The Mandie Collection (43 page)

“And since Sallie is teaching some of the children, maybe she could come to the meeting, too. That would show the parents that it is not a white school but is a special school just for Cherokee children,” Riley said.

“Yes, Sallie come to powwow, too,” Uncle Wirt agreed.

“Uncle Wirt, do you plan on having this meeting while I am here?” Mandie asked. “I'd like to go, too.”

The old man smiled at her and shook his head. “Too soon. Need more time to make powwow,” he replied. “Must talk and talk to get powwow.”

Sallie said to Mandie, “It will take lots of talk to get the parents to come to such a meeting. They are not interested in whether their children go to school or not. Most of the parents did not go to school.”

“Oh, I wish I could help,” Mandie said with a sigh.

“Parents will only listen to Mr. Wirt because he is the eldest in our settlement,” Sallie explained.

“Does Tsa'ni go to school?” Mandie asked.

“Sometimes,” Riley O'Neal replied.

Uncle Wirt shook his head and frowned as he said, “Tsa'ni need school bad.”

“I go to school when it is in session,” Dimar said, glancing at Riley O'Neal. “But it is not in session very much.”

“Yes, but you do study your books at home,” Riley reminded him. “And you are making good progress.”

“One must have the desire to learn, and I have that desire,” Dimar told him.

“We must think of some way to give that desire to the children who do not wish to go to school,” Sallie said.

“How about a hickory switch? That's what the white children would get if they didn't go to school,” Joe said with a big grin.

“It is the parents we must convince,” Sallie said. “The children will go to school if the parents require them to.”

Uncle Wirt stood up from the table and said, “We go now,” as he looked at the girls. Turning to Uncle Ned, he added, “Back soon.”

“We wait,” Uncle Ned replied.

Mandie hurried to pick up Snowball, who had finished his breakfast and was washing his face by the stove. As she started to follow the other girls out the door, Joe caught up with her and whispered, “You won't go off somewhere looking for that quilt, will you?”

“I won't,” Mandie promised, and then added, “Not on any more roofs, anyhow.” She smiled at him.

“Not just roofs,” Joe said. “No place except to your Aunt Saphronia's and back here.”

“We're going to Aunt Saphronia's to learn how to make a quilt, so we won't have a chance to do anything else,” Mandie reminded him.

“I don't know whether we will return before you do or not,” Joe said.

“Since Uncle Wirt is going with y'all, he'll have to come back to get us to bring us home. So I imagine you'll be back before we are,” Mandie told him. She held tightly to her white cat.

“Anyhow, please stay out of trouble,” Joe said.

“Come on, Mandie,” Celia called from the open doorway.

Sallie and Uncle Wirt had already gone outside. “I'm coming,” Mandie replied and hurried to join her friend, smiling back at Joe as she went.

On their way to join Sallie and Uncle Wirt at the wagon, Mandie whispered to Celia, “Joe is afraid I'll go off somewhere and get in trouble looking for that quilt.” She had told Celia about the escapade on the roof the night before.

“He knows you do get in trouble lots of times chasing down mysteries,” Celia reminded her as they got to the wagon and climbed aboard.

Since Mandie had not told Sallie about the missing quilt, she could not say anything more. She held on to Snowball as Uncle Wirt drove the wagon at a fast speed to his house.

Aunt Saphronia was waiting for them at the back door, and Mandie caught a glimpse of a large chocolate cake with dishes stacked nearby on the table as they went through the kitchen into the front room, where the old woman did her sewing.

“Close door. Put cat down,” Aunt Saphronia told her.

Mandie quickly went back to close the outside door to the kitchen. Then she put down Snowball, who immediately headed for the woodbox behind the huge cookstove. She left the door to the kitchen open as she followed Aunt Saphronia, Celia, and Sallie.

“Now we work,” Aunt Saphronia said, sitting down at her worktable. She reached for a stack of blue material cut into squares.

“Aunt Saphronia, Uncle Wirt said Tsa'ni came home yesterday and you sent a quilt by him to the schoolhouse for Mr. Riley,” Mandie said as she and her friends drew up stools to sit down.

“Did Tsa'ni not take quilt to school?” the old woman asked, turning to look at Mandie.

“Yes, ma'am, he took it. Mr. Riley was at Uncle Ned's this morning and said he did,” Mandie replied.

“Good. Now we work,” the old woman told her.

Mandie was good at making the tiny stitches required on the blocks, but she was terribly slow because her mind kept wandering off to the missing quilt. Where would she look next for the quilt? They couldn't stay much longer at Uncle Ned's, because her grandmother
expected them back home to go with her to New York. Joe had said he would help Mandie look for the quilt. But then, Joe never had any ideas about how to solve any mystery, so she would have to come up with plans.

“Coffee,” Aunt Saphronia told the girls, rising from her chair.

Mandie came back to the present and realized they were taking a break to go into the kitchen for cake and coffee. She smiled to herself as she followed the others.
Joe sure missed out on this chocolate cake
.

The girls helped Aunt Saphronia fill the coffee cups and bring them to the table, where the old lady began slicing the cake, placing it on plates, and passing it around.

“Sit. We talk,” Aunt Saphronia told them.

After they were all seated, Aunt Saphronia continued, “You learn how to make quilt?” She looked at the three girls.

“Yes, ma'am, so far,” Celia replied.

“Yes, my grandmother has already taught me some patterns,” Sallie said.

Mandie thought about it for a moment and then said, “I can make the blocks, but I'm not sure I can put it all together to make a quilt.”

“That take days to do whole job,” Aunt Saphronia said. “I show you how make blocks. Learn more when you go home.”

“But I don't know anyone at home who can make quilts,” Mandie replied, frowning as she thought about various people.

Then Aunt Saphronia surprised her. “John Shaw, son of Talitha, know how,” she said with a big smile.

Mandie gasped in surprise. “Do you mean my uncle John knows how to make quilts? Him?” she asked.

Aunt Saphronia, still smiling, replied, “Yes, Talitha teach him.”

Mandie immediately thought of the lost quilt. She was sure her uncle had seen the quilt when she and her friends had found it in the attic. He had not made any comment on the pattern, but she wondered if he had been able to read the message on it. After all, he was one-half Cherokee and knew the language.

“Do you know if he actually made any quilts?” Mandie asked. She was so eager to ask Aunt Saphronia about the missing quilt but was afraid to. After all, it had been her husband who had sent it back and said to put it away.

“Not know. That many years ago. You ask him,” Aunt Saphronia said. Sipping her coffee, she continued, “I give all you white cloth. You take home and sew. Then get names signed.”

“You mean we should make the quilt blocks before we get people to sign?” Celia asked.

Aunt Saphronia smiled at her, nodded her head, and said, “Yes, not time to make here. We make few but not enough.”

They went back to work until they stopped for the noon meal of stew and cornbread, which Aunt Saphronia had already cooked. Then they once again continued making quilt blocks until Uncle Wirt came home with the fish he had caught.

Handing the bucket of fish to Aunt Saphronia, he told the girls, “Morning Star say bring you back.”

Aunt Saphronia quickly set the fish in the dry sink and told the girls, “Must get blocks take with you.”

“Oh, but I want you and Uncle Wirt to sign two of my quilt blocks for me,” Mandie told her as she followed Aunt Saphronia into the front room to get their things. Celia and Sallie and Uncle Wirt came in behind them, with Snowball meowing wildly at the smell of fish in the kitchen.

“We sign,” Aunt Saphronia replied, going over to get the white material. Turning back to Wirt, she said, “We sign quilt.”

Uncle Wirt took down a bottle of ink and a pen from the top shelf over the fireplace. He brought it over to the worktable.

While the girls watched, the two old people slowly wrote their names on blocks for each of the three.

“Thank you,” Mandie said, surveying the work and then turning to hug Aunt Saphronia.

“And I thank you,” Celia said with a big smile.

“I thank you,” Sallie added, picking up her pieces of material. “Do not touch the name till it's dry,” she warned the other two girls.

Uncle Wirt took the girls back to Uncle Ned's house. Mandie had to hold on to Snowball with one hand because she held her quilt blocks and material in the other. Snowball had not wanted to come with them. He had wanted to stay where the fish were.

Uncle Wirt let them out at Uncle Ned's and went back home.

Morning Star already had the fish cleaned and ready to fry when
they arrived. The three girls immediately took advantage of everyone being together and demanded everyone sign a quilt block. Everyone but Joe and Riley O'Neal understood what they were doing.

“You just sign your name on a quilt block, and I will sew it into a quilt when we get home,” Mandie explained. “This is called the Album Block, and you are supposed to get all your friends to sign on the white crosses.”

Sallie got the pen and ink, and everyone had to sign a block for each girl's future quilt. Mandie was surprised to learn that Morning Star did know how to sign her name, even though she spoke very little English.

“I taught my grandmother,” Sallie said as Mandie watched Morning Star sign her name.

“She does a good job,” Mandie said.

Morning Star shooed everyone except Sallie out of the kitchen so she could prepare supper. Mandie, Joe, and Celia went to sit on the back steps. Snowball stayed around Morning Star's feet, hoping for a piece of fish.

Mandie told Joe they had learned that her uncle John Shaw knew how to make quilts.

“And I've been wondering if he knew what the message was on the quilt we found. I'm sure he saw it, but I don't know whether he noticed that it had a message on it, like Uncle Ned said,” Mandie told Joe.

“I don't know, but I would never have thought Mr. Shaw knew how to quilt,” Joe said with a big grin.

“I suppose we are going to have to go home in a day or two. Grandmother is waiting for us,” Mandie said. “And if we don't find the quilt before we leave here, that will worry me forever.”

Joe grinned at Mandie and said, “But Mandie Shaw is always able to solve any mystery she runs into.”

“Yes, you are right about that,” Celia agreed.

“But this time I just don't know what to do next,” Mandie said, frowning as she thought about it.

And she thought about it all during supper and afterward as everyone played checkers again. Dimar had taken his fish home to his mother, but Riley had stayed to join Uncle Ned's family.

Finally Riley O'Neal went home, and everyone went to bed. The three girls went upstairs to Sallie's room together. As soon as she stepped into the room, Mandie spotted her valise back in the corner where she had originally left it. Without a word she rushed over to it, peeped inside, and found a quilt that she had never seen before. Someone had switched the quilts.

Trying to catch Celia's attention without Sallie seeing, Mandie said, “I need something out of my valise.” And she went over to the returned valise. While Sallie was not looking, Mandie made faces and pointed to the valise.

Celia cleared her throat as she watched and said, “Yes, I need to get my hairbrush.” She reached into her own valise for the brush as she nodded to Mandie.

Snowball had come upstairs with them. Suddenly he began meowing and clawing at the valise. Mandie hurried over to pick him up. “You be quiet now, Snowball. It's time to go to bed,” she scolded the cat as she set him on the bed.

The cat jumped down from the bed and went racing back over to the valise.

Sallie noticed and said, “Do you think he believes that is his sandbox?”

“I don't know,” Mandie said, picking him up again. This time she set him down in his sandbox in another corner. He scratched and used the box. Then Mandie picked him up and got in bed and held on to him. He finally hushed.

Later, when Mandie thought Sallie was asleep, she whispered to Celia, “It has the wrong quilt in it.”

“It is your valise, though, isn't it?” Celia whispered back sleepily.

“Yes,” Mandie replied.

Celia drifted off to sleep, and Mandie lay awake trying to figure out how the valise got back into the room and why it had the wrong quilt in it.

She could hardly wait to tell Joe about this, but she knew she didn't dare get up and go to his room in the night.

Then something else finally dawned on her. The quilt must smell like fish, since Snowball had gone wild over it. That meant someone with fish had put it there. And she knew who all had gone fishing
that day—Dimar, Riley, Uncle Ned, Morning Star, and Uncle Wirt. Could it have possibly been one of them? She instantly felt that Uncle Wirt was the one involved in this. After all, he had been the one who demanded that she put the quilt away.

But then, how would Uncle Wirt have known she had the quilt with her?

“Oh, but these Indians are smart. They know everything that goes on,” she mumbled under her breath.

Now the problem was to find the quilt with the message. If Uncle Wirt had taken it, she might never find it, because he didn't want her to know what the quilt said.