Thirty Quilters and a Red Barn Door

Hanging It

Neal stood there a second looking at his wife. Then he went to her and squeezed her shoulder once, and he picked up his drill and his bag of lag screws, and he started up the ladder.

Percival took the bottom edge with one of Ardith’s grandsons, and the two of them lifted the quilt off the blocks and raised it overhead against the barn wall, slow and steady, a foot at a time.

The star rose up, blue and gold against the red boards. It wobbled a little in the breeze, and Percival steadied it with one gloved hand.

Neal reached down from the ladder and took the top edge, and between the three of them they eased it up until it was square on the wall, right under the hayloft.

That was when the clapping started. I don’t know who started it.

One woman, and then all of them, thirty women in summer blouses standing in the green yard clapping, and the neighbors down by the road clapping, and somebody’s grandkid whistling through his fingers.

I stood beside Mom’s lawn chair with my hand on her shoulder.

She sat there in her pink cardigan with her white hair shining in the sun, looking up at it, and she didn’t clap and she didn’t cry. She just looked.

Neal drove the first lag screw, and then the second, and then all eight of them, through the frame and into the old oak planks of the barn wall.

The drill whined and stopped, whined and stopped. Every time it stopped, the women clapped again.

The whole time, Tammy stood at the bottom of the ladder with both hands on the rails and her feet planted, and she didn’t look away once.

Under the Red

When it was done and Neal was back on the ground, he stood with Tammy at the foot of the ladder for a minute, talking low.

I didn’t hear what they said. Then Tammy left the ladder against the barn and walked across the yard to Mom’s chair.

The women around Mom stepped back to give her room. Tammy stood in front of Mom’s lawn chair and looked down at her, and for a second I didn’t think she was going to be able to get any words out at all.

“Arlys,” she said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was just a decoration.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “That’s not true. I knew it was yours. I just didn’t think it mattered as much as how the barn looked. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Mom looked up at her for a long time. Then she reached out and took Tammy’s hand in both of hers, the same way she had put her hand on the initials.

“I know you are, honey,” Mom said. “The old one’s still under there, you know. Under your red. It’s not going anywhere. So now there’s two of them on this barn.”

Tammy started crying then, and Mom patted her hand and let her.

“You’ll come to guild on Tuesday,” Mom said. It wasn’t a question. “I’ll show you how to lay out a star. If you’re going to live on this place the rest of your life, you ought to know how to lay out the points.”

Tammy nodded. She couldn’t talk.

Ardith caught my eye over Mom’s head. She didn’t smile, exactly. But she gave me one small nod, the kind she gives when the color comes out right.