4 Plagued by Quilt (10 page)

“Our mother had a box of silk threads. Go on and feel it, if you want,” Shirley said.

“She won’t, I told you,” said Mercy. “It’s her training.”

My textile training, yes, but also my new fear of “feeling” when touching certain fabrics.

“The velvet and threads were handed down from Rebecca,” Shirley said.

I glanced up. “Rebecca who made the Plague Quilt?” I tried to look around the skirts. “Where is it? Did you bring it?”

“Backseat of the car—
oof
.” Shirley’s skirt shifted to the left.

“It’s safe at home,” Mercy said.

“As I was saying,” Shirley said, “our velvet came from Rebecca. She had two daughters and a son. Her wedding present to each of them, her daughters and the daughter-in-law, was six bolts of velvet and silk threads in enough colors to embroider a garden.”

“Granny’s mother was the daughter-in-law, right? Rebecca was Granny’s granny? I’ve never heard that story about the velvet and threads. How cool. But that would have been ninety or more years ago. And you made these skirts from some of that velvet? You still had some of it?”

“Ours is the thrifty side of the family,” Shirley said.

“No telling how the rest of it was used,” said Mercy. “Or wasted. Here, forget your dang training.”

I only half listened, so I wasn’t prepared for Mercy’s sudden move. She twitched a handful of her skirt, flipping the bottom up and into my lap.

I caught it in my hands.

I
was lying on the floor, looking up into the faces of a dozen curious teens and an anxious Nadine. I felt as though I’d been lost in a complicated embroidery pattern, as though I’d watched a stop-action video of . . . of what? The history of the Spivey family? Because I’d held the hem of Mercy’s skirt in my hands . . .

I realized Clod was holding my hand. I yanked my hand from his and worked very hard not to wipe it manically on my pants leg. Shivers went through me and I jammed both hands in my armpits. I heard an odd, gurgling noise and realized it came from me. I stopped when I also realized one of the teenage girls standing near my feet was crying.

“Hey, I’m okay.” I sat up. “See? I’m fine.”

Clod was still too close and everyone else was staring. Except the twins. I didn’t see them. And I couldn’t smell Mercy. Where had they gone with those skirts as dark as night, velvet night . . . nightmares . . .

“Did you hit your head?” Clod asked. “Come on, we should get you checked out.” He put his hand out to help me stand.

“What? No. No, really, I’m okay.” I was, too. Head
clear again, breathing easily, steady hands. I stood up. “I’m okay now. Thank you, though.”

“All right, everyone, the drama is over,” Nadine said. “It
is
over, isn’t it?” She glared at me, looking and sounding more angry than anxious. “The quilting
will
take place?”

“Sure, Nadine. Of course. Give me five minutes?”

She leaned close, still glaring. “You were supposed to be ready to start,” she hissed, “and this is turning into my personal nightmare. You need to start and finish, on time, so that Wes can start and finish on time. He’s stepping in for Phillip, but he is a busy man, with other commitments, and we cannot
waste
his time.”

And I frittered my own copious hours away, lolling on cold linoleum floors.
I leaned closer to Nadine, reducing the comfort gap further, and stared without blinking until she pulled back. I’d used that technique before, and found it effective for unnerving confrontational colleagues. I thought of it as my “dead-eyed shark look.” Considering how often Geneva used it effectively on me, I decided I could probably rename it my “dead-eyed ghost look.”

“Fine, Nadine. No problem. We’ll start immediately. But may I make a suggestion?
You
should take five minutes and get a grip.” Ah, no, I should not have made the suggestion. Too late—mouth opened, tongue disconnected from brain. Granny would not have been proud, and neither was I.

Nadine gave me the look of an antagonized site director. It was a look that didn’t bode well for gaining her confidence and permission to snoop in her domain. I should have slapped my forehead and apologized instantly, but Clod stepped between us in one of the
smoothest moves I’d seen him make. Or maybe he’d missed the tension he’d interrupted, and he was taking the shortest route to the door. In fact, from the tilt of his head and the direction of his nose, it looked as though he’d seen someone or thought of something . . . Without another glance at Nadine or me, without another word, he quickened his pace and disappeared out the door.

And then I was torn. I wanted to follow him. He’d just reacted in an interesting way. To what? Why? I wanted to know where he was going. But Nadine was right—I needed to get the students engaged in the quilting. I needed to put my nosiness in check. Besides, Nadine saw Clod leave, too, and she was already going after him.

*   *   *

Nadine had either fudged on the number of teens who’d withdrawn from the program, or more had dropped out since she’d called me the night before. It didn’t matter which was true. The first day, two dozen students sat in the auditorium listening to Phillip’s introduction and followed him on the tour of the site. Now—one death, two skeletons, and two days later—half that many sat at tables in the education room, waiting for me to begin the quilt unit. I wondered if, in the name of public relations, Nadine had offered to refund the hefty chunk of money the dropouts had paid for the program.

I also wondered where Shirley and Mercy were. I didn’t like to admit it, but I needed them; none of my other volunteers had shown up. I wasn’t quite ready to agree with Nadine that the program was a disaster, but it couldn’t take too many more body blows. And then I wished that turn of phrase hadn’t popped into my head.

“Hi, welcome to the crazy quilt portion of Hands on History. It’s nice to see all of you again. I’m Kath
Rutledge. You can call me Kath or Ms. Rutledge; either works for me. I’m going to give you a short introduction to crazy quilts, we’ll look at examples of quilt blocks and a few other artifacts, and then if we can, we’ll jump right into the project.” We would if the irritating Spiveys came back or the other volunteers arrived. I glanced at the door. That didn’t make any of them magically appear. “Along the way, I’ll work in information about nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century textiles, and I’ll do it in such a brilliantly seamless way that each of you will develop a burning desire to pursue advanced degrees in textile conservation.” I looked around at them. “Didn’t you have lanyards with name tags on Monday?”

“Mr. Bell collected them.”

“Ah. Well, we’re going to talk about autograph quilts anyway, so let’s start by making one.” I sketched a chart on a blank piece of paper—rectangles for the tables, squares for the students, and then added a frivolous sawtooth border all around. “Quilts with embroidered signatures were popular keepsakes and going-away presents in the nineteenth century. They were a functional, decorative way of remembering friends. This will be my keepsake, and at least for this morning I’ll know your names.” I held the paper up. “Your piece of the quilt is where you’re sitting. Find your square on our seating quilt and put your name in it.”

“Should we put our last names, too?”

“First and last names will be great. And neatly, please, so I can read them.”

While they passed the seating chart, I stewed over the missing volunteers. The TGIF quilters were experts—artists who enjoyed hooking other people on their art. Our plan called for me doing my academic bit, but the
Hands on History quilt sessions really belonged to them. They’d be guiding the students through the steps of making a quilt—albeit a small one—from start to finish. Most of the volunteers had committed to quilting with the students each morning through the whole two-week program. Surely they hadn’t all backed out in reaction to Phillip’s death—not without telling either Nadine or me. So where were they?

Oh. I looked at the communicating door at the back of the room and felt like a fool. In the confusion of . . . everything . . . we’d no doubt crossed wires, and I would find them sitting in the auditorium, chatting happily and wondering where the heck
we
were.

But the auditorium was dark. Empty, too, unless the Spiveys hung like a couple of old bats from the ceiling. On my way back to the front of the room, I pulled out my phone and called Ardis.

“I haven’t heard anything on this end,” she said when I told her what was going on. “Don’t send anyone looking around for them.”

“It isn’t dangerous, Ardis.”

“We don’t know that, but I can find them faster with a few phone calls than a teenager will traipsing around the Homeplace. I’ll hunt, you punt, and I’ll call you back.”

I disconnected and one of the girls handed me the completed chart. “Thanks . . .” I waited to see where she sat down. “Thanks, Barb. This is great. All right, let’s get started with a question. What do zombies and yoga pants have in common with bacon-flavored ice cream?”

And there wasn’t a single peep.
Zach would have gotten that riddle,
I told myself. But he’d attached himself to Jerry and the skeleton. Skeletons. Two skeletons. Did
these kids know there were two? Two and counting? Did that mean it wasn’t Geneva out there? Or was it Geneva and someone else? Two bodies where they shouldn’t be . . . the memory of two bodies haunting Geneva . . .

“Ma’am? Are you sure you’re all right?” Ethan, according to the chart.

They really were a nice bunch of teenagers. They continued staring at me, but now they looked concerned instead of clueless.

“Sorry.” I gave myself a shake and smiled at them. “Zombie walking over my grave. What do zombies, yoga pants, and bacon-
anything
have in common? They’re fads. Everyone agree with that?” They did. “Good. People followed fads in the 1890s, too, and making crazy quilts was one of them. Quilters—men as well as women and girls—made crazy quilts for a variety of reasons, and not just to sleep under. This was the height of the Victorian era, and people loved clutter. They filled their parlors with curios—” I stopped. “Do you know what a curio is?”

“I don’t, but I’m curious.” That wag, sitting next to Ethan, was Nash. They fist-bumped and sat back, looking pleased.

“Kudos for being curious. The term ‘conversation piece’ was coined at that time. They filled their parlors with objects—natural and man-made—from around the country and around the world, and crazy quilts fit into that trend. You saw the crazy quilts on display in the museum here on Monday. Did their crazy—their crazed—pattern remind you of looking through a kaleidoscope? Because the Victorians loved kaleidoscopes, too, and some historians see a connection between that love and the love for crazy quilts.”

“I can see that,” Barb said.

“Good.” And then I realized that I
had
seen that—the weird patterns that spun through my head when my hands touched Mercy’s skirt were completely kaleidoscopic. Thinking about it, trying to anchor those fractured, spinning images, trying to bring them into focus, threatened to make my head spin again. I needed to concentrate on what I was doing.

“Crazy quilts,” I said on a deep breath, “were
it
. And the Gilded Age Victorians put them everywhere. They covered pianos with them and draped them on tables and on the backs of sofas. And the quilts weren’t just part of the clutter. With their lush fabrics, lack of symmetrical or repetitive patterns, and elaborate embroidery, the quilts themselves were cluttered. Quilters created them out of scraps of velvet, pieces of favorite dresses, handkerchiefs, men’s ties, silk cigar bands, ribbons commemorating special celebrations and events, and out of the clothes of loved ones who’d passed on.”

“They recycled,” said a boy sitting behind Barb—that would be Tyler.

“They did, Tyler. But not always. Companies were as sharp in 1880 as they are today, and some of them capitalized on the crazy quilt fad. You could go down to the mercantile in Blue Plum and buy bags of velvet and silk scraps packaged specifically for crazy quilts. Or you could buy them through mail order. And you could buy magazines with quilt patterns and embroidery designs.”

I held up a scrapbook I’d borrowed from Ernestine. Her granddaughter had started it when her first baby was born. I flipped through the pages so the students could see the decorative papers and colorful borders highlighting the story of the baby’s first year.

“Do any of you know someone who scrapbooks?” I asked.

This time a few hands rose.

“Fad,” one of the girls called. Megan.

“Yes, it is. And scrapbooking was a fad with Victorian women, too.” I put Ernestine’s scrapbook down and held up a pair of thin white cotton gloves. “Watch this.” I put on the gloves and picked up another scrapbook, older and more fragile. “Why the gloves, do you think? To protect my hands from old paper and glue?”

“To protect old paper and glue from
you
,” Zach said from the doorway.

“Absolutely right, and a hank of embroidery floss goes to the unexpected young gent in the doorway. Are you taking a break from digging, or are you joining us?”

“Jerry said he only needs a skeleton crew right now,” Zach said with the ultimate deadpan. He slunk into the room to a chorus of groans from the other students, and sank onto his spine in a chair at a table by himself.

An interesting kid, Zach Aikens. As far as I knew him, I liked him. And I heartily resented Clod for planting the doubt in my mind that made me add that qualifier. I couldn’t think of anything about Zach’s behavior that wasn’t part of the typical growing pains of teenagers anywhere or from any family. He was a bright kid who shouldn’t be considered dubious just because he had law-breaking relatives. Nor should he be dismissed merely on the say-so of a deputy who had his own iffy brother. Not that I thought Joe was really all that iffy.

“Burglars,” I said, regaining the teens’ attention. “Burglars and museum professionals also have something in common. We wear gloves because we don’t want to leave fingerprints behind. Hands, no matter how clean,
leave oils that attract dirt.
This
scrapbook”—I held the clothbound book higher—“comes from the collection here at the Homeplace. Lillian Holston started it in 1876, pasting swatches of silk, velvet, cotton, and linen fabrics in it, and also samples of embroidery stitches. It started out as her quilting scrapbook. Her friends might have made quilting scrapbooks, too, because scrapbooks
about
quilting were as much a fad as quilting itself. Lillian dated some of the pages, and she wrote notes on others with ideas for color schemes and patterns. Toward the end of the book she began pasting in newspaper articles that must have caught her eye, mostly about parties and social functions. Again, some of them are dated and some aren’t, but she seems to have worked on the scrapbook for about three years.”

I walked around the tables, turning pages so the students could see the fabrics, stitches, and newspaper articles.

“Did she ever make the quilt, and do we have to make those fancy stitches?” Megan asked.

“I don’t know if Lillian made the quilt,” I said.

“Why not?” Zach asked.

“That’s a good question. I might know if she made the quilt if I knew the collections better. As a volunteer for this program, and because of my professional background, I was allowed to look through the collections. But the collections are fairly extensive, and I only had time for a brief survey of the records to find appropriate artifacts to illustrate what I’m talking about.”