The Coffin Quilt (9 page)

My brothers Bill and Bud brought the news. They'd been to Stringtown that morning, to the general store run by old Harlan Meeker, to get some coffee beans for Ma. I loved my brothers, but I didn't believe the story. Why to Stringtown, when we had a right proper general store here and Mr. Randolph sometimes gave us goods on trade?

No. I didn't believe a word of how they'd just happened to run into Johnse and stood jawing with him a while, real friendly-like. I think my brothers were snooping around like bloodhounds. My family can be awful sneaky sometimes.

"What's Johnse doing in Stringtown?" Pa asked.

"Maybe buying coffee beans," Alifair said. She got right uppity sometimes, and Pa let her 'cause she was the oldest girl and he said she had common sense and depended on her.

"He was to see Ro," Pa said. "And by Jehoshaphat, I won't abide it!" He slapped his hand on the table and we all got quiet. I'd been quiet all along, of course, scared somebody would know I'd been to see her this day.

"Not gonna have it," Pa was ranting. "He's seen the last of my daughter, that little white maggot."

I felt Alifair staring at me, like she knew I'd seen Ro that afternoon. Her eyes looked downright queer, like she was looking right into my soul. And I began to believe that she did have powers, like Ma said. I kept my eyes down on my plate, because I didn't want to face her power just then, whatever it was.

"Tell you what I want, boys," Pa said to Bud and Bill. "Want you both to go to Stringtown next Saturday and keep an eye on that little white maggot. He'll be timbering with his pa all week, but sure's God made apples, he'll be on the prowl again next Saturday. If you sense he's on his way to see Ro, come tell me. I'll get Jim to arrest him. He's deputy sheriff. It's his job to arrest people who seduce innocent young girls."

It was the first time since Ro had run off with Johnse that he'd spoken of her as innocent. Would my brother Jim really arrest Johnse? Could he arrest him? What did
seduce
mean? Had Johnse done something terrible to Ro that I didn't know about? If so, why had they clung together at Devil's Jump today like the Devil was coming back again with his apron full of stones?

Alifair was staring at me again. I quickly looked down. She could wither my spirit, that girl, if she tried hard enough.

"Don't you think somebody ought to go over and warn Ro that Johnse is sneaking around?" Ma asked. "I'm sure she doesn't want to see him anymore. If she did, why would she be hiding out at Aunt Betty's?"

Young as I was, sometimes I thought that my ma had too much religion, that it had addled her brain.

Pa stopped shoving food in his mouth long enough to stare at her. "You telling me, Sarah, that our daughter doesn't want to see him anymore?"

"She was mighty put out with him for not going against old Devil Anse and marrying her, Ranel. I know that much. I think she should be warned. Haven't we had enough tribulation in this family?"

Pa nodded and allowed that we had.
If they knew about the baby they'd know about tribulation,
I thought. They'd be out hunting Johnse right now with repeater rifles. Nobody knew, except me and maybe Floyd. And we weren't telling.

Of a sudden I lost my taste for the food, worrying for Ro. Suppose next Saturday my brother Jim did arrest
Johnse? I had to warn Ro somehow. I started planning how while my family fussed all around me. I prayed, sitting there.
Dear Lord, show me the way.
And then for some reason, maybe it was blind luck like happens to you sometimes, God answered my prayer.

Pa decided Ro should be warned. And that I was the one to do it.

"I'll have to take a day off from school," I said.

"No," Pa decreed. "It can wait. Johnse won't be on the prowl till Saturday."

Alifair objected, of course. But this time Pa hushed her up. I was Ro's favorite, he reminded her. Onliest ones she trusted right now were me and Ma, and he wasn't about to send Ma on a child's errand. And so that's how I got to be on the scene when my brother Jim came to arrest Johnse Hatfield and we acquired more tribulation in our family. Or as my brother Tolbert would say, all hell broke loose.

S
OMETIMES
P
A WILL
talk about the war. He'll tell how muddled he felt when he found out that Virginia, which he thought was for the Confederacy, went off and split itself in two and he was fighting for West Virginia and something different than he thought.

That's how I felt all week. Always I thought my family was all of a piece. Now Ro had broken herself off. And was on the side of something different. And me with her. I was so addle-headed I got in trouble in school. We were learning to cipher, but no matter how I studied my
Pike's Arithmetic,
I couldn't work those numbers on my slate.

"Fanny McCoy, if you take five apples away from twelve and give them to your sister, how many would you have left?" Mr. Cuzlin asked.

Dazed, I asked stupidly, "Which sister?"

Everybody laughed. Adelaide and Trinvilla were smirking at me.

Mr. Cuzlin scowled. "Which sister would you like to give five apples to, Fanny?"

"Roseanna," Nancy McCoy burst out. "She needs 'em."

More laughter. Mr. Cuzlin slammed his hand down on the desk. "The answer! Now!" Instead I glared at Nancy. "I'd give Ro all twelve if I could! But nary a one to Adelaide or Trinvilla. Or Alifair!" They watched me all the time, inside the house and out, and I knew they were reporting to Alifair. Because she still suspected I'd sneaked off to see Ro.

Mr. Cuzlin stood. "The preliminaries," he said, "are over."

I'd never gotten the switch at school and I braced myself as he came toward me. Instead he grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the side of the room with the little kids, the five-year-olds, and shoved me down in a desk. "Maybe you can learn something from them," he said.

Everybody laughed and my face went hot. I'd rather be switched. Trinvilla and Adelaide were still smirking.

***

S
ATURDAY FINALLY CAME
and I went to see Ro again, this time with Pa's blessing. "Listen to everything she says and report to me," he said.

Again when she went to Devil's Jump to meet Johnse I followed and hid behind the boulder. I didn't want them to run off without my knowing.

I heard Johnse say how he told his pa about the baby. "He said he doesn't want any spawn of the McCoys under his roof." Ro gave a cry, but he gentled her and commenced telling her of his plan. To this day I believe he had a plan, and if my brother Jim and Pa hadn't rode up right then I would have heard tell of it.

But they did ride up, on horses that were lathered and wild in the eye, Jim with his gun drawn and Pa waving his hat in the air and shouting and looking like he was fulfilling some prophecy from Isaiah. They tore through the bushes on the other side of Devil's Jump, splashed their horses right into the creek, and reined them up so hard their horses reared on their hind legs.

Ro screamed as my brother Jim yelled, "Johnse Hatfield, I'm here to arrest you under the laws of the great state of Kentucky for seducing a young woman. Hand over your pistol."

Then Ro recovered herself. "Still letting Pa lead you around by the nose, I see."

Jim stood his ground. Which was now the water in the creek.

Johnse had his hands out, palms turned up. "I'd never do a thing to hurt Ro. Ask her."

Jim wasn't about to ask anybody anything right then. He aimed to carry out the proper order of things. "Come on, Johnse, let's go peaceful-like," he said. "We'll let the court decide."

"No court in Kentucky gonna give a Hatfield a fair shot," Johnse said.

"Why should they?" Ro screamed. "My own family won't give him a fair shot. Pa, how can you do this to
me? Haven't you hurt me enough? When will all this stupid hatred end?"

Pa didn't even answer.

"Pa, there's no cause to do this, please!" Ro was pleading now. "I went with Johnse of my own will. He never seduced me. I love him, Pa! Why are you taking on like this?" And she sloshed through the water with her long skirts, right toward Pa and Jim.

"Don't come any farther, Ro," Jim advised.

"Why? You gonna shoot me, too? You big sheriff's deputy hero?"

"Bring him in, Jim," Pa said.

"Soon's Ro gets outa the way."

But Ro stood right in the way between Johnse and Jim, while Jim still aimed his gun at Johnse, which meant, of course, it was pointed first at Ro, and Pa kept fussing at him to get on with it. Talk about tribulation! You'd have to go all the way back to Job in the Bible to match this.

My sister started sobbing then. It was terrible sounding. "Pa," she was blubbering, "Pa, how can you do this to me?"

And Pa was saying, "I'll do more to you in a minute if'n you don't move. I'll get off this horse and you'll find out what I can do if I set my mind to it."

Right about then I figured somebody had to end it, or they'd all be standing there until the sheep came home for salt. So I ran out from behind that boulder right toward my brother. "Let him go! They love each other!"

Later on, I received a long lecture from Jim, who told me how he could have taken that movement for anything and fired his gun. And maybe killed me. Or Ro, or even Johnse. "You should have stayed out of it," he scolded. "What in tarnation were you doing there, anyways? You didn't belong there. You're always where you don't belong, Fanny. Damn women always are!"

I didn't know whether to cry for the scolding or to be proud because he'd lumped me in with all womankind. But back to that creek.

Jim didn't fire. He was his old steely self, though the gun did waver a bit. One good thing, though, I'd pushed Ro out of the way.

Johnse never moved. Just stood there with his palms out. "You okay, Ro?" he asked.

"I'm fine!" She was mad now. "Fanny, get out of the way," she said. "Go on up to the house with Aunt Betty."

But I wouldn't move.

There's no telling what would have happened next if Aunt Betty hadn't come out of the house and stood there shielding her eyes with her hand and hollering, "Hello! What's going on down there? You all right, girls?"

Jim took off his hat and waved it. "Everything's fine, Aunt Betty. They'll be up in a minute!"

Aunt Betty sort of broke the mood. Everybody looked pretty shamefaced for a minute. Johnse ended it. "I'll come along, Jim. Peaceful-like. It's the only way to get this thing settled."

"No!" Ro yelled. "They'll kill you!"

"Nobody's killing anybody," Jim said quietly. "You know me better than that, Ro."

"Well, I don't know Pa. Not anymore!"

But when Jim took Johnse in hand, she hushed. She touched Johnse's arm, then stood with her hands over her mouth as Jim helped Johnse onto his horse and they started down the path, Jim leading Johnse's horse by the reins. Ro ran after them. "God, don't take him, please!" she sobbed.

"Fanny, take care of your sister," Jim ordered. Then they rode away in the name of the great state of Kentucky.

"Oh my God, oh my God, they're going to kill him!" She was bent over, sobbing.

"Come on, Ro," I said. "Don't cry."

She stopped crying then. She had another thought. "I've got to warn Anse!" she said. "If I can warn Anse Hatfield, he'll stop them! She stood up, wiped her face, looked around, and spied Aunt Betty's horse, Clothilda, in the field. "It's ten miles to the Hatfields' cabin. I can make it."

"You can't ride like you are," I said. "You'll hurt the baby." I knew that much. "And we both have wet shoes and skirts. We'll take our death of colds."

She bent over, grabbed her petticoat, and started ripping. "Help me make a halter. You can ride behind me if you want."

You take sides with somebody and there's no going back. One little bit at a time you keep opening doors and going through them, until you've got so many doors behind you, you can't find your way back nohow. In ten minutes we had the petticoat halter on the horse and were off to cross the Tug and warn the Hatfields.

I
T WAS ON
that ride that I knew Ma was right all along. The Devil was wagering for Roseanna's soul. And he was winning.

What made me know this was Clothilda. She was old. Aunt Betty's children had grown up riding her. These days Aunt Betty rode her into Stringtown, at a slow and easy gait, and that was all the exercise she got. Otherwise she just lounged around in the pasture, limping.

On that ride, Clothilda was like a demon. She never held back through the ravines. She was sure-footed over rocks and fallen trees. She plowed through thickets of briars, she never got afeared of the path ahead. It was as if she
knew
the path, though she'd never been on it before. And all the while my sister was leaning low over her, whispering in her ears.

Might be it was Ro who was the demon. Don't think
I didn't ponder that, much as I had a chance to ponder anything sitting behind Ro and holding on to her for dear life. It was a wild cold ride, through hidden secret places. Not the way Tolbert had taken me at all.

We came to the river finally, the Tug at Matewan. That old Clothilda never spooked, just splashed right in. Oh, the water felt so good on my legs even though it was cold, because they were scratched and burning from the underbrush. The Tug was low. Somebody was with us on that. Ma would say God. I say it was the Devil. And the reason I know it was him was because his henchman was along with us on the ride, too.

Yeller Thing. I saw him and I smelled him as Clothilda dashed through that water, splashing white foam up all around us. I saw him through the foam. He was in the water, too, keeping up with us, growling and egging Clothilda on. I screamed. "Ro! Look!"

But she didn't look, and like as not, if she had she wouldn't have seen. Only I saw Yeller Thing, ever. Only I felt the terror of him. I knew by now that he was my terror alone and nobody else's.

***

S
OON ENOUGH WE
were up the embankment and on West Virginia soil. More riding, though this time the way was not so harsh. And then through a path in the woods to Devil Anse's place. Dogs yowled, chickens fled as Ro pulled back on the petticoat reins and slid off Clothilda's back. "Get her some water," she said, and she ran through the yard to the house.