By now he’d slipped the stone bottle back under the blankets. He lay on his side, looking at them, his bone-thin hands kneading the pillow. “That’s sort of what I’m trying to do here, you understand? I know that if I was to die real soon I wouldn’t have no finished tapestry to show...mine’s got all these holes in them. I wanna have a whole one, a finished one. I don’t much fancy wandering’ around all-blessed Night because God don’t like what I show Him. I want to fill in the holes I made.” He smiled. “I love you two kids. I truly do. And I love your mom and your Grandma and your dad, too. They’re all real fine people. I just want you all to ...I just wanted to tell you about that.”
“Grampa,” said Alan, softly. “Whatever happened to that man’s quilt?”
Grampa pointed to his top blanket. Marian and Alan looked at one another and shrugged, then Grampa started to pull down the blanket but didn’t have the energy to finish, so they did it for him.
Underneath the top blanket lay the quilt. Even though they could see only very little of it, both Alan and Marian knew it was probably the most beautiful thing they’d ever see.
“I wanna...I wanna be buried with this,” said Grampa. “I already told your dad that.” He
gestured for Marian to lean down close so her could kiss her good-night. “Hon, I need to be alone with your brother for a few minutes, okay?”
“... ‘kay.”
“Good girl. You run along to bed and I’ll see you in the morning.
Marian decided to sleep downstairs that night in case he woke up and needed something, so she went into the living room and laid down on the sofa.
She watched as Grampa gave Alan the stone bottle and explained something to him. Her brother looked so serious as he listened, more like an adult than a nine-year-old. Then she lifted her head and overheard Grampa say, “...wait here with me until your dad gets home...” but then she was too tired to keep her head up.
She woke up around two-thirty in the morning. Lifting her head, she saw her Dad’s work boots setting next to the door. She wondered if he’d had a good night at work. Maybe he could quit soon, like he wanted, and start his own building business. She hoped so. It bothered her that Dad was never home nights.
She heard Grampa tapping against the railing of his bed with something. She went to him.
“You got good ears, little girl. You’ll go far.” He tried to raise himself up but couldn’t.
“I gotta pee,” he said. Marian wanted to go wake Alan or Dad but Grampa wouldn’t hear of it. He finally laid down and pointed to his drinking glass. “Why don’t you empty that damn thing out and I’ll ...I’ll use it.” She did as he asked, carrying the glass into the kitchen and pouring its contents down the sink. When she came back in Grampa had his hands at his sides and was staring at the ceiling.
“Marian, I hate like hell to ask this, hon, but…well...I can’t seem to move my hands. Would you mind, uh...?” Marian already had him out and in the cup, so there was no need for him to finish. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “You make your mom rind dad real proud, you hear?” “Yes sir,” she said. His eyes then lit up, but only for a few moments. “How’s about puttin’...puttin’ my record on real low so’s we don’t wake the whole house? I’d kinda like to hear it.” Again Marian did as she was asked.
When she came back Grampa was desperately trying to empty his bladder but couldn’t get anything to come out. She wiped his forehead, then put her hand on Grampa’s abdomen, pushing down gently. After a few moments the pained expression on his face relaxed as the urine started to fill the cup. He soon finished and nodded his thanks. Marian took the cup into the bathroom to empty it. It was full of blood. She washed her hands afterward and then asked him if there was anything else he needed. “Could you maybe fix it so my record would play over a few times?”
She did, then kissed him good-night again, and went back to the darkness of the living room, where she sat on the sofa and listened for a while before falling asleep again, hoping that Grampa would feel better on the morningside.
When she woke up there was Mom, holding Grampa’s head in her lap, rocking back and forth, stroking his hair and crying. “Yes, that’s it...go to sleep, shh, that’s it, you rest now. You rest....”
Alan came over and hugged Marian. They stayed like that until Mom looked up and saw them and told them to come over and say good-bye to Grampa. Marian was suddenly afraid of the thing that mom was holding in her arms. It wasn’t Grampa. It didn’t even look like a human being.
She pulled away from her brother and saw that some of Grampa’s blood was still on her fingers.
It took her forever to get that hand clean.
5
Press seam allowances toward the darker fabric. Cut apart in pairs. The squares are in their proper color placement and ready for sewing. Place the first pairs right sides together and sew into four patches.
* * *
Alan pressed the top of his baseball cap to make sure it was still in place, then reached into one of his pants pockets and removed the stone bottle. “When Dad came home that night Grampa had both of us cut our thumbs and put some of our blood into this bottle, along with his. Then he gave it to Dad to keep until it would be time to pass it on to me.” He shrugged. “Guess it was some kind of Irish thing, some legend that our great-great-grandfather brought with him when he came to the States.”
“What are you supposed to do with it?”
Alan shook his head. “I can’t tell you yet.” He lifted the bottle into the light, slowly turning it from side to side, admiring it. “There’s something like twelve generations’ worth of Quinlan-men’s blood in here.” He looked straight at her.
“You’re now the only Quinlan woman left who can willingly carry on the family’s bloodline, so it’s your time now.”
Of all the things that raced through her mind at that moment, Marian found herself focusing on one word: willingly.
Alan took hold of her arms and pulled her to her feet. Jack reached up and—like something out of a cartoon or a Washington Irving story—removed his head from his shoulders and held it in front of him, his twig-fingers grasping the stem and removing it from the top of his head.
“Not yet,” said Alan to Jack as he took hold of Marian’s injured wrist, removed the dressing, and pushed on her wound until it burst open, dripping blood into the stone bottle.
Jack guided his head under the flow, trying to ignite his flame with Marian’s blood.
“Stop it,” she said through clenched teeth, wriggling against her brother’s grip but he was stronger than she remembered. He increased the pressure on her arm, pulling it toward the pumpkin while Jack loomed closer, his glow dimming, his form somehow larger and more powerful.
“We need to do it this way,” said Alan. “Just a little more blood, please.”
“Jack Pumpkinhead’s lonely, hon,” said the thing holding its own pumpkin head. “I want our family together again.”
Marian took a deep breath, twisting her wrist as some of her blood slopped into the jack-o’-lantern, then kicked back, the heel of her shoe connecting solidly with Alan’s shin. He howled and released her and Marian made a beeline for the back door because there was no way in hell she’d make it past both of them to the front door. Ignoring Alan’s calling her name, she
made her way into the kitchen and toward the back porch when she was struck in the face by a tree limb and fell backward against the sink counter.
Jack Pumpkinhead help to right her, then stroked her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that, but you just have to understand.”