The Persian Pickle Club

by Dallas, Sandra

  She came skipping out of Forest Ann’s house when she saw me and whispered, “I’d think driving with Mrs. Judd would be as scary as … you know. ...” I laughed.

  Nettie overheard and was shocked—not because we’d said something against Mrs. Judd’s driving. We all made remarks about that. Nettie acted as if it was blasphemous for us to joke about what had happened to us. Of course, it would have been if our husbands had, or even the other Pickles. But the jokes were a bond between Rita and me, and making fun of that night helped us.

  Rita drew me off to one side. “I had a look at the coroner’s report,” she whispered. “Doc Sipes wrote there wasn’t a thing about Ben’s body that proved he’d been murdered. For all he knew, Ben had fallen out of a tree and somebody’d put him in the ground to save the cost of a funeral. Now, why would he say a thing like that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why would he unless somebody paid him to?” she asked. “And who’s the only one in Harveyville who has enough money to spend bribing a coroner?” Rita glanced in Mrs. Judd’s direction.

  Mrs. Judd saw us looking at her and called me to come inside to see the Celebrity Quilt, and in my excitement, I forgot about Doc Sipes and who might want to pay him to put lies in his report.

  The Celebrity Quilt was beautiful. Over the summer, as the autographs had come in, we’d embroidered them in red, but we’d waited until fall to put the quilt together, just in case some of the famous people we’d written to had been on vacation and hadn’t gotten their mail. Forest Ann and Mrs. Ritter assembled the embroidered squares into rows, setting off each one with borders of red cotton. Then they stitched the strips together into a quilt. Where the corners met, they added tiny red-and-white nine-patch squares. It was as fresh and as pretty a quilt as I’d ever seen. Forest Ann had set it into the wooden quilt frame in the middle of her dining room, the big oak pedestal table pushed into the corner.

  I stood at the edge of the quilt and fingered Lew Ayres’s autograph. Then I ran my hand over “Good Luck, Eleanor Roosevelt,” thinking I’d never met a woman who could look at a piece of material without touching it. I bet even Eleanor Roosevelt had pinched that fabric between her thumb and forefinger before she wrote her name. I looked over the rows of famous names and felt pride that they were all part of a quilt in Harveyville, Kansas—a quilt that’d been my idea.

  We stood impatiently, waiting for Forest Ann to assign us places around the quilt, which it was her privilege to do, since we were at her house. Ella was the best quilter, so of course she’d work on the center, where the stitches showed the most. I was surprised when Forest Ann didn’t put her there. She asked Ella to sit on the side. Then she placed Rita next to Ella instead of at the lower end, where the poorest quilter usually sat. That was a nice thing to do, even though Rita didn’t understand what a compliment it was.

  Then Forest Ann said, “Queenie, would you sit here, please, where you can work on the center.” Everyone smiled and nodded.

  “Ella ought to be there,” I protested.

  “No, the Celebrity Quilt was your idea. You deserve the honor,” she replied. “Besides, you’re a fine quilter.”

  I blushed and sat down on one of Forest Ann’s dining room chairs. Now I knew why Mrs. Judd had made me come to Persian Pickle. She and Forest Ann had planned this ahead of time. I looked up and saw Mrs. Judd smiling at me, and I felt so lucky to have such good friends that tears came to my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to see, for fear they’d think I was crying over that night, so I picked up my pocketbook and searched for my thimble. Then I threaded my needle and took a stitch, carefully pulling the knot through the quilt top to hide it, and began to make tiny stitches around Edgar Bergen’s autograph.

  With all the sorrows we’d been through, we hadn’t had a regular Persian Pickle in the longest time. The last one, in fact, had been at Opalina’s, the day that Hiawatha found Ben Crook’s bones. Of course, with all the troubles, we’d seen plenty of one another, but I realized as I stitched how much I’d missed all of us sitting down and working together. There was something homey and comfortable about the way we bent over the quilt in Forest Ann’s parlor. I had Grover, and I had the Persian Pickle. Some made do with a lot less.

  “This sure is a pretty quilt,” Mrs. Ritter said. “Don’t you think so, Rita.”

  Rita muttered, “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you going to write another newspaper story about it?” Mrs. Judd asked. Rita’s first story about the Celebrity Quilt had been only a paragraph, and it hadn’t included any of our names.

  Rita shrugged without looking up. “I’m pretty busy right now.” She yanked at her needle, and the thread pulled out of it. Rita licked the end of the thread, flattened it between her thumb and finger, and pushed it back through the eye of the needle.

  Mrs. Judd stopped stitching to watch Rita. “Tell me why people’s so crazy to read about a murder? It seems to me they’d rather read about what a body’s doing for those less fortunate.” Mrs. Judd looked over at Ella, who didn’t seem to be paying attention. Sometimes I wondered if Ella heard one single thing we said anymore. Her mind had always wandered, but since Ben’s funeral, she seemed more than ever to be living in some place that was far off from Harveyville.

  Rita looked up and gave Mrs. Judd a smug smile, as if she knew a secret she wasn’t telling. “Really?”

  “It would be awful nice if they ran a picture,” Opalina said.

  “Of us?” Ada June asked.

  “Of the quilt, of course,” Opalina said, but Ada June and I exchanged glances. We both knew Opalina meant of us. I thought it would be awful nice, too.

  “Maybe I’ll write about the quilt later on,” Rita said. “Right now, I can’t let Queenie down. After what happened to us, I gave her my word that I’d solve … Mr. Crook’s … you know ...” She glanced at Ella and didn’t finish. I put my needle down, wondering if I should protest. She’d never given me her word she’d find Ben Crook’s killer for my sake. Nor did I ask her to promise any such thing, but I realized the club members knew that. So I kept my mouth shut.

  Ceres took a couple of backstitches and bit off her thread with her teeth, then reached for her spool. “If you ask me, it was just your bad luck you getting stopped like you did. There wasn’t anybody after the two of you. The man who did it was only a bum passing through,” she said. “I meant to tell you, Cheed said that he heard a car got stopped over to Emporia last evening because of a stump in the middle of the road.”

  Rita and I looked at each other, and Opalina asked, “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Two big men got out of the car and moved the stump.”

  Opalina cast a sidelong glance at Ceres, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, Opalina said, “I don’t get it. If nothing happened, what does that prove?”

  “Why, that’s the point of it, dearie. That stump didn’t just sprout by itself. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t have any idea who’ll be coming along. It was an accident that two men were in the car last evening—just like it was an accident that Queenie and Rita were the ones who were stopped here. When that robber saw grown men get out of the car, he stayed hid. There’s your proof.”

  “What I think—” Agnes T. Ritter said, but Mrs. Ritter had been watching Rita, who was getting fidgety as she listened to Ceres and Opalina. So she interrupted Agnes T. Ritter.

  “I’ve been wondering. How many raffle tickets do you think we’re going to sell on this quilt?” Mrs. Ritter asked.

  Agnes T. Ritter was annoyed because she hadn’t been allowed to tell us what she thought, and she opened her mouth to try again. But I didn’t care what she had to say. Besides, like Rita, I didn’t want to hear any more about the men in Emporia. So I piped up, “I’m going to ask Graver to sell the farm and buy all of the chances. That way, I’ll win the quilt.”

  “My stars! To think a farm in Harveyville is worth that much,” Mrs. Ritter said.

  We talked about the price we’d charge for the tickets a
nd how many we’d print and who would buy them, and before we knew it, Forest Ann called, “Ready to roll?”

  “Ready,” I said.

  “Just hold your horses,” Mrs. Judd told us. She’d tangled her thread and had to break it off. Then she cut a new length, put it through her needle, and took hurried stitches. As the rest of us completed our sections, we stood up and stretched and admired one another’s stitching. We were making good time.

  At last, Mrs. Judd snipped off her thread and said, “Ready to roll.”

  We stood back and watched while Forest Ann and Agnes T. Ritter rolled the part of the quilt we’d just stitched over the top of the frame, unrolling an unquilted section from the bottom at the same time.

  While they did that, Ada June came over to me and put her arm around my waist. “I’m glad you came, Queenie. That’s my favorite dress of yours,” she said. I thanked her, and she whispered, “Aren’t you glad Mrs. Judd forgot about reading?”

  “Oh, boy, am I!” I whispered back, although I wasn’t so sure Mrs. Judd had forgotten. We all felt the need to visit.

  As we took our places again, I saw Forest Ann pat Nettie’s arm. Nettie moved her neck as much as she could to smile up at her sister-in-law. Then her mouth trembled, and I wondered if Tyrone’s rheumatism was acting up again. I hoped not. I’d rather slop pigs than have to sit through another evening of tending Tyrone Burgett in a sickbed. Nettie looked worn out, and I thought that with all her worries, she’d been an especially good friend, calling on me with a molasses pie and some of her fruitcake after what had happened to me.

  “I hope those pregnant girls appreciate all the work we’re doing on this quilt,” Agnes T. Ritter said after we’d gone back to stitching.

  “Agnes! For goodness sakes!” Mrs. Ritter looked at Agnes T. Ritter and shook her head.

  “I’m just saying we went to a whole lot of work, and for all we know, it’s for a bunch of tarts. That’s who stays in those homes, you know. Girls with no moral sense!” She pressed her skinny lips together.

  Nettie drew in her breath so sharply that we all looked up at her.

  “Well, maybe not every one, but I’ll bet you most of them are. You can like it or lump it. I’m just saying what I think, which is girls who get in the family way when they’re not married are no more than trash.” Agnes T. Ritter sure was in a bad mood that day.

  Mrs. Ritter reached across the quilt and touched her arm. “Agnes, that’s enough. We’re not here to pass judgment.”

  Agnes T. Ritter put her pointy nose in the air, but she shut up.

  Nettie turned her face away, but not before we saw the tears running down it. She tried to get up, but her chair was wedged in between Ella’s and Opalina’s, and she couldn’t move. So she put her hands over her face and began to sob, the tears running down her nose and dripping on the autograph of Bebe Daniels.

  Forest Ann got up and stood behind Nettie, her arms around her. “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s going to be all right.” Forest Ann sniffed back a few tears of her own. “Nettie’s just concerned about Tyrone,” she told us.

  But we knew Tyrone wasn’t the cause of Nettie’s tears. One by one, as we remembered what had set Nettie off, we put our needles down and looked at Nettie with sympathy. No, it wasn’t Tyrone. Except for Ella, who never did understand what was going on, Agnes T. Ritter was the last one to get it, and when she did, she sucked in her breath and said, “Velma’s … Velma’s ... Oh, I didn’t... Oh my God!”

  “Be still,” Mrs. Judd told her quietly. “Ella, sweetheart, do you have my scissors?”

  “Oh,” Ella said, looking around her chair.

  All of us searched about our places for the scissors until Mrs. Judd held them up in the air and said, “Good heavens, they were right here in my workbasket all the time.” Of course, she’d known they were. She wanted to give Nettie a chance to blow her nose and dry her eyes with a piece of toilet paper from her pocket. By the time we turned to Nettie again, she’d stopped crying, but her eyes were red and her face was blotchy. The scarf had slipped off her neck, and her goiter quivered like a piglet. Forest Ann, who was still standing in back of Nettie’s chair, tucked the scarf into Nettie’s collar.

  “I guess you could say Velma’s one of the less fortunates,” Nettie said at last, giving a short, bitter laugh.

  “It’s her business,” Mrs. Ritter said, taking three or four stitches in the quilt and pulling the thread through. “It’s not ours.”

  “It’ll be everybody’s business before long,” Forest Ann said.

  Mrs. Judd picked up her needle and took a stitch, and the rest of us followed. Then Rita piped up. “We used to say in college that the first baby can come anytime. After that, it takes nine months.” Rita failed to notice that the rest of us didn’t think it was funny. “When’s Velma getting married?”

  Nettie sent her a quick look. “She’s not.”

  “Oh!” Agnes T. Ritter said. “Oh, heavens!”

  “He’s a married man, if you must know,” Nettie said, and began crying again.

  We all made little murmurs of sympathy until Mrs. Judd cleared her throat. “What does Tyrone say?”

  “He doesn’t know. Velma’s afraid to tell him. I’m afraid to tell him, too, if you want to know the truth,” Nettie said. “You know how much he sets store by how a person keeps the commandments.” She looked around the circle at each one of us— as if under these circumstances we’d point out that Tyrone Burgett’s standards were always for the other fellow! As far as I knew, Tyrone didn’t personally keep any of the commandments, apart from not working on the Sabbath.

  “Nettie and Velma don’t want to disappoint Tyrone. He’d be so hurt,” Forest Ann put in. We all knew that wasn’t it. They were afraid Tyrone would throw Velma out of the house, and maybe Nettie with her.

  “Sometimes these young girls have accidents,” Opalina said. We all knew exactly what Opalina meant, and I shuddered.

  “No,” Forest Ann said quietly. “I asked Doc Sipes. Velma’s too far along. It would likely kill her.”

  I looked down at the quilt and saw how crooked my last few stitches were, and I pulled them out.

  “I guess it’s up to us to figure out what’s to become of Velma,” Mrs. Judd said. She was right. The others knew it and stopped talking to concentrate on sewing. We were women who turned to our needles when there were problems to be dealt with.

  “If she needs a place to stay, she can always live with Cheed and me,” Ceres said. “We’d welcome a young person—and a baby.”

  Nettie shook her head. “That wouldn’t work because Tyrone would find out about it, and he’d give you ‘Hail, Columbia’ along with Velma and me. But thank you just the same, Ceres.” Nettie put her needle aside and said in a voice filled with shame, “Besides, Velma doesn’t want to keep the baby.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering why women like Velma and Rita, who didn’t want children, got pregnant, while God denied me a baby even though I wanted one more than anything in the world. He even gave five at one time to that Dionne family in Canada. Was that fair? Maybe things like that happened because God was a man and didn’t understand. I wanted to ask the others what they thought, but I was afraid Nettie would call me blasphemous.

  Nettie glanced at me and continued. “I’m not saying Velma’s wrong about that, but it would break my heart knowing there’s a tiny baby out there someplace who’s Velma’s flesh and blood, and mine, too, and it’s living in an orphan home with nobody to love it. The baby will end up in one of those places, just like corn in a crib, if Velma doesn’t keep it, since nobody in times like these can afford to take in an extra mouth to feed. It’s not right to leave a baby to be brought up an orphan.” Nettie poked her needle into the quilt and took a single stitch. “Velma’ll have to stay here in Harveyville to have the baby. We don’t even have the money to send her to a home. They charge something, you know.”

  “We could all help out,” Opalina said. “We could raise the money
ourselves.”

  “We’re women. All we have is egg money. If we ask our husbands, well, we’ll have to tell them why, and then everybody will know,” Ada June said.

  That was true. Agnes T. Ritter began to say something but stopped before Mrs. Ritter could interrupt her. The rest of us thought hard but couldn’t come up with any suggestions. Finally, when it seemed like there was no answer at all, Mrs. Judd spoke up, and it occurred to me that she’d had a plan all along. “I know one person who could pay, that is if he doesn’t spend all his money trying to corner the market on this quilt,” Mrs. Judd said.

  I looked up quickly because it sounded like she meant Grover. He and’ I were better off than most. That was true. But we didn’t have money to throw away, and if we had, Grover wouldn’t give it to Tyrone Burgett’s daughter. Mrs. Judd was staring at me, and I stared right back while the others looked from her to me. Then I had a terrible thought, and before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Are you saying Graver’s the father? Are you accusing Grover of committing adultery?” I heard one of the Pickles suck in her breath, but I didn’t look because I wouldn’t take my eyes off Mrs. Judd.

  “Oh, no such thing!” Mrs. Judd said quickly. “Don’t get your dander up, Queenie. I know well enough who Velma took up with, and so do you, I expect. What I’m saying is this: Velma’s going to have a baby she doesn’t want, and you want a baby you don’t have. Now we can use one problem to solve the other. If Grover’s willing to pay for Velma’s keep in Kansas City, I’d guess she’d let you keep the baby. Isn’t that about right, Net-tie?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Oh course she would. It’s a fact,” Mrs. Judd told her.

  My hand holding the needle began to shake. I’d been doing a lot of shaking lately, but this time it wasn’t from fear. I tried to stop it with my other hand, but I jammed myself so hard with the needle that a drop of blood ran out onto the autograph of Mae West. I didn’t feel the prick because what Mrs. Judd had said was running around inside my mind like a chicken without its head, and there wasn’t room in there to think of anything else. I knew the club members had stopped talking and were staring at me, but I couldn’t make their faces come into focus.