The Coffin Quilt (17 page)

"It's me. The fallen woman of Pike County."

Soft laughter. "We got no quarrel with you. Just come to warn Mrs. McCoy there. She better tell her husband to leave off huntin' Hatfields."

Ro had the gun aimed right at him. "She heard you. Now get off her land. And take your low-down women-beatin' men with you."

"That's right unkind, Roseanna. We don't beat up women."

"Tell that to Mary McCoy and her mother-in-law. Now git. Johnse taught me to use this."

Unbelievably, they went. Turned, pretty as you please, and rode off. Ro set down the gun and leaned against the doorjamb. Martha hugged her. "I'm so proud of you. You're so brave."

I looked at my sister Roseanna. And what I saw was not relief in her face. But disappointment.
She was sorry they didn't attack,
I thought.
She still wants to die.

The thought struck me full-face. I wanted to throw up. Without another word I left the two women standing there, talking and consoling, and ran upstairs to bed.

I
WAS FOURTEEN,
the oldest in the class. At fourteen most girls left school, but nobody said anything so I kept going. I helped Mr. Cuzlin with the little kids. He said I was right smart, that I should think about going to normal school and become a teacher.

"You'd have to go to Wirt County in West Virginia to school," he said. "They're turning out good teachers there and many will be teaching here in Kentucky."

I thanked him for his interest. "But I can't go to school in West Virginia," I said.

"If you pass the exam, you won't have to worry about tuition. I'll see to it that you don't."

"It isn't that." I looked at him. "No McCoy goes into West Virginia. They'd be shot dead in their tracks. Just yesterday my brother Jim and a deputy were caught there hunting Hatfields. Old Devil Anse made them kneel. Said they were going to die. The other deputy
knelt, but not Jim. He opened his shirt and said, 'Shoot. I'd just as lief die standing on my feet.'"

"But he wasn't shot, was he?" Mr. Cuzlin said.

"No sir. Because Devil Anse said he was too brave. I'm not brave. They'd shoot me."

He looked so sad then. "Well," he said. "Maybe when this trouble is over. Think on it."

If he'd said I should go to Paris, France, it couldn't have been stranger to me. "I can't conjure up a life away from my family, Mr. Cuzlin. Besides, I'm Ma's mainstay. Alifair is gone most of the time on her healing missions. Adelaide's working with Aunt Cory to become a granny woman. Ma faints a lot. She needs me."

He said something funny then. "Fanny," he said, "sometimes we don't have to leave in order to get away. Sometimes all we have to do is choose."

I
WAS FOURTEEN
and it was the last day of the year. I worked alone in the kitchen making a supper for the occasion. Brunswick stew simmered on the stove. I was frying up a heap of potatoes. I'd made light bread and carrot pudding for dessert. Pa had been gone all day, but that was nothing new. It seemed of late that I didn't have a pa at all. He was either gone on raids into West Virginia or stone silent when he was home. Same with Calvin. We'd been lucky to get the hogs slaughtered this year.

Pa and Calvin had been all day in Pikeville. Ma was most of the day in her room. As if her fainting fits weren't enough, she now had influenza. Last time I checked her she was praying that Adelaide and Alifair would get home without being ambushed.

In December Pa and my brothers and a new deputy sheriff, name of Frank Phillips, had brought in Wall Hatfield, Devil Anse's brother. The whole month had
been taken up with a trial. We just about had Christmas. Wall was sentenced to life in prison for his part in my brothers' killings. But everybody said it was illegal. 'Cause he'd been kidnapped from West Virginny. And while they were arguing should there be a new trial, Wall Hatfield up and died in prison.

Pa and Calvin had left to meet with men in Pikeville at first light. Before he'd left, Pa had told me to keep the doors locked. He was afraid of reprisals. Lord, I didn't have time to think of reprisals. I raced around like a chicken chased by a fox all day, caring for Ma, cooking, milking the cows, feeding the dogs, pigs, chickens, and horses.

It had commenced to snow about two in the afternoon and when I was bringing the milk cans in, I was looking down, for the snow was in my eyes. Then, halfway between the barn and the house, I heard it. The hissing. The growl. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked up.

There, by the corncrib, was Yeller Thing. Standing still, so's I got a look at him for the first time. Seemed like a cross between a wolf and a painter cat. Looked about starved, too. His head hung low and his eyes glowed at me. His tongue hung out about a foot long. 'Peared pure worn down like he needed a tonic. I knew it was Yeller Thing, for the stink of him. For a full minute we just stared at each other through the snow. "What you want with me?" I asked.

He only growled.

"You go 'way. You vamoose!" I don't know what made me brave. I was worn down myself from working,
my hands were freezing, and now I had to worry about Adelaide and Alifair getting home safe, too. "That what you come to tell me? Well, my sisters will be right fine. You'll see!"

I went on with my milk cans. Mangy old dog is what he was. I wasn't a child anymore to be afeared of him.

Just about then, Adelaide drove in. She went about in a little cart that Floyd had made her. "Stopped by Mr. Chasen's to treat his arthritis," she said. "He allowed how he thought the Hatfields would be on the warpath on account of Wall dying."

"We didn't kill him," I reminded her.

"He said he heard they're tired of hiding in the mountains. That they've had to sell off land to buy food 'cause they couldn't farm. And to pay for men, guns, and lawyers."

We stamped the snow off our feet, "Can't we talk about something else?"

"Did you remember to give Ma her medicine?"

"Yes." She insisted that Ma have her "blood purifier." She mixed a spoonful of sulfur in a pint of honey. "She took it, but I still think we should call Dr. Grey."

"She'll be better soon. No need for Dr. Grey."

I slammed the lid down on the Brunswick stew. "Tomorrow, I'm fetching him!"

"Heavens! Fetch him. Do. You'll see I'm right." She tossed her head and ran upstairs.

Pa and Calvin came in next, worn down and freezing. I fetched Pa's slippers, got Calvin some rum. Then came Alifair. I breathed a sigh of relief. My family was home,
safe.
You see, Yeller Thing,
I thought as Ma said the prayer,
your day is over. My sisters are home and safe.

***

F
UNNY HOW THINGS
come back to you. I remember how careful I was to store those leftovers after supper, how I cleaned up the kitchen. Ma went to bed directly after supper. Alifair and Adelaide went upstairs to confer. Calvin read a newspaper. He was twenty-four, tall and lanky. I thought about offering him one of the new books Mr. Cuzlin had given me. Another Dickens novel. But then he took up his Trixie and commenced to clean it. I waited for him to speak to me. When he didn't I said good night and went to my own room to read.

***

T
HEY'VE ASKED ME
about it since. So many people. What did you first hear? Was it late? Were you the first awake?

It's all a jumble to me—noise, shrieks, crashing glass. I only know we went to bed in a warm darkened house. My supper had been good. Everybody said so. My family was home safe, so there was no sense in even thinking of Yeller Thing. An old mangy dog is all he was, all he'd ever been. Too many stories of haints in these parts was the trouble. My last thought was to fetch Dr. Grey tomorrow for Ma. Pa was worried about her. I'd ride myself and fetch him after Adelaide left.

No sooner had I closed my eyes, it seemed, than the sickening sound of crashing glass woke me. Then there
was the crack of a gunshot and the thud as it hit the pinelog walls of the house. My first thought was that something had exploded downstairs. Had I left the Brunswick stew on the stove? Once my feet were on freezing floors, I knew it was not the Brunswick stew. I'd put that away. Then I heard Calvin's racing feet in the hall, his cry.

"Hatfields, Pa! They're attackin'!"

Everybody was running then. My sisters raced downstairs in flannel nightgowns, and I followed. Pa was buttoning his shirt and grabbing a gun. Against the white snow outside, the jagged glass of the kitchen window was outlined. Frigid air came in.

Calvin was fastening on his gunbelt. "Out by the corncrib. 'Pears to be a bunch of 'em."

I stood stock-still.
The corncrib!
Yeller Thing! He
was
real! Again, he'd come to warn me!

"Put your mother back to bed," Pa ordered me.

There was Ma, leaning on a chair in the kitchen, looking like a scarecrow. Adelaide started leading her upstairs when Calvin ran to kiss her. "Don't worry none, Ma. They won't get in. They'll have to kill me first." Then he looked at Pa. "Up to the loft, Pa. That's where we have the advantage. You girls, stay away from the windows."

"Come on out, Ranel!" The voice boomed outside. Jim Vance. "Come on out and surrender, if you want to save your family."

Pa? Surrender? I guess that's when I knew it was over. He'd die first. We all would. That's when I knew we were finished.

I
T WENT ON
for what seemed like hours, the shouts of the men outside, the gunfire, the scrambling inside, the footsteps and shouts of Pa and Calvin upstairs.

"Come on out, Ranel," the voices kept demanding. "Come on out. We want you. We're sick and tired of your comin' into West Virginia and makin' us hide away from our homes and womenfolk. We aim to make you pay for Wall dyin' in prison. We want this over, now!"

Adelaide cried. She clung to me in the kitchen, where we hunkered low by the old cast-iron stove, and cried and trembled like a baby. "They aim to kill us, Fanny."

I held on to her. "They won't. Pa and Calvin won't let 'em."

"If only we had more men."

"I should get my coat on and run for Floyd," I said. I was sure I could sneak out. But every time I made a
move to leave her, Adelaide clung to me. "Don't go! Don't leave me!"

So I stayed. To hear bullets thudding into the house walls. To hear the shouts and cusses and threats from the men outside, the braying and barking of our dogs, Adelaide's wailing, Calvin's voice upstairs, every once in a while Pa's. To shiver in my nightdress next to Adelaide, even though we were beside the stove.

"Maybe we should go upstairs with Ma and Alifair," Adelaide said.

I thought that a good idea. But just as we were pondering it, the light in the kitchen changed. A yellow glow cast on the walls from outside. Adelaide raised her head to see and gasped. "They've got pine-knot torches."

"We're a-goin' to set the house afire, Ranel," came a shout, "lessin' you come out now!"

The only answer was a volley of shot from the upstairs windows. Each time the guns fired I jumped. The sound was so sickening. It echoed in the cold air.

Next thing we heard was a terrible scream. "I been hit! I been hit!" we heard from outside.

"That's it, Ranel!" And with that, another kitchen window smashed on the front wall, and a flaming bunch of faggots made crackling brightness where no brightness should be, in the middle of the kitchen floor. At once the bundle of twigs flared orange, eating, devouring. Then came another, and another, and another followed, making a circle of flame and smoke that filled my eyes and brain, destroying the herbs hanging from the
rafters, Ma's calico curtains, making new curtains of thick, sour smoke.

I had to get us out. "Come on," I said, "upstairs, Adelaide." I had to drag her. We bumped into Calvin and Pa, scrambling down. "The kitchen's on fire." I choked out the words.

"Alifair, c'mon down here and get to the buckets," Calvin yelled. We kept buckets of water in the house just in case of fire. Maybe three. At the most four. The flames in the kitchen were growing, hissing, growling like some live beast. I stood there, staring, thinking,
Now we won't have the Brunswick stew to eat anymore, and it was so good.
Then somebody pushed me aside.

"Alifair!" I heard Calvin yell again. Then I saw Alifair go right through the smoke, grab up the buckets, and start thowing the water on the flames. The puncheon floor was warm, smoldering, under my bare feet. Flames lapped at the beamed ceding, feeding on everything in sight. The heat was near suffocating.

Calvin and Pa were firing out the kitchen windows. Pa's shirt was smoldering in back. Alifair threw some water on it. "We need more water, Calvin," she yelled. "It's all give out."

I saw Calvin turn from the window, waving his arms like some haint in the smoke. One arm held Trixie.

"We gotta have more, Calvin," Alifair said, "or we'll be burned out. We'll be forced out, and they'll kill us all!"

"Can you sneak out to the well and get some?" They were standing not three feet from each other, but yelling
through the smoke, because Pa was firing out and the men outside were firing in. Alifair already had her coat on over her nightgown. Smoke and flames were coming up through the floorboards now.

"By God," Calvin yelled. "They've put more torches under the house!"

"I'm goin' out now," Alifair said. She grabbed up a bucket.

"They'll shoot you," Pa yelled. I thought he hadn't been listening, but he had.

"It's either that or they shoot us all," Alifair told him. "Anyways, even they aren't low-down enough to shoot a woman fetching water to save her house!" And then she was gone, through the smoke, out the back door, and into the yard.

"Alifair!" Adelaide screamed, and tried to follow her. "Don't go, please!"

"Grab your sister," Pa yelled, "and shut her up! Get outa this room and see to Ma."

I took a-hold of Adelaide, who was screaming like a painter cat. I dragged her out of the kitchen. There was a sight of smoke in it now. I didn't know how Pa and Calvin were able to breathe, excepting that they were firing out of open windows. Every once in a while one of the shots from outside the house would thud against the walls. The sounds were soft thuds but horrible. Under my bare feet I felt broken glass. I tripped over something wooden, near fell, and righted myself. The world seemed to be gone howling mad all around me.