A Quilt for Christmas (9 page)

“Oh, one drop won't hurt it. After all, this is
bleeding
Kansas,” Eliza replied, smiling just a little. Then she asked Ettie if she were saying that once an escaped slave reached Kansas, he wasn't safe, even though Mr. Lincoln had set him free, that he could be captured and sent back to his owner?

“I am. As long as there's money in it, there are men who'll work for the devil,” Ettie replied.

“Maybe that would keep those colored people out of Wabaunsee County,” Mercy said.

“Why, I'd think you might want to hire them to help you in your fields now that your husband isn't coming back,” Anna told her. “I've heard they're hard workers, and cheap.”

“Not me. I'd shoot any of them that came on my farm,” Mercy replied.

“You already said that. And I heard you said it in town, too. I did not think you were a vengeful woman. You were given the wrong name,” Ettie said. “If one of those coloreds came to
my
farm, I'd invite him in for supper and give him a rhubarb pie.”

Mercy bristled and was about to reply, when Eliza spoke up. “I don't think we have to worry about anybody snatching up Negroes now, what with the war almost done.” She paused, then looked up at the sun and asked where the time had gone. It was long past the dinner hour, she said. No wonder the children were fighting a battle out there. She asked Mercy to help her set out the food. Eliza stuck her needle into the quilt and stood up, stretching her back. She ached not just from bending over the quilt frame but from the farm work, too.

“They don't understand what it's like to lose a husband,” Mercy told Eliza as the two headed for the house. “There's an awfulness to it. You and me and Missouri Ann, we know.”

Eliza reached for her friend's hand and squeezed it, letting the touch warm her. “We need each other, Mercy. There is indeed an awfulness to being alone.”

*   *   *

The dinner was a simple one, but it was better than what the women and children generally ate. Eliza had added potatoes and turnips and onions to stretch the chicken stew. The pie Ettie brought was made with molasses instead of sugar, while Mercy's cake was sweetened with applesauce. But there was cream to pour over the desserts, because the women still had cows to milk.

Eliza blessed the dinner and asked for victory for the North, and then, her voice trembling, she prayed for the safe return of Ettie's and Anna's men. The women helped the children, thinking if the dinner were sparse, they would rather go without than let the little ones be hungry. But there was more than enough, and once the children were served, the women dished up for themselves. They sat in the sunlight and ate slowly, hoping they felt full before the food was gone.

Eliza did not want to revisit the subject of slavery. Nor did she want to talk again about the war dead for fear she would cry. So she brought up the Independence Day fair. How much did they think the Log Cabin quilt would bring? she asked the others.

Mercy guessed seven dollars, and Ettie said it would more likely be four.

“But it's as nice a quilt as was ever made. Surely it's worth more than four,” Mercy said. The women had set aside their plates and returned to quilting.

It didn't matter what it was worth, Eliza told her. It was what somebody would give for it, and there wasn't much cash around. Many people were barely making it. She didn't add that without Will's pay, she was one of them.

Then it seemed like a waste of their time to stitch the quilt, Mercy observed.

Anything was worthwhile if it was for the soldiers, Anna told her.

“Sewing seems a poor way to win a war,” Ettie said.

“We are women,” Anna replied. “We stay at home. We don't do the fighting.”

Ettie took a few stitches, then looked across the orchard. “Oh, to see and be in it all. Wouldn't that be something?”

“Well, I for one would think it unladylike to shoulder a gun,” Anna argued.

“Oh, bosh, Anna,” Ettie said, pulling her needle through the quilt so hard that she broke the thread. “Now look what I've done.”

“Nathaniel believed a woman was an ornament of the home. I want a man to take care of me,” Mercy insisted.

Ettie leaned over and licked the end of the thread still stuck in the quilt, then put the end through her needle. “A mighty fine job Nathaniel's done of that, him dead and buried.”

“Ettie! How could you?” Eliza reprimanded. She leaned back on the stump that she used for a chair, feeling as hurt as Mercy must be. How dare Ettie suggest the death of their two husbands was their fault! Then she glanced at Missouri Ann. Eliza had almost forgotten that she, too, had lost her husband. But Missouri Ann seemed to accept widowhood better than Mercy and Eliza. Or perhaps she was just grateful to be on Eliza's farm.

“Well…” Ettie glanced shame-faced at the other women. “I shouldn't have said it, and I beg your pardon, Mercy, but I ask you who's to care for the women when their men are killed in this war? You can't raise two daughters on Nathaniel's pension. Nor can Eliza or Missouri Ann, or the others. It seems there's a vacant chair in every house in Wabaunsee County.”

Eliza spoke up. “Sometimes I wish
I
were fighting the South. To be idle in time of war is torture.”

“Oh, we're not idle,” Ettie told her. “Just look around this sewing circle. Everyone has a needle.” She paused while the women looked at each other. “It's just that I feel useless with nothing more to stop the war than stitch a quilt. I wish we could do something that made a real difference.”

“What?” Anna asked.

“That's just it. What? We're women. What can we do?” Ettie asked.

The quilters grew silent. The afternoon was drowsy. It was only March, but the sun was warm, and there was just a little breeze blowing through the trees. Eliza wiped her fingers on her skirt, since her hands had begun to perspire. She found it hard to push her needle through the quilt because it was damp from the moisture on her hands. She glanced around at the others and saw that they, too, had grown listless. Their quilting had slowed. So Eliza suggested they take a break and have a dipper of water. She stood up and wriggled her back to get out the kinks. The others seemed eager to stop and stood, too. Anna lifted her arms in a stretch, and Eliza saw the woman's jacket rise and her skirt go taut over her stomach and realized her friend was pregnant. She must have conceived just before her husband left in the fall.

Anna caught Eliza's glance and said, “June, probably. I'm not sure.”

The other women had gone to the well and were dipping water from the bucket. Eliza put her arm around Anna. Summer was the best time to have a baby, she said, although both knew summer was also a difficult time for a farm woman to give birth, especially a woman who was tending a farm by herself. “You'll find someone to help with the crops,” Eliza said.

“The crops!” Anna cried. “What do I care about crops? It's bearing a child alone that scares me. What if something should happen to me? What would become of the babies? Who's to care for them?” Anna had two boys, the oldest only three.

“You've gone through childbirth before.”

“But not without Cosby. Oh, Eliza, I can't sleep for fear of what might happen. I did not want to get this way with Cosby going off to war. I told Cosby I did not…” Her voice trailed off, then she added, “But we love each other so. What will I do?”

Anna's mother would always take them, Eliza replied.

Her friend put her hands to her face. “That's just it. Mother is with child herself. It was the saddest day of my life when she told me that she, too, would have another baby.”

“At her age?”

“She is forty-seven. I was her first, born when she was sixteen. She has been bearing children for two thirds of her life! Eight births so far, and I do not know how many other times she conceived and lost the half-made babies. It is too much for her.”

Eliza tried to think of something comforting to say but could not. She was grateful Will had not left her in that condition.

“I had thought when I found out that at least I would have Mother to help. After all, my youngest brother is seven. And not knowing I myself was in the same condition, Mother thought I would come to her aid. It is a conundrum of the worst sort.”

“Perhaps the men will be home by then.” Eliza thought of the stupidity of her words and added, “Perhaps the sun will rise in the west.” She laughed but not with humor.

“I suppose I will just have to manage. I did not think I could run the farm without Cosby, but I have done a decent job of it.”

They all had, Eliza replied. And Anna would do a decent job of birthing that baby, she added.

“I must carry on alone. There is nothing else that can be done.”

Eliza smiled at her friend. “You can't prevent having the baby, and you have done all right with that in the past. You may not have Cosby, but you'll have us, Anna. We'll see you through it. Maybe that's what women can do in wartime. They can care for each other when their men cannot care for them.” She grasped her friend's hand as she thought perhaps that was not much of a challenge. And then she had a terrible thought. What if Anna's husband, too, did not come home? Three of the five women had already lost their husbands. Eliza could not bear the thought that Cosby Bean, too, might die.

*   *   *

Both Eliza and Anna were distraught as they returned to the quilt frame. The others did not seem to notice, however, for they were silent, too, lost in their own thoughts. They continued to stitch, talking only to ask for the scissors or the thread or whether it was time to roll the finished section of quilt over the end of the frame to expose the unstitched portion. Every now and then one of the women stood up to stretch her back or to check on a child who was whining or who had grown too quiet. Mercy seemed shocked when one of her daughters, who was playing soldier, complained, “Why do I have to be the damn Reb all the time?”

“Such cussing. I don't know where she picked it up,” Mercy said, getting up from the frame to reprimand the girl.

“Probably from her father,” Ettie told the others when Mercy was out of earshot.

“Ettie, he is dead!” Anna said, shocked.

“Even more reason for her to cuss,” Ettie replied, and Eliza couldn't help smiling. She wondered again about laughter in the midst of the deepest grief.

There were chores to do, and the quilters were anxious to be on their way. They stitched quickly, and by late afternoon, they had finished the quilt. All that remained was to roll the backing over the front of the quilt to form a binding, and Eliza would do that later. She unrolled the quilt from the frame, and she and Missouri Ann held it up, as the others admired it.

“I must have worked on a thousand quilts, but I never see a finished one that doesn't take away my breath,” Ettie said. “Missouri Ann, those stars look like they fell out of the sky.”

Missouri Ann sucked in her breath with pride. Then she and Eliza folded the quilt and rested it on the frame. The others gathered their children, along with their dishes and needles and scissors.

Just as the women finished, two men, one on horseback, the other driving a wagon, came into the barnyard. There was a bend in the lane to the Spooner farmhouse, so the men could not have known the women were gathered in the orchard, and they appeared surprised to see so many.

“Why, we are intruding,” John Hamlin said, taking off his hat and greeting the women.

“Not so's you'd notice. We were just leaving,” Ettie said, but she made no move for her buggy.

Eliza went up to the men and told them to get down and help themselves to the well water. John exchanged a glance with the second man, Print Ritter, and both dismounted, leading their horses to the water trough, then going on toward the well.

“I was on my way to town and stopped to see if you had need of anything, Mrs. Spooner,” John said.

John Hamlin had been kind, had stopped to give his condolences and ask if there was wood he could chop or harnesses to mend. Still, the Spooner farm was hardly on his way to town. The women must have realized that, too, and now they were in no hurry to leave. They stared as the two men headed for the well, but then Print stopped in front of Missouri Ann and nodded. “How do, Mrs. Missouri Ann,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.

Anna and Mercy exchanged a knowing glance, and Eliza looked away to keep from smiling. It wasn't the first time the blacksmith had found a reason to stop at the Spooner farm and engage Missouri Ann in conversation.

Ettie opened her mouth, then shut it and climbed into her buggy. “I'll see you in church,” she said, flicking the reins across her horse's back and starting down the road. Anna followed, with Mercy at her side, knitting needles out and working furiously, for she was one to always knit socks or scarves or mittens for the soldiers. The two grinned at Missouri Ann, whose face was red with embarrassment.

Eliza hoped the women would not tease Missouri Ann later. She had known the first time Print Ritter called, using some excuse about just passing by and offering to have a look at Eliza's wagon wheel, which he'd noticed had begun to wobble, that he had taken an interest in her friend.

But there was not time for visiting that day. She and Missouri Ann had chores to do and supper to be gotten, and she hoped the men would not stay long. She had had enough company for a while.

John and Print went to the well, taking their time with the water, waiting until the dust from the departing vehicles settled, to return to the women. The men's faces were serious, and Eliza realized that this was not a courting visit.

“We have need of your help,” John told Eliza, glancing at Missouri Ann as if he were not sure she should be included in the conversation.

“You can trust Mrs. Missouri Ann,” Print assured him. “Mrs. Spooner would be of no use if Mrs. Missouri Ann wasn't in on it.”