The Enchantment of Lily Dahl Read Online Free PDF Page B

of Hollywood and California, but watching the man in the window had turned her eastward, and now she imagined herself walking in crowded streets beneath towering buildings on her way to an audition, a script tucked under her arm. Lily pedaled harder with the wind in her face and looked out at the cornfields, the stalks still short but growing taller in the wide, flat fields. The sky had cleared since yesterday, and the sun was hot on her face. When she came to the end of the driveway that led to the Bodlers’, she stopped, climbed off her bicycle and looked at the ruined farmstead turned junkyard.
    The Bodler place was such a spectacular eyesore, it was almost gorgeous, a sight that made people whistle in disbelief if it didn’t stun them to silence. A mountain range of refuse had formed in the front yard, great heaps of junk so high they hid the house, garage and fallen barn behind them. These multicolored towers that included parts of bicycles and cars, old appliances, wires, pipes, lumber and innumerable moldering somethings never failed to impress Lily. She remembered searching for toys in the piles when she came here with her father as a child. She remembered feeling both exhilarated and uncomfortable as she dug in the mounds of junk. That was before she had heard the Helen Bodler story, and yet she had known that the old farm with its two dirty men was a place apart. She had never been inside the house. Her father used to go in to speak to Frank, but he had always asked her to wait on the step, as though he didn’t want her to see what was inside. Once, after her father had left her in the yard, she had walked around to the side of the house and pressed her face to a windowpane. She had seen hazy piles of objects and furniture, and then out of nowhere she had seen a face—an enormous, only vaguely human face, its great mouth hanging open, its tongue flickering like a snake’s, and Lily had run gasping from the window. She did not tell her father about it. She did not tell anyone about it, and only years later did she assume that she had mistaken Dick Bodler for a monster.
    The brothers’ old green truck wasn’t parked in the driveway today, and there wasn’t a junk picker in sight. Lily listened to the sound of her feet scraping against dirt and pebbles in the driveway and looked up suddenly when she heard a crack above her. A loose piece of canvas from a baby stroller had caught the wind, and she heard it crack again. Otherwise the place was very quiet. Birds chittered, the grass rustled, and she could hear car motors in the distance. When she reached the garage, she paused and looked in through the open doors. The sun cut a sharp rectangle on the earth floor, but beyond that light the interior looked almost black. She could make out a chaos of boxes, old tools and farm equipment, and she inhaled the odor of mildew and cold, damp earth, two smells she liked. Lily had no intention of going inside. The sun and air had made her slow and a little sleepy. But then she saw a suitcase lying on a crate, one corner of it illuminated by sunshine, and she walked toward it. Feeling only vaguely curious, she touched its cracked leather surface, then tugged at its handle. It felt full, and its unexpected weight attracted her. Lily dragged it into the light, hesitated for a second and opened it. The bag was filled not with odds and ends as she had anticipated, but with neatly packed clothes, as if someone had planned a trip, never taken it and then forgotten about the suitcase altogether. The clothes inside had belonged to one woman. They were all the same tiny size, and whoever she was, she hadn’t worn them for a long time. Lily couldn’t date them exactly, but examining a long shapeless dress, she guessed it had been fashionable during the twenties or thirties. Lily seated herself on the dirt floor and pulled out a threadbare camisole with a liver-colored stain. Although she knew it was childish, she pitied the stained