“Do you know where he bought it, Jane?” Arabella asked.
“I sure do,” Jane said with a little laugh. “It’s ironic. It’s a Kentucky quilt, but Dalton bought it in Cincinnati, at Shillito’s.”
Eddie looked at it again. The figures were not as good as Betty Jo’s; the sheep were stupid-looking and there was no imagination to the cows. Betty Jo’s fiery furnace had looked hot, and each leaf of flame had character. It wasn’t as old as this one—Ellen Clous had said it was done in the fifties—but if this was worth eight hundred, Betty Jo’s was worth a thousand. At Shillito’s, anyway.
Jane Smith-Ross had two picture books on quilting to lend him; that night he studied them carefully. There was no doubt about it: Betty Jo Merser was a find. The whole problem would be marketing. He would hire someone to install the track lights and to put shelves along one wall; he wanted to start dealing with Ellen Clouse for all the Betty Jo Merser quilts she had. The fiery-furnace one would look terrific on the freshly painted white wall on the left as you came in the door. They could hang two or three of them and store the rest on shelves, like pool-table cloths. If you put Deeley Marcum’s statue of the Las Vegas Model on the floor—that newly varnished oak floor—to one side of it and a few feet out from the wall, the two of them would go together just right. Thinking about it, his heart began to beat faster.
He had no difficulty getting a carpenter and an electrician. Everybody needed work, and it was wintertime. But when he talked to the electrician about an alarm system for the windows, the man said he didn’t know anything about that. Eddie called a place from the Yellow Pages, but no one answered. He decided to worry about it later and left the man installing track lights in the ceiling while the carpenter was cutting boards for the shelves. Arabella got license applications at City Hall and began calling her friends to tell them about the shop, starting the word-of-mouth. He left the men working and went to the newspaper office to talk about advertising. He had run a few ads for his poolroom from time to time, but they had been simple cuts. He needed something for the gallery opening that would look elegant. And there was radio and TV. Enoch—or his secretary—might be able to help with that. Maybe he could get Arabella on the morning show, to talk about Kentucky folk art. And then they had to look into the other artists: they would need to stock more than metal statues and quilts.
It did not seem crazy, or even strange, for him to be doing what he was doing. Art had never meant anything to him, and he had never been in an art gallery or museum in his life. But what he was doing felt like a hustle and he liked the notion of a hustle, liked putting his mind into it. It was in the service of money, and he loved money—loved dealing with it, loved making it, using it, having a dozen or more large denomination bills, folded, deep in his pocket. So much in his life did not make sense. But money did.
“We could take the quilts on consignment and not have to put up any money,” Arabella said. They were driving toward Irvine.
“That means we don’t pay Ellen in advance?”
“Right.”
“How does she know we have a better way of selling than she does?”
“You talk her into it.”
He drove silently for a while, pushing the two-year-old Toyota pretty hard. He had been thinking of a panel truck or Microbus, with KENTUCKY FOLK ART GALLERY on the side, along with a logo of Marcum’s woman-and-dog in profile. He thought about Arabella’s idea for a moment and then said, “We’d have to give her at least half, and I want to go for broke. I want to buy a quilt for three hundred and sell it for nine. Otherwise it’s not worth our time.”
“What about poor Ellen?”
“Poor Ellen? In the first place Ellen didn’t make the quilts, and in the second she hasn’t been able to sell them at that dump with the Esso pump and the kerosene stoves. If you want to feel sorry for somebody, make it Betty Jo Merser. Ellen’s the robber baron of this enterprise, not its victim.”
“You should be teaching economics at the university instead of shooting straight pool.”
“A person learns about money shooting straight pool.”
“Eddie,” Arabella said, “you’re driving too fast.”
He said nothing but did not slow down.
“I’ll give you twenty-seven hundred for all nine.” Eddie had that much in cash and he set it on a little table with a doily on it near the fireplace.
“You’re being silly,” Ellen said. “That’s the whole lot of Betty Merser’s life’s work, and any five of them’s worth that much.”
“They’re not making you anything hanging on the walls here.”
“Let me get you folks some tea,” Ellen said. She went into the kitchen. She didn’t even look at the money.
“Eddie,” Arabella whispered, “you’re going to have to pay more or get fewer quilts.”
“We’ll see.” He had his eyes on the fiery furnace above the fireplace, with the three black-haired children tied with ropes about to be shoveled in. He could get twelve hundred for that quilt if he could find the right buyer.
When Ellen came back carrying a tray with mugs of tea on it, Eddie said, “What do you think all nine of them are worth?”
“You’re downright serious about those quilts, aren’t you?”
“I like the workmanship.” He took a cup from the tray.
Ellen nodded but said nothing. They sat with their tea for a while and then, abruptly, she stood up, smoothing out her heavy corduroy skirt. “Maybe you’d like to see what her mother did.”
Eddie looked up at her. “Her mother?”
“Betty Jo’s. She passed away before the war.”
“And she did quilts?”
“She’s the one taught Betty Jo. Leah Daphne Merser was the best quilter around.”
“Where are they?” Eddie said.
“In the bedroom.” She walked through the door to the right of the fireplace. “There’s only three.”
There was a wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Ellen opened this and took out a sheet that covered what was inside. Under this was a quilt wrapped in a clear plastic garment bag. She took it out of the chest with care, set it on the bed, eased it out of the bag and began unfolding it. As it opened up Arabella began to hold her breath.
“I’ve had these a long time,” Ellen said. “There was a dealer from New York going to buy them back when Betty Jo was alive, but I never heard from him. I wasn’t all that fond of selling. Don’t know if I am yet.”
Eddie stepped closer to look. He had spent several hours with Jane Smith-Ross’s books, looking at the detailed illustrations carefully. This quilt was the real thing. It was trapunto, with flowers and birds in appliqué, and the stitching was as delicate as that in any of the pictures. He remembered one in the book that the legend said belonged to the Museum of American Folk Art in New York; the book gave it two pages, in color, and another page to show details of the stitching. This one was better. He picked an end of it up gently; the cloth was smooth and light, and the quilting of flower petals was flawless. He looked over at Ellen. “I’d like to see the others.”
“Seven thousand dollars!” Arabella said.
“In for a dime, in for a dollar,” Eddie said. He was driving just at the limit. In back of him, wrapped individually in plastic, were the nine quilts of Betty Jo Merser and the three exquisite ones of her mother. He felt fine. He always liked raising the bet.
“If you get sprinklers in, I’ll write it. Otherwise I just can’t.”
“Sprinklers?” Eddie said. That was one thing he hadn’t thought of. “How much is that going to cost?”