The Coffin Quilt (15 page)

"Ma spooks herself," he said.

"Alifair says it isn't fitting now."

"It's fitting, long as that old hawk keeps at our chickens. He already got one this morning."

"She says you should have more respect for your brothers."

He patted his gun. He called it Trixie. "This is the only thing folks around here respect," he said solemnly. "And as far as Tolbert, Pharmer, and Bud go, wherever they are they want me to get that old chicken hawk, Fanny. Just like they want me to get those bloodsucking
Hatfields. And if Ma weren't so set on stopping Pa, we'd all be off hunting them properlike soon's the funeral is over. But she isn't goin' to let us. I heard them arguing about it last night."

I had, too. All night, it seemed, the low rumbling of Pa's voice and the high-pitched begging of Ma's had come through their bedroom door. This morning they'd scarce looked at each other.

"Pa blames her for the boys," Calvin said. "And so do I. She shouldn't of stopped Jim from sending for him and getting up a posse. She shouldn't of gone herself and made deals with old Devil Anse. She had no right. So it isn't my shooting that's spooking her this morning, Fanny. It's her own conscience. So go along now while'st I get myself this hawk."

I got up. "What'll I tell Alifair?"

"That as soon's this day is over, I'm gonna teach her to shoot a gun. And you, too. The day is coming soon when we may need you all to know. I'll be along directly. Go on, now. I need some more time alone here with Trixie and that old hawk."

I thought how he needed less time with Trixie. Less time with guns. Maybe they all did. But I didn't say it.

"There's something," I said, "and I don't know who to tell it to, now that Tolbert's gone."

He looked up and nodded sympathetically.

"Bill. He's upstairs in his room. And he's crying."

He blinked, but otherwise his face didn't change. "I know, Fanny," he said sadly. "He cried all last night. Says it was him who knifed Ellison and it's him who
should be dead, and not Bud. We're gonna have a heap of grief with Bill, Fanny. You tell Alifair if she wants a worry, she's got one. Right upstairs."

"I tried to tell her about Bill this morning. She won't listen."

He sighed. "Well, why don't you try and talk to him then, Fanny? Seems to me you both need a friend about now."

I started back to the house. As I was halfway there I heard the shot, heard Calvin's shout of glee. "Good girl, Trixie. We got him."

In the kitchen I grabbed a cup of acorn Indian pudding and another of coffee. "Where you going with that?" Alifair asked.

"Bringing it to Bill. He's had no breakfast."

She held out her hands. "Anybody who doesn't come to the table doesn't get breakfast."

I stepped back, clutching my booty. "Bill needs it. He's upstairs crying," I said fiercely. "And I aim to bring it to him."

Several of the neighbor women had stopped what they were doing, stopped their chatter, and were watching. Alifair knew this. She sighed, held up her hands, and whirled around. "See what I have to put up with?" she said. Then to me. "Go on, but I want both of you down right quick. The funeral's soon starting."

I ran up the stairs, but I knew I hadn't bested her. I knew I'd pay for it later. And now there was no more Tolbert to rescue me from Alifair's clutches. Ma was so crazy with grief that if Alifair held my head under the
pump and drowned me, Ma wouldn't discover it for three days. I stopped outside Bill's door and listened. No sound from inside. I pushed open the door and went in.

***

H
E ATE.
R
IGHT
where he was, on the floor by his bed. He was about starved. But he ate like a man who didn't know he was eating. Like he didn't even taste the food.

"My fault, Fanny," he said. "I should be dead, not Bud."

"It's nobody's fault," I told him.

He looked at me then for the first time. "Roseanna," he said. "Did you know? She brought that quilt home with her. She's got coffins for all of us on the edges. Just like she knew all the time they'd be shot. And she's just now moving Bud's, Pharmer's, and Tolbert's to the middle. Don't that beat all?"

I stared at him in horror.

"I want to die, Fanny. I told Roseanna. Know what she said? That she's felt that way for a long time. Then she said how a body can will themselves to die. Said she's seen it many a time when she was caring for sick folk. For no reason they just upped and died on her. Willed it. Well, that's what I aim to do then, I told her. You just better get my coffin moved to the middle."

"No," I told him.

"How can I live, Fanny, with Bud gone and it bein' my fault? No, I know what's best for old Bill. Come on now, don't you cry. You're so little and purty. You're the only sane McCoy. Come on now, let's go on down to the
funeral. I'm gonna play my fiddle. 'Amazing Grace.' How you think that'll be on my fiddle?"

I clutched his hand as we went downstairs. "It'll be fine," I said. "It'll be just wonderful."

I was crying so I could scarce see and almost tripped going down. But Bill held on to me.

B
ILL PLAYED
"Amazing Grace" at the funeral. And it was right fine.

Afterward, when people were eating all the food, I found Ro out in the yard near the herb garden.

"Poor little Fanny," she said. "Lost Tolbert. Your favorite brother."

"I heard you've got his coffin on your quilt. And Bud's and Pharmer's. Is Bill's there, too?"

"Hush." She set her plate down and reached out to grab and hug me. "Hush, don't let Pa and Ma hear you about the quilt."

I pulled away from her. "Pa said don't you ever put any McCoy names on it, Ro. Why'd you do it?"

"You still don't understand about that quilt now, baby, do you? It's more than just a quilt. It's a family history, like a Bible. I wanted it for my little Sarah Elizabeth."

"She's dead." I hadn't meant it to sound so cruel, so final, but I was angry.

"I know," she said softly. "And now somehow because she is gone to the angels I want to finish it properlike. Because I started it for her."

Something inside me, deep inside, something that was part of my bones made me know she was lying. It frightened me. Because I was seeing Ro, my beloved sister, in a different light for the first time.
How could she have put our names on her quilt?
The thought of it ate into me, disturbed something I didn't want disturbed, brought it out of the woods and made me face it down, like I'd faced Yeller Thing.

My sister Ro was crazy. Crazy with grief over Sarah Elizabeth, teched in the head because Johnse had wed Nancy. Why hadn't anyone seen it? Because she'd been so good, nursing Alifair and all those others who'd come down sick?

"Did you tell Bill that a person can will himself to die?" I asked.

She nodded and sighed. "I've seen it, honey."

"But why did you have to tell Bill?"

"Why?" She gave that soft laugh of hers. And her voice! Oh, how it seeped into me, finding all my hurt places, just how it'd always done all my life. Her voice, so sweet, like dripping honey, had always made things all right with me. Had always put my fears to rest. Now that same voice was saying things I couldn't abide.

"Honey, I tried to help Bill. Because I know how he feels. Because I want to die, too. I just wanted to help him, is all."

"Stop it!" I stood up. "You're not going to die, Ro. And neither is Bill."

She smiled up at me. "Of course not, honey. No more dying. We've had enough of that, haven't we?" Her voice, putting my fears to rest, soothed me. But in her eyes there was a look I ran from, a look that warned me of what was to come. So I ran from her. Just like I ran from Yeller Thing.

***

"I
SN'T YOUR BROTHER
Calvin coming to school anymore, Fanny?"

It was a day in October struck through with enough color for one of Ma's quilts. The sky was a perfect blue. I looked up from gathering my things to take my leave. "It's hunting season, Mr. Cuzlin."

He smiled down at me. "Oh, I know that." He waved an arm around the schoolroom. "Even the seven-year-olds aren't here these days. You can hear the shots of the hunt from miles away. But Calvin hasn't been here once since school started this fall. Is he not coming back?"

"He's never said. But I heard him say there's nothing more you can teach him. He wishes there was."

"And Trinvilla?"

"She's to wed the reverend's son in December. She's making ready."

He nodded. "I'm sorry for all the trouble you folks have had. The Hatfields have been indicted here in Kentucky, you know. I've been following it in the newspapers."

I nodded. Ever since the killings, newspapers had been filled with stories. About murder under the pawpaw trees. About bloody killings. Pa wouldn't allow them in the house. We kept them away from Ma. "But the Hatfields are in West Virginia," I said.

I said no more. In our family you never spoke of troubles to anyone outside. I longed to tell Mr. Cuzlin, though, of how things were at home. How Bill had been tending the cows since Alifair's sickness and now Alifair made me do it, because Bill no longer did his chores. He wandered the woods. Not hunting, just wandering.

Because Pa was afraid to let us girls go to and from school on our own, Bill was supposed to escort us. He did mornings, but by afternoon he seldom came. I'd have lied to Alifair and told her he did, but Adelaide would run right home and snitch on Bill. Then he'd be in trouble. I'd have to go and fetch him home for supper. Most times I'd find him at my brothers' graves.

I wanted to tell Mr. Cuzlin how Pa and Ma argued all the time now about him wanting to lead raids into West Virginia to bring in the men who'd shot my brothers. How Pa kept organizing posses. The men would gather in our front yard, armed and ready. And then Ma would talk Pa out of it, and the men would have to go home.

I wanted to tell how rumor had it that Johnse had taken part in the killings of my brothers. No, I couldn't tell any of this. "I have to go," I said. "I have chores at home."

"Wait." He went across the room and fetched a book.
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens. "Calvin will like it," he said.

I thanked him and went out into the October day. I wouldn't give the book to Calvin. But I couldn't tell Mr. Cuzlin that. Dickens was as far away from Calvin now as the man in the moon.

Adelaide ran on ahead. She was closer than ever to Alifair since the boys' deaths. But others in our family were shifting allegiances. Now that Trinvilla was to wed, Alifair had pushed her away. Calvin and Floyd had joined forces, both angry at Ma for keeping Pa from hunting Hatfields. Floyd, never one to fight, was ready to fight now. My only friend was Bill, even though he was only half there in his head.

We worried for him, wandering the woods, because Hatfields were crossing into Kentucky. Just last week my brother Sam and two of his friends were going to have a turn of corn ground at the mill at Dails Fork, when one of his friends was shot by Hatfields who'd crossed the Tug and come into our territory. That was as unheard of as black bears breaking into your larder.

When I got home from school, Alifair was waiting at the back door, wiping her hands on her apron. "Where's Bill? He didn't come fetch you all again?"

"You know already," I said. "Adelaide told you."

"Don't get fresh. Give me your things, then get to the barn and get the cows milked. They're waiting. Then go fetch Bill. I saw him at the graveyard. What's this?" She peered at the book.

"From Mr. Cuzlin. For Calvin."

She tossed the book away. It landed in the kitchen garden. "Dickens? Is that man crazy? You know where Calvin is? With Pa and Jim, invading West Virginia.
They brought back Tom Chambers today, one of the men who killed the boys. Does that sound like he needs Dickens?" She went into the house. I picked up the book and took it with me to the barn to milk the cows.

It was coming on to dark when I went up the hill above the creekbed road. I heard the music before I got to the top. Bill was playing his fiddle softly. The sun still cast a faint light in the west. He was backlit by the fight, kneeling by the graves. I waited until he was finished playing.

"You gotta come home, Bill."

He looked at me. "Tolbert always liked 'How Great Thou Art.'"

I nodded. "Supper, Bill. Come on home. Please?"

He cradled his fiddle in his arms, looking around. "It's so purty up here."

I walked up the hill farther and reached out my hand to him. I didn't want him getting notions about how purty a grave was. "Come on, Bill, venison stew for supper."

He gave me his hand and we went down the hill together.

Y
ESTERDAY A FUNERAL
and today a wedding. That's what I thought, watching Trinvilla stand in church beside Will Thompson while his father asked her, "Wilt thou take this man?"

Yesterday the same people, standing in church blowing on their hands for the cold in spite of warmth from the old pot stove, had stood stamping their feet at the cemetery at the mouth of Peter Creek while Reverend Thompson prayed over another McCoy, ambushed by Hatfields, a distant kin.

As Trinvilla answered yes, two men stood guard with long rifles outside the small church. Yesterday, McCoys were so armed at the cemetery it looked like they were expecting General Grant and his army. But with good reason.

While Reverend Thompson had prayed over the casket, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord," we could see Hatfields gathered all in a row on horses across the Tug. Pa expected them to fire their high-powered Winchester rifles across the water at us any minute.

After the funeral Reverend Thompson came over to Pa. "I'm a man of the Lord, Ranel. I have to stay out of this fight. If the Hatfields need me to bury any of their dead, I must do so."

"It's all right," Pa had said. "Just pray over our dead and marry our children."

It was two days into the new year when Trinvilla wed, cold as the inside of the Devil's ear. We tramped back to the house in the snow. And even though the men were all armed, there was a mood of merriment. Back at the house my brother Floyd broke out the rum. Bill, looking pale and thin, started his fiddle music. The parlor had been cleared of furniture for dancing. The kitchen was full of people and good smells. In the upstairs bedroom that Trinvilla shared with Adelaide and Alifair, I watched as Adelaide helped my sister pack her things.