Free The Coffin Quilt by Ann Rinaldi Page A

from his touch. It holds the warmth of the person who takes it from the stomach of the deer, you know. That's right nice of Floyd. Thank him for me. How's things to home?"
    I shrugged. "The same."
    "They know you're here today?"
    "No. But you know I'm always allowed to wander free on Saturday as I please."
    "I'd rather you visit me than anybody," she said. "And since you've come, there's a promise I want from you, Fanny."
    I felt a sense of doom, like the sun just left the heavens. "What?"
    "I know you don't like this quilt, but that's just because you don't understand it. Promise me that if anything ever happens to me or my baby, you'll move our coffins to the center and make sure my baby's name and date of birth and death get put on right."
    I stared at my beautiful sister. I'd heard people talk of how women who were expecting a baby got all kinds of strange notions and had to be humored. Was this one of them? Or was Ro suddenly getting strange in the head?
    "Why should anything happen to you or your baby?" I asked.
    "Just promise me you'll do as I ask, Fanny. And then keep the quilt forever."
    A chilly breeze stirred the branches of the mimosa tree. From the kitchen came Aunt Betty's singing. "Queen Jane" was the song. I knew of it. Calvin explained how it told how Henry the Eighth, who had his
wives' heads cut off, followed Jane Seymour, one of them, to the grave. And how lots of our songs are handed down from the Old World, from England. He said that's why we say things like "afeared." Because Shakespeare did, too.
    Ro was waiting for me to answer. But I recollected what Tolbert had told me once, "Don't ever be pushed into a promise. Say you'll study on it."
    "I'll study on it," I told her.
    Did she hear me? Of a sudden someone whistled, clear and sharp on the fall air, from the direction of Devil's Jump. Ro stood. The quilt tumbled from her lap. "Oh, it's Johnse! I knew he'd come. I knew he couldn't stay away."
    I watched her fly across the grass down to the creek. I sat there munching Aunt Betty's sugar cookies. The Coffin quilt had landed on my lap.

Chapter Fourteen
FALL 1880
    I SPIED ON them. Those are the only words to put on what I did that day when Ro met Johnse Hatfield near Devil's Jump. I hid behind some rocks that the Devil had dropped conveniently when his apron string busted and listened to what they said to each other.
    After they finished hugging and kissing that is. And they did that for some time. I thought they'd never stop, but finally they did and that's when I listened.
    He told her how he'd heard she was here. He asked her why.
    She told him it was because she just couldn't live under Pa's roof, with his hate creeping around her like a ginseng vine around a tree. "And I haven't even told you about the baby yet."
    That's when Johnse broke loose from her and looked like he'd just been hit by one of the boulders dropped from the Devil's apron. "Baby?" he asked.
    You can picture what followed. Lots more hugging and kissing, which was only proper, I reckon. Ro got all shy then, like she never got with anybody. And I wondered if the Devil was indeed wagering for her soul.
    "Can we go into the house and talk?" he asked.
    "No," she said. "Wouldn't be fair to Aunt Betty if she let you in, being as we're not wed. She's courting gossip just letting me stay with her."
    "All right," he said. "We'll talk here. It isn't that I'm not happy about the baby, Ro. How couldn't I be? But we've got to do something. I don't want my child a wood's colt."
    "What'll we do?" she asked.
    They studied on the matter. Like there was all kinds of things for them to do when both knew there was only one. Get hitched. And both knew how impossible it was.
    "Do you think we could?" she asked.
    Johnse shook his head. "Onliest way is if we ran off. Got shut of this place and everybody around here."
    "Then how would we live?" Ro asked. "There'd be nobody to help us raise a house or give us a start. You know how important that is, Johnse.