Clay's Quilt

  They made their place on the porch, the music from inside flowing past them and spilling out over the river and the little valley beyond. Clay brought out a liter of Dr Pepper and a jar of pickled baloney, which they ate while Cake rolled another joint.

  “So brother’s in love,” Cake said in a sliding, drawn-out voice. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  “First of all, I ain’t in love. Why you keep bringing this up?”

  “Just answer the question, damn you.”

  “Naw,” Clay said. “I don’t believe in it. I believe in feeling a connection to people, right off the bat. Like a spiritual connection, or something. You know. Some people you’re just drawed to, without an explanation. I feel that way over you.”

  “Whoa, now, boy,” Cake said, and laughed uncomfortably.

  “You know what I mean. If I hadn’t knowed you all my life and I met you now, I’d feel something. They’s more between us than just growing up together. They’s something spiritual there.”

  “Spiritual,” Cake said, savoring each syllable of the word. “So that’s how you feel over this Alma? A spiritual connection?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Cake licked the gum across the top of the cigarette paper and rolled up another joint. He held it up close to Clay’s eyes. “See there, the perfect camel.”

  “That’s right,” Clay said.

  “Hey, I read that there was no such thing as true love for our generation.”

  “You read?” Clay laughed. “You ain’t read nothing since high school.”

  “Well, I seen it on some show. They was talking about our generation and said we was all in too big a hurry for love.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard tell of.” He was stoned, just off the little bit he had smoked, and he felt like talking all night. “People don’t know nothing bout our generation. Even we don’t. You can’t analyze a generation until they’re old, anyway. D’you think people in the sixties knowed what kind of history they was living through?”

  “Hell no!” Cake shouted, like a member of a church congregation crying out an amen to egg on the preacher. He lit the joint and it crackled loudly. “That’s right, brother. Preach it like it is,” Cake screamed to the night.

  He jumped out of his chair and did a little dance around the porch before lying down on the cold wooden floorboards of the porch. The cold sank through his shirt and ran icy fingers up and down his back. “Come down here. We’ll smoke and study the sky.”

  Clay pulled off his shirt. He lay down on the porch floor beside Cake. When his bare back touched the chilled floorboards, he jumped and shuddered, but then it felt good. He put his arms behind his head and looked up at the stars. The tape inside had ended, and now there was no music except that of the river, silky and calm. A little breeze stirred the trees, which brushed together like a girl’s prom skirt. There were not many stars, and the sky was so black that it seemed a thick, misty blue. Clay felt like reaching up and giving the velvety texture a good stir.

  “Reckon our mommies ever got high together?” Cake asked.

  “Guess we’ll never know,” Clay answered.

  “It’d be a lot cooler for them if they had,” Cake said, and they both lay there laughing for a long time afterward, feeling like they were a part of the autumn air.

  9

  THE EXTINGUISHED CANDLE at Dreama’s wedding told true: when Dreama was six months pregnant, a woman called to calmly and methodically tell her that she was having an affair with Darry. Darry erupted in screams of denial—and that was all Dreama needed to confirm her suspicions.

  “You’re lying,” Dreama told him. “Any fool could read it in your eyes.”

  Darry cursed and raved, adamant in his denial. Dreama knew that he was alarmed by her coolness. He was stunned by Dreama’s calm, easy tone and clear-eyed, straight face. She stood before him without a hint of emotion. It was as if she had just stood up in class and read a poem and was waiting for her teacher to tell her she could sit down again. She enjoyed seeing him so taken aback. He fell to his knees and begged her to believe him. He was not about to admit to his infidelity, and his denial was pathetic.

  “I never went out on you, Dreama!” he hollered.

  She didn’t flinch, although the people across the road surely must have heard. “You’re lying,” Dreama said. “You went out on me, and me carrying your baby.”

  He stood up and grabbed the ashtray from the coffee table. He threw it against the wall and it shattered. When it did, his face seemed to cave in on itself, and he came toward her with his hands in front of him as if he meant to stroke her face. His eyes were wet.

  “Crocodile tears,” Dreama said, folding her arms across her chest.

  He fell onto the couch in exhaustion, crying, and finally stumbled out of the house and into his truck. Dreama stood in the door to make sure he was leaving.

  “I’ll still see my baby!” he yelled. He paused, as if he was trying to figure out if this sounded like he was admitting to the affair. “You won’t take that from me, will you, Dreama?”

  Dreama shut the door gently, her face hidden behind the lace curtains. Through them, she watched him tear out of the driveway and leave black marks all the way down the road before he shifted gears and rode on across the mountain. Dreama saw the neighbors out on the porch, watching, and then looked back to the road, as if he might still be there. She could hear his truck for a long time as its motor echoed off the cliffs.

  The December sky was black with square clouds, and rain fell thin and straight. Birds flew away in a great racket.

  Dreama felt clean and free of obstacles. She saw everything that she would do; it was all lined up for her, and she knew she could carry it through, though cold, tiny beads of sweat had collected on her forehead. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and went to the telephone.

  “Clay,” she said, smoothing her hand over her belly, “come get me right now. I’m leaving Darry.”

  WHEN CLAY GOT TO Pushback Gap, he found Dreama sitting in the yard in the downpour. She had packed everything she needed into three old suitcases. She sat on one upright case, and the other two lay helter-skelter on the porch steps.

  “Just put them in the back,” she said, handing over the suitcases. The rain intensified with every second. “The rain won’t hurt em.”

  “You’ll be dead with a cold, Dreama,” Clay said, once they were both in the truck. He turned the heater on high, shaking his head. “Pregnant and setting out in the rain.”

  “Let’s just leave here, Clay. Please. Get me out of here.” She fixed her eyes on the little house, as if she would never see it again.

  Clay backed out onto the highway and started down Push-back Gap. Large coal trucks boomed over the wet, winding road, seeming to slide around the blacktop curves on two wheels. The rain fell harder and harder. They drove about a mile without speaking.

  “This girl called me this morning,” Dreama began. “Just as soon as Darry had left for work. I was fixing me some French toast, since Darry never eats breakfast and I was starved to death. Well, as soon as he left, I was fixing the toast and the phone rung. This girl asked for Darry, and I said, ‘This is his wife. Who is this?’ When I said that, it was dead silent for a whole minute, but I wasn’t about to hang up and she wouldn’t either. So I waited, and finally I said, ‘What do you want with my husband?’ And she just told me. She was so cold about it. She said: ‘Don’t you know I’m F-ing your man?’ She used the F word to me. At first, it got me so bad that I didn’t know what to do. I knowed she was telling me the truth. Even using that kind of language, she sounded so honest. She sounded like she loved telling me about it, but she sounded honest, too. I knowed it was true. She said, ‘I didn’t know he was married.’ And that seemed to hurt worse than what she had first said. I just hung up.” Dreama let out a long breath. “Give me a cigarette, Clay.”

  “Hell no. You’re pregnant.”

  “Shit. I’m just so nervou
s, now that I’m talking about it. But I can’t cry to save my life, Clay. While I was waiting for you, I sat there and tried my damnedest to work up some tears, and I couldn’t. I almost feel a relief. And I don’t know why, because before today I never thought of Darry going out on me. We’ve only been married four months. And I love him, I really do. I’ll never get over him.”

  “If you love him like that, you can forgive him.”

  “No,” she said quietly, facing the window. The rain ran down the window in long, liquid fingers. Through the glass, the mountains seemed to tremble and the houses grew squat, then tall. Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning lit up the whole sky, making everything appear angular and in silhouette. They came to the four-way stop, and Clay asked if she wanted to go home with him or to go to Free Creek.

  “I guess I’d better go stay with Daddy. He’ll die if I don’t.”

  “Dreama, I don’t know what to say,” Clay said.

  “I don’t want you to say nothing to me. I know what’s going through your head: I told you, Dreama. I said you all was too young, to wait. I tried telling you. If I hadn’t married him, I’d never been happy, though …”

  “I don’t care about that now, Dreama. I’m just worried over what will become of you, and the baby.”

  “Well, I ain’t taking him back. I’ll tell you that right now. I’ll get a divorce, have my baby. Easter will help me with it. And then I’ll start going to the community college and I’ll make something out of myself. I am not going back with Darry Spurlock. Mark my words.”

  “If I see him, I’ll stomp his ass,” Clay said, turning into Free Creek. When Dreama didn’t protest, he thought perhaps it truly was over between her and Darry.

  “There’s something I been dying to tell you, but I don’t think this is exactly the right time,” Clay said, turning the radio completely off. It had been playing quietly the whole trip.

  “No, go ahead. I’m serious, I ain’t upset about Darry right now. Tell me anything.”

  He should have just waited until they got to Easter’s. If it hadn’t been for the rain, they could have walked up the trail to their tree and their rock bench. All this was so hard to say.

  “Well, I’m going out with somebody, and I like her,” he blurted out, and instantly felt foolish.

  “Dammit, Clay,” Dreama said angrily. “How long has this been going on? You never talk to me no more. You have plumb quit me since I got married. We used to be best of friends, and now I call and call and you’re never home and you never foot my doorstep—”

  “We’ve been through all of this before, Dreama.”

  “I don’t know why you’ve growed so distant from me. It kills my soul. I remember you not being able to sleep and coming into my room at three in the morning, making me get up and talk to you.” Her eyes were wet now, but still she did not cry.

  “Anyway, I’m telling you now. Just hush and listen. We’ve only been out once, but I swear, I’ve went crazy over her.”

  “God almighty. You sound plumb eat up with it. Who is it?”

  “Alma Asher.”

  “Clay, that girl’s married.” Her tone was guarded, quiet. She hated to hurt his feelings.

  “She’s fixing to divorce. I know all about it. How did you know?”

  “I talked to her a little when I called her to play the fiddle at my wedding. We got to talking. Honey, you don’t need somebody like that.”

  “Like what? Just because she’s been married?” he said. “I swear, Dreama, there is just something there that I can’t explain, that I never knowed of before.”

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about, Clay,” Dreama replied. “That’s how I always felt over Darry, too.”

  WHEN CLAY AND Dreama got to Free Creek, the rain was coming down so hard that Clay could barely see to make it into Gabe’s driveway. Already the creek was raging, and water poured down off the cliffs. The new gravel of Easter’s and Gabe’s drives had washed out into the road again.

  Gabe was drunk when they got there, since it was past six o’clock on a Friday evening. He looked from Dreama’s suitcases to her face and seemed to gather what had happened. Three of his friends were sitting at the kitchen table, playing quarter bounce and smoking one cigarette after another. Gabe pushed his chair back from the table and jumped up. “I’ll kill that sum-bitch over hurting you,” he said. “Get my pistol!”

  The men got up without a word and left, like scared children, as Gabe ranted.

  “Lord God, Daddy, quit acting like a fool,” Dreama said, dropping heavily onto the couch. “You hain’t shooting nobody and you know it.”

  “Clay, if you don’t stomp that boy, I’ll stomp you,” Gabe said, wild-eyed.

  Dreama laughed shortly and then turned on him. In the most hateful voice she could muster, she said, “You ought to have been stomped, then. Mommy told me you went out on her the whole time she was big with me.”

  Gabe settled back into his chair and didn’t say a word.

  “I’m craving some macaroni and tomatoes,” she called out, as if there had been no harsh words spoken.

  “They ought to be some Creamettes in the cabinet,” Gabe said.

  Dreama got up and turned on the stereo. It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if she had never gotten married or pregnant or left her husband. She went into the kitchen, where she started slamming cabinet doors and rattling pans. “Ain’t you going to set down, Clay?”

  “I’ll be back in a little while. I’m going over to see Easter.”

  EASTER WAS WATCHING the Renfro Valley Barn Dance when Clay went in. The Osborne Brothers were playing an old standard and everybody in the audience was clapping and looking right at the camera.

  “Ain’t El home yet?” Clay said, coming into the living room.

  “No. He just called me from Pittsburgh. They’s a big storm up there and he won’t be in till tomorrow. He said that was the aw-fullest town to drive in he’d ever seen, anyway.”

  “Why don’t you go with him sometime, see a little of the world?”

  Easter laughed to herself. “Lord God, Clay. You couldn’t pay me enough money to hop in one of them big trucks.”

  She took the remote up off the table and held it straight in front of her, as if she was unaccustomed to using it, and flicked off the television.

  “You heard bout Darry and Dreama?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I brung her home from Pushback Gap.”

  Easter looked away, to the windows. The winter rain beat against the windows like someone tapping their fingernails on the glass. He recalled the night before his mother’s funeral. He had stood at that window, watching his cousins play on the frozen road. Most of the snow had melted, and the remainder of it lay in stripes across the yard, although the mountainside was still covered. He had been urged to go out and play, too, but had refused.

  “Listen to that rain. It’d be a good time to sleep, with that beating on the roof,” Clay said.

  Easter was studying him carefully, running her eyes over his face, so obviously, so carefully, that she might as well have put her hands to his face to study it, like a blind person might do.

  “What is it?” Clay asked softly, as if they were both listening for something.

  “I heard tell you was going out with that fiddler played at Dreama’s wedding. Cake tole me.”

  “She’s Thomas Mosley’s girl—you know, the Singing Mosley Family. You have tapes by them.”

  Easter’s face brightened and she sat up on the edge of the couch.

  “She goes to church!”

  “Naw, she don’t claim to be saved. But she’s a good person, Easter, she ain’t wild or nothing.”

  “I’ve heard tell of her!” Easter fretted her brows together. “She’s the one that has made such a fool out of her daddy. I heard he was the best man ever was, and she was running wild all over the country and singing in clubs.”

  “That’s her sister, that’s Evangeline. This is Alma I’m going with. You??
?ll love her better’n anything, Easter, I know you will.”

  “Well, you bring her up here to see me,” Easter said, and settled back in her seat. She put one hand atop the other in her lap, the way people did when they had their photographs taken. She studied her hands for a minute, as if inspecting her fingers for cleanliness. “But I can’t figure her not going to church with a daddy like that. When are you ever going to settle down and go to church? I worry myself to death over you.”

  “Easter, let’s not talk about this right now. I just don’t believe that way. I can’t make myself believe the way you do. And I won’t be no hypocrite.”

  They sat for a moment and listened to the rain. Easter studied her hands, and Clay went into the kitchen to fix them both a cup of coffee. When he came back, Easter was standing at the window, watching the rain. It was beating hard, and little puddles full of ringlets stood in the yard.

  “Clay,” Easter said suddenly, with her back to him. “They’s something I have to show you … and I don’t know how.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Easter went down the hall and came back with the large Bible box. She set it on the ottoman in front of Clay and sat back down on the edge of the couch, her hands folded again, as if in repentance. “I just found it, Clay, day before yesterday. I should have went straight and called you, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. Your mommy left all this stuff for you. There’s a letter in there with your name on it. I didn’t open it.”

  Clay pulled the box up onto his lap and ran his palm over the top of the box. Pictures of flowers, cut from seed packs and magazines, were taped all over the lid.

  “The box was your great-granny’s. She ordered a Bible that come in it, and Anneth always loved that box better’n anything. She taped them flower pictures on there when she was little.”

  Clay kept rubbing his hands over the box lid, suddenly dreading to open it. Staring down at the box, he quietly asked, “Where’d you find it?”