The Coffin Quilt

by Ann Rinaldi

  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.

  ***

  DID 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.

  Chapter Five

  1880

  SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED and I didn't know what. Where had Ro gone? One part of me didn't think it was right of her to do me like that, and the other was loyal as a bee worker to its queen. If only I knew what had happened!

  Had Ro and Johnse meant what they said to each other, or was it in some kind of code that I wasn't privy to because I was just a little 'un? Always I was just a little 'un. When would I be big enough to understand?

  I understood this much. Ro would never go off with a Hatfield. She was going to do some terrible thing to him down there by the creek. She'd come back laughing and all my brothers would crowd around and tell her she'd done good.

  She didn't come back. And from then on it seemed that nobody in our family laughed ever again. Not for the right reasons, anyways.

  ***

  THE SUN WAS slanting on the other side of that locust tree and the shadows deepening when Pa came over to me. "Fanny, where's your sister?"

  "She went for a walk down by the creek." If you lie to Pa you he to God. I knew that since I was just a knee baby. But my heart and soul belonged not to Pa then. Or even to God. But to Ro.

  He looked in that direction, and I held my breath. "We'll be a-startin' home soon. Go tell her."

  I got up. "Yes, Pa."

  Then someone called him and he walked back to his friends.

  I'd missed the game of Fox and Geese. I'd missed Kitty Walks a Corner, too. And the puppet show Mr. Cuzlin put on with puppets made by my brother Floyd. I'd wanted to watch the boys play Town Ball. My brother Bud was playing. No matter. I went to find Ro.

  I had to walk across the creek, so I unbuttoned and took off my shoes and hose. The water was cool. "Ro!" I called. "Ro, where are you?"

  Why did I call? Because I wanted to give her warning I was a-comin' is why. Because I suppose that I knew all the while that she was not throwing Johnse into the creek. I knew they had other more interesting things to do. Else why would they be hiding over there in the thicket like they were?

  "Here, Fanny."

  Her blouse was drooping off one shoulder. Her hair was mussed. Her shoes were off and Johnse's shirt was all the way unbuttoned in front. Alifair would say she should be whipped out o' Kentucky if she saw her. She held out her arms to me. "Here I am, baby. Come here."

  I went to her. "Pa says we're to go home soon."

  Johnse was buttoning his shirt.

  "Good. You go on home with Pa. Did you have a nice time today, Fanny?"

  "No. I waited for you and you didn't come."

  "Well, I had things to do."

  "What things?"

  "I had to talk to Johnse. About important things." She knelt down in front of me then, and I saw something in her face and her eyes I'd never seen before. Some happiness, like she knew a secret.

  "You're not coming?"

  "No, Fanny baby."

  I didn't like the way she said Fanny baby. Something was not right here. She was pleading for my understanding. How could I give it to her when I didn't understand? "Where you going, Ro?" But I think I already knew.

  "Home with Johnse. He's aske
d to me to marry him."

  Ma has a saying: "God doesn't give us a burden heavier than we can handle." Well maybe not, I thought, standing there, but our families sure do. "Marry?"

  She gave a little laugh. "Sure. Don't you think it's time I got married, Fanny? Mr. Hatfield will give us some land and we'll have a cabin built. And you can come see us, just like you visit Tolbert and Mary."

  "You been drinking corn liquor, Ro? You can't marry him," I whispered. "Pa will kill you. And him."

  She laughed. "I'm not afraid of Pa."

  How could she not be? When Pa got riled up it was terrible, worse than what the preacher told us God was like when he threw Adam and Eve out of Paradise. But that was why I looked up to her so, because she lived outside the circle of Pa's anger and Ma's religion. A place I wanted to live. It was why Alifair hated her. Still there was something plumb daft about it. Like she'd been bewitched. She'd seen Yeller Thing maybe and he'd turned her head. But then I looked up at Johnse and I thought no. She'd only seen Johnse Hatfield. But it was enough.

  "I'm twenty-one, Fanny," she said. "I'm of age."

  I felt a catch in my throat, a heaviness in my chest. And there came a rustling of wind then, like before rain. I looked up. The dark was coming because Ro was going. The light I'd known was pouring out of me, like my life's blood, and leaving me dark. "If you marry him you'll be a Hatfield," I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  "That's all foolishness now, and you know it. All this fussing between our two families. Johnse and I have been studying on it all afternoon here. We figure if we marry it'll end all the hate between our two families. Ain't that right, Johnse?"

  "Sure will," he said. "We both mean too much to our kin for them to disown us."

  "So you go on back to Pa." She stood up, still smiling. "Go on. Once we're wed there ain't a thing he kin do about it."

  I turned to go. "What'll I say?"

  "Nothing, honey. You don't say a word. Tell Pa you couldn't find me. When we're wed we'll let them know, sure 'nuf."

  "That's a lie, Ro."

  "Only a teenie little one. God won't mind."

  "Ma will. She'll put my pebble on the damned side of her tree stump."

  "Fanny baby, you couldn't be damned. I don't care where Ma puts your pebble."

  I was near to crying. But I turned and started back. The wind was really kicking up now, turning the tree leaves so you could see the silver under them. It was even starting to rain. I could see back to the clearing by the schoolhouse. People were gathering things up, women putting on shawls, families making for their wagons.

  "Hurry," Ro urged. "Go on now. Run."

  I turned again. "I always wanted to be at your wedding, Roseanna," I said.

  "I know. But things don't always work out how we plan. Tell you what, you kin put some of my glycerin and rosewater on tonight afore you go to bed."

  I was always begging for some and she would never give it. But my heart just got heavier as it came to me what all this meant. Ro wouldn't be in our room with me anymore. The bed next to me would be empty. She'd be sleeping tonight with Johnse Hatfield!

  I ran. Rain was coming down heavier. I didn't even stop to put on my hose and boots. I just ran to where I saw Ma and Pa. And when Pa asked, "Where's Ro?" I said I couldn't find her.

  "She must have walked on ahead," Ma said. I got into the wagon and she wrapped her shawl around me. Alifair was staring at me like she knew something. I looked away. The thought of living at home under Alifair's ways, without Ro, sickened me.

  "Don't know why Ro can go her way, and we always have to come when you call, Ma," Alifair said. But Ma only told her to hush and started humming "If Everybody Was Like Jesus What a Wonderful World This Would Be."

  Thunder rolled overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. I thought of Ro and Johnse. Where would they find a preacher tonight? Were preacher men ready to read vows over young folk any time of the day or night in West Virginia? Because that's where Ro would bed down tonight. In West Virginia. Across the Tug Branch of the Big Sandy River.

  Pa had the reins, and my brother Bud held his rifle at the ready as we drove through the woods. I looked for Yeller Thing, but I never saw him at all.

  Chapter Six

  1880

  THERE WERE NINE of us children still living home at the time and I can close my eyes today and see us as we all sat around the kitchen table that night after the elections.

  I want that night back with all of us together having tea. Even if Alifair made it and considered herself in charge of the kitchen. That's what she always wanted, to be the woman of the house. Like Tolbert says, she should have her own place.

  But I'd even take Alifair's sass if it meant I could go back to that night and hear Pa and the boys talking about Mr. Buggin's crops or the new springhouse Mr. Taylor was making. And Trinvilla saying how Mr. Randolph was going to start buying ginseng, witch-hazel leaves, yellowroot, poke, and cherry bark to sell in his general store.

  I should tell about our house, now. It's important.

  It was a big house, our place on Blackberry Fork. I don't want anybody who happens to read this to think that just because it was a log cabin it was an old poke of a place with a dirt floor. Pa built it soon's he came out of Virginia and married Ma in 1849. I have to give the Devil his due. It was a right fine house Pa built.

  The kitchen first, because that's where we all gathered, where Pa held forth when he chose to lecture, scold, or instruct, where we said prayers before bedtime, led by Mama. There was a big round table in the middle and chairs. Oak. The cupboard that held all Ma's dishes was oak, too. Then there was the washbasin set on a table with a bucket of water under it. We washed dishes in a big old nib that sat near the washbasin. Pa had put in a hollow bamboo cane to drain the water outside. In the corner was Ma's wood range that she always kept blackened just right, the one with the warming closets on top that I miss so now. Adelaide and I had a stool we'd use to reach them. Anytime of the day you could reach in there and get biscuits and they were always warm. And there'd be a pot of soup boiling on the new of the moon. Because that's when it jelled best.

  Over the kitchen was a hanging whale-oil lamp, given to Ma by her father when she wed. Ma didn't trust it, purty as it was with flowers painted on it. She'd rather burn candles. Said that oil lamp would burn just right when we were alone, but as soon as the preacher or somebody important came to call it would smoke and the oil would run over. Ma said there was no end to the wickedness that lamp would do to embarrass her. I wondered if it didn't have to do with the fact that her father never wanted her to wed Pa in the first place.

  So we used candles. Some families in town had kerosene. But Ma said it was the Devil's own decoction, that people who used it had a covenant with him. Downstairs, too, we had the parlor where the spinning wheel and a loom sat. There were the horns from the first deer my brother Bud shot, an old piano somebody gave Pa when he saved a man's horse from dying, stuffed thatched rockers, a picture of Pa in his uniform from the war, our family Bible, and a shelf of books: Pilgrim's Progress, Notes on the State of Virginia, Tristram Shandy, The Deerslayer, The Scarlet Letter, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

  You may think they were high-toned for people plain as us. Unless you knew that they were loaned to my brother Calvin by Mr. Ambrose Cuzlin. Calvin was eighteen then, but he still attended our school when he could. It only goes to eighth grade, but Mr. Cuzlin let him keep coming because he said Calvin had a mournful need to learn. Only a month before that election day Calvin gave a speech on good government at the Fourth of July celebration. Pa said Mr. Cuzlin was giving Calvin notions, but as long as he did his chores Pa let him go.

  Upstairs were our bedrooms—four. Ma and Pa had the second to biggest with an old rope bed that Pa had put slats in, a washstand and a clock, and rag rugs on the floor. Nice curtains, too—calico.

  Down the hall was the biggest room. The boys' room, where Bill, Bud, Pharmer, and Calvin slept. Four beds, solid oak with the
headboards decorated with birds and animals burned in by my brother Floyd, four washbasins where they shaved their faces every morning. Where Bill tried to shave every morning, even though he only had fuzz, at fourteen.

  The room for Trinvilla, Adelaide, and Alifair was across from mine and Ro's. We took the smaller room so we could be together.

  In front of our house there was an early spring garden. Pa said they used to call 'em kitchen gardens. It was just where the porch ended and it got the morning sun. The smokehouse was in back and so were the bigger gardens. That's where the pole beans were, where Pa and the boys grew cabbages, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, squash, onions, corn, and beets. The barn was up the incline behind the house. And there was a little house a bit aways from ours. That's where Faithful Black Mookie once lived. Tolbert told me that Faithful Black Mookie was a slave Ma and Pa had before the war. But he was misnamed, because he ran away while Pa was off fighting. James, Tolbert, Floyd, and Sam remember him. We used that little house for storage, and every so often, if Ma sent me in to fetch something, I could feel the haint of Faithful Black Mookie there. Like he never left.

  His old quilt was still in the corner, ragged and damp. So was his shirt, on a peg on the wall. Why did he leave without his shin? I wonder. But think! Us with a slave! And some of my brothers old enough to recollect him!

  The well was out back, behind the kitchen, and it was a hundred feet deep. Every once in a while me and Bill would pull the big piece of slate off it and peer down into the dark depths. We'd drop a pebble in, wait, and hear it plop.

  The cellar was near as important as the kitchen. Pa and my older brothers had made a ring of big rocks right in the middle for a fire and put in a clay pipe that somehow drew the smoke out. That's where we did the wash, not down by the river like some families. That's where we made hominy, where Ma cooked her lard. And there we had whole sections of chestnut logs hollowed out to store meat in after it was cured. And holes dug in the ground for our vegetables we wanted to keep through the winter.

  I just don't want anybody to think we were squatters, or dirt farmers or anything, because we weren't. My brother Pharmer kept bees, Bud hunted, Calvin traded horses. We all had our place. And when I think of us now as we were that night when we got home from elections, I know that even though Ro wasn't there it was one of the last close times we had as a family.