I BURNED THE note the next day. I was supposed to send one to Trinvilla and Will and let them know when to fetch Ro, but the note I sent two days later said she was too sickly to travel.
They didn’t come ’round. I didn’t reckon they would. They’d never been to see us at the Pikeville house. Didn’t want to dirty their hands by coming. Maybe they were right, I don’t know. Maybe they saw things as they were long before I did. I don’t fault them for it. In the trouble, we all had to find our own way out the best we could. Do what we had to do to survive.
Ro died a month later. Willed herself to. The night before, I was in the kitchen locking up when I saw a light out back. I looked out, thinking, Oh, I hope it’s not Johnse come anyway in his old wool hat. And when I looked, he was there, just outside the window.
Yeller Thing.
I couldn’t believe it was him, come all the way from our old homeplace! I hadn’t seen him in two years! How’d he find us here? Did I have to ask?
I opened the door and went outside. I wasn’t scairt. I felt about him like an old friend now. I knew he wouldn’t harm me. “She’s a-goin’ to die tonight, isn’t she?” I asked him.
He just lowered his head, his tongue all lolling out like he’d traveled a long way. But those eyes, how they glowed! And the smell of him! Then he did a strange thing. He lowered himself down like a lost dog and rested his head on his paws, all greenish yellow and ugly as can be. Why, he is pure tuckered out, I thought. And I knew then that it was the last time I would see him.
“I thank ye for the warning,” I said. And then I went into the house and upstairs to check on Ro. She was sleeping real peaceful-like. She wasn’t feverish. I looked out the back window from the hall. Yeller Thing was gone.
Next morning Ro never got out of bed at all. I went upstairs to find her dead. Pa buried her in Dils Cemetery, other side of Pikeville. He never said why he didn’t take her back to Blackberry Fork and bury her with the others. We didn’t ask.
I think I knew.
I think we all did, though none of us ever spoke the words. I think might be I was the last one to know about Ro and what she was about. But I thank God I came around to knowing.
All the newspapers carried news of her death. They played it up, all the things we’d rather forget. How Roseanna McCoy was the one who caused the feud between the two families, how a war had been fought over her. Like Helen of Troy. Imagine! My sister!
Trinvilla and Will didn’t come to the funeral. Reverend Thompson was still in Pennsylvania. Johnse Hatfield didn’t come, either. None of the Hatfields came. I think my family would have killed them right over her gravesite if they did.
Might be if I’d given her the note she would have rallied. I think of it as saving more lives. Though at night when the house is quiet I mind that I probably killed her by not giving it.
I think how strange this fight was between our families. How the killings, the raids, the maiming, the burning, and loss of property and home was all so bad. But the things we didn’t do when we should have were just as bad.
Ma didn’t give Jim permission to send for Pa and form a posse. I didn’t give Ro the note from Johnse. People who knew didn’t tell the judge that Ellison Mounts wasn’t to blame for killing Alifair. And the wrong man was hanged. Oh, I tried to tell Pa. We had a regular fuss about it. But he wouldn’t hear it. “Somebody has to hang for killing Alifair,” he said I told him it wasn’t right, that I’d go to the judge myself, and he laughed and said no judge would listen to a woman, look how they’d called Ma a liar in court, and she was there. So I knew he was right.
The things we don’t do are just as bad as the things we do in this life. It can drive you pure daft, if you think about it.
I have thought about it. A lot. Which is maybe why I’ve told Mr. Cuzlin I want to take that exam and get into normal school. And try to become a teacher. Might be some good will come of it that wouldn’t be if I just sat around here taking care of Ma every day and brooding. Ma will get taken care of. Let Adelaide come home and stay for a while. I’ve decided to do it.
Think on it. Something good coming out of something a McCoy did. That’s a hoot, isn’t it?
I’ve not seen Yeller Thing again and I don’t expect to. I still have Ro’s Coffin quilt. And someday soon I’ll burn that, too.