The Coffin Quilt Read online

  I looked down at my hands holding the reins, at the tiny blue veins I could trace on their backs. I wondered what Celtic blood looked like and how it was different from other people's blood. I liked Tolbert's explanations. They made sense. Especially about Alifair. It was good to know she didn't have the light of holiness. Next time she started on me I'd kick and bite her good. Then let her heal herself and see how good she'd do.

  Chapter Two

  1880

  THE FIRST TIME I saw Yeller Thing was right before Ro ran off. And from then on I saw him just before every bad thing happened to any of us. I was the only one who ever did see him. And I haven't seen him since she's gone.

  Yeller Thing was the most terrible creature you'd ever want to run into in these mountains. Stinking worse than a skunk. I never could lay my mind hold of what he was so I could tell my brothers, who all went gunning for him. Oh, they heard him, all right, and smelled him, thrashing around out there in the woods. But they never saw him like I did. He wasn't a painter cat, they said, and he wasn't a bear. He was something nobody could explain.

  Except me. Because Yeller Thing came for me, to warn me of what was to happen to us, of how there was evil amongst us. But not only that, he came to show me how evil often had the face of beauty and good. Like Alifair with her light of holiness. And Ro with her pretty looks and ways. And sometimes evil even attached itself to good, to draw strength from it. Like it did with Mama, in spite of, and maybe even because of her prayerful ways.

  But I was too young. I didn't know. I thought it was just a haint, like people sometimes see in these parts. I thought it was enough to make a cross in the dirt with my toe, spit in it, and make a good wish every time I left the house so Yeller Thing couldn't get me.

  And all the time evil was there. In our house. And had got us all already.

  ***

  DOES ANYBODY KNOW what it's like to have an older sister like Roseanna? So purty that just being next to her is better than a piece of rock candy? Just being around her you didn't need a spring tonic. When she walked by everybody looked. Then looked again. Once wasn't enough. Ma said that she could turn a person into a pillar of salt. Or if not that, then an addled idiot.

  I wanted to be like her. The way she dressed, walked, tossed her hair was just perfect. She sang, made a pie, diapered a baby, even slopped the hogs better than anybody.

  I can still smell the glycerin and rosewater she used. Sometimes of a dark night I'll smell it in the house just like she's there, roaming around in her white nightdress.

  Sometimes I think she still is.

  ***

  I SUPPOSE I ought to put down about Pa's sow and pigs, just to keep things straight.

  It was 1878 and I was five, so I'm just putting down what was told to me. But here it is. Like every other family in these mountains, we raise hogs. And like the sheep, we let them go in the hills to forage. This is done right before hog-killing time. The nuts fatten them up. And so they don't get mixed up, every hog owner marks his own.

  Pa's mark was a slit in the right ear and an overbit in the left. But when time came to go fetch those hogs home, Pharmer, Calvin, and Bill, three of my brothers, couldn't find them. As it turned out, one of those hogs, Pinky, was my pet, even though I knew she'd have to be slaughtered and eaten. I trudged along after my brothers and called and called for Pinky, but I was just a mite glad she wouldn't be found. I hoped she'd stay free until after hog-killing time. Then I could have her for another year, and maybe convince Pa to let me keep her.

  My brother Bill was twelve at the time, already given to long periods of silence, and he played the fiddle sweet as Gabriel's horn. He was on his way home from Stringtown, where he'd been playing for a family wedding, when he passed Floyd Hatfield's cabin and saw Pa's pigs, one of them Pinky. Soon's he came home, Pa was off with his gun, like The War Amongst Us was still going on.

  Of course Floyd wouldn't give back those pigs. So Pa had the Justice of the Peace make a warrant, and Floyd was charged with stealing those pigs. You'd think that would be nobody's business but Floyd's and my pa's, wouldn't you? Not in these parts. Seems every McCoy in Pike County and beyond was already loading his gun because their kin's hogs had been stolen.

  Stealing a hog is a serious business. There isn't any part of the hog my family doesn't use—head for stew or scrapple, tongue to be boiled in water and sliced and served cold, the liver for pudding, the backbone, tail, and ribs can be barbecued or made into stews, and of course the lard for fat.

  Some people eat the lights, or the lungs. We feed them to the dogs.

  So you can see that a hog thief is the low-down-est, bloodsucking-est snake there is.

  Mama, of course, right off told Pa he shouldn't of brought charges. "Trouble will come of it," she said. Mama sees trouble behind every red maple tree. She can't help it. What I can't figure is how anybody can be walking with the Lord for so many years now and be afeared all the time. She's always singing that song, "If Everybody Was Like Jesus What a Wonderful World This Would Be." She's had her feet washed in Meeting, just like the women in the Bible washed the feet of Jesus. It's an honor that doesn't come to everybody.

  Anyways, the judge was a Hatfield but the jury was both Hatfields and McCoys. The judge said he'd be fair if everybody put away their pistols. The jury was split right down the middle on whose hogs they were, so they took a vote. The last one to decide was Selkirk McCoy, who was married to a Hatfield. Selkirk said the hogs belonged to Floyd, and that was it.

  A fight almost broke out in court, but Pa abided by the judge's decision. And I had to give up Pinky.

  Then Squirrel Huntin' Sam McCoy comes into it.

  It's as much of our history as the fact that Pa and Ma are first cousins and that Pa served in the Confederate army in the war.

  Squirrel Huntin' Sam is a nephew of Pa's and the best hunter of squirrels in these mountains. But he's teched in the head. I ought to know. He was still in the sixth grade when I started school. For the third year. At recess he'd catch birds and kill them, just for the fun of watching them die. I could have told them about Squirrel Huntin' Sam, if they'd asked me. But nobody ever does ask me much of anything, even now. When you're the youngest, you stay the youngest forever.

  It was fall. Hunting season. Which is almost a religious holiday in these mountains. The crops were laid by and the men were off. From our place, through the autumn woods, you could hear the sounds of the hunt: squirrels and partridges rushing to take cover, the braying of the dogs, the calling of the horn, and then the distant report of the guns going off. It was exciting and scary at the same time. I love the woods as much as the next person, but I always knew that hunting time was a time of death, that it had a dark side to it that meant the ending of things.

  It was the ending of things for Bill Staton, who was half Hatfield and had sworn at the pig trial that he'd seen Floyd mark those creatures as his own. Squirrel Huntin' Sam had taunted him for a lying traitor after that, and Staton saw his chance to get even.

  He shot Paris McCoy, Sam's brother, who was out hunting with him. Sam fought Staton and killed him. Paris recovered, but Sam was taken to Logan Jail in West Virginia to be held for trial.

  Before you knew it, there was Pa, his gun at the ready, saying they had to get Sam out of jail. Most of the time Pa wouldn't even admit to kinship with Sam. But a McCoy was a McCoy. And a McCoy in a West Virginia jail was like a chicken in the jaws of a fox. Pa rallied his kin. A hundred of them went to the trial. But Sam was freed, and he's still floating around out in those woods, disgusting as ever, killing things for the fun of it.

  That's the big story about Pa's sow and pigs, which means nothing to me. I don't care how much they all say the trouble started with that.

  It would have sat there, that trouble, and never festered, never started up again, if not for my sister Roseanna. And I can say this, because I loved her best of all.

  Chapter Three

  1880

  ROSEANNA AND I had little iro
n bedsteads in our room in the house on Blackberry Fork. They were covered with quilts Mama made. And we had calico curtains on the windows, too. It was a real nice room. Roseanna made it nice. She had a looking glass over a little wooden dressing table that brother Floyd made for her. "Like grand ladies do," she told me. I don't know how Ro knew what grand ladies did, but I took her word for it She let me use the little dressing table and taught me how to curl up my hair in rags. And she let me touch all her things, like the brooch Pa gave her when she turned twenty-one that belonged to his very own mama. Even the combs she put in her hair, her good embroidered handkerchiefs, and her scented soap. She made that soap herself. When we cooked up a batch, she took some aside and put some decoction in it that made it smell good. Adelaide called it her witch's brew. I knew for a fact that the scent came from some little heart-shaped leaves in the woods. But I didn't tell anybody. I know how to keep a secret.

  Roseanna could always make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, that's what Mama said. I thought Roseanna could do miracles. I depended on her for it.

  Adelaide, Alifair, and Trinvilla shared a bigger room, but they could have it. I was never allowed in there. They had their secret things. Alifair made corncob dolls that were precious to her. And Trinvilla had her box of dye recipes. I didn't care about any of it, not even Adelaide's herbs. She was only ten to my seven when the trouble with Roseanna started but already coming on to be a little old granny woman. Mama let her visit with Aunt Cory, a real granny woman, and stay for days. I think Adelaide did it just to get out of chores.

  Adelaide and Trinvilla were jealous of Ro because she was so purty and all the boys in Pike County wanted to court her. And they were hateful to me because I was Ro's pet. They were all the time whispering how she was going to come to perdition. But Adelaide and Trinvilla didn't even know what perdition was. And didn't care. If Alifair said Ro was going to come to it, they agreed. They'd agree with anything she said. I think they had a quarter of a brain between them.

  Truth to tell, I didn't know the meaning of the word, either. But I learned it on Election Day, 1880. The day Ro ran off.

  ***

  THE NIGHT BEFORE Election Day was the first time I saw Yeller Thing. I was out back by the corncrib, stuffing straw in mattress tickings. The mattresses had to be filled with clean straw every fall. Adelaide was supposed to be helping me, but she'd wandered off to get some ginseng down in the holler by the briar thickets. So I wandered off, too, across the creek to the woods to check on my playhouse and get my dolly that Floyd had carved me.

  The sun was all but down and the woods were filled with shadows and the sounds birds make when they're going to sleep. I fetched my doll, climbed down the ladder, and then I heard the noise, the rustling nearby. At first I thought it was Adelaide, come to spy on me, because I never allowed her in my playhouse. But nobody was there. Again the rustling, this time closer, and I got scairt. Just off a piece, across the holler, I could see our house, all solid and snuggly, with smoke coming out of the chimney. How could anything hurt me so close to our house?

  But I knew better. Hadn't Calvin warned me about snakes, and even bears? I searched the ground around me, peered into the blue shadows. The sun was gone, it was coming on to night. The woods were no place for a little girl at night. I turned to go, then heard it again, the rustling.

  Before I turned I smelled it. And almost laughed. A skunk! I turned to see where it was and that is when I saw Yeller Thing for the first time.

  It whooshed past me. I almost felt the draft it made. And the smell got worse than anything, even worse than the outhouse at school in September.

  I know what I saw. It was yeller. And big. Bigger than anything in these woods had a right to be, even a bear. It streaked by like a painter cat. And there was this eerie sound. Not a growl. It sounded like a Rebel yell, from what my pa told me about such yells. Or like a man about to die, which is maybe the same thing.

  For a moment I stood stock-still. And then I heard the words Mama so often read from her Bible: "And it is appointed unto men once to die."

  Those words just came into my head. And I knew then that what was out there was nothing animal or human. The knowing flooded through me, and I ran. Back through the holler, across the creek, and up to our house, through the back door, yelling, "Mama, Mama, I saw the Devil!"

  Mama calmed me. She gave me cookies and warm milk. And she scolded, too.

  "If you'd paid mind to your chores and finished filling that mattress ticking, you wouldn't be in trouble. Where's Adelaide?"

  I sipped my warm milk, still shivering. "Out picking ginseng."

  I saw Mama look across the kitchen at Floyd, who was sipping some coffee at the table. My brother Floyd is old. Twenty-eight at least. He has his own little log cabin a piece away from us, on the creek, where he makes his moonshine and his toys. He travels around selling those toys every fall and sells the moonshine all the year round. He is not so all-fired-up taken with Pa as the others are. Floyd is different. Alifair said he has girls wherever he goes selling his toys. But he never speaks about them. Every once in a while he comes to sup with us.

  "Go find Adelaide," Mama said to Floyd.

  Floyd got right to his feet. "Where's she picking?" he asked me. He had Pa's long gun in his hand.

  "Down in the holler by the briar thickets."

  He made for the door.

  "He won't be after Adelaide," I told him. "He's come for me."

  Floyd looked at me with those steel gray eyes of his. He's a quiet sort, but nice. Lots of times I go to visit him at his cabin and bring him some hot biscuits or fresh preserved jam. He lets me touch the toys he's making, the jumping jack, the little farm sled. He asks my opinion about girls' toys. And listens to what I tell him.

  "Why's he come for you?" he asked. And I knew he believed me.

  "He's come to tell me something. To warn me." The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. But they were right sounding. "But I don't know about what."

  Floyd nodded. He understood. When people hereabouts tell stories of haints, others don't disbelieve. Some tell of seeing ghosts of tormented souls. Some of witches come to make your soul tormented.

  "Best put a drop of turpentine and some sugar in that milk of hers," he told Mama. Then he went out the door.

  I know what that's for, a fretful little 'un. It'll make them sleep. Oh, how I hate being the youngest! Mama did as Floyd said, then made me wash and go right to bed.

  Chapter Four

  1880

  THE NEXT DAY was bright with sun and bursting like a hog bladder with the excitement of the elections. I went early with Roseanna. She smelled so sweet and looked so purty in her new calico. Her hair was all curled and shiny. Because I'd fallen asleep early, she couldn't do my hair up in rags, so she fixed it in one long braid down my back and put a sassy ribbon on it.

  When we got to the schoolhouse, the menfolk were already there, all done up in their best, standing around and joking in little groups, and they stopped all that jawing and stared at Ro when we walked up. I could have busted with pride. Even Ambrose Cuzlin, my teacher, who was standing by the schoolhouse door welcoming everybody, had a grin for Roseanna.

  Everybody was there. One glance around told you that. Republicans and Democrats, young men and old, the well-placed and the dirt-poor, Hatfields and McCoys.

  Ro and I sort of stayed off to ourselves for a while, under a locust tree. Nobody bothered her outright, because my brothers were there, all of them, and that's quite a parcel.

  Floyd had brought his moonshine, of course. Tolbert came with his wife and baby. Brother James was there with his family. They live a mile below us on Pond Creek. James has five children already and is older than Floyd even. James is a deputy sheriff and everybody knows he doesn't pussyfoot around the law but is a man to be reckoned with.

  Brother Sam was there with his Martha, too. They live on Dials Fork. Bill, who was twelve, was with Bud, who was just sixteen and coming on to be a man. Calv
in was eighteen, and already one. Pharmer was fifteen, brave, handsome, and good already with a gun. I've got a brother Lilburn, in his twenties, but he's off somewhere looking for gold. Lordy, I could have left somebody out. When it comes to my family, I never know.

  Alifair, Adelaide, and Trinvilla were coming later with Mama.

  All the boys gave me and Roseanna their howdy, then walked off to be with their friends. It seemed so funny to see all those people walking in our schoolhouse, and I was more than just a mite glad that Mr. Cuzlin had made us neaten it good. He was proud of that log schoolhouse. All by himself he put backs on the puncheon seats.

  There was lots of shouting and insulting and slapping on the back the way men do to each other. The womenfolk were gathered under the trees in their Sunday best, setting down baskets of food and spreading cloths on the tables. Everybody brought food, even the young girls. Not Roseanna. She brought herself. It was enough, and everybody knew it. Children ran back and forth playing tag and crack-the-whip. Some of the smaller boys from school had squirt guns.

  I saw Nancy McCoy. She was fifteen and still in school with us. She's Uncle Harmon's youngest, spoiled and fussed over by her big brothers because her pa was killed before she was born. She thought she was the puniest girl on Peter Creek. Well, she couldn't hold a candle to Ro, even though the boys all moon like sick calves over her at school, including the younger ones. If you want to talk about perdition, she was headed for it all right.

  Onliest one who wasn't there was Belle Beaver. She lived in a little lean-to in Happy Holler. She was a fancy woman. Alifair, who thinks she knows everything, said Belle was whipped out of North Carolina, so she came here. But women didn't want her around and had already gone in a delegation to my brother Jim to see about running her out. So far Jim hadn't said he would and hadn't said he wouldn't.