by Donis Casey
Sheriff Barger had placed several items in a neat row along the dining table in the narrow, cheerful room that had once been a breezeway between the kitchen and the main part of the house.
There were two black leather boots which had been cleaned, and, Alafair was glad to see, no longer contained the remains of feet. Several dirty and degraded items had been arranged on the table next to a smallish, fringed, leather satchel. Alafair could identify a rose stone, a small bone knife, a tiny tobacco pouch. Most interesting to her was a fairly good-sized piece of cloth material in the shape of a lopsided rectangle, perhaps six inches by eight inches. It was in a bad state after ten years in the ground. There had been a rudimentary attempt to brush away some of the dirt but she could still see protrusions of hair-like tendrils of grass and weed roots. There was no way to tell what the original color of the cloth had been. But there was a distinct repetition of dark shapes on a lighter background. Some sort of pattern. And the remnants of tiny, even lines of stitches across the face of the material.
“That’s a piece of a quilt,” Martha said just as Alafair thought it.
“Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff said. “That’s what we reckoned. It was in the bag, wrapped around the other things.”
Alafair leaned close and peered at the dark pattern. “What is this?” she asked, thinking aloud rather than expecting an answer. “Looks like…is it birds?”
Barger looked at her with interest. “None of us that examined it back in Muskogee could tell what that pattern is, Miz Tucker. Does it look familiar?”
Alafair impulsively reached for the fragment of cloth but caught herself before she touched it. She cast Barger a questioning glance, her hand hovering in the air, and he nodded. She gingerly picked up the quilt piece and peered closely at it. “Martha, come have a look at this. You have younger eyes than me. Does that look like birds to you?”
Not only Martha responded to Alafair’s request, but both her brothers as well. Martha, Gee Dub, and Charlie crowded around for a closer look.
“It doesn’t look like much of anything to me, Mama,” Charlie offered.
“Just a regular pattern of dark smudges,” Gee Dub agreed.
Alafair held it out to Sally, who shook her head. Martha took a step back.
She put the scrap back down on the table. “Sorry, Sheriff. Something about that pattern reminds me of birds. I reckon that’s the best I can do.”
Barger wasn’t displeased. “Well, that’s a better guess than anybody else has come up with.”
Shaw said nothing. He was standing behind the crowd with his back pressed to the wall next to the door, fingering the bone necklace in his pocket.
Chapter Thirteen
“Ma, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, I think I’ve seen the pattern on that piece of quilt before.”
Alafair was leaning over a wash tub in the back yard, up to her elbows in soapy water, when Martha made this startling announcement. It was a raw Monday morning, overcast and gray, with a cold, blustery wind chapping Alafair’s cheeks and flapping the sheets she had already hung over the clothesline. Martha was dressed for work in a neat Navy-blue skirt. Her square white collar was just peeking out from the top of the belted wool coat she had donned for her upcoming buggy ride into town.
Alafair gaped at her for an instant, then straightened and dried her hands and forearms on a piece of towel she had tucked into the pocket of the apron she was wearing over her heavy cardigan. “You recognized that quilt piece? Are you sure? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Well, I had to think about it for a spell first. Besides, what if I’m wrong? I didn’t want to say anything in front of Sheriff Barger or Scott before I mentioned it to you.” Martha rubbed her red nose with a mittened hand before she continued. “Mama, do you remember that blue and white pinafore you made for me when I was five or six, the one I liked so much and wore all the time until I couldn’t fit into it?”
Alafair rolled down her sleeves. “Sure, honey. The one with the…” She swallowed her words and her eyes widened.
Martha nodded. “The one with the birds. Yes, you remember too. Indigo birds on a white background. They had their wings spread like they were flying. You made a pinafore for me and one for Mary, too, if I remember.”
“I’ll be switched! The way those little dark blobs were arranged on that bit of quilt must have just tickled my memory enough to make me say ‘birds’ without quite knowing why. Martha, honey, I see what you’re getting at, but just because one thing reminds you of the other it don’t mean that they really are the same.”
“Why did we both think the same thing, then?”
Alafair smiled. “We might both think a stranger looks like Daddy without thinking he really is Daddy.”
Martha didn’t look quite as sure of herself as she did before. But she persisted. “Whatever happened to those pinafores, Ma?”
“I don’t rightly remember. They probably got handed down to the twins. Most of your clothes did. Then Alice most likely wore hers to a nubbin and Phoebe’s went to Ruth for a play dress. After that I’m guessing I used them as dust cloths or wove them into a rag rug.”
“Or a quilt?”
“I’ve used many a scrap of you children’s worn clothes to make quilts, sugar, but I can’t recall us owning a single quilt with indigo birds on it. Can you?”
“Not right off.” Martha’s forehead crinkled as she mentally inventoried her mother’s collection of bedding. “Still. Would you care if I had a look through the chests after I get home this evening?”
“No, honey, you go ahead on whenever you want.”
The screen door on the back porch creaked open and Mary’s head popped out. “Martha, come on,” she called. “It’s almost seven o’clock. I’ve got to get to the schoolhouse.”
Martha left and Alafair rolled up her sleeves before resuming her scrubbing. She could hardly keep from muttering to herself as she rubbed. Why had Shaw and his brother taken a notion to hunt birds on that forsaken plot of land out in the middle of nowhere? What malevolent force had led Buttercup to retrieve a piece of leg that had been attached to someone lying quietly buried in the woods for at least a decade? Who was that inconvenient fellow with the hole in his forehead and why was he causing such a bother for folks who never did anything to him?
Chapter Fourteen
Martha kept banker’s hours for once and walked home as soon as the bank closed in the afternoon, leaving the buggy at the schoolhouse for her siblings. She barely took time to strip off her coat and scarf and greet her mother before rummaging through the cedar chests and armoires, inspecting every blanket, pillowcase, quilt, sheet, and towel for a patch of blue birds. All the children had returned from school and completed their afternoon chores. Alafair had begun mixing cornbread for supper when Martha finally wandered into the kitchen, her eyes on the floor and an expression of intense concentration on her face.
Alafair couldn’t help but grin. “Now you’re inspecting the rugs?”
Martha looked up and managed a quirky smile. “All right, I give up, Ma. I reckon those birds are long gone.”
Mary turned from stirring the big pot of beans on the stove. “What are y’all talking about? What birds?”
Martha put her hands on her hips. “Mary, do you remember those pinafores we had when we were girls, the ones with the blue birds on them?”
“Sure I do. I hated mine. It was real thick material and I thought it was scratchy.”
“Do you remember what happened to them?”
Alafair sighed. “Oh, Martha, let it go.”
But Mary nodded. “Yes, mine got all ripped up when I fell off old Pork Chop. It had seen better days by then anyway, so Mama used what was left of it to make a rag mop. I enjoyed that rag mop more than the dress. I don’t know about yours, Martha. I do remember when you made those, Mama. I was with you when you picked out the material at Cousin Hattie’s mercantile. That was the first time you ever let me help you choose a pattern and it mad
e a big impression on me. You said that it was ‘linsey-woolsey’. I thought that was funny.”
“Oh, that’s right! You can’t hardly get linsey-woolsey any more. It makes good clothes for children because it’s tough as canvas.”
Mary stirred as she reminisced. “You had some of that material left over, if I remember right. You said you were going to make a baby gown, I think, but never did,”
Alafair slid the cornbread pans into the oven. Why don’t I remember any of this? I guess I’ve sewn so many little girl dresses in my time that I can’t remember one from another. Did I ever make a baby gown with blue birds? Who was a baby when I bought the bird material?
She began to calculate the years, intrigued by the problem in spite of herself. Martha said she was five or six at the time. Gee Dub was born in the fall just before Martha turned five. Must have been about 1896 or ’97.
Alafair paused in the midst of slicing onions. That was the year she’d borne the boy who died after a brief week of life. She had intended to make a baby gown for him but he had been born and died before she got around to it. It was no wonder she didn’t remember what happened to that leftover material.
Mary did. “That piece sat up in the top of your armoire for a while, Ma. I think you finally used it to make a quilt.”
Chapter Fifteen
Shaw was spending a lot more time grooming Gee Dub’s long-legged red mare, Penny, than he ought to, these days. He always left that particular task until the very end of the work day, just before he dismissed the hands and gathered up the boys and headed up to the house for supper. Since Gee Dub had gone off to study agriculture at Oklahoma A&M, Penny was feeling a bit lonely so Shaw tried to make a point of seeing that she was ridden and put through her paces once or twice a week.
Or maybe it was Shaw who was feeling a bit lonely since Gee Dub had left for A&M and ending his day by combing Penny connected him in some way to his absent son.
Shaw could hardly admit it to himself but he hated to see his children grow up and leave. Yet, ever since Martha had drawn her first breath nearly a quarter century before, he had considered his primary purpose on earth to prepare his children to do just that. He and Alafair had done a damn fine job of it, too, without a doubt. He loved being surrounded by his cheerful, contentious, boisterous bunch, the more of them the better.
But first Phoebe had married, and then Alice. Gee Dub had made the decision to go away and study. Mary would be gone in the spring and Martha by next fall. Even Ruth, just sixteen, was making plans to take a music course in Muskogee next year. Every time one of them broke away it left a gaping tear in the fabric of the family. It didn’t seem fair to Shaw that he was losing half his children within a three-year span.
Alafair told him that the family was just getting bigger, what with the sons-in-law and the new grandbaby, and many more of both to come. Shaw liked all his daughters’ husbands and future husbands and he adored his little granddaughter Zeltha Day. He still had five young ones coming up, and after all Grace was only three years old. How could he possibly complain?
Even so, it just was not the same as when all ten were skipping and running and flying around the farm. He remembered an early summer day several years ago, before Grace was even born, when he and Gee Dub and Charlie came home from town with a hundred pound block of ice in the buckboard. As he pulled up behind the house to unload he found Alafair and all seven of the girls in the back, sun-drying their hair after a mass washing with water from the rain barrel. Alafair and the older girls were sitting in kitchen chairs brushing out their long tresses and the little ones were dashing about with hair flying behind like silken sails. They were so beautiful, all of them there together, laughing and talking, hair of every hue, pale blond and honey, chestnut and auburn, deep brown and sable, shining in the sun. For a moment the sight had rendered Shaw unable to move, and he sat there with the reins looped through his fingers until Gee Dub had poked him.
“Daddy, the ice is going to melt.”
Shaw had made a joke and leaped down before the boys could see the tears in his eyes.
Penny shifted and bumped Shaw up against the side of the stall. He came back to the present with a jolt. He had been standing with both brushes still against the horse’s flanks and she was impatient for him to get on with it. He obliged, annoyed at his self-indulgent mood.
What was wrong with him lately? First he’s seeing ghosts in the woods, then hearing his long-gone father whispering to him, then getting all sentimental over the children. It wasn’t manly to be so soft-hearted. Or soft-headed. Maybe it was the change in the weather. Autumn had always made him feel melancholy. Or maybe he should never have disturbed that grave.
“Shaw, you in here?” Alafair’s voice was a welcome distraction.
“Over here, darlin’.”
He threw a blanket over Penny’s back and left the stall to meet Alafair coming up the long middle aisle that divided the stable.
He blinked at the pale light streaming in through the stable door. “Well, hush me up! I didn’t know it was getting so late. I was wanting to go over to Ma’s. Is supper ready?”
“The girls are putting it on the table now. Charlie and Kurt are already up to the house. Kurt was going to come get you but I told him I’d do it. There’s something I wanted to mention to you in private.”
He felt a stab of dread. Their private conversations usually took place after they went to bed, the only time they were alone in the natural course of the day. If she had something to tell him that couldn’t wait until bedtime it didn’t bode well. “What’s the matter?”
“Martha just told me that piece of quilt she saw at Grandma’s yesterday looks to her like it was made out of some material that I used to make dresses for her and Mary when they were children.”
Shaw sagged, relieved and annoyed at once. He shook his head. “After such a long spell in the ground it didn’t look like much of anything to me.”
“Well, I’d agree with you, but when she mentioned it I could see what she was talking about. The pattern and the shape of the little figures and even what color I could make out does look a powerful lot like the material in those pinafores. Mary thought that I had a hank of that material left over and used it to make a quilt with.”
“I don’t understand, Alafair. How could a quilt made of our little girls’ dresses get wrapped around a stranger who was murdered ten years ago and buried miles away from here? What did you do with this quilt you made?”
She shrugged. “I don’t even remember making a quilt with bird material.”
“Well, then, I expect the girls are misremembering. The pattern on that scrap probably just reminded y’all of some little dresses they used to wear a lot. It most likely isn’t the same pattern at all. And even if it it is, that don’t mean it’s off the same bolt you bought.”
Alafair crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her feet as she considered this. “Makes sense,” she conceded, looking up.
Shaw opened his mouth to ask what was on the menu for supper, but Alafair wasn’t quite finished.
“Do you fear that Barger suspects Grandpapa of knowing something about how that skeleton got in the ground?”
“I don’t know what Barger thinks. But I doubt if Papa knows anything about it. I do know that he didn’t have a very high opinion of Hawkins. It was probably real easy for him to believe that Hawkins scampered for some evil reason.”
“Your Papa bought that property even though he doesn’t seem to have wanted it. He certainly hasn’t done anything with it in all these years.”
“Well, him and Roane were in the Cavalry together and that’s a bond for most men. He would help a deserted wife if he could, too. Besides, Papa most likely thought to turn around and sell the farm for a profit. I’ve known him to do that with other parcels. But maybe it didn’t work out this time because the place has a cloud over it.”
“I do hope that the sheriff doesn’t take it into his head that Grandpapa knows mo
re than he already said. Why didn’t he tell Barger about the haint? Maybe the place has been haunted since long before Hawkins ever came along. Maybe that’s why he ran away.”
When Alafair brought up the ghost, Shaw’s face flushed red. “Barger’s never going to find out anything for sure about that body. Neither are we, Alafair. It’s been too long. I declare, honey, I wish the sheriff would just drop the whole thing. Whatever happened to that fellow, it was long ago and whoever done it is long gone. What good does it do the living to stir up the past?”
Alafair studied his face. Shaw was not telling her everything about that hunting trip, she was certain of that. Something had happened to him that had not happened to the others. For a moment she pondered whether or not to press him on the matter. Had it been one of the children who was so obviously troubled she wouldn’t have hesitated. But Shaw was a different story altogether, and he had had about enough of the topic. She decided that patience was the best tactic for the moment. She took his arm. “I’m sure you’re right, hon. I’m sorry I mentioned it. Come on in, now. Supper’s on the table.”
Chapter Sixteen
Normally Shaw was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. Even though he was still and quiet, his back turned toward her, Alafair knew he was awake. The roil of his thoughts was palpable. She turned onto her side and pressed up against his back. She didn’t need to ask what was on his mind so didn’t bother to ease into the topic.
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
She put an arm over Shaw’s side and felt him take a breath. “Tell who what?”
The night was dead silent. The windows were closed against the chill, and besides, it was too late in the year for the riotous frog and insect noise of a summer night. Even the children’s sighs and breaths were muffled by piles of bedclothes. Yet Alafair lifted up on her elbow and put her mouth next to his ear to whisper something too secret to be said aloud even in such quiet.
