Lizzie, would you send me your white silk ruffle so that I can sew it onto my ball gown. When the story of Charlie gets out, every man at the fair will want to dance with the wife of a hero.
I am going to write Papa and tell him he was wrong all along about Charlie. I never wrote a letter to Papa before.
Your soon-to-be-famous sister,
Mrs. Charlie Bullock
July 26, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
I am sorry about the ruffle, which you probably have received, since I mailed it back the day after the fair, and I haven’t had time to write till now. That ruffle is spoilt for sure. I didn’t see it come loose until it got trampled and tore to pieces. Well, it couldn’t be helped. I would make you a new one, but there is no white satin to be found this side of Keokuk. The ruffle was a victim of the war, plain and simple. I feel bad, of course, but I think you won’t mind so much when I tell you that my dancing raised more than a dollar for the Soldiers Relief Fair.
On the morning of the fair, we got up in the dark to do the chores and left for town at sunup. By then, the pike was crowded with wagons and riders, and it took us two hours just to reach town. Lucky stayed behind and agreed to do the evening chores, so we did not have to hurry home. He is scared to stay on the farm because night riders have been about and it looks like things at Bramble Farm, such as a fat shoat, are getting took. Lucky’s just as scared to go to town. I says to Mother Bullock, “As long as he’s scared both ways, he might as well stay to home and be useful.” For once, she agreed with me.
As our donations to the fair, Mother Bullock and I took a pan of gingerbread, a basket of the prettiest peaches you ever saw, and an Iowa Four-Patch quilt that was worked up by the quilt group. All of it was sold, with the money going to the Soldiers Relief fund. The quilt brought more than twenty dollars at auction, and everyone said that was because it was the design I made up, which has become the symbol of the Soldiers Relief. Even Mother Bullock was impressed with the sum, and that is no small matter.
I did not spend my day with her, for which I am grateful, because as soon as we unloaded our wagon, she went off in one direction and me in the other. It was the best Soldiers Relief Fair I ever saw, or it would have been if I’d ever seen another. I worked in the sewing booth with Nealie, where we sold handkerchiefs and needle cases and pen wipers. When our turn was done, me and her went to see the sights. I shared my dinner with Nealie, since she had not brought any, and she bought us the “hereafter,” as Mother Bullock calls it—a fruit pie and two doughnuts. Nealie does not flaunt her wealth, but I think she is fixed right smart.
A phrenologist had set up, and Nealie paid him two bits each to read our heads. He felt all over Nealie’s head and said she had a quick temper but also a love of “inhabitiveness,” which means she likes peace and quiet and her own fireside. I didn’t see that was any great shakes, because to tell the truth, that Nealie can be into devilment. I guess that’s why I like her. Then the man fingered the bumps on my head and said I was intelligent and refined and given to mirthfulness. But my brain is mostly back of my ears, he said, so I’m selfish, too. That surely wouldn’t surprise Mother Bullock, and doesn’t me, either. He sought to sell us a phrenology book, but as we already had got our heads read, I paid him a dime for a book on dreams instead. The night before, I had dreamt I went to picking apricots, but as it was winter in my dream, they were froze as hard as walnuts. So I looked up fruit dreams in the book and was sorry I did, because it said dreaming about apricots out of season means great misfortune is on the way. It didn’t say anything in the book about them being froze, but if they’re dried up, that means sorrow. Nealie says they just make that up to sell books and for me not to pay any attention. Dream reading is not a genuine science like phrenology and palmistry. Still, I’d rather have my dime back.
After we visited the booths, Nealie went looking for her husband, whilst I judged the quilts. There were seventeen of them entered in the contest, some real nice but others no better than practice work. I don’t know how a woman can have such a poor view of herself as to show off poor stitching. Three of the quilts were Iowa Four-Patch, which shows how popular the design has got to be. The winner was a Feathered Star, made of home-dyed homespun by a little girl who wasn’t more than ten years old. The piecing was first-rate, and stitches even and small, maybe ten to the inch. She was so proud of winning that she donated the quilt to the auction, and it brought twenty-two dollars. Why, Lizzie, if we keep raising money like this, we’ll have enough to buy an ironclad, just like the Secesh ladies.
When the judging was done, Nealie came for me, and we went to Jennie Kate’s to change into our ball gowns. (Jennie Kate is now as fat as a pig at slaughter time, and me and Nealie dressed fast in case her labor pains came on and we would have to miss the dance to tend her. Myself, I would die before going about in society looking so ugly, but Jennie Kate waddled right along after us, happy as a hog in mud. If somebody had asked her, she would have danced. Now, there’s scandal.
Lizzie, don’t think I’m vain when I tell you I was the best-looking girl at the dance. I wore the blue gown I made last year, just before me and Charlie left Fort Madison. Nealie had pinned up my hair so it was high on the back of my head (over where my brain is). She said she never saw anybody so stylish, even in Peterson’s Magazine, and you know it has the latest fashions. Mother Bullock did not approve, because she sent me a stern look when she saw me all dressed up, but then she doesn’t much approve of anything I do. When it was first discussed at the Soldiers Relief meeting about women charging five cents a dance for the relief fund, Mother Bullock said it was the first step down a road to ruin, and once started along that path, a woman could never go back. Why, if a woman took money for dancing, what would she charge for next?
“You mean washing shirts and plowing fields?” I asks. That brain is getting me into trouble for sure.
“I expect you know what I mean,” she says. “It is a step toward hell.”
“Well, hurrah for hell!” I says. (No, I did not say it, but I thought it.)
Lizzie, they played waltzes, schottisches, and polkas, and I would not have missed it for any consideration. We did not have dance cards. Instead, the men bought tickets, which they presented to the ladies, and it was considered disloyal to the Union to turn down any man. There was a blacksmith as big as an oak tree and stinking of sweat, but I couldn’t refuse him. Fat as he was, he was as light as egg whites when he danced. I took a turn with a schoolteacher who had feet as small as a girl’s, but he was clumsy, and I think he must be the one who started the tear in the ruffle.
He stepped on my arch, as well, so I hoped to sit out the next dance or three, but then a gentleman held up a ticket, and before I knew it, I was whisked onto the dance floor by the handsomest man in attendance—Mr. Samuel Smead. He is more nimble than any man I ever danced with, except for Charlie. We flew around the floor, and many people stopped to admire us, for you know I can keep up. When the dance was over and another man came to claim me, Mr. Smead presented me with two tickets, instead of one, so, for the benefit of the Union, I could not refuse him. Each time one dance ended, he gave me a ticket for the next, until they were all used up, and then he went to buy more.
The moment he left, Mother Bullock, the spoilsport, rushed over and pinched my elbow between her bony thumb and forefinger and says, “For shame. You are Charlie Bullock’s wife, and you are making a spectacle of yourself. I forbid you to dance, for I am shocked.” Mother Bullock shocks easy. She leaned close to me. Mother Bullock does not bathe much, as she considers it a hazzard to her health, and she gave off a peculiar odor.
I guess it was the fault of learning about my bad brain, for instead of turning red with embarrassment and looking for a place to hide, I blurted out, “I am dancing for the Union, and proud of it. If dancing raises enough money to win the war and bring Charlie home, then how can you deny me, old woman?” Mr. Smead came up then with a handful of tickets, and I left her sputteri
ng over a reply. I wondered if she might leave without me, and I then would have to stay with Jennie Kate or beg a ride with Nealie. But when the ball was over, I found her asleep in our wagon.
After the last dance of the evening, Mr. Smead says, “I never expected to meet a girl as pretty and accomplished as you in this place. You can expect to see more of me.”
“My husband is a Union soldier,” I says primly. Then he looked so forlorn that I had to laugh, and he took my hand and kissed it! Oh, Lizzie, it is such fun to flirt, and no harm done. It’s not right, me living with a sour old woman while Charlie is off having his fun. It would serve him right if I was to have an admirer.
With love to all from your pretty
and accomplished sister with a selfish brain.
Alice Keeler Bullock
P.S. I almost forgot to tell you. Charlie was out on a scout and shot another Reb. He wounded him bad, because there was lots of blood on the ground, but he doesn’t know if he killed him. I should have told Mother Bullock that my dancing bought her son a dollar’s worth of bullets.
3
Long Cabin
The log cabin quilt begins with the small center square, usually red. Strips of fabric are added to the sides—darker shades on two adjacent sides, lighter shades on the other two, so that the block is divided diagonally into darks and lights. Strips are added until the block reaches the desired size. Then blocks are assembled with the darks and lights forming their own overall pattern—Barn Raising, Sunshine and Shadow, Straight Furrows, Streak of Lightning, Windmill Blades. Legend says that these quilts played a part in the Abolitionist movement. Runaway slaves knew that when a Log Cabin quilt was made with a black center and hung on a clothesline or thrown over a fence, the house was a safe stop on the Underground Railroad.
August 12, 1863
Sister Elizabeth,
I know I lie when it suits me, even to you, but I didn’t lie about the ruffle, so you best take back what you wrote. I think you are not nice to say what you did. Someone stepped on the ruffle, just like I said, and it couldn’t be helped. It was for the good of the Union. But since you have gone off your feed, I’ll send you my pink bonnet to make up for it, even though the bonnet is nicer and costlier. Please to be particular to see that it is not torn. Don’t you ever ask to borrow from me again, either.
Your sister,
Mrs. C. Bullock
August 17, 1863
Dear Lizzie,
I wrote you before that we have had night riders in the area, and they do terrible things. All about here are afraid, especially me and Mother Bullock, since we have no man to protect us, except for Lucky, and he’s more afraid of the bushwhackers than we are. They plunder what they can and destroy the rest, and are worse than rodents, for even a pack rat will leave you something. Last week, they set fire to a farmer’s cornfield just three miles away, and when his wife tried to stop them, they did awful things to her—vulgar things, so I won’t tell you, but you can guess. I think I would rather die than be ravished, and I think I would kill any man who tried it. Then they slit her throat. So everybody here keeps a close watch these days. Me and Mother Bullock had been worried because there were horse tracks on our land, coming from near the creek. We paid it little mind at first, thinking it might be soldiers going home, although most of them travel by shank’s mare and stay to the road.
Then things began to disappear. I told you about the shoat. We lost hens and eggs, too, but thought it was weasels. But weasels wouldn’t take a crock of butter from the springhouse or steal the washing off your bushes, including that brown dress, which was ruined when I burnt it last winter. So then I got to wondering if Lucky was stealing from us. After all, the contraband we heard talk in Slatyfork said it was the slave way to get back at Old Massa by stealing from him. And Lucky was brought up in slavery ways. In case it isn’t Lucky sneaking around, Mother Bullock has begun tying the dog in front of the house each night. He has a loud bark and looks as mean as Stonewall Jackson, although he wouldn’t hurt anybody.
Then on Wednesday last, me and Mother Bullock came in from the fields three or two hours early, and when we reached the barn, we heard a squealing inside. Mother Bullock thought a fox or a coyote had got in, and real quiet, she sneaked into the house and took down the shotgun, which is just above the door, and she motioned for me to grab the pitchfork. We went inside the barn, but by then, everything was quiet, and I said maybe it was rats fighting.
She thought that over. “Rats don’t sound like folks laughing. Foxes, neither.” She squinted because it was dark in there, and looked around the barn “Hand me over the pitchfork. There’s something in that hay. You know how to use the shotgun, Alice?”
“Yes’m.”
“Then stand aside. I’ll poke the pile with this sharp pitchfork, and you shoot whatever comes out.” She talked loud, then waited a minute. When nothing happened, she took a step forward and yells, “I’m going to stick this fork all the way through this hay, then do it again, and you shoot it when it runs. You hear that?” She waited, then says, “You in there. Git!”
The hay moved a little, and pretty soon, a bony arm stuck out. Then came a girl behind it, wearing my brown dress! She sidled around the barn until she was out the door, us right behind her, and Mother Bullock pinned her against the wall with the fork. She was the sorriest thing I ever saw, so thin, the sun shone through her. It would take three of her to make a shadow.
She looked as if she had been used hard, but she didn’t appear dangerous, and I was a little disappointed and says, “I misdoubt we caught the midnight assassin.”
“You the one stealing from us?” Mother Bullock asks.
The girl didn’t answer, just kept looking back over her shoulder toward the barn.
“Girl, I asks you a question,” Mother Bullock says. But she still wouldn’t say a word, just kept glancing from us to the barn door, scared green, acting rabbity.
Then it came to me. “There’s another in there.”
Mother Bullock jerked her head around and squeezed her eyes to see inside, but it was too dark to make out anything. “You go fire the shotgun in that hay,” she tells me.
“Yes’m.” I started for the door.
“No, lady!” the girl says, speaking for the first time.
I stopped and looked to Mother Bullock, who says, “She’s got a man in there, and they’re up to no good, stealing from hardworking folks that have got a son in the army of the republic.”
“Maybe her man’s a deserter,” I says. “Or a raider. Might be they’re the ones setting the fires.” I got all worked up and aimed the gun inside the barn.
“No!” the girl cries. She moved so fast that in no more time than it takes to tell it, she had jumped away from Mother Bullock and grabbed the shotgun out of my hands. “Stand off. I swan, I kilt before,” she says real fierce. But she was shaking.
“We wouldn’t have hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. “But I can’t abide a thief.”
“Can’t help it. It’s steal or starve,” she says, then calls into the barn, “Come on out now.”
We didn’t hear a sound from the barn, but of a sudden, there was a little girl standing in the doorway. She could have been six or four, just knee-high to a duck, and she was the prettiest girl ever you saw, with eyes cornflower blue and her hair the paler than pale yellow of buttercups.
“Come here, Joybell. You’ns come right here.”
Joybell ran forward—right into a fence post. She smacked her head so hard, she fell down and lay there as still as a rock. The string-bean girl set down the shotgun and ran to her. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at the two of them, but Mother Bullock shook her head at me.
“Maybe there’s more in there,” I says.
“If there was, they wouldn’t have sent the baby out. This girl-woman’s just like a momma bird protecting her young. That’s how come she run out of the barn the way she did, to draw us away.” Mother Bullock moved toward the two of them but didn’t close in
.
“Keep away,” says the girl, putting herself between Mother Bullock and Joybell. “You don’t have no least idea what I’ll do if you touch her.”
“I know some about doctoring. I could look, see how bad she bumped her head. We won’t hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. The girl-woman looked at Mother Bullock for a long time, deciding whether she could trust us. Then she shifted so that Mother Bullock could see the baby.
“Joybell, is it?” Mother Bullock asks.
The girl nodded. “Joybell Tatum. I’m Annie Tatum. Pleased to meet you.”
Mother Bullock knelt down and turned over the little girl. She had a long cut on her forehead from where she’d snagged it on a nail sticking out of the post, and it oozed out blood all over her face. “We’ll carry her into the house, out of the sun. Alice here will help you.”
I handed the gun to Mother Bullock and says to Annie, “You take her shoulders. I’ll carry her feet. How come she ran into that fence post? Was she looking at the sun?”
“Ain’t her fault. It’s the Lord’s. She was that way when she was born a baby.”
Alice's Tulips: A Novel Page 5