“Plus, Valerie knows so much about everything.
Whenever I go with her, I always learn new things—and she's very good at dickering. I can never find the nerve.”
Pix had always been amazed that Jil had found the nerve to open and run her store. She was extremely quiet and shy. Both Pix and Faith thought Jil was beautiful—what was cal ed in another day a "pocket Venus"—tiny but perfect, with thick, silky dark brown straight hair fal ing to her shoulders. Her attire betrayed the fact that she spent winters off-island working in Portland. The outfit she'd worn today at the Sewing Circle—a hand-painted turquoise tunic over a gauzy white accordion-pleated skirt—hadn't come from the Granvil e Emporium, where it was stil possible to find printed shirtwaist dresses circa 1955. Tom and Sam both said “attractive" was as far as they would go in describing Jil , thereby confirming Faith's oft-stated notion that men knew nothing about female pulchritude.
The next day, Valerie met them at Jil 's. Pix had offered to drive, but Valerie had a van and there was always the possibility they might be carting home something big. Jil hoped to get some things for the store—smal folk art items and thirties jewelry had proved especial y popular.
“Hop in," Valerie cal ed out cheerful y. She was wearing work clothes jeans, turtleneck, sneakers, each discreetly emblazoned by Lauren. The first place they stopped was a barn. The sign out side promised TRASH
AND TREASURES. Jil had found some alphabet plates at a procurable price there earlier and wanted to look in again. Pix walked through the door feeling the tingle of excitement she always did at an auction, a yard sale, any place that offered not just a bargain but a find.
Jil started sifting through boxes of costume jewelry and Valerie was climbing over dressers and bedsteads to examine an oak dining room set. Pix strol ed through the musty barn. There was a pile of Look magazines next to a windup Victrola. Tables were fil ed with a mixture of fine cut glass and gas station giveaways. She was slightly taken aback to see the kind of tin sand pail and shovel from her childhood behind locked doors with other toys of various vintages. Maybe hers was stil in the attic at The Pines. At the end of the aisle, there was a heap of linens, and her heart began to beat faster when she saw there were some quilts in the pile. She started to sort through them. Motes of dust floated in the strong light from an adjacent window.
Some of the quilts had suffered a great deal of dam age, but one was remarkably wel preserved. Left in a trunk or used only for company, it was the Flying Geese pattern, done in shades of brown and gold. The triangular "geese"
were several different prints—some striped, some flowered. The setting strips were muslin and elaborately quilted. It was a real scrap quilt and Pix fel in love with it.
There were occasional touches of bright red, perhaps flannel, and the handwork was exquisite. She took it and two of the damaged ones that she thought could be repaired to the front of the barn.
“How much for al three?" she asked the owner. "Some of them are very badly worn."
“Came out of a house over near Sul ivan. Nothing that went in ever left until the party that owned it departed in a pine box." He seemed to find this very funny. Pix had heard about these untouched houses before.
“What's your price?"
“Two hundred dol ars," he said firmly.
Pix almost gasped. The man obviously didn't know what quilts were bringing. She held on to her senses and countered, "A hundred and fifty"
“We'l split the difference, deah. How about one seventy-five—plus tax”
Pix agreed. She wasn't about to lose her quilts. She paid him and ran over to Jil , who had a fistful of Bakelite bracelets.
“Look what I got!" Pix kept her voice down, but it was hard.
“Quilts! How wonderful. I'l pay for these and then let's go where I can see them properly.”
They cal ed to Valerie that they'd be outside, then spread the quilts on the grass by the van. The Flying Geese quilt looked even better in the sunlight against the green grass. "Pix, it's gorgeous," Jil enthused.
Pix was elated and bent down to look at the stitching again. That's when she saw it. Close to the border, just like the other one. Two crossed blue threads.
Two crossed blue threads just like the ones on the quilt that had served as Mitchel Pierce's winding-sheet.
Four
Pix was so startled that she grabbed Jil 's arm.
“It's the—”
She started to speak, then stopped abruptly. She hadn't told anyone except Earl about the mark, a mark that had come to represent a hex in her mind. He hadn't seemed very interested. Pix quickly decided to change course.
“It's the best quilt I've ever found. What a treasure!”
Jil did not appear to find Pix's overt enthusiasm odd.
Quilters were known for their passion.
“It is beautiful. You are so lucky. I could probably get three or four hundred dol ars for it, maybe more." She sounded wistful. "What about the other quilts, what are they like?”
Pix was suddenly eager to examine them for more marks. They spread them out in a row.
“What a shame! This quilt is almost perfect, only some wear in the corner. But that could be repaired. What's the pattern?"
“I'm not sure. Some variation of Pinwheel. This one is Irish Chain, though, and it wil take some work, but I think I can replace the parts where the fabric has disintegrated.”
Pix wanted to go back to the pile of linens to examine them further. For al she knew, the blue cross-stitches could be a kind of laundry mark, but it was strange to find them in exactly the same place on both quilts.
“Shal we see what else we can turn up? Valerie seems to be engaged in mortal combat with the owner over that dining room set, so we might as wel look around some more.”
Jil commented, "Mortal combat with velvet gloves.
When I was leaving, I heard her tel him, `My, what lovely things you've got here. I have so many people asking me to find antiques for them, I just know I'm going to be coming here al the time.' “
Pix had to laugh at her imitation of Valerie's accent—
Down East meets Down South. It was a curious encounter.
Happily, Jil wanted to look at the linens, and Pix led her to that corner of the barn. They sorted through the stack of mismatched napkins, huck hand towels, and tablecloths, turning up the two badly tattered quilts Pix had previously spotted. Pix shook out each one thoroughly, ostensibly looking for holes. There wasn't a blue mark to be seen. Jil decided to take some of the monogrammed guest towels.
“People don't care whose initials they are so long as they have them. It adds a touch of class to one's powder room."
“I'l have to remember that if I ever have one," Pix remarked. The downstairs half bath off the kitchen in the Mil er household always seemed to be fil ed with the kids'
overflow from the bath the three shared upstairs. In the past, it was dinosaur toothbrush holders and whatever toothpaste manufacturers had dreamed up to entice kids to brush—
sparkles, stars, exotic flavors. Now it was hair gel and hot combs. The towels, while not actual y on the floor, were always in disarray, except for the first five minutes after she put out clean ones.
With her mind torn between a vision of what a home inhabited by two reasonably tidy adults would look like and how dreadful it would be not to find mud-covered cleats in the living room anymore, she wandered toward the big open barn door.
At the front of the store, Valerie was writing a check and arranging to come back later for the dining room set.
She didn't want to stand around and wait while he unearthed it al . When the owner's back was turned, she shot Pix a triumphant glance and winked.
Outside as she looked at the quilts, she softly crowed,