Zora's Quilt

FICTION Zora's Quilt Mary Lynn White "You ain't gonna grow potatoes that way in this country," Zora called out as she walked heavily across the field toward me. I was energetically mixing some hard-earned goat manure into the soil. "You've got to give 'em some fertilizer ifyou want 'em to make. Right now and when they come up good. I got some 10-10-10 over't house," she offered, coming up beside me, bracing herself with the hoe she used as a walking stick. "Oh, no, I'm fine," I said, wiping my forehead with a goat-manured glove. I was proud of the fragrant droppings I had forked into the wheelbarrow and bumped down the path from the neighbor's farm. "This will do the trick. I think there's one more load in the barn yet." "Well, whatever you think," replied Zora. "No wonder your hands are so soft and pink, with you wearing them gloves. I never could stand 'em. Anyway, let me give you a hand," and she flipped the hoe around and started making trenches. When the potatoes were safely underground, we walked back to Zora's for a bowl of banana pudding. Though I'd been casually introduced to Zora by my landlady, this meeting was the real beginning of our friendship. She and her husband Stanley lived next door to me, surrounded by a network of kinfolk up and down Rock Creek. Over the creamy pudding and coffee, I spun her some tales from my past and she listened with rapt attention, prompting me with questions when I slowed down. It was the first of countless such visits over the years. Later I learned she was right about those potatoes; hers were the size of small melons and mine no larger than hen's eggs. Soon Zora had taught me to plant beans and corn, helped me break my dog Snapper of killing chickens, and made sure I got the hang of my wood stove before winter set in. A single woman from the Virginia coast, I was ignorant of the treacheries of deep winter in these mountains and had no family to depend on, so she widened her already large Mary Lynn White and her husband enjoy gardening and keeping bees in Western North Carolina. They maintain a glass studio in Spruce Pine. 21 circle of friends and relatives and drew me in. Sometimes Stanley added his two cents' worth to my education. "Have ye got a gun?" he asked, as I sat at the kitchen table, stringing half runners with Zora. "God no, I don't have a gun!" I snorted, uncomfortable with the very idea. "Well, have ye got a cast iron skillet then, to hit someone over the head with?" he asked. "You there all by yourself, with no man to protect ye. Naught but that dog, and its a-petted to death. What good will it be? You better get ye a gun." "I think not, Stanley. I'll just scream for you to save me," I said to nettle him. One day Zora had a queen-sized quilt set up on the frame in the middle of the dining room. Everyone sat around the kitchen anyway, so the dining room was no great loss. This particular quilt was a Drunkard's Path with colors of rich caramel and tobacco, coral and teal, that would eventually hang in her daughter Brenda's family room. Zora had eight children. Each child and every grandchild had at least one of her quilts. Stanley shuffled into the dining room where Zora and her daughterin -law Faye were trying to teach me how to make tiny regular stitches through the impossibly thick material. Faye was a quiet woman, practical and steady. She was almost as good a quilter as Zora. "My legs is a-killing me!" Stanley said, "Don't no one understand how bad I hurt. I can't hardly climb in and out the truck." We heard this often so we paid him little mind. He watched us as he took a worn comb from his back pocket and drew it through his thick gray...