Clay's Quilt by Silas House

Author:Silas House
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

12

GOD WAS LOOSE in the church house, and the Holy Ghost ran rampant among the people, sizzling through the air and hitting the women until they were forced to shake with wild abandon, succumbing to the spirit, throwing their heads back and speaking in unknown tongues, dancing out into the pews and rushing round and round the church, swaying like waterless swimmers in front of the altar, screaming loudly and taking off to run up and down the aisle.

The men stood with their arms raised heavenward, their eyes tightly shut, their mouths moving with silent prayers. The pastor paced back and forth on the altar, throwing his arms straight up while he shouted, “Have your way, Lord! Have your way!” The guitarist ripped his strap from around his torso, threw his guitar down, and began moving about the altar. He had never received the Holy Ghost before, and when he began to call out in tongues, the whole congregation felt the breath of God upon them. They danced and hollered, shouted and swayed.

Only Easter stood still. Her hands clenched the pew in front of her as she stood with her head bent low. Surely the Lord was among them, she knew that, but she could not feel him this Sunday night. It was like being sober and walking into a honky-tonk at midnight: everyone else so happy, so filled with life, while you felt nothing in particular. She couldn’t understand why she was being left out, and she kept her eyes shut tightly, praying that the spirit would come to her.

Guilt rested upon her soul as heavily as the spirit weighed on everyone else around her. Why was she condemned to feel such pain for something that was really not her fault, something that would have happened regardless of what she had said? She kept going back to that day while the rest of the congregation churned about her.

It was New Year’s Day, and it had been snowing ever since the night before. The cold was bitter, more severe and freezing than Easter could remember its having been in a long while. She had awakened with a feeling of dread and burden but had no clear sight as to what was troubling her. She tried to shake the uneasy feeling and go about her chores.

El was stuck on the interstate somewhere between Black Banks and Cincinnati, so she was left to fend for herself during the storm. She had to get coal to feed the Stokermatic. She put on a heavy mackinaw and a pair of El’s work boots and trudged out in the knee-deep snow with coal bucket in hand. The snow had stopped that morning around daybreak. Easter had heard all of her life that sometimes it got too cold to snow. She felt the cold grind into her bones and set into her teeth.

A large drift had shaped itself right in front of the lean-to. She got a shovel out of the pump house and cleared a way into the coal.

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