Near Places, Far Places

Near Places, Far Places by Sarah Barnhill We are both widows, Momma and me, and we live together under the same roof. When my husband died it seemed the right thing to do for me to move back home, so my boy Cleeve and me did, did move in with Momma, since she didn't have nobody and I didn't have nobody. Then Cleeve went and got hisself in trouble and had to leave home and now there's just Momma and me. Two women in a big old white house on the Asheville highway. We got a good view though, of the river and the valley and the mountains all around. And a good view is more than a lot of people got. I was already living there with Momma when Mr. Van Fleet showed up. He came from Del Ray Beach, Florida, and drove up here every year to escape the heat. Sometimes his wife came with him, but she didn't like the mountains. She got car sick, and it rained too much to suit her. She was with him that year he stopped the first time though, and when she got out of the car, she stretched to get the kinks out and stood by the car door with her hands on her back. She had on dark glasses as 35 big as beer mats, and she said nothing about the quilts. Mr. Van Fleet had seen the quilts hanging on the clothes line, six of them stretched out in the sun to dry. We watched him stop in the middle of the highway, back his car up, and drive up to the house. He told us he was Mr. Van Fleet from Del Ray Beach, Florida, and offered to buy every last quilt. "It's got bullion stitching in it," she said. "And a piece from my momma's wedding dress." "But you know there's pieces of Grannie's wedding dress in nearly every quilt you got," I told her. "I know. But this one's different. Each of them gold coins stitched into every square's different. Just look at that work. And see Momma likes her quilts but Momma also likes making a dollar, so I wasn't too surprised when she agreed to sell all but one. She let him have Double Wedding Ring, Drunkard's Path, Goose in the Pond, and Steps to the Altar and Rob Peter, Pay Paul. But when it come to Widow's Mite she put on the brakes. here," she poked the quilt up at me, "this one's got Momma's initials stitched into it." And there it was—ARC, for Addie Rae Case, stitched into the little yellow circle made out to look like a coin that was supposed to be part of the widow's mite. "He'd give you a good price for it." "I know. But this one's different." 36 "You are a stubborn soul, Momma." "I know that too," she said. Mr. Van Fleet came back the next summer and the summer after that and bought more quilts. French Bouquet and Bourgoyne's Quilt and Noonday Lily. Others too, but I can't remember them all. And every summer he asked Momma would she part with Widow's Mite and every summer Momma said no. Last August we were sitting on the porch shucking the corn that Moon had brought in early that morning before me or her was out of bed. Moon is my oldest boy and him and another man worked sixteen acres of bottom land near the International plant they'd been renting for the last seven years. This was the last summer for the corn though, and for everything—the tobacco and the beans and the tomatoes. International bought the land for a new extension and a parking lot, and as soon as Moon harvested the last ear of corn they started to break ground. The phone rang. I had so much corn silk stuck all over me that Momma went to get it. She was gone a long time for her since she doesn't like talking on the phone, and when...