MY BROTHER CALVIN was out back shooting at a hawk that had been plaguing our chickens all week. Every once in a while we’d hear a shot and everybody in the kitchen would jump.
“Fanny, go tell your brother to stop that shooting,” Alifair ordered. “You’d think he’d have more sense. Ma is spooked. And he should have more respect for his brothers.”
Alifair was in a fine fettle, like she always was when things got bad in our house. Trouble brought out the best in her. And we had it now, all right. The kitchen was full of neighbor women who’d brought food, like you always do at funerals. Alifair had been in charge since two days ago when Jim came and told us that my brothers were dead.
All three of them—Tolbert, Pharmer, and Bud—shot by Devil Anse and his men under the pawpaw trees on the Kentucky side of the Tug, the day after we visited them at the Mate Creek Schoolhouse. After Devil Anse had promised Ma that he’d keep them alive. Shot in cold blood.
I saw their bodies when Jim and Calvin brought them home yesterday. I peeked into the parlor when Ro and Alifair and neighbor women were washing and dressing them.
They were full of bullet holes. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go into our parlor again.
All I could think of was what Tolbert had said to Ma when Mary and I and baby Cora went with her into that schoolroom. The same thing Mary had said. “Don’t beg for our lives, Ma. Don’t ever beg a Hatfield. And don’t ever believe what they tell you. Send for Pa.”
Ma hadn’t sent for Pa, who was still in Pikeville waiting for his boys to be delivered there by the sheriff’s of ficers. She’d believed in the Lord setting places for my brothers in the midst of men armed with Spencer rifles. And now she was in the parlor with Tolbert’s wife, Mary, little Cora, and Roseanna, saying, “I believed Devil Anse. I had his promise.” Or allowing how God was going to welcome her boys into heaven. It was enough to make a person never want to pray again.
Today, the first day of September, was the funeral. Three fresh graves were dug high on a hill above the creekbed road. A secret place where they couldn’t be found. I still couldn’t believe my brothers were gone. Even though Yeller Thing had warned me.
Where did they go? To Ma’s heaven? Would there be bees for Pharmer to tend there? Pheasants for Bud to hunt? What would Tolbert do on this first day of September, with the air cooling and the woods calling?
I worked my way around to the back of the house, past clusters of men in Sunday suits and hats, some with gold watch chains dangling right next to their pistols. Others jawing, with rifles poised in one hand. Neighbors and McCoys. I didn’t even know who all some of the McCoys were. But they raised their hats and mumbled condolences as I passed.
I nodded politely, feeling very grown up. I was wearing a new brown calico and a white apron. At nine, men raised their hats to you in these mountains. At fifteen or sixteen a girl wed. There was my sister Trinvilla talking with Will Thompson, the preacher’s son, who’d been coming around courting her regular-like this summer. And she was fourteen, but a true woman already. I went down to the chicken coop, where Calvin was sitting under a tree, waiting for that hawk. He nodded curtly to me. I sat down. “Alifair said to stop shooting. It’s spooking Ma.”
“Ma spooks herself,” he said.
“Alifair says it isn’t fitting now.”
“It’s fitting, long as that old hawk keeps at our chickens. He already got one this morning.”
“She says you should have more respect for your brothers.”
He patted his gun. He called it Trixie. “This is the only thing folks around here respect,” he said solemnly. “And as far as Tolbert, Pharmer, and Bud go, wherever they are they want me to get that old chicken hawk, Fanny. Just like they want me to get those bloodsucking Hatfields. And if Ma weren’t so set on stopping Pa, we’d all be off hunting them properlike soon’s the funeral is over. But she isn’t goin’ to let us. I heard them arguing about it last night.”
I had, too. All night, it seemed, the low rumbling of Pa’s voice and the high-pitched begging of Ma’s had come through their bedroom door. This morning they’d scarce looked at each other.
“Pa blames her for the boys,” Calvin said. “And so do I. She shouldn’t of stopped Jim from sending for him and getting up a posse. She shouldn’t of gone herself and made deals with old Devil Anse. She had no right. So it isn’t my shooting that’s spooking her this morning, Fanny. It’s her own conscience. So go along now while’st I get myself this hawk.”
I got up. “What’ll I tell Alifair?”
“That as soon’s this day is over, I’m gonna teach her to shoot a gun. And you, too. The day is coming soon when we may need you all to know. I’ll be along directly. Go on, now. I need some more time alone here with Trixie and that old hawk.”
I thought how he needed less time with Trixie. Less time with guns. Maybe they all did. But I didn’t say it.
“There’s something,” I said, “and I don’t know who to tell it to, now that Tolbert’s gone.”
He looked up and nodded sympathetically.
“Bill. He’s upstairs in his room. And he’s crying.”
He blinked, but otherwise his face didn’t change. “I know, Fanny,” he said sadly. “He cried all last night. Says it was him who knifed Ellison and it’s him who should be dead, and not Bud. We’re gonna have a heap of grief with Bill, Fanny. You tell Alifair if she wants a worry, she’s got one. Right upstairs.”
“I tried to tell her about Bill this morning. She won’t listen.”
He sighed. “Well, why don’t you try and talk to him then, Fanny? Seems to me you both need a friend about now.”
I started back to the house. As I was halfway there I heard the shot, heard Calvin’s shout of glee. “Good girl, Trixie. We got him.”
In the kitchen I grabbed a cup of acorn Indian pudding and another of coffee. “Where you going with that?” Alifair asked.
“Bringing it to Bill. He’s had no breakfast.”
She held out her hands. “Anybody who doesn’t come to the table doesn’t get breakfast.”
I stepped back, clutching my booty. “Bill needs it. He’s upstairs crying,” I said fiercely. “And I aim to bring it to him.”
Several of the neighbor women had stopped what they were doing, stopped their chatter, and were watching. Alifair knew this. She sighed, held up her hands, and whirled around. “See what I have to put up with?” she said. Then to me. “Go on, but I want both of you down right quick. The funeral’s soon starting.”
I ran up the stairs, but I knew I hadn’t bested her. I knew I’d pay for it later. And now there was no more Tolbert to rescue me from Alifair’s clutches. Ma was so crazy with grief that if Alifair held my head under the pump and drowned me, Ma wouldn’t discover it for three days. I stopped outside Bill’s door and listened. No sound from inside. I pushed open the door and went in.
HE ATE. RIGHT where he was, on the floor by his bed. He was about starved. But he ate like a man who didn’t know he was eating. Like he didn’t even taste the food.
“My fault, Fanny,” he said. “I should be dead, not Bud.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” I told him.
He looked at me then for the first time. “Roseanna,” he said. “Did you know? She brought that quilt home with her. She’s got coffins for all of us on the edges. Just like she knew all the time they’d be shot. And she’s just now moving Bud’s, Pharmer’s, and Tolbert’s to the middle. Don’t that beat all?”
I stared at him in horror.
“I want to die, Fanny. I told Roseanna. Know what she said? That she’s felt that way for a long time. Then she said how a body can will themselves to die. Said she’s seen it many a time when she was caring for sick folk. For no reason they just upped and died on her. Willed it. Well, that’s what I aim to do then, I told her. You just better get my coffin moved to the middle.”
“No,” I told him.
“How can I live, Fanny, with Bud gone and it bein’ my fault? No, I know what’s best for old Bill. Come on now, don’t you cry. You’re so little and purty. You’re the only sane McCoy. Come on now, let’s go on down to the funeral. I’m gonna play my fiddle. ‘Amazing Grace.’ How you think that’ll be on my fiddle?”
I clutched his hand as we went downstairs. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “It’ll be just wonderful.”
I was crying so I could scarce see and almost tripped going down. But Bill held on to me.