Momma had intended the quilt to be a record of Anna-Rae’s childhood and was going to make it into a fine keepsake for her eighteenth birthday. But, as Momma had passed away in the Appalachian winter of 1941--just after Anna-Rae’s seventeenth birthday, she had just continued embroidering the little squares. Sometimes she faithfully finished one per year, as Momma had originally intended, and sometimes, as she grew older and life busier, several years would pass between these little documentations of her life. But for now, we will view little Anna-Rae as a carefree child of four in the Indian-summer autumn of 1928. As the small, softly plump fingers of Anna-Raeline Hawkins make their first clumsy stitches in the pale buff cotton square, we join her on the journey that will be her life – captured in the squares that encompass it’s joys and sorrows, innocence and innocence lost, naivete and age-wizened maturity.

"Now you jus push that needle there up through the fabric, yep, jus like that. See Anna-Rae, you done your first stitchin! Looks mighty perty too do’n it?" The thin, callused hand moved away from the chubbier, softer little one it had been guiding to reveal three rather large and crooked stitches of bright yellow embroidery floss. The towhead child looked up at her mother silently, delight shining in her cornflower blue eyes. "Now that there’s gonna be the side of the ‘A’ for ‘Anna’… see?" Momma’s thin finger traced the shape of the letter A on the cotton square. Momma stood up abruptly, as though suddenly infused with energy rare and to be seized-upon, sliding the small child off her lap in a single movement. "Now you git on outside an play for a bit. I got ta git on with the bread makin!" She gave the child a soft pat on the backside, and stood smiling as she watched her trot out onto the porch, the old screen door creaking as it slowly sagged back into place.

Anna-Rae giggled softly to herself as she ran across the dirt door-yard and into the woods. Here was her "second-mos favoritest" spot… after Momma’s warm kitchen. Reaching a towering old oak she dropped to her belly and squirmed between the roots down into a hole barely large enough for a coon-hound. Once inside, Anna-Rae peered around, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness of her little hide-away. This was her secret place, well, almost secret… Momma and Poppa knew she had a special place close by, but didn’t worry about where it was exactly, because Anna always returned quickly when they hollered for her. It was special because this was where she went to look at her ‘pitchers’. That was what Anna-Rae was doing now. She nestled back into the soft earth and roots and looked out at her ‘pitchers’… little vignettes of the surrounding woods framed by the gnarled roots of the ancient tree. A pretty oval around a scene of ants industriously dragging a leaf through the soft earth… A lopsided square revealing a chattering chipmunk at work at the base of a nearby black walnut… and framed by an almost lacy border of smaller roots, a nodding pink Fairy Slipper almost translucent in the filtered autumn sunlight.

Later that night, as the sounds of the woods floated on the warm air up into the porch -- Poppa lifted the dozing child from Momma’s lap. As he turned, caressing her face with his own bristly chin and breathing in the sweet child-smell of her soft skin, a little cloth-covered hoop bounced to the ground and rolled under Momma’s old rocking chair. She twisted and bent over the arm of the chair with a weary sigh and retrieved the little hoop. Leaning back against the hickory slats of the chair, she let her head fall to one side and looked down at the bright stitches. Poppa’s footsteps shuffled about behind her in the house and the familiar strains of the fiddle rose in the night air. Looking back to her daughter’s first quilt square, she fingered the pink flower. "A Fairy Slipper Momma… from my pitcher place!" Anna-Rae had excitedly exclaimed when Momma had tried to guess it’s identity. "Enjoy your Fairy Slippers little one," she whispered into the night, "you’ll be needin the fairies to make your shoes soon." She rose and went in to the house, the old screen door moaning softly as it closed in it’s tired old way.

- TWO - Johnny -

She smoothed her little eight-patch quilt over her lap as she sat on the thread-bare settee next to Momma in the evening dark. Poppa would not be back from the Mine until late. The lone kerosene lamp flickered. Mommas eyes were closed and a light little snore came from her nose. Washing George Marny's clothes had tired poor Momma out. Even with Anna-Rae's help it was heavy work for Momma. The foreman of the coal mine had a large family and Momma told Anna-Rae that at least they had some good honest work to do "and that never hurt no one."

The quilt was now big enough to use as a blanket for a doll. Anna-Rae liked to tuck her raggedy ann doll into bed with it. When she was seven, Momma had made her the little stuffed doll and Anna-Rae had made her patch that year with a likeness of the little doll. Her mother had helped her, but Anna had done most of the stitching herself. She was getting pretty good at it, with Momma's loving guidance.

The doll's dress on the patch was made of the same faded blue calico that the real doll used for a dress and which originally had been a piece of Anna-Rae's own dress. The little dress was sewn on the quilt like a small flap so that it could be lifted to reveal a little "I luv u" heart on her belly, just like Momma had put on the stuffed doll. Next to her quilt, she treasured the doll most and took both of them to bed with her at night. This year she was planning to embroider a picture of herself and her best friend Clara Jean holding hands.

Anna gently fingered the patch she had made when she was six. It had a tree on it, a stitched rendering of her "picture place" tree. Anna-Rae's picture place beneath the big old Oak was now too small for her to squeeze in and the squirrels had taken it over. Now Clara Jean and Anna had their very own secret place up on the hill behind the house. Nestled between two big rocks the girls would look down on the village. When the loud whistle blew they would watch the people scurry out of the Mine, making their way to their shanty homes. The two girls would talk in whispers with their heads together and make plans about what they were going to do when they grew up.

The last of the neighbors left around midnight. A skirl of snow rushed in as Anna-Rae pushed the oak door closed. The wake for Momma had tired Anna-Rae. She had served fresh bread (Momma's recipe), apple cider, ham, baked potatoes and boiled cabbage. Though the root cellar was almost empty now, the food she had given gladly, as a thank you to all the relatives and friends who had helped the Hawkins family in their time of need. She sat for a long minute on the old settee, too tired to cry. Poor Momma, God rest her soul. Life had just worn her out. Poppa was gone these three months from black lung. Now here she was an orphan, just turned seventeen with her little sister Emma-Sue to look after. Emma had been born when Anna was twelve. Emma was fast asleep now in the lean-to off the kitchen. Anna realized Emma would probably not remember their parents. Now Anna cried. After a minute, she collected herself and rose to add wood to the stove. This winter of '41 would set record cold and be talked about for a generation to come. But to Anna and Emma it would always be the year Poppa and Momma went to heaven.

Anna stood looking down on Emma's soft round face. Just like an angel, she thought, all those beautiful golden curls. Anna vowed then and there, not to let life wear her out. She wanted a good life, somewhere away from the toil of this town, a good life for Emma above all. As she turned to go, Anna fingered the sixteen piece quilt, that hung on the quilt rack near the small window. Feeling the deepening chill of the thin walled room, she swept the quilt off the rack and laid it gently over her sleeping sister.

Anna-Rae stepped out of the cow stall, to see Clara-Jean sitting on the pole fence. Clara had her school bag slung over her shoulder. In the bitter cold morning, she had her black wool scarf wrapped over her head, covering her ears.

"Cain't go to school no more, reckon" Anna said to her. "I got all these here chores and little Emma to look to"

Clara shrugged, "I ain't saying nothing. I just go to get away from Vernon. 'Sides, I sorta like it. Maybe I'll learn enough to get outta this hole of a town."

Clara swung down from the fence. Anna walked to the shed, to fetch some timothy hay. Already, she had milked the cow, mucked the stall, and put in fresh straw. Next, she had to see to their four chickens and tidy up the house. Clara followed.

"What're you reckoning on doing now?" She asked. Clara was Anna's oldest and best friend. Anna knew Clara felt her loss almost as much as if it had been her own. Clara knew too, that in this company town, Anna had few choices.

"Well, there's Matthew. He's come calling from time to time. He's a decent fellow. Momma liked him alot, you know." Anna could see disappointment cloud Clara's face.

"I know, he's nice, I've known him my whole life! But, you'd be happy just getting married? What about you?"

"Clara-Jean, I don't see much other chances for the likes of us! Tell me what else? Do you know too, that Matthew has got an uncle, who's got no kids of his own. And this uncle has land, a farm. It's away from this town anyhow."

"You sure got it figured, Anna. He's ain't even courting you yet! And I'll tell you what else there is - Education. That's what Teacher says. I certainly ain't marrying no man." Clara looked very determined. Too bad she wasn't going to marry, she was very beautiful. Then Clara smiled her best no-hard-feelings smile at Anna and they both laughed, their breath making clouds in the brisk air.

"Well then, Miss Clara, I reckon, you best be getting off to your studies. You won't turn into a genius standing around this old place!" She gave Clara a friendly shove.

Clara laughed and hurried off, calling over her shoulder, "I'll stop back by later!"

Anna, blew onto her hands to warm them, then picked up the pitchfork for the hay. Emma-Sue came into the barn just then. She carried a basket of eggs. "Look, Anna-Rae, I can help too!" Anna wanted to cry again, but Emma's delighted face made her strong.

"Good girl, Emma. You take them on into the house, I'll be in shortly and get breakfast for us." Emma trotted off. Anna thought of Emma asleep, the night before, beneath Anna's quilt, the quilt that told the story of Anna's own childhood. It was time, she told herself, to think of a new square - one to honor Poppa and Momma.

That evening, by the fire, Emma and Anna sat side by side. Each worked with needle and thread. Emma was trying to stitch a first quilt square. Anna was forming a square from patches taken from two of Momma's favorite old dresses. Momma had worn them, 'til they couldn't be rightly mended anymore. Now Anna was stitching a sun-burst pattern, for Momma had been just such a bright light, but for far too short a time. This followed a stitched picture of Poppa's metal lunch bucket made from a sleeve of his blue work shirt. It was late, but Anna wanted to finish before she turned in. Clara-Jean had gone home an hour ago, after reading stories to them from a new library book. Emma had curled up asleep, clutching the wooden hoop that held her patch, under her chin. Gently, Anna pulled it free. She picked Emma up and carried her to her bed where she tucked the little girl in beneath the patchwork quilt.

"Anna… Why did God make things to fall apart before their time?" Anna was sure Emma was alluding to the broken kitchen hand pump. They were going to town today for new a leather in hopes of repairing it. But right now what ran through Anna's mind were the premature deaths of Poppa and Momma. "Don't rightly know for sure Emma but God knows what God's doin'. All things work for his good…..You'll see."

Anna was tying a neat bow on the little brown bag bundle of shirts she had washed and ironed for mister Galliger. "Emma… fetch your bonnet and latch the back door so's the chickens don't git in honey." Soon Emma came padding back into the front room with an excitement in her eyes. Her little hands fumbled under her chin with the laces of her bonnet. "Will we be able to get a licorice twist at Milo's while we're in town Anna?" "If there's anythin' left over from the leather, I promise to buy you a twist Emma." She took her sun hat from its peg aside the front door and placed it on her head, tucked the brownbag bundle under her arm and took Emma's hand leading her out the door. "Gotta git going now so's we can get that pump a-workin afor dinner."

Oakhill was a typical West Virginia coal-mining town, its dusty false front wooden buildings and boardwalks lining Mainstreet lead uphill directly to the mines tall elevator shaft. Down the hill, Mainstreet disappeared in the tall pine trees as it crossed a heavy wooden bridge over Kanawha Creek.

Anna and Emma stopped momentarily at the center of the bridge to glimpse the Rainbow Trout lazing in a sunny eddy at the side of the creek. Anna's mind wandered back to times when she and Momma stood right in this same spot taking in the pleasant aroma of the pine trees on the breeze and the peaceful gurgling sounds of the creek as it passed beneath them. The memory of it turned to pain as she realized the innocence and security of those days were gone and now she must look forward and be strong, both for herself and Emma. "Come Emma, gotta be goin'."

The bell above the door on the Mining Office jingled as Anna and Emma entered. "Good mornin' Mr. Galliger. Got your wash'n here." She laid the bundle on a large oak desk in the middle of the room. "Well thank you Anna-Rae." Henry Galliger was putting something in a drawer of a tall wood filing cabinet. "Didn't spect them till tomarrow or the next." Henry reached into his pocket as he came away from the filing cabinet and pulled out some change on the flat of his hand. "Here's an extra quarter for your quick work Anna." He turned to Emma with a big smile, "and how are you today Emma?" "Anna says I can git a twist at Milo's if'n theres nuff change from the leather," Emma beamed.

Anna thanked Mr Galliger and the two headed up the street to Verbeck's Hardware. As they passed Milo's Mercantile Emma bounced along peering in the windows with anticipation of her treat. Anna just smiled down at her knowing with the extra quarter from Mr. Galliger there'd be more than enough for a twist.

Entering the hardware store Anna peered toward the rear counter for Mr. Verbeck's familiar face. A handsome young man about Anna's age with an apron on appeared from the back room. "Good morning ma'am. May I help you?" Anna stood there for a moment slightly blushing, still searching for Mr. Verbeck. "Yes…is Mr. Verbeck around? I need a new leather for our pitcher pump. Do you have those? …The leathers I mean." "Sure do ma'am, right this way." The young man went on talking as he led Anna and Emma to one side of the store. "My name is Michael. I don't believe we've met. I'm new here in Oakhill. "John Verbeck is my Uncle."

Anna with Emma in tow followed obediently. "I'm Anna-Rae Hawkins and this is my sister Emma. We live on the flats 'cross the creek 'bout a half a mile." "Pleasure to meet you both", came Michael's reply as he rummaged through some boxes on a shelf. "Do you have a 'Little Giant' or a 'Bailess'," he asked.

Anna looked a little troubled. "Din't know there was more than one kind. Before Momma died she said we could git a new leather from Mr. Verbeck." Her voice sounded a little desperate. Michael's head popped out from the shelves and as he turned his eyes met Anna's for the first time. There was a long moment of silence where the two of them seemed to take more than a passing interest in each other. They were satisfied looking into one another's eyes. It was Michael that broke the trance. "Your mother was Edna Hawkins?" It was more of a statement than a question. "Uncle John told me about your folks passing. Please accept my condolences. "Thank you Michael. We're getting on ok I guess." Michael perked up. "If you can wait till my Uncle John gets back, I'm sure he'd let me come out to your place and look at that pitcher pump." Anna looked at Emma and back at Michael. "We cain't be asking that of you. We'll manage somehow." Anna was being polite and hoped the good looking newcomer would persist.

Her thought was interrupted by a jingling of the door as Mr. Verbeck came in. "Good morning Anna and Emma. What can we help you with today?" Before Anna could answer, Michael began to explain: "The Hawkins pitcher pump needs fixin' Uncle John. Would it be all right if I took some leathers and flappers out to their place and see what I can do?" "Good idea Michael. Take a Ford Wrench and a screwdriver from under the counter with you. Ok?" Anna gave Mr. Verbeck a smile. "Thank you so very much Mr. Verbeck, we won't keep him tool long."

On their way out of town the trio stopped at Milo's for licorice twists and lingered at the rail on the Kanawha Creek Bridge. Anna contemplated her feelings and the scene; the three of them together on the little bridge. 'I'll begin the square tonight' she thought.

When World War II started and Michael went away, Anna-Rae took his job at Verbeck's store.  For the next three years all she thought about were Michael and saving up for Emma's education.  But things never seem to turn out like you'd expect.

Now Anna-Rae sits in the farmhouse in the quiet of early evening, putting one more square on her keepsake quilt.  It's Emma's first square; turned out to be the only one she ever made.  And it was on her 18th birthday that she and Anna-Rae had their only quarrel ever.

"I'm not going to college, and you can't make me.  I'm going to be an artist!"

So Anna-Rae had given her half the money she'd saved, and Emma took off, for Paris she said, and it had been two years now they hadn't heard from her.

Satisfied with her work, Anna-Rae smooths the quilt gently and looks again at each square.  Here is the crooked Fairy Slipper, her very first square; the sunburst made from Mama's old calicos; an orange tree appliqued the year Clara moved to California; and the double wedding ring she finished the night before her wedding.  Each with its own memories. Up near the top is a blue square with a single gold star.  She fingers it with a small sigh.  Michael was killed in France in '45.  They hadn't been able to afford an engagement ring, and she'd been just as glad not to have another memento to cry over.

Anna-Rae gets up and carefully hangs the quilt on its rack.  Humming and moving slowly, she goes downstairs and out to the barn, where her husband Matthew is closing the animals in for the night.

"What are you doing out here, woman?" he says, grinning.  "Get on inside and put your feet up."

"I'm just going to have a baby, Matt.  No need to fuss - lots of women do it."

But she is smiling too, and lets him lead her back across the yard to the house, and settle her into the rocking chair with a pillow tucked behind her back.

"Doctor says having the first at your age you can't be too careful.  Can I bring you anything?"

"Just my sewing basket.  I better get Baby's quilt square started - in a couple more weeks there won't be much time for sewing."

In the spring of '56, Anna and Matthew's first child, James Dean Mandelbaum, came squalling into the world. At ten pounds four ounces and twenty-three inches long, he was far and away the largest Mandelbaum known to have been born in West Virginia. Matt Mandelbaum couldn't stop bragging about it to friends, neighbors, and, of course, any of the far-flung Mandelbaum clan who dared venture near the old Mandelbaum spread.

Matthew had inherited the farm from his uncle when the old man passed away at 97 in 1948. Almost 70 when Matt was born, Old Man Mandelbaum had been the eldest of 17 children born to Ziggy and Rita Mae Mandelbaum, he a disaffected furrier who had fled the hectic New York furrying scene for the quieter, more grounded existence of the okra plantation; she the plump, perky, sun-ripened farmer's daughter he had fallen for from that moment at the Anthracite Festival of '51 when he watched her dance a West Virginia reel while simultaneously whipping up a batch of biscuits in a large green stoneware bowl. The West Virginia reel, a whirling, foot-stomping solo display of feminine provocation dubbed locally the "Mazurka of Muskrat Love", was a local tradition: the device of last resort reserved for the slightly overaged Racoon County girl in desperate want of a husband.

Old Man Mandelbaum was born nine months after the wedding, which took place in the fortune-teller's tent at the festival, following shortly on Rita's performance. He was named Old Man after Ziggy's grandfather.

Sixteen more children were born to Ziggy and Rita Mae over the next twenty-five years. All sixteen, from the eldest daughters, Mazola Rae, Granola Faye, and the twins Enola and Pianola Gay, all the way down to the youngest of them, Matthew's uncles Wheatbag and Calumet, and his mother, Folger Silex Mandelbaum, were happy, healthy and quick-witted lovers of toil.

Folger had Matthew when she was forty-five. Of her thirteen children, only Matthew was not named after an appliance. He remained in Racoon County after his older brothers and sisters, and all his cousins, left to assume responsible positions in the New York furriers community. By 1935, his aunts and uncles all now removed to Florida on their children's money, Matthew's last remaining relative in West Virginia was Old Man Mandelbaum, and it was clear that Matthew would be his inheritor.

The Mandelbaum family had abandoned okra planting during the Civil War in favor of kiwi fruit, so strange and repulsive to American soldiery that armies of both sides gave the farm a wide berth. After the war, Ziggy cannily switched to the growing of sunflowers, the oil of whose seeds fetched eye-popping prices as a weasel aphrodisiac on the newly-burgeoning fur farms of Nova Scotia. In the early 1900s, the family, led now by Old Man and his sober-minded younger brother Business Man, converted the plantation again to a new crop, this time a secret hybrid developed by ingenious brother Mendel Hernia Mandelbaum. The new plant was so odd-looking no one in the county ever figured out what it was, but the family fattened on profits made by shipping carloads of it to China where it sold to the rich at ear-ringing prices as the antidote for rhino-horn overdose. Not wanting to appear over-prosperous during the depression, Old Man switched once again to the homely, multicolored Indian corn that Matthew found growing there when, upon Folger's surprise acceptance in 1935 of a fellowship at the Sorbonne, he rented out their trailer and moved in with his uncle on the farm.

Matthew stayed on the farm through the war as required by a long-standing federal law declaring Indian corn, which had sometimes served as gunshot in revolutionary times, essential to national security. Old Man taught him to farm and to train weasels, an ancient and cherished family tradition. When Old Man passed away in 1948, Matthew traded his single remaining pair of tapdancing weasels for a 1941 StumpHumbler tractor and, resolving to enter the mainstream of West Virginia folk culture, set himself the task of courting in earnest the plump, sun-ripened war widow Anna-Rae Hawkins-Verbeck.

The story of Matthew Mandelbaum's courtship of Anna-Rae is too brief to be told here. Suffice it to say they wed, and, after a pleasant honeymoon spent among the furriers of New York City, settled down to the raising of a traditional crop to be named later. Within a very few years, they had attained that level of marginal poverty requisite to the maintenance of real character that Matthew had had in mind back in '48. Emma, long a sore temptation to Matthew as she stood at her easel day in and day out, one hip outthrust, gazing out the parlor window at her perennial subject cow and absently daubing a loaded camel hair on the breast of her translucent grainsack shift, had finally left for New York, where, as had all the family's furriers before her, she imagined she would take up the arts in earnest. She left behind her single contribution to the quilt, a green square with a brown-spotted white cow standing in its center. A few months later, Anna had delivered J.D., and was only now finishing her square for 1956. As she rocked J.D.'s cradle with the toe of one foot, she peered thru half-spectacles at the finishing stitches on the picture, a cradle with a foot sticking out of it, over the ornate motto, "Baby Makes Three".

"Select scanner."

"Set x equals 10."

"Set y equals 1."

"OK!"

For the 91st time, Jim Mandelbaum listened to the click and hum of the machine and watched a colorful square appear on the large flat monitor screen in front of him as he held the corner of the quilt as firmly but carefully as he could against the scanning surface. Now that he'd gotten to the bottom edge it was easier to position the squares accurately and this last row would go in more quickly than the others, where he'd had to fold the quilt in various elaborate ways to get one in place.

It had taken him several days to do it, but he thought the quilt squares would be a wonderful memoriam and fitting decoration for the family website announcing the family's third decennial reunion jamboree, MandelJam 2020. As much as his mother had never "held" with the new-fangled computer technology, he was sure she would have been pleased to know that family members all over the country, the world for that matter, would be able to see and appreciate her life's work. And now that she was gone, he wanted to celebrate the life the quilt represented.

Several of the squares actually represented events in his and his brother and sister's lives: a chessboard with every piece embroidered on its square the year he had won the state high school chess championship; an intricately asymmetric one of overlapping piano keys four years later when Marilyn completed an eight-year piano course their mother had enrolled her in. That was a little ironic now, as she hadn't touched a piano since and had become a happily married housewife, mother of seven and grandmother of...well, he'd lost track after La and Ti'd started having kids. Towards the end of the seventh row was the lurid flaming-heart-with-crown-of-thorns one she'd produced to show Dustin there were no hard feelings when he'd converted. Though he was in his 50s now, Jim still couldn't get used to hearing his ten-years-younger brother called "Father".

Then there were the ones commemorating events here on The Farm (as it was universally called in the family): a huge acorn embroidered with a dozen different shades of brown the year the storm had blown down the great old oak at the top of the hill; a plaid-patched primitive pig-in-profile the year old Emily Emsworth, a Berkshire sow his father had nurtured from a runt had won Best Of County; and an accurate blueprint on denim the year he and Judy had gotten married and they built the new house. When Ulysses had come along the next year, the first grandchild, he'd gotten a square all his own, modeled after a fifty dollar bill.

Sometime in the 70s, when he'd been away at school, she'd decided to take up the cello, and wisely but not too well (his father had told him, wincing) had sawed away at it and added a square of tesselated cellos to the quilt. Then there was that year in the 80s when she'd packed a few things in a suitcase, made breakfast for his father, then kissed him goodbye and disappeared for four months. When she returned she never said a word about it, and his father had never asked, but her square that year had a palm-tree'd island set against a large, fan-rayed sun. An embarrassing multi-colored Mickey Mouse in full grin marked the year they'd all gone down to Florida for the first family Jamboree. Two years later his father died. She had sat by the window in her sewing room upstairs, not speaking to anyone for nearly a month. When he took her some food each day, he saw that each day she was pulling out the black stitches she had made the day before. But when she finally came downstairs, the quilt had a square with a rainbow of concentric hearts.

In the second row there was a square of solid red. In the fourth there was one of solid golden yellow. In the sixth was one of solid royal blue, and in the eighth was one that looked like it was plain white but, if you put it at a certain angle to the light, had been woven in different directions in such a way as to produce a lacily ornate snowflake.

"Set x equals 10."

"Set y equals 6."

"OK."

The quilt had always been spread on his mother's double bed, and each year since she turned 90, like all the other years, she had added another square. She had had to work on them more often, and for shorter lengths of time, the last few years. Many an evening he'd come over to the old house to see if she needed anything, and find her propped up with several pillows in her bed, peering at her current project through a large magnifying glass that hung from her neck.

So late one morning last year he had passed by the house on the way back from his morning walk. And gotten no answer when he called in cheerily at the screen door. He went in, immediately worried as he'd been when this happened lately, and she was always in the bathroom, or out back trying to coax another carrot out of her garden. But now he'd called again and still no answer. And there was something about the absolutely perfect silence of the house as he went up the stairs, but he still figured she was probably just asleep. And so she seemed, for a moment, when he went into her bedroom. But he immediately saw that she was slumped to one side and her head pressed against the headboard at a painful-looking angle no one could sleep in. Her body was cold and solid when he instinctively propped her back up on her pillows. The embroidery hoop had fallen face down at the edge of the bed.

He now held the last square of the quilt against the scanner and watched a green background display on the screen. On it was the incongruously purple head, upper body and one paw of a chipmunk. It's one eye seemed to be looking at a point above and behind him, and he couldn't help looking there himself as he carefully folded the quilt.

"Save on K in Jim's Stuff For The Webpage as Anna-Rae Mandelbaum's Keepsake Quilt, May 8, 2020."

"Scanner off."

Jim's wife Judy, comfortably frumpy and cute with it in a baggy green sweatshirt looked in at the door.

"Emmie and Liz are ready to go, honey."

Jim's ancient and eccentric aunt and her slightly less ancient but no less eccentric companion had been staying with them on their perennial circuit of visits with the family and this trip had become, for the time being, a daily ritual. Jim led the way to the little blue commuter car in the barn, helped them in, and unplugged it from the charging stand. He got in, turned on the motors, and without a sound but the crunching of the gravel drive, they rolled out onto the road toward the cemetary.