Stitches

Stitches "Keep busy. Do somethin' with your hands," Grandmother'd say, rewarding my neat stitches with a cup of cocoa, later a thimble of dented silver. I sewed my way through split dreams, broken vows, and youngsters' vagaries. Later I chopped calico into neat squares, piecing together with bitter stitches what remained. But somewhere out of a dream my gandmother's voice echoed Doing Business "Loosen up, child. You got a ways to go Willy cleans her spectacles, yet." the better to watch the dusty worm -Carolyn Page wind up the hollow, writhe as it follows Barnett Creek, past sagging barns and cabins collared in blazing staghorn sumac and sly chokecherries. Willy lifts the corner of her apron as the silver Mercedes passes the plot of tipsy markers and ribbons that guard the rotting bones from every war that swallowed up Pine Mountain's sonless men. Willy swats flies, her thimble catching light, as the big car glides into her dooryard, scattering hens, and the city woman slides from white leather while a lackey unloads empty boxes on the bare board porch. To an automatic litany of praise, the boxes are filled with sewn-together calico squares in vivid colors, patterns nobody here would recognize. Big City woman pays, takes photos, orders more, drives off. The dust settles. -Carolyn Page K ' 61 ...