She mentions the sitar because she knows people frown upon this innovation. I have heard Nathan make snide remarks about it, suggesting that there were some traces of insanity in the woman even though he was professing his love for her at the same time.
I tell her that she needs to do something that will prove to Ruth that her art quilts would sell. I know for certain that Ruth’s don’t sell at all. She works so hard and gets little or nothing in return. Every Saturday morning she loads five quilts on the GMC pickup and takes them to the farmer’s market at the University Mall parking lot in Athens. She displays them on railings. People come and look and say “how beautiful” and go to the next stall to buy organic vegetables. They will only talk about them when they are out of her hearing: the quilts are expertly done, but they are like any other traditional quilts. Same stitches and knots. Same Jacob’s Ladder, Bow Tie, Drunkard’s Path, Shoofly, Monkey Wrench, Wagon Wheel, Flying Geese, Crossroads, North Star, Log Cabin, Bear’s Paw that are found on other traditional quilts. Not that all these designs are found in one quilt at the same time. Only one or two of them feature in a quilt — unless it is a sampler. What may be distinctive are the combination of colors she uses and the patterns on the fabric itself. A brazen and heartless customer sometimes says directly to her that one can easily and cheaply find the same kind of quilts at Wal-Mart and they are used as mere bedcovering rather than works of art that can proudly be hung on the wall.
Every Saturday afternoon Ruth loads five quilts on her GMC and drives back to Kilvert. Once in a while she is lucky and a charitable person buys a quilt. Only once in a while. As a result she has to depend on food stamps, on the Center’s pantry and now on my contribution for room and board. When things are a bit tight — the family can’t live on the sauces and relishes that are stored in the cellar — she has actually said that I am God-sent, although she hates to be dependent on charity. When on occasion I give her more than she charges me, she is loath to take the money.
But Ruth is so steeped in tradition that even poverty will not move her to be innovative in her use of the very traditional designs. After all, many modern quiltmakers create works of art that are inspired by traditional designs but that venture into new directions. Which is what I was encouraging Orpah to do. It is the same approach that I once suggested to the women at the Center. They are steeped in tradition too. At best they make strip quilts. That’s as far as they can venture into the world of “art.” But fortunately they go beyond the slave designs in their exploration of traditional quilts. They also do quilts from other American traditions such as the Wedding Ring, the Pinwheel, the Irish Wheel, the Schoolhouse, the Diamond-in-the-Square and many others. At least they did not pooh-pooh the idea. They merely said they were going to teach me how to quilt and I could then create those so-called art quilts that I am always on about, so that they may continue in peace to make quilts the way their great-grandmothers made them.
The sitar. It’s been days since I heard it. Here it comes again tonight. Midnight. The sounds seep through the walls to my cellar. Muted. Up to now I had thought that a trumpet was able to transmit melancholy better than any other instrument. I was wrong. The sitar in the hands of Orpah achieves just as much. Or better. She has managed to make the sitar speak a new language.
I am aroused to a point of madness. I want to hear the sitar in all its glory. I wake up, put on my robe and walk outside. I stand behind Mr. Quigley’s sole shrub and begin to abuse myself, to the extent that if I was living in an earlier era I would have been committed to the mental asylum at The Ridges. I go with the rhythm of the sitar, but stop immediately when I see a dark figure appear from the corner of the wrap-around porch. It is Mahlon Quigley. He is in a period costume of some kind. He looks like a pirate of the high seas with a tricorne hat and a patch on one eye. He wears a bandolier over his shoulders and as it falls across his chest I can see that it is empty. He holds a gleaming cutlass in one hand and a tray of food in the other. He walks gingerly until he gets to Orpah’s door. He taps at the door with his sword. The music stops and my hard-on unceremoniously dies. The door opens and against the light there is Orpah still holding her sitar. Even though I can only see her outline because of the backlight she is a pirate girl in a short dress and a big hat, which is likely to be a tricorne as well. Mahlon waltzes into the room and shuts the door.
For some time there is silence. Then a lot of giggling. I walk closer to the window. Mumbling. Singing. One voice. Two voices. Male and female. Laughter. Moans. Giggling. My God! I walk away in disgust.
The next morning Obed wakes me up with a rude knock. I have a call. I grab my robe and rush to the living room. I suspect it is Beth Eddy because she is the only person who has ever called me here. It is Barbara Parsons at the Center. “I’d like for you to come to our Christmas dinner,” she says. I thank her. I was going to go in any case. Everyone in Kilvert is going. Everyone but Ruth, who is still nursing resentment against the Center women.
And there is Mahlon sitting on the swing looking as innocent and serene as the wooden Jesus in his garden. I look at him and suddenly my stomach churns.
“What was the call about,” Obed asks.
“It was just the women at the Center,” I say.
“I thought it was Beth.”
“With a voice like that? Why don’t you call her?”
He looks at me as if I have asked him the dumbest question ever. But I am interested in Mahlon Quigley. I want to know more about this man.
“Why?” asks Obed.
“I find him intriguing.”
“My old man intriguing?”
“Don’t you people know what happens under your own roof at night?” I was getting agitated.
“Oh, you mean about him and Orpah? Of course we know. Everyone knows. They have been doing it since she was little. Since I was little too. But I outgrew it. Orpah’s still a child at heart.”
Then he walks away.
Mahlon Quigley, I learn from the women at the Center later that day as I help arrange the chairs in the hall, is a respected elder in the community despite his silence. On the rare occasions he utters something everyone listens and takes note. They don’t remember when and how his silence started; it just crept on them. They do have a memory of a much younger and vibrant Mahlon though. He and Ruth used to live on a small farm when Obed and Orpah were little. They raised all their food, including meat. They slaughtered hogs and chickens. They raised their own eggs too. But, alas, farms were commercialized and the family had to leave the land.
But no one could take the farmer out of Mahlon. Even when he had moved to the village he kept cows. “He got them as calves and then grew them up till they was big and then sold them for beef,” said Irene. Sometimes he had up to eight cows at a time. He had two or three pigs and a few chickens as well. “Back in them days you could keep them animals in your backyard without the government whupping your ass,” adds a man who had joined us helping set the place up for the party.
A strange disease attacked his animals; many of them died and others had to be put down. This pained him very much and he decided he would never again grow anything that would die. Hence his garden has gnomes and flags and statues. The only living thing is the bush that has survived for generations and is not likely to die in his lifetime. When women talk of him their eyes become moist and their voices drip honey. One senses awe in the men’s tones. Everyone is in agreement: there has never been a gentleman like Mahlon Quigley seen in these parts.