Prayers for Sale (17 page)

Maudie was right there in Denver when Hennie made the rounds of the immigrant trains with Mae, asking if anyone had lost a child. The woman hid in her wagon so that the little girl wouldn’t recognize her own mother, but she heard Hennie say she was headed for Middle Swan. Maudie waited five years, until enough time had passed that Mae wouldn’t remember her, and by then, Maudie had aged considerably, too. Then she convinced Joe there was easy gold to be found on the Swan River, and they moved to the Tenmile.

“You saved my girl’s life,” Maudie said. “He’d have killed her, just like he did this baby. He said there wasn’t any reason for girls to live, and their crying made him crazy. Joe knew I loved the babies, loved them as much as I hated him. He wouldn’t let something I loved live.” She explained that she’d seen Joe smother the infant before he took her outside and buried her.

Maudie said that just before she died, when there was nothing else Joe could do to her. Hennie sat beside the woman, listening to the scuffling noise made by pack rats moving around in their secret place in the wall. She wanted to ask the date Mae was born, but by then, the woman was past knowing anything. When Joe returned, the doctor with him, Hennie told them it was too late. Maudie had crossed over.

“Who’s going to take care of my old dog?” Joe asked.

At that, Hennie slapped him hard, as hard as she could. Joe made a fist, but the doctor grabbed his arm and told Joe
if he so much as touched Hennie’s little finger, he’d have to account to the entire camp.

Hennie stared into the remains of the fire for a moment, then went to the door, pushing it open as far as it would go, and looked out at the trees that were dripping rain. The heavy scent of pine came into the cabin. The rain had slowed and the sun was shining through the trees. “Devil rain,” the girl said, nodding toward the door. When Hennie didn’t understand, Nit explained, “Rain and sun at the same time.”

“Devil rain,” Hennie repeated. “I guess that means the storm’s done with. Just us go now.”

“I’m glad you told me about Mae. It makes me think some babies had it worse than my sweet Effie. Your story heals me.” The girl stood and returned the sweater to Hennie. The two went outside and gathered firewood, setting it on top of the stack in the cabin, for it was the custom to replace any wood that was used up in a place of refuge. Then using a stick, Hennie raked the embers in the fireplace and watched them die, careful not to leave as much as a fire coal.

“What happened to Joe?” Nit asked, as they shut the door, and Hennie returned the two blocks of wood to their place.

“He died,” Hennie said with a mirthless chuckle. “I didn’t let on about Mae being his daughter, for fear he’d claim her out of meanness. There are some that think even a father like Joe has a right to his child. But I told about Joe killing the baby. I said it was Maudie’s deathbed confession, and folks know I’m not a liar, so they had to believe me.”

There was talk in Middle Swan about putting Joe on trial and hanging him or sending him off to prison. Some of the men were for making meat of Joe right then. Others thought Joe ought to have to live with himself, and when the Reverend Shadd arrived in Middle Swan later on and heard the story, he agreed, saying Joe would have died a thousand deaths if each day he’d had to face what he’d done—not that Hennie cared in the least what the Reverend Shadd said. “Joe saved everybody the trouble of deciding his punishment when he got drunk and wandered outside the cabin and froze to death,” Hennie finished.

Water dripped off a jack pine down Nit’s neck, and she stopped to rub herself dry. “Did you ever tell Jake and Mae who her folks were?”

“Yes. They had the right to know. I wondered how Jake’d take it, because Joe’d done him a meanness—high-graded a claim Jake was working. But when I told Jake, he said, ‘Vinegar Joe’s daughter? Great day, Hennie, you saved our girl from a terrible fate.’ Jake never loved Mae less for knowing who she was.”

Later, when Mae was older, Hennie told her, too. “I owed it to Maudie. She needed something more than quilts to be remembered by. Mae named her middle daughter Maudie. Funny thing was, Mae always looked more like me than Maudie or Joe. How do you explain that?”

The girl didn’t answer. She followed Hennie down the path onto the main trail, scattering the pine needles that had gathered in ridges after the rain.

“If you’re a praying woman, you might say a prayer for Maudie,” Hennie told Nit. As the two reached the path beside
the dredge, Hennie herself said a prayer—or maybe it was an order: “Lord, you make sure Maudie has a little happiness. And you tell her Mae’s doing fine, and she’ll be taking care of me soon.” Hennie frowned and added, “Not that I need to be taken care of.”

The Coffee Cup quilt was put in and ready for the Tenmile Quilters. Hennie had basted the top to the batting and the back, then stretched the quilt sandwich tightly in the old frame, whose side rails were set to allow a comfortable reach for the quilters working from both directions. She was glad to see a quilt in the frame, for it had been empty since she’d finished her Bear Paw, and the room looked out of sorts without a quilt in progress.

Hennie had promised the girl Nit Spindle that she’d arrange a quilting after Nit finished her own top. With many hands, the quilt would be completed in hours, but even more important, the girl would have a chance to get to know her neighbors. “There isn’t a better friend than a mountain woman,” Hennie had told Nit. Still, in the high country,
where the blood ran thin, women were standoffish. They didn’t take to strangers. A person could live on the Swan for ten or twenty years before she was considered “one of us.” By making Nit a member of the Tenmilers, Hennie would force the others to accept the girl.

There was another thing on the old woman’s mind, too, for she had invited a second woman, one even newer in Middle Swan than Nit, to attend the quilting.

So when her Bear Paw was done, Hennie had taken it out and bound it off, leaving the frame empty while she completed the blocks for her Coiled Rattlesnake and bound them together with sashing. Then, because she didn’t want to put that quilt into the frame until the Coffee Cup was done, she’d turned to carpet rags to occupy her hands. She’d torn strips and rolled balls for weeks, it seemed, and her fingers itched to quilt again.

The house had been scrubbed and flowers picked and set in jars around the room so that the place smelled of Chinese lilacs and yellow roses. The windows in the big room weren’t made to open, but no matter. Even in the heat of late June, the house, with its thick walls, was cool. Hennie opened wide the front and side doors to let in the fresh air and turned on all the lights. The big house, with its deep-set windows and log walls, was always a little dark. As she surveyed the room a last time, Hennie’s eyes stopped on the silver frame, worn through from so many polishings that it was mostly pot metal now, and picked it up. “The girl needs help,” she told the long-ago picture of Jake, setting it down quickly as she heard footsteps on the path. “If this isn’t the way I’m to be
the Lord’s instrument, then the two of you best figure out how I am—and before snow sets in. And I could use your help for myself, too, Jake. You know I’ve got something to settle before I go below.”

Nit was the first to arrive. She set a plate of fried chicken and a basket of half-moon pies on the kitchen table, saying, “I brought a little something or other,” and clasped her hands together to keep them still. “You think those ladies will laugh at my quilt?” she asked, putting a hand to her cheek to stop a nervous twitch. “Quilts are different at home. We pay no mind to the quilting, just take big old stitches to get done. And I never attached binding before. Maybe they’ll think it’s a fool thing to use coffee cups for a design. I don’t know why I ever did.” The girl smoothed her hair, which had been freshly washed and set in pin curls, then brushed until it shone. She wore a pretty dress with a little round collar. The girl had dressed in her best to make a good impression.

“They’ll like it fine,” Hennie soothed her, thinking that while the girl might never be a first-rate quilter, she had improved in the weeks that she’d lived in Middle Swan. She was better than some, including Bonnie Harvey, who didn’t know how to quilt any more than a dog did. There was hope for Nit. “We get so tired of trading the same old patterns that they’ll be joyed to find a new one.”

“You think so?” Nit asked, as if she didn’t quite believe it.

“Maybe not Monalisa Pinto, but she’s airified. She never likes anything. Put no dependence on what she says. You could understand a goose as good as you could understand her.”

“She’s right smart of hardness,” observed Nit, recalling the
snub the woman had given her the day Nit first saw her at the Pinto store. Monalisa hadn’t softened to her since.

Hennie was almost sorry they’d invited the storekeeper’s “wife” to become a member of the Tenmile Quilters and it was Hennie’s own fault. She’d felt sorry for the woman, who had worked at the Willows before she took up with Roy Pinto. Hennie thought that asking Monalisa to become a Tenmiler would help the woman’s reputation, and it had, although Monalisa never was grateful. Folks put Monalisa’s days as a hooker out of mind, but the woman herself couldn’t seem to stop looking for slights, which Hennie supposed was why she acted so high-and-mighty, quibbling over little things and pointing out faults in others. “Sometimes, we call her ‘Mrs. Pickaround.’ Not to her face, of course.” Hennie was a little ashamed of herself for the remark, for she was not a long-tongued woman. She added quickly, “But she quilts first-rate. A woman isn’t all bad if she turns out good quilts.”

She stopped to contemplate a moment before she continued. “A quilt circle’s like a crazy quilt. You got all kinds in it. Some members are the big pieces of velvet or brocade, show-offish, while others are bitty scraps of used goods, hoping you don’t notice them. But without each and every one, the quilt would fall apart. There’s big and small, old and new, fancy and plain in a quilt circle. Some you like better than the others. We have our differences, and Monalisa is a trial, but it’s a surprise how we all come together over the quilt frame, even Monalisa. We’re as thick as a lettuce bed.”

Nit asked about the other quilters, and Hennie obliged her, hoping the gossip would put the girl at ease. Carla
Swenson was a retired teacher from the high school. Her sweetheart had been killed in a mine accident when Carla was a young woman, and she’d never married. Gus Bowes, Carla’s intended, and his brother worked the old Yankee-Dives mine, using a rope ladder to carry up the ore on their backs. The brother went to town for dynamite, and when he came back, he found Gus dead at the bottom of the mine shaft. Carla never gave her heart to another. Hennie remembered that awful time and how she’d visited her friend day after day to restore her spirits, advising her to keep her mind on the happiness that she’d had with Gus, not the loss. “Don’t you believe a short time together is better than no time at all?” Hennie asked. Then Hennie told her the story about Billy.

Bonnie Harvey was Carla’s sister, and she had enough children for the two of them—nine. “Her husband’s a miner. She’s a Baptist.” Hennie pronounced the word “Babtis.” Carla was dark-headed, as thin as a needle, but Bonnie was plump and blond and looked like a star that fell from heaven.

Edna Gum was a highborn lady, and her husband was vice president of the Swan River Dredge Company, but she was plain as a shoe, and you wouldn’t guess in a million years that she was rich, Hennie said. “She’s mannerable, but she never puts on airs. Edna’s got silver things, but she acts like they’re nothing better than the tin the rest of us use. And she doesn’t dressify like Monalisa Pinto.”

Another new woman had been invited, Hennie added, a woman newer even than Nit in Middle Swan. She had arrived in town only a week or two earlier, and Hennie had met her when she went calling with a Gold-and-Silver Cake.
When Hennie examined the newcomer’s quilts, she decided there was nothing to be done but to invite her to the quilting. “You never saw anything so finely made. Her name’s Zepha Massie, and she’s a shy thing, but that doesn’t matter over a quilt frame. There’s something about stitching together that draws a woman out.” Hennie lowered her voice, although there was no one else to hear her. “I hope you’ll be especial kind to her, because she doesn’t know a soul.”