The Quilt With My Name

Double

I had the money in my jacket. I had stopped at the bank in Waynesboro and I had it ready, because I had made up my mind driving down that I was going to do this right and not insult the woman.

“Mrs. Pruett,” I said, “I came to buy it back. You paid eight. I’d like to give you double, sixteen, for the quilt and the pillowcases and the trouble, and more than that if you’ll take it, for keeping it safe when you had no reason to.” I had two twenties folded in my hand. “You kept my grandmother’s work out of a rag bag. That’s worth more than I can carry.”

She looked at the money in my hand like I had done something that puzzled her.

“Put that away,” she said.

“Ma’am, I want to make it right.”

“Put it away, son.” Not sharp. Firm, the way my grandmother could be. “I did not keep that quilt for six months and pray over it to sell it back to the boy whose name is in it. What kind of a woman would that make me.” She set both hands flat on the arms of her chair. “I’ll not take a dime off you. Not the eight, not the sixteen. It was never mine. You can’t sell a man back the thing that was already his.”

I sat there with forty dollars going foolish in my hand.

“Then let me do something,” I said. “There’s got to be something.”

She thought about it. She looked over at the hall, toward the back of the house where I guessed her bedroom was, where the quilt had been folded on a chest at the foot of her bed for half a year.

“There is one thing,” she said. “And it’s for me, not for you, so don’t thank me for it.” She leaned forward. “When you get that quilt back on your own bed, where it belongs, I want you to take a picture of it. On your bed. In your room. And I want you to send it to me so I can see it laid out where it was meant to be.” Her voice went thin. “I have wondered about this boy Josh for six months. I would like to see him home. That’s my price. A photograph.”

I said I would. I said it twice.