Read Prayers for Sale for Free Online

to be,” she replied. “That’s where you took him, isn’t it?”
    “We heard he’s run off and is somewheres out in the woods, hiding like the yellow scum he is,” Abram Fletcher said, leering at her.
    “What makes you think that’s Billy?” Ila Mae asked.
    “Because Billy’s not good for much ’cept taking to ground.” The men laughed at that, and one took out a jug and handed it about.
    “Billy’s too much of a man to run!” Ila Mae told them.
    “Well, ain’t we men, too, and white at that? Not yellow like Billy,” Abram said, and the others laughed again.
    “You can look all around. He’s not here,” Ila Mae told them. She continued quilting, taking the worst stitches she’d ever made in her life but keeping on sewing because she didn’t want the guards to think she was afraid of them.
    One of the home guards dismounted, and he went into the house. Ila Mae heard things falling onto the floor. In aminute, the man came out with the skillet of cornbread she’d left on the hearth to bake. He’d wrapped the hot pan in the Seven Sisters quilt she’d made just after she was married. “I thought Billy’d be hiding under the bed, but he ain’t there. Found his dinner, though,” the man said, passing around the skillet so that the others could scoop out the cornbread with their hands. Then he flung the skillet into the woods. Abram took the quilt from the guard and tucked it in front of his saddle.
    “You going to tell us where he’s at?” Abram rode his horse over next to Ila Mae, so close that the animal knocked against the quilt frame. Abram reached down with a big knife and slashed the center of Ila Mae’s half-finished quilt. “Martha Merritt sewed a Yankee flag in the middle of her quilt. If she hadn’t lit out, we’d have took care of the traitor. You get what I mean?” he asked.
    Ila Mae knew what he meant. “I told you, Billy’s in the army. He hasn’t been back since you took him off to town.”
    “We’ll see about that.” Abram climbed off his horse then and grabbed Ila Mae’s arm so hard that she thought he’d pulled it out of its socket. “I always did fancy this girl,” he told the others.
    Despite the pain in her arm, Ila Mae made a fist, ready to defend herself. No man but Billy had ever touched her, and she didn’t intend for any other man to try.
    “Now, Abram,” one of the men said. “We ain’t here for that.”
    “Aw, what are you thinking?” Abram replied. “She’s not so lucky. I just thought we’d tie her up so’s she’ll tell us where Billy’s at.”
    “Maybe we ought to beat her with a whip,” the man with the jug suggested. That was whiskey talk and it scared Ila Mae.
    Abram took down the rope that had been strung for meat drying, and he tied Ila Mae’s hands together. Then he fastened her hands to the crosspost of the well. After he finished, he leaned down and kissed her hard. Ila Mae spat at him, and he slapped her across the face, then put his fingers through the gold hoops in her ears and ripped them out. “We’ll come back later on and see if you’ve changed your mind,” he said, then whispered, “You be nice now, and I’ll show you a good time.” He mounted his horse and rode off with the others, the earrings in his pocket, Ila Mae’s Seven Sisters quilt still affixed to his saddle.
    Although Ila Mae wasn’t able to move, she was grateful that the men were gone. Her ears ached, and her wrists hurt where the rope was tied too tightly. She cried out, hoping a neighbor would hear her; with Billy gone, the old farmers still living in the neighborhood were in the habit of checking in on her. Even if none of the neighbors heard her cries, somebody would come down the Buttermilk Road and set her free. Or one of the guards might sober up and be bemeaned by what the men had done and come back to cut her loose.
    At the worst, Abram would return. As the day wore on, Ila Mae’s arms began to swell, and she developed a terrible thirst.