The Persian Pickle Club (19 page)

“1 told Blue I was thinking of getting a new manure spreader, but he says he can take the old one apart and put it back together as good as new,” Grover told me when we were seated. He turned to Blue. “You know, I was thinking we could use that wrecked automobile frame out by the smokehouse to build you a windmill down here—that is, if you’re staying on for the winter. We’d sure like you to. Isn’t that about right, Queenie?”

“It’s been real nice having you as neighbors,” I said.

Blue and Zepha looked at each other a long time, then Zepha cast a sideways glance at us. She turned her eyes back to her husband but spoke to Grover. “Mr. Bean, there’s something you got a right to know. You tell it, Blue.” Instead of replying, Blue looked at his hands. Zepha said again, “Tell it, Blue. You know you got to say it.”

Blue nodded. “The woman’s right.”

Grover and I looked at each other, not knowing what to expect. I felt a chill on my back as I wondered if Blue had had something to do with the man on the road, after all. We didn’t know the Massies very well, and they did have odd ways. But the minute I thought of Blue being tied up with that man, I knew I was wrong. I trusted the Massies almost as much as I did the members of the Persian Pickle Club.

“We ain’t told you the truth. We didn’t just break down there on the crick last summer like we said we done. We come here a’purpose.” Blue gave Grover such a look of remorse that I wondered if he feared he’d be struck down by lightning.

“I guess I don’t follow you,” was all Grover said. I took a drink of coffee, and the sound of my swallowing was so loud, everybody looked at me. Sonny sat down on the hired man’s bed with Baby. The sun had set behind the deep blue fields, and the only light in the room now came from the yellow circle cast by the kerosene lamp on the table. All I could see of Sonny, sitting back along the wall, were his eyes, shining like a coyote’s.

Blue opened his mouth to say something, but he was talked out, so he nodded at Zepha and leaned back in his chair in the shadows, which made his face dark.

“We heard about you’ns. We come here looking for this place. We heard you was good for a handout,” she said.

I looked at Grover, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. So, he’d been helping back-door moochers without my knowing about it!

Grover wouldn’t admit it, however. Instead, he asked, “Do you mean my neighbors say I’m an easy touch?”

Blue found his voice again. “No, sir.” He drew himself up so he could look Grover in the eye. “It wasn’t nobody around here. We heard it at a place where we was camped. Man said to go two miles north of Harveyville, past the yellow house on the left, and camp by the creek. He told us, ‘The man’ll help you, but stay clear of the woman. She ain’t partial to drifters.’ “

Zepha added quickly, “We say he’s wrong about that, missus. You’ve been every bit as nice as your husband.”

Grover grinned at me, then turned serious and said, “I don’t blame you for it, Blue. When your family’s hungry and you’ve got no place to stay, you do the best you can. It’s no skin off my back why you showed up, and now that you’re here, Queenie and me are glad of it, aren’t we, honeybunch?”

“You bet!”

“There’s nothing more to say, then.” Grover stood up. “We’ll be getting on—” Blue put out his hand, and Grover sat back down.

“Fact is, there is,” Blue said, while Zepha nodded and gritted her teeth. “We wasn’t going to say nothing about it. Then we heard about them finding that dead feller.”

“You mean Ben Crook?” Grover asked. He put his hand over mine on the quilt.

“That’s the name,” Blue said. Zepha interrupted, but Blue tapped the table with his fist to stop her from talking. “You told me to tell them, so I’m doin’ it. Now, hush up.” He leaned back on the two legs of the chair and took a deep breath.

“I don’t know that this means nothing, but that feller who told us about you did a good piece of talking. He said to stay away from the Crook place, since a poor widow woman lived there with not enough to share.”

“That’s true enough,” Grover said.

“Then he told us her husband was buried out there in a field.” Blue set the front legs of the chair down with a thump. That was the only sound for a full minute.

“How would anybody know last spring that Ben was buried out there?” I whispered to Grover.

“ ‘Xactly,” Blue said. “When he told us, I thought the man was already dug up.”

“This fellow who told you, do you remember what he looked like?” Grover asked.

Blue shook his head. “We tried, and we cain’t. He was just a voice over the fire. Zepha says she recollects his head was shaped like a hoe, and he was narrow between the eyes. She remembers he had a beard like a feed bag, but she don’t recall no more than that. He ‘lowed as how he sneaked into this here cabin and lived a time, and you never knowed about it.”

“Maybe Skillet,” I said. “Did he tell you his name was Skillet?”

Blue looked at Zepha, who shook her head. “I don’t recall that he said his name.”

“If he did, I don’t remember no name of Skillet,” Blue added.

We all stared at one another until Baby cried. Sonny muttered, “Doggone,” and patted her, and she went back to sleep.

“We don’t want to cause no trouble,” Blue said at last.

“It’s our duty to tell you, that dead man being torn from the bosom of his family like he was,” Zepha added. “We been talking about it ever since we heard. At first, we weren’t sure we’d say nothing, ‘cause we aimed to move along in the fall. But now that we’re fixing to stay the winter …”? She glanced at me, then continued. “Well, I put it to Blue, ‘We got to tell the folks.’“

“What are you going to do?” Blue interrupted her, and we all turned to Grover.

“We’ll have to tell the sheriff, I expect,” Grover said. Blue’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced at Zepha, so Grover added quickly, “It doesn’t mean whoever it was you met killed Ben. Maybe it was a lucky guess, since everybody knows Ben disappeared. It’s a natural thing to make up a story like that over a campfire.”

“That feller seemed sure enough about it,” Zepha said. “The way he talked, it sounded like that Mr. Crook had already been dug up. We never thought nothing of it till the preacher woman spoke up about the nigger finding them bones.”

“We’ll have to let the sheriff know about it. I don’t expect he’ll do anything, since you don’t know who did the talking. I’ll drive you in tomorrow,” Grover said.

Blue exchanged another look with Zepha, then turned to Grover. “I wouldn’t be wanting to talk to no sheriff myself,” he said.

“Oh, don’t concern yourself with Sheriff Eagles. A man can’t be responsible for what he heard somebody else say,” Grover told him.

“There ain’t going to be no trouble, is they?” Zepha asked.

“I shouldn’t think so. The sheriff is liable to ask you the same questions I did. Come on up to the house in the morning. I’ll go with you myself.”

“We don’t want no trouble.” Zepha rocked back and forth, looking at Blue. “We’s honest. That trouble back home, it weren’t Blue’s fault. There’s those can tell you so, but they never spoke up.” Then she added darkly, “I heard an owl hoot last night after supper. I know they’s bad times coming. I told you that, Blue. I know the signs.”

“Hush, woman,” Blue warned her.

Grover stood up. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Zepha. Sheriff Eagles is a nice man, and I’ll tell him you’re as honest as anybody I ever met in Harveyville.”

“We cain’t have no more trouble,” Zepha said. “I never seed the like o’ signs. I saw a hawk fly east across the moon—”

“Quiet,” Blue said.

Zepha kept on rocking, muttering to herself. She didn’t even notice when we left the shack.

“That one sure does take on,” Blue said, shaking his head at Zepha. He walked us to the car and ran his hand across the hood. “Coming in, she sounded like she’s got a rod loose,” he said.

“Maybe we can take a look at it in the morning when we get back,” Grover said, and Blue nodded.

Driving home in the dark with the headlights shining across the brown stubble on our fields, I locked the doors again and moved close to Grover.

“Are you thinking about Skillet—or whoever that was the Massies met—living in the shack?” Grover asked. I nodded, and even though he couldn’t see me in the blackness, Grover knew I was. “Don’t you worry. If it was Skillet living there, he won’t come back now that Ben’s body’s been found. I never knew why he stayed on the Crook place as long as he did, the way Ben ragged on him.”

“Did you give him permission to stay in the shack?” I asked. Grover didn’t answer, so I knew he had.

Grover stopped when we reached the highway and turned to me. “Skillet told me Ben went for him with a pitchfork. There was no reason for it. Skillet was putting away a harness and heard a sound, and there was Ben right behind him, ready to stick him in the back. That’s why he took off. I ran into him down by the creek. He was waiting until Ben left so he could sneak back and get his things.”

“Did he get them?”

“I never knew. All I know is, he wasn’t in the shack a few days later.”

“Was he living in the shack after Ben disappeared?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to remember that all evening.” Grover shifted the car into gear and turned onto the highway. “The fact is, I’ve been trying to recollect it ever since Hiawatha found Ben’s body. One thing’s for sure, whether Skillet killed Ben or not, he’s got no reason to come back to Harveyville.”

Grover and Blue never went to the sheriffs office. Grover waited for Blue until almost noon, then went to the shack looking for him.

When he returned, Grover leaned his back against the kitchen sink and faced me. “They’re gone, Queenie.”

“What?” I asked.

“The shack’s empty. The Massies must have packed up right after we left last night and took off. The place is as clean as a whistle. They even removed that quilt frame from the ceiling.”

“I don’t understand. They asked to stay, and we told them they could. Why would they leave?”

Grover took off his hat, hung it on the knob on the back of a kitchen chair, and sat down. “I suppose they were scared. Hill people don’t much like lawmen. It took pretty near as much courage as they had just to tell us the story. I should have thought about that. It’s my fault for telling Blue he had to talk to Sheriff Eagles.” Grover went to the icebox and took out a pitcher of buttermilk. “You want some?” he asked, reaching into the cupboard for a glass.

“It’ll make me puke,” I said. We both laughed, even though it brought tears to my eyes. “I’m going to miss that little boy. I’ll miss all of them. Maybe they’ll be back next summer.”

Grover shook his head.

“Did they leave a note?” I asked.

Grover took a swallow of buttermilk right out of the pitcher and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Could they write?”

I didn’t know.

“They left the cream can and some other stuff.” Grover put down his glass and went to a cardboard box he’d carried in and left on the Hoosier cupboard. Inside were dishes and spoons I’d loaned to Zepha, along with some of Graver’s tools that Blue had used. There was a pile of toothpicks, too, tied with an old shoelace. Grover took out a bundle that was wrapped in newspaper and fastened with string. “They left this, too. It was sitting on the hired man’s bed. You better open it.”

I didn’t have to open it to know what it was. I stared at the package in Grover’s hands for a long time, blinking back the tears. I took the bundle from Grover and untied the string, putting it into my apron pocket to save. I carefully unwrapped the newspaper and took out the quilt, folded with the design inside so it wouldn’t get smudged from the newsprint. “It’s her Road to California quilt,” I said, slowly opening it and staring at the tiny pieces, no bigger than postage stamps.

“That’s a real shame. They sure set store by that quilt,” Grover said. “They must have left in such a hurry, she forgot all about it.”

I felt the homespun goods between my thumb and finger and rubbed my hand across the stitches. Then I held the folded quilt against my face. “No,” I told Grover, “Zepha didn’t forget it.”

S
o much had been happening lately—first the excitement over the baby, then the Massies pulling out—that before I knew it, a week had passed and Persian Pickle had come around again. Club meetings were back on schedule, and so was I. Going out, at least to Pickle, didn’t bother me anymore.

Mrs. Judd was the hostess. So I thought, surely, Rita would find an excuse not to come. Those “interesting things” that Rita’d found out about the Judds didn’t sound very nice, and with the way she and Mrs. Judd felt about each other, Rita wouldn’t be comfortable sewing in the Judd parlor. Women can’t quilt when they’re angry. It shows up in the stitches. Of course, even when Rita was in a good mood, her stitches weren’t the best I’d ever seen. Despite my efforts, Rita, at heart, was not a quilter, and I’d begun to doubt that she ever would be.

To my surprise, however, Rita was at the Judds’ when I arrived, waiting for me. She stood off by herself in the parlor, fidgeting and looking more ill at ease than she ever had. When she saw me, Rita grabbed my arm and said, “My God, Queenie. I sure am glad you’re here. It makes me feel creepy being in this house.” She bit the end of a fingernail. Most of her fingernails had been chewed off, and the polish was a mess.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” I said, although the truth was, the Judds’ parlor with its heavy walnut furniture covered with brown upholstery was as dreary a place as I’d ever seen. Paper with big tan feathers covered the walls, making me feel I was inside a pillow. The pictures were hung so high that you got a crick in your neck just looking up at them—although I don’t know anybody who would bother to do so, since the same pictures were in every house in Kansas. They were
End of the Trail,
which showed an out-of-luck Indian about to fall off his horse, and another, whose name I never knew, of a bunch of dogs sitting around a poker table, playing cards. That one was a favorite of Grover’s. We had the same picture hanging in Dad Bean’s old bedroom, and I hoped Grover would let me throw it out when we turned the room into a nursery.

Rita curled her lip a little as she looked around the room, stopping at Mrs. Judd’s prized Whig’s Defeat hanging on the wall.

“Look at that quilt. There’s a big hole in it,” Rita said, touching a dark spot where the stuffing showed through.

“It’s a bullet hole, and the red around it, that’s blood,” I told Rita, who snatched her hand away. “The quilt belonged to Mr. Judd’s father. He carried it all through the Civil War and claimed it saved his life when he was shot by a Confederate.”

Rita bit the end of her finger because there wasn’t any nail left to chew. “If that rifleman had been a better shot, there wouldn’t be any Mr. Judd.” I smiled a little, only to be polite to her, because it wasn’t a nice thing to say. Then Rita whispered, “Murder seems to run in the family.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that, but it reminded me I hadn’t told her what the Massies had said about Skillet. “Come over here,” I said, glancing at Ella to make sure she was out of earshot. I drew Rita into the dining room and looked around, because I didn’t want anyone else to overhear, either. Of course, Grover let Sheriff Eagles know what Blue and Zepha had told us, but the sheriff kept it to himself, so I didn’t care to upset the club members by bringing it up. They wanted to forget about Ben Crook’s murder every bit as much as I did.

“Here’s your killer,” I whispered. I told Rita the story of the Massies overhearing a drifter say a man was buried in Ella’s field. “Blue and Zepha knew about Ben’s body before Hiawatha found it. That hobo at the campfire just had to be Skillet. The way they described him, I know it was,” I said.

Rita listened without interrupting, furrowing her brow as I finished. “Well, maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.” Rita thought a minute. “For crying out loud, Queenie, you know as well as I do that that Skillet person didn’t kill Ben Crook.” She tapped her front teeth with her thumb. “Of course, he could have been in on it one way or another. It sort of complicates things. I’ll have to think about that.”

“You’re crazy!” I sputtered. “A man knows about Ben Crook being buried before the body’s found, and all you can say is it’s something to think about?”

Rita ran her tongue back and forth over her lip. “Hold your horses, Queenie. I’m not saying Skillet wasn’t involved somehow, but I know for sure he didn’t do it. Wait till you hear what I have to tell you. Do you know what a conspiracy is?”

“Well, of course. I’m not so dumb,” I said, trying to remember what the word meant.

“What’s this about a conspiracy?” Mrs. Judd had come up behind us, and neither Rita nor I had noticed her until she spoke. She wore a brown dress with tan stripes that made her look like a piece of her furniture. The dress was baggy, with spots on the front, and crumbs, too, which wasn’t like Mrs. Judd, who’d always been tidy. She’d been a big woman once, but her bones seemed to have shrunk in the past few weeks, leaving her skin loose and saggy. Caring for Ella had taken its toll on Mrs. Judd, but she’d bite her tongue off before she’d utter one word of complaint. So would Prosper.

“Oh, we’re just talking,” said Rita, who was a lot faster with the comebacks than I was.

“Yeah, talking,” I added.

“Well, come and quilt,” Mrs. Judd ordered. “You can talk while you sew.” She wet her finger and touched the crumbs on her bosom, then brushed her hands together.

Mrs. Judd went ahead of us into the parlor, and Rita drew her finger across her throat. “Whew!”

Mrs. Judd’s Dresden Plate was ready for us in the quilt frame, which was propped up on the backs of four chairs. The club members gathered around it, telling Mrs. Judd how nice the quilt top looked, even though Mrs. Judd didn’t have an eye for color. She’d picked orange for the centers of the design, which made the quilt looked like a field of pumpkins. Mrs. Judd had bleached the sugar sacks she used for the background, but I could still make out the writing on some of them. The stitches in the quilt were nice and even, however. Ella leaned over to inspect them, and her monogrammed brooch fell off, right onto the quilt, which was lucky, because the pin was made of china and would have broken if it had hit the parlor’s linoleum carpet.

Rita picked up the pin and handed it back to Ella, first brushing her finger over the gold letters. “E.E.C. Ella Crook. What does the middle initial stand for?”

“Eagles. It’s Ella’s maiden name,” Ceres said.

“Let’s get started,” Mrs. Judd interrupted. “Sit anyplace you like. I’m not particular.” Even so, Mrs. Judd maneuvered Ella as far away from Rita as possible. She didn’t trust Rita any more than Rita trusted her, and I wished now that I’d found out what it was Rita knew. I didn’t want her to spoil our quilting by saying something rash.

“Ladies, the Celebrity Quilt’s all bound,” Mrs. Ritter announced as we took our places and began stitching around the Dresden Plate wedges. We all murmured our approval.

“We used red for the binding, the same fabric as the sashing. It’s pretty. Awful pretty,” Agnes T. Ritter said. Both Ada June and I stopped sewing to look at her. Agnes T. Ritter had never in her life said anything was pretty. “Well, it is,” she sniffed.

“It will make us famous,” Nettie said. She looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back. Neither one of us was thinking about the quilt. We were thinking about Velma’s baby— my baby. Still, I knew from the last club meeting that not one Pickle, including Nettie, would ever say a word out loud about the baby until it arrived, so Nettie and I only smiled.

“So famous, maybe somebody will ask us for our autographs for
their
celebrity quilt,” Forest Ann said.

“Maybe so,” Mrs. Judd put in. “Maybe Lizzy Olive will.”

We laughed, and I was glad things were back to normal at the Persian Pickle Club. This was going to be as pleasant a quilting as I’d ever attended. The entire club had come, and except for Rita, who was still jumpy, we were all in a good mood. The room was sunny, and big enough so that we weren’t cramped. We sewed with the windows open, since it was warm outside, but we didn’t have to worry about chiggers because the first frost had killed them.

We stitched quietly for a minute. Then Opalina said she’d heard Blue and Zepha had pulled out, and I nodded. “I guess they just got itchy feet,” I said. “Drifters do that. That’s why they’re called drifters.”

“Did they steal anything?” Agnes T. Ritter asked. “People who sneak away in the night ‘most always take something.” Now she was her old self again.

“No, not unless you count the girlie calendar that the last hired man left behind a couple of years ago.” I knew the Massies hadn’t taken it, however, because Grover had removed it when he took the Massies to the cabin in the early summer, then tacked it up in the barn where he thought I wouldn’t notice it. “But they left something behind. Zepha gave me her Road to California,” I said, blushing, because the Pickles knew women didn’t give you their best quilts unless you were special to them.

“Oh, a Road to California’s a nice quilt,” Ella said. She was following things better that afternoon than she had in a long time.

“Zepha’s a fine quilter. She told me that in the hill country, they throw a cat on top of the quilt as soon as the last stitch is in. If the cat jumps into your lap, then you’re the next to get married.” I glanced at Agnes T. Ritter, but she didn’t look up. “I don’t know where they went, but I hope the Massies headed for“California. Zepha always talked about going there.”

“Maybe she’ll see Ruby,” Ella whispered.

“Now, Ella, sweetheart, those people weren’t the kind Ruby would be acquainted with. Besides, they don’t even know Ruby’s name,” Mrs. Judd told her. “We’ll get a postal from Ruby one day soon. Just you believe it.”

We talked about Ruby, wondering where she was and whether she ate oranges every day, until we heard the Packard drive up, and Mrs. Judd said, “That’ll be Prosper. He went to town for lemons. I forgot to get them yesterday. We’ll have tea with lemons this afternoon.”

Prosper came into the parlor with a paper bag clutched in both hands, and when he saw us, he blinked his little pink eyes, then ducked his head with embarrassment. Our husbands stayed away from the Persian Pickle Club, and if they didn’t, we shooed them out. Prosper took off his hat and looked around the circle, nodding at each one of us. When he came to Ella, he smiled and said, “My, Miss Ella, don’t you look pretty as paint.”

“Oh, Prosper.” Ella looked down at her needle and blushed.

Prosper kept on around the circle, and when he reached Rita, he didn’t nod; he just looked away.

“Well, hello, Mr. Judd,” Rita called, bold as brass. Her voice was high and a little out of control, which made me look up. So did the others, and Prosper backed out of the room.

“I’ll set these in the kitchen, Mother,” Prosper said. The back door slammed, and the Packard started up again. Mrs. Judd, who’d been watching Rita since Prosper left the room, continued to stare at her.

In a minute, Rita glanced over and caught Mrs. Judd’s eye, and the two of them watched each other like sniffing dogs, not saying anything. Ella didn’t notice, and she said in her tiny voice, “Prosper’s the best man.”

It was the second time that afternoon that Ella had spoken up. I was about to send her a smile of encouragement when suddenly Rita blurted out, “Like hell, Ella! Prosper killed your husband!” I don’t think Rita had planned to say that. It just happened. Before she could stop the words, they were out. Rita froze, the point of her needle stuck in the quilt.

The room was so quiet, we could hear Opalina’s needle go through the quilt. Opalina was sweating, as usual, and her sticky needle squeaked as she pushed it through the cotton with her thimble.

I finished my stitch at the instant I looked up at Rita, and I ran the needle into my finger. When I glanced down, I saw a little drop of my blood on the Dresden plate I was stitching around. I put my finger into my mouth.

Nettie and Forest Ann turned to each other with shock in their faces, and Mrs. Ritter grabbed Agnes T. Ritter’s hand. Ceres, her eyes wide, put her knuckles into her mouth and bit down. Ella held tightly to the seat of her chair to keep from sliding off, her face even whiter than usual. We exchanged glances with each other before turning to stare at Rita, who had a look of horror on her face at what she’d said. Her open mouth was a round O, and a little line of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Her hands shook on the quilt, and to steady them, she held fast to the edge of the frame.

At that very moment, before anyone spoke, a lazy winter fly buzzed in from the kitchen, made big swoops around the room, and landed on the light globe hanging above us. Mrs. Judd stood up slowly so she wouldn’t disturb it, took a flyswatter off the wall, and slapped it against the light. The dead fly fell onto the quilt, landing on the bright orange center of one of the Dresden plates. Using the edge of the swatter, Mrs. Judd picked up the fly and carried it to the screen door, flicking it outside. She closed the door and hooked it, returned the swatter to its nail, and sat down.

“What’s that you were saying about Mr. Judd?” Mrs. Judd’s voice was quiet, but there was an edge of steel in it, the way it got when city people tried to talk her down on the price of her eggs.

We looked at her as she spoke, then turned to Rita for the answer.

Rita swallowed uncomfortably, looking as if she wished she could fall through the floor. After making an accusation like that, she couldn’t back off, and I think she knew not one of us in that room was on her side. She opened and shut her mouth a couple of times before saying, “I told Ella your husband killed Ben Crook.” Rita still didn’t have control of her voice.

“That’s what I thought you said. You as much as told Prosper that the time you caught him out by the horse trough, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Judd waited quietly, but Rita didn’t answer. The rest of us were too stunned to speak.

Ella broke the silence. “Not Prosper,” she stuttered.

“He did, Ella.” Rita gave her a pleading look, then turned again to Mrs. Judd. Her voice was firmer when she spoke this time. “You know he did it, don’t you, Mrs. Judd? Why, I think you all know it, every one of you.” She looked at each of us, even me. I lowered my eyes.