Clay's Quilt (9 page)

Anneth pushed through the women and ran into the yard. She took Marguerite's bony shoulders in her hands and shook her as hard as she could. Marguerite's hair, which she always wore pinned up, tumbled down to tremble around her face and brush the dust. Anneth shook her so hard that she expected to shake Marguerite's eyes back down to their proper place. Finally, Marguerite made a low, coughing sound, as if her mouth was full of dirt. She fell into Anneth's arms and breathed in great gulps of air. She looked up at Anneth with such a pathetic mixture of thanks and bewilderment that Anneth had decided right then and there to befriend her.

“What is it, honey?” Anneth asked. “What in the hell's wrong with you?”

“I'm smothering,” she coughed out. Her face was covered in dirt, and one tear rolled out to make a long, crooked line down her cheek. She held on to Anneth tightly, digging her fingernails into her arms. She reminded Anneth of a child, with her little, breakable hands and those pale eyes, big and round as dollar coins.

“These mountains are smothering me to death,” Marguerite said. “Too close.”

Anneth laughed heartily. “Well, you might as well get used to em. They're here to stay.”

After that, Anneth had made it a point to go see Marguerite every chance she got. Marguerite was smart and she seemed so exotic. Marguerite had shelves and shelves of books and received a new one every month in the mail. She had a whole milk crate full of classical records, and when she played them, she would move her hands around in the air like two white doves floating in front of her. The wild violins of Paganini made chills run up the backs of Anneth's legs.

Anneth sat on the floor going through the records while Marguerite played them and moved her hands around, telling the life stories of each composer.

They went for long walks together, climbing the mountain that stood behind Easter's house. They talked and looked at the trees while they each packed their babies on their hips. Marguerite taught Anneth how to press autumn leaves between sheets of wax paper, and Anneth told her about the old tradition of finding a four-leaf clover and putting it in the Bible when a child was born to ensure good luck throughout the child's life.

No one understood this friendship. They couldn't see why Anneth, who loved to drink and run wild all weekend, would
want to spend time with Marguerite, whose face was as flat and featureless as her personality. Easter was especially upset.

“I don't understand you,” Anneth said. “Why would I want to slight her? She's good to me.”

“There's just something about that woman,” Easter said.

“Maybe she is a little strange, but I like that. Just because she don't claim no sort of religion, you think she's a devil. That don't make a lick of sense.”

“It ain't just that,” Easter said. “That first day I met her, when I touched her hand, I didn't feel a thing. I can't explain it. It was like touching a dead person.”

Anneth threw her head back and laughed, slapped her bare knee. “That's why you don't like her, because you can't read her. You believe somebody is without a soul just because you can't see into it.”

Easter didn't say a word, which let Anneth know she was insulted.

“Don't you feel sorry for her?” Anneth asked.

“Why?”

“My God, I feel sorry for anybody that's married to Harold Singleton. He's the ugliest, stupidest man I ever knowed,” Anneth said. “She's all alone, miles away from her home.”

When Anneth was killed, Marguerite actually did lose her mind at first. She broke every dish in the house and, when she realized what she had done, gathered up all the pieces in a paper bag, which she hid underneath her bed. Only when Harold came home from the mines did she see that her hands were cut and bleeding. As soon as Harold came in and told her to get ready to go down to Easter's for the wake, she straightened herself as if she had flicked a switch. She put on makeup and her brightest dress and walked down the holler holding on to Harold's hand.

Marguerite walked straight-backed to the coffin. Everyone
watched, as she seemed changed, a different woman. It was as if some of Anneth's immense strength had been pumped into her. She leaned down and took hold of Anneth's hand, mouthed a short prayer, and walked out. At the door, Easter took both of Marguerite's bandaged hands into her own.

“She thought so much of you,” Easter said.

“Thank you,” Marguerite said, and for the first time that any of them could see, she smiled.

Later, when Clay came up to play or stay the night with Cake, Marguerite dropped whatever she was doing to sink down on the floor and sit with him until Cake asked her to leave them alone. She would bring out her milk crate of records and wipe them with a damp cloth, handling them as if they were a priceless set of dishes that would be ruined if one was broken. Every time Clay came to the house, she dragged out the records, waiting for the day he would ask about them.

When he finally asked to hear some of the albums, she told him to play whatever he wanted. He picked the records at random, choosing an album more for the cover than anything else. He grew fond of Mozart, Bach, Paganini. From then on, every time he came, he wanted to hear them. This was the only place he knew of to hear such music, and it gave him a guilty thrill to listen to it. Cake and Dreama rolled their eyes and laughed when he played the records. They made jokes while he played the foreign music, and ended up running outside to play without him.

Marguerite would sit and hold a glass of iced tea with a paper towel around it while Clay sorted through the albums. She directed him to set the needle to a certain groove and sometimes closed her eyes while the music played, the way Clay had seen some people do when they were savoring an especially good piece of corn bread.

“That is Johann Sebastian Bach, my mother's favorite
composer,” Marguerite said. She chose her words very carefully, so that even in conversation she sounded as if she were reciting a poem. “That is the Air, from the Suite in D Major. We played it at my mother's funeral. When I hear it, I picture her and the way she looked when we would go to the ocean.”

Clay hardly ever spoke when he was alone with Marguerite. He loved to sit and listen to her, watch the way she cast her eyes down slowly at a thought she didn't announce, the way she moved her hands around in front of herself when he played something she liked.

He held up a record cover and tried to pronounce the name of the composer.

“That is Niccolò Paganini,” Marguerite said. “There is a piece on there that your mother loved. It's called ‘La Campanella.' She'd turn that up as loud as it would go and dance around the living room.”

Clay ran his firm, flat hand across the record album. It felt very cold.

“You may have that, if you promise to take very good care of it.”

Clay couldn't believe his good fortune. He didn't protest, as he had been taught to do when offered a sudden gift, but jumped up and hugged Marguerite around the neck. She laughed nervously. She wasn't used to being touched. “Don't tell anyone I've given it to you,” she said.

He put the record on and counted the correct number of grooves until he came to “La Campanella.” Neither of them spoke as the music filled the room, encircling them like ghosts. Clay looked at the floor, picturing his mother dancing round and round.

When the song ended, Marguerite brushed Clay's bangs back off his forehead. Her movements were like water, so full of grace
and ceremony that they looked practiced. She ran her hand down the side of his face and put two fingers beneath his chin so that she could look into his eyes. Clay felt strange, almost uncomfortable, and wondered what she was looking for. They both jumped with a start when Cake ran into the room. Cake stopped suddenly, the smile fading from his face as if it had been wiped away. Clay knew that Marguerite had never touched Cake in such a good, secretive way.

A
LMA WAS STILL
at the honky-tonk. It was almost four o'clock in the morning, but Evangeline would not leave. As soon as the crowd had cleared out after the club closed at two, Evangeline had come straight off the stage, taken five shots of liquor, and gone up to the deejay's booth to put on a seemingly endless tape.

Now she was dancing in the middle of the dance floor by herself. She convulsed around the floor barefoot, with her eyes tightly shut, dancing as fast as she could to “Hot Legs.” One of the bouncers, Frankie, sat in a chair at the edge of the dance floor, watching as Evangeline twisted and shook. He smiled as though he knew something nobody else did, believing that she was dancing just for him, and each time she came near, he reached out for her, hoping she would finally collapse, exhausted, into his arms.

Alma sat at the bar, slowly nursing a Dr Pepper, and watched
her sister. This was the way it had been ever since she had moved in with Evangeline a month ago.

Roe came out of the back room and went behind the bar, splashing Seagram's 7 and 7UP into a glass. “You want one, honey?” Roe asked. “Seven and Seven. It's what Patsy Cline drunk.”

“No, thanks,” Alma said, and nodded toward Evangeline. “I've got to get her out of here.”

“She does that ever once in a while,” Roe said. “I usually just leave and tell her to lock up on her way out. Frankie always takes care of her.”

“I'll bet he does.”

Roe sat down at the bar and began counting her tips. The counter was covered with greasy dollar bills and shiny quarters. “Hey, I seen you dancing with Clay Sizemore tonight,” she said. “If I was you, I'd latch onto him.”

Alma smiled without taking her eyes off Evangeline, who had sat down on Frankie's lap and was taking the cigarette from his mouth to take long, exaggerated draws. “He seemed nice, but nothing'll ever come of that.”

“Why not? He's the best feller ever was.”

“I'm married,” Alma said.

Evangeline fell out of Frankie's lap and onto the dance floor. She lay on her back, clutching her belly while she laughed. Alma left her bar stool with a loud sigh.

“Come on, Evangeline.” She spat her words out over the loud music. “This is ridiculous.”

“Oh, baby, don't be mad at me,” Evangeline said, and sat up. She ran one hand down the side of Alma's face. “I'm just drunk is all.”

“Frankie, help me get her out to the car. Come on, now. I've set here long as I'm going to.”

They walked her out of the club and across the parking lot
to the car. Alma got into the car and started it up while Frankie stuffed Evangeline into the backseat. “Turn on the radio, by God!” Evangeline hollered, lying down.

Frankie put the seat back up and started to get in up front.

“What do you think you're doing?” Alma asked. She put her arm across the passenger seat so he couldn't sit down.

“I'm going home with you all. I stay up Evangeline's all the time.”

“Not no more. I stay with her now.”

“Well, how in the hell am I supposed to get home?” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“I don't know, and I don't give a shit. I don't like you, and you ain't getting in this car.”

She shifted into drive and took off with the door open. She peeled out of the parking lot and almost lost control of the wheel in the deep gravel. The steering wheel spun around between her fingers and she bolted upright in her seat as the car straightened out. The door slammed closed heavily as she turned onto the road and started down the mountain.

“Turn that radio on, by God, I said!” Evangeline screamed again, as Alma turned onto the ramp to Daniel Boone Parkway toward home. Alma snapped on the volume, and the radio blared country music so loudly that the words of the song seemed to run together.

The parkway was deserted, and Alma felt like screaming, screaming even louder than the radio. She rolled down her window to let some of the music flow out onto the cool air.

She flew down the highway, and suddenly the image of her father appeared on the windshield. She pictured him at home, down on his knees beside his bed, praying aloud with tears streaming down his face. He was crying over his two daughters, who he was certain were going to hell. Anytime she heard from
him, he said: “And your blood will be on my hands. The Bible says so.”

Their family was the most popular gospel group in the mountains. Everyone had heard of the Singing Mosley Family, and everyone loved and respected them. Being in a gospel group was second only to being a preacher.

Evangeline had been the lead singer until she was sixteen years old. Back then, Evangeline would barely get out the first verse of a song before people rose to their feet crying and praising the Lord. Evangeline's voice stirred up emotions in people, made all of their feelings spill out on their faces. It wasn't long before Evangeline started moving her hips a little too much as she sang. Their father thought she was too wild with her tambourines, often beating them so hard that her palm went right through the covers.

Alma could remember the night Evangeline left the singing group—and childhood—behind. They were at the Lost Fork Full Gospel Church, and Evangeline was taking control of the crowd. People were running up and down the aisles, screaming out in tongues, falling onto the altar to pray. Alma watched as Evangeline's eyes fell on a boy in the audience. The boy was sitting slumped over in his seat, turning something over in his hands. He was the only person present who didn't seem to be under Evangeline's spell, and she must have liked that. He had curly brown hair, and eyes as green as water. As soon as the singing was over and the preaching began, Evangeline slipped out of her seat and walked down the aisle, looking at the boy in such a manner that he knew he better follow her out. She didn't come home until the next morning, and when she did, Thomas met her at the door with a belt. She jerked it out of his hand before he had a chance to use it and slammed her bedroom door.