Clay's Quilt

by Silas House

  “Nothing much. We’ll probably just cook supper and set around the house.”

  Easter read his eyes, and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

  “Gabe told me about him going after the man who killed Mommy. Said he drowned. It don’t make no sense.”

  “Why don’t it?”

  “Well, it just seems awful convenient for him to just fall and accidentally drown, after killing three people. Are you sure the law beat Gabe to that man?”

  “Gabe never killed him, Clay.”

  “Well, it just sounds too perfect that he died like that, just down the mountain from them.”

  Easter nodded. “Well, to tell you the truth, sometimes I think it could’ve been any one of us that done it.”

  Clay looked at her, feeling exhausted. Sometimes he wished he didn’t know a thing about what had happened to his mother. He often wished they had just lied to him about everything, told him she had died a natural, peaceful death and left it at that. There were too many twists and turns to this story, too many oddly shaped pieces to fit into this quilt. “What in the world do you mean?” he asked.

  “We all wished it so hard. I know it’s a sin, Clay, but when they tole me Anneth was dead and who done it, I set there and prayed and prayed that he would die, too. I’ve repented over that many a day, but I can’t help the way I felt. I can’t lie about how full of vengeance I was.” She put both elbows on the table and moved closer to him, then folded her hands one atop the other and settled back into her chair. “We all wanted so bad for him to be dead, that he just was. Something took care of it for us.”

  Her words were final, and that was enough for Clay, anyway. He pictured the death wishes of everybody that had loved his mother—Easter, Gabe, Marguerite, Paul, Sophie—all of those vengeful prayers rising up into the air, becoming one solid and real entity. He imagined that they became a mass of red, crying birds, flying over the mountains, casting a shadow on the land beneath them. They were redbirds, and their bright bodies were stark and beautiful against the gray sky, the white earth. They sliced through the winter air as they zeroed in on Glenn. The murderer was so frightened by the oncoming flock that he lost control of his vehicle and plummeted off the side of the road. He tried to run, until he fell into the creek, where the birds rested heavily upon him—the thousand of them. They sat on him, flapping their broad, shiny blood wings, their eyes perfectly round and opaque. Finally, all of his breath was in the creek, and ice started to collect back around the corpse. Then the birds took off, one by one, like drops of blood being sucked up into the clouds, up to become a part of the gray, rolling sky of January.

  “It don’t make no sense, to pray for something like that,” Easter said, breaking apart his thoughts. “The Lord don’t answer them kind of prayers. But how else can you explain it? I was glad he was dead, though. I won’t lie about that, neither. I’ve grieved over the way I wanted to avenge my sister, but never over him dying. I was glad, and I’ll prob’ly have to pay for that one day. You can’t get into Heaven with hate in your heart.”

  Clay picked up the apple again and bit into it. Juice ran down the corners of his mouth. He didn’t want to hear any more. He had always wanted to know about his mother’s life, about the things she had been, not about her death, but it seemed he could not learn about one without knowing the other.

  “Easter, you always told me if I wanted that little piece of land off to the side of the house, that it was mine.”

  She nodded. “This land was left to me, Gabe, and your mommy, so it’s part yours.”

  “I been thinking that I’d like to come back to Free Creek. I’ve worked six year in them mines without spending much, and I’ve got bout enough money saved up to build a little house. I’d rather do that than move a trailer in.”

  “Lord, Clay, it’d tickle me to death if you’d build on that land. I’d give anything if you’d take it.”

  “I want to,” he said. “That’s where I want my children to be raised. Right here on this creek, where I was.”

  Easter smiled, and Clay could see that she was trying to hide how pleased she was.

  “It’ll be for the best. A family ought to live together. Seeds won’t grow if they tossed to the wind.”

  Clay slapped the table hard, and it issued a short, high shriek. “I will then,” he smiled. “Just a little square house, with big windows so I can see the creek.”

  “I can picture it,” Easter said.

  16

  THEIR LOVEMAKING WAS tangled and moist, like summer vines—a wild mess of arms and legs, warm skin against cool, Clay’s silver Saint Christopher necklace mingling with Alma’s gold chain and small, plain cross. The room was thick with milky gray shadows, and the window was a silver square in the wall.

  The sleet was loud and constant, but Alma heard it as if from a great distance. She watched the beads of ice beat against the window, feeling both melancholy and exhilarated. Winter seeped into the house. The room was so cold that the chill ate through to her bones, but her skin was warm with the heat of their love-making. Beads of sweat stood on her shoulders. He had thrown the covers into a heap on the floor beside the bed, but their bodies were naked to nothing more than shadows; only the lights of an occasional car moving down the winding road lit their bodies silver and speckled them with the bits of sleet on the window.

  She moved her hands down the backs of his arms, which seemed to be the only parts of his body that were cool. Her hands went from the smooth darkness of his back to the chaps in his hands, thin gashes lined with grit. She breathed in that smell of earth, and the aroma of coal, dirt, rock, and roots caused her to shudder from head to toe, her head arched and her teeth firm upon her bottom lip in pleasure. There was no sound except that constant lull of sleet.

  He ran his hands down her legs and put his stubbly jaw against her belly. She could feel him inhaling her. Alma listened to every little thing: the small, soft wrinkle of the sheets, the quills of the feathers in the pillow as her head sank deeper and deeper within, the click of a gasp caught halfway in her throat. She caught the scent of ice overtaking the room, and the sweet, damp flavor in the bowl of his neck. Neither of them spoke, and it seemed to her that he wanted to holler out but did not.

  Afterward, they lay very close and didn’t say a word for a long time. His breath played against the nape of her neck, and she ran her hand up and down his arm, trying to translate everything she felt. She memorized the texture of his arm and kissed his shoulder. She ran her hands over his face, feeling it the way the blind might do to identify someone, and her fingers lingered on his lips, pushing against them as though they were the frets of her fiddle.

  She didn’t know how to feel. She thought this might lead them somewhere that they need not go. It was too soon, she reasoned. Every doubt ran through her head until she just shook them away and concentrated on the matter at hand. She had wanted to do this, and now she had. She didn’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but she had wanted to do it. And she was glad that she had.

  “I’ve got to have a cigarette,” Clay said, in a tone that made it clear he knew this was a cliché. She watched him walk naked out of the room, lit only by the gray, twisting shadows. She pulled the covers up over her face, so that only her eyes were showing, and felt like laughing without knowing why. She had never been made love to before in her life, and she didn’t know what would be the acceptable thing to do. She felt like getting up and doing cartwheels through the house, although she knew that he would have thought she was crazy, and besides, her legs were still much too weak for that. Maybe she ought to come right out and tell him that she had never known anything like this. Honesty usually followed making love in the movies, and the movies were about her only source of information on sex. Denzel had certainly never taught her a thing about it.

  Alma followed the orange glow of Clay’s cigarette as he came back into the room. He got into bed and lay on his back, pulling her to turn over and lie on his chest. He smoked wit
h one hand and twirled her hair around his fingers with the other.

  “You want me to put a CD on?” he asked.

  “Naw, I’d rather listen to the sleet,” she answered. “Sounds like it’s dying down.”

  He didn’t answer, and she knew that he was listening to the beating ice. They lay there like that for a long time, not saying anything. After a while, the sleet grew more and more quiet, as if they could hear it making its way to the other side of the world. When another car passed, maneuvering carefully over the slick road, their bodies glowed like fox fire in its headlights.

  “You ever seen the ocean?” he asked.

  “Are you crazy? My daddy thinks going to a ball game is so worldly it’s a sin; he’d fell dead before he’d let any of us go to the beach.”

  “I ain’t neither, but I want to someday. Me and you ought to just take off for two or three days and go,” Clay said. “I’d give anything to stand on the beach and just look out across that water. I can’t imagine what it’d be like.”

  “I’ve had a recurring dream for as long as I can remember,” she said in a breathless voice. “I’ve dreamt of standing by the ocean and just sawing away on my fiddle, with the water sliding up under my feet and the hot air making my strings soft and loose. In my dream, I play so hard and wild that eventually my body raises plumb off the ground to drift way out over that water.”

  “That’s some intense music making,” Clay said, laughing softly.

  “I swear, I’ve felt like that before. Not just in my dream. Sometimes, when I get a song just right, it’s like I become a part of the music.”

  “I’ve seen that on your face.”

  Before long, the sleet came back, pounding against the house like a flurry of gravel, and they were sung to sleep by its steady rampage. Alma’s sleep was plagued by dreams of muddy water. It seemed like one dream that lasted all night, consisting of nothing except her standing on a narrow bridge, looking down into a wide, shallow creek filled with water the color of rich soil. When she woke up, her neck ached, as if she had really stood looking over the side of the bridge. Her skin felt gritty and tight, as if she had actually swum in the filth, and she went into the bathroom, careful not to wake Clay. She stood at the mirror, splashing cold water onto her face and looking at her reflection. She had heard all of her life that dreams of muddy water meant only one thing: death.

  DREAMA’S SON WAS born at five o’clock in the morning, screaming with a set of lungs that he had surely inherited from his melodramatic mother.

  “Call Darry,” she had said when she had dilated far enough and the doctor said it was time. “Tell him to hurry.”

  Easter dialed the number over and over, and when she rushed back into the birthing room with a pale face and slack shoulders, she had not even had to tell Dreama he wasn’t home. Dreama told her to look up Evelyn McIntosh in the phone book, and that was where he would be.

  When the woman answered, Easter felt blood rush to her face. Times like these, she wished she didn’t go to church; her faith was the only thing that kept her from cussing Evelyn McIntosh all to pieces. “This is Dreama’s aunt,” she spat out. “I know Darry’s there. Tell him his child is being born and to come on if he wants to be here.” After she hung up, she wished she’d been more hateful. She wished she had said, “You old whore,” or something to that effect. She fumbled in her purse for another quarter and dialed Clay’s number.

  CLAY, ALMA, AND CAKE were still up partying. Alma and Clay had gone to the Hilltop for the first time since the fight. Clay hadn’t gotten drunk, but Cake had not stopped drinking all night long.

  Clay stood at the stove, cooking Cake a fried baloney sandwich to sober him up before they went to bed, while Cake sat close to Alma on the couch telling her the long, complicated story of how he had found himself alone in a bedroom with Janine Collins, one of the Hilltop’s most notorious women. Alma pealed wildly with laughter and stomped one foot on the floor. He jumped from the couch and imitated Janine’s walk, swinging his hips with jutting force and putting each foot so far in front of the other that he nearly fell down.

  “Talk about walking like you got a cob up your rump,” Cake said. “She does.”

  Alma lay her head back against the cushion and laughed with her eyes closed. She wasn’t completely drunk, but she was feeling good. Cake was still jealous of her, but he was trying to like her, and from the looks of it, she already loved him. He’d had plenty of Jim Beam and pot, and he told the story with the grace and comedy of a talkative drunk. He moved all over the room, showing her how the girl had chased him and finally pinned him to the bed. Cake paused long enough to fill his shot glass with another hit of whiskey and down it in one slug. He breathed out with pleasure and smacked his lips. “Mmm-mmm good, just like Campbell’s soup,” he said.

  “Dammit, don’t drink no more, Cake!” Clay hollered, pointing with his fork. “You’re already wasted, and I ain’t setting up all night with you. I’m done sober.”

  “Yeah you will, little boy,” Cake said in a slurred voice. “You’ll take care of baby brother.”

  The phone rang and Clay threw the fork into the sizzling skillet and turned down the stereo. He yelled for the two of them to stop laughing as he got the phone.

  “Clay, Dreama’s having the baby,” Easter said matter-of-factly. “She’s asked for you.”

  “Be right there,” he said, and hung up quickly. He spun around and his eyes fell on Cake and Alma, who were laughing into their hands. Alma beat the couch with one hand and held her stomach with the other. Cake sat with a very straight back and giggled a low, annoying hunh-hunh-hunh. “Shit,” Clay thought aloud.

  “What’s wrong?” Cake asked loudly, hopping onto the couch cushion and standing up.

  “Dreama’s had her baby, and you two are both drunk.”

  Clay had never seen Cake sober up so fast. When he and Alma and Clay piled into the truck and headed down the wet, shiny highway toward the hospital, Cake tried to keep from crying. He leaned against the door and put thumb and forefinger across the bridge of his nose, holding back his tears. “Aw, man,” he kept repeating, not realizing that his words were audible.

  “What is it, Cake?” Alma asked. Clay was flying around the curves, his eyes fixed to the blacktop, and paid neither of them any mind. “You sound like you’re crying.”

  “No. I just can’t believe Dreama’s had a youngun.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and sucked all of his unfallen tears back deep inside himself. He wasn’t about to cry in front of Alma, and he actually didn’t know why he felt like it. “She’s so little.”

  “Are you all right?” Alma stretched her arm out on the seat behind Cake and cupped the ball of his shoulder in her hand.

  “He’s just on a crying drunk,” Clay said solidly, but he knew that Cake loved Dreama. He did not take his eyes from the road, and said, “You need to straighten up, brother. Can’t go in there drunk.”

  “I’M GOING TO call him Tristan, after that movie,” Dreama announced.

  “What movie?” Easter asked, considering the name.

  “Legends of the Fall, her favorite movie of all time,” Clay answered.

  “Besides Gone with the Wind,” Dreama chimed in. “You know, Easter. I showed you that picture of Brad Pitt. That was his name in that movie.”

  “Dreama, you know I wanted to call my first boy that,” Clay said.

  “Tough titty. I beat you to it.” She looked from Clay to Gabe, laughing. Gabe stood close to Dreama’s bed, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the baby. Dreama nodded toward Gabe and laughed. “Daddy, you look like you’re in shock. Look how much it looks like Daddy, right through its eyes.”

  Gabe beamed and remained silent. Only Cake looked more uncomfortable, standing there beside Dreama’s bed, as if he wanted to lie down right beside her and go to sleep. He hadn’t said a word since they had gotten to the hospital.

  “Here, hold him, Clay. You the closest thing to a daddy he’ll
ever have, my pinion,” Dreama said, and wrapped the blanket tightly about the baby. She handed the baby to Clay and fixed her own bedcovers around her. She looked down as she spoke, smoothing out the blanket into a neat, straight fold that disappeared on either side under her arms. “If Darry wanted to be part of this baby’s life, he’d done been here. Any other woman wouldn’tve even called him, but I wanted to be able to say I done right by him.”

  “That’s all anybody can do,” Easter said.

  Clay held the baby nervously. Its small body heated up the crook of his arm. He could feel the baby filling up with air, then exhaling it. He could feel life, right there in the palms of his hands. Clay fished the baby’s hand out of the blanket and watched as it wrapped its long, narrow fingers about his own. Tristan’s grip was tight. Clay couldn’t help leaning over and kissing his wrinkled forehead. He had Dreama’s high brow and a fine down of black hair.

  Clay handed the baby to Gabe, who was standing closest to him. Now they were all looking at Tristan, and only Easter looked at Clay, puzzled by the strange wash of bewilderment on his face. Clay walked quickly out of the room and onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette. Easter found herself ready to go after him, as she always had, but realized that now it was Alma’s place to do so. Easter folded her arms and bemoaned the fact that she was losing her boy.

  “WHAT IS IT, CLAY?” Alma said from behind him. She had been around men enough to know that they didn’t want you to look at them when they had been crying. Men were allowed to weep only in church. She put her hands above his waist, careful not to get too close. “Tell me.”

  Clay turned quickly so she could not catch sight of his face, and engulfed her with his arms. Her face buried in his chest, she breathed in his good coal smell, feeling his frame quiver. He seemed to have fallen into her arms, and all of his weight was on her.

  “Another fatherless child,” he said finally. His breath sizzled onto her neck and sent shivers down her back. “It kills me.”