The Coffin Quilt (5 page)

I'd give all I am to go back to the way it was when we were together, all of a piece. I want to go back so bad I'd let myself be dragged through the woods forever by Yeller Thing, made part of his terror, to have it back for just one night.

But God doesn't work it that way. How could He? Why He can scarce keep track of things now. How would it be with everybody asking Him, "God, I want to go back and do it over"? He gives us one chance, that's all. And fools that we are, we never get it right.

T
HE ROOM WAS
so lonely without Ro. I felt like I'd fallen into a gopher hole. I lay in my bed and stared into the darkness as I listened to the sounds of the household settling into bed. At one time I felt so pitiful lost I got out of bed and started toward Ma and Pa's room. From the other side of the door I heard them talking. It was about Ro. I stood and listened.

They were conjecturing where she could be. I heard Ma say might be she'd gone to Aunt Betty's, but she never went off before without telling.

Pa said she was of age and she had sense.

Ma said Alifair was of age, too, but never stayed away of a night except when she went to revival meetings. Ma was afeared, she said.

Pa said Ro might be the purtiest girl in three counties but push comes to shove she could put a bear in his place.

Ma said it weren't bears she was worried about. It was the way some of the boys were a-lookin' at Ro today that put the righteous fear of the Lord into her.

Pa said, all right, all right, after this day he'd talk to Ro about not staying out without first telling where she was fixing to stay. He said if she didn't come home by morning he'd have the boys go out and ask around.

Then Ma said, why did the Lord try her like that, giving her the puniest girl in three counties? Why couldn't she be plain like the others?

It hurt me that Ma thought me, Adelaide, Trinvilla, and Alifair plain, but I was used to it. Ro was always spoke of as the purtiest.

Pa answered it was because the Lord couldn't help Himself. Ro just took right after her ma in looks. Everything got quiet then, so I went back to my room. I tried not to look in the direction of Ro's bed.

I wasn't guilty anymore about not telling them what I knew after Ma said that. All I could think was,
Is Ro married yet?
How could she be married when she didn't even have a quilt? A girl had to have at least three quilts before she could wed. And Ro had never gotten around to starting hers. I wished I wasn't so little. I'd make her one. I was learning to piece a quilt, just doing the running stitch. I wondered if Ro wouldn't like a nice bearpaw pattern.

I lay awake a long time. I heard a hooty owl call, then a nightbird. Heard Old Blue, my brother Bud's hunting dog, howling outside. Soon he was joined by Old Rags, Bill's dog. Then all I heard was the locusts, then wind rustling the trees.

Suppose they couldn't find a preacher in West Virginia this time of night. Would Devil Anse let them in? Mama once said that a person who let people who weren't wed stay at their house overnight kept a bad house. Well, old Devil Anse's house was bad anyways.

Almost soon's I fell asleep, it seemed, somebody was shaking me. "Fanny! Get up!" Alifair, sure 'nuf. "You come on now. Up, or you don't get any vittles I cook in this house."

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "I didn't hardly sleep."

"Neither did anybody else, thanks to your wonderful Ro. Come on now, lazy girl. Up."

My brothers, rifles in hand, were near out the door when I got down. Pa was bellowing, "I want every friend and relative questioned if'n you don't see her on the road comin' home."

I heard a whimper from Ma. Alifair thumped the buttermilk pitcher down on the table and glared at me. "You were with her. Where did she go?"

Brilliant sunshine spilled into the kitchen and hurt my eyes. I was hungry. I reached for some ham, but Alifair clamped her hand down on my wrist, "She knows something, Pa."

Everybody stopped to look at me. I felt Pa's gaze fixed on me. His eyes were brown, but now they looked like blackstrap molasses. "Fanny, where's your sister?"

"I don't know, Pa. Like I told you yesterday, last I saw her she took a walk to the creek."

If you lie to Pa you lie to God.
But I kept at it, throwing my lies right in God's face, hoping he wouldn't punish me by making something terrible happen to Roseanna.

"Did you go tell her we were leaving yesterday like I asked?"

"I couldn't find her, Pa. Then it started to rain and I come running."

I knew I'd be punished real bad if they found out I was lying.

"Alifair, let your sister at the ham," Pa ordered.

I let myself breathe again. They believed me! Ma and Pa and my brothers, leastways. Even Adelaide and Trinvilla, though I knew Alifair would soon bring them around to what she was thinking. Which was that I was lying my eyes out and I'd rot in hellfire for it.

My brothers left. Pa sat down to finish his breakfast with the rest of us. They spoke no more of Ro, but I found then that I could scarce eat, hungry as I was. Because every time I looked at her empty chair I felt sick inside. Ro would likely never sit at this table with us again. Terror gripped me as I thought that I might never see my sister Ro again, either.

***

A
LIFAIR HAD CLEAR
blue eyes and glossy brown-red hair that she wore pulled back. Her face was always scrubbed clean as was everything about her person. And that's how she was. Clean. No wiles. No head tossing. No lowering of the eyelashes. Alifair was so honest it
hurt. Her words went right in your face, and if you didn't like them, you could go skin a skunk.

Sometimes I wished she'd like me. But she didn't, and there was nothing for it.

She milked the cows. It was her idea, not Pa's. She wanted to be in charge of those cows as much as she wanted to be in charge of the house. She knew when to turn 'em out and when to keep 'em in the barn. She kept the milk crocks clean and churned the butter. She fed the cows corn nubbins, fodder, shucks, and tops. She'd go with Pa, twice a year, down to cotton country to get cottonseed for 'em. It was the only time she stayed away except for healing or revival meetings.

"I want you to come out to the barn with me," she said as I sat finishing my breakfast.

I knew what was coming. But I sassed her anyways, remembering what brother Tolbert had said. "Isn't there a revival meeting coming up soon?" I asked.

She stopped what she was doing and pulled me out of the chair and dragged me out to the barn with her. To see the new calf, she told Ma. There was no new calf. There was me, whipped up the ladder to the hayloft with a switch on my legs, and made to stay there while she cleaned the cow stalls. Or for as long as she wanted. Until I told her the truth about Ro.

***

I
DIDN'T TELL.
Along about noon my brothers came back with the news that everybody they'd talked to said Ro had gone off yesterday with Johnse Hatfield.

Since Calvin, at eighteen, was the oldest at home, he
told it in the kitchen. "John Hatfield said he saw her crossing the Tug with Devil Anse's boy, Johnse, yester evenin'."

I saw Pa's face blacken. Heard Ma's gasp. "John is half McCoy," Pa allowed. "He can be trusted."

"But why?" Ma asked. "Where was she a-goin' with Johnse?" Ma looked like she'd just swallowed some boiled onions in molasses for a sore throat.

"Where do you think?" Pa asked. "She's been taken by the son of that Devil Anse Hatfield. Likely she's run off to wed. But far as I'm concerned, she's lost all notions of respectability. She has forsaken us, everything we stand for. I don't hold with such. So far as I'm concerned, we forget Roseanna. Her name has gone from this house. She no more crosses my threshold."

Again Ma gasped. "Pa, aren't you being a little unforgiving?"

He looked at her. "Roseanna—and this is the last time I'll say her name—knew what she was a-doin'. She set out to hurt us, trafficking with a Hatfield. I tell you, she's gone from this house!"

"Alifair," Ma said, "strip Roseanna's bed. Burn the linens. Fanny, go put her pebble on the side of the damned."

I stood rooted to the floor. I could not believe all this. It was a bad dream. Just yestermorn me and Ro had set off with our family's blessing to the elections, laughter from the house echoing in our ears, Ma calling after us to make sure we had our shawls. Now I would never see my sister Ro again.

I felt a big fist inside me, squeezing my heart. Then I felt Alifair's glare. "Go," she whispered. "Do as Ma says." She grabbed my arm and smacked my bottom. I ran out the door sobbing to put Ro's pebble on the side of the damned.

A
MONTH WENT
by. A month of heat and locusts. Of chores and church and no Roseanna. Me alone in the room, looking at her stripped bed, her things setting there in the corner in a burlap bag, as Pa had decreed they be. A month of Alifair herding me around, bossing me, and knowing there was no Ro to take my part. Alifair wanted to move into my room to "take charge" of me, she told Ma. I told Ma I'd die first. I begged her not to allow it, so she didn't. "We'll wait a bit," she told Alifair. "Ro may be back." It was part of the world Ma lived in that made her believe this.

"Why would she be back if'n she's wed?" Alifair asked. Usually she let Ma live in her world. Because that's what gave her leave to take over the kitchen. Now she wasn't about to.

"Maybe she isn't," Ma answered.

"Well, if she isn't then she's living in sin. And Pa won't let her back."

Ma didn't answer and Alifair didn't move in. Ma was still woman of the house after all.

The sheep came home and left again. Ma made me, Trinvilla, and Adelaide new dresses for school. Nights got cool and there was a ring around the full moon. I went to my playhouse a lot and saw that the muskrats had built their houses big and the north side of the beaver dam on the creek was more covered with sticks than the south side. All signs of a bad winter.

Pa and my brothers started gathering in the crops. We planted fall turnips and cabbages. They pushed over the collards and put pine bark and dirt over them to keep 'em for the winter. We stored the pumpkins in the shuck pen, the sweet potatoes in the smokehouse. My brothers cut and stacked wood. We made a batch of soap from the hickory and oak ashes. I started school.

From the first day there were strange looks and whisperings. I knew the other kids were talking about Ro. I kept my nose to my primer and stayed to myself. Adelaide and Trinvilla told Alifair how embarrassed they were that Ro was now common gossip. She told them that's what happened when you came to perdition and they should just learn from it.

One especially chilly September morning Ma sent me with a basket to Belle Beaver's shack. Adelaide and Trinvilla teased me about it all the way, and shouted "ask her about Ro" when they continued on to school as I stopped.

Belle came to the door, all wrapped in something silk that didn't go with her surroundings and made you think of far-off places. She wasn't a bit embarrassed. "Thank that nice mama of yours," she said. "She's a true Christian."

I said I would. Her hair was some color I'd never seen. She had rouge on her cheeks. Was this what happened when a person came to perdition? Would Ro look like this someday?

"Heard your sister wed that nice Johnse Hatfield," she said. "And they're all carryin' on like she run off with some Yankee. I know what it is to be vilified. You wait here." And while I stood there wondering what
vilified
meant, she disappeared into her shack and in a little bit came out with a hair comb. "Give this to her. She'll like it, bein' new wed and all."

I was so touched by her gift that I took it, mumbled my thanks, and went on my way. What a beautiful comb! But I couldn't give it to Ro. It would make her vilified, like Belle. I threw it in the woods on my way to school, mourning the loss of its purtiness. I'd probably never see another like it.

At recess I was out at the pump fetching some water for Mr. Cuzlin when out comes Nancy McCoy, all gussied up in her new calico. Pink it was, and with her dark curls she looked right purty in it. Most girls were through with school by Nancy's age and were home helping out. But Nancy kept right on coming, when she pleased. And it wasn't like Calvin, who wanted to learn. Nancy came because she had nothing else to do. And she
was always making sheep eyes, either at Mr. Cuzlin or Calvin. Both paid her no nevermind.

She was carrying a green peach-tree suck, forked at the end. "You want to see me find water?" she asked. "I can find water with this. I'm doing an experiment."

I went right on pumping. "Got all the water I need."

She stopped to look at me. "Bet I could find your sister for you, too."

I went right on pumping. "What do you know about Ro?"

"She's living with Johnse Hatfield. At Devil Anse's house. And they ain't married."

My face flamed. "Not true."

"It is so. My brother Lark told me. And he knows."

I finished filling my bucket with water, and we stood there staring at each other. "Living without benefit of marriage," Nancy whispered. "Lark has friends in West Virginny. And he knows. And soon so will everybody. You see? I told you I could find your sister for you with my peach stick, didn't I?"

I took the peach stick from her and broke it in two. "Liar!"

"That's no way to treat kin," she said gravely.

"Don't care if you're kin. You're a liar!" I threw the water at her. It went all over her new pink calico. I dropped the bucket and ran. Not back to the schoolhouse, but home. All the way, crying. And who was there in the yard? Alifair. Demanding to know why I was home. I wouldn't tell her, of course. I couldn't. And that's when she put my head under the
pump, trying to make me tell, and Ma came out and stopped her and packed my bag and sent me to Tolbert and Mary's.

***

S
O
I
WASN'T
there at supper when my family got the news that Ro and Johnse weren't wed. Bad news travels faster than a brushfire in these parts. I was just setting down to supper with Tolbert, Mary, and little Cora, my hair still wet, when Calvin rode up and came in to tell us.