The Negro has moved into the hired man’s shack and has taken over the milking. He is afraid of marauders. Over the border in Missouri, they strung up a darky by his feet and left him hanging in a tree. The man got loose, but fell and broke his neck. Our Negro bought us a bushel of black walnuts that the hired man had kept hidden in the shack, and Mother Bullock cracked some and made up a batch of divinity. Since she is always talking about hard times coming, as the song says, I was surprised. The candy is as pretty as snow and tastes awful good.
Jennie Kate Stout has said nothing about it, but she is living up to her name and getting stouter and stouter every day, until she is as big and soft as a pillow, so I think she is going to have a baby. There is a crop of babies coming, you bet—all due nine months less one day after the Wolverine Rangers left. Well, if I hadn’t already been pregnant, I would be having a baby, too.
Give my respects to all.
Alice Keeler Bullock
May 2, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
Here is the second part of the joke. Kittie Wales arrived at quilting yesterday looking like the sultana of Turkey in the prettiest Persian shawl I ever saw. It is a paisley, the old style, where the pieces are fitted together, instead of woven in one piece, and although it is not new, there is not a single hole or worn spot in it. Jennie Kate asked if she had recently acquired it.
“It is a gift,” says Mrs. Kittie in a mysterious way, “from an admirer.”
“Why, here you are, ready to take a fourth husband, and we have had only one apiece,” says Nealie. We were sewing at her house.
Jennie Kate screwed up her face, thinking, then asked if the admirer was Ezra Harper, a widower who boards with Mrs. Kittie.
“Certainly not!” Mrs. Kittie replies. “Do you think I would marry an old man when a young one will do? I’d as soon kiss a dried codfish as Mr. Harper.” She danced around the room, making the floorboards shake, and sang, “I am bound to be a soldier’s wife or die an old maid.” She dances like a thresher and sings like Pussy Willow when you step on her tail. “Kittie Wales marry a border? La!” she says.
“Then who?” Jennie Kate asks. She is not one to mind her own business. But then, we were all curious because we didn’t know any young men in the neighborhood, let alone one who was simpleton enough to marry such a mountain of a woman, nice though she might be.
At last, Mrs. Kittie took a carte de visite from her pocket and passed it around. “He sent his picture with the shawl, the shawl being ‘jerked’ from a fine plantation for me.” Lizzie, it is the soldier boy who had received our first blanket. “He is of the opinion,” continues Mrs. Kittie, “that I have written him to say I have yellow curls and pale eyes and am of a marriageable age and want to correspond with a soldier.”
She put on such a silly, simpering air that Nealie and I burst out laughing. So it seems that Mrs. Kittie had turned the tables and played the joke on us. Now the question is, Will she reply to the letter and continue the ruse? Jennie Kate asked what she would do if he came calling when his enlistment was up. Mrs. Kittie frowned, then replies, “One of you will have to write and tell him I am drowned in the creek.”
Nealie’s farm is to the west of ours, about three miles. Her husband and his brother work it together with some neighbor boys, and it is a good one. They were about the house during our sewing, and Mrs. Kittie, who does not mind stirring up a hornet’s nest, asked why they were not in the army. Nealie replied for them that they do not want to join a war, as they do not care to die for the Union. Mr. Samuel Smead offered to see me home after quilting, and I was tempted to accept, because he is so charming. Besides, I knew it would vex Mother Bullock, who has got on my nerves more than usual lately, but I was prudent and went with Jennie Kate in her buggy.
I like Nealie as well as anybody I have met in this place, because she is merry and doesn’t put on airs. She has the brightest red hair you ever saw and green eyes. Nealie dresses as plain as anybody, but she has choice things, which I saw when I went into the bedroom to get my shawl. She has a shell cameo carved with a man’s face, a pair of garnet eardrops, and a ring with a pale yellow stone. But the nicest of all is a brooch, which is ivory, with a woman’s face painted on it. I wanted to ask Nealie if the woman was her mother, but since the jewelry was in the bureau drawer, hidden under Nealie’s gloves, I kept the question to myself.
Our brother Billy wrote to complain Papa works him too much. “I have been a good horse, but he’s rode me too hard,” Billy says. That is the truth, for Papa’s rode all of us too hard, and that’s why me and you left. Billy says with the way Papa treated him, he knows what it is to be a slave and thinks he will join up as a drummer boy. But Billy is only thirteen, and Papa would never allow it. Bad as Papa treats him, Billy is his favorite, and he would send the other five boys to war before he’d let Billy go. Mama and Papa love us, I think, but they believe it would spoil us to let us know.
I received a letter from Mama, too. She is worse than Charlie for writing and takes up her pen only when there is bad news to be spread. This time, the bad news is about you. Lizzie, have you kept it from me for fear I would worry? Are things bad with James at work? You know how jealous people spread rumors, and I hope what Mama heard is just a tale. Nails are nails, so how could anyone accuse James of producing a shoddy product? Not that I’m saying he would do so. Dearest Lizzie, I have always poured out my heart to you, and you are my comfort. I expect you to return the favor.
With loving regards,
Alice
May 11, 1863
Darling Lizzie,
I am glad what Mama heard about James is wrong. Rumors have a thousand feet in this war, and you can’t stomp on every one. (I made that up. Do you like it?) Mrs. Grant had no call to write your friend with such inferences about James. I never liked her. That cast in her eye makes her look so stupid that I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me she was too dumb to slice bread. You do not have to answer to any of those women, Lizzie.
I think I don’t like this war much. It’s not fair that I am cooped up on this place with an old woman and made to do most of the work. Lordy, I miss Charlie. The parades and fine uniforms and jolly speeches were fine. But now we hear every week of someone who has been killed, and not always in battle. The measles and smallpox are sweeping the Wolverines, and many of the boys that marched off with Charlie now sleep with the dead. In town, I see men with empty sleeves and trouser legs pinned up. There are men on crutches, and I saw one man, who’d lost both legs at Shiloh, push himself along in a dogcart, fighting for space in a muddy road with a sow and her litter. Now where is the glory in that? I wish the war would end, even if Charlie doesn’t get him a Rebel. I am not going to grow away from Charlie whilst he’s gone. I am going to grow toward him. I hope.
Last evening, the Negro hitched up the wagon, and the three of us rode to Slatyfork to attend a lecture at the church. It was sponsored by our Soldiers Relief, and the oratory was given by a darky who had escaped from a plantation in Arkansas before the war began. Now he speaks to raise money for the cause and to inspire the Unionists. The contraband spoke as good as me or you, and his wife, who is a pretty nappy-headed girl with skin the color of a caramel, was just as tastefully dressed as anyone in the hall—and more fashionable than most, with bigger hoops. As her husband spoke, she sat and knitted stockings for the soldiers, just like me.
I don’t like slavery any more than the next person, but I never thought much about it. Charlie, neither. He joined up to preserve the Union, not to free darkies. But listening to that black man caused a hurting in my head, until I thought it would break open, and I felt sorrier for those two than for anybody in my life.
The man was beat scandalous. He told us the slavers whipped women naked and washed them down in brine, but they did the men even worse. Once, “Ole Massa” whipped him forty times, drawing blood every lick, and when he was done, he poured salt into the wounds. But that wasn’t all. He hog-tied the slave and set him near the fire
so that the heat would blister the welts. Then he threw a cat on the man’s back to scratch the blisters open. And what had the Negro done to deserve this? He was a house nigger, who had grown up almost as a brother to his master and later became his manservant at the plantation house. His offense: He had forgotten to black Ole Massa’s boots.
When the contraband had finished his story, there was not a dry eye in the house, except for Nealie’s husband, who was quite disagreeable. He muttered the man was a liar, that slave owners never stropped their niggers. At that, the Negro stood up and removed his shirt, then turned his back to us. It was a mass of ridges from neck to waist, and probably below, too. Why, Lizzie, if a man in Fort Madison beat a mule that bad, he would be turned out by his neighbors.
After the Negro fastened his shirt again, he beckoned to his wife, who continued the story. She went naked like the other slave children until she was twelve and had to beg for a dress because she had become a woman. After that, she got one dress a year, a shift made out of rough material, like a gunnysack. The slaves ate at a horse trough, she told us. The gruel was dumped into the trough, and they set to, using their hands or shells to scoop up the food. She worked in the kitchen of the plantation, and her life should have been better than the others in bondage, but it was a misery. Her mistress held her hand over a hot fire until it blistered, in punishment for burning the biscuits. One day, she was sent on an errand, and when she got back, her children had been taken to the slave auction and sold, and to this day, she does not know where they are. Lizzie, she cried, and I cried, and even Mother Bullock wiped her eyes. I know the Negroes are different from us, but still, I thought about your little Eloise and Mary and how you would feel if someone snatched them away from you.
The Ole Massa got tired of her crying for her lost children, so he tied her to a fence post and set the dogs on her. When she recovered from the wounds, the female contraband and her husband ran off. She told us she could stand any punishment they gave her, but she was pregnant, and she would rather die trying for freedom than see them sell off another of her flesh and blood. Then she motioned to a little girl to stand up, and there was a murmuring, because the girl was not a sable hue, as you would think, but as white as you or me. Well, Lizzie, we didn’t have to ask how that girl came to be fathered. How do you suppose a master could sell his own child, even if it was begot from a slave?
When the meeting was over, the collection plate was passed, and Mother Bullock put in a dime. Outside, Mr. Frank Smead, who I think is as worthless as my old shoes, made a racket, cussing and hollering that God had cursed the whole Ethiopian race by making it black. He said the Confederates had it right when they drove their wagons over the bodies of Negro soldiers to see how many nigger heads they could crush. There was grumbling from folks leaving the church, as everyone disrepects Mr. Frank Smead. Someone began to sing, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree,” but before a fight could break out, Nealie and Mr. Samuel Smead quieted Mr. Frank and drove away. On the way home, I asked our Negro his name. It is Lucky. “Lucky what?” I asks. But he does not know.
I wrote to cheer you up, and I misdoubt I have done that. Instead, I told you as sad a story as you ever heard. I guess there is a lesson, and it is that others are worse off than me and you. Of course, it is human nature to put our problems first, no matter how bad others’ are.
So accept my love in place of any cheerful thoughts.
Alice
May 21, 1863
Darling Lizzie,
There never was a person so mean as Myrtle Lame. You had every reason to think you were included in the invitation she issued to the others at the tea. I do not understand why you take the blame and make excuses for her. You have always been easier on everyone than you are on yourself. She shamed herself, not you, with her rudeness. I never heard of anybody telling a guest she was not wanted. And after all the trouble you had gone to look so presentable. You must cut her dead for a hundred or two years. You may be sure I won’t tell Mama. We have always kept each other’s secrets.
Please excuse this mean little apology for a letter. I will quit and call it a bad job. Mother Bullock is hitching the buggy to go to Aunt Darnell’s and has promised to leave my letter at the post office on her way.
With much love and in haste,
Alice
May 30, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
Charlie writes that things are bad. One of his messmates died. The man had stepped on a piece of iron that cut through his foot, and his leg swoll up and turned black, and he died of the gangrene. Another has gone to the surgery because he says he is coming down with the cancer, but Charlie thinks he is just a hospital bummer. They have not had any fighting yet, but when he was on picket duty, Charlie caught himself a Rebel. The man broke and ran, like Rebels generally do, but Charlie went after him and grabbed him up. The man said he was only a poor farmer, but Charlie didn’t trust him and went through his pockets, and sure enough, there was a map of the camp and a letter to his wife saying if she never heard from him again, he had died in a loyal cause—the traitor! Charlie wrote that the man thought so little of himself that he referred to himself with a little i instead of big I. Now Charlie is quite the hero for capturing a spy.
I have had a hard time of it, too, this spring and am feeling plenty sorry for myself. At least we have had good rain, and you know what ’tis said: “Rains in May bring lots of corn and hay.” Well, that means I will have my work cut out for me at harvest time.
Then I must do the cooking, or else Mother Bullock does it, and we don’t eat so good as chickens. She loathes indoor chores and is so unhandy at cooking, we would not eat so well as soldiers, who dine on bacon, coffee, and hardtack (which Charlie says was made before the dawn of the Christian era). Her cooking would make a hog wish it’d never been born. I would not mind the work here so much if there was something to look forward to, such as a sociable gathering. If we could have parties or a ball, I would be much more pert, but all this work and no more fun than you can have with a bunch of farm women sits hard on me.
Well, this is as dull a letter as I ever wrote, for I have got the blues like an old maid. Lizzie, why would anyone think the worse of you for doing your own housework? No one would believe for one minute that James is failing. Rather, I think you are being patriotic to get rid of the servant, because with the war, economy is all the rage. You know how the newspapers criticize Mrs. Lincoln for throwing fancy parties in the White House. Of course, she is rumored to be Secesh in her sympathies. Besides, I would not like a servant living in my house, spying on me, although a servant problem is not likely to be one I’ll have on Bramble Farm. You always were a worker, Lizzie, and now that you don’t go about so much, you won’t need more than a hired girl coming in days. I am glad James is more cheerful. I haven’t been married so long, but I know as well as you how to improve a man’s disposition! Do you use the sheaths, or do you want another baby? There’s always withdrawing, but everybody knows that causes nervous prostration and paralysis—although that would be on James’s part, not yours. Now I close the poorest letter I ever wrote.
From little i, your sister,
Alice Bullock
June 3, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
Here is news that will cheer you. Well, pr’aps not, but it certainly cheers me. There is to be a Soldiers Relief Fair in Slatyfork this summer. We shall have farmers donate part of their harvest and livestock. Booths will sell pies and cakes, needle books, pincushions, pen wipers, and straw hats. Mrs. Van Duyne has donated a silver cake basket, and we will sell chances at ten cents. We are to give a quilt exhibition and prize for the best. (Since I am to be the judge, I won’t be allowed to compete.) There will be wire dancing, feats of strength, an oratory contest, and a mesmerist. But best of all, we’ll have evening entertainment—most likely a minstrel show, because they are the rage here—followed by a ball! Oh, Lizzie, I shall wear my blue silk and dance my feet off, even though the men will have to p
ay a nickel to the Soldiers Relief fund for each dance! I think I shall have my choice of one or two handsome men, but if not, any man with two legs will do.
In haste,
Alice
June 18, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
Charlie has got him a Johnny Reb—not just one but two! And they were all but handed to him on a platter. You see, he and about a dozen soldiers were on a patrol when they ran across a company of Rebels. Well, they weren’t really on patrol, but had gone after what Charlie calls “slow deer.” The soldiers aren’t supposed to shoot cattle on the Rebel farms, but they may take all the deer they can find. So they call cattle slow deer, and take them easily because they are so weak that it takes two men to hold up a cow for the third man to shoot it. Charlie and his pards weren’t even thinking about Rebels, when, of a sudden, they caught sight of forty or fifty of them on up ahead. Because they were only a handful, Charlie and the others decided to hightail it out of there, but then they saw more Rebs right behind them. They were caught in the middle, so what could they do but take a stand?
Charlie saved the day! He told the boys to spread out and pretend they were a big company, and to shoot first, before the Rebs discovered them. So the Yanks lined up along a little draw, each one aiming at a Johnny, and they fired. Charlie’s Rebel jumped right up in the air, then fell down dead. Charlie loaded and drew a bead on another Secesh, and down he went, too. Our boys, all of them good Iowa shooters, slaughtered a goodly number of the Rebs, and the others didn’t stay around long enough to get off but one shot apiece before they ran like the cowards they are. After they were gone, Charlie turned to the soldier next to him and discovered the poor man staring at his arm—which had been shot off and was lying on the ground. Even that didn’t dampen Charlie’s spirits. He writes he had been afraid that when he got into battle, he would show the white feather and run off. Of course, I know that any man who stood up to Papa the way Charlie did when he asked for my hand is no coward. But Charlie was not so sure. Now he has met the challenge and turned into as true a soldier as ever was. Charlie carried the wounded bluecoat all the way back to camp, where he was turned over to a surgeon, and Charlie believes he will live. I think it is a pity that Charlie was not in a famous fight, like Vicksburg, so everybody could have heard of him. It is unlikely the Battle of the Slow Deer will get wrote up in the newspapers.
Alice's Tulips: A Novel Page 4