The Coffin Quilt (3 page)

Roseanna could always make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, that's what Mama said. I thought Roseanna could do miracles. I depended on her for it.

Adelaide, Alifair, and Trinvilla shared a bigger room, but they could have it. I was never allowed in there. They had their secret things. Alifair made corncob dolls that were precious to her. And Trinvilla had her box of dye recipes. I didn't care about any of it, not even Adelaide's herbs. She was only ten to my seven when the trouble with Roseanna started but already coming on to be a little old granny woman. Mama let her visit with Aunt Cory, a real granny woman, and stay for days. I think Adelaide did it just to get out of chores.

Adelaide and Trinvilla were jealous of Ro because she was so purty and all the boys in Pike County wanted to court her. And they were hateful to me because I was Ro's pet. They were all the time whispering how she was going to come to perdition. But Adelaide and Trinvilla didn't even know what perdition was. And didn't care. If Alifair said Ro was going to come to it, they agreed. They'd agree with anything she said. I think they had a quarter of a brain between them.

Truth to tell, I didn't know the meaning of the word, either. But I learned it on Election Day, 1880. The day Ro ran off.

***

T
HE NIGHT BEFORE
Election Day was the first time I saw Yeller Thing. I was out back by the corncrib, stuffing straw in mattress tickings. The mattresses had to be filled with clean straw every fall. Adelaide was supposed to be helping me, but she'd wandered off to get some ginseng down in the holler by the briar thickets. So I wandered off, too, across the creek to the woods to check on my playhouse and get my dolly that Floyd had carved me.

The sun was all but down and the woods were filled with shadows and the sounds birds make when they're going to sleep. I fetched my doll, climbed down the ladder, and then I heard the noise, the rustling nearby. At first I thought it was Adelaide, come to spy on me, because I never allowed her in my playhouse. But nobody was there. Again the rustling, this time closer, and I got scairt. Just off a piece, across the holler, I could see our house, all solid and snuggly, with smoke coming out of the chimney. How could anything hurt me so close to our house?

But I knew better. Hadn't Calvin warned me about snakes, and even bears? I searched the ground around me, peered into the blue shadows. The sun was gone, it was coming on to night. The woods were no place for a little girl at night. I turned to go, then heard it again, the rustling.

Before I turned I smelled it. And almost laughed. A skunk! I turned to see where it was and that is when I saw Yeller Thing for the first time.

It whooshed past me. I almost felt the draft it made. And the smell got worse than anything, even worse than the outhouse at school in September.

I know what I saw. It was yeller. And big. Bigger than anything in these woods had a right to be, even a bear. It streaked by like a painter cat. And there was this eerie sound. Not a growl. It sounded like a Rebel yell, from what my pa told me about such yells. Or like a man about to die, which is maybe the same thing.

For a moment I stood stock-still. And then I heard the words Mama so often read from her Bible: "And it is appointed unto men once to die."

Those words just came into my head. And I knew then that what was out there was nothing animal or human. The knowing flooded through me, and I ran. Back through the holler, across the creek, and up to our house, through the back door, yelling, "Mama, Mama, I saw the Devil!"

Mama calmed me. She gave me cookies and warm milk. And she scolded, too.

"If you'd paid mind to your chores and finished filling that mattress ticking, you wouldn't be in trouble. Where's Adelaide?"

I sipped my warm milk, still shivering. "Out picking ginseng."

I saw Mama look across the kitchen at Floyd, who was sipping some coffee at the table. My brother Floyd is old. Twenty-eight at least. He has his own little log cabin a piece away from us, on the creek, where he makes his moonshine and his toys. He travels around selling those toys every fall and sells the moonshine all the year round. He is not so all-fired-up taken with Pa as
the others are. Floyd is different. Alifair said he has girls wherever he goes selling his toys. But he never speaks about them. Every once in a while he comes to sup with us.

"Go find Adelaide," Mama said to Floyd.

Floyd got right to his feet. "Where's she picking?" he asked me. He had Pa's long gun in his hand.

"Down in the holler by the briar thickets."

He made for the door.

"He won't be after Adelaide," I told him. "He's come for me."

Floyd looked at me with those steel gray eyes of his. He's a quiet sort, but nice. Lots of times I go to visit him at his cabin and bring him some hot biscuits or fresh preserved jam. He lets me touch the toys he's making, the jumping jack, the little farm sled. He asks my opinion about girls' toys. And listens to what I tell him.

"Why's he come for you?" he asked. And I knew he believed me.

"He's come to tell me something. To warn me." The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. But they were right sounding. "But I don't know about what."

Floyd nodded. He understood. When people hereabouts tell stories of haints, others don't disbelieve. Some tell of seeing ghosts of tormented souls. Some of witches come to make your soul tormented.

"Best put a drop of turpentine and some sugar in that milk of hers," he told Mama. Then he went out the door.

I know what that's for, a fretful little 'un. It'll make them sleep. Oh, how I hate being the youngest! Mama did as Floyd said, then made me wash and go right to bed.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was bright with sun and bursting like a hog bladder with the excitement of the elections. I went early with Roseanna. She smelled so sweet and looked so purty in her new calico. Her hair was all curled and shiny. Because I'd fallen asleep early, she couldn't do my hair up in rags, so she fixed it in one long braid down my back and put a sassy ribbon on it.

When we got to the schoolhouse, the menfolk were already there, all done up in their best, standing around and joking in little groups, and they stopped all that jawing and stared at Ro when we walked up. I could have busted with pride. Even Ambrose Cuzlin, my teacher, who was standing by the schoolhouse door welcoming everybody, had a grin for Roseanna.

Everybody was there. One glance around told you that. Republicans and Democrats, young men and
old, the well-placed and the dirt-poor, Hatfields and McCoys.

Ro and I sort of stayed off to ourselves for a while, under a locust tree. Nobody bothered her outright, because my brothers were there, all of them, and that's quite a parcel.

Floyd had brought his moonshine, of course. Tolbert came with his wife and baby. Brother James was there with his family. They live a mile below us on Pond Creek. James has five children already and is older than Floyd even. James is a deputy sheriff and everybody knows he doesn't pussyfoot around the law but is a man to be reckoned with.

Brother Sam was there with his Martha, too. They live on Dials Fork. Bill, who was twelve, was with Bud, who was just sixteen and coming on to be a man. Calvin was eighteen, and already one. Pharmer was fifteen, brave, handsome, and good already with a gun. I've got a brother Lilburn, in his twenties, but he's off somewhere looking for gold. Lordy, I could have left somebody out. When it comes to my family, I never know.

Alifair, Adelaide, and Trinvilla were coming later with Mama.

All the boys gave me and Roseanna their howdy, then walked off to be with their friends. It seemed so funny to see all those people walking in our schoolhouse, and I was more than just a mite glad that Mr. Cuzlin had made us neaten it good. He was proud of that log schoolhouse. All by himself he put backs on the puncheon seats.

There was lots of shouting and insulting and slapping on the back the way men do to each other. The womenfolk were gathered under the trees in their Sunday best, setting down baskets of food and spreading cloths on the tables. Everybody brought food, even the young girls. Not Roseanna. She brought herself. It was enough, and everybody knew it. Children ran back and forth playing tag and crack-the-whip. Some of the smaller boys from school had squirt guns.

I saw Nancy McCoy. She was fifteen and still in school with us. She's Uncle Harmon's youngest, spoiled and fussed over by her big brothers because her pa was killed before she was born. She thought she was the puniest girl on Peter Creek. Well, she couldn't hold a candle to Ro, even though the boys all moon like sick calves over her at school, including the younger ones. If you want to talk about perdition, she was headed for it all right.

Onliest one who wasn't there was Belle Beaver. She lived in a little lean-to in Happy Holler. She was a fancy woman. Alifair, who thinks she knows everything, said Belle was whipped out of North Carolina, so she came here. But women didn't want her around and had already gone in a delegation to my brother Jim to see about running her out. So far Jim hadn't said he would and hadn't said he wouldn't.

Me, Adelaide, and Trinvilla walk by Happy Holler on our way to school. Adelaide and Trinvilla really run by, afeared of seeing Belle. I think Alifair told them that she can taint them with her evil ways. I know she can't,
because Ma sends me two or three times a year with baskets of vittles. I've never been in her shanty, but she's always been nice to me. I'm not afeared of her.

Everything was going on the way it should, with the men voting and feeling good about themselves and everybody gathering around to eat and catching up on things. You couldn't help but notice that the McCoys stayed on their own patch of ground and the Hatfields staked out another. Most of the Hatfields came over from West Virginia, so they couldn't vote. They came just to find out what was going on. There was some calling back and forth. Some howdies, and lots of long looks, but no trouble. Not until young Johnse Hatfield started walking in our direction.

My brother Bill had already started playing his fiddle. I was listening to that sweet but mournful sound behind all the talk and laughter when I looked up and saw Johnse coming toward us. "Ro," I said.

She'd have died before she let on she knew he was coming. She was sitting there making a cornhusk doll for me and calling something over to Nancy McCoy about her dress. But she knew Johnse was coming. Every pore of her knew it.

"Pa will kill us, Ro." Hatfields and McCoys never spoke to each other. If we broke that rule here, every man would have his hand on his gun quicker than you could say moonshine.

Yet here was Johnse Hatfield walking toward us.

"Howdy there, girls." And he leaned against that locust tree, grinning for all he was worth.

I could have thought a lot of things in that moment.
But the first thing that came to my mind was how I'd learned in school about the Minute Men in Lexington up north and how they stood and faced the British soldiers. "Then someone fired a shot," my teacher, Mr. Cuzlin, told us. "And it was the shot heard round the world."

That's what Johnse Hatfield's howdy was that day to us. The shot heard all through West Virginia and Kentucky. I may have been only seven, but I knew that much, anyways.

***

D
ID THE TALK
and laughter all around us stop? Did the people look, without turning? Did they hear without trying? Did the birds stop singing and the whole world tilt just an itty-bitty bit? I felt it. All of it. But nothing else mattered, because though Ro hadn't yet favored him with a howdy, or even a look, my eyes filled up with Johnse Hatfield.

I knew what Pa told us about Hatfields better than I knew my Bible lessons.
The waters saw thee, Oh God, the waters saw thee and were afraid: the depths also were troubled.

Was Psalm 77 about God? Or the Hatfields? Could it be about Johnse Hatfield? Teeth so white, smile so sassy, eyes so blue? And dimples! What was it Ma said about dimples? "Sometimes you don't know if the Lord poked His finger there or the Devil." With Johnse I was sure it was the Devil. He moved like a painter cat. He smelled like my brothers, of strong soap, tobacco, corn liquor, and horses. But oh, I never felt like that around my brothers. So then, why was my soul troubled? And me
only seven! Think what Ro was feeling! I looked up at him worshipfully.

My sister tossed her head but still didn't look. Kept on with that doll like her life depended on it. "Hello yourself. You're takin' quite a chance coming over here like this, aren't you?"

"I figure you're worth it."

"Do you now?"

"Sure 'nuf." Still with that insolent grin. Still leaning against the locust tree. "You got a feller, Roseanna McCoy?"

"Nope. But I can't see what business it is of yourn."

"I could make it my business if'n you gave me the chance."

She was still sitting there working on that doll. "And how do you plan to do that, with my pa and brothers and fifty other McCoys all around us like bees around honey?"

"You got the honey part right," Johnse said. "Why don't you leave the bees to me? I kin handle 'em."

"I'd like to know how, is what I'd like to know."

"Heck." And Johnse moved from the tree, a little more toward her. "They're all so fired up on corn liquor and politics nobody'd even notice if'n we sashayed down to that bunch of trees over there by the creek where it's cool. Nobody'd even miss us."

"You think that, do you?" my sister asked.

"I know it. I'd bet my life on it."

Roseanna finished with the doll and handed it to me. "There you go, baby. You wait here. I'll be right back." Then she got up, smoothed her skirt, and still without
looking at Johnse, they walked together away from the locust tree and down to the creek.

The waters of the creek will see thee, Johnse Hatfield, they will see thee and also be troubled.

I waited. She didn't come right back. I got a plate of food and went to wait under the locust tree with my cornhusk doll. I'd wait all day if Roseanna wanted. But she just didn't come.