I am working on my quilt when one woman offers me unsolicited advice: “You should of left Orpah’s problems with her mama alone.”
“Yeah, that’s where it all starts,” another one concurs. “You should of minded your own business.”
“It’s all Mahlon’s fault,” says the first woman. “He’s gotta pay more attention to Ruth and stop playing his silly games with Orpah like they was little children.”
I prick up my ears, but the arrival of a guest disrupts the gossip. She is selling rotary cutters and makes a spirited demonstration on how they make the usually tedious and boring work of cutting blocks easier. They look like pizza cutters to me. She folds the fabric many times over and using a broad flat ruler with grids on it she first cuts a square, which becomes many squares because of the folds, and then cuts the squares into triangles.
“The rotary cutter will change your life,” she says, and then points out that my squares wouldn’t be so terribly uneven if I had used a rotary cutter.
Barbara comes to the defense of her star pupil and points out that I am new at this. She says a few encouraging words, adding that what I am doing is a new design.
“I’ve never seen one like that,” she says. “Your fingers are becoming finer. Your quilt becomes art…like a sculpture.”
But the guest doesn’t buy it. She insists that a rotary cutter will make things much easier for me.
“And he’ll never learn to cut straight on his own with scissors,” says one of the women.
“You are cutting on your own when you use a rotary cutter,” the guest says. “It doesn’t cut by itself. You direct it.”
I like the idea of a rotary cutter and I buy two. I also buy two rulers.
“One’s for Ruth,” I say when I see their puzzled look.
“Yeah, maybe she’s gonna change her mind ’bout you,” says another woman and everyone laughs. I let them have their fun at my expense and go on with my sewing.
It is late afternoon when I leave the Center. The sun is still shining. I dread going home. Perhaps I should sit and while away time with the brooding elders who are sitting on the porch chewing Kodiak and spitting onto the grass a few feet away, silently competing as to whose black jet will get the farthest. At the risk of losing my appetite by the time I get home for dinner I take one of the car seats, which would have been Mahlon’s if he were here. I guess he’s gone back to the forest.
The brooding elders don’t talk much. They just brood. I am hoping to change that, so I ask after their friend Mahlon.
“You don’t wanna cross Mahlon,” says an elder. “We know what you’ve done and he don’t like it no ways.”
Everybody knows. The whole world knows.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say.
“That Mahlon,” chuckles another elder, “he’s gonna whup you ass so bad you gonna wish you never laid your darn eyes on his li’l girl.”
I may think I am younger, another elder observes, but their Mahlon is stronger. It is because he never worked in the mines. Every man they know was finished by coal dust, but Mahlon was too smart to go underground. He worked on his farm and kept animals instead. The Quigley family has always been smart, from the very first Quigley — Lord have mercy on him — who was a prophet and used a red scroll to tell the future right up to Mahlon’s generation. I am rather disappointed that Obed and Orpah don’t seem to feature in the generations that have distinguished themselves with their wisdom.
“Yep,” says an elder with a mouthful of Kodiak. “Them Quigleys fought damn hard when coal and timber companies was kicking our grampas’ ass off their land.”
But another elder decides to burst the Quigley bubble. Not all the Quigleys were good guys, he points out. Doesn’t anyone remember that one of them used to be a gunslinger hired to force striking miners from their houses back to work?
“It was back in them days. It was before our time,” says one elder dismissively.
“Yeah, but my pap tol’ me about them Quigleys that was hired guns for the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency,” says the elder.
“We didn’t have nothing like that here,” argues another elder.
It was in West Virginia, explains the elder. That was where the Quigleys who were hired guns worked. They took all their thuggery from Kilvert to West Virginia where miners were fighting for the right to unionize. The Quigleys were mine guards and became strike breakers, sometimes fighting pitched battles with the miners.
These events remind another elder of yet another Quigley who was not as good as Mahlon or as the revered first Quigley. This one ran a store owned by the mining company in Kilvert. Oh, yes, there was once a store in Kilvert!
“It left folks in debt by giving them scrip,” says the elder. “All their wages went back to the company.”
“It ain’t Quigley’s fault if folks was stupid,” says a defender of the Quigley legacy.
The elders have obviously forgotten all about me as they argue about the good old Quigley days. I quietly leave.
Mahlon is not in the forest after all but is all greasy under the hood of the GMC trying to fix something. In the kitchen Ruth is arguing with Obed. I can hear them from the living room. I dare not go in there lest I be dragged into whatever they are screaming about.
“They’re jealous of our democracy, that’s why,” says Ruth. “They’re jealous of our standard of living.”
“Why don’t they bomb Sweden, Mama? It’s a democracy with a higher standard of living. Why ain’t no one jealous of Sweden?” says Obed.
“You been reading the Athens News. They gonna say anything ’cause they hate America. Ain’t no country in the world that’s got a better life than the good ol’ U. S. of A.”
“Lotsa countries, Mama,” says Obed. “And no one bombs them.”
“’Cause they appease them terrorists, that’s why.”
“’Cause we mind everybody’s business, that’s why.”
Orpah appears from the inside door of her room and shouts: “Will y’all shudap? I’m trying to sleep.” She must be feeling good that they obey her order instantly. But it is really that Obed has stormed out of the kitchen and out of the house. He does not notice me sitting on one of the car seats in the living room.
Ruth walks out of the kitchen and sits at her workstation. She sobs softly. I shift uncomfortably and she notices me for the first time. She tries to hide her eyes with her hands while bowing her head. I go to her and give her my gift of a rotary cutter and ruler. She looks at them for some time and then smiles wanly at me.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I am sorry Obed annoys you so,” I say. “I don’t think you two should take politics so personally.”
I almost add that I doubt if her hero, the man who runs the whole country, gets as many sleepless nights as she does over international affairs, but think better of it.
“It ain’t that,” says Ruth between sniffles. It’s just that her children don’t appreciate her. No one appreciates her for the sacrifices she has made for the family. Then she sobs once more. I never know what to do in such situations. I don’t have a tissue to hand her. I stand there for a few seconds looking foolish, and then I quietly make for the door.
Obed is with his father under the hood of the GMC. He sees me and his face lights up. I know immediately that there is a new money-making scheme he wants to share with me.