The Persian Pickle Club (21 page)

“I’m an old woman, and I’m willing to take my punishment,” Ceres told Rita.

Ada June shook her head. “I know you’re trying to protect me, with my kids and all, but I’ll own up to it. Lord knows, he deserved it.” She looked Rita in the eye. “I struck him with a piece of kindling. I did it two or three times, until he stopped moving.”

“The truth is,” Mrs. Judd broke in, and everyone turned to her. “The truth is, I’m the only one strong enough to mash in Ben Crook’s head. And I’m the only one mean enough to do it.”

“Oh, no, dear, I stood on a chair so I could hit him,” Opalina said. Mrs. Judd gave Opalina such an astonished look that I almost laughed.

“We all put him in Mrs. Judd’s Packard and drove him out to the field to bury him. Then we swore a pact that if anyone ever brought up Ben’s name, we’d say he loved Ella and thought the sun rose and set on her,” I explained. “I guess we said it too much.”

“With so many men walking away from their families these days, why, folks just naturally thought that’s what Ben did,” Ceres added.

“Ben didn’t have any family, and Ella was the only one who cared about him. Everybody else in Harveyville was glad he was gone. Who’d take the trouble to look for him?” I said. The others nodded.

“But it was murder,” Rita said, drawing out the word and shuddering.

“Murder? You think killing a crazy man who’s about to beat his own wife to death is murder?” Agnes T. Ritter asked.

Rita didn’t reply. No one else spoke, either. We were relieved when a car drove past to give us something to listen to besides the sound of our voices. I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life. I could have put my head down on the quilt right then and gone to sleep. The others were weary, too, especially Mrs. Judd, who had black half-moons under her eyes. The fire had gone out of her.

She knew this wasn’t over, however, and when the sound of tires on the dirt road faded away, she asked, “Now that you know the truth, Rita, what are you going to do?”

Mrs. Judd question was the one we all wanted answered, although not one of us had had the courage to ask it. Rita frowned as she thought it over, and she wouldn’t meet our eyes. I wondered if the others heard my heart pounding away.

“You won’t put it in the paper, will you? Anson would lose his job, and they might chop off our heads, just like chickens,” Opalina said. She began to cry.

Ceres reached over to hold Opalina’s hand while Mrs. Judd said, “Hush. The state of Kansas doesn’t behead anybody.”

“We didn’t tell you this to put in the newspaper,” Agnes T. Ritter said slowly. “We told you because you are a member of the Persian Pickle Club, because you are one of us. We extended the hand of friendship to you, and there’s nothing in this world that’s stronger than friendship. You had the right to know our secret, because we trust you.” I had never heard Agnes T. Ritter say anything so fine, and I wanted to hug her for it. The idea of doing that almost made me giggle.

Rita thought hard, her teeth biting into her bottom lip. She’d chewed off all the lipstick, and the skin was raw. I remembered that night in the Ritter kitchen when Rita had sworn to sell her soul to get out of Harveyville. She wouldn’t have to sell her soul now. She’d just have to sell our story to the newspaper.

As I watched Rita twist her wedding ring around her finger, I saw how rough and cracked her hands were, not at all pretty like they were the first time I saw her. The thumb, where she’d torn off a hangnail, was bleeding onto the edge of the quilt.

“I promised to write one more article for the
Topeka Enterprise,
and I told the editor I was certain I knew who killed Ben Crook. He’d think I was stupid if I didn’t come up with something,” Rita said, choosing her words carefully. She put her hands in her lap and looked directly at me. I wanted to turn away, but knew I had to look her in the eye. Ceres put her arm around my shoulder.

“Just today, Queenie told me a story that happened before Mr. Crook’s body was found. A man at a campfire said he knew somebody was buried in Ella’s field.” Rita paused, then gave a high little laugh. “Why, you’d have to be as big a dummy as Charlie McCarthy to think it was anybody but that Skillet. It’s my duty to write a story about Skillet—you know, to warn people to watch out for drifters.”

Rita looked a little pleased with herself as she finished and winked at me. As each of us understood what Rita had said, we sighed with relief and smiled at her. I unclenched my hands to see that my nails had sunk through the flesh and drawn blood that had dripped onto the quilt in front of me. We’d spilled more blood on Mrs. Judd’s Dresden Plate that day than the Whig’s Defeat had gotten during the whole Civil War.

“That’s a real good idea. You tell folks to start locking their doors at night,” Nettie said.

“It would be what you call a service to mankind,” Forest Ann added.

“And women,” Opalina added.

The rest of us chimed in about what a help a story like that would be to people, especially those who live out in the country. Ceres said she knew Rita would do a bang-up job.

“Maybe you could run his picture,” Opalina said.

“Now, who takes a picture of a hired man?” Mrs. Judd asked her, and we all laughed.

Ella didn’t laugh. She didn’t say anything, either, which made the rest of us grow quiet again. I wondered if Ella would object to Rita’s story, but she didn’t. In fact, she wasn’t listening to us anymore. She smiled to herself and took up her needle, which had been lying on top of the quilt, and made half a dozen stitches, pulling the thread through as she hummed a little tune under her breath.

“Why, shame on us. We’ve hardly quilted at all today,” Mrs. Ritter said. One by one, each member of the Persian Pickle Club, including Rita, picked up her needle and begin stitching around the Dresden plates.

We sewed quietly for a long time, no longer feeling a need to talk, until at last, Mrs. Judd stuck her needle into the quilt and took off her thimble. “Somebody tell me where’s the time gone. I forgot all about refreshments.” She placed her hands on the side of her chair and hefted herself up. “I’ll put the teakettle on. Hot tea always hits the spot after an afternoon’s sewing. Did I tell you I’ve got fresh lemons?”

Mrs. Judd took a few heavy steps toward the kitchen before stopping to place her hand on the back of Rita’s chair and leaning over to examine the quilt in front of her. “Honey, those are real nice stitches. You’re coming along just fine.” She straightened up and added, “We’ve had an awful good quilting this evening, haven’t we, ladies? Why, you might say it’s the best Persian Pickle we ever had.”

I
t was my turn for Persian Pickle, and I could hardly wait. I’d kept quiet for two days, ever since I found the package and the postcard in the mailbox, both of them on the same day. The other club members would be as thrilled as I was!

I checked the icebox pudding again and made sure that no dust had collected in the last five minutes on the dining room table. Then I leaned over the cradle and kissed Grover junior, who was sleeping under the Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Bill quilt that Nettie and Forest Ann had made for him.

He was the sweetest baby in the world, and pretty, too. He didn’t look the least bit like Tyrone Burgett, although Grover said it would be a while before we knew whether he had Tyrone’s beer belly. That was the one and only time Grover mentioned that our baby was Tyrone’s grandson. After that, Grover forgot about it, and so did I. The Persian Pickles never mentioned Grover junior’s parents, of course. He was our baby.

Things had gone just the way we’d planned. Velma turned over her little boy to us two weeks after he was born, then went on to Moline, where she found a job as a clerk in the house-wares department of a Kresge’s five-and-dime. She’d never once written to ask about him. People in Harveyville knew we’d adopted, of course, but, except for the Pickles, no one ever suspected the baby’s mother was someone they knew.

Of course, I’d have mortgaged the farm to pay for Grover junior, but Velma’s stay in the unwed mothers’ home in Kansas City hadn’t cost us much at all. That’s because the folks there gave us credit for the $124 we raised selling raffle tickets on the Celebrity Quilt.

An old bachelor who lived north of Paxico won it. He wasn’t at the drawing, so I volunteered to mail the quilt, but Opalina warned us not to trust the United States Post Office. Someone who worked there was bound to recognize the box and take the Celebrity Quilt home, she said, and how would we explain that to Mrs. Roosevelt? She was right, I guess, so I drove all the way over to Paxico to deliver the quilt in person, which tickled that old boy. Ada June, who’d ridden along with me, said what a pity it was he couldn’t read and so didn’t know whose names he slept under.

At last, I heard the first car turn into our yard, and I glanced out the window, to see Nettie and Forest Ann pulling in next to the balm of Gileads, which still glistened with water. It hadn’t been much of a rain, but we weren’t particular, being grateful for any amount of moisture. I watched the two women walk toward the house, arm in arm, with their sewing baskets in their hands. They came inside, letting in the smell of the earth that Grover had just turned for the kitchen garden, and went to the cradle to peep at the baby.

“He grows every time I see him. He’ll be as big as Grover if you don’t watch out,” Nettie said. She patted the scarf around her neck, but these days, the gesture was only habit. Dr. Sipes had removed her goiter, probably for free, just to please Forest Ann. Nettie had gotten her hair marcelled, too, but she’d had to pay for that herself. Tyrone must have been doing some better in the gambling business.

“Him never fusses one bit. Him takes after Grover,” Forest Ann said, smoothing Grover junior’s hair.

The other members of the Persian Pickle Club arrived a few minutes later, talking softly so they wouldn’t wake the baby. I told them they could speak up. “Grover junior could sleep through a thunderstorm.”

“How would you know? We haven’t had a thunderstorm since he was born—hardly since I was born,” Agnes T. Ritter said. She and I had become closer, not best friends exactly, but good friends.

She’d stopped by right after that quilting at Mrs. Judd’s in the fall to say we shouldn’t blame Rita for trying so hard to leave Harveyville. Agnes T. Ritter confessed she’d wanted to get away every bit as much as Rita. She’d hoped to leave right after high school, but somebody had to stay on to take care of Howard and Sabra Ritter. So after finishing college, she’d come back home instead of looking for a job in Lawrence or Topeka. Her folks had hoped Tom would be the one to stay. They needed a man to help with the farming, and, well, Agnes T. Ritter sniffed, they thought Tom was smarter and better-looking and more fun to be around than she was, so who wouldn’t rather have Tom? Even in her own home, Agnes T. Ritter wasn’t anybody’s first choice. Still, she knew Tom never would come back for good. So her folks were her responsibility. I came to understand Agnes T. Ritter after that talk, and I admired her for her sacrifice.

Rita had done just what she’d promised that day at Mrs. Judd’s. She’d written one more article for the
Topeka Enterprise
about Ben Crook’s murder, warning people to be careful of drifters, especially one named “Frying Pan.”

Rita told about the Harveyville Masons putting up a ten-dollar reward for the capture and conviction of Ben’s murderer. When I read that, I asked Grover if Ben Crook was a Mason in good standing. Grover said he wasn’t because he’d never paid his dues, which was the second reason the reward was only ten dollars. The first reason was that nobody cared enough about Ben to pay more than a sawbuck to find his killer. Ben’s murder had caught the Masons between the mud and the wagon wheel, Grover said. Some of them thought they ought to give twenty-five dollars to whoever had killed Ben. They never paid out a reward one way or the other, because Skillet never was caught.

Rita didn’t get the job on the
Topeka Enterprise,
but she and Tom moved away just the same. Not more than two weeks after the quilting at Mrs. Judd’s, Tom was offered the engineering job he’d applied for at the Mountain Con copper mine in Butte, Montana. A day later, they were packed and gone. I think Tom was even more anxious to get away than Rita. A couple of weeks after that, Rita wrote to say she hadn’t had any luck with the newspapers in Butte, but she’d gotten the next best thing, a typist’s job at the Anaconda Copper Company. She was learning shorthand so she could get a promotion to steno, and one day, she might even be a secretary. “It’s a humdinger of a chance, and it sure beats feeding chickens,” she wrote.

After Rita left, the Persian Pickle made her an old-fashioned Remembrance quilt. We embroidered our names along with favorite sentiments on diamond-shaped pieces of fabric. I assembled the diamonds into a star and added a nice background. The club members stitched the quilt one day at Net-tie’s house, and we sent it off.

Rita wrote us a note by return mail, saying she’d never seen anything as gorgeous as that quilt, which she’d put on the bed as soon as she unfolded it, as a surprise for Tom. Rita turned into an even better friend after she moved away. She was my best pen pal, sending me a letter every couple of weeks, telling me about the funny people she met in Butte and the fancy restaurants where she and Tom ate.

When I wrote to tell Rita the baby had arrived, she and Tom sent Grover junior a telegram congratulating him on choosing us to be his parents. I framed it.

After the club members finished cooing at the baby, they sat down in the chairs I’d arranged around my quilt frame and admired my Christian Cross, which was made entirely of plaids and polka dots, each square a different material. I’d asked all the club members to search their ragbags for scraps so I’d have enough. I thought it was the prettiest quilt I’d ever made, and they did, too.

I assigned chairs around the quilt frame and waited until everyone began sewing before I announced, “I have a surprise for you.” I tried to sound important.

“You see another rain cloud, did you?” Mrs. Judd asked, looking up from the stitches she was taking around the blue-and-yellow-plaid cross.

“It’s something just as good and maybe better. Look at this!” I took a postcard out of my pocket and held it up. “It’s from Ruby!”

“Oh, Ruby. Goody!” Ella said. Now that the Judds had arranged for a telephone and electricity to be installed at her place, Ella had moved back to her farm. Duty and Hiawatha kept an eye on her, and Prosper picked her up at noon every day so she could take her dinner with the Judds. I’d never seen her so happy.

“Are you going to pass it around, or are you just going to wave it in the air like that?’“ Mrs. Judd asked.

“Read it out loud,” Ada June said.

I cleared my throat. “It’s from Bakersfield, California, and in case you can’t see it from where you’re sitting, there’s a picture of two little boys sitting on a giant peach.”

“They’ll squish it,” Opalina said.

Mrs. Judd shot her a look. “Read the postal,” she ordered.

“It says, ‘I bet you never thought you’d hear from me again. I hope you haven’t forgotten your old friend Ruby. Floyd is working for a farmer here, and we are living in a tourist cabin.’ And it’s signed, ‘Love to the Persian Pickle. Ruby Miller.’“

“Well, that’s just fine,” Forest Ann said, and everyone nodded.

I handed the card to Ada June to be passed around. She studied the picture while the others went back to their sewing, but not me. I cleared my throat, and they looked up.

“What now, Queenie?” Mrs. Ritter asked.

“That’s not the only thing that came in the mail. I got something from Rita, too.” I went into the dining room and came back with a cardboard box. I set it on the edge of the quilt frame and folded back the tissue, then lifted out a baby’s quilt and held it up. “It’s from Rita. She made it out of the scraps we gave her at our quiltings. She took them with her.”

“Why, we taught her to quilt, after all,” Mrs. Judd said, taking the quilt and holding it up close to her spectacles. She passed it on.

“Did you ever see anything so cunning?” Ceres asked when the quilt reached her. “It’s threads of all our lives, Rita’s and ours, pieced together.” Ceres handed the quilt to Mrs. Ritter.

“Lookit here. She’s used the little sea horses in ‘that green,’ you gave her,” Mrs. Ritter told Forest Ann. “And here’s a dear little piece of Persian pickle from you, Ceres. I’d have thought it was all used up by now.”

“Her stitches are getting better,” Ada June said, although that wasn’t true. Rita’s stitches were as big and crooked as they’d always been. “I bet she’s been practicing out in Montana.”

Nettie traced her finger around the edge of one of the pieces. “This is real nice. What’s the design?”

“It’s Double Ax Head,” Forest Ann replied when the quilt reached her.

Forest Ann passed Rita’s quilt to Agnes T. Ritter, who looked it over and said, “No it’s not. It’s not Double Ax Head at all. Well, I mean, some might call it Double Ax Head, but that’s not its real name, not the name on my templates, anyway.”

I’d sat down and begun stitching around a dark blue square with orange dots, but something in Agnes T. Ritter’s voice made me glance at her.

She was holding up the quilt and looking my way, waiting to get my attention before continuing. “When Rita wrote me to send her a pattern for a quilt for Queenie’s baby, I went through my templates and picked the one I thought had the best name. Of course, I chose an easy one, Rita not being such a good quilter and all. But it was the name that decided me. This quilt is a Friendship Forever.”

“Oh, Agnes T. … Agnes,” I said. She blushed, something I had never seen her do, and it was not a pretty sight, but I didn’t mind, because I wasn’t as critical of Agnes as I used to be.

“Fancy that. Of course it is. Could you think of a better name!” Ceres said.

“Was there a card?” Mrs. Judd asked. I told her there was and took it out of the box and handed it to her.

“It says, ‘If you wonder who’s responsible, I did it.’“ Mrs. Judd frowned at me. “Does Rita think you wouldn’t know she’d made it?” Grover had asked me the same thing.

“I guess not,” I said, going back to my stitching. I knew that wasn’t what Rita meant at all, and I smiled to myself.

The note was a kind of joke between Rita and me that I couldn’t explain to the members of the Persian Pickle, even though it went back to Rita’s last quilting, the one at Mrs. Judd’s.

When the time had come to go home, Rita had left the house with me and walked all the way to my car, where we were out of earshot of the other club members.

“Queenie, there are two things I have to clear up, just in my own mind. I promise I won’t put them into the article.”

“Well—”

Rita broke in before I could object. “How did Skillet know Ben Crook was out in that field? It’s awfully mysterious unless he helped you bury the body.”

Of course, I’d wondered that myself. “No, Skillet didn’t help. I can’t be sure how he found out, but my guess is he passed by the grave and was curious about why the earth was turned. He might have dug down to see for himself. He wouldn’t have told anyone about finding the body. There being bad blood between the two of them, he might have been arrested for Ben’s murder. I suppose by the time he met the Massies, he figured Ben had been dug up.”

Rita thought that over and said it made sense.

I turned to go, but Rita stopped me. “There’s one other question.”

I’d been afraid of that.

Rita lowered her voice. “Was it Mrs. Judd? Was she the one who killed Mr. Crook?”

I thought over that question for a long time. The members of the Persian Pickle Club never talked about which one of us had been responsible for Ben’s murder, because we didn’t care. Anybody arriving first at the Crook place that day would have picked up the oak ax handle lying on the woodpile and smashed in Ben’s skull to keep him from beating Ella. As we saw it, we shared equally in the guilt—and in the credit for saving Ella’s life, too. It was important to remember not that a bad man was dead but that a good woman still lived. It wouldn’t surprise me if one or two of the members couldn’t even recall which Pickle had wielded the ax handle, and among those who did, not a single one would have told, even in a court of law. We were all in it together. The one who actually struck the blow knew that, and it kept her from dwelling on the fact that a man died because of her.