earthworms in the mulch pile at the side of my house, he simply walked up and threw her against the brick wall with all his anger and might, then walked away. She split open then slowly bled out. There was nothing I could do but cry. I buried her in a shoebox later that night. Momma lined it with some of the roses from her garden.

I don’t know when Daddy called Danny’s parents, but we didn’t see him for a long while. When we did, he still had the yellow and green shadows. At that point, we didn’t want to know what happened. Danny and I never spoke to each other again. I don’t know if it was out of mutual distain or from instruction, but I wasn’t sorry for it either way. He represented everything wrong with the world and had fallen in love with death, and for all appearances, she seemed to love him back.

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Marlene Poches is the author of Lila. She was born and raised in The South, primarily within the Great Smoky Mountains and along the Tennessee River. Her experiences can be found in much of her writing, as well as the cultural eccentricities of that era during the 1970s-1990s. Marlene currently resides in Athens, Ohio, where she and her husband work full-time, as well as run a baking business and permaculture mini farm raising endangered livestock, organic produce and edible flowers, which they sell at the Athens Farmers Market, and nationwide, by special order. Marlene plans to publish her first series of short stories in 2021.