Clay's Quilt

by Silas House

  His black eyes homed in on her from under the rim of his hat. His pupils were abnormally large, so that he seemed to look at you harder than other people did. Easter felt as if Glenn was reading her face.

  “Say there, Easter. How are you?” he asked, as if he had just come to visit. He had barely spoken to her since the day she had taken the jars of mayonnaise to his house and told him not to touch them.

  “Froze to death,” Easter said.

  “Well, I won’t keep you out here long, and I hain’t got time to come in. I was just looking for Anneth. I got home while ago and seen she had took all her stuff off. I was hoping that I could talk to her before she done that. You know, patch things up.”

  “She ain’t here, Glenn. She’s on her way home from Lolie’s. I told her that she was a fool, getting out in this, cause Israel’s bringing her, and I know he don’t have no four-wheel drive,” Easter said. She wanted to let him know that Anneth was leaving him, and she figured this would do the trick. She wanted to see defeat on his face, but it did not appear.

  “Well, they’ll never make it over Buffalo without one. I’ll just head back that way and see if I meet em. They’ll prob’ly need to be pulled out of a ditch line.”

  A strong gust of wind blew down the holler and pushed the snowdrift off the roof of the back stoop. The snow scattered between Easter and Glenn like tiny bits of broken glass.

  “We’ll see you later. You get warmed up now,” he called out through the silver wind.

  Easter stood in the freezing cold until he had driven out of sight. The wind died down, but the awful chill did not.

  When it became dark, she still hadn’t heard from Anneth. She called Gabe and made him come over to worry with her. She paced the floor and stopped only long enough to glance out the window for approaching headlights. Gabe sat at the table and drank his coffee in long, hot gulps and bounced Dreama on his knee.

  “If anybody knows how to take care of theirself, it’s Anneth,” he told Easter. She wished she hadn’t called him.

  And then she saw the lights of a car making its slow way up the road. She ran out onto the porch in her stocking feet, thinking it was them. But when the car pulled in, she saw that it was the sheriff. She leaned on the icy porch rails as he walked up the yard. “Have they wrecked? Are they all right?” she asked.

  “They never wrecked, Easter,” the sheriff said. He started to take off his hat but did not. “But it’s bad, I’ll tell you. Ain’t El at home?”

  “No, no,” she said. “He’s on the road. I want to know what it is. I want to know right now.”

  “Clay’s all right,” he said, and paused for a long moment. He didn’t know how else to say this. “Anneth was shot, Easter, and she’s gone.”

  Easter didn’t pass out, but they all scrambled to her, yelling, “She’s fainted!” She never lost consciousness. She simply lost the will to stand, to keep her eyes open. Her whole body went limp and she began to slump to the ground like a rag doll before the sheriff caught her under the arms and carried her into the house. They laid her on the couch, and even though she was aware of being awake, she heard nothing. She saw only the backs of her eyelids, felt only her chest rising and falling with each breath. After a little while, she slipped into a kind of sleep.

  Later, she heard the low cries of Clay and awoke. The living room was full of people. Gabe, with Dreama on his hip, was speaking quietly into the telephone. She could hear people milling about in the kitchen. She smelled coffee and bacon grease and lemon Joy. When she raised herself up on her elbow, she saw Paul moving down the hall, packing Clay in his arms. Sophie was sitting on the love seat with her arms wrapped around Lolie. Lolie was leaned over, her face in her hands. She shook her head back and forth, as if in strong denial. She rocked herself, and Sophie had to move with her to keep her arms in place. “Shh,” Sophie whistled in Lolie’s ear, as if she were a child.

  None of them noticed Easter stirring until she cried out, “Clay?” Someone had placed a quilt over her, and she threw it aside and swung her feet out onto the floor. “Where they taking him?”

  “Hush now,” Gabe said, suddenly beside her. “He’s asleep.”

  “I heard him cry,” she said. She pushed Gabe aside and went to the first bedroom. Paul was stepping back from the bed, where he had just placed Clay. She stood in the door. When she spoke, her voice seemed somehow dulled. “Is he all right?”

  “He just woke up for a minute,” Paul whispered, “and went right back to sleep.”

  Clay was sound asleep, covers pulled up to his ears. She couldn’t bear to go in there to him. She held on to the door frame with both hands, knowing she ought to go to him, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She wasn’t ready for that. She hadn’t been there when he had awakened, hadn’t been there to bring him home. She could not face him right now.

  Paul led her back into the living room. Then she saw Lolie’s face, shining with wetness. Her eyes were red and swollen. There were little cuts all over her cheeks and forehead, small enough to be razor knicks. Her hands trembled and she held them together in an attempt to still them.

  “Was it Glenn?” Easter asked.

  Lolie nodded slowly. “He killed my Israel, too. And Jewel.”

  Paul made Easter sit. She was barely aware of him beside her until she felt his hand on the back of her neck, directing her where to go.

  “We was stopped on the side of the road. Israel couldn’t drive no more,” Lolie said. “The road was getting too bad. And Glenn pulled in behind us. Me and Jewel was so tickled. We’d been setting there so long. But Anneth knowed. I could see it on her face before he ever got to the door.”

  Sophie smoothed Lolie’s hair back off her forehead. “You don’t have to talk about this right now,” she said.

  “Tell me,” Easter said.

  Lolie ran both of her hands down her face. She held them there a moment, but her fingers jerked so badly that she had to fold her hands together, knuckles beneath her nose. “Only thing Glenn said was, ‘You leaving me?’ Anneth was hollering for Israel to go, to drive, but before she could even think to lock the door, he jerked her out of the car. Clay fell right out, his little face down in the snow.”

  Easter made a curled sound in the back of her throat.

  “And he pulled Anneth up by the arm,” Lolie said. “She fought him, though, Easter. She busted his mouth. Kicked him in the shins, but it never phased him. Blood was running right down his chin, but he never flinched. All I could think was Get to Clay, you got to get the baby. He was trying to get up, but the road was too slick. Jewel and Israel was both on Glenn, trying to get him off of Anneth, but Glenn slapped Jewel’s face. Knocked her plumb down, he hit her so hard. Jewel had been beating him over the head with her purse, and when she fell, she reached in that purse and pulled out her little gun. She always packed it.”

  Easter pictured all of it as Lolie spoke: Anneth struggling in Glenn’s arms, the way every little movement must have been intensified in the crunching of snow.

  “Glenn was fighting Israel with one hand and holding on to Anneth with the other. He never made one sound. Jewel pulled that little pistol up and said, ‘Let her go, now, Glenn.’ She said, ‘You my brother, but I’ll shoot you if I have to.’”

  Easter was aware of nothing but Lolie’s words and the images of it all that played in her head. It all made so much sense to her. Why hadn’t she known such a thing would happen? She listened to Lolie and saw Glenn kicking Israel away. She saw Jewel fire all nine rounds of the pistol. First three, shot up into the sky. Then the rest of the bullets right at Glenn. All of them missing except one, which seemed to do nothing more than tear a small hole in the shoulder of his coat. Glenn acting as if he didn’t even feel it, as if he didn’t even know that he had been shot. Anneth hollering, “Get Clay! Get Clay!” and Lolie covering Clay up with herself, her long coat spread out on the snow around them.

  “When I looked up again, Glenn had his pistol out,” Lolie said. “He sho
t twice at Israel and hit him both times. One of the bullets went right through his arm and hit Jewel in the chest. They both fell down, and I knowed right then. It was so loud. It echoed off them hills. I screamed then. I couldn’t move, couldn’t leave Clay. I just hunched down over him, put all my weight on him, and I heard the other shot.”

  Easter listened. She listened and she pictured Anneth lying on the snow. Completely and suddenly still. Israel and Jewel lying just steps away from her. Not a sound on the cold air as Lolie turned to look back, as she took inventory of what had happened. Then Easter came back to Lolie’s voice.

  “Oh God, I can’t tell it,” Lolie cried. “I can’t tell how it was.” She began to rock again. Sophie ran her hand over Lolie’s back. Lolie’s eyes stared out as if she didn’t know where she was, but it seemed she couldn’t stop talking. “Glenn was running back to his truck, and I slid around on the ice and finally got Clay up on my hip and I run down the road. I could hear that truck shift into drive. It was so hard to run in that snow, and I had to keep Clay’s head pushed down against me. I didn’t want him to see.”

  She stopped for a long time and cried. She lurched forward with grief, but couldn’t hush.

  “I thought he was after us. I could hear the truck coming. It was like I was running in wet cement, its engine so loud. Clay kept saying my name, over and over. I looked back and there was Glenn, in his truck, right at my heels, seemed like. I just jumped over the guardrail and let myself fall down the mountain. We rolled. Ice and snow in our eyes. I just held on to Clay, held to him tight as I could while we rolled down that mountain through brush and briers.”

  Easter could see them tumbling, Clay’s fingers gripping Lolie’s arms. A flash of his eyes, snow drifting away from saplings that their bodies rolled past. She thought she could hear it, the crack of tree limbs, the truck engine rumbling up on the highway.

  “We finally hit a big tree, and it knocked the breath out of me,” Lolie said. “I don’t know how long we laid there.”

  EASTER FELT LIKE crying out, loud enough to stop the whole church service. God was here, in this very church house, and she wanted to ask him—face-to-face—how she could live with this burden. The Bible said that the Lord would not put more on us than we could bear, but this was too much to bear, this was asking too much. I am not strong enough, she wanted to cry out. It is too much. She had been given this gift, this curse, this knowledge of what the future held, but still she had not seen what was going to become of her own sister. She had ignored the feeling, had not tried to make the shape of dread more clear, had accepted that it would have something to do with the ice and the snow. Even worse, she had led Glenn right to them.

  “It’s too much!” she said aloud, but only those closest to her turned, for the rest of the church was filled with the Holy Ghost and paid her no mind.

  She ran out of the church house. As she crossed the parking lot, she could hear the people hollering and praying inside the church. She could hear their feet pounding the floor, the preacher shouting, “Have your way, Lord!”

  Snow bit at her face as she walked back down the holler toward her house. By the time she got home, she was trembling with cold. She got into her car and didn’t give it time to heat up before she backed out of the drive and went across the bridge to the highway. She drove to Clay’s house by the river.

  She pulled in and put the car in park. Only now did heat begin to pour out of the vents in a solid stream. The windows of Clay’s house were lit yellow and his truck sat in the driveway. She could hear the dull thud of music.

  The night after they had buried Anneth, she had sent Clay off to bed with two of his cousins while she and the rest of the family discussed what had to be done in the aftermath of Anneth’s death. When they had left, she had sneaked into the bedroom and scooped Clay up into her arms. She had wanted him to sleep with her.

  When she lay him on her bed, she realized that he hadn’t even been asleep. He had looked at her as if he didn’t know where he was. She had gotten into the bed with him, her good dress and stockings still on.

  “Can’t you sleep, honey?” she had asked.

  “No.”

  “Will it help if I sing to you, then?”

  “It might.” His voice had been so small, so quiet.

  She began to sing an old church song to him. He had not protested and had watched her, his eyes open wide, full of questions. When she’d finished, he had said, “She always sung songs from the radio to me. Do you know any of them?”

  “No, all I know is church songs, baby.”

  “Well,” he had said with finality.

  Easter couldn’t go to the door and spill her old fears to him. He had lived through so much disappointment, and she wasn’t about to add another. It was bad enough that he had to live with the knowledge that his mother had been murdered. She backed out of the driveway and drove home.

  13

  WHEN ALMA AND CLAY walked into the Hilltop Club, she felt like she ought to be wearing a scarlet letter on her blouse. As soon as the cigarette smoke and perfume and loud music washed over them, she felt very ashamed. It was bad enough, she reasoned, that she was here, in this place her parents had always regarded with such fear. To make it worse, she was not even divorced yet, and on the arm of Clay. The guilt she carried along with her was so real, so solid, that she could actually feel it biting into her ribs.

  She had been raised better than this. She was not like Evangeline, either. Evangeline didn’t care about anything as long as she was having a big time. Even though Alma danced and played a rollicking, skirt-twirling fiddle and kicked back shots of Jim Beam until daylight, she was still saddled with this awful shame that she could not get rid of. Her mother had once told her that she possessed “a conscious heart.” She knew that this was true, but she wished that she could be like Evangeline. It would be nice not to give a damn about anything. People like that certainly lived longer, free of grieving themselves to death.

  “What’s wrong?” Clay asked as they made their way through the swimming crowd. He held her hand tightly and nodded to everyone they passed.

  “Nothing,” she lied, and noticed that all eyes were upon her. She knew it was because she was with Clay Sizemore. She and Clay had been here together twice already, but she still couldn’t get used to the fact that everyone watched them. Women saw her with Clay and envied her. Men looked her up and down and realized that Clay had seen something in her that they had missed when she had gotten up there and played that fiddle. She found herself pulling the top of her blouse together; she felt downright naked in her outfit, which Evangeline had picked out for her.

  Clay went to a round table near the dance floor and turned the RESERVED sign facedown, then held two fingers up to the waitress. He put his arm around Alma’s shoulders and breathed hot into her ear, “You’re lying. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing, I told you.” Dozens of scents swirled around them, and she breathed them all in deeply, thinking she might be able to soak enough sin into her body to free her mind. “I hope you’re in a dancing mood. I want to dance all night.”

  Roe came to the table with two bottles of Miller Lite and two shots of bourbon balanced on her cork-lined tray.

  “S’that what you wanted, baby?” Roe asked Clay as she slid two napkins onto the table and placed the drinks on them.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “How are you doing, Alma?” Roe set her tray down long enough to give Alma a shoulder-crushing hug. She gave Clay a peck on the cheek that left a set of pouty, bright pink lips on his face. “I already told you Clay’s my special customer. If you jealous, you might as well get over it, cause I have to love on him, he’s so pretty. Anything you’uns want, just holler.”

  Without even thinking beforehand, Alma scanned the crowd with an intent look on her face. She had done this every time they had come before, as she was always sure that Denzel would be among the drunks. Clay threw back the shot of Jim Beam and chased it wit
h a gulp of beer, then breathed out as if his mouth were on fire. He had told her that he planned on getting wild tonight.

  “You gonna get drunk with me?” he asked.

  “I might do it, but I can’t chase liquor with beer,” she said, and scooted her icy bottle toward him. “Sorry, but I need a Pepsi. Then I can outdrink you.”

  Cake, Geneva, and Goody came in, their boot heels announcing them like a trio of galloping horses, and hollered to Clay and Alma from the door. They scuffled about the table, trying to find places to sit, and Geneva screamed out across the crowd for Roe to bring her and Goody a fifth of Wild Turkey.

  “Alma, this is my cousin, Geneva, and her man, Goody.” Geneva smiled politely and lit an incredibly long cigarette. Goody reached out across the table and shook Alma’s hand. “They’re both crazier than hell.”

  “You damn straight,” Geneva said, exhaling a square column of blue smoke. “I’m Clay’s favorite cousin.”

  “He’s got more cousins than anybody I ever seen,” Alma replied.

  “Old mountain family, honey. We kin to everybody in Crow County one way or another, legitimate or not. Clay said you was from way up on Victory. I figured he’d have to go to the edges of the county to find somebody he wasn’t kin to.”

  Roe brought the fifth, and Goody ordered another round for Clay and Alma, and a Pepsi. “Let’s party!” Cake hollered out, and people at several tables behind them squalled out in agreement. Saturday night had begun.

  ALMA PROVED TO BE a good drunk. Her personality was not so much changed as it was heightened. She made friends with Geneva and Goody quickly and tried to talk to Cake as much as possible. He warmed to her, admiring her ability to sling back shots of whiskey. He wrapped his arm about her neck to sing along to songs he liked.