by Molly Macrae
“Ms. Rutledge, have you found out yet if Lillian Holston made her quilt?”
Geneva turned and looked at Barb, then hunched her shoulders and started rocking.
“The one she talked about in her scrapbook you showed us,” Barb said.
Geneva answered. “No-oh,” she said, in time to her rocking. “No-oh, no-oh, no-oh, no. Lillian, Lizzie, Ezra, and Flory, Sweet Uley, and Nan, it was the end of their story. No, Lillian did not finish her quilt. Lillian, Lizzie, Ezra, Uley, Nan, and Flory. Mattie and I were so very sorry. The plague came and they were all gone.”
“Kath, dear?” Ernestine moved in front of me, her kind eyes peering into mine from behind her thick lenses. “Can I help?”
“It’s okay, Ernestine. I’m fine.” I turned to Barb. “I’m sorry, Barb. I don’t think Lillian did make the quilt, and that’s such a shame. Her scrapbook tells part of a story. Her quilt would have told more of it. That’s one of the engaging characteristics of quilts. Quilts are folk art. Folk art is full of story. Engaging in story is a basic human endeavor.”
“She’s put on her professional hat,” Mercy said.
“Which she was so recently obliged to take off,” said Shirley.
“Hush,” said Zach.
I smiled at him and at the other students, and then I zeroed in on the twins. They drew back, tucking their chins. “Shirley? Mercy? You haven’t told the class the story behind your quilt yet. And I’d like to know why it’s called the Plague Quilt.” If they’d been turtles, their heads, arms, and legs would have disappeared inside their shells.
Carmen raised her hand. “Could it have anything to do with the cholera epidemic? We studied that in school.”
“Eighteen seventy-nine,” Zach said.
“Three-quarters of the population fled,” said Barb. “Of those who stayed, two-thirds died.”
Bless their avid, history-loving hearts.
“Bingo,” said Shirley, followed by “Ow!” when Mercy’s elbow caught her.
“Unfortunately,” said Mercy, “Mr. Treadwell was given half an hour of our time this morning, and so we’ve run out. Your questions will have to wait.”
“You could tell me,” I said.
“Don’t you have to be back at the shop?” Shirley asked.
Darn. She was right.
“And we have other places to be and things to do,” said Mercy. They sighed identical, exaggerated sighs.
I didn’t say anything more while the students put away their quilt blocks and materials. I held my tongue while the twins told the students how much they needed to get done on their blocks each day in order to have a quilt at the end of the program. I made pleasant small talk when Nadine came to take the students on to their next session. But before the Spiveys scooped up their muslin-wrapped treasure and escaped, I cornered them.
“We have an agreement, correct? You are here, doing a really fine job with the students. In exchange for letting you do that, I will get to spend an equal amount of time, alone, studying the Plague Quilt. Correct?” I didn’t wait for answers. “I want you to know I do trust you. But I want to know when that’s going to happen.”
“At the end of the program,” Mercy said. “Otherwise how would we know how much time to give you?”
“Shirley and Mercy Spivey,” Ernestine said, coming up behind me. For a twinkling tiny mole of a woman, she could be extremely fierce. “I don’t trust you and I want to hear you promise that’s what will happen.”
“Why don’t you tell her about it now and let her see it?” Zach asked.
I hadn’t realized he was still in the room, too. Or, judging by the door to the auditorium standing ajar, maybe he’d slipped back in.
“We have no problem sticking with the original agreement,” Shirley said.
“Or trusting you to do the same,” said Mercy. “See you later.”
Geneva still sat next to the muslin bag on the table. The twins carefully lifted the bag, shivered, and left.
“I know why they won’t tell you about it,” Zach said, watching them go. “It’s all about power. And theirs is the worst kind. It’s old-people power and some of them flaunt it.”
“Watch yourself,” I told him.
“He’s right, though, Kath. You are right, dear,” Ernestine said to Zach. “A certain amount of power comes with old age. The thing is, we all have it, but some old she-devils abuse it. Now, that wasn’t a kind thing for me to say. Not that it wasn’t true, but I’m sorry you had to hear it.” She patted his cheek.
Cool Zach’s eyes went wide, and he blushed from the neck of his T-shirt up to his hairline. “I have another question,” he said, with a bit of a squeak in his voice. “Do you think the skeletons in the dump were plague victims? We read about how they ran out of wood for coffins.”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “I don’t know the answer. I suppose, if things were so bad, with so many people leaving, so many sick or dead, if there wasn’t any better choice, it might have happened. They weren’t laid in the ground very respectfully, though. Did Jerry say anything that makes you think they might be plague victims?”
“He didn’t say much about anything. I was just wondering. No big deal.”
“Wondering is a fine thing to do, in my book. Here’s what I’m wondering. Does either of you remember any of the names you saw on the Plague Quilt?”
Neither Ernestine nor Zach had paid attention to the names on the Plague Quilt. Like me, they’d been more absorbed by the colors, patterns, embroidery, and whimsical details of Rebecca’s work. I didn’t prompt them with the names Geneva had mentioned, but between them they came up with half a dozen—some first names, some last. I wasn’t sure whether they were more access points for our search, or more pieces we’d be trying to fit together. I planned to take the names they remembered to Friday’s Fast and Furious meeting the next afternoon, along with the names from Geneva’s sad rhyme. But first I had to get through the evening—and dessert with the Spiveys.
* * *
What kind of dessert did one serve to enigmas such as the Spivey twins? Did they really expect dessert? I stopped at Mel’s on the way home, ran in, asked for three slices of the honey nut cake, and dashed back out, happy that I hadn’t run into Mel. She would have had the expected Spivey attack out of me in three seconds flat. Once home, I ate a virtuous green salad, then waited. While I waited, I nibbled around the edge of one slice of cake, reflecting on the appropriateness of my choice. Honey, to sweeten and soothe the unpredictable twins; nuts because I liked the symbolism. The clock ticked and I realized I could be knitting while dreading instead of picking at the cake.
I washed my hands and took up my knitting needles to work on a peony pink baby hat for Friday’s Fast and Furious thousand-hat challenge. It was my third pink hat in as many weeks, and I was looking forward to the last of that color. Debbie never seemed to tire of knitting yellow hats, and Thea stuck with her mission to instill a love for reading and good literature early in a child’s life by knitting red-and-white-striped beanies. She called them vestigial Cat in the Hat hats. Mel went with food colors. But I hadn’t settled on a color or a theme or a mission. I also didn’t knit as often or as fast as I should.
The Spiveys waited until full dark, parking down the street, away from the streetlight. They’d told me that after they crept up onto the porch, knocked softly, and scurried past me into the house. I was expecting them, of course, but I still had trouble making myself open the door wide enough for them to actually get in.
“In case he’s onto us,” Shirley said.
“Wes? What’s he likely to do?”
“Let’s go on into the kitchen,” Mercy said, “away from prying picture windows.”
“Cozier in the kitchen, too,” said Shirley. “Oh, and look, you have cake for us.”
They ate first and had seconds on sweet tea, then told me
their story of Wes Treadwell. They didn’t know details and they were fuzzy on dates, but they knew it had happened in California and involved taking advantage of bankrupt homeowners.
“Finding a weak spot and moving in is his forte,” Mercy said.
“Exploiting the salt of the earth for personal gain,” said Shirley.
“But you don’t really know what happened or when. Just that it happened in California. How do you even know that much?”
“Shirley’s ex keeps in touch with her,” Mercy said. “He’d like her to move out there with him.”
“Frank is a skunk,” said Shirley. “That’s why he knows another one when he smells him.”
“And why Shirley left Frank,” said Mercy.
“That and I don’t like the idea of leaving everything I know and hold dear.”
“Or moving to California and falling off into the ocean when the big one comes,” Mercy added.
“Does Frank know the details?” I asked. “Could I call him?”
“Oh, I couldn’t let you do that,” Shirley said. “He suffers from high blood pressure.”
“When Frank called last week and said he’d like to personally kill Wes Treadwell, Shirley had a terrible time calming him down again,” Mercy said.
They left when I told them there wasn’t any more cake. Mercy turned back before I got the door closed.
“Don’t breathe a word of this when you see us at the Homeplace,” she said. “We daren’t rile him.”
“You were trying to rile him loudly enough to get through to him on the other side of a closed door today.”
“Sometimes we’re too hotheaded for our own good. Thank you for the cake. Such dainty slices. The tea was a tad on the sweet side. See you tomorrow.”
Bless my heart.
* * *
By Friday morning, the quilting session felt like a routine. The students made progress on their blocks and we’d fallen into an easy companionship of stitching. It was a quiet, unremarkable morning except for two things. One was that the twins avoided speaking to me about anything other than snipping threads and pressing seams. They even avoided making eye contact, and that was soothing. The other was an embellishment Zach added to his quilt block—two of the coffin-shaped pieces he’d stitched together turned out to be identical, and in those coffins he embroidered identical skeletons. All in all, it was a good morning.
* * *
“Do you realize,” Ardis said that afternoon as we were setting up for Friday’s Fast and Furious, “we have investigated enough crimes by now that we have our own organizational thing that organizations have. One of those things, if you know what I mean.”
I wheeled the whiteboard into position so it could be seen from any of the comfy chairs we’d pushed into a half circle in the TGIF workroom. The workroom—the same used by Joe and his fly tiers—was a flexible space whose odd assortment of chairs and worktables accommodated formal and informal meetings of needleworkers of all kinds as well as the posse’s strategy meetings and information exchanges.
“If she does not know what she means, how does she expect you to know?” Geneva asked. She’d been floating near the ceiling but now came down and huddled in one of the chairs.
“Are you talking about the whiteboard?” I asked.
“Not the board itself,” Ardis said, “but the idea of bringing the board in, and arranging the chairs just so, because that’s how we work best. You know what I mean. It’s an acronym. S something. Standard operating procedure. That’s what it is and that’s what we have. SOP.”
“Stolen orange pencil?” Geneva asked. “Subterranean octogenarian panda?” The whiteboard always made her grumpy. She’d told me that the clean, white expanse of the board called to her. It calls, but at the same time, it mocks me cruelly, she’d said. Because I can never answer. Now she grumbled as she watched us. “Perhaps Ardis means we have stinky, odiferous peonies.”
I flapped my peony pink baby hat at her.
“Is there a fly in here?” Ardis asked.
“Silly old poop,” Geneva said.
“Use a newspaper or a swatter,” Ardis said. “Don’t risk ruining the only hat you finished in the past seven days.”
“One of these days I’m going to blow everyone’s mind and bring in . . .” I tried to come up with a fabulous number of sweet baby hats. “How about a dozen?”
“Four should be fine. With a reasonable goal, you’ll feel good if you overshoot, and the rest of us will be surprised.”
“I’ll try my best.” I’d read recently about several women who had each, personally, knitted a thousand baby hats in a year. I knew I didn’t have that kind of knitting drive, but surely I could start pulling my weight in Fast and Furious. “Toss the marker over, will you? Yow!” Geneva had risen from her chair and the marker went right through her. It didn’t hurt her, but I flinched anyway. I’d never got used to seeing objects or people pass through her. And of course it annoyed her.
“Stop oppressing phantasms,” she muttered. “If you will excuse me, I am going upstairs to spend time with Argyle, a creature who is never snide, overbearing, or pedantic. On the contrary, he is always sweet, obedient, and purring.” With that, she floated out of the room.
“What was that about?” Ardis asked. She stared at the doorway and rubbed her eyes.
“Nothing, I was thinking of a couple of questions to start us off,” I said. “And oh boy, do you smell what’s coming up the stairs?”
Mel came in with her knitting bag and an insulated carafe. John followed with his bag and the source of the spicy, herby aroma on a covered plate. If we ever lost Mel as a member of Friday’s Fast and Furious, we’d be sadder and each of us several pounds lighter. She’d assigned herself the duty of bringing refreshments every Friday afternoon and had given herself the title Year-round Undersecretary of the Marvelous.
“Yum.” Ardis leaned over the plate, eyes closed.
“That’s my name, and you’ll never wear it out,” Mel said. “I brought something different today.” She thumped the carafe down on the Welsh dresser we used for refreshments, and took the plate from John. “It’s savory, not sweet like me. Yo, Ernestine, what’s the holdup there? You need me to come light a fire under you?”
Ernestine came in with a nearsighted smile for each of us and one for the dress form standing in a corner. She had a second carafe in her hand, but no knitting bag.
“Did you lose something downstairs?” Mel asked her.
“I might have put my bag on the kitchen table,” Ernestine said. “Or the counter.”
“I’ll get it.” If I ran down and back up, maybe the calories in Mel’s treats wouldn’t be so noticeable.
“Any sign of stragglers?” Ardis asked when I dashed back up.
“I’m not that late,” Thea called from the kitchen. “And I’m not deaf. Give me a minute.” We heard her puffing as she climbed the stairs. When she reached the top, she sagged in the doorway. “I practically ran here, and these shoes are not conducive.” She dropped herself into the nearest comfy chair and John brought two cups over to her.
“A choice today,” he said. “Cucumber lemonade or unsweetened chai latte.”
“Both.” She took a sip of the latte and then a swig of the lemonade. “That’s better. Who’s got hats?”
Starting our meetings with show-and-tell was SOP. We took turns laying our contributions on the low table at the center of our half circle, like so many poker players adding chips to a pot. Ardis kept count for us. She went first, with a stack of sky blue hats.
“Six,” she said, looking smug. “A little off my game this week. Daddy was fractious.”
Ernestine added the pale peach and the lilac hats she’d knitted while waiting to see Grace, and three in orange tabby stripes with cat ears. “They’re Argyle hats,” she said.
John counted out four in aqua. Th
ea put in three of her red-and-white-striped hats.
“Sweet potatoes and cayenne,” Mel said, laying out four hats in shades from deep orange to orangey red. “I’ve been working on a sweet potato biscuit recipe this week.”
I put my one puny pink hat next to theirs.
“A bit of ‘slow and tell’?” Mel asked. “That’s okay, Red. We know your needles take a rest when we’re on a case. What’s our total, Ardis?”
“Debbie sent three,” Ardis said. She laid three creamy yellow hats on the table, pulled a pencil from behind her ear, and totaled her running tally. “That makes six hundred forty-two, plus Joe’s if he shows. We’re ahead. But that’s good, because I expect we’ll slow down as the holidays approach.”
“Well,” I said with exaggerated exasperation, “some of us better not get any slower, or she’ll be frogging what we already have, instead of adding to the pile. There—” I dropped my act. “I saved you the trouble and made the dig myself. Sorry I’m slow, guys. I’ll make up for it by making the run to the hospital this month.”
At the start of the challenge, the group had pictured taking their one thousand hats to the hospital in one impressive delivery at the end of the year. Ardis said she’d even toyed with the idea of dressing up as a stork for the delivery. But when hats started overflowing plastic bins in the workroom, we realized the hospital would have the same storage problem, and we’d started making deliveries once a month, sans beak and feathers.