Quilt Stories by Cecilia Macheski

Author:Cecilia Macheski [Macheski, Cecilia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

Excerpt from

Black April

Julia Peterkin

BEFORE DAY was clean Big Sue got up out of bed and went to the front door to look at the weather. The cool air was soft and still, trees and birds were asleep. The earth itself was resting quietly, for the sun tarried late in his bed. The stars had not yet faded from the clear open sky, but Big Sue was full of excitement. Only a few hours more and she must have everything ready at Maum Hannah's for the quilting to commence.

Her own big room was almost large enough for a quilting, but it was better to go to Maum Hannah's. The meeting benches could be brought in from under the house where they stayed, to make seats enough for the company, and Maum Hannah's quilting poles stood always in the corner waiting for work to do. Plenty of pots sat on her hearth and two big ones out in the yard besides. Most of the plantation quiltings were held at Maum Hannah's house, the same as the night prayer-meetings.

The raw rations were all ready to cook. Plenty of rice and cornmeal. White flour and coffee and sugar from the store. She'd pot-roast the ducks, and fry the fish, and make the turtle into a stew. She'd roast the potatoes in the ashes. The corn-pone would bake brown and nice in the big oven on the hearth. With some nice fat white-flour biscuits to eat last with the coffee, she would have enough to fill everybody full.

Breeze must get up and hustle! She called him and he tried to raise up his drowsy head, but sleep had it too heavy for his strength to lift. If she'd only let him take one more little nap! But she shook him soundly by the shoulder. To-day was the day for the quilting. He must get up and dress, and get some fat kindling wood to start a fire under both the big pots in Maum Hannah's yard. He'd have to fetch water for those pots too, and tote all the quilts there, and the sack of newly ginned cotton April had given her for lining the quilts, besides all the rations that had to be cooked for the quilters to eat at dinner-time.

With a sleepy groan Breeze rose and pulled on his shirt and breeches, then his sluggish feet shambled toward the water-shelf where the tin wash-basin sat beside the water-bucket. Big Sue made him wash his face, no matter how soon or cold the morning was. He might as well do it, and get it over with.

As he reached a heavy hand up for the gourd that hung on a nail beside the water-bucket, his arm lengthened into a lazy stretch, the other arm joined in, and his mouth opened into a wide yawn. Then his fingers dropped wearily on to his head where they began a slow tired scratching.

Big Sue stopped short in her tracks, and the sparkle in her beady black eyes cut him clear through to the quick.

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