Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

the young couple was tramping about in the snow, the boy holding tight to his wife’s hand, treating her as if she was as delicate as a china doll. Nit’s husband wasn’t much more than achild himself, the flush of youth still on him. Hennie asked how he liked working on the dredge, and he said fine. But Hennie knew from Roy Pinto at the store that the workers were rough on him, especially the boss, Silas Hemp. He was a real stinker and took especial delight in devilment. Later, Hennie asked the Almighty to find Dick another line of work for him, one for which he was better suited.
    Hennie leaned over to smell the cookies. “Your stomach doesn’t see what they look like. These’ll taste awful good,” she said. “I was just about frying some bread for breakfast, but I’d rather have a snickerdoodle.” Hennie walked back over the stepping stones to the door. “I was wrecking my mind thinking what to do today, and here you’ve come along for a nice visit.”
    Hennie held the door so that Nit could go ahead of her. The house, which was as neat and tidy as if Hennie had just finished spring cleaning, smelled of cloves. The room they entered was large and served as living room with a fireplace constructed from big, smooth stones along one wall, a dining room, and a kitchen. A door in the kitchen opened outside, and a second door led to an inside bathroom, a luxury in Middle Swan. There was another doorway in the back that opened onto a bedroom, where a spool bed was made up a foot high with quilts. A staircase along one wall led to more bedrooms. Hennie’s house was a pure mansion compared to Nit’s cabin.
    “It’s the prettiest-looking house,” the girl said, looking around again, stopping for a minute to take in the framed sampler over the fireplace mantel.
    In Middle Swan, a person who entered a room was supposedto say, “You’ve got it pretty good here,” but the girl didn’t know that, so Hennie smiled and replied, “Thanks for the compliment.” She shut the door, and the house was so thick and tight that the two women barely heard the rumbling of the dredge.
    In the center of the room was a frame with a quilt laid on it, and Nit went over to peer at the quilt top. The design was Bear Paw, and Nit studied it for the square that Hennie had worked on at the Spindle place. The girl had a good eye for fabrics, but Hennie had pieced the blocks from so many different materials that Nit was bewildered. She spread her fingers over the quilt top, touching the corners where the pieces fit together perfectly, rubbing her index finger over the quilting stitches, which were as tiny as if they’d been taken on a sewing machine. A kitchen chair sat askew beside the frame, where the old woman had been working just that morning.
    “If you live by yourself, you can set up a frame and work on it till your heart’s content. A standing frame’s better than one hung from the ceiling, for it’s always here, ready for my hands,” Hennie explained. “This frame’s the one Billy made for me in White Pigeon seventy years ago, and I’ve never used another. He cut saplings and planed the wood himself, then sanded it down till it was smooth as window glass. Here you can see where he used a hot poker to make the holes because he didn’t have an auger.” Hennie lovingly swept the back of her hand along a row of holes that were still charred black. The frame itself had been polished to a patina by the woman’s hands.
    Hennie thought how like her daughter Mae it was to understand what the frame meant to her and to provide a placefor it in the house in Fort Madison when the old woman moved there. But Lordy, what would Hennie do with the quilts she made? Mae wasn’t partial to quilts. Besides, Hennie wanted to do more with her last days than piece quilts nobody wanted, looking out at a river that was as slow as a fishing worm. She’d move to Fort Madison if she had to, but she wasn’t ready to say “deep enough” to life.