Prayers for Sale Read online

  Hennie understood things weren’t good between Joe and Maudie, but she hadn’t understood just how bad they were, not until that day she’d stopped by the cabin and found Maudie not an hour away from giving birth. “Where’s Joe? Did he go for the doctor?” she asked.

  “He left two days ago. I expect he’s on a high lonesome somewhere.” Maudie twisted in agony on the bunk. “He didn’t know the baby was coming or he’d have been here. I know he would have. The baby’s early,” she added, pleading in her voice so that Hennie would not say a word of criticism about Joe.

  Hennie wondered why a wife would protect her husband that way, but Maudie must have her reasons, she decided, and only sniffed. “They’re all early up here. It’s too late to go for the doctor. You’re too far along to be left alone. I guess it’s up to you and me to deliver this baby—mostly you.” She chuckled to ease herself and to make the woman in the bed smile. “Being early means a small baby and an easy delivery.”

  The labor didn’t last long, but Maudie was sickly, and it was all she could do to push out the baby, a mewly thing, tiny but healthy. Hennie wrapped the baby in a bit of towel and was just finishing cleaning up the bed when Joe stalked in, drunk, cursing his wife because supper wasn’t on the table.

  Hennie swallowed down her anger and told him, “Maudie needs her rest. She’s just given you a daughter.”

  “A daughter!” Joe took a swig from the bottle in his hand. “I’d rather have a sow than a daughter for all she’s worth. I told her a son. I wanted a son. All this time, and nothing but a girl!” he said, raging as if he’d swallowed a kerosene lamp. “I guess she’s not woman enough to give me a son, just a hard-boiled brat of a girl.”

  Hennie glanced over at Maudie then, grateful that the woman had gone to sleep and was spared her husband’s anger.

  “Now she’s done with it, she can get up and fix my supper.”

  “I’ll do it,” Hennie said, mad enough to wring the man’s stringy neck. Hennie knew he wouldn’t cook his own food, and if she didn’t do it, Joe would pull his wife out of her sickbed as soon as Hennie left. She wondered then about the bruises she’d seen on Maudie’s arms and legs. Most likely, the man had taken a stick to his wife.

  When Joe had eaten and finished his bottle, Hennie told him, “Don’t bother Maudie now. She needs her rest.”

  “Don’t you be telling me what for. The Bible says women’s to be silent around their men.”

  “What do you know about the Bible?”

  “I know that much.”

  Hennie wanted to remind Joe of some other things the Bible said, but she’d have been wasting her breath. Besides, Maudie would suffer if Hennie got the best of Joe. So instead, she told him she’d bring his dinner the next day.

  That night, however, a terrible storm swept across the mountain range. It raged for days, leaving Hennie snowbound at home. As soon as the trail was passable, she put on her snowshoes and went to Maudie. The woman was sitting in a rocker in front of a dead fire, staring straight ahead, when Hennie pushed open the door.

  “Where’s your baby?” Hennie asked.

  Maudie didn’t answer for a long time. “Gone under.”

  “Oh, Maudie.” Hennie knelt beside the woman, taking her hands. “I’ll help with the laying out. I brought along my piecing, a doll quilt for Mae. It’s almost done. We’ll wrap her in that.”

  “Joe’s got rid of her.” Maudie said it just like that—“Joe’s got rid of her”—as if he’d just stood at the door and thrown the baby into the trash heap.

  Hennie shuddered as she wondered whether the little child was alive when Joe took her from her mother. That would have been murder, a terrible thing to accuse someone of doing, and Hennie didn’t ask. She feared what Joe would do to Maudie if he found out she’d told. And Hennie was afraid of what Joe might do to her for knowing. Or what she’d do to him.

  Hennie didn’t tell anyone her suspicions, but she gave it out to the women along the Swan how things stood with Maudie, and they made sure she was provided for. There were some that gave their prayers. Hennie would have bought prayers off them for Maudie, but they weren’t for sale. They were freely given. This one gave her a sack of onions, saying they’d rot if Maudie didn’t take them, and that one brought her scraps for her piecing, telling Maudie it would be a blessing to take them because she was so sick of the double-pink, she couldn’t stand to take another stitch in it. Even women such as Hennie who joyed to quilt took their tops to her to be quilted. Instead of paying her money, which Joe would have taken, they brought her groceries from the Pinto store.

  Women had a way of sharing, and Maudie knew that it would be an unkindness to turn them down, for she was well aware they acted out of love. Accepting the work was her way of thanking the women for their generosity. When Maudie opened the door and saw one of her friends standing there, happiness spread across the dishearted woman’s face.

  She loved visiting with the women, but Mae was her especial joy. Hennie believed Maudie must have seen her own baby’s face in Mae. The woman begged Hennie to bring Mae with her when she called, and on the few times Maudie made it down to Middle Swan, she stopped at the Comfort house, asking if Mae was about. Hennie, who’d told her Mae’s story, thought Maudie felt a kinship with the little lost child, for the woman was as lost a person as Hennie ever saw.

  Hennie called on Maudie for the last time to find the woman in the cabin, lying in the bunk, Joe sitting in front of the fire. Hennie had brought along a pie, which she set on the table before she went to her friend. Maudie roused herself and turned, her hand covering the side of her face. But her hand wasn’t large enough to hide the burn.

  “The fool woman burned herself. She screamed her eyes out till I thought I’d have to fist her. What the hell you waiting on? Bring me that pie. I ain’t had a decent thing to eat for two days. I need a drink, too. You got any about you?”

  Hennie turned on him. “You get the doctor!”

  “Get him yourself.”

  “Git! Now!” Hennie snarled. “Or I’ll tell every man in Middle Swan what you did to your wife.” Hennie was mad enough to gouge his eyes out.

  For a minute, she thought he might get up and try to kill her, and she didn’t care, because she was angry enough to fight a panther. But she knew Joe was a coward. He whined and fussed, muttering he hadn’t done a thing, but after a time, he put on his coat and left. Hennie wondered if he’d really bring the doctor, but maybe it didn’t matter, for she knew Maudie was dying. There was no need for a doctor, but it was in Hennie’s mind that Maudie would die easier if her husband wasn’t around.

  After Joe left, Hennie went to the sick woman and folded back the quilt. Maudie lay there naked, her whole side burned, as if she’d fallen into the fire—or been shoved, Hennie thought. Maudie would have ripped off her fiery clothes, then lain down on the bed and suffered for hours. As she put her arm under Maudie’s pillow, Hennie felt an angel crown under the woman’s head and knew that little mass of feathers wadded up in the pillow meant the woman didn’t have but a little while left on this earth. “Maudie?” Hennie said, touching her friend’s hand.

  The woman opened her eyes and muttered, “Hennie?” She tried to raise her head but couldn’t. So she squeezed Hennie’s hand instead.

  “Joe’s gone for the doctor.”

  “No use. I’m done for, and I’m glad. I don’t want to live anymore. I prayed you’d come. There’s something I got to give you,” Maudie said, taking her time with the words. Hennie thought Maudie meant a few coins or a trinket, something she didn’t want her husband to have, and Hennie said not to trouble herself.

  But Maudie was agitated and wouldn’t be still until Hennie brought her sewing basket to her. “It’s in the bottom, under a bit of paper,” Maudie whispered.

  Hennie took the contents out of the basket, noticing the basting threads that had been carefully saved to be reused, the old-fashioned brass pins, and a wooden thimble that the woman must have carved herself.
At the bottom of the basket was part of an envelope that had been glued down. Hennie pried it up then stopped, as she stared at what Maudie had saved. It was a piece of Mae’s dress, the one she was wearing when Hennie found her. Homespun it was and dyed blue. Only the scrap was new, never even washed.

  “How did you get this?” Hennie asked after a time, although she knew the answer. “Mae is . . . Mae is . . .” She couldn’t speak the words.

  “My baby,” Maudie said for her.

  “You should have claimed her. Why didn’t you?”

  “Joe would have killed her, too,” Maudie whispered. It took the dying woman a long time to tell the story, for her life was draining out of her.

  She and Joe and Orleana, for that was Mae’s name, crossed the plains in a wagon by themselves. One night, the girl wandered off, and when he discovered her missing in the morning, Joe wouldn’t let Maudie search for her. He said that leaving her like that would teach the worthless thing. Maudie refused to leave without her child, so Joe tied her to the wagon, telling her she could go along or get dragged to death.

  “He never wanted Orleana,” Maudie said slowly, explaining she’d prayed that someone kind would find her little girl and keep her. She thought the child might even be better off with the Indians than with her own father. “But you found her,” Maudie said, her burned lips trying to form a smile.

  Maudie was right there in Denver when Hennie made the rounds of the immigrant trains with Mae, asking if anyone had lost a child. The woman hid in her wagon so that the little girl wouldn’t recognize her own mother, but she heard Hennie say she was headed for Middle Swan. Maudie waited five years, until enough time had passed that Mae wouldn’t remember her, and by then, Maudie had aged considerably, too. Then she convinced Joe there was easy gold to be found on the Swan River, and they moved to the Tenmile.

  “You saved my girl’s life,” Maudie said. “He’d have killed her, just like he did this baby. He said there wasn’t any reason for girls to live, and their crying made him crazy. Joe knew I loved the babies, loved them as much as I hated him. He wouldn’t let something I loved live.” She explained that she’d seen Joe smother the infant before he took her outside and buried her.

  Maudie said that just before she died, when there was nothing else Joe could do to her. Hennie sat beside the woman, listening to the scuffling noise made by pack rats moving around in their secret place in the wall. She wanted to ask the date Mae was born, but by then, the woman was past knowing anything. When Joe returned, the doctor with him, Hennie told them it was too late. Maudie had crossed over.

  “Who’s going to take care of my old dog?” Joe asked.

  At that, Hennie slapped him hard, as hard as she could. Joe made a fist, but the doctor grabbed his arm and told Joe if he so much as touched Hennie’s little finger, he’d have to account to the entire camp.

  Hennie stared into the remains of the fire for a moment, then went to the door, pushing it open as far as it would go, and looked out at the trees that were dripping rain. The heavy scent of pine came into the cabin. The rain had slowed and the sun was shining through the trees. “Devil rain,” the girl said, nodding toward the door. When Hennie didn’t understand, Nit explained, “Rain and sun at the same time.”

  “Devil rain,” Hennie repeated. “I guess that means the storm’s done with. Just us go now.”

  “I’m glad you told me about Mae. It makes me think some babies had it worse than my sweet Effie. Your story heals me.” The girl stood and returned the sweater to Hennie. The two went outside and gathered firewood, setting it on top of the stack in the cabin, for it was the custom to replace any wood that was used up in a place of refuge. Then using a stick, Hennie raked the embers in the fireplace and watched them die, careful not to leave as much as a fire coal.

  “What happened to Joe?” Nit asked, as they shut the door, and Hennie returned the two blocks of wood to their place.

  “He died,” Hennie said with a mirthless chuckle. “I didn’t let on about Mae being his daughter, for fear he’d claim her out of meanness. There are some that think even a father like Joe has a right to his child. But I told about Joe killing the baby. I said it was Maudie’s deathbed confession, and folks know I’m not a liar, so they had to believe me.”

  There was talk in Middle Swan about putting Joe on trial and hanging him or sending him off to prison. Some of the men were for making meat of Joe right then. Others thought Joe ought to have to live with himself, and when the Reverend Shadd arrived in Middle Swan later on and heard the story, he agreed, saying Joe would have died a thousand deaths if each day he’d had to face what he’d done—not that Hennie cared in the least what the Reverend Shadd said. “Joe saved everybody the trouble of deciding his punishment when he got drunk and wandered outside the cabin and froze to death,” Hennie finished.

  Water dripped off a jack pine down Nit’s neck, and she stopped to rub herself dry. “Did you ever tell Jake and Mae who her folks were?”

  “Yes. They had the right to know. I wondered how Jake’d take it, because Joe’d done him a meanness—high-graded a claim Jake was working. But when I told Jake, he said, ‘Vinegar Joe’s daughter? Great day, Hennie, you saved our girl from a terrible fate.’ Jake never loved Mae less for knowing who she was.”

  Later, when Mae was older, Hennie told her, too. “I owed it to Maudie. She needed something more than quilts to be remembered by. Mae named her middle daughter Maudie. Funny thing was, Mae always looked more like me than Maudie or Joe. How do you explain that?”

  The girl didn’t answer. She followed Hennie down the path onto the main trail, scattering the pine needles that had gathered in ridges after the rain.

  “If you’re a praying woman, you might say a prayer for Maudie,” Hennie told Nit. As the two reached the path beside the dredge, Hennie herself said a prayer—or maybe it was an order: “Lord, you make sure Maudie has a little happiness. And you tell her Mae’s doing fine, and she’ll be taking care of me soon.” Hennie frowned and added, “Not that I need to be taken care of.”

  Chapter 5

  The Coffee Cup quilt was put in and ready for the Tenmile Quilters. Hennie had basted the top to the batting and the back, then stretched the quilt sandwich tightly in the old frame, whose side rails were set to allow a comfortable reach for the quilters working from both directions. She was glad to see a quilt in the frame, for it had been empty since she’d finished her Bear Paw, and the room looked out of sorts without a quilt in progress.

  Hennie had promised the girl Nit Spindle that she’d arrange a quilting after Nit finished her own top. With many hands, the quilt would be completed in hours, but even more important, the girl would have a chance to get to know her neighbors. “There isn’t a better friend than a mountain woman,” Hennie had told Nit. Still, in the high country, where the blood ran thin, women were standoffish. They didn’t take to strangers. A person could live on the Swan for ten or twenty years before she was considered “one of us.” By making Nit a member of the Tenmilers, Hennie would force the others to accept the girl.

  There was another thing on the old woman’s mind, too, for she had invited a second woman, one even newer in Middle Swan than Nit, to attend the quilting.

  So when her Bear Paw was done, Hennie had taken it out and bound it off, leaving the frame empty while she completed the blocks for her Coiled Rattlesnake and bound them together with sashing. Then, because she didn’t want to put that quilt into the frame until the Coffee Cup was done, she’d turned to carpet rags to occupy her hands. She’d torn strips and rolled balls for weeks, it seemed, and her fingers itched to quilt again.

  The house had been scrubbed and flowers picked and set in jars around the room so that the place smelled of Chinese lilacs and yellow roses. The windows in the big room weren’t made to open, but no matter. Even in the heat of late June, the house, with its thick walls, was cool. Hennie opened wide the front and side doors to let in the fresh air and turned on all the lights. The big house, with i
ts deep-set windows and log walls, was always a little dark. As she surveyed the room a last time, Hennie’s eyes stopped on the silver frame, worn through from so many polishings that it was mostly pot metal now, and picked it up. “The girl needs help,” she told the long-ago picture of Jake, setting it down quickly as she heard footsteps on the path. “If this isn’t the way I’m to be the Lord’s instrument, then the two of you best figure out how I am—and before snow sets in. And I could use your help for myself, too, Jake. You know I’ve got something to settle before I go below.”

  Nit was the first to arrive. She set a plate of fried chicken and a basket of half-moon pies on the kitchen table, saying, “I brought a little something or other,” and clasped her hands together to keep them still. “You think those ladies will laugh at my quilt?” she asked, putting a hand to her cheek to stop a nervous twitch. “Quilts are different at home. We pay no mind to the quilting, just take big old stitches to get done. And I never attached binding before. Maybe they’ll think it’s a fool thing to use coffee cups for a design. I don’t know why I ever did.” The girl smoothed her hair, which had been freshly washed and set in pin curls, then brushed until it shone. She wore a pretty dress with a little round collar. The girl had dressed in her best to make a good impression.

  “They’ll like it fine,” Hennie soothed her, thinking that while the girl might never be a first-rate quilter, she had improved in the weeks that she’d lived in Middle Swan. She was better than some, including Bonnie Harvey, who didn’t know how to quilt any more than a dog did. There was hope for Nit. “We get so tired of trading the same old patterns that they’ll be joyed to find a new one.”