The Coffin Quilt Read Online Free PDF

it."
    I turned to go. "What'll I say?"
    "Nothing, honey. You don't say a word. Tell Pa you couldn't find me. When we're wed we'll let them know, sure 'nuf."
    "That's a lie, Ro."
    "Only a teenie little one. God won't mind."
    "Ma will. She'll put my pebble on the damned side of her tree stump."
    "Fanny baby, you couldn't be damned. I don't care where Ma puts your pebble."
    I was near to crying. But I turned and started back. The wind was really kicking up now, turning the tree leaves so you could see the silver under them. It was even starting to rain. I could see back to the clearing by the schoolhouse. People were gathering things up, women putting on shawls, families making for their wagons.
    "Hurry," Ro urged. "Go on now. Run."
    I turned again. "I always wanted to be at your wedding, Roseanna," I said.
    "I know. But things don't always work out how we plan. Tell you what, you kin put some of my glycerin and rosewater on tonight afore you go to bed."
    I was always begging for some and she would never give it. But my heart just got heavier as it came to me what all this meant. Ro wouldn't be in our room with me anymore. The bed next to me would be empty. She'd be sleeping tonight with Johnse Hatfield!
    I ran. Rain was coming down heavier. I didn't even stop to put on my hose and boots. I just ran to where I
saw Ma and Pa. And when Pa asked, "Where's Ro?" I said I couldn't find her.
    "She must have walked on ahead," Ma said. I got into the wagon and she wrapped her shawl around me. Alifair was staring at me like she knew something. I looked away. The thought of living at home under Alifair's ways, without Ro, sickened me.
    "Don't know why Ro can go her way, and we always have to come when you call, Ma," Alifair said. But Ma only told her to hush and started humming "If Everybody Was Like Jesus What a Wonderful World This Would Be."
    Thunder rolled overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. I thought of Ro and Johnse. Where would they find a preacher tonight? Were preacher men ready to read vows over young folk any time of the day or night in West Virginia? Because that's where Ro would bed down tonight. In West Virginia. Across the Tug Branch of the Big Sandy River.
    Pa had the reins, and my brother Bud held his rifle at the ready as we drove through the woods. I looked for Yeller Thing, but I never saw him at all.

Chapter Six
1880
    T HERE WERE NINE of us children still living home at the time and I can close my eyes today and see us as we all sat around the kitchen table that night after the elections.
    I want that night back with all of us together having tea. Even if Alifair made it and considered herself in charge of the kitchen. That's what she always wanted, to be the woman of the house. Like Tolbert says, she should have her own place.
    But I'd even take Alifair's sass if it meant I could go back to that night and hear Pa and the boys talking about Mr. Buggin's crops or the new springhouse Mr. Taylor was making. And Trinvilla saying how Mr. Randolph was going to start buying ginseng, witch-hazel leaves, yellowroot, poke, and cherry bark to sell in his general store.
    I should tell about our house, now. It's important.
    It was a big house, our place on Blackberry Fork. I don't want anybody who happens to read this to think that just because it was a log cabin it was an old poke of a place with a dirt floor. Pa built it soon's he came out of Virginia and married Ma in 1849. I have to give the Devil his due. It was a right fine house Pa built.
    The kitchen first, because that's where we all gathered, where Pa held forth when he chose to lecture, scold, or instruct, where we said prayers before bedtime, led by Mama. There was a big round table in the middle and chairs. Oak. The cupboard that held all Ma's dishes was oak, too. Then there was the washbasin set on a table with a bucket of water under it. We washed dishes in a big old nib that sat near the washbasin. Pa had put in a hollow bamboo cane to drain the water outside. In