Calico Ball

by Kelly, Carla

  He set down both heavy parcels. “That won’t do. May I escort you to the ball?”

  “Me?”

  The sergeant looked around elaborately. “I don’t know anyone else on this street.”

  “I never thought . . .”

  He picked up the bundles, then set them down again, as if he had arrived at some momentous decision. He put his hands on her shoulders. “I watched you on that first day of the trip to Fort Laramie. I saw the excitement in your eyes. In the last few months I have watched it diminish. What happened to that little lady?”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  “I watch everyone connected in any way with G Troop,” he said. “Soldiers and dependents alike.” Astounded, Mary watched the lift and fall of his shoulders. “I watch you with those silly wives. I know you are being taken advantage of, and there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

  Why did he have to say that? Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. He pulled her close right there and let her babble into his overcoat about her tiresome and childish friend and the huge gulf between them now. Keeping her voice low, she raged against the realization that the officers’ wives saw her as someone biddable who would sew and do all that was expected of her because she was an Indian and a servant.

  “It’s not just the officers’ wives,” she said. “The corporal’s wife who cooks for the Mastersons gets her digs in, too, that I am lazy and ignorant.”

  Mary thought about that a moment, until her innate honesty took over. “She might be right. I should know more about cooking.”

  “Are you the youngest in your family?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Youngest and the only daughter. I might have been spoiled a little.”

  “Perhaps, but nothing prepared you for . . . this.”

  “No,” she said, and felt her frustration dribble away. Maybe proximity to a man disinclined to judge her was soothing the wound no one could see. “They don’t know anything about me,” she concluded, embarrassed now. She backed away and he let her go. Maybe it was time for her own confession.

  “And do you know something else? I see the Indians at Fort Laramie, the ones called Laramie Loafers. I watch the Indian mothers begging with their eyes. I see them in rags, and I feel superior to them. I am not, am I?”

  Sergeant Blade picked up the fabric, his face serious. “None of us are. That’s why I hate my job, at times.”

  She touched his arm and gestured at the calico bundles he carried. “This calico would make a lot of dresses, aprons, and children’s shirts for the sad people hanging about the fort. I ask myself, why not start charity at home?”

  “That, my dear, is a question for the ages,” he replied. “Why not? Wait here. I’m going to put this fabric in the ambulance, check on my driver, and take you one more place.”

  Mary was amazed that he wanted anything to do with her, after she had cried all over his greatcoat and made a spectacle of herself. She looked around cautiously, happy to see no one else on the street except two cowboys arguing in front of one of the saloons, and an old dog scratching himself and looking supremely indifferent.

  “Where are we going?” she asked when he returned from the ambulance and offered his arm.

  “There’s a dressmaker I know . . .”

  “You know a dressmaker?” Was this man always going to surprise her?

  “Her brother was a corporal in the Tenth Cavalry, a Negro regiment,” he said as they walked along. “I taught him to read, and he made sergeant. My Fifth and his Tenth were garrisoned at Fort Davis in Texas.”

  “He couldn’t read?”

  “Mary, he spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana plantation. Reading was against the law.”

  “At least that never happened to Indians,” she said.

  “He came up to me one morning after guard mount and asked me if I would teach him. Said his lieutenant told him he could make sergeant if he could read the manual of arms, call roll, and fill out reports.”

  “Why did he ask you?”

  Mary watched the color rise from the sergeant’s neck to bloom on his face. “It can’t be that embarrassing, Rowan.”

  “Maybe not to you . . . He said I had a kind face, and there weren’t too many of those at Fort Davis,” Rowan said, after taking his turn to look around. “A sergeant with a kind face . . . I didn’t know what to say. Well, except yes, of course I would help him. And I did. He’s a first sergeant now. His sister used to live with him before she married a railroad man.”

  He appeared disinclined to say more, which suited Mary well enough. It was still before noon, and she had already examined her motives and character in light of the uncomfortable reality that she was probably as spoiled, in her own way, as Victoria Masterson, and also sadly lacking. Why Sergeant Blade continued to be so kind to her was a question for the ages.

  One short block and one more took them nearly out of Cheyenne. Rowan stopped in front of a modest clapboard house with a sign in the front window: Mrs. William Washington, Dressmaker.

  “Sukey told me that she wrote Modiste first, but no one in Cheyenne knew what that was,” Sergeant Blade told Mary. “This is more of a dressmaker kind of town.” He knocked on the door, listened, then opened it and ushered her inside.

  Mary looked around in delight at the neat-as-a-pin parlor on one side and the business side with its cutting table, Singer, and mannequin wearing a dress she would happily commit a felony to own, if she thought she could get away with it.

  “My goodness, but I want that dress,” she told Rowan, who laughed, then swept off his forage cap when a tall, supremely elegant black woman came into the room, tape measure around her neck, shears in her hand, and a smile of welcome on her face.

  “Sukey Washington, are you ever going to look a day over twenty?” he asked, by way of greeting. “And where is that useless husband who should protect you from scoundrels like me?”

  The dressmaker laughed. “Sergeant Blade, he’s down at the railyard, and you know precisely how old I am!” she exclaimed. “My goodness, did you finally do the wise thing and marry?”

  I won’t look at him, I won’t look at him, Mary told herself as her own face turned rosy enough for two people.

  Sukey Washington glanced from Rowan to Mary and back. She rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, then, for assuming, but who is this lovely lady?”

  That was all the impetus the sergeant needed to draw a deep breath and move right along. “This is Miss Mary Blue Eye. We have quite a story to tell, haven’t we, Mary?”

  If she lived to be eighty, Mary knew she would never forget the sweetness that was Sukey Washington. After enduring months now of wary looks and second glances as people wondered just who and what she was, this dark woman gazed at her with no guile and no hesitation.

  “Blue Eye. What a beautiful name,” she said.

  “I have always thought so,” Mary replied, then couldn’t help herself. “At least until I came out West. It’s kind of hard here.” And then she horrified herself by bursting into tears again.

  Feeling helpless and stupid, Mary turned for the door. She could wait outside while the sergeant visited with his friend. Why was she so foolish?

  She got no farther than the thought.

  “My goodness.” Sukey Washington put her arms around Mary. “It’s not easy, is it?”

  “I don’t mean to be a baby,” Mary said when she could speak. Sukey was soft and comfortable, and she never wanted to move. “I’m tired of people looking at me. I really don’t want to sew fifteen dresses, even though I have to.” She stepped away. “Here I am telling you this when you already know how it is. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  Sukey pulled her close again. “A hurt is a hurt. I also wish people could see the me that I see.”

  Mary nodded. The me that I see, she thought. Yes, that’s it.

  She blew her nose and felt herself in control, even if too immature to be seen around grown-ups. “Let me wait out
side while you visit with Sergeant Blade. I’m sorry I was so childish.”

  “Stay here,” Rowan said. “I wanted to say hello, but also to ask Sukey if she has any calico.”

  “We already have what we need,” Mary reminded him.

  “But no fabric for you. I still want you to go to the calico ball with me.”

  Oh dear, he hadn’t forgotten. “I have too many dresses to sew, Sergeant. Thank you, though, for the invitation.”

  “What do you have here?” he asked Sukey, obviously intending to ignore Mary.

  “Follow me.”

  He did and motioned for Mary to come too. She shook her head, and he gave her what was probably a kinder version of The Stare.

  “Very well, although I do not have time to sew.” She might have been a cricket chirping on the hearth, for all the attention he paid.

  Still, a lovely bolt of cloth caught her eye, one of five equally lovely ones stacked next to more expensive fabrics. She couldn’t help her sigh of appreciation.

  How strange that the sergeant pointed to the same bolt. Sukey pulled it out from between two others and carried it into the front room. She stretched out two yards, then looked from Mary to the material and back.

  “I wouldn’t have thought this, but dark blue with white polka dots is perfect for your complexion,” Sukey said. She held up the fabric to Mary’s face. “And black hair? My dear, you were born to wear this.”

  Sergeant Blade was reaching in his back pocket. Mary stopped him, her hand on his arm.

  “You will not pay for this, Sergeant Blade,” Mary said, and gave him what she hoped was an approximation of The Stare. “I will.”

  Their stare-down lasted a few seconds, and she won. He held his hands up.

  Her eyes lively, Sukey named a price. Mary said, “Ten yards,” and handed over her own money.

  “I personally hope that was your train fare back East money,” he whispered in Mary’s ear while Sukey cut the fabric, humming to herself.

  “I’m keeping my ticket money safe,” Mary replied, flattered that it mattered to him.

  “You know you’ll miss me,” he teased.

  I believe I will, she thought.

  “You’ll let me carry your purchase, Miss Blue Eye?” the sergeant asked most formally, humor in his eyes, too, once they were on the street again, after tea with Sukey Washington and sandwiches to take along.

  “Certainly you may,” Mary replied. She took a deep breath. “And yes, I will go to the calico ball with you.”

  The ambulance stayed behind at Fort Russell and was replaced by a wagon containing mainly requisitioned supplies. Rowan wrapped the formidable mound of fabric for the calico ball in burlap and set it next to Mary’s valise and bedroll, made from three of the pile of army blankets requisitioned for Fort Laramie.

  Sergeant Blade tried to politely talk her out of riding sidesaddle, citing blustery weather and the hint of snow. She said it would take more than that to coop her up into a supply wagon with kegs of dried beef, red paint in tins, and surprisingly, even more dried raisins.

  He finally shared news Mary didn’t want to hear. “A patrol in this morning from Fort Fetterman crossed a big trail of Indian ponies headed north. I’d rather you stayed in the wagon.”

  Mary knew better than to argue. He added that the troopers had noticed the straight lines denoting travois, which usually meant women and children.

  “It’s no raiding party, Mary.”

  “Maybe we can give them some of the raisins,” she joked.

  “The logic here, Miss Smarty, is to cut a low profile and avoid what looks like a sizeable party, even if they aren’t bent on raiding,” he said. “The wagon for you.”

  “And if we surprise them by accident?”

  “You’re determined to worry, aren’t you?”

  “I like to know where I stand.”

  “If we surprise them, it won’t be pretty,” he admitted. “Trust me to keep you safe.”

  Maybe a joke would help. “You’d better, because I have fifteen dresses to make.”

  “Sixteen. Don’t forget yours,” Rowan reminded her.

  Mary made herself comfortable by adding a few blankets to her stash in the wagon. Someone had put in a pile of newspapers, the Chicago Tribune among them, probably intended for enlisted men’s day rooms and officers with subscriptions. She fished out the Tribs and settled in for a day reading about the Great Chicago Fire, as it was already being called, along with “One for the history books,” and “A conflagration such as we have never seen, and we have seen a lot.”

  She spent the afternoon reading through pages of first-person accounts of the “raging inferno unequalled in all the annals of the United States,” shaking her head over loss of life and stories of families searching for children unaccounted for and hotheads ready to lynch all Irishmen because of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Sukey Washington’s sandwiches went down with ease, and so did the handful of raisins Mary knew no sharp-eyed commissary clerk would miss.

  She had just started an article detailing what the various churches were doing to relieve the suffering poor when she heard Sergeant Blade holler, “Close up, men, we’re in for it.”

  The teamster turned to her. “Head down,” he ordered. “Hang on.”

  From the time she was small, her parents had taught her instant obedience. Her college-educated father had apologized for the lesson. “Nothing more will ever happen here to our Seneca Nation because it has all been done to us,” he had told her. “Even then, my father so taught me, and his father before him, going back and back. When someone tells you to obey, you obey.”

  “Nëga:je:” Mary heard Papa speak to her from that corner of her mind called Seneca wisdom, the one she hadn’t visited much. She sank to the wagon bed. “I will try,” she repeated in English as she wedged herself between two kegs.

  After trundling down and up through what she thought must be the Chugwater to the opposite bank, they headed on a run toward a higher point, then stopped with a lurch. She heard the teamster set the brake, then leap into the wagon bed with her. He rested his Sharps carbine against the wagon seat he had just vacated.

  “Doing okay, missy?” he asked, his eyes forward on what, mercifully, she could not see.

  “Doing okay,” she echoed.

  She heard horses close to the wagon and the creak of leather as men dismounted. “What is happening?” she asked the driver, hoping she didn’t sound as frightened as she felt.

  “There aren’t enough of us to allow one in four to hold the horses while the rest of the troopers dismount and fight,” he explained, then stopped to squeeze off a shot. “They’ve tied the horses to the wagon wheels. Glad I set the brake.”

  Another shot. A gasp. The murmur of voices. Sobbing and then silence. Her nerves tuned like fine wire, Mary heard someone fiddle with the canvas at the back of the wagon and flinched as the tailgate dropped.

  “Help me, Casey.”

  She knew the sergeant’s voice, marveling that he sounded so calm. “Can I help, too?” she asked.

  “You can. We’re handing in a wounded man. Casey will pull him toward you. Do what you can to stop the bleeding.”

  She waited for the teamster to crawl toward the bleeding trooper that Rowan pushed inside as gently as he could, considering.

  “Degadënö:nyöh,” she said.

  “Come again?” Rowan asked.

  “Just thanking my parents for teaching me things they thought I would never need,” she told him.

  “And I thank them, too,” the sergeant said. “Keep your head down. We’ll get through this.” He slammed up the tailgate and jerked down the canvas.

  The trooper stared at her with frightened eyes. Mary could not remember his name, or if she even knew it. “Your name?”

  “Will Lemaster,” he said. “Can you help me?”

  “I will do my best.”

  Casey had returned to his crouch by the wagon seat. Will tugged himself closer to her, using his elbows because
his left leg seemed useless. Mary saw the blood pooling under the fleshy part of his thigh, if troopers even had fleshy parts.

  “Damn but I wish it had been an arrow. They don’t bleed so much at first,” he said. “Can you cut off my trousers above the shot hole?”

  His question jolted her into motion. Mary opened her valise and took out her cutting shears. Thank goodness she had brought them along to Cheyenne. Like a typical Easterner, she hadn’t trusted a town as raw and ungainly as Cheyenne to have any such thing.

  She did her best not to cause him any pain, and Will did his best not to do more than suck in his breath when she did. Her fingers were soon slippery with the trooper’s blood as she cut off the trouser leg and pulled it away.

  “I don’t think the ball went all the way through,” she said.

  The trooper grimaced. “A surgeon’s going to need to probe around. Right now, stop the bleeding. I can only lose so much.”

  She looked with some longing at the pile of fabric that others had paid for, then returned to her valise, where she took out the beautiful dark-blue material with polka dots she had paid for a few hours ago.

  She reminded herself she was leaving in January, and seriously, where would she have found the time to make that dress at all? Mary cut into the length of the material, moved the shears steadily up two yards, then cut across. Moving deliberately, her hands steady now, she folded the strip over and over until she had a respectable pad.

  Another few snips and she cut more of the lovely fabric. She placed the pad over the wound weeping blood. “Hold it there,” she ordered.

  He did as she said, fear gone from his face. Heavens, the man must have thought she knew what she was doing.

  “Hold it tight as I start the wrap,” she said.

  He did. After wiping her hands on her skirt, Mary wrapped the strip around the pad and his thigh until it was bound up neatly, with maximum pressure on the pad. If this didn’t work, she couldn’t think of anything else except a tourniquet, which even she knew would mean eventual amputation.