Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “You’ve often said you admired him, and you enjoyed the French version,” said I, wondering why he did not smile. “This is the English version his grandson published later, with additions to the manuscript.”

  “Thank you,” said he. “I’m sure I will enjoy it.” Only then did he look up and meet my eye, but just as quickly his gaze alighted on the ornament in my hair. “You’re wearing the comb.” Involuntarily I touched it, my cheeks growing warm, and I nodded. “It suits you.”

  “It suits my hair,” said I, attempting a laugh. “It keeps it out of my eyes, which is a great benefit when one is trying to sew, I assure you.”

  “Or to dance.” His voice grew distant. “At the Harvest Dance, that lock above your ear kept slipping out of place and tumbling across your cheek.”

  “I did not think you had noticed,” said I, nervous, and trying once again to tease him out of his serious mood. “As I recall it, we saw little of each other that night. You danced with your sister and with Charlotte Claverton as much as with me.”

  “Yes.” He looked up at me gravely. “I suppose I did.” Then he took a deep breath and stood. “Gerda, there are things I must tell you, but perhaps you have guessed them already.”

  I shook my head.

  At that moment, someone pounded on the door. “Dr. Granger,” a young voice shouted. “Dr. Granger, are you there?”

  Alarmed, I flew to the door and opened it. In tumbled a boy of about thirteen, gasping for breath, his face red and frightened.

  “Daniel?” said Jonathan.

  “Mrs. Granger said you would be here,” said the boy, panting so hard I could barely make out his words. “It’s my pa. He’s been shot.”

  Jonathan was already throwing on his coat. “Where is he?”

  “Home. Susanna’s looking after him.”

  Susanna, I was to learn later, was the boy’s ten-year-old sister. Daniel’s mother had died two years before while giving birth to his youngest brother.

  “When did this happen?” asked Jonathan, as he followed the boy out the door.

  “Same day the storms hit. He was out in the barn—” Daniel swallowed hard. “They hit him in the stomach. He was bleeding real bad, but I couldn’t get to your place any sooner. The snow—”

  “It’s all right, son. We’ll get back to your place in no time.” Suddenly Jonathan looked at me. “There’s no time to stop for Dorothea—”

  “I’ll come.” Quickly I threw on my wraps, my mind racing. The same day the storms hit, Daniel had said, which meant his father had been suffering for four days.

  Anneke, who had returned to the room at the pounding upon the door, fled to the barn, where Hans saddled a horse for me and one for Daniel, whose mare was spent from the long run first to the Granger farm and then to ours. In minutes we were on our way.

  As we rode, Daniel gasped out the story. When the storm worsened, his father had gone to the barn to check on the live-stock, and discovered two men engaged in stealing his horses. Unarmed, Daniel’s father attempted to flee, but before he could escape, one of the pair fired upon him.

  “Did your father recognize the men?” asked Jonathan.

  “He said he didn’t, but I know who they were,” said the boy, his voice full of hate and exhaustion. “Only one kind of people shoot a man for his horses then run off without the horses.”

  But the road and our pace prevented him from saying more.

  We raced on, north through the woods to the Wilbur farm, which lay to the northwest of Creek’s Crossing. At last we arrived, expecting the worst, only to find a familiar wagon in the yard. Jonathan’s parents had come.

  His mother met us at the door, relieved to see her son but still anxious. Her husband, she reported as Jonathan hurried inside, was upstairs, distracting the other children. Nodding, Jonathan requested soap and two basins of water, which his mother quickly made ready. “Wash your hands,” he instructed me, and did so himself before racing to his patient’s side.

  I obeyed, then quickly joined him in the other room. Mr. Wilbur lay on a bed, eyes closed and pale, a blood-soaked dressing covering his abdomen. He moaned in pain as Jonathan lifted the bandage to inspect the wound. I glimpsed raw, seeping flesh and felt my head grow light, but Mrs. Granger held me steady and whispered that I should not think of what I saw, but must steel myself and provide what assistance Jonathan required of me.

  I gulped air, nodded, and followed Mrs. Granger to the bedside, where we helped Jonathan as he fought to preserve Mr. Wilbur’s life. My memory is a blur of blood and flesh, but I know I followed Jonathan’s instructions automatically, rapidly and without thinking, numb and frightened. I had cared for ailing relatives, I had assisted in childbirth, but never had I witnessed a struggle to repair so great a wrong done to the human body, and my mind was numb with disbelief that any man could knowingly inflict such agony on another.

  It seemed hours until Jonathan stepped away from the bed, exhausted, and said that he had done all he could. He withdrew to wash himself and rest, while his mother and I tried to make Mr. Wilbur more comfortable by changing his soiled bed linens. Mr. Wilbur little noticed our efforts, as he had long ago fallen unconscious from the pain.

  Mrs. Granger offered to watch by his bedside. I thought then of the children whom I had not yet seen, and since I could do nothing else, I went to the kitchen to prepare them something to eat.

  Jonathan was in the kitchen, slumped in a chair, his head in his hands.

  “You saved his life,” said I, quietly, as I scrubbed my hands clean.

  “I did nothing of the sort.” His voice was oddly emotionless. “I came too late.”

  “He’s alive. We’ll care for him until he recovers.”

  “No. He’s lost too much blood. The bullet remained in him too long. The wound was not closed, nor was it covered well enough to prevent infection. He will not live out the week.”

  I could not bear to think of those children left without their only remaining parent. “He has survived four days already. He may make it.”

  Jonathan did not reply. I knew he disbelieved me but was either too tired or too kind to contradict.

  When the meal was ready, Mr. Granger brought the children downstairs to eat. They wanted to see their father, but Jonathan told them he was sleeping, and they must be good little children and let him rest. They ate somberly, even the youngest, still just a baby. Jonathan beckoned to his father, and quietly they slipped outside to the barn, where I imagined them looking over the scene of the terrible act.

  Later, I put the three youngest children to bed and returned downstairs to find Jonathan gently asking Daniel to tell them all he remembered about the two men. Daniel repeated the story, adding little to what he had told us earlier, but I listened intently to each detail, certain he would confirm what I had already decided: The two men must have been the two slave catchers who had visited Elm Creek Farm the previous autumn. The greatest evil I had ever heard of and the greatest evil I had ever seen had become intermingled in my mind, so that I could not picture the crime without seeing those two slave catchers in the place of the horse thieves.

  I waited for Daniel to provide the details that would prove my convictions true, but once more he said although he had run outside at the sound of the gunshot, he had glimpsed only the men’s backs as they rode off, heading west, away from Creek’s Crossing.

  “Did your father have any enemies?” asked Mr. Granger.

  “Yes,” said Daniel venomously. “Those g——Abolitionists.”

  Shocked, I looked to Jonathan, who gave me the barest shake of his head to warn me to be silent. “Why would Abolitionists wish to kill your father?” asked Jonathan.

  “Because they know what Pa thinks of them, and they came to quiet him, just as Pa always said they would. They always want to kill a man who thinks different than them.” Suddenly he exploded with anger. “I know why they wanted our horses, too. So those g——Abolitionists could ride ’em to Kansas. My pa says all the g—Abol
itionists should go the h—to Kansas if they want and leave us alone, and I wish they would, I wish they would!”

  The words choked out of him as he struggled not to cry. I wept inside to see so much hatred and pain in such a young boy, but I stood frozen, helpless, unable to comfort him and afraid that he would learn Abolitionists were in his house that moment, and that his father’s life was in their hands.

  But Jonathan knew exactly what to do. He clasped the boy’s shoulder and said, “We do not know who committed this terrible act, but you were very brave to try to help. You tended your father well during the storms, and you came for me as soon as you were able. I’m sure your father is very proud of you, and he’ll tell you so himself, when he wakes up.”

  He said this, I knew, believing Daniel’s father would never wake.

  Mr. Granger had to return home to care for his livestock, but Jonathan, Mrs. Granger, and I remained, tending to Mr. Wilbur through the night and watching over the children. By the next morning, Mr. Wilbur had been taken with a fever. He lived two days more, but then, as Jonathan had foretold, he perished.

  Mr. Granger and other men from town saw to the burial. Jonathan saw me back to Elm Creek Farm. It seemed as if months had passed since last I had been there.

  We did not speak as we rode along. I do not know what thoughts occupied Jonathan, but I worried about the young Wilbur children, now orphaned, and wondered what would become of them. And although I tried to tell myself the two men were surely long gone, my heart quaked with fear knowing that two murderers had come among us and might yet lurk nearby.

  “Why did Daniel believe them to be Abolitionists?” I heard myself ask.

  Jonathan was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “It is no secret that Wilbur supports the Southern cause. I know he earned at least one bounty by informing upon a family that helped escaping slaves.” He paused again. “L., the man who owned Elm Creek Farm before your brother—he and Wilbur were friends, and of like minds in this.”

  I nodded to show that I understood, but I felt bile rise into my mouth, picturing our barn the scene of the recent crime, and Hans bearing Mr. Wilbur’s fatal wound. “Do you think Daniel was right?” asked I. “Could Abolitionists have done this?”

  “I do not and cannot believe that,” said Jonathan. “Likely the men were common horse thieves. What troubles me is that young Daniel is firmly convinced otherwise. His father taught him hatred well, and I do not know if such a deeply planted belief can ever be uprooted.”

  “You knew Mr. Wilbur hated Abolitionists, and yet you helped him.”

  He looked at me, surprised. “Of course.”

  I said nothing more, and yet I marveled at him. Creek’s Crossing and all the country had begun to whisper of a conflagration to come, in which Free Staters and slaveholders would fight in every corner of the nation as they were now fighting in Kansas Territory and Missouri. And yet Jonathan had struggled to save the life of this man who was already his enemy, and who might one day desire to kill him. He had fought with all his strength and skill, persisting even when he knew all hope was lost. He had tried to save the man even when he knew he would fail, because it was right, because it was necessary, because to Jonathan even the life of an enemy was precious.

  Mrs. Engle, who had known Mrs. Wilbur well, wrote to her family informing them of Mr. Wilbur’s passing. Mrs. Wilbur’s sister replied, requesting that the farm be sold and the proceeds used to send the children to her and her husband. Within weeks the matter was settled and the children were on their way to Missouri.

  I do not know what became of them after that.

  6

  Grace examined the photos of Margaret Alden’s quilt under a magnifying glass, but although she did not find any fabrics that definitely matched the three at Elm Creek Manor, she could not rule out the possibility. One cotton print in particular, an overdyed green print of leaves scattered on a black background, seemed to appear in all four quilts, but without actually seeing Margaret Alden’s quilt, Grace could not say for certain.

  Sylvia was so confounded by the newly revealed contradictions between folklore and historical fact that she did not know how to react to Grace’s conclusions. She felt that she had come to know Gerda quite well, and she was certain Gerda could not have left Elm Creek Farm to become a slave owner—and Margaret Alden’s ancestor—in South Carolina. Still, although the responses of her quilt campers proved that Elm Creek Manor could make a strong impression on its residents, she could not believe a mere casual visitor would have stitched such a tribute to it. If not for the quilted picture of Hans’s unique barn and the overdyed green cloth possibly linking the four quilts, Sylvia could convince herself the so-called Elm Creek Quilt had nothing to do with the Bergstrom estate, despite the nickname Margaret’s grandmother had applied to it. One thing was certain, however: Whatever location the quilt immortalized, the quilter had more than a passing acquaintance with it. The unknown quiltmaker’s desire to remember that place forever was evident in every stitch.

  Before her week of camp concluded, Grace photographed Sylvia’s quilts and promised to further investigate the fabrics and patterns. “In the meantime, keep reading that memoir,” said Grace, as she bid her friend good-bye Saturday after the Farewell Breakfast.

  “I most certainly will,” Sylvia assured her, but that was not all she had planned. She would write to Margaret that very day and ask her for more information about her family history, including any other family quilts possibly sewn by the same quilter. And a week hence she would welcome a professor from Penn State to Elm Creek Manor. She had invited him to study the half-buried log that might be what remained of the Bergstrom’s cabin, and was pleased by his enthusiastic acceptance.

  As the weekend passed, Sylvia frequently took up the memoir with the intention of reading on, but instead she found herself returning to the passage in which Gerda described how she and Anneke had passed the bitter January storms by sharing stories of their lives back in Germany. Sylvia wished with all her heart that Gerda had recorded those stories. She ached to know what Gerda and Anneke had learned about each other in those four days. Instead her ancestor teased her with glimpses into the past—Anneke’s childhood, the daily life of Hans’s immediate family—and left her with a thirst for knowledge she doubted even Gerda’s memoir could fully quench.

  But on Monday, before the evening program, Summer provided her with a small but satisfying taste.

  Surmising that Mr. Wilbur’s murder would have shaken the town, Summer had returned to the Waterford Historical Society’s archives and searched the Creek’s Crossing Informer microfiche. Sure enough, news of the murder occupied a prominent position in the January 15, 1858, edition, but Summer also found several smaller articles in subsequent issues, which she printed out and proudly delivered to Sylvia.

  “‘Local Man Murdered in Cold Blood,’” said Sylvia, reading the headline aloud. “Dear me.”

  “The story mentions Jonathan,” said Summer, and Sylvia needed no further inducement to read on:

  LOCAL MAN MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD!

  FOUR CHILDREN ORPHANED

  Mr. Charles Wilbur, a longtime resident of Creek’s Crossing, was shot in his barn by persons unknown six days ago. He was said to have interrupted two men as they were engaged in stealing his horses, and though he was unarmed, they fired upon him as he made to depart. Mr. Wilbur’s eldest son responded to the sound of gunfire in a brave attempt to defend his father, but arrived too late to see who committed this cowardly and heinous act. The youth sustained his father’s life for four days with only his younger siblings to assist him, their mother being dead, but he could not summon help, for like many of us his family was snowbound during the most recent spate of storms. Dr. Jonathan Granger arrived to find the victim yet drawing breath, but despite prodigious skill, the doctor was unable to preserve his life.

  It is said that the two murderers and would-be horse thieves left the Wilbur farm heading west and that they will probably not retu
rn, but all citizens should keep a sharp eye out for suspicious strangers entering the town and take care to lock up their horses at night.

  Mr. Wilbur will be laid to rest on Sunday at the First Lutheran Church with a sermon by Reverend Lawrence Schroeder. The Ladies’ Aid Society is seeking contributions for the unfortunate children orphaned by this outrageous crime.

  Another article, dated January 20, announced a “Covered-Dish Supper” at the First Lutheran Church to raise money for the four Wilbur children, and a second, published a few days later, reported that the event had raised thirty-two dollars and praised the residents of Creek’s Crossing for their generosity. The last of Summer’s articles, dated February 2, stated that the culprits had not been caught, although a trail of horse thefts and attempted murders suggested that the two men had headed west and south, on a meandering course “to escape justice in the lawless West.”

  Sylvia read the articles again more carefully, not surprised that neither Hans nor Anneke appeared in any of the stories, but disappointed that Gerda, who might have been mentioned for her role in caring for Mr. Wilbur before his death, was not named either.

  As far as the Creek’s Crossing Informer was concerned, Gerda might have spent those harrowing days secure within her own home—which only strengthened Sylvia’s reluctance to rely on the official historical record alone.

  Spring and autumn 1858—

  in which we build our new home

  The murder of Mr. Wilbur transformed our town, making even the bravest wary of strangers. It also widened the ideological divide between the Abolitionists and those sympathetic to the slaveholder. The Abolitionists were convinced the two would-be horse thieves had been slave catchers, seeking fresh mounts upon which they would pursue their unfortunate prey. Most anti-Abolitionists, among them Mrs. Engle, insisted the murderers were Abolitionists, stealing horses for escaped slaves to ride to Canada. Others believed as her son did; Cyrus Pearson wrote an editorial in the paper declaring that the two men wanted to steal the horses for Abolitionists planning to settle in Kansas Territory, where they would skew the electorate and make Kansas a Free State. He called for “all just Men of our Virtuous City” to donate money and arms to send to “our Brethren whose blood has watered the fair fields of Missouri.”