Chapter 4
May 1927
“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Papa?” I asked uncertainly. “I’m not all that set on going. You and Mama could go instead and I could stay with Morgan.” I stood in front of the mirror fiddling with a hat pin, accidentally stabbing myself in the finger while studying Papa’s reflection instead of my own.
“Go on, go on,” he said, waving me off impatiently. “We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Morgan?”
Morgan nodded, shaking his blond curls over his forehead and pulling his finger out of his mouth to give me a wide grin. “We’ll be fine, Mama. Papaw’s goin’ to show me how to play mumbley-peg, ain’t you, Papaw?” Papa gave Morgan a little nudge with his knee to remind him that this had been a secret.
“Papa!” I scolded. “He’s too young to be throwing mumbley-peg. He’ll cut off his fingers.”
Papa made an exasperated face. “Bah! He’ll be four in just a few more days.”
“May nineteenth,” Morgan piped in.
“That’s right,” Papa affirmed. “So, don’t get your dander up, Mother Hen. Besides, I wasn’t going to let him throw it. I was just going to show him how.” He turned to Morgan with his eyes gleaming and his brogue thickening like it did whenever he was telling a story. “Sure now, me boy, when I was your age, I already had a knife of me own, and me brothers and I, we’d use them to hunt snakes in the old country. Huge, slithering serpents they were, as long as my arm.”
“Papa,” I said reprovingly, “you know there aren’t any snakes in Ireland.”
“Not now there aren’t,” he said solemnly and nodded to the knife held in his hand. I grinned at the joke I’d heard a million times before, then we broke into loud laughter, and Morgan joined in, more from fellowship than understanding.
Mama came out of the bedroom wearing her good Sunday dress and coat. “Goodness! What a racket. Eva, you ready to go?”
“Ready,” I knelt down and planted a kiss on Morgan’s smooth forehead. “Be good, now. And”—I shot a warning glance at Papa—“remember, absolutely no mumbley-peg. No knives. No shotguns. Nothing dangerous. I mean it.”
“Fine, have it your way, then. No knives,” he huffed, his eyebrows drawing into a single, bushy line before a new idea brightened his expression. “Say, Morgan! You ever chew tobacco?”
“Seamus, that’s not funny,” Mama accused good-naturedly as she opened the door. I laughed at Morgan’s bemused expression and turned back to give him still another good-bye kiss.
Mama drove our Ford like an expert, with superb control and a little faster than you might have supposed if you judged her by the fussy bunch of false cherries she’d pinned to her coat collar.
Our new used car was a great source of pride to us all and a measure of how well things had gone on the farm the last few years. Crops had been so good we’d been able to make improvements on the farm and buy some modern conveniences for ourselves, though I suspect some of our newfound riches came from the savings Papa had earmarked for my education; there was no need to hoard pennies anymore. We could finally afford to get hooked up to the power lines that ran down the county road, and, first thing, Papa bought Mama an electric mangle. It ironed everything so quick and neat, we got the laundry done in half the time. But the car was the most exciting purchase we’d ever made. I’ll never forget the day Papa chugged up to the house, shouting and honking the news that he’d bought Mr. McCurdle’s Ford at a bargain price. He couldn’t have been any happier if his name had been Rockefeller. It seemed like the twenties were indeed roaring, even in Dillon.
Though Papa bought the car, Mama was the better driver. He was always too busy looking out the window and exclaiming over the beautiful day or the freshly plowed fields to bother much with keeping his eyes on the road. I was more like him. The passenger seat suited me fine.
I leaned my head out the window and took in the endless mural of clear, black sky, pricked with stars, felt the spring wind on my face, and smelled the loamy freshness of the newly turned earth and sprouting wheat. I breathed the perfect night deep into my lungs and sighed contentedly.
“What are you thinking, Eva?”
“About how lucky we are. The night Morgan was born, Papa said he’d bring us luck, and he was right.”
“Well, I think we might give the good Lord some credit, too,” Mama said piously, “but, yes, I think you’re right. We have everything we need and then some.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “just about everything.” To myself I thought, There is no point in asking for more. If I sometimes stood outside on a summer afternoon and searched the hot, empty sky for a glint of sun on a sapphire wingspan, or if I woke from a dream crying, my hands clutching the air for something that had seemed so solid the moment before, if the sight of young couples walking hand in hand through town made me cross to the other side of the street where I wouldn’t have to watch, then the sound of Morgan’s chortling laughter as he roughhoused with Papa, or the feel of his soft, cunning hand wrapped in mine pulled my heart back from the heavens and filled the empty places. Most of them.
Slim had said he’d come back, and he meant it at the time, but I’d always known he wouldn’t. From the first day, I’d prepared myself to be alone forever. Most of the time I succeeded, but the reality of loneliness was a harder road to walk than it had seemed when I’d released Slim to his future. At unpredictable times he would still appear in my mind, waking or sleeping. I could see him, hear him, but that was all. In a way, that was sadder than not seeing him at all. Sometimes, at the oddest moments, moments when I should have been happy, I was suddenly pierced through with loneliness, because, at those times, being happy didn’t seem to make much sense if I couldn’t share it with Slim.
I berated myself for wanting too much, especially on such a beautiful night, when things were going so well. Times were good. The crop was in, and my son was healthy, happy and smarter than any four-year-old I knew. Slim had popped into my life for an instant and disappeared, but at least I’d had an instant. Some people never even got that. I had my beautiful boy, loving parents, and a good home for us all. And as if that wasn’t enough, now it seemed that my quilting hobby was about to become a real little business.
One day, while I was studying some photographs of Monet’s paintings in one of Papa’s books, I got the idea you might make a quilt the same way, blending small splashes of color into a larger, richer scene. I dug though dozens of scraps of blue, aqua, turquoise, sapphire, cobalt, and teal until I had enough cloth to design and piece together a watercolor lily pond of my own. Morgan and I gave it to Ruby for Christmas.
When Ruby’s rich Aunt Cora came visiting from Dallas, she made the biggest fuss over the quilt and wanted to buy it. Ruby explained it was a gift and not for sale, but she introduced us, and Aunt Cora ordered another one “just like it.” The fussy old lady said she’d pay me fifty dollars! I accepted her offer but explained I couldn’t make it exactly the same as Ruby’s.
“Quilts are like names, Miss Cora. It’s important they match the personality of the person they belong to. Otherwise, they’ll never quite fit, no matter how pretty they are. You let me think on it a bit. I’ll make a quilt just with you in mind, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to take it.” She agreed, and I worked hard and finished the quilt in two months.
It was a garden scene, with bougainvillea and gardenias and hibiscus, flowers I’d never seen except in books, but as I cut and stitched and pricked my fingers I could smell a sweetness in the air that seemed to float in from far-off trade winds. When it was finished I embroidered my name and the date on the back in purple thread and shipped it off in the mail.
About two weeks later, I received a manila envelope from Dallas, fat with checks and a letter from Ruby’s aunt.
Dear Miss Glennon;
I can’t tell you how happy I am to have received my quilt at long last. It is more beautiful than I could have imagined. You were right to insist on designing one just for me even though I pressed you so to make a copy of dear Ruby’s. I have always loved gardens and flowers. There is nothing that brings me as much peace as kneeling in my flower beds, working the earth and finally seeing the fruits of my labor in full bloom. How did you know I raise gardenias? How beautifully you’ve captured them in color and cloth! Now I shall sleep surrounded by elegant white blossoms even in winter. Thank you so much.
I have enclosed letters from three of my friends, Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Byrd and Miss Shelton, who would also like to commission quilts from you. Please find enclosed three checks for $25 (as a deposit) along with a $50 payment for my own quilt. At my suggestion, the ladies have sent photos of themselves and letters to give you a bit of information about their backgrounds so you can “think on” the type of quilt you want to design for them. I told them not to expect the finished product for at least six months as I know how many hours you put into each creation. Several other friends have also expressed interest, but I have suggested they wait until these first three are finished so you are not overwhelmed by the work.
Please give my regards to dear Ruby and to your family. Thank you again, Miss Glennon, for your beautiful work. You wield your needle like an artist’s brush.
Affectionately,
Mrs. Cora Shaw Daniels
Personally, I thought she went a bit overboard with the “artist’s brush” comment, but I was flattered by her praise and only too happy to make some money of my own. Most of the money went into a bank account I’d started for Morgan. I tried to give some to Papa and Mama to help with expenses, but they wouldn’t accept a dime. Instead, I was doing some little things to treat them. I’d bought a new pair of boots for Papa, and now I was taking Mama to town for an ice-cream sundae and a movie. It wasn’t much, but I wanted them to know how much I appreciated all they’d done for me and Morgan.
It was pleasant sitting at the drugstore counter with Mama and watching her eat ice cream, delicately spooning the last swirls of chocolate out of her parfait dish without even a clink of spoon on glass. I thought of how she’d lived all her life without any little luxuries, and now here we were, fine as anybody in town. Two months before I hadn’t had five dollars to call my own and now, all at once, I was practically rich.
“Eva,” Mama said, interrupting my daydream, “it’s almost time for the picture to start and you’ve hardly touched your sundae. Better hurry up before we’re late.” She relished a last dribble of chocolate syrup. “My, that was delicious! Thank you, Eva.”
“Mama, out of my next quilt money I’m going to buy you a dress. I bet you never had a store-bought dress in your whole life.”
“No, I haven’t,” she confessed, “but then again, I never really needed one—still don’t. You save your money for little Morgan; you might need it someday. Things look fine now, but that can change in a moment; crops fail, doctors’ bills come due. You’ve got to be ready for everything.”
“Oh, Mama. Don’t be so pessimistic! I saw in the paper where Oklahoma and Kansas are some of the best areas in the country for business,” I lectured between gulps of strawberry ice cream. “New people moving in all the time, and more and more land being bought up for farms. There’s four hundred times more wheat being produced here than there was just ten years ago.”
“I’m not a pessimist, Eva. I’m a realist. Are you finished? Let’s go. I don’t want to be late for the picture show.”
We hustled over to the theater, and I bought a bag of popcorn for us to share. The theater was small and lacked the elegance of the movie house I’d seen on our trip to Oklahoma City years before. There was no balcony, no gilt angels peering down from the proscenium, but it was pretty fancy for Dillon, with seats upholstered in red plush and armrests of polished oak. As it was Saturday night, the theater was full, and we saw several people we knew. One or two acknowledged Mama with a surreptitious incline of the head, though most pointedly ignored us. I was still considered a disgrace by most people in town. Their obvious contempt made me feel ashamed, and I sank a bit lower in my seat. However, for every inch I retreated, Mama rose up two, her face looking as determinedly proud as I’d ever seen it. I was relieved when it was time for the show to start, the red velvet curtain pulling back to reveal a gauzy white scrim. As usual, the projector started playing while the scrim was still closed, showing images behind that looked slightly fuzzy and dreamlike.
The cartoon and the newsreel were shown before the feature. Mrs. Poole, whose husband owned the theater, sat at a nearly in-tune upright piano, banging out marches, or rags, or dirges depending on the mood of what was being projected on the screen. Mama and I sat in the darkness munching on popcorn and laughing at the cartoon. When the newsreel began, I couldn’t help but lean forward in my seat. It seemed like all the news was about aviation that day, at least that’s all that I remember of it.
The first story was about two Frenchmen, Nungesser and Colli, who had set off for New York from Paris, attempting to be the first men to fly across the Atlantic nonstop to win fame and the $25,000 Orteig prize being offered to whoever broke the record. Everybody knew about the Orteig prize. Many planes had crashed and several pilots had disappeared making the attempt to win it. The same had happened to the two Frenchmen. They’d taken off on May 8th, and no one had heard from them since. They were assumed lost and dead at sea. Reaching for some more popcorn, Mama leaned over to me and whispered, “I think they’re crazy even trying. You can’t fly across a whole ocean!”
She was probably right, but wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if you could fly across the sea. Imagine rising up into the clouds and over the waves one day, and the next day touching down next to the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben, or even the pyramids of Egypt. The screen flickered, and the next story headline appeared in bold white letters: NEW AVIATION RECORD SET. CHARLES LINDBERGH FLEW SOLO FROM SAN DIEGO TO NEW YORK, BREAKING RECORD FOR TRANSCONTINENTAL FLIGHT.
The screen showed a sleek little plane flying low over a field thronged with reporters. She had only one wing, a closed cockpit, and, as near as I could tell from the film, no real window. I wondered how the pilot could see out of a plane like that. It seemed a shame to fly closed in like that, cocooned from light and sound and all the things that made flying so wonderful. The plane landed shakily while Mrs. Poole pounded out a triumphant, tinny march before the picture on the screen changed to these words:
Fresh from his new record breaking flight, Lindbergh waits at New York’s Roosevelt Field for a break in the weather to try his chance at winning the Orteig prize. Some call him “Daredevil Lindbergh,” others call him “The Flying Fool.” Small wonder. Young Lindbergh will make his flight alone and with only a single engine!
The screen flashed to reveal a handsome young man in a leather flight jacket standing next to the strange-looking plane I’d seen earlier. The pilot turned to face the camera, grinned, and pushed his curly hair off his forehead in a gesture that was engraved on my heart. My hand flew to cover my mouth and for a moment I forgot to breathe.
“My Lord!” whispered Mama, “It’s Slim!”