Moon Over the Mountain

by Carol Dean Jones

  “I have no idea, Mother. You’re the family expert on historical trivia.”

  “Trivia? This is important stuff, my dear.” The two bantered awhile before settling down to work on their blocks.

  A bit flabbergasted by seeing a new side of Jane’s mother, Sarah asked her about their quilt project. Genevieve said they were making the Churn Dash and went on to explain that they were going to use a different fabric for each one, giving it an overall scrappy look. Jane pulled the fabrics out and the three women went through them making comments and enjoying the camaraderie.

  Later, Jane had a chance to talk to Sarah privately. “Mom goes in and out like that. Sometimes she’s the mother I always knew, and other times she hardly knows me.” Sarah saw tears beginning to well up in Jane’s eyes. “I love her,” she added, “but sometimes she tries my nerves. I feel really guilty about that because she can’t help it.”

  “It must be hard,” Sarah responded laying her hand on Jane’s arm. “She’s lucky to have you on her side, and I can tell she’s having a wonderful time here.”

  Jane smiled. “She is. I’m glad Andrea wasn’t able to take her. This will be good for both of us.”

  After lunch, Sarah walked around the classroom to see what the other women were doing. She could tell each of the quilts was going to look unique. They had chosen a wide range of colors and quilt patterns and two quilters had even designed totally new layouts for their eighteen photo blocks. Brenda announced that they would be getting their picture fabrics the next morning but not to rush with their quilt blocks. “We have plenty of time,” she announced.

  Sarah was carrying her cell phone in her pocket and set it to vibrate, but when it actually did, she jumped. “What was that?” she cried slapping at her slacks and thinking she had been struck by a large bug. “Oh wait,” she said, looking embarrassed. “It’s just my cell phone.” Everyone laughed.

  She glanced down at the display and saw that it was Sophie. Oh my, I forgot to call her this morning, she told herself. “Hello, Sophie,” she said into the phone as she grabbed her jacket and headed for the door leading to the lobby. “I meant to call you this morning,” she apologized, “and here it is afternoon already.”

  “Not in my world, it isn’t. I just got up.”

  “Oh, I forgot about the time difference. I’m glad I didn’t call you then. It would have been the middle of the night. How are things going?”

  “I have news. Can you talk?” Sophie said simply.

  “Sure, I’m dying to know how you like Alaska.” As she was talking, Sarah pulled on her fleece jacket and headed for the front porch where reception was best. “So tell me. …”

  “I’ll tell you all about Alaska another time. I have something much more important to tell you.” As usual, Sophie was going to drag out her news until Sarah was on pins and needles.

  “Tell me Sophie.”

  “It’s fantastic news! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. …”

  “Sophie …?”

  “Okay, okay. Well, it’s like this. You know Timmy’s going to retire in December, right?”

  “Yes, I know that. And …?”

  “Well, he can’t make a trip to Middletown right now. …”

  “I know that too. That’s the reason you and Higgy went there instead of Tim coming to Middletown. So …?”

  “Well, since Timmy can’t get time off … we were sort of thinking … well …”

  “Sophie! Out with it!”

  “Higgy and I are getting married next week here in Alaska.” Sophie said the words calmly but then squealed so loud Sarah had to yank the phone away from her ear.

  “Oh my,” Sarah responded. “Are you serious? Next week?” She stood up and walked around on the porch trying to absorb the idea that her friend would be coming home a married woman. And to Higgy …

  Sarah expressed her disappointment that she couldn’t be at the wedding but said she would plan a reception once they were all home.

  “When do you think you’ll be back?” Sarah asked.

  “Higgy is talking about an Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon and I think we’ll do it. That would have us up here for an extra two weeks. He’s taking me shopping in Anchorage tomorrow to buy warmer clothes for the cruise. It’ll be really cold out there!”

  “You bet it will be,” Sarah responded. “But you’ll have Higgy to keep you warm,” she added with a chuckle.

  “I sure wish I had you here to talk me through this,” Sophie responded not seeming to want to joke about it. “I’m too old for all this. …”

  “Now Sophie, if I could do it, you can too. How will you get to Anchorage? Are you driving?”

  “No, it’s six or seven hours if you drive. They run a small plane over there that only takes forty-five minutes as the crow flies. He has us booked for tomorrow. We’ll come back here the next day. In the meantime, I’m a wreck. What should I wear to get married?”

  “How about a suit. I think that would be perfect.”

  “Do you think it could be a pant suit? I brought along my turquoise one.”

  “Sure, Sophie. That would be fine.”

  “Or maybe I should buy a dress …?”

  “Keep it simple, my friend. Keep it simple. If you want to buy something, buy a long dress so you can also wear it to the fancy dinners on the ship.”

  “And shoes? I’m sure not wearing the old lady shoes with a dress. …”

  “If you buy a dress, then you’ll need to buy shoes too. Why don’t you go with the turquoise pant suit? It’s silk and you look beautiful in it.”

  “Really?” Sophie said in a little girl voice. “Is it really pretty enough?”

  “Absolutely.” Sarah was beginning to wish she could fly up to Valdez and help Sophie through this. Alternatively, she wished Sophie would wait until December when her son would be home, not to mention it would give Sophie more time to get to know Higgy.

  She broached the subject with her friend, but Sophie vehemently objected, explaining that Higgy was excited about the Alaskan cruise and she wanted it to be her honeymoon trip. “I’ll get through this,” Sophie said, sounding more in control, “as long as I can call and whine occasionally.”

  “You may call and whine, and cry, and laugh … whatever you need.”

  They remained quiet for a few moments before Sophie spoke up saying, “Thank you, and kiddo, I couldn’t have done this if you hadn’t done it first.” Before Sarah could respond, Sophie added, “Gotta run. Higgy wants to take us all three out to breakfast.”

  Breakfast, she wondered, but again remembered the time difference. “Call me,” she said as they were hanging up. Sarah immediately dialed Charles.

  “You’ll never guess what I’m about to tell you,” she announced when he picked up the phone.

  “And this is our collection of quilts influenced by the Appalachian Quilt Trail.” The group had arrived at the museum around 10:00 that morning and everyone headed straight to the quilt section. “Have you heard about the Quilt Trail?” their guide asked.

  Most of the group shook their heads and looked at her eager to hear more, but also glancing toward the quilts hanging on the walls and down two corridors created by quilts hung from tall frames.

  “Throughout the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia, farm communities are beginning to hang eight-foot-square wooden plaques on their barns displaying hand-painted quilt blocks. In Tennessee we have at least twenty-five barns displaying these blocks and that number is growing. Of course, there are hundreds in the entire Appalachian Mountains and it’s starting to spread around the country.”

  Seeing that the women had become interested in her story, she continued. “This started as a way to encourage travelers to leave the main roads and follow barn quilt maps into the backcountry where they’d find local artisans displaying crafts in country stores, craft shops, galleries, museums, and even at historic sites. The collection in this room is of quilts made using the blocks displayed on barns in
Tennessee. If you read the labels, you’ll see the towns they represent.”

  “Is there a map of the trail?” one of the students asked.

  “Absolutely. They’re on the table by the door and I want to encourage you to take some when you leave and give them to your friends. Our artisans depend on visitors.”

  The group walked through the room slowly, recognizing most of the quilt blocks used in the quilts. “May we take pictures?” one of the women called out to the guide.

  “You certainly may. Just don’t touch the quilts.” She slipped on her white gloves and added, “Just let me know if you want to see the backs.”

  Sarah took several pictures with her cell phone. As she turned the corner to go down the next row, Sarah was struck by a simple block she hadn’t seen before. There was a mountain, a night sky, and a very large moon. She walked over to the label and read the name of the pattern: Moon Over the Mountain. It reminded her of the evening when she sat on the porch at the lodge and looked out toward the mountains the night of the harvest moon. The artist had repeated the block in varying sizes all over the quilt top using batiks. She pulled out her cell phone to take a picture, but dropped it back into her pocket and reached for her camera. She stood back and took a picture of the entire quilt, then moved in close and took a picture of one block.

  She walked on through the displays. Some were designed repeating one quilt block throughout the quilt and others were sampler-style. She recognized most of the blocks and stopped at the Ohio Star, glad she had chosen that particular one for her memory quilt. She saw a Bear Claw block, a Crown of Thorns, and the Tennessee Star, all of which she knew; but the Cock’s Comb, the Diamond Knot, and the Circle Star were new to her.

  When most of the group was finished, they moved to the next room that was featuring a traveling exhibit of antique quilts from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sarah wondered about the women who made them and the children who had recognized their old clothes preserved in the quilts. The designs were simple, obviously made to be utilitarian. Most were simple Four-Patch or Nine-Patch blocks with sashing made from several different fabrics. She examined the quilting stitches and tried to imagine the woman who sat by candle light stitching into the night once her many chores were done.

  Moving on through the museum, they saw wooden crafts, pottery, knitted wear, jewelry, basketry, and paintings, but Sarah was particularly intrigued by the musical instruments. A tape was playing in the background and the curator explained it was the mountain dulcimer. The sound was haunting. Had Sarah been in a store rather than a museum, she probably would have pulled out her checkbook and gone home with an exquisite cherry or maple mountain dulcimer. She wondered if she could learn to play one. That may be next for me, she told herself with a grin.

  Sarah and Jane stopped at the museum’s cafeteria around noon and enjoyed a delightful lunch outside on the patio. There was a gentle waterfall nearby and the diners occasionally felt the cool mist. “What a spectacular day,” Sarah commented.

  “I hate to admit it, but I’m enjoying my day of freedom,” Jane commented. Mary Beth, Coby’s older sister, had offered to look after Jane’s mother for the day. Mary Beth was studying to be a nurse’s aide. She and Jane both felt comfortable with the arrangement and Genevieve seemed to like Mary Beth. They had planned to have lunch in the lodge’s picnic area and take a walk along the nature trail. “Their activities will wear mother out and she’ll sleep most of the afternoon,” Jane added.

  After lunch, she and Jane strolled through the vendors’ private shops on the second floor of the museum. Sarah saw an intricately carved dog that looked so much like Barney that he could have easily been the model. She decided to purchase it along with a small kitten also carved by the same artist. When she entered the room displaying the musical instruments, she looked longingly at a teardrop-shaped cherry mountain dulcimer and reached for the artisan’s business card.

  “Are you interested?” Jane asked curiously as they were leaving the shop. It was the only card she had seen Sarah pick up.

  “Maybe. Just maybe …” she said thoughtfully.

  In the late afternoon as they were driving through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, they stopped at a sign pointing toward Clingman’s Dome. Coby pulled the minibus over and stood up in the front. “I need to ask you women what you want to do here. I can drive up the mountain from here and get pretty close to the observation dome. But from there, you will have about a half-mile hike to the spiral walkway that takes you on up to the Dome. Both walks are at a pretty steep incline.”

  “How long is the spiral walkway?” Jane asked.

  “The brochure says 375 feet.” He didn’t want to add that he wasn’t sure whether some of the women could handle the steep incline, so instead he said, “I know you ladies have done a lot of walking today. Are you sure you want to do this today?”

  The group talked about it, some of the younger ones were all for it, but some of the others, Sarah included, felt it was a bit much for today. “Any chance we could do this as a separate trip another day?” Sarah asked.

  “That’s a possibility. I don’t know what these folks have scheduled for you, but I’d be glad to drive you over here another time, the ones that want to come that is.”

  “I like that idea,” one of the younger quilters in the back of the bus called out. “I’d hate for part of our group to be waiting here today while some of us go up.”

  “Okay, so we’re off to get some dinner.” Later Coby stopped the minibus in front of a restaurant with a sign promising country-style food. Sarah hadn’t realized she was hungry until she stepped in the restaurant and was struck by the mouthwatering aroma of down-home cooking.

  They were seated at several tables for six and within minutes they were served their drinks followed by bowls of pork barbecue and platters of ribs and beef brisket, all “slowly smoked over sweet hickory wood,” according to their waitress. There was a bowl of light, fluffy mashed potatoes and green beans cooked with ham, along with baskets of corn bread, muffins, and homemade breads. They were advised to save room for desserts and everyone moaned.

  They were all walking slowly as they headed back to the bus, everyone claiming they wouldn’t be eating again for a week. Sarah and Holly sat together with Jane in the seat ahead of them. “I’m glad I came on this trip,” she turned and said to Sarah. “I almost stayed back at the lodge with mother.”

  “I think it was good for both of you. I’ll just bet your mother had fun with Mary Beth.”

  Relaxed and happy, Sarah dropped off to sleep on the ride home.

  The next afternoon as Sarah was working on her Ohio Star blocks her cell phone vibrated, but this time she was ready for it. Again, she grabbed her jacket and headed for the front porch.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  The readout indicated that it was Sophie calling, but she wasn’t getting a response. She saw that she had three bars, but as she was looking at the display, they disappeared and the phone was totally dead.

  Sarah walked out toward the woods but still didn’t have a signal. Coby pulled up and took two grocery bags out of the van. “Hi, Mrs. Parker,” he called.

  “Hey Coby. I can’t get a signal today. Do you have any suggestions?”

  “There’s a good place up that trail,” he said, pointing to a gravel path that led into the woods. “That’s the nature trail visitors take. It leads up to an overlook where you can see the whole valley and across to the park. Signals are usually very strong up there.”

  “Thanks, Coby,” she said waving to him as she hurried up the trail.

  It was a beautiful morning; the sun was shining through the trees and birds were chirping. How could I have been afraid of this beautiful place? Sarah thought as she continued the gradual climb. As she walked, she noticed that there was unobtrusive signage next to the more unusual looking plants with both their Latin and common names. This must be where they have the Flora and Fauna Walk described in the brochure. Sh
e made a mental note to sign up for it when she got back.

  Ultimately, she came to a clearing and just ahead was the overlook Coby told her about. She walked toward the edge where the precipice fell toward the spectacular valley below. Deep in the far corner of the valley she could see smoke curling skyward from a shack, tiny from this distance. She wondered how they came and went. There was no evidence of a road. Beyond the shack, hills became mountains and the lush red and yellow colors of fall became a soft blue as the mountains reached into the haze of the sky above. “Breathtaking,” she said aloud to no one.

  Sarah tried her cell phone again and this time with success. “Sorry,” she said when Sophie picked up the phone. “I had to move to a place where I could get a signal. Sophie, you wouldn’t believe the isolated beauty of this place. …”

  “… and I have something to tell you that you won’t believe,” Sophie responded with both anger and exasperation in her voice. “I’m marrying a total idiot,” Sophie bellowed into the phone. “You won’t believe what he’s done!”

  “Sophie. Calm down. Start at the beginning. What’s happened?”

  Sophie grumbled before getting down to the facts. “Well, it’s like this. We went into Anchorage shopping. While we were there, we stopped at the courthouse to apply for our marriage license.”

  “Yes?”

  “I filled out my part and passed the application to him. He filled out his part and handed it to the clerk.”

  “That all sounds fine. …”

  “That’s not all. The clerk looked at the form and looked at Higgy and back at the form. ‘Mr. Higginbottom,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand what you wrote here next to the question about whether you’ve been married previously. What does that say?’”

  “What did it say?” Sarah asked, curious to know what had upset Sophie so much.

  “Higgy took the application back and looked at it. ‘It says not really,’ he told the man.”