Clay's Quilt (6 page)

Dreama pushed him back to the corner of the room, where no one could hear them talking. She straightened his bow tie and picked lint off his jacket, never meeting his eyes. “I'm fixing to get married now,” she said, sadly.

“I know it.”

“Well, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, Clay. I'm afraid.”

“If you love him, that's all that matters.”

She stared into his green eyes, which were framed by the coal dust that no miner could get out of his lashes. She nodded.

“I know why you got so upset at me, that day up at the cedar,” Dreama said. “I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I never knowed you had any intentions of even wanting to have something serious.”

“I never did,” he lied. “It's all right.”

The bridesmaids all crowded in front of the mirror, pinning their wide-brimmed hats atop their heads. When they caught a glimpse of Clay leaving, they all turned to watch him go. His eyes settled on Easter.

“This is the best-looking bunch of women I ever seen,” he said loudly.

“You damn straight,” Geneva said, and Easter nearly passed out from hearing such a word uttered within the walls of the church.

C
LAY WALKED BACK
into the sanctuary and down the aisle toward the foyer. The pews were full, and Clay nodded to everyone as he passed. There were people Easter went to church with sitting right beside people Gabe got wild drunk with, which made Clay smile to himself. There were aunts who told him how good-looking he was and asked why he wasn't married yet. There were uncles who knew perfectly well that Clay didn't hunt but continued to ask him when he was going to go squirrel hunting with them.

In the foyer, Darry was leaning up against the wall, green-faced and red-eyed. None of them had lain down until six that morning because Gabe wouldn't let them. Gabe got wilder than any of them and ended up on a crying drunk that half of them didn't even remember. They all got up at ten in order to get ready for the wedding, and that was when everyone realized it had been pure foolishness to have a bachelor party the night before the wedding.

“I hope you don't get up there and puke when you're supposed to say ‘I do,'” Clay told Darry.

“I've never got sick yet. I'm tired, though.”

Clay felt awkward when he couldn't find anything else to say. He had known Darry all of his life, but for whatever reason, he
had never even considered being friends with him. Darry talked slow and easy, choosing his words carefully, and Clay liked that about him, but he had never been able to like him. Weddings always made people feel closer—especially the men—but that was about as far as it went between Darry and Clay. They had been pushed together by the ceremony, and afterward they would just nod to each other when they met and not be able to hold a whole conversation. They stood side by side, waiting for the wedding to begin, and didn't say another word.

Clay stood and looked out at the crowd, remembering all the Sundays Easter had brought him and Dreama to church here. He recalled the way Pastor Morgan's voice had shaken the church, as did the heavy thumping of his fists upon the podium. Clay had often wondered if God had a voice as powerful as the preacher's. Sometimes the preacher would pull off his suit coat and let it fly through the air to land wherever it might. The singing gave Clay visible chill bumps, and he had been mesmerized by the women who spoke in unknown tongues and shouted, often falling onto the floor and shaking until someone spread a towel over their legs so that their skirts wouldn't ride up and shame them. More than once he had witnessed Easter rising from her place at the piano midsong to take off running down the aisles, hollering, with her hands raised over her head. Once she had shouted and danced so hard that her hair had fallen out of its pins and she had broken one of the short heels off her shoes.

He remembered the Sunday school classes he had attended downstairs, where it had always smelled of chalk and damp books. He had memorized the verses and the books of the Bible in order: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Clay never had felt really close to God inside the church, not the way he did when he could see the creek running over the rocks and the mist coming
down off the mountain. By the time he was about thirteen, he began to realize that God didn't just live inside this old church house, even though the preacher called it God's house every chance he got. One Sunday, in the middle of the morning meeting, Clay told Easter he had to go to the toilet, but instead he left the church. He walked up into Free Creek and up the mountain. He ran quickly along the white path until he reached the big cedar tree and then sat on the rock ledge with his knees pulled up to his chest.

He closed his eyes and felt God floating all around him. He felt His presence burning into the trees, popping on the air.

No sooner than he found salvation, he heard Easter. “What do you mean, up and leaving during the preaching? You lied to me, right in the church house,” she said, her voice nearly as loud as Pastor Morgan's.

“I don't know. I felt cramped up.”

“You've got to learn the ways of the Lord, Clay. I've got to give that to you. I'm the only one will.”

“I like it better right here,” he said. He wanted to say,
This is where God lives,
but he knew Easter would probably say that was blasphemy. She was always worried about people blaspheming since this was the only sin that God would not forgive. He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he told her, “I believe in God.”

“Well, I sure hope so,” she said. She clutched her purse in front of her and didn't move. “But you have to congregate with other Christians, honey. You've got to let your light shine.”

“Why can't I shine it right here?”

Easter fretted her eyebrows together. “You going to be just like your mommy.”

He kept going to church with Easter. He felt the fire of the Holy Ghost run up and down the back of his neck, he clapped and sang
along to songs like “The Good Old Gospel Ship” and “Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” but it wasn't the same feeling that came to him when he was on the mountain, alone. That was where he prayed. On the mountain, he was able to recognize the Lord hanging in the trees, blowing against his face.

Clay heard the first strains of one of his favorite songs, and he was brought back to the present. When he turned to look past the pews crowded with everyone he knew, he saw a girl he had never seen, stepping up on the altar. She brought a fiddle up to her face and began playing “Midnight on the Water.”

He had barely gotten to size up the fiddler before Darry nudged him and said it was time they walked on up to the altar. Even after they were situated in front of the congregation, he couldn't help looking to his side, where she was playing.

The girl's eyes were closed tightly, as if she felt every note of the music flow through her. He liked the straight way she stood, the careful placement of her feet. He watched the way she moved, her body bending forward slightly with each changing note, her hair swaying softly behind her, the curve of her cheek against the cool wood of the fiddle. She concentrated on the cries of her fiddle, making sure each one came out correct and full of pain. When she finished, she stepped to the side of the altar pews without even looking out over the audience.

Anita Whitaker went to the altar and began singing “Love Can Build a Bridge,” and the bridesmaids began their walk up the aisle. When Dreama appeared in the foyer on Gabe's arm, the fiddler stood and broke into a rousing version of the “Wedding March,” and then everyone jumped up and looked toward the back of the church.

Clay looked at the fiddler, though. Still she did not open her eyes but sawed away at the instrument like a man determined to cut down an oak. She let her hair fall into her face, her knuckles
white. The music seemed to flow right out of her skin. He felt dizzy from the beauty of her fiddling and swallowed hard. Even after she had stopped playing and the ceremony began, he watched her. He didn't even notice when one of the candles in the tall, brass candelabra fizzled out with a hiss, foretelling infidelities, and a little murmur rose up from the crowd.

Dreama and Darry tangled around each other for a long, sensuous kiss, and the preacher introduced them as man and wife.

Darry and Dreama walked quickly back down the aisle as the fiddler launched into a fast, celebratory song that Clay had never heard before.

The reception was held across the road in the fellowship hall. Everyone settled into their seats while Dreama and Darry went about shoving wedding cake into each other's mouths and twisting their arms awkwardly together to drink their punch. Clay sat down beside Easter, who had taken her seat at the very back of the room. She was gray-faced and looked as if she had walked wearily into the building and fallen into the first chair she had seen.

“We're supposed to be up front,” he said. “Dreama will kill us.”

“I know it,” Easter answered. She did not meet his eyes and seemed to be looking at nothing at all. Suddenly, she seemed very old.

“What's wrong?” Clay asked.

“It's just come to me,” she said, as if she was out of breath. “Dreama's carrying a baby.”

When he turned in his seat, he saw the fiddler, standing straight-backed in a coat that was too heavy for the season.

“Are you Dreama's brother?” she asked.

“No, I'm her first cousin, but I might as well be. We was raised up together.” He could smell the strong, fresh scent of Coast soap easing out of her skin.

“Well, can you tell her that I need to go on and leave? She said I didn't need to play at the reception. I hate to run off, but I've got to go.”

“Why yeah, I'll tell her,” Clay said. “Did she already pay you?”

“You all don't owe me nothing,” she said. “It was such a pretty wedding that they ain't no way I could charge for playing. It was my pleasure.”

Clay patted his back pocket for his billfold, then realized it was in his tuxedo jacket. “Here,” he said, and shoved a twenty-dollar bill into her slender hand. “At least take this, for gas up here.”

“No,” she said, pushing the money away with a half-smile. “I don't want it. Swear I don't.”

“Are you a friend of hers?”

“Naw, I had a little paper on the bulletin board at the community college, saying ‘Fiddler for Hire,' and she called me,” she said, and laughed as if she was embarrassed. “This is the first time I ever played for strangers.”

“Well, you'll never make no money this way.”

“That's all right. We'll see you all later. Tell Dreama I said congratulations.”

He watched her skipping across the puddles of the parking lot, her fiddle case clutched tightly in her hand. She got into her car and plowed off through the rain as if she was running away from something.

C
LAY AND
C
AKE
were headed to the Hilltop Club. The night was warm and well lit by a bright rind of a moon, but there was a scent to the air that signaled autumn approaching. Clay had rolled down all of the windows, and the wind came into the cab of his truck to swirl about roughly. Steve Miller was singing on the radio.

Cake patted the dashboard to the beat of the music and took long hits on a joint. Clay didn't hunger for pot, and he definitely didn't feel like it tonight. The aroma of marijuana was sickeningly sweet and tangy as it met the damp, warm air.

“You want to cruise through town before we head up to the club?” Clay asked.

“Why yeah,” Cake answered, after singing the entirety of a verse. “We do every Saturday night. Why would we change it now?”

Clay drove on, leaning this way and that with each curve of
the road. They drove into town, where the stores were all closed and lit up like many-windowed boxes stacked along Main Street. The town itself was closed, as nothing stayed open past dark, but the streets were filled with slow, rumbling cars crowded with people who waved and hollered to Clay and Cake. They knew by the cars who they were passing, without even glancing at their faces. They went on up to the shopping center, where people sat on their car hoods beneath signs that ordered
NO LOITERING
. People were dancing beside their open car doors or sitting on the tailgates of trucks, swinging their legs and yelling to everyone that passed. Cake burst out of the truck window, half his body extended into the air, and screamed for everybody to go up to the Hilltop with them.

The Hilltop Club sat nestled halfway up Town Mountain, a wide-shouldered wall above Black Banks. As they climbed the steep grade, they could see the whole town spread out below them. There were so many lights and zooming cars that it almost looked like a big city. Across the bowl that held the town, another mountain rose up to support the hospital, which you could pick out by the marble statue of Jesus with his arms stretched out in front: the white figure was so lit up that it could be seen for miles.

In the parking lot, Clay turned off the truck and sat breathing in the good air for a minute while Cake primped. It was such a beautiful night that Clay considered asking Cake if it would be all right with him if they just went driving around, but he knew this would have been foolish talk to Cake. Cake had waited all week, thinking of nothing but Saturday night while he worked at the gas station, and there was nothing he would rather do than party. Besides, Clay liked being dressed up and having somewhere to go, liked knowing that he could walk into the club and know everyone there, that he could hold up a dollar bill and
have a cold beer delivered to him. They could hear the beat of the music rolling across the blacktop, and already he felt like dancing.

“How I look?” Cake asked. He had on a black bowling shirt, tight black Levi's, and shiny black boots. He brushed his hair again and studied himself in the visor mirror.