TOLBERT GAVE A holler to let them know we were coming. Else they might have shot at us. At once their dogs started braying and yelping. They do have a parcel of dogs. But the family was smaller than ours. At last count, seven children, though we’d heard that Levicy Hatfield was expecting again.
Robert E. Lee, who was thirteen, came out to the gate. His hair was so yellow it was white, and it hung over his eyes. He was munching something. I saw him, though my brother made me stay back until he knew all was safe. Tolbert leaned down from his horse and said something to Robert E. Lee, who ran right into the house to get his pa, I guess.
Bushes and flowers grew wild everywhere. I kept thinking, so this is West Virginia. But it didn’t look any different from Kentucky. I could see a woman on the porch behind the climbing vines. Could that be Roseanna? Then Cap Hatfield came out of the house. He was two years younger than Johnse and blind in one eye. He was a big hand for killing. He loved to kill almost as much as he loved to eat, so I got a mite scared when he walked right up to my brother. But I knew Tolbert had his gun at the ready.
Their talk drifted on the morning air. Then Tolbert waved me forward. I trembled with excitement. I was finally going to see Roseanna! But I was scared, too. I didn’t trust Cap. And I didn’t think Tolbert should accept an invite unless it came from old Devil Anse himself.
Then Devil Anse came out of the house, hitching up his trousers, his long black beard reaching below his neck. His head was half bald, his nose like an eagle’s, and his eyes all narrow and too close together. I slid off my horse and stood behind Tolbert.
The men walked off a piece. I heard Devil Anse ask my brother what we’d come for, heard Tolbert’s reply. Then they conferred in low tones. I stood like a jackass in the rain, staring over at the porch. It was Roseanna. But it seemed like she didn’t see me.
“You can go on over and say howdy, Fanny,” Tolbert said.
The place seemed spooked, empty. Chickens were scratching in the dirt, and except for them and the dogs settled now under the big locust tree, nothing bestirred. The weathered boards of the house made it seem stark. What windows there were gazed at us like blank eyes. Yet at the same time I felt hidden eyes on me. I opened the creaking gate and went toward the porch. “Ro?” My voice faltered.
“Fanny?”
It was Ro! I went up the rickety steps. There she was, behind the wild vines, quilting.
“Oh, my God, baby, come here.” She held out her arms.
I went to her, sobbing. “Oh, Ro, I’ve missed you so. It’s just awful at home without you.”
“Why have you and Tolbert come? Is it Ma? Is she all right?”
I wiped my tears. “Yes. We’ve come to fetch you home. Pa sent for you.”
“Pa? Pa sent for me?” She pulled back, holding me by my shoulders. “Pa? You telling me he wants me home? I thought he’d be madder than a stuck pig because of what I did.”
I couldn’t lie. “He is, Ro. But now he’s found out you aren’t wed, so he wants you home.”
“Oh, Lordy, Lordy.” She released me and started walking on the rickety porch, chewing on a fingernail. “How’d he find out?”
“Word’s got ’round. You know how it does.”
She knew. Now she folded her arms across her middle and groaned. “We wanted to marry. We still both want it. But Johnse’s pa won’t allow it.”
I stared at her, blinking. “How can he stop you?”
“Johnse isn’t twenty-one yet. But oh, honey, we love each other. And we’re wed in our hearts, where it matters. No preacher could make it more legal!”
At that moment I understood more the habits of our sheep than I understood my sister Ro. I only knew she was in trouble if she didn’t come home with us today. And that was enough. “Since you’re not married, you’ll come home with us, won’t you?” I asked.
She stopped pacing. “Oh no, Fanny, I can’t come home. I can’t leave Johnse. I love him.”
“But you could come back when he comes of age and wed. Can’t you?”
She shook her head of curly hair. “It’s not only Johnse. I know Pa, Fanny. He wants me home same’s he wanted that sow and pigs years ago. Because I’m his’n. But how will he treat me if I come home? You can’t tell me he isn’t frothing at the mouth ’cause of what I did. Can you?”
No, I couldn’t.
“If I leave Johnse and go home and Pa is mean to me, I won’t be able to stay. Then I’ll have lost Johnse, too. He’ll think I don’t love him if I leave now. No, baby, I can’t chance it.”
Tolbert came on the porch and hugged her. “Why aren’t you wed, Ro?” he asked.
“Johnse’s pa won’t let us.”
Gently, he led her to the far end of the porch and spoke softly to her for a while, his head bent low above hers. Then I heard him finish. “You oughtn’t to stay someplace with somebody if they won’t let you wed, Ro,” he said.
“I know.” She put her hand on his arm and smiled up at him. “But Tolbert, we’re working on old Devil Anse. I’m sure he’ll give in soon. Did you ever know anybody who couldn’t give in to me, Tolbert?”
He shrugged.
“Go on now,” she said. “It isn’t that I’m not glad to see you, but don’t stay around too long. There could be trouble. Give my love to Ma and everybody. I’ll be fine.”
Tolbert didn’t know what to do. He looked in the direction of old Devil Anse Hatfield and Cap, who were standing away a little piece, all the time watching us. He looked at Ro. I could tell he was split down the middle just like that old locust tree in our yard that was struck by lightning last summer. “Hate to leave you here like this,” he said.
“Go. Please.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I’m just fine.”
Tolbert moved away, off the porch toward the gate. “Make it quick, Fanny,” he said.
Was he still counting on me to convince her to come? I searched around in my mind for something to say. Then I saw the quilt she’d been working on. It was the strangest quilt I’d ever seen. All dark colors, not bright and purty like ours. “You’re working on this?” I asked.
“Yes. Johnse’s ma had started it and never finished. It’s a Coffin quilt.”
I looked closely. All around the edges were coffins, spaced well apart. The middle had a large empty space. “A Coffin quilt?”
She gave a little laugh. “I don’t cotton to it much myself, but it’s over half done and it’s all I’ve got right now for our bed. Each coffin has a name of the member of the family. And when they die you move the coffin from the edge and put it in the middle. See?”
I looked up at my sister. “How can you live with people who make quilts with coffins on them? What kind of people are they?”
“It’s only a quilt, honey. Don’t take on so.”
“Coffins on a quilt! How can you cover yourself with it? These people are all crazy, Ro.”
“It’ll keep us warm this winter. When it’s done I’ll start on my own. Maybe one with birds, animals, and flowers.”
“Ro, come home. Bad things will happen to you here, I know it.”
She kissed my forehead. “Go,” she said. “If you can get away, bring me a bundle of my things. Pa hasn’t thrown them away, has he?”
“No.” I wished I’d thought to bring her something. I thought, guiltily, of the comb. It wasn’t right for a woman not to be dowered, was it? But then, Ro wasn’t wed. Oh, I was so confused.
“Then maybe sometime you can ride over with them. Leave them by the gate. If I see you, I’ll come out. You can do that for me, can’t you? I’ll warn them you may be coming, so you don’t have to be afraid.”
I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t come home with us. I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying.
Coffins on a quilt! I looked at it, lying there, ugly as sin. Then at her, so beautiful. Would she become like them if she stayed here? They were sharp-faced, ugly people, with no color in their faces. I turned and ran through the yard and the gate to where Tolbert was waiting.