Read Online The Quilt by T. Davis Bunn - Free Book Online

brought Everett food every once in a while, then stood over him to make sure he ate.

    Just before dawn on the fifth day after Preacher Louis’s visit, the last stitch was made. Seven tired ladies stepped back from the upright frame and looked with pleased expressions on their work.
    It was a glorious quilt.
    The outer edges were framed in shiny swatches of multicolored satin. They gave way to a stretch of pastel blue as clear and soft as the morning sky. And against this background were set the circular flower-patterns. Radiating out from each inner circle were fourteen petals, and each pattern was made from four different materials, four different printed designs.
    Somehow the different colors and designs and prints melted together and formed a new, larger pattern. The older ladies who had done quilts before knew this was the key. If the patterns were in true harmony they were seen yet not seen, like each brushstroke of a painting was not seen separately from the whole.
    The quilt was a picture and a story. It was a testimony to a time when pressures did not cry out for urgent things to be constantly tended to, when the world had not created a thousand different temptations pulling free time into a myriad of mindless activities. It told of values and patience and timeless meanings. It drew the person in. It spoke of comfort and rest. It soothed with the gentleness of a mother’s kiss.
    Jonas arrived with the sun, bringing the doctor for his morning visit. The two men stopped in front of the upright frame as though drawn to the spot.
    â€œThat is a work of art,” Dr. Martin said. “You ladies should be proud of yourselves.”
    â€œToo tired to be proud,” Jody said, smiling at her husband.
    â€œI’m not,” Amy said. “I’m so proud I could burst.”
    â€œI want to take that frame apart and put it back togetherin Mary’s room,” Jonas decided. “Want her to see it just like this.”
    â€œYou better wait till Lou Ann gets here,” Jody said. “She’d skin you alive if she wasn’t here to watch Momma’s face.”
    â€œYou get busy with that, then,” Dr. Martin said. “I’ll go see to our patient. Everett still in there?”
    â€œHasn’t moved in five days,” Jody said, the light in her eyes dimming. “I went in a couple of hours ago and covered him with a blanket. Momma seemed to be resting comfortably.”
    It took them the better part of the morning to unfasten the quilt, take the screws out of the frame’s corners, and set it up again in Mary’s room. They had to wait until they were sure she was asleep before starting to rebuild it. While they worked they kept shooting little glances at each other, raising up a little and looking at the bed, half-grinning at the thought of what Mary would say, making a lot of noise in a quiet sort of way, and just generally acting like kids getting ready to surprise their parents.
    Everybody who didn’t work stood in the doorway and watched, or waited in the sitting room to greet the newcomers and watch their expressions as they saw the quilt spread out across Mary’s chair. Most everybody had seen it the day before, but this was different. It was finished. The extra stitches had been cut away, all the little slivers of material brushed aside, the floor vacuumed, the quilt laid out for all to see. People came in and were cautioned to silence on account of the door to the back room being open; then those already there would kind of shuffle aside so the newcomers could see the quilt. There was a little gasp of inward breath, a little step forward with outstretched hand, a moment of silence, and the words everybody’d been waiting to hear. It was a glorious quilt.
    Finally the frame was built up again, and the quilt was taken and set into place. By this time the door was jammed so tight with bodies that those in back couldn’t see a thing. Everett sat