Oh, honey, what about it! However did you come by that old quilt? I can recall just like hit was yesterday, me and Belvy stitching on it, along with some of the others from along the branch--let's see, there was Callie and Aetha and the Goforth sisters Beulah and Lula What a time we had that day!
All of us had got up early to get the chores done and leave some dinner in the house for our men but we was ever one of us at Callie's house just as Hobart --that was her man's name-- was heading to the barn to put the gears on his team. Callie's house had a good size front room and the quilt was already on the frame hoisted up to the ceiling. We all called out Howdy to Hobart, but he didn't even throw up his hand, just kept on a-walking. He was a hateful somebody, and that's the truth.
There was something a little quare about Callie that morning; her eyes was kindly wild and she kept looking after which way Hobart was going. I asked was there something the matter and she just gave a little laugh that warn't exactly a laugh and said Hobart had bowed up over her having a houseful of women there all day so she'd packed him a lunch and told him not to come back till dark.
Now that surprised me right much for Hobart was rough as a cob and I was pretty sure he beat Callie now and again. It warn't like her to go against him. But, thinks I, maybe she's had enough and is going to stand up for herself. I just hope he don't kill her.
There's where she put her name, there on that piece of pink cloth. It was from the dress she was married in and she wore it to church and such till Hobart decided that she was too vain of it and he took and cut it up in pieces for rags. She cried and cried but ever after, all her dresses was dark ugly browns and blacks.
Callie done this embroidry too. I asked her was it a flower and she gave a kindly wild look and laughed another of those quare laughs and said No, it is a bird, flying free.
Well, I didn''t think nothing of it at the time, and every one of us had done some fancy stitching on this crazy quilt. Which we were making it as a gift for our preacher who was moving away, having been left a big house and a lot of money by a maiden aunt.
We thought the world of Preacher Joshua Raines; he was a good somebody and right easy on the eyes, to tell the truth. He set many a heart a-fluttering with that curly yaller hair and them soft gray eyes. Some of the men faulted him for not preaching more about sin and the hereafter but he said the message he had was about doing good in the here-and-now.
So we was all working away to set off each patch with embroidry and funning, the way women-folk will when they ain't no men around. And Callie was the gayest of all, most like she'd taken a sup of white likker, which I knew she hadn't. Ladies, says she, how would you get rid of a hateful man?
Well, everyone got quiet and Belvy's eyes got real wide and she was about to speak when Beulah said, Why, I reckon I'd poison him. Find some mushrooms or mash up a bunch of foxglove leaves and mix them in with lamb's quarters . . .
No, says, Lula, who could never let her sister outdo her, I'd put
a rattlesnake in the bed and make sure he got in first. And she giggled like one thing.
Now everyone was joining in, except me and Belvy. Aetha said to send him to the field with a lunch pail of bees--and we all looked out the winder at the row of bee gums Callie tended.
That was another thing her and Hobart warred over--he hated a bee but she had brought the bee gums with her when they married and she sold honey to put by money for the children that, after three years of marriage, hadn't happened.
Well, it got right quiet and we looked at one another and at Callie, who had pushed her chair back and stood up. Ladies, said she, I'm sorry to leave before the work is done. And she went and pulled out an old cardboard grip from under the bed.
Just then we heard the sound of an automobile coming along the road in front of the house. Now back then not many had vehicles except for Doc Morris. But Preacher Raines had bought him an A-model Ford when he come into all that money and it was him pulling up to the house and getting out, that purty yaller hair shining in the sun.
I thank you for the ideas, says Callie, as Preacher Raines takes her grip and puts in the back seat. I was right at the end of my tether and, but for Josh, she said, taking his hand and climbing into the front seat, I might have done something dreadful. As it is, I believe I'll just leave Hobart to stew in his own hatefulness. I've left him a note to say I won't be back. Me and Josh, we're heading out now for our new home.
And off they went.
And again we all looked at one another. Well, says Belvy, what shall we do with this qoing- away quilt? The preacher has already done gone and Hobart's wife with him.
As I recollect, it was the Goforth sisters said they'd take the quilt home and finish it. We was all in a hurry to be on our way before Hobart come back.
He never did much good after Callie left. He'd always been bad to drink and he started drinking all day and not tending to his crops. No one knew where the preacher and Callie had gone and Hobart didn't even try to find out.
But one morning he took a notion to get rid of Callie's bees and like a fool, he kicked over the hives, one after another.
At least, that's what those who found him figgered had happened. Hobart couldn't say, being dead as a hammer.
