Clay's Quilt by Silas House Read Free Book Online

barely able to walk. Hung over, you see. Easter was griping on her a sight for being so slow, and they was both standing at the kitchen sink, cutting up a big hen to fry. Well, I took a big mule and rode it right in the back door. I was real easy with him, real slow, and they never even heard me, they was in such a big fizz arguing and working. Now, I never knowed of Easter to be scared of nothing in her life, but when she felt that big mule’s breath on her neckand turned around eyeball to eyeball with it, she liked to died. She passed slick out.” Paul burst out laughing, holding both big hands against his belly. He closed his eyes and leaned his head far back, barely able to catch his breath. “Aye Lord, that liked to tickled me to death.”
    â€œWhat about Mommy?” Clay asked. “What’d she do?”
    â€œOh, that never even phased Anneth. She just started laughing and liked to never hushed. That’s how Anneth was,” Paul answered, and started laughing again.
    Clay laughed, too, but only partly at the story.
    â€œScoot up here, now, Clay,” Paul said. “Watch here.”
    Paul told him everything about quilting, things he would never remember, but he savored each word as if they were lost verses of Scripture. He watched the needles, and the pieces of cloth, and his uncle’s brown eyes. Paul hummed and never blinked. He had big, confident hands. The needle seemed very thin between his square-tipped fingers. Paul worked the pieces in slowly.
    Clay wished that he could piece the story of his mother together in the same way. He might find scraps of her life, stitch them together, and have a whole that he could pull up to his neck and feel warm beneath. Someday he might be able to fit all of his questions together and work needle and thread between them and the answers. If he did, he would take two corners in his hands, snap the whole out onto the good air, and let it sail down smooth and easy to settle on the ground. It would be a story made up of scraps, but that was all he had.

3
    D REAMA’S WEDDING TOOK place on a cold, dreary day. A thin rain fell upon Free Creek. It was slow and quiet, falling straight down without the company of wind or black thunderheads; instead it brought along a gray, swirling sky that seemed to shift and wrap itself around the edges of the horizon. It smelled fresh and damp, like clothes that have been left out on the line after the dew has fallen.
    A rain like that brought spirits with it. The translucent sky gave off the hint of otherworldliness. The rain was so cold and the sky so dark that it looked like a scene from the past, either in another time or in another world.
    Beneath the pelting rain, the Free Creek Pentecostal Church sat up on the hillside at the mouth of the holler as if it were keeping watch over the houses and people below. It was an old church, but it looked just the same as it had when it was built in 1917. The people who had raised the roof were stern-facedand rough, and they had all held firmly to the belief that buildings were meant to be sturdy, not beautiful. The exterior of the church looked suitable for a funeral, but not the place for a wedding. Still, Dreama wouldn’t even have thought of being married anywhere else.
    Dreama was in the baptistery dressing room, standing in front of the full-length mirror and about to cry. Easter was bent behind her, trying to fasten the two dozen pearl buttons that ran down the back of her wedding dress.
    â€œI knowed it would rain on my wedding!” Dreama moaned. “It never rains on nobody’s wedding. Nobody’s. I knowed it would on mine.”
    â€œThis rain hain’t hurting nothing,” Easter said. “Be glad for the rain; the Lord sent it.”
    Easter struggled with the buttons, which were supposed to squeeze through loops that weren’t half big enough. Against her will, she gave up. She was far too nervous to be