THE ONLIEST TIME I ever saw my pa cry was when a letter came to him, all stained and wrinkled, telling him a man he’d fought the war with had died. They’d eaten rats together in a Yankee prison. And when Pa got the letter that the man was run down by a carriage on the streets of Richmond, he cried like a baby.
That was the onliest time I saw him cry until Tolbert told him Ro wouldn’t come home. Pa didn’t really cry, but his face got all screwed up like he was fixing to. “Go on into the house,” he said to me gruffly. “Your ma’s got supper awaitin’. Tell her I’ll be in directly.”
By the time Tolbert brought him into the house, his face was smooth again. We all stood around the table until Pa sat. That was the custom. Then Ma would say a prayer. But soon as it was over Pa stood again, and we stopped reaching and grabbing for the food. We knew he was going to hold forth.
“Your sister has refused to come home,” he said. “I say she’s made her own bed, now let her lie in it. But I want to hear what you all say. First you, Sarah.”
“I say we should give her another chance. Let her mull things,” Ma said.
Tolbert, who’d stayed for supper, spoke next. “Her head is muddled. I think she may come if we give her time.”
“I say let her sleep in the bed she made,” from Alifair.
“You would say that,” Pharmer flung at her. “You were always jealous of Ro. I’m for giving her another chance, Pa. Then go fetch her. We fetch our hogs when they don’t come home, don’t we? Can we do any less for Ro?”
“Storm the place and get her back,” from Bud, “whether she wants to come or not.”
“I’m with Bud,” Bill said.
“Ro hasn’t done anything lots of other girls haven’t done,” Calvin offered. “She went there thinking she was to wed. It isn’t her fault the old man won’t let them.”
Pa took it all in, nodded after each offering. He didn’t ask me or Adelaide or Trinvilla. They didn’t care, but I did. And I had to say my piece. “Pa?” I asked.
“You’re too young,” Alifair interrupted.
“Let her speak,” from Pa. “She was there. What do you have to say, Fanny?”
Everybody was looking at me, especially Alifair. She was giving me the hatefulest look I’d ever seen. “Ro’s afeared you’ll be mean to her if she comes home. She said she won’t be able to bear it. And then she’d lose Johnse, too.”
Pa nodded.
“Is she happy there?” Ma asked.
“She seems so,” I said. “But we can’t leave her there anyways. We have to go and ask her again to come home. I think she would if we asked her again, Pa.”
“What are you telling us, Fanny child?” Ma asked.
I looked straight into my mother’s careworn face. “Ma,” I whispered, “she’s been working on a quilt. Not like the kind we make. It has little coffins all ’round the edges, with one for everybody in the family. And when a person dies they move the coffin to the middle.”
Ma closed her eyes, and I saw her lips move in prayer. Then she said the prayer aloud. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” she said. “Ranel? You hear that? You hear what kind of people they are? They’ve got our daughter working on a Coffin quilt.”
Pa sighed heavily and gave the hand signal that we should all start to eat. “That’s decided me,” he said. “Tolbert, can I prevail upon you to go and see your sister again tomorrow and try to bring her home?”
“You can, Pa. But what’ll convince her to come?”
“When you tell her,” Pa said, “that I aim to kill every Hatfield in Kentucky and West Virginia if she doesn’t come. Can I prevail on you to give her that message, Tolbert?”
“Yes, Pa,” Tolbert said.
“Fanny, you’re to go along with him,” Pa ordered.
I felt a thrill of importance. Alifair’s look grew more hateful. “Not fair!” she whined. “Not fair she goes again. I’m the oldest. It’s my place!”
“When the time comes for the fighting, Alifair, you’ll be right in on it, I promise,” Pa said.
So I got to go home with Tolbert again that night. And the next day we set off again for West Virginia. I asked if I could bring some of Ro’s things in a bundle, but Pa said no. “She won’t be needing her things if she comes home, and if she doesn’t she won’t be getting them. It’s up to you, Fanny, to tell your sister that.”
SO I TOLD her. Right after Tolbert told her what Pa aimed to do if she didn’t come.
“You want to start a war, Roseanna?” he asked her. I stood right next to him when he said it. “You think the last one was bad? If Pa gets all the McCoys together and storms over here, it’ll be worse than the firing on Sumter.”
As Ambrose Cuzlin would say when he picked up his switch, “The preliminaries are over.” No more sweet words from Tolbert, no more cajoling. Ro had already told my brother again all about how much she loved Johnse, but Tolbert was not interested in hearing of it.
“Either he marries you today or Pa comes riding in here tomorrow, Ro,” he said.
I held her hand. She needed me to do that. Johnse was nowhere in sight. His father, old Devil Anse, stood a distance away with two of his sons, Robert E. Lee and Elliot Rutherford. They were waiting. They knew trouble was in the air.
“I don’t want anybody to get shot on my account,” she said.
“Then you know what to do,” Tolbert said.
She looked down at me. She patted my head. “Did you bring my things, baby?”
“Pa wouldn’t let me, Ro. He said if you come home you won’t be needing them, and if you don’t you won’t be getting them. Please come, Ro.”
She nodded. Her face was white and drawn. She looked older of a sudden. “I have to talk to Johnse first,” she said. And she disappeared around the corner of the house.
Tolbert and I waited on the porch. I saw Cap wandering around by the barn. He had a seven-shot repeating carbine in his hands. I nudged Tolbert.
“I know, Fanny. I saw him. Don’t look at him is all.”
“Will he stop us from taking Ro?”
“I’d like to see him try.”
In about ten minutes my sister came back, wiping her eyes with her hand. In the other hand she had a bundle of things. The bundle was wrapped with the Coffin quilt, “I’m ready,” she sniffed.
“You can ride double with Fanny,” Tolbert told her.
“But one of these days me and Johnse will be wed properlike. Then nobody can keep us apart.”
“When that day comes I won’t stop you,” Tolbert told her. “It’s just that you gotta abide by notions of respectability and not sully our name.”
“You’re not bringing that quilt, Ro,” I said.
“I aim to finish it before we wed.”
“Can’t you start another one?”
Tolbert scowled at her, then said to me, “Leave her be. And let’s get out of here.”
He helped Ro up behind me on the horse. He tied her things in the ugly Coffin quilt to the side of the saddle. As we started out of the Hatfield place, I felt dozens of eyes on our backs. I held my breath, waiting for the crack of Cap Hatfield’s rifle. I thought, No good will come of this. Some things just bode evil. I wished she hadn’t brought that Coffin quilt. No good will come of it, I thought, no good at all.