The Persian Pickle Club (18 page)

She wanted me to ask her what it was, but I didn’t care to know. “Don’t bother,” I said. “But I wish you’d come around and help me make a baby quilt.”

R
ita came around to see me one afternoon the following week, but Ada June was visiting then, so Rita couldn’t tell me what she’d discovered about the Judds. I knew she was still busy with her story, because Grover said Tom drove her to the county courthouse at Alma and even took her into Topeka, although for what, I didn’t know. Once I glanced out the window as Rita walked down the road past our place, wearing her reporter’s suit. On an impulse, I decided to offer to drive her into town, and I called out, but she didn’t hear me. I didn’t go after her because, after I thought it over, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to drive into Harveyville. Even though Velma’s baby wouldn’t arrive for a long time, I was too busy making plans for it to help Rita read through dirty old record books or ask questions of people who didn’t want to talk about Ben Crook. In fact, I hoped I’d never hear Ben’s name again. We’d put his body in the ground. It was time to bury his memory, too.

Mrs. Judd had been right, of course, when she’d insisted Grover wouldn’t say no to me about the baby. As excited as I was, I waited until the next day to ask him. I fixed spareribs with the last bottle of the sauerkraut Dad Bean had put up, and I mashed the potatoes as fine as whipped cream. After I served sour cream-raisin pie, I said, “Grover, there’s something we have to talk about.”

“I thought so. We don’t have dinner like this every day.”

“We have a chance to have a baby,” I said in a rush, forgetting I was going to lead up to it. Before Grover could even open his mouth in surprise, I told him about Velma and the married man, the unwed mothers’ home in Kansas City, and Mrs. Judd’s idea. “I didn’t tell her yes. I said you’d have to agree, because you’ll be the baby’s father.”

I held my breath waiting for Grover to reply, but when he spoke, he asked for another piece of pie. I cut an extra-big slice and watched him while he ate it.

“I just wish it wasn’t Tyrone Burgett’s grandchild,” Grover said, using the back of his fork to take up the piecrust crumbs. He licked them off. “Nettie’s all right, and what’s wrong with Velma isn’t something she would pass on to a baby. Shoot, if it’s a girl, it might be real pretty like her.” He took up a last crumb with his finger and popped it into his mouth. “Say, you don’t think it’ll have a goiter like Nettie’s, do you?”

I looked at Grover in astonishment, until he said, “That’s a joke, Queenie.”

“We ought to know something about the father.” I scraped my pie crumbs into a little pile in the center of my plate, where I left them.

“Oh, I expect he’s all right,” Grover said, so quickly that I looked up at him. For all I could tell, Grover knew who the father was. But more important, it sounded to me as if he had made up his mind to take the baby and was trying to keep me from having doubts. “If it’s a boy, we’re not naming him Tyrone. That’s for sure.”

“Can we afford the baby?”

“Hell no!” Grover grinned. “We couldn’t afford to have our own baby, either, but that didn’t stop us from trying.”

I blushed, then grinned back at him like a ninny. “Grover Bean, what are you saying?”

“Well, Mama, I’m saying we better get that old cradle out of the barn.”

I got up and stood behind Grover, my arms around his neck, and kissed the tip of his ear. He pulled me down on his lap.

“You won’t mind so much if the baby isn’t ours, will you?” I asked.

“It’ll be ours.”

A few days later, Sonny stopped by. When I turned around from the sink, he was sitting at the kitchen table, smiling at me.

I’d never get used to the way the Massies slipped in and out of our place as quiet as foxes. Once, I’d dropped a whole apronful of eggs from the henhouse when I looked up and found Blue standing in my kitchen garden, next to the snap beans. He was as still as a beanpole, and I half-expected the runners of the vines to curl up his legs. When I saw Sonny that morning, I barely managed to keep hold of the butter I was taking out of the churn and putting into a glass dish.

“You want some buttermilk?” I asked after I set the butter dish in the refrigerator. I wiped my hands on a tea towel and threw it over my shoulder.

Sonny made a face. “Buttermilk makes me puke. Cookies don’t.” I knew that, but I always asked because his answer tick-led me so.

I put half a dozen snickerdoodles on a plate and set them in front of Sonny, then picked up one myself and took a bite.

“Hey, that ain’t yours. You give it to me,” Sonny said, putting his arm around the plate, drawing it to him so I couldn’t help myself.

I reached into the jar and dropped another cookie in front of him. Still, Sonny watched me suspiciously as he held on to the plate and gobbled up the snickerdoodles. When he was finished, he said, “Missus, Ma says, you’ns come down this evening.” It wasn’t an invitation as much as an order, and it made me smile. Sonny never thought we might have other plans.

“I’ll have to ask Grover.”

Sonny frowned. “He best say yes. Where’s them toothpicks?” I got out the little glass holder and set it on the table. I never knew what Sonny did with toothpicks. He always took as many as he could get away with, but I never saw him pick his teeth with one.

“What does your ma want?” I asked.

Sonny shrugged. “She just said if you’ns was to home, I was to tell you to come calling right after supper.” He slid from his chair and disappeared out the door.

With the harvest over, there wasn’t much work for Blue, and I figured the Massies wanted to ask us about staying on. I hoped they would, anyway. Now that the hired man’s shack was fixed up, I was afraid that tramps would break in and light fires. But that wasn’t the real reason I wanted Blue and Zepha in the place. The Massies were neighbors now. I liked having them there. Besides, I owed Blue, after the way he’d rescued Rita and me. I felt safer with him in the shack. It would suit me fine if the Massies lived with us forever.

The Massies had their own garden, and we gave them milk and eggs because we had plenty. With prices as low as they were, it hardly paid to truck the stuff to market. In exchange, Zepha made us liver pudding and ash cake, which were not favorites of Grover’s and mine, but the chickens liked them.

Sometimes Grover caught Blue out mending fences or repairing equipment. He told Blue to keep track of his time so we could pay him, but Blue never did, and Grover didn’t push him, since it was Blue’s way of settling with us on the shack. The Massies didn’t want to be beholden. Often, Grover wouldn’t see Blue working. He’d just notice that the pedal on the grindstone had been fixed or the shovels sharpened, and he’d know that Blue had been around.

“Maybe they’ll tell us they’re ready to move on,” Grover said as we drove through the dusk to the shack. I didn’t like walking across the fields in the dark anymore, so we went on the road.

Even though Grover was with me, I reached over and locked the door. Then I shivered under my heavy sweater. I didn’t much like being on the road after dark, either.

“Cold?” Grover asked.

“Yes.” I think he knew without my telling him that I was scared every time I got into a car at night. “Where would the Massies go if they left here?”

“Dunno,” Grover said. “I doubt that’s why they asked us to come down, though. Blue’s fixed the stove to throw out more heat, and he’s patched the shack to keep the snow from drifting in. With those quilts Zepha hung on the walls to keep out the cold, they couldn’t find a warmer place.” Grover steered the Studebaker around a spot where the road had eroded.

“It’s my guess they’ll ask to stay. If they were to leave, they’d pick up and go without a word. That’s the way the hill people are. We’d go down to the shack one day, and they wouldn’t be there. Besides, if they were going to leave, they’d have done it by now, gone someplace where there’s still a harvest. With what Zepha’s put up from the garden in those jars you gave her and the milk and eggs from us, they’ve got it real nice.” Grover switched on the radio, but the stations were too scratchy, so he turned it off.

“You know, Queenie, if they stay, maybe Blue and I could put electricity into that shack. Sonny sure would like to have a radio for Christmas.”

“Zepha, too,” I added, squeezing Grover’s hand.

We turned off the highway and drove down the old road to the shack in the soft dusk, past the fence where Blue hung the rattlesnake skins that Pup, the Massies’ dog, killed. Grover said Pup wasn’t much of a hunting animal, but he killed snakes deader than a Kansas Sunday night. The skins made me shiver, although I’d rather see the snakes dead on a barbed-wire fence than alive out in the field.

Sonny ran to meet us and hopped onto the running board, leaning over to listen to the engine. He knew as much about machines as his father did. I wondered if the two of them had ever fixed Blue’s old car with the water pump Grover got for them. I’d never seen Blue drive it, but then, plenty of people walked places because they couldn’t afford gas.

Blue was looking at the sky when we got out of the car, and Grover asked, “You spot a rain cloud up there, do you?”

“Cain’t say’s I did.” Blue shook his head. “Sure wish there was one for Sonny’s sake. I already seen rain onct.”

Zepha sat on the steps, rocking back and forth and crooning to Baby, who sucked on a sugar tit. Blue’d built a little roof over the stoop. Next to Zepha were old lard cans filled with geraniums, grown from slips I’d given her. She took them inside at night to keep the frost from getting them, then set them back out every morning.

“It always feels like home when I see the stars. You never go so far away you can’t see a familiar sky. I draw comfort from it,” Zepha said as I sat down next to her and hugged my knees to my chest to keep warm.

“There’s a harvest moon tonight.” I pointed to the big orange circle in the sky. “Did you ever see anything so pretty?”

“Not never.”

I put a brown paper sack next to Zepha. “I’ve been cutting out quilts. These are just a few old scraps that I can’t use.”

“ ‘Bliged.” Zepha reached into the sack with her free hand and took out one of the scraps, fingering the cloth, knowing without looking that it was store-bought, the thread count high. She held the piece up to the light shining through the doorway and laughed when she saw the little sailor boys on it. “This’ll make real pretty kivers,” she said. “We got coffee on.” She handed me the baby.

“Obliged,” I said, then frowned in the dark. Grover said it took me less than five minutes to start talking like whoever I was with.

I followed Zepha inside, intending to set Baby on the bed. Then I noticed Zepha had put her Road to California quilt on it, most likely in our honor, so I put the baby on the hired man’s bed that Sonny slept on. I lifted the Road to California to inspect the stitches and saw Zepha watching me.

“I never saw such small stitches or such a pretty quilt,” I told her. “I sure am glad you didn’t sell it to Lizzy Olive.”

“That one!” Zepha sniffed and turned to the stove.

There was a cottony smell in the room that came from the quilt Zepha was working on. Blue had rigged up a frame that hung from hooks on the ceiling and could be lowered and raised by ropes tied to the wall. “I see you got a quilt going,” I said, looking up at the frame, which was snug against the ceiling.

“I always got a quilt going. Wouldn’t be natural, not. At home, I picked the cotton for the stuffing and carded it till it was soft like clouds, but I cain’t find none here. I used an old blanket for fill. I warshed it in hot water, and it all drawed up and weren’t good for nothing but the inside of a quilt.”

Zepha handed me two cups of coffee, which I took out to the men, returning to the shack for mine. As I glanced up at the quilt in the frame near the ceiling, I said, “A comfort like that will keep out the Kansas winter—that is, if you’re planning on staying the winter.”

Baby let out a cry, her tiny tongue moving in and out of her mouth and her little fists stretching up over her head. It wouldn’t be long until my own baby was doing that very thing. Why, those two little ones might even be friends. Zepha picked up Baby and murmured a snatch of a lullaby I’d never heard. When Baby was quiet, Zepha set her back down on the bed. She didn’t respond to my remark about staying on, and I didn’t repeat it. The Massies would tell us their decision in their own time.

The wind came up, sending dirt through the door, and Zepha called, “You’ns come on in now and get out of that blow.” She went to the stove and poured water over the old coffee grounds in the pot and put it back on the hot stove to boil. “We’ll have us more coffee in a minute. Me and Blue make coffee from parched chestnuts. It ain’t half bad. But we got us real coffee for company.”

“Well, it tastes fine!” I said as Blue and Grover came inside. Sonny followed, standing in the doorway, one bare foot on top of the other.

“Shut that door, boy,” Blue yelled, then turned to Grover and me. “Grab you a seat.” Zepha motioned us to the place of honor on the Road to California quilt. When we sat down on it, Blue nodded with approval.

“That’s the wife’s favorite. She loves her Road to Californy more than a cat loves sweet milk. Of course, it was give to her. She didn’t make it herself. Hers is made some better.” Zepha ducked her head with pleasure and embarrassment.