Art's Blood (10 page)

Elizabeth touched her neighbor’s arm and said softly, “I know, Miss Birdie, it’s sad. I hate it that even Dessie’s house is gone now.”

Miss Birdie fixed Elizabeth with a bright-eyed gaze, then resumed her work on the mule-eared straight chair she was rebottoming. “That old hickory-bark seat lasted its time but it’s give out now. Talk is, the high sheriff says somebody meant to start that fire.” Her knobby-jointed hands tugged at the baling twine that she was double-warping around the front and back rails of the chair seat. “Got to git this part tight and straight or I won’t do no good when I come to weave.” She jerked her head in the direction of another straight chair, this one with a bright, new woven seat. “Git you a chair, Lizzie Beth. See how that one sets.”

Elizabeth obeyed silently, fighting back tears brought on by the memory of Dessie— another good friend, now gone.

Tying off the warp ends with a snug knot, Miss Birdie mused, “Reckon who could of done such a thing? I heared that the big feller was dead and they had the other one in jail. Reckon they fell out over that little black-haired gal. She’s up at yore place, what I hear.”

Elizabeth smiled. As usual the local grapevine was swift and accurate. With only a weekly newspaper serving the county, most of her neighbors relied on one another for the news. “That’s right, Miss Birdie; Kyra’s staying with me— she was at my house the night of the fire.”

“Reckon why she wants to put them flower pictures all over herself?” Frowning, Birdie cocked her head. “I asked her would they wash off and she said they weren’t supposed to. And a ring in her nose like an ol’ bull— I never heared of such.”

The little woman measured out a double length of twine, secured it to the side rail of the chair, and began to weave. Over three, under two, over three, under two. “I hate it about that big feller. He was a pretty good somebody. Did you know he come down and cleared out my gutters atter that last big rain? I offered to pay him but he wouldn’t take no money. So I give him a jar of my bread-and-butter pickles— I’d just finished three runs of them. He set right there where you’re a-settin’, Lizzie Beth, and et ever last pickle in the jar. Said they was the best he’d ever tasted.” Birdie smiled happily at the memory. “’Em three was right quare dudes but leastways they was always friendly. Not like them Florida people moved in down the branch, won’t even throw up their hand when they ride by.”

It was quickly established that Birdie knew what there was to be known about the fire.
Except for the part about the so-called nanny,
thought Elizabeth.
Kyra must not have told the sheriff about
that
last night.

“I guess we’ll know more about it when they get done with the investigation, Miss Birdie. Kyra’s going to be at my place for a while—”

“Reckon that’ll be all right with Ben.” Birdie glanced sideways at Elizabeth and smiled knowingly. “I seen ’em go down the road together this mornin’.”

Elizabeth sighed and wondered briefly if anything ever happened on Ridley Branch without Miss Birdie’s knowing about it. “Miss Birdie, one reason I stopped by was to see if you could lend me some quilts.”

Some were on the beds; some were folded on closet shelves. A once-beautiful Grandmother’s Flower Garden, now tattered and faded to a pale shadow of its original splendor, was in use as an ironing board cover. Triangular scorch marks dotted the little pastel hexagons that some hand had so carefully stitched together. “Ain’t much left of that one,” Birdie remarked cheerfully, seeing Elizabeth run her hand gently over the old quilt’s soft surface. She dumped two quilts from the closet unceremoniously on the bed. “These here is in the best shape.”

“These here” were a gaudy red-and-blue Jacob’s Ladder in prints and plaids from the fifties and a crazy quilt made from thin woolens in autumnal colors. A determined herringbone embroidery stitch covered every seam, and embroidered flowers, animals, names, and initials were worked in many of the larger patches. Elizabeth spread the quilt out to study the embroidery. Some was crude and straggling; some was beautifully executed. “Who made this one, Miss Birdie?”

The plump little woman frowned. “Ay law, let me think on it. Now, I believe that one belonged to my brother’s wife. Britty Mae’s been gone, must be twenty-four years come November. And Lexter, he died in a car wreck two years after she went. Didn’t none of their childern want this quilt, so I took it.”

The old woman leaned down to peer at an embroidered motif in the center of the quilt. A heart encircled the names
Britty Mae & Lexter
and the date
1931.
“I believe she told me that some of her friends from home give it to her when her and Lexter got married. Look at that piece of wool crepe.” Her gnarled finger rested lovingly on a mulberry-hued triangle. “I had me a dress out of goods just like that.”

Miss Birdie’s fingers absently traced an embroidered flower. “Britty Mae weren’t from here. She was raised up over beyond Hot Springs— place called Shut In. But she had went to school to learn to be a beauty operator and she got her a job in Ransom and went to boardin’ there. That’s where Lexter met her— saw her in the dime store. He come home and told me he’d seen the girl he aimed to marry.”

“I
went to Shut In yesterday,” Elizabeth offered. “A friend of mine has an aunt—”

“I seen you and your feller headin’ out.” Miss Birdie gave a knowing nod. “He ain’t been around much lately, now has he? I figgered you and him must of fell out. Now look at this,” she continued, ignoring Elizabeth’s attempts to set her straight, “ain’t that the purtiest thing?”

Her fingers rested on a large embroidered sunflower— the most beautiful of any of the work on the quilt. The many petals twisted and fluttered as though caught in a breeze, their carefully shaded yellows and golds adding unusual depth to the stitchery. The dark brown center was a swirl of tiny French knots representing the ripening seeds. Just below the graceful heart-shaped green leaves on the flower’s sturdy stalk were tiny embroidered letters.

“Can you make that out, Lizzie Beth? What does it say?”

Elizabeth leaned closer. “Tildy…it looks like…Rector.”

“I might of knowed,” sniffed Birdie. “Couldn’t no one else ’broider like that.” She straightened, pressing the backs of both hands to her back. “Ay law, Tildy Rector. I ain’t thought of her in many a year. Course I didn’t really what you might say
know
her. Only seed her the oncet. But Britty Mae knowed her good. Her and her sister.” The old woman frowned. “Now what was that sister’s name? I cain’t remember nothin’, seems like.”

Birdie leaned back over the bed, scanning the quilt intently. “Her name had ought to be on here too. Now where—?”

“Is this it?” Elizabeth held up the lower left corner of the quilt. A blue daisy consisting of a lumpish French knot surrounded by six uneven loops for petals was stitched loosely above crooked block letters spelling out FANCHON TEAGUE.

Elizabeth studied the daisy, then looked back at the sunflower. Something seemed wrong, something…

“That’s her. I mind Britty Mae showin’ me them two flowers. She laughed about it— how them two girls was so different. She said that Fanchon could do ever thing in the world— sing and play the banjo and make all the young fellers to fall in love with her— but when it come to needlework, she might as well of had two left hands. Tildy was ahead of her there. Seems like Britty Mae said that didn’t nobody like Tildy much— said Tildy was as plain as an ol’ boot and had a way of allus sayin’ just the wrong thing. Tildy didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Britty Mae said, but most folk took against her. Fanchon was the one that ever one made much of, her so pretty and sweet-talkin’. But fer all that, it was Tildy that was Britty Mae’s friend.”

Miss Birdie’s gaze lingered on the sunflower. “Law, how it all comes back to me now. Tildy had told Britty Mae about the way that Fanchon done her— why, it was a pitiful thing— and Tildy the rightful daughter. I mind it like as it was yesterday, Britty Mae standin’ there in her and Lexter’s bedroom, holdin’ this very quilt and a-sayin’, ‘Fanchon may fool a lot of folks, like she fools Miss Caro and Miss Lily, but I’ll tell you what’s the truth— that huzzy is a street angel and a home devil.’ ”

It was late afternoon. The sun had dropped behind the mountain and Elizabeth was in her salad garden, tearing out the bitter old lettuce that was bolting in spite of the shade cloth. She packed the uprooted plants into an old feed sack and was on her way down to delight the chickens with a treat of fresh greens when she became aware that a single heifer was loitering on the flat spot under a big tulip poplar at the edge of the woods— the same heifer, if she wasn’t mistaken, that had been there early in the morning. She looked toward Pinnacle’s peak— yes, the rest of the herd had moved up the mountain for the lusher grass at the top.

“I wonder— there was one heifer that Ben said was bagging up— maybe I ought to go check to see if her calf’s starting to come.”
She left the bag of lettuce and started for the gate into the pasture.

For the most part, the cows of Full Circle Farm gave birth unattended and with little trouble. Occasionally a heifer bearing her first calf would require assistance, particularly if she was small. But as Elizabeth neared the big poplar she was delighted to see a small dark red calf curled up on the ground. The cow, a heifer no longer now that she had produced a calf, lowed softly and began to lick her tiny offspring. The little creature at once rose, hind end first, balanced on wobbly legs, and teetered to its mother’s swollen bag. It thrust its little head at the udder in a series of surprisingly hard butts, captured a dripping teat, and began to suck.

“What a good mama! A fine baby and it’s a heifer too!”

After a quick check to be sure that there was no retained placental tissue dangling from the cow’s rear, Elizabeth decided to walk on into the woods for a little way. Now that the sun had set, it was almost cool among the huge poplars and hemlocks, maples and hickories. She walked on, savoring the breeze that rustled the leaves above her and listening to the small scurryings and tappings of the wild inhabitants of this bit of the farm. The staccato hammer of a pileated woodpecker
brrr
ed out like machine-gun fire, and a gray squirrel’s raucous warning chatter sounded from a tree just ahead.

Suddenly, she heard a single explosive bang just as something whistled past her head. Incredulous, she stood frozen. There was complete silence for a moment, then a clatter of wings as the big black and white woodpecker flapped away.

At last she found her voice. “Goddammit, get out of here! No hunting! There’re cows and dogs and people here, for god’s sake!”

She waited, listening hard. At last she heard a stealthy rustling that quickly diminished into nothingness.
Idiot kids,
she raged,
probably the Robertses from the next holler. I know Ben’s had to run them off before. By god, I think I’m going to call Morris Roberts and complain. We’ve always gotten along just fine but now that his new wife’s kids are living with them…

Fuming, she turned back, the pleasure of the walk spoiled. The pale splintered wound in the big maple just a few yards behind her made her catch her breath.
Sweet Jesus, that was close.
Her heart was pounding as she strode quickly back down the path toward the garden.

Today I came across an article about Leo Frank, the Atlanta Jew who, years ago, was unjustly accused of the rape and murder of a young Gentile girl. I had almost forgotten the story— but I was struck by a photograph of him in the courtroom— a faraway, doomed stare, as if he knew what lay ahead— the unjust guilty verdict, the anti-Semitic crowds, the rabid lynch mob, the noose and the slow strangling death. I remember too being moved by that same expression not long ago in a film on the television—
The Last of the Mohicans
it was— the kidnapped girl at the edge of the cliff— her Indian captor beckoning her to move away from the perilous edge and that same lost, hopeless look— the look of a spirit already leaving the body— crosses her face before she turns and deliberately plunges to her death. And I have seen it one other time— not in a film nor a photograph, but on a face I loved, a face whose eyes looked into mine, then turned away forever.

But I run ahead of myself. I must tell the story as it occurred and in its entirety, beginning with my arrival in Hot Springs, North Carolina— early April of 1934.

I had changed trains in Asheville without time for a look at this thriving Southern town. My only impression was that it was certainly no Boston. And as the train for Hot Springs sped along the narrow railway that clung to the rocky cliffs high above the dashing French Broad River, it seemed to me that we were on a journey back in time. From my window I could see log cabins, rudely built unpainted barns, ramshackle outbuildings, men turning the red soil behind teams of mules or even oxen. A tiny child, sitting on a quilt at the edge of a field, waved at me when the train made one of its many stops to pick up or discharge a passenger at some rural crossroads, and I saw that his feet were bare though the air was still cold.

Miss Geneva, as she was called by one and all, met me at the train station in a quaint farm wagon pulled by a sorrel mule. She raised her eyebrows at the amount of baggage that I had with me, but said nothing beyond, I hope we have room; I’ve been buying supplies.

Indeed, the wagon bed was heaped with boxes and bags and it was only with much careful maneuvering that my three large valises were added to the rest. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that I had not, as Mother wished, brought my steamer trunk too.

Miss Geneva, a short sturdy woman of about forty, handled the reins skillfully, urging the red mule into a quick walk as we turned onto the rutted wagon road that led to Shut In and the Appalachian Women’s Crafts Center. She explained that while the Center owned an automobile, it was difficult to manage on the unpaved back roads, as well as being prone to inexplicable breakdowns. And as I’m no mechanic, she told me, and Caro won’t even learn to drive an automobile, we bought old Pete and the wagon from a family that was moving to Detroit.