Clay's Quilt

by Silas House

  Evangeline moved all over the stage, dancing and singing, her skirt swishing about her knees, her head thrown back. The people were yelling out, whistling, singing along; they were in awe of her, like a swarm of dazed bees under the spell of a bee-charmer. The band began to strum a soft acoustic set while Evangeline paused to take a long drink from her cup of whiskey.

  “We gonna change the pace a little right now,” Evangeline breathed into the microphone. She had brought the cup with her and took another long swallow. “Since this is the Heritage Festival, we gonna do a real old song that come over from Ireland. This is one of my favorites, called ‘Barbara Allen.’”

  It was a song that all of the people knew, a song that their parents had sung to them and that they had sung to their own children, but Evangeline transformed it into her own: the tragic look on her face made the song seem new and exotic. She sang every word perfectly, singularly. Her voice seemed to stream out over the whole town and overtake everything in its path. Her steady song went down and mingled with the music of the well-lit carousel and the chatter of the people browsing the booths, and farther down to mix with the subtle song of the river that had given the town its name.

  Slowly, slowly she got up

  And slowly she went nigher

  And all she said when she got there

  Was “Young man, I think you’re dying.”

  People began to dance. Lovers, mothers and their young sons, old married couples. Main Street was filled with dancers who stamped softly on a ground that was becoming decorated with the first fallen leaves of autumn. Clay looked about anxiously for Alma, but he saw her nowhere. He watched the dancers and felt a tightness in his stomach. He saw married couples much younger than him, some of them dancing while the girl held a baby right on her hip, and an older couple, who still seemed in love after all these years. He doubted love like that would ever come for him.

  “Oh, yes, I’m sick, I’m very sick

  I hear the death-wind howling

  No better no better I never shall be

  If I can’t have Barbry Allen.”

  Cake lit a cigarette and sighed heavily. “This song kills me,” he said. “It’s too damn depressing.”

  Clay did not reply because he could not take his eyes from Evangeline, who looked as if she was crying and trying her best to conceal it.

  “You might as well forget that fiddler, buddy,” Cake said. “She ain’t even here.”

  “She’s here somewhere. I guarantee that,” he said. “I bet she’s one of them musicians they hire to walk around and play.” Clay wanted to keep walking through the crowd, to look for her, but somehow he thought this would not be right. The whole crowd was transfixed by this ancient song, and he felt it would have been disrespectful to move among them. It would have been like digging into the food while someone was right in the middle of saying the supper blessing.

  She was on her sad way home

  She seen the hearse come rolling

  “Lay down lay down his corpse of clay

  So I might look upon him.”

  When the last notes of the music drifted away and Evangeline’s voice was overtaken by the river’s music, the people took their arms from one another, the moon went back into the clouds, and the microphone issued a long screech. Evangeline announced a break, and taped music came on.

  Clay watched as the band and Evangeline went off the side of the courthouse porch and back into a large tent.

  “I’m going to find out where she is. I’m tired of just thinking about her,” Clay said. “You going with me?”

  “No,” Cake said, dropping his cigarette and smashing it out with his boot heel. “I’m going down to the carnival.”

  He took off through the crowd while the people hollered out for the band to come back. “E-vang-line! E-vang-line!” the people chanted.

  He found Alma standing at the entrance to the handicrafts booths. She was wearing a heavy wool dress suit, the black bright against her pale skin, her face peaceful and intent on her music. She held the instrument with the palm of her hand touching the neck of the fiddle, and her little finger stood out from her hand in a permanent crook. Her eyes were closed, but her lips had the hint of a smile on them.

  She was playing an old song, something that Clay’s Irish ancestors might have played as they danced about these mountains celebrating their newfound freedoms. Clay felt close to each pluck of the fiddle, wondering how many among the generations before him had heard those same notes. The music lifted and fell, was quiet, then loud, the notes rising and rising, only to fall low. Was he entranced by her, or by the music?

  People walked by slowly or stood near her, as if she were a mechanical contraption some theme-park scientist had dreamed up. She did look too beautiful to be real, Clay thought. He saw something in her face that was sad and alive at the same time, which alarmed him and made all of his sensations begin to move at once. He could feel them surging through him like juices. Alma’s face was out of place in this world—it was from another time, like the face of a young woman who stared out at you from a picture taken during some horrific period in history, looking tired and lovely, noble and slightly broken, all at the same time. It was not just her face or her hair or her body, but the way she moved, the way her eyebrows fretted together as she played the higher notes on the old fiddle. The slight bend at her knees, the graceful flow of her neck, the easy slide of her arm—everything about her seemed to be a part of the music, as if the fiddle were the one in charge. She seemed possessed by the song.

  When the song ended, there was soft clapping and people walked on in to see the quilts and pottery. But Clay remained, and when she finally let out a long breath, took the fiddle down, and lifted her head, he was looking her straight in the eye.

  “Hey,” Clay said.

  She met his eyes only briefly before looking down at her fiddle. “Hidy, Clay,” she said.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  She smiled politely. “Aye, do you know what time it is? I forgot my watch.”

  “It’s close to eight-thirty, I guess.”

  “The chamber hired me to move around and play until eight. When I start playing, time flies by.” She stepped into the booth behind them and spoke to a Cherokee girl with hair that swept the ground: “You care to hand me my fiddle case?”

  “Well, it’s about half an hour until the next big concert,” he said when she had gotten her case. “I been wanting to ride some rides, but I ain’t got nobody to ride with me. You want to?”

  “I guess I ought to go on up to the main stage.” She spoke softly, so quietly that it seemed she was afraid someone might hear her talking to him. She took up her black case and put the fiddle down into it carefully. “I’m supposed to meet Evangeline up there.”

  “Can’t I walk up there with you?”

  She smiled softly again, fastening the top button on her jacket. “I guess.”

  They walked along quietly for a few minutes. Clay eyed the moon as it floated in and out of view in the big October sky. He was trying to think of something to say.

  “You play the best fiddle ever was,” he said, looking at her, but she would not meet his eyes.

  “You told me that up at the Hilltop.”

  Clay shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “No, this was different—that song you were playing back there. That’s real fiddle music, where the fiddle is all that matters. Up there at the Hilltop, you was just entertaining, adding to the band’s music. That song back there is what the fiddle was meant to play.”

  “That’s right.” She eyed him for a long second, as if she was trying to figure out if he had really meant what he had just said or if he had rehearsed it.

  They were nearing the carnival, and a hundred loud sounds echoed down to them: teenage girls screaming on the rides, music thumping from up on the hill, men calling out for people to play games, Tilt-A-Whirls screeching, the eerie, hokey music of the merry-go-round. As they slipped into the crowd, Al
ma moved among the people like a vapor, easing through the churning mess without ever having to stop or ask to be pardoned. He followed behind closely, straining to keep up, and he felt that he ought to grab her hand or touch the small of her back to help guide her through this confusion, even though she was having a much easier time than he was.

  When she turned to give him a small, half-mouthed smile, he blurted out, “Let’s at least ride the Ferris wheel, since we up here.”

  She could not hear him over the hundreds of people and the blur of music and machinery, so he had to repeat himself, and in doing so, he must have looked either very pitiful or very sincere, because Alma went against what her head told her to do, and she told him all right. He rushed to a booth to buy them two tickets and they walked together toward the neon-lit wheel. They stepped onto it without a word, the ride operator eyeing them suspiciously as he chewed an hours-old sucker stick. The wheel had nearly reached the top before either of them said a word.

  “If I come to the festival without riding the Ferris wheel, I feel like I ain’t even been,” Clay told her, holding on to the steel bar in front of him with white knuckles shining.

  She exhaled loudly, as if calming herself. “Lord God, I ain’t been on a carnival ride since I was a little child, and I had to sneak then.”

  “Sneak?”

  “Don’t you know who my people are? You’ve heard of the Singing Mosleys, ain’t you? Well, my daddy thought coming to the carnival was a sin. He called it a ‘worldly place.’ Anything besides church was a worldly place in his book. And after I left home, I sure never got to go nowhere—” She broke off and let out a little yelp as the wheel swooshed down quickly, tickling their stomachs as it sped up.

  “How come?” Clay asked, and she looked at him as if she had no idea what he meant. “Why didn’t you go nowhere after you moved out of your daddy’s?”

  “You don’t know a thing about me, do you?” she asked, looking at him with a pleasant smile. “I figured everbody up the Hilltop had filled you in on my story, as good as they all know Evangeline.”

  “I don’t know a thing. What is there to know?”

  She didn’t reply. The Ferris wheel stopped just as their car came to the top, and the whole town was spread out below them. Neon rides swirled round and round. The river showed itself in sparks where light broke apart on its waves. Above it all, the moon floated across the sky like a silver coin, throwing its thick light on the mountains that held the town like a bowl in their hands. A cool breeze came up and smoothed Alma’s hair back, and she seemed to be concentrating on that good air and where it had been.

  “It’s cold, ain’t it?” Clay said. “I don’t know why they have this festival so late in the year, when its nigh about winter.”

  “With all the festivals around here, I guess this is the only time they can have it,” she answered, seeming to be glad for small talk. The Ferris wheel car shifted as they began to move again. It advanced, then stopped, then went down again as people were let off of cars below them.

  “Look,” Clay blurted. “I was wanting to ask you if we could go out this weekend, or sometime.”

  “I can’t, Clay,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Well, hell,” he said, and instantly caught himself. It had been drilled into his head that he should never cuss in front of a woman he didn’t know. “Why can’t you?”

  “I’m married.” She looked straight into his eyes as the wheel dropped another notch. She seemed to be waiting for a wild reaction.

  Clay didn’t have a thing to say. The nausea of true disappointment spread down through his body. He had never even thought of this possibility. He glanced down to her hand on the steel bar, but he saw no sign of a wedding band or any ring at all. He didn’t speak, only looked at her as if there were something else she should say.

  Alma pushed her hair back out of her face and looked down toward the carnival lights again, perhaps watching for that breeze to come back up and wash over her. “We’re separated right now. I mean, I’ve filed for my divorce and everthing, but it still ain’t a good idea. If he found out, it’s untelling what he’d do.” She laughed good-naturedly, like they were old friends. “Besides, what’s a good-looking boy like you want with somebody that had done been married?”

  “That wouldn’t matter a bit to me,” he said, and made his tone so serious that she couldn’t have doubted him. He was suddenly even more conscious of her, and of how close he sat beside her. “Things like that don’t matter. The past is the past.”

  “It’s good to think that way.”

  “You look to me like you need to get out and live a little, to tell you the honest God’s truth.”

  “Well, you sure pick up on things. I ain’t been living in a long time.”

  “I don’t care how many times you been married,” he said. “I’ve got my eye on you.”

  She laughed again, and he bet himself that she was thinking how it would be to let him show her how to be alive again. He wondered if there had been a time in her life when she had felt like playing the fiddle until her fingers bled, sitting up all night to talk about big dreams. That’s what he wanted to do with her.

  “Well, nobody ain’t never told me that. If you got your eye on me, I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

  The Ferris wheel dropped once more and they found themselves on the balcony. The little leather-skinned man opened their car roughly and eyed them carefully as he chewed on his stick. Their shoes rang out on the metal steps leading back to the street. At the base of the Ferris wheel, they stood facing each other, like two teenagers who had just had their first date and didn’t know whether they ought to kiss or just say good night. Alma glanced at the ground and thought for a second.

  “I’ll ride into town with Evangeline on Saturday night, and you can pick me up at the Hilltop,” she said. “About eight.”

  “That’ll be real good,” Clay said, smiling widely.

  “I’m gonna go on up and meet Evangeline. I’ll see you,” Alma said, and disappeared into the huge crowd that was beginning to leave the midway. They were all headed toward the courthouse for the big concert. He stood for a moment, hands in pockets, trying to pick her out among the mass, then began walking back toward Main Street, thinking he would never find Cake.

  When he got back to the courthouse, there were twice as many people. It seemed that everybody in Crow County was there. The ground was covered with handmade quilts and folding chairs. People picked at funnel cakes and craned their necks to see if Evangeline had come back out on the stage yet. Children ran up and down the street, hollering and laughing. Teenagers stood in clumps, smoking and looking about anxiously so their parents wouldn’t catch them.

  All at once, the big speakers began pumping out a recorded version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and a group of young girls in skirts and ribbons ran out onto the courtyard and began stomping away on pieces of plywood that had been laid on the ground. The children twirled and threw their legs as the crowd pulsated in front of them, clapping and squalling. Clay looked around once more for Cake, who was probably behind the courthouse smoking a joint with somebody he had run into. Out of the swimming crowd, Dreama and Geneva burst through, laughing and hollering to him. Dreama was four months pregnant and already in maternity clothes, but she grabbed his hand and they began clogging as others moved back to clear a dance floor or joined in themselves.

  “MARRIED?” CAKE SAID loudly, not looking up. He was taking pinches of pot up out of a sandwich bag and putting them into a folded rolling paper. “Son, you are plumb crazy. I’m crazy, and even I won’t fool with a married woman—”

  “Separated, I said,” Clay shot back. They were flying down the highway toward Clay’s house. “She’s done filed for divorce and everthing. It ain’t like she’s happy and living with him and fixing to bear him a youngun.”

  Cake looked over at Clay and tried not to laugh as he licked the cigarette paper and began to roll the joint up betwe
en his forefingers and thumbs. He stuck both ends into his mouth to smooth them out and rolled his fingers over the middle of the joint again. Cake didn’t even need the interior light on—he was an expert at rolling joints in a speeding vehicle. “You are crazier than hell, buddy. You sure are.”

  Clay reached into his cassette case and found a tape to slide into the player. Tom Petty began singing “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” and Clay sang along loudly.

  “My favorite song. You gonna burn this with me?” Cake asked, sliding the joint under Clay’s nose. Clay shook his head no.

  “Come on, man. You ain’t got stoned with me in forever. What’s your glitch?”

  “Fire it up, then, if you’re gonna whine all night,” Clay said, and took in the pot hard and slow.

  “So you in love, after seeing her three times?” Cake asked.

  “Hell no, but I want to get to know her.” He picked a piece of marijuana from between his front teeth and realized that the song had ended. He fumbled around on the seat and put in a Bob Dylan tape. A strumming guitar and a high-pitched harmonica filled the truck as “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” came on.

  “I ain’t met too many people in my life that intrigued me. She does,” Clay said.

  “Intrigued?” Cake cackled, already stoned. “When’d you start using that word? I personally think that you are intrigued more by that fiddle she plays than by her. You’ve loved a fiddle all your life and now you just think it’d be cooler than hell to go with somebody who can play it.”

  “Now I know you’re fried. You’ve started philosophizing,” Clay said, holding the joint out from his mouth without taking a draw. The joint had shrunk too small to hold, and he set it in the ashtray and beat his hands against the steering wheel to the circling music of the guitar.

  Cake suddenly pulled himself up to sit on the window frame, leaning out the window and letting the cold air beat against him. He squalled out, hollering as loudly as he could to the passing trees, to the night sky, then slid back into the truck just as Clay pulled into his driveway.