Clay's Quilt

  At each turn he was sure that he saw a clearing where sunlight fell in a wide block on the ground, where the trees stepped back to make way for a field full of Cherokee roses, Queen Anne’s lace, jonquils, jack-in-the pulpits, black-eyed Susans, purple daisies. He wondered if it was a place all of his ancestors had gone to, and if it was where his grandmother had picked out the names for her children. Anneth and Easter had both been named for wildflowers: Queen Anne’s lace and Easter lilies. He imagined that every person in his family had journeyed to that tightly stretched field, so high atop the mountain that only flowers could grow there.

  But there was nothing. He had known this mountain all of his life, and there was no such field. There was no bald spot on its summit, only jagged spears of rocks that stood in the ground like gravestones, surrounded by thousands of trees that moved as if they were underwater.

  He lay down on a flat rock and peered up at the sky. He felt sunlight upon his face, and he could feel it all through his body, beginning at his head and spreading down his chest and arms, into his legs and feet. He felt as the rocks and cliffs must feel, after a long, gray season of soaking up nothing but chill, when they suddenly find the sun. He felt like pulling off all of his clothes and lying there, but he was too relaxed to move. The field of flowers had to be close by—what else could have given him this sense of intoxication, if not the soup of a whole field of wildflowers?

  He wanted more than anything to drift off into sleep and awake with a blue-black night sky filled with stars above him. Below, they would be looking for him, and it would be good to wake up and hear them hollering his name, down there. For once everybody else would be looking for something, and he would be content. He wanted to stay right here, up above reality, where no one could touch him, no one except God.

  CLAY REALIZED THAT he had to go back down to be married. When he came off the mountain, he found that it was still morning, although he felt as if he had been on the mountain for hours.

  Although Pastor Morgan did not believe in marrying someone who had been wed before, he agreed to marry Clay to Alma because he had known the boy all of his life. He stood on the porch with Easter’s husband, El, who had taken his first day off in years to attend the wedding. When the pastor saw Clay, he smiled the way he did when he shook hands with everyone after church, and he folded the boy up in his long arms.

  “Still climbing that old mountain, Clay?” the pastor asked.

  “Yeah. I guess I always will.”

  “I haven’t been up there in years.”

  Clay breathed deeply and laughed. “I’m nervous.”

  “Well, a big breakfast’ll cure that,” El said, putting his arm about Clay’s shoulders. “Easter and Lolie been cooking all morning.”

  Inside, the table was crowded with bowls and platters bearing biscuits, fried apples, potatoes, tenderloin in a pool of redeye gravy, fried baloney, and eggs. Lolie was scraping brown gravy out of a skillet into a bowl while Easter poured coffee and directed everyone to their seats. This was the first time that Clay could ever remember the two of them cooking together. Uncle Paul sat at the table beside Aunt Sophie, who looked mad because Easter wanted her to rest and wouldn’t let her help with the cooking.

  El and Pastor Morgan sat down while Clay went into the bedroom to make sure that Cake and Jimmy Darrell, Alma’s brother, were up. Everyone had stayed at either Easter’s or Gabe’s the night before, and it was good for them all to be together here like this on the morning of the wedding. Evangeline refused to stay all night at anyone’s house, no matter the event, but would arrive later to sing. She had decided to head out for Nashville, along with her band, in hopes of finding a recording contract. She had put off their journey just so she could be at the wedding and would leave for Music City as soon as the vows had been spoken.

  Dreama had insisted that Alma spend the night with her at Gabe’s, the two of them sleeping in the same bed like sisters. Clay and Cake had slept together at Easter’s, on a pallet on the floor beside the bed where Jimmy Darrell lay snoring like an old woman and hollering out in his sleep.

  Gabe had made his way across the yard, and Clay was glad to see him. He hardly ever took meals with the whole family, and it was especially strange to see him seated at the table next to Pastor, although they talked like old friends. They had grown up together, and Pastor was one of the few men Gabe respected. All of the men were at the table, while Easter and Lolie fluttered about them like birds around corn in the hottest part of the day.

  “You all go on and eat now, then we’ll set down and eat,” Easter said. Clay couldn’t remember ever sitting down to eat at the same time as Easter during a big meal, not even at holidays. The women always ate last, when the men had finished and made room for them at the table.

  “No, I want us all to eat together,” Clay said. “They’s enough chairs. Call Dreama and Alma, and we’ll all eat together.”

  “Why, it’ll be cold by the time them gals get over here,” Lolie said. “You all go ahead and eat. The women will eat later.”

  “Call and tell them to hurry. I want us to eat together, now. That’s what I want for my wedding day.”

  Dreama and Alma came in laughing, and when Alma looked up, her eyes did not meet Clay’s at once. Her face looked so clean and clear that it seemed to Clay she had found some blessed water to wash with. A noticeable silence fell across the room as everyone looked at her; then, just as quickly, Easter ordered them to sit.

  “Lord, bless this food we are about to receive, and thank you for providing us with it,” Pastor said, without announcing that he was about to say the blessing. “And Lord, bless this day when these two young people commit their lives to each other, and help them to overcome the obstacles a couple face in life. Help them to receive your love and accept them into your life. We all know that you are the only way and the light, forever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed Easter and Uncle Paul. Then a great hum arose from the table as they all started passing bowls and plates and eating as though they were starved to death.

  They did not have a big conversation while they ate. They ate quickly and only spoke to comment on the food or ask a quick question that would get a quick reply. They said things like, “Lolie, this gravy’s so good I have to pat my foot to eat it,” or “That jelly you eating, I picked them blackberries myself.” But when they finished, they pushed their chairs back a little from the table and talked for a long time, nursing coffee and mixing molasses and butter together in their plate to smooth over the extra biscuits.

  Clay felt like he should jump right up and start getting ready for the wedding, but he didn’t want to leave the table right away. He pushed back his plate and asked Uncle Paul to tell them all about the way he and Sophie had first come together. Clay had heard the story many times, but he never tired of it.

  Uncle Paul loved to tell stories, but no one would ever have guessed by the way he went about starting. At first his tone was low and soft, with long pauses between sentences.

  “Well, way back, I was the worst drunk ever was. I’m not ashamed to say it, cause the truth’s the truth. I worked for a long time at a lumber camp in Laurel County, over on Blackwater, and one night me and some boys drove over to Manchester to play poker. We’d been drunk on moonshine two days. Now, a drunk don’t need to get in a card game, but that’s what I done, and I lost everthing I had. Even bet away my little truck that we’d drove over there in. By the time the game folded up, I was drunker than a monkey’s uncle, and my buddies had run off and left me. The man that won everthing was a good feller, and I reckon he felt sorry for me. He talked me into letting him give me a ride in my own truck, and he took me to the train station to send me back home. Put me right on a car and paid my way, but when he asked me where I was living and I said ‘Blackwater,’ he must’ve thought I said ‘Black Banks,’ cause that’s where he sent me. When I got off the train there, I was still so drunk I barely could walk.

  “Now Sophie worked in the theater t
here at town, and when she got off work she always went to that little restaurant to get her a piece of pie and a pop. It was right there at the train depot, and when she was leaving, she seen me laying out on one of the benches outside. I was so drunk I don’t remember none of this, but it’s got told back to me, you see. She found me and seen I was drunk and didn’t have a dime, so she pulled me up off that bench and took me over to her sister’s car. Her sister always come and picked her up from work. She took me to her sister’s house, where she was living at the time. I don’t know how that little girl ever walked me in there, cause I know I was dead weight against her.

  “Anyway, she brung me in, flopped me on the bed. She tole her sister’s man that I was an old drunk and didn’t have nowhere to go and that it was untelling what would happen to me if she’d just left me there. So Sophie and her sister went to doctoring me up. Put me in a cold bathtub and put some of her sister’s man’s clothes on me, cause I was so drunk I’d ruined my clothes and everthing else. That cold water sure enough sobered me up, cause I can more or less remember everthing after that. I remember thinking these was the strongest two little women ever was, cause they lifted me up and throwed me on the bed like I was a rag doll. Sophie set up with me all night. I was in real bad shape, I reckon.

  “All the next day, Sophie fed me tater soup. Put so much pepper in it that it cleaned me out good and proper, felt like I was breathing fire. She’d set right on the edge of the bed and feed me until I was able to myself, and I recall the first time she put that mush to my mouth, I was so hungry that I bout swallowed spoon and all. She’d wipe my chin and sing songs. She’d sing that song that says ‘I sing because I’m happy’ and ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ I’d hear her in the kitchen singing, too, and then I’d know she was in there fixing me something to eat.”

  Everybody laughed quietly, but he didn’t look up.

  “Well, eventually I got feeling better and got up out the bed. I told her I had to repay her somehow, but she wouldn’t let me. She said her sister would drive me back home, plumb back over on Blackwater, but I wouldn’t let her and told her I’d rather walk back to Black Banks and find me a ride somehow. They knowed better than to argue with that, cause they knowed it would insult me, you see, and they both stood at the door and told me good-bye. Soon as they closed the door I went to chopping firewood and piling up their coal for em. I couldn’t stand the thoughts of being beholden to somebody. After a while, I lit out and got back to Laurel County, and didn’t touch nothing to drink. I’d work in that lumber camp and think about Sophie singing ‘I sing because I’m happy.’ That’s all that was on my mind. When I got me a little money saved up, I went back to that little house and we started courting.”

  Uncle Paul stopped for a long moment, looking at the table. His big hands were still in his lap.

  “She’d sung to me, you see. She’d fed me when I was hungry, and I didn’t have no choice but to come back for her.”

  THEY WERE MARRIED in Easter’s side yard, just across the grass from the skeleton of the house that Clay was building for them. The lumber looked damp and bright yellow in the fine spring day. Folding chairs had been borrowed from the funeral home and set up in neat squares; bunches of dogwood and sarvis were tied with wide ribbon to the aisle chairs. Dreama and Alma had cut the flowers early that morning from the trees along the creek.

  Before the wedding, Alma had sent Evangeline and Dreama out onto the porch every few minutes to look for her parents’ Cadillac making its way up the holler; she had called them a week ago and asked her father to come and give her away. Her father did not come, but when Dreama spotted an unknown Blazer heading up the road, she was sure that it had to be some of Alma’s people. Alma ran out into the yard, her train flying behind her like the wide tail of a kite, and fell into her mother’s arms when she stepped down out of the truck. Her oldest brother, Elihu, got out of the driver’s side.

  “These two are enough,” Alma told Clay. “If Daddy don’t want to be here, I ain’t letting it bother me.”

  Elihu walked up the aisle with her and said, “Her mother and I,” when the preacher asked who gave Alma in marriage. Evangeline and Dreama were matrons of honor and Jimmy Darrell served second to Cake as best man.

  Clay had invited only the members of the immediate family—Geneva and Goody, a few more cousins, Gabe and Lolie, Easter and El, Uncle Paul and Aunt Sophie—and, to everyone’s shock, Marguerite, who had walked down the holler and quietly found a seat in the back row, by herself. She sat with her back very straight, her head held high. She had dressed well for the occasion and looked like a woman who went out all the time. Tears fell from her eyes, but she wept silently, wiping them away so quickly that no one even saw her put a tissue to her face.

  Alma marched in to Alison Krauss singing “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” from Dreama’s portable stereo, which was perched on a small wooden table and hidden by dogwood flowers. Since the wedding was held outside, the traditional unity candle could not be lit, so when they came to that part of the ceremony, Evangeline stepped out and sang “Let It Be Me” while her guitarist, Lige, strummed softly behind her.

  When Pastor pronounced them man and wife, Clay bent Alma back dramatically and kissed her for a long time, one of the first times that Clay Sizemore did not have a thousand thoughts rushing through his mind. He heard nothing, saw nothing, but felt her lips, smelled her good, clean scent.

  He felt that his mother was watching from the shadow of the giant cedar across the creek.

  19

  ALMA WALKED THROUGH the shell of their house, running her hands over lumber that felt ripe with juice. She breathed in the scent and thought that standing in a half-built house must be the closest thing to being inside a tree, smelling it. The scent was so strong that she could even taste it.

  It was getting dark and the sound of Clay’s hammer was loud in the dusk.

  The house was completely framed now and the roof had just been finished, so she was picturing what it would look like when it was done. She made a list of furniture she would have to buy and where certain pictures would hang and the way it would feel to stand at her sink and look out the little window over it, where she could see the backyard. She stood in that spot and imagined her hands in soapy water, the smell of a just-eaten supper lingering in the kitchen air.

  Suddenly Clay’s hands were upon her. He held her from behind and kissed the back of her head. “Won’t be much longer,” he said.

  She turned around and put her face in the warmth of his neck. He was sweaty and bare chested.

  “We’ll put the windows in tomorrow,” he said. He had enlisted everyone he knew to help with the house. Clay didn’t know a thing about carpentry, but he was learning as he went.

  For a long moment they stood there at the place where their sink would be, and she was very aware of his breathing. Night closed in quickly, and before long there was no light except the bare bulb of the droplight in its cage. Clay had run an extension cord over from Easter’s house, and the bulb burned in what would become the living room, where he had been hammering on the windowsills to get them square.

  She put her lips to his arms, but instead of kissing them, she just let her lips linger on his skin. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that lightning bugs had floated in. They hung in the air, glowing brightly, then darkening. There were more than a dozen, and they were all so close that she could reach out and touch them.

  “Look,” she said quietly, as if the bugs might be scared away. “Lightning bugs always make me think of when I was little.”

  He pulled away from her and caught one of the bugs in his hand. He held his palm up to her face, and the lightning bug glowed, casting a greenish yellow hue on her cheeks. The bug steadied itself, then spread its wings and took to the air.

  “I remember when I was real little, my mother woke me up in the middle of the night to look at the lightning bugs,” he said.

  “I thought they only came out at dusk,” she s
aid.

  “That’s why she got me up. It must’ve been three in the morning. She had been sitting up all night, drinking right by herself. I could smell the whiskey on her breath.”

  “How old was you?”

  “I couldn’t have been more than three. People don’t believe that I can remember that far back, but I can. She got killed when I was four, but every once in a while a little memory comes to me out of nowhere. I remember that night just like it was yesterday. Everything about it. The way the creek sounded, the little slice of moon hanging on the sky. Them lightning bugs, so many that it didn’t seem possible.”

  Alma took a step forward and put her hands on his face without knowing what she intended to do. She put a thumb against his lips, but he kept talking.

  “I never seen so many in my life. Just floating everywhere, so thick it didn’t seem real. And you could smell them. You know how a lightning bug has a real distinct smell? That covered our clothes. She carried me and every few seconds she would say, ‘Look,’ just the way you did a minute ago. And before she carried me back in the house, she said, ‘Remember this, Clay.’ And finally I did.”

  Alma kissed him. Free Creek was quiet and hot tonight. No one was stirring outside.

  WHEN THE HOUSE was finished, they did not have a dance to usher joy over the threshold, as people did in the old days, but moved in before the electric company had turned on the power. They spent their first night there in the blue black of springtime darkness on a mattress in the middle of the living room floor. They raised all of the windows and listened to these sounds: a chorus of crickets and katydids, a damp April breeze stirring in the burning bushes that Clay had planted on either side of their front steps, the chirp of the chimes Alma had hung from the porch eaves, and the rush of the creek.

  After they broke the house in properly, they lay back on the mattress with the breeze coming in sweet and cool against their sweaty bodies. They fell asleep tangled about each other and awoke when the uncovered windows welcomed in the sunlight coming over the mountain.