Clay's Quilt (7 page)

“You look all right,” Clay said.

“Just all right? You mean I don't look damn good?”

“You look good, Cake,” Clay said. Cake knew exactly how good-looking he was, and his vanity annoyed Clay. They went through this every time they went somewhere.

“Well, hell, why didn't you say that instead of just ‘all right'? Now I feel like I look awful.” Cake fished down into Clay's glove box and pulled out a small bottle of cologne. He sprayed it all over his shirt and, with a maniacal grin, squirted two sprays onto his crotch.

“Shit-fire, Cake. Now we gonna smell just alike.”

Cake laughed and climbed out of the truck. Cake didn't give a damn about anything on a party night. As long as he was having a good time, nothing mattered. Some Saturday nights, when they fought and the bouncers had to pull Cake away with his boot heels dragging, he would laugh like a lunatic while blood poured from his lip.

“All right, let's see who goes home with the best-looking woman tonight,” Cake said, strutting across the lot.

“Who are you, John Travolta? I can't remember many nights you took somebody home with you.”

“I'm picky, I guess.”

As soon as they opened the door to the honky-tonk, cigarette smoke burst out onto the crisp night air like a translucent fist being unclenched. They paid their way and walked into the spell Evangeline was casting over the audience with her husky voice.
The music churned about them. Evangeline was singing “Don't Ask Me No Questions” while she danced across the stage. She smoked a cigarette and took sips from her bourbon and Pepsi as she sang.

The honky-tonk was full. They had to push their way through to get to their table. Every small wooden table was crowded with more chairs than it could accommodate, and people stood against the walls like a line of police guards. People threw their heads back in laughter, women sat on men's laps, people downed shots of liquor and blew the fire off their jellybeans before throwing the drinks down their throats. The dance floor was filled with people, hunched and swaying beneath the huge stage, where Evangeline strutted back and forth.

Everyone spoke to Clay and Cake as they made their way through the club, so that it took them five minutes to cross the short distance to their table. The table was marked by a piece of notebook paper that read
RESERVED
. Cake wadded up the piece of paper and threw it onto the floor.

As soon as they sat down, their waitress arrived to put napkins and a bowl of pretzels on their table. She also sat two long-neck beers and two shots of whiskey before them.

“I seen you all coming in,” Roe explained, “so I went ahead and set you all up. I know what my boys order.”

Cake paid her and added a hefty tip. “Go ahead and bring us a fifth of Jim Beam,” he said.

“I'll do it.” Roe nodded and parted the crowd.

Cake danced in his seat and squalled out loudly to let everyone know they had arrived. He swallowed the shot of whiskey without chasing it. Clay downed his own shot and felt the fire of bourbon scorch his throat. He looked out over the crowd and watched Evangeline as she finished the song and took a long swallow from her cup. Cool air rolled off the dance floor, and
the place was filled with the scent of liquor and beer and a hundred different perfumes. Clay felt a strange sense of dissatisfaction that he couldn't actually name, and looking around, he suddenly felt that most of the people around him looked pathetic.

“Man, I love this song,” Cake said, jumping up. “I've got to dance.”

Cake faded off to the strains of “Night Moves,” hunting for somebody to dance with.

When Roe came back, she sat right down at the table with Clay. She shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “What're you up to, Clay?”

“Nary thing, Roe. Gonna try and get drunk.”

“What's wrong? You don't seem like yourself tonight.”

“Ah, I don't know. I feel kind of lonesome tonight.”

“Well, you in the wrong place, then,” she said with a wheezing laugh. “People don't come to honky-tonks to be lonesome.”

“People don't go nowhere to be lonesome, do they?” he asked, and smiled.

Roe laughed loudly as she got up. “Naw, I don't reckon they do. I don't see what a good-looking boy like you is doing lonely, though. I don't understand it.”

“Well, I don't neither,” Clay said.

Roe ran her finger through the air. “Look around, then. They's plenty of women here, and most of em would give their eyeteeth to have you.”

“There ain't nobody here I'd have,” he said. “Don't want nothing you can find at a honky-tonk.”

“When you get ready to settle down, where you need to go and find you a woman is the church house, buddy,” Roe said.

Clay felt like saying, “You're one to talk,” but he didn't. Roe had worked at the Hilltop for the past twenty years and wound
up just as drunk as everybody else by the time the club closed, since she took a sip out of everybody's glass—just like she bummed a smoke out of everybody's pack. She was a good old girl, though.

B
EFORE LONG
, C
LAY
and Cake's table was crowded with drunks. Geneva and her husband, Goody, were there, along with several other people that they always partied with. They were all intent on getting wild drunk tonight, and they were well on their way. They talked loudly, yelling back and forth over the music. They drank from the same bottles and lit one another's cigarettes. They had been drunk together so many times that if they were not related, they felt like it.

Cake poured Clay another shot and slid it across the table. “Drink up, brother!” he hollered. “Let's get knee-walking drunk tonight.”

Clay threw his head back and swallowed the liquor. Half the bottle was gone, and he was already feeling the dull electricity coursing through him. Liquor did not make him stumble or stutter, did not make him meaner or louder, but seemed to prod his jumpy spirit. When he got drunk he wanted to jump up and down, hollering to tell everybody that they ought to enjoy life more.

Geneva was obviously drunk, as her consumption of beer had been pepped up by several Xanax. When Evangeline and her band began to play “Cherry Bomb,” Geneva bolted out of her seat and grabbed hold of Clay's arm, pulling him up. She danced through the crowd toward the dance floor, turning round and round, snapping her fingers and twisting her hips until Clay caught up with her and they began to swim around the floor.

Geneva was a good dancer not only because of how well she
moved but because of the cool, serious look on her face. She seemed completely absorbed in the music, unaware of her dancing partner or her surroundings. She shut her eyes or looked at the floor, holding her mouth in a firm, straight line with her top lip stuck out hard above the bottom one. Clay followed her in perfect stride, moving his body in all different directions and managing to keep in sync with the music.

When the song ended, Geneva and Clay hugged and she said, “Thanks, baby,” loudly into his ear. Clay put his hand into the small of her back and began to stroll across the dance floor, but she stopped.

“Wait,” Geneva said. “Let's see what they gonna play next.”

Evangeline took her time between songs. She drifted across the stage to grab her cup of whiskey from a wooden stool and emptied it of all contents. She held the cup up in the air until Roe scrambled up to the stage and took it to be refilled. Evangeline lit a cigarette and breathed smoke out through her nose as she conferred with the lead guitarists. Finally, she made her way back to the microphone. The band strummed softly behind her, tuning their guitars.

“We going to do one of your-all's favorites, now. How bout a little ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky'?” The crowd roared with applause and high squalls. “Wait a minute, now. Wait. Tonight it'll be the real thing. My little baby sister is going to come up here and play the fiddle for us.” The applause intensified with more clapping and whistling. Roe brought Evangeline another cup of whiskey. She breathed loudly into the microphone and winked at Roe.

She looked offstage and yelled, “Alma, get up here, now.”

Evangeline's sister, Alma, walked slowly up the steps and onto the stage. She carried her fiddle and its bow in one hand. She waved as she made her way across the big stage while everyone
whistled and clapped, but she didn't look up, as if she was afraid she might misstep and fall right in front of everybody.

“If you don't know her, this is my little sis, Alma,” Evangeline said. “And she can play that sumbitch like nothing you ever seen.”

Even with all the bourbon coursing through him, Clay knew that she was the same fiddler from Dreama's wedding. He could tell by the way she moved.

He thought she was beautiful but didn't know exactly why. She was dressed modestly—unlike most of the women there—in a long, black skirt with a slit and a white, ruffle-collared shirt that was open by only one button. She wore black flats and black hose, and her hair fell in a wild auburn blur down to her waist. There was something about her face that struck him as out of place. She looked like somebody from another time. Her face was smooth and made up of soft, rounded curves, but it was interesting in the same way older people's faces are: there seemed to be a story in her eyes that was waiting to be told. She pulled her sleeves up, threw her hair to the side, and positioned the fiddle on her shoulder. When she put her chin onto the cool wood, Clay felt a start run all through him.

The band was silent behind her, and the crowd was paying reverence, too. Fiddlers were not common fixtures at the Hilltop, and everybody was quietly excited. Either that or Clay was simply unaware of any sound other than that of the bow first touching the strings of the old fiddle. She began the song slowly, the strains high and mourning. She was a part of the music, her face a peaceful hillside. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut, and she swayed softly, so slowly that it was barely noticeable. She reminded Clay of tall grass in a slight breeze. The sad voice of the fiddle filled the building. Evangeline began to sing the slow first verse of the song, and it seemed that her voice and that of the fiddler were in perfect harmony, like two sisters ought to be.

When the prelude was finished, Alma launched into the song fast and furious. One long leg burst out of the slit in her skirt, and her foot stomped on the stage. Her head and shoulders moved back and forth wildly, her hair swinging behind her like a fiery sheet hung out to dry. She began to move around the stage, and it seemed to Clay that she didn't really mean to start pacing—it seemed as if she was forced to. The music had control of her.

Geneva had begun to clog, and when she noticed that Clay was still staring up at the stage, she slapped him hard on the arm. He began to dance with her, but still he didn't take his eyes from Alma. Everyone churned around them, feet stomping, skirts slicing through the air. People hollered out and kept their arms limp at their sides, careful not to let their eyes follow their feet. Shoes and boots clicked and beat on the wooden floor.

Evangeline leaned back into the song, letting her voice rip from far down inside her. Clay half-expected her to break into tongues as she sang about being a cuckold. Alma also seemed to be taken by a higher power and moved around the stage with the slit in her skirt sneaking higher up on her leg, her body writhing with each cry of the fiddle. Clay decided right then and there that he wanted to know her. He wanted to hold her hand flat in his palm and look for the red lines the strings of the fiddle had left across her fingers. He imagined her fingertips would be hot as coals, and he longed to put his cool mouth around them.

When the song was over, Alma tapped the strings lightly and bent at the waist for a quick bow. The club was filled with the roar of applause. Geneva held her hands high over her head as she clapped.

“Damn, she could play,” Geneva said.

When they got back to the table, everybody was still clapping. The band was noisily making its way offstage, taking their first
break of the night. The canned music kicked on, and people raced back to the dance floor to do a line dance. Clay and Geneva, exhausted by the clogging, fell into their seats, taking great gulps of air. Cake slid another shot of liquor across the table, but Clay ignored it as he gathered his breath and senses.

As soon as he saw Roe coming through the crowd, he motioned her over.

“What is it, sugar?” Roe asked, balancing a full tray of beer over her head.

“Who is that fiddler?” Clay asked quietly.

“She's Evangeline's sister—”

“I know that. Do you know her?”

“Met her tonight, before we opened. Real sweet, from what I seen of her. Why, you wanting to meet her?” She laughed before he could answer. “I'll see what I can do.”

Clay was unaware of anyone else at his table as he watched Roe deliver the beer and then go over to where Alma sat. He couldn't see her table from where he was, but he knew she was over there.

Geneva dipped a napkin into a glass of water and squeezed it so that streams ran down into her blouse, then wiped the sweat off her brow. “Anybody bout to pee?” she asked, looking around at the girls crowding the table. “I danced so hard it's a thousand wonders it didn't run right down my leg.”

All the women left the table, and Goody and Cake scooted across the chairs until they sat next to Clay.

“What'd you all think about that fiddler?” Clay asked. “She was a doll, I thought.”

“She could play that fiddle, but she wasn't all that to look at,” Cake said.

“She looked good to me,” Goody said in his slow, careful drawl. “Had a nice little ass on her.”

Cake cackled loudly and swatted Goody on the back. His heavy hand cracked against Goody's leather jacket like a man's face being slapped.

Roe appeared at Clay's shoulder, breathing as if she had just climbed the mountain up to the Hilltop. “She won't come over to your table. Said if you want to talk to her, you'd have to come over there.”