The Quilt (7 page)

And so because he questioned everything he asked why it was called the trick when it didn't seem very tricky, but she didn't quite know and just told him it was that way because it was that way.

Sometimes in the evenings Kristina would read the letters she got from Olaf, the father who was not fighting the war in Europe but was fighting in something called the Pacific.

The mail appeared in the mailbox at the end of the driveway once every three days because the only car available to deliver mail came from a town forty miles away and with gas rationing there couldn't be daily mail. So once every three days the boy would take Jake, whom he was starting to call Bullet, and he would mount his horse—a stick with a slightly curved “head”—and ride to the end of the driveway and bring back the mail, and almost every time there was a letter from Olaf.

The letters were all full of news about how hot it was and how bad the food was and how all they had to eat was rice and something called dunderfunk but never about the fighting or anything really bad, although there must have been more because sometimes Kristina would seem to skip whole sections and read to herself and blush so hard that even the top of her breast—where he didn't feel comfortable looking— would turn red.

Everything was just exactly as he thought things should be except he missed his mother and wanted to meet his father and then came a day he did not like to remember at all, or think about even when he was an old man looking back on the times when everything was perfect.

He was kneeling in the dirt making roads and fields with his wooden grader blade and Jake was watching him carefully, as though needing to correct him, when he heard the sound of a car.

At first he thought it was the mailman but it was not a mail day, and then he wondered if they had found some gasoline from the ration place but it was not that, either, because the car turned into the driveway and when it got close he could see that it was a newer car, shiny black.

It stopped in front of him and two men got out and one was a minister, which the boy knew because he had a white collar, and the other man was a soldier in a full-dress brown uniform with a brown leather belt, and they smiled at the boy and opened the gate and knocked on the door and his
grandmother let them in and for a few seconds there was no sound at all.

Not a bird, not a breath, not a whisper and then the boy heard a scream worse than anything he'd heard when the baby came, and he ran to the house and burst into the kitchen, where the baby was in the cradle and his grandmother was holding Kristina, who was sobbing, choking, fighting for air, panting and screaming all at once.

“We are very sorry for your loss,” the soldier was saying—and his voice was even and his eyes tired, as if he had said this same thing many times and did not like having to say it—“and it is important for you to know that your husband gave his all for his country….”

“My husband”—Kristina took a breath and raised her head, and the boy had never seen eyes like hers, hard and cold and full of tears and cornered and vicious—“is
dead
, you son of bitch! He has never seen his son and he is
dead
!”

“You must go now,” his grandmother said to the men, taking Kristina back in her arms. “You have done your job and we must do ours now. Go.”

The minister held out his hand but the boy's grandmother shook her head. “Thank you for doing your job but you must go now.”

And they left and the boy stood, feeling a great loss he did not understand because he had not known Olaf the father. Yet something had been taken from his life.

And Kristina kept saying over and over, “What will I do, what will I dowhatwillIdowhatwillIdo,” in a kind of sobbing song, and finally his grandmother held her at arms' length and shook her.

“You will do what we always do because we are women. You will raise your son because that is what we do. We are the strong ones, we have always been the strong ones. Men are weak and go off and fight or fish or work and do not come back, but we are women and we are strong because we go on. We always go on.” And his grandmother was crying now as well, but her voice was hard and she shook Kristina again. “We go on and on when the men are gone. We keep them in the quilt and go on and on because in the end, when it is done, we are the only ones. We are the strong ones. Now pick up your baby and feed him and then
clean the buckets because it is nearly chores time and we must work.”

And she turned and threw the buckets in the sink and then faced the boy, who was standing by the door crying, and she said, her voice still hard, “Go and open the barn and let the cows in and get the stools down and we will come and milk. We must work. We must go on and we must work. Go now!”