Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas Page A

“Deep enough” was what the miners said when they quit a mine.
    The old woman pulled herself out of her reverie and said to Nit, “Billy told me he wanted a worthy frame, because quilting was pious work and pleasing to God. I myself couldn’t have said it better.”
    “Oh my!” Nit clapped her hands together at the thought. “It’s a lovely quilt,” she added, making Hennie wonder if she should present it to the girl. A person couldn’t have too many quilts in Middle Swan.
    But maybe she should wait until she finished a nicer quilt. This one wasn’t much better than a scrap quilt, made up of fabrics Hennie’d had for a long time. “A quilt’s like the family Bible. It’s got everybody’s mark in it, memories of everybody’s lives. There’s pieces from my old dress that I wore when I came to Middle Swan and another from a shirt I found hanging on a tree in Poverty Gulch, just outside the Terrible Mine, which hasn’t been worked in fifty years. I never knew how that shirt got there. I let it hang all summer before I decided nobody was coming for it and I took it.” She ran her hand over the quilt top and stopped at a white cotton scrap with a design of tiny black feathers and tapped her thimbled ring finger on it. “Mrs. Sabra—she was the dressmaker in Middle Swan—gave me this one. It’s left over from a shirtwaistshe made for Bijou, who worked . . .” Hennie stopped, for she didn’t know how the girl felt about hookers. “For a lady long ago. I guess every scrap has its story. But you’re a quilter. You know that.”
    Nit pointed to a piece that had a luminescent quality, the blue the color of a peacock’s feather. “What’s this from?”
    Hennie laughed. “Why, it’s from the Pinto store. I saw that material there fifty years ago, and I had to have a piece of it. I never saw anything that color outside of a book. It was dear-bought. I didn’t want anyone else to have it, so I took it all, the whole bolt, cost me five dollars. Then I was so ashamed of myself for being greedy that I gave pieces of it to one and all. You see a piece of that blue in a Middle Swan quilt, and you know it came from me. That blue’s been in every one of my quilts, too. Still, I’m mighty saving of it and don’t give that material to just anybody these days.” She paused and added, hoping to let the girl know that she was esteemed by the old woman, “But you might have a piece, if you like.”
    “Oh,” Nit said, sensible of the honor.
    Hennie opened her pie safe and rummaged around in it until she found the blue and tore off a strip. She handed it to the girl, who ran it across the palm of one hand, ironing it with the fingers of her other hand. “I’ll save it till I’m good enough to use it. I’m getting better with my quilting, you know. Dick says when I set my mind to a thing, I do it. He’s the same way. That’s why we get along.” Nit studied the fabric. “We went out to ourself the day we got married so’s we could make something of us. If we’d stayed with our homefolks, we’d have turned out just like them.” Nit thought overwhat she’d said and added, “I mean, I love them, but they’re easy to satisfy.” The girl put the blue fabric into her pocket. “Like I say, I’ll keep it for a good quilt.”
    Hennie waved her hand and told Nit to use it now. What was the use of saving it? she asked. Besides, Nit was already a fine quilter, Hennie added. The girl wasn’t, but the quickest way to insult a woman was to criticize her quilts. “Would you welcome coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, for Hennie’d never known anyone who wouldn’t welcome coffee, she said, “Now, just you sit, and we’ll have us some with our cookies. If I take hotcakes for supper, then I got the right to eat snickerdoodles for breakfast.” She hurried into the kitchen part of the room and fed chunks of wood into the cookstove, then went to the sink and turned on the faucet, filling the teakettle with