Clay's Quilt (20 page)

Alma began sawing away on her fiddle. It was a fast, exhausting piece that called for a banjo to back her up, but Lige and the band were keeping up. People rushed the dance floor. It was one of those songs that seemed to play on its own—the kind of song that let Alma know why people had once considered the fiddle the devil's instrument. It was wild and loud and set everyone to dancing or squalling or stomping their feet.

Clay loved this song. He had said it sounded like the sound track to his life, and she loved that. So she gave the fiddle all of her strength, finally giving herself up to the song or the devil or whatever it was that filled her body with sensation and took control of her. She kept her eyes on the neck of the fiddle, moved her head back and forth to the sweet, spinning sound, and shuffled her feet to the beat. She could see Evangeline dancing, holding up her skirt and clogging so hard that the people in the crowd could hear her heels stomping along with them.

Clay and Cake clogged with their arms limp at their sides, but Geneva and Goody stood watching Alma, clapping and keeping time. When they came to the bridge, Alma let the fine guitar-picking of Lige take over for a moment. She tapped her bow against the strings and patted her foot. She grinned down at Clay, who was dancing near the stage. And then she saw Denzel making his way across the dance floor. He moved careful and stiff, like a man stepping across rows in a garden. His eyes were fixed on her face. He did not blink.

Evangeline looked up from her stomping feet just in time to see the smile sliding off Alma's face. Lige waited for the fiddle to kick back in as the bridge ended, then started playing faster
so the people might not notice that Alma had not put her bow back to the strings.

Denzel walked slowly to the stage, no sign of emotion on his face. He did not look angry, and he certainly did not look happy to see her. His eyes were slightly squinted, as if he were trying to be certain that it was her. Alma scanned the crowd for Clay, and when she laid eyes upon him, Denzel followed her gaze. He looked back and forth from her to Clay and then to her again.

“I've watched you tonight,” he hollered, but she couldn't really hear him. Somehow she knew what he was saying, as if she were able to read lips.

He walked around to the little set of steps that led up to the stage.
He intends to come right up here, then,
she thought. She dropped the fiddle with a dull thud and moved back slowly. The microphone issued an awful shriek as she knocked the stand over. The whole crowd stopped. The band's music faded for a moment, then picked back up.

Clay pushed his way through the people and got to Denzel about the time he stepped up onto the stage. The music stopped and Lige ripped the guitar's shoulder strap off himself. The drums' cymbals sent out a sweet, shivery splash as the drummer got up. Alma kept backing up, unaware of where she was going.

Clay caught Denzel by the shoulder and turned him around. When Denzel pulled his arm back, Clay hit him square in the mouth. Denzel's broad back crashed against the side of the stage, but he came back with his fists ready. He hit one side of Clay's face and then the other, landing each punch squarely.

Clay went at Denzel with fists flying. He struck Denzel's face and then punched him in the stomach. Denzel fell to the floor again and Clay straddled his chest to punch either side of his face. Denzel bucked Clay off him and stood quickly, moving around in a half-circle, then pushed Clay down with both hands
and leaned over him. Alma could see his elbows rising up into the air behind him as he hit Clay in the face.

Alma scrambled down off the stage and pulled at Clay, screaming and sinking her fingernails into Denzel's face. She felt his skin peel back underneath her nails. She wrapped her arms around Clay's head and she pulled him up onto her lap as Denzel's fists pounded against her hands. “Don't hit him!” she screamed, over and over, her voice a high, scratchy thing that she had never heard before.

Cake broke through to pull her away. He hooked his arms through Alma's from behind while she continued to scream. Clay managed to get up and went at Denzel as if reinvigorated. As he pounded Denzel's face, everyone in the honky-tonk began to fight. The crowd surged forward and people fell onto one another. Glass shattered. Tables were turned over; chairs were thrown. A lot of the women were fighting, too, but some of them stood up in their chairs to get a better view. They hollered and laughed. Geneva ripped a girl's blouse half off. Goody attacked one of the pool players. The bouncers tried in vain to pull people apart.

A man pulled Clay off Denzel, who was lying in between table legs, with blood running out of the side of his mouth. The man held Clay back as Denzel got up, his big hands spread across Clay's chest as he said, “He's had enough now. Drop it.”

Denzel didn't look at Clay again but stepped over an upturned table to go toward Alma, who was still being held by Cake. Cake let go of her, thinking that Denzel intended to fight him, but when he did, Denzel slapped Alma across the face.

Evangeline ran at Denzel and hit his face with open hands. She yelled close enough for her spit to land on his lips. Tears ran down her face in a black mess of mascara. The bouncers grabbed Denzel, hustling him across the dance floor.

The pool player released Clay with a little push, right into the
grip of Frankie, who took his arm and began walking him out of the club. Alma was suddenly at his side.

People were still fighting as Frankie led them out. Cake, Geneva, and Goody followed, but Evangeline had to be packed out. A bouncer wrapped one big arm around her waist while she kicked and hollered.

Frankie sent them outside. He stood in the open doorway, out of breath. “God awmighty, Clay,” he said. “Don't you know better than to mess with that feller? That sumbitch is crazier than hell, and on coke. Get the hell out of here.”

G
ENEVA DROVE THEM
all back to Clay's house. Alma insisted that Clay put his head in her lap, though Geneva assured her that he was fine, she had seen him in far worse fights than that.

“He ain't hurt!” Geneva squalled out. “Damn, that was a rush. I ain't been in a fight in five year. Uh, Goody, you bleeding!” Geneva let out a peeling laugh and beat on the steering wheel.

Clay sat up dizzily and blew his nose onto a wad of toilet paper that somebody had handed him. “Did I do all right?” he asked.

“All right? Hell's bells, buddy, you whopped his ass, looked like to me,” Goody said. “I don't see how he kept getting up.”

“Cause he was so coked up he didn't feel nary punch, that's why,” Geneva said loudly. She lit a cigarette and clicked off the radio. A light rain began to fall and the wipers grated across the windshield. “That bastard was higher than hell on coke. Couldn't you tell that?”

“Who in the hell was that anyway?” Cake asked. “We didn't even know him.”

“I never seen him before,” Goody said.

“That was Alma's ex-husband,” Clay said.

Alma looked at Clay. “How did you know?” she asked, but Clay didn't answer.

“Well, he won't mess with you all no more,” Geneva said, driving carefully around the curves of the wet road. “I guarantee his nose is broke, plus a lot more.”

Alma ran her sweaty hand over Clay's and leaned over him to breathe out, “I'm sorry, Clay. I shouldn't have never went there.”

“They ain't nothing to be sorry about,” Clay said.

“L
ORD
G
OD
, B
UDDY
,” Gabe said, sitting upright in his seat at the kitchen table. “You are beat plumb to death.”

“He looks worse than I do,” Clay said as he sat down at the table.

Dreama came down the hallway, ready to start breakfast.

“Oh my God, Clay. You need stitches,” she said, and touched his face softly. She looked as if she was about to cry. “If Easter sees your face tore up like that, she'll die, absolutely die.”

“Don't touch that cut, Dreama, it'll mark the baby!” Gabe boomed, and Dreama pulled her hand away quickly.

“Was it over that girl you seeing?” Gabe asked.

“Naw. I tole you, I don't know what it was over. He just come up to me and—”

“Buddy, don't lie to me,” Gabe said, standing and hitching up his jeans. He walked to the counter and poured himself and Clay a cup of coffee. “You know I know everbody up at that Hilltop. They tole me that was Alma's husband.”

“He signed the divorce papers today. It'll be final in three months.”

“It don't matter, son. They ain't divorced yet, and you ought not be out with her.”

“Shit, Daddy, what are you so moral all of a sudden for?” Dreama asked, wild-eyed.

“What?”

“Like you ain't had married women.” Dreama laughed loudly.

“They was separated when I met her. It ain't like I took her away from him,” Clay said, eyeing his uncle for a response.

“Still, you can't blame the feller. If he went in there and seen you two together, he didn't have no choice but to fight you. When you going to realize how people work, Clay? How the world works?”

“All I know is, I'm marrying her soon as that divorce is final,” Clay said.

If anybody knew how the world worked, it was Gabe. Clay remembered the first time Gabe had taken him hunting. He remembered the sound of falling leaves, cooing like women whispering among the trees. Leaves had drifted down in fiery quilts, patchworks of gold and red and orange.

“You know this path, now don't you?” Gabe had asked.

“Why yeah,” Clay answered. “I travel it ever day.”

“Well, you go on down yonder, and I'm going up on this ridge. Now walk easy, buddy, and kill you one.” Gabe straightened Clay's camouflage jacket, which was much too big for him. “Walk like I tole you.”

Gabe slid away and Clay walked carefully down the path, trying to bear the feet of his ancestors. Gabe had always told him how their Cherokee blood allowed for them to walk silent as a spirit over the mountain paths. Clay moved down the mountain without making a sound. He fancied he could walk
right up on the most timid bird without its knowing he was close.

He had walked silently on the path until he came upon a walnut tree, its limbs weary with their load. The ground below had been decorated by the nuts, and each time the slight morning breeze moved, a few more bounced onto the forest floor, like heavy rocks plopping into deep water. He quickly went about gathering them, shoving as many as he could carry into his hunting sack. When it was full, he felt the sack, the way he had patted Gabe's so many times before, and judged them to feel the same. Gabe's hunting sack was always pressed tight with squirrels, and when Clay smoothed his hand over it, it felt like a dozen little babies in a woman's belly. When he and Gabe met back up, Gabe shook his head.

“Walnuts?” he said, and his tone made it clear that he would never understand his nephew. A boy was supposed to be crazy over hunting, should mark off the days until the season opened, want to lay out of school just to go on a hunt. It was the mountain way. Gabe walked on down the trail, hitching up his pants and muttering to himself.

Clay took his hands away from his face and tried to clear his nostrils of the sharp, green scent of walnuts from so long ago. He heard Gabe laugh in a forced manner.

“Talking about marrying a woman that hain't even divorced yet,” Gabe said. “I swear, buddy, you a sight.”

E
VANGELINE HAD BEEN
playing solitaire. Now she took a card off the top of the deck and formed a perfectly straight line of cocaine on top of her wobbly nightstand. She rolled up a dollar bill and leaned over, snorted the coke up in one long nose-gulp. She breathed in deeply, threw her head back, and shook it madly, then took her index finger and dotted up the tiny
particles she had left behind and put them on her tongue. She closed her eyes, pinched her nostrils tightly, snapped off the radio, listened to see if the water was still running, and said aloud, “What in the
hell
is she doing?”

Alma had been in the shower for more than ten minutes. She turned round and round beneath the showerhead, her eyes clenched tightly shut, feeling nothing but the water, hearing nothing but the steady pounding on her cold body.

Evangeline lurched down the hall. Soon she would feel the cocaine and it would wake her up, sizzling up to hit her right in the forehead. She felt awful right now, and she badly needed the rush this instant. She had to be at the club for warm-ups in thirty minutes, and the boys would be pissing and moaning if she was late. Evangeline banged and kicked at the bathroom door, mad as hell. “Alma Leigh! What in the hell are you doing? I have to get cleaned up!”

The water beat its monotone song against the tub.

“Alma? Are you all right?” Evangeline's voice was suddenly tinged with worry. Ever since the lawyer had called and said that Denzel had signed the divorce papers, Alma had been acting crazy. She hadn't responded at all the way Evangeline had expected. If it had been Evangeline, she would have jumped up and down, screaming, “I finally got rid of the son of a bitch!” but Alma had just hung up the phone, called Clay to tell him, and gone to the bathroom. She had been there ever since.

Evangeline kicked the door so hard that the wood cracked around the doorknob, and her toe instantly began to swell up. “Alma, what in God's name are you doing in there?”

“Leave me alone,” came Alma's voice, full of water.

“Shit-fire,” Evangeline muttered, and gave up.

Alma hugged her arms about herself and felt the lukewarm water beat on her face and spread its sensation all the way
through her body, from the top of her head to her fingertips and down into her legs. She leaned against the tile, her hair tangled in the corners of her mouth, her eyes still clamped shut, and slid down the wall. She sat in the tub with her knees together in front of her face and gave herself to the water. It felt so good, so cleansing, that it reminded her of baptism. She could remember that sensation clearly, even though she had been very young when her father convinced her that she had been saved and that she had to go beneath the water to enter Heaven. She remembered how cold the November river had been, and the preacher's huge hand in the small of her back. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,” his rising voice announced, and then she was under the water so long that she thought he might never bring her back up. That water had felt so clean, and she had been convinced that it had been water blessed by the Lord. When she came back up to the late autumn air, she had felt so pure; she had felt sterilized from sin, bathed only in the goodness of the world. The people on the bank began singing “Down in the River to Pray,” and the presence of God had washed up onto the shores. She felt as good now, as full of spirit.