The Quilt and the Cairn
Edna closed her eyes and turned her face toward the midmorning sun. The early summer warmth of the South Dakota prairie was so different from the last time she had been here. “So very different,” she said to herself in a whisper. Her eyes opened and saw bright greens and vivid blue, not the flat browns and gray skies of her memory. The smells of new life and road dust filtered in the small gap of the car window. Such another contrast. She closed her eyes again and could smell the frozen earth and feel the bone aching chill of the north wind of almost eighty years ago. Tears began to well up as she again looked out at the passing landscape.
“You okay Gram?” came a voice from the front seat of the car.
Edna looked at her great-granddaughter and smiled. “It is just so beautiful. “Not at all like the last time,” she said. “I should have come back sooner.”
Darla reach over the front seat and grasped her oldest living family member’s hand. She smiled back at Edna and gave her a little wink. “Well, I am glad you are here now, and I’m glad that I’m here with you.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that all of you came along too. Especially you, my little elf,” Edna said, tickling her small backseat traveling partner. Her five year old great-great-grandson Tommy gave out a squeal of laughter.
“Gram,” he shouted between giggles, “I’m trying to watch for cows!” He grinned at her and turned his eyes back to the grassy pastures that rolled along either side of the road.
Darla’s husband George let loose a long “moo” sound and Tommy laughed again. Ed held on to the top of the steering wheel with his left hand, his right on his wife’s knee. They too smiled at each other as the sedan motored along.
It was because of George this trip was possible. He had been a fighter pilot in the Pacific theater from ’43 until the end of the war. After he came home he took advantage of the G.I. Bill, became an engineer and started working as a test pilot and consultant for Boeing. That is where he met Darla. She had worked at the factory in Tacoma during the war and was able to stay on after the boys came home. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was close enough. They soon were engaged and married in the spring of 1948 and Darla left the company to become a housewife. Tommy came along one year later, making Edna feel younger and older all at the same time.
George made good money and adored Edna as much as Darla did. After hearing Edna telling stories of Edna’s father packing up the family in Illinois and heading to the Black Hills of Dakota Territory to strike it rich by either finding gold or providing goods or services to the ones that had already found their fortune. They left far too late in the year and it was a cold and wet fall when they traveled though this land. The tales of that hard journey and Edna wishing aloud that she would like to go there again gave George the idea. For her ninetieth birthday, he would fly her and any other family member to South Dakota to see the places Edna had talked about for all these years.
When he told Darla his idea, her love for him deepened farther that she could imagine. And she knew exactly where Edna would want to see the most.
#
Edna had just turned 10 when her father Albert decided to make the move west. It would be the twelfth time since the end of the war they had made such a move. Albert’s life had been led by one simple mantra: boom or bust, bust being in the lead for most of the time. His wife Lena, a decidedly imaginative woman, went along with every plan, never losing faith that Albert would make a go of it no matter where they landed. The trip across the Dakota Territory, however, would be the one that broke the adventurous will of the whole family.
It was late October when they made the stop. The temperature had gotten above freezing long enough to sleet on the small group of wagons that traveled together to the Black Hills. Albert climbed down from his wagon, a blank look on his gaunt face. It wasn’t raining very hard, but combined with the cold, his whole body ached. Edna sat in the back of the wagon with her little sister Claire. Lena remained seated next to the now empty spot of her husband, her head pointed toward the ground. Everyone but Albert was wrapped in a blanket, trying to hold in as much heat as possible. There was work to be done and a blanket would have just gotten in Albert’s way.
Edna stared at her sister. Claire was not quite two years younger but just as tall as Edna. They both had the hazel eyes of their mother and the red hair of their father. Many people guessed the girls were twins and they were never seen apart. They relied on their love for each other to get through all the upheavals forced on them by their father. Sure enough they had some knock down fights but when it came down to it, they were best friends.
Claire’s eyes were shut, her face the only thing showing out of the quilt that covered her. The quilt became the focus of Edna’s attention. Bright blue and white when created by the hands of a master. The repeating pattern mesmerized the older sister. In her mind’s eye Edna imagined the travels of the quilt. It had come across the ocean before America had broken its British Empire shackles and moved many places across the eastern U.S. It had not seen any more exciting of a life than any other quilt but it was loved by several generations and coveted as the warmest. Now it was not quite as bright as it had been and repairs had been made here and there. Lena first covered Claire with it not long after they had crossed the Mississippi to ward off the chills of a fever. Both the blanket and the fever had been with her since.
From outside the wagon Edna could hear her father grunting and a repeating shuck sound as his shovel tried to dig into the frozen ground. She looked out the back of the wagon, no emotion on her face. This had been the longest of the family moves and the most unpleasant. The weather was either cold and rainy or just plain cold and felt like it sucked all the warmth out of their bodies and there was no fire big enough to get it back. They had to make many stops along the way, wagons breaking down or getting stuck or someone’s beast of burden getting injured or someone getting too sick to travel. Edna continued to stare out at the gray skies and dead brown grass, watching the plumes of condensing breath coming from man and beast.
The soft voice of someone other than her father could be heard coming from the same place as her father’s labor. Albert replied to the other voice but continued to dig. The first voice spoke again and the response from Albert cracked though the small group like a bull-whip. Edna jumped. She had never heard her father raise his voice in anger before. She kept her empty gaze out to the prairie. The front of the wagon creaked causing Edna to turn toward the sound just in time to see her mother put her feet on the ground and walk toward the softer voice and the rhythmic shuck…shuck…shuck.
The words Lena spoke were difficult to hear but their meaning was not. The interloper’s soft voice spoke again and then footsteps headed toward the other wagons. Normally Edna and Claire would have been peeking at such goings on and filling in the blanks for what they could not hear. It was a fun game and never failed to give the sisters a fit of giggles.
The sound of the other wagons starting to move brought Edna out of her empty gaze. She poked her head out the back to watch as wagons started west again, going around her family’s wagon. Most of the faces she could see were looking down or making a point of not looking at Edna and the rest of her family. After the travelers were well past them, the young girl crawled out of the back and walked around to where her mother and father stood. They all looked at the small, shallow hole Albert had dug. “It will have to do,” Lena said with the same blank stare the rest of the family had.
Albert jammed the shovel head into the ground as hard as he could. It barely went in but it was enough to stand on its own as Albert made his way to the back of the wagon. Lena kept looking at the hole with an emotionless face. Edna looked at the prairie around her, determined to memorize the landscape. The edge of the blue and white quilt brushed up against her arm as her father walked past her.
The mother and daughter moved closer together as Albert lowered Claire into her grave. Lena crouched down and adjusted the quilt to cover her youngest child’s face. The sleet hitting their clothing and wagon the only other sounds that could be heard.
The three stood silent for what could have been a minute or an hour. None of them could tell. The gray clouds above them seemed darker and closer to the ground. North winds picked up and wicked away what little warmth any of them had left. Albert grabbed the shovel and started to cover the quilt with the same rhythm he used to dig the hole, the familiar pattern of the fabric being obscured by the half frozen topsoil of the northern plains. Edna knew she should have tears if not completely breaking down and sobbing. Her father finished his heart breaking task and once again stood by his wife and daughter in silence.
“We will all cry when we are warm again,” she thought.
#
The flight from Washington to South Dakota was the first for Edna. As most of her life, her fear was dominated by her curiosity. Even when they hit rough turbulence her thoughts were filled with the wonder of flight rather than the fear of falling. Darla asked her great-grandmother if she was okay many times during the trip and Edna’s answer stayed consistent throughout. “I know you worry, my dear girl, but I’m pretty tough for ninety.” she said
“Gram, you are tough for any age.”
They landed in Rapid City and were met by a fellow pilot and friend of George’s named Joe. Joe and his family put them up for the night and it was in his car Edna and her family drove across the state visiting the elderly woman’s past.
Now they were on the most important leg of the trip. Earlier in the day they had stopped in Gann Valley so Edna could talk to some of the locals about what she remembered from that cold, late autumn day. As to be expected, coffee time at the town cafe is where her best information could be found. She already knew that the route they took was north of the small town, but where exactly she wasn’t sure. Many of the old-timers listened to her with the seriousness of a military briefing. She described being on the south side of a valley, a certain stand of trees and the shape and size of a creek nearby.
The men listened and talked and traded ideas until their coffee was cold but none seemed to care. A consensus was come to and for the most part they agreed she was looking for Abraham Sorenson’s land on the Buffalo/Hand county border. Directions were given and thanks exchanged and all the men refused to let Edna pay for their coffee. They just wanted to know how it turned out so they made her promise to stop back and tell them what she had found. She and her three family members happily agreed, especially Tommy who had been given pennies for the gum ball machine and looked much like a chipmunk as they waved goodbye and headed up the road.
The directions were good and they pulled up to the Sorenson farm house about half past twelve. The cafe crew said Abraham usually came home for lunch and they should be able to catch him then. They parked behind a well-used pick-up just as a large man wearing bib overalls stepped out of the beat up truck. He walked toward the car as Edna was the first to exit the sedan. When he saw her, Abraham took off his cap and his thick silver-gray hair stuck out in all directions.
Edna introduced herself and her family, apologized for interrupting his lunch and asked him if they were in the right place. Abraham stuck out his hand to Edna and smiled, his weathered face wrinkling around his eyes as he smiled. Her small hand disappeared into his massive paw and he invited them in.
Inside the house, Abraham’s little round wife Betty loudly expressed her sincere joy at having company. She sat them down at the kitchen table while she talked and scurried about preparing everyone lunch. Abraham pulled a pipe out of his chest pocket and asked how he could help them.
Edna sipped some lemonade, Betty had poured a glass for everyone, and told the Sorensons her story.
Abraham and Betty looked at each other and Darla could see tears welling up in Betty’s eyes. Abraham let out a long breath and nodded to his wife.
“How about we turn this lunch into a picnic?” the big man said.
Soon they had all loaded into the pick-up. Edna, Betty and Abraham up front, Darla, George and the most excited kid in the world to see real cows up close in the back.
As they drove, Edna’s eighty year old memories flooded back and the land began to look like that of the gray afternoon so many years ago. The three in the cab sat quietly, breaking into the occasional grin based on the outbursts of joy coming from Tommy in the bed of the pick-up. Edna had not even got to the description of the landscape before they left the house, but Abraham seemed to be taking them right there. How did he know where to go? She got her answer when Abraham stopped.
In front of them was a massive pile of stones. The pick-up had barely stopped moving when Edna jumped out. George and Darla were talking and laughing as they hopped to the ground, Tommy riding on his father’s shoulders. As they came around the front a silence fell over them.
Edna walked slowly up to the cairn and placed her hand on a stone. It was hot from the sun but not so hot she could not keep her hand there. After a few moments, Betty and Abraham walked up to Edna and Abraham began to speak.
“Almost thirty years ago I took this farm over from my dad. My first decision was to plow this land up and so that is what I started to do. I had made one pass with the plow when I noticed this sticking up from the ground.”
Betty held a white towel in her hand and began to unfold it. In the middle was what her husband had found. Edna’s eyes widened as she recognized the pattern sewn into the piece of faded blue and white quilt. Abraham continued.
“I knew what I had stumbled upon right away. I guess sometimes people weren’t able to dig so deep, for whatever reason. I stopped plowing and knew I could never tear up a sacred place like this. I pulled a small stone out of the ground and used it to mark where I had found the quilt, brought the piece back home for Betty to take care of. From then on I would take the rocks I had picked from other fields and put them here,” Abraham voice cracked a little, “so whoever was there would be safe.”
Edna held the cloth remnant close to her chest and looked at the monument Abraham and Betty had made for dear Claire. Tears streamed down Darla’s face and George felt a tightening of his throat. And while he didn’t know why, Tommy felt the importance of this moment and watched in silence.
The Sorensons stood on either side of Edna, also looking at the grave. Edna placed the piece of quilt on the pile of stones. She dropped her hands to her sides and put one hand in Abraham’s and one in Betty’s. They stood there, maybe for a minute, maybe an hour, when Edna said “Thank you.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking, filling in the blanks of the stories. Abraham took Tommy over to a cow and let him touch her. His grin would take days to wear off. They made their way back to the farm house and Betty insisted they all stayed the night. Edna and the Sorensons talked into the late evening before they realized what time it was.
The early morning found the sedan all packed up, including some baked goodies from Betty, and goodbyes and addresses were exchanged. Abraham had one thing left to show them. He walked them to the barn and by the door was another stone. It was bigger than the others and had carved letters on its flat top. It read, “For All Those Who Have No Marked Grave.”
Abraham told them of his plan to set this stone with the others but he would now wait until he could carve a memorial to Claire on it. Edna once again put her hand into Abraham’s and smiled.
After all the farewells were said, George fired up the sedan and the four travelers headed back toward Gann Valley. Darla laughed saying the ol’ boys at coffee would get a story, and then some.
Edna gave a slight smile and felt the warmth of the midmorning sun.
FIN
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