Alice's Tulips: A Novel (15 page)

If you can find it, I would like you to bring a bottle of Wistars Balsam of Wild Cherry, for all we have for sickness is calomel. You will remember Mama used Wistars for her pains. Mother Bullock will not discuss what ails her; in fact, she claims she feels tolerably well. She is tougher than mule meat, but she is inclined to rheumatism, and it rains all the time. She keeps a buckeye in her pocket for it, but the Wistars would work better. Keep a list of charges, and I will settle with you when you get here. You see, hiring out has made me a woman of means.

Lizzie, you never saw me work so hard to clean as I have done in the last few days. The weather was good, for a change, so I have washed the ticks and blankets. Me and Mother Bullock made soap, too, as we are low, and she threw in a handful of dried rose petals. I think that was for you, because she’s never added them for me. Annie says we have done it wrong, because soap can’t be made in the wane of the moon, but we could not wait. I think both Annie and Joybell are looking forward to your visit. Annie asks if your hands and feet are small like mine. She says small feet come from wearing shoes all the year around, but she doesn’t know the source of small hands. Joybell asks if she will be allowed to play with Eloise and Mary. In Kentucky, some
would not allow her around their children for fear that being blind, she was cursed.

Oh, I am longing to see you, and I fear for your safety if you stay even one more day with James. Lizzie, don’t even dare to hint to him that you are leaving, for James will tell you lies to make you stay. (And you are so good, you would give him another chance.)

Nealie stopped on her way to town yesterday in her high-wheeled carriage, which can straddle a stump or cross a creek four or three feet high. When I told her you were to come, she said she would have a tea for you. We’ll see about that. I think we are safe as long as her husband is away. I would like your opinion of Nealie.

May God keep you safe until I can

is the earnest prayer of your sister,

Alice

April 6, 1864

Dear Lizzie,

I cried and cried all week after you left. I never had such a good time in my life as I did on your sweet visit, and now I am miserable. I cried because I miss you and because I feel sorry for myself and because I misdoubt James will keep his pretty promises. He vows to both of us that he is a changed man, and I know you believe him, but myself, I don’t. The only promise he is likely to keep is the one about not opening your mail. I have never seen you so mad about a thing in your life. (Are the scratches healed? It serves him right.)

Of course, I was a goose to have wrote a letter that arrived after you left, and especially to have called James a pig. I should have thought, Well, of course, he will open it, looking to see where you have gone. But even if I hadn’t written, he would have figured it out pretty soon anyway, since where else could you run off to if not to me? Mama and Papa would not want
you at Fort Madison for fear of the gossip, and there is no one else in the family to take you in. So he would have come to Slatyfork in search of you on any account. As foolish as I was to say what I did about James in the letter, I suppose that was what made us talk over the old Carter affair whilst he was at Bramble Farm. I was surprised he never knew how I felt about his part in it. And I did not know he believed he was standing up for my honor—probably because nobody ever protected my honor before, including me. So we cleared the air on that. And I was relieved that he promised never to tell Charlie. (If he ever breaks that promise, his face will become as scratched as a bread board.)

Lizzie, I pray it was worth the trouble and expense of coming here to make James take stock of himself and to renew his pledge of abstinence. At least, you made him realize he could lose his family if he did not righten himself. And he told me when I opened the door to him at Bramble Farm that his family means more to him than anything in the world. Well, we shall see. Mother Bullock has not said a word about James. She is not much taken with men’s charms. But she minds her own business, I’ll say that for her. If she suspected what went on with you and James in the barn, she hasn’t said as much, so you can rest your mind on that account. I told her you had slipped on the hay and fallen headfirst. Of course, that wouldn’t explain the misbuttoning. If your romping produces issue and it is a girl, you must name her Temperance.

You were not gone an hour when Nealie stopped to invite us for sewing again. That is the only good that will come of your leaving, for I don’t know how I could have turned her down without hurting her feelings. She asked whether I would sew for her again, but I said we are behind on the farm because of your visit (which is not so, of course, since you were so much help). I told her that I could not socialize for the longest time. Maybe I’m not such a good liar as I think, because she says, “Frank is took to Missouri, and Samuel with him. They won’t be back for a fortnight, maybe more.” But already having said I was needed on Bramble Farm, I had to turn her down.

You are wrong to say Mother Bullock does not like you. It’s
me
she doesn’t like, but I think she dislikes me a little less than she did. She is gruff, and her way is to criticize, not praise, but I have gotten used to it. She is in poorer health than she lets on, and possibly some pain. This morning, I found her bent over, but when I asked the matter, she said it was only a stitch in her side. I disbelieved her, however. She does not perform her chores so good as she once did. She pretends she does not notice that I have taken over many of them—for if she took notice, she would have to thank me, and that she cannot do. If she needs me to undertake the hard work, I am willing it should be done. Only I wish she would not tell me I do a poor job of it.

The quilt we started comes along nice, and I am taking credit for your good sewing. I can tell by turning over the squares which ones each of us did. The stitching is just like a signature, with yours ever so much nicer than mine. But others think all the stitches are mine, and I do not disabuse them of the idea. I wish you were here to do the quilting on it. I never enjoyed anything as much as when we were girls, sitting together at the quilt frame. Now here is a funny thing, Lizzie: When you gave me the templates, you called the pattern Country Husband, but when Nealie saw it, she says, “Oh, you are making a Drunkard’s Path. So now I call the quilt Homage to James.

I wrote Papa to send Billy to help me on the farm. Billy smarts more than ever under Papa’s hand. I have not received a reply.

Your very lonely sister,

Alice K. Bullock

April 15, 1864

Dear Lizzie,

It is good you went away, because we have had us a bushel of troubles, and I would not want you and the girls here when there are those who wish us harm.

Somebody has got into the root cellar. It happened yesterday,
when me and Mother Bullock had gone to quilting for the Soldiers Relief at Mrs. Kittie’s. Annie and Joybell came along, too, for we are behind in our stitching (partly because I am working on the Drunkard’s Path we started instead of on that damnable Iowa Four-Patch). We agreed that when we have finished quilting this one, we will tack the work, making comforts instead of quilts. The work will go faster, and the soldiers would rather have a tacked quilt than none at all. Lucky was left in charge of Bramble Farm, and he was way off in the north field clearing brush and did not know a thing was wrong until Mother Bullock told him, or so he says. I think Lucky is an honest man—as honest as his kind can be, with all the natural resentment they harbor against white folks. However, Lucky knows more than he lets on.

When we came home, I had a queer feeling, the kind I get sometimes with a prickling about my ears, that mischief was going on, but everything looked a’right, and so I paid no attention to the itching. But that evening, when Mother Bullock went to the root cellar for potatoes, she discovered the damage. Jars and bottles were smashed; cider, conserve, jam, sauerkraut, and all else we had preserved had been poured over the root vegetables, so the whole is spoilt. Only the cherry bounce is saved, and that because me and you took it into the house for a nip when you were here.

But that is not all. As Mother Bullock stood on the cellar steps surveying the damage, a rattlesnake, the biggest she ever saw, slithered through the spilled food toward her, its eye fixing her, its tongue sliding back and forth like a whip snapping. It was the evilest snake since Eve.

“Oh, Alice, come a-running,” Mother Bullock calls in a voice of such fear that I went a-running all the way from the house. That snake was holding her eyes with his, and she was paralyzed to move. I think the rattler would have climbed the steps to get at her if I hadn’t come along and chopped off its head. It was the snake’s bad fortune that a spade was in the ground right by the dugout.

As we stared at the damage, I ask what we both thought: “Do you reckon the wicked person who did this put that snake in here?”

“It occurred to me. And if there’s one, might be there’s more.”

“No,” I tell her a little too fast. “A man could pick up one snake and bring it along, but I doubt he could fetch two. Likely, he came afoot, since no horse would let a man ride it with a snake in his hand.”

“We’ll keep a sharp watch while we clean up.”

“I’ll do it. I got my heavy shoes on. You go to fixing supper.” Mother Bullock agreed, which surprised me, because she is not one to shirk. But she brought a lantern so’s I could look for more snakes. I never disenjoyed a thing so much in my life as cleaning up that cellar. Every minute, I knew a snake would come off a dark corner of a shelf and fall down my back.

The whole time, I cursed whoever had done the thing. Me and Mother Bullock talked about it all night, wondering who could have so much evilness in him. We concluded it was bushwhackers, although we didn’t understand the reason of spoiling things instead of stealing them. Of course, I am all but certain of who did it, for Mr. Frank Smead had vowed I would get my due. But I could say nothing, for a prickling about the head is no proof. Since Nealie was at quilting, her husband knew me and Mother Bullock would be away from Bramble Farm.

That business in the root cellar was just the start of it. This morning, we discovered Lucky has lit out. Now I know many believe that the Negroes are shiftless. But I think Lucky was frightened away by the very person who was in our cellar. Whether Mr. Frank Smead threatened Lucky or Lucky feared he was in danger for knowing Mr. Smead was responsible, I do not know. Mother Bullock was very angry with Lucky, saying he had neither honor nor gratitude, which surprised me, because she has ever taken the colored man’s side. When I said he had deserted us because he was frightened, she says, “That’s not reason enough to run off. We was frightened, too, but we didn’t turn tail. Who’s to do the plowing and planting?”

“We’ve got Annie. The three of us will manage,” I says. I wished I could have told her Billy would come, but Papa was much put out at my request and said I had married Charlie without his blessing and now should not turn to him for help. So I will not ask for Silas or Judah, either.

Mother Bullock did not reply at first, just wrung her hands in her apron, standing in the doorway, looking out over the farm. “I wonder,” she says at last. “I wonder if we will manage. Charlie has to have a farm to come home to.”

“Why would he not?” I asks, but she only sighed and did not answer.

I have got behind in my Bible and had promised Mother Bullock I would make up for the lapse in reading when you were here. But Scripture never calms me like quilting, so I went to stitching instead. The Drunkard’s Path is laid off and put in the frame, and so I began the quilting of it. For marking, I used the flower template you brought and very kindly left behind for me.

Mother Bullock picked up the Bible and read some aloud, then laid it down. After she watched me stitch for a time, she says, “It would be nice to leave something pretty behind for folks to remember me by. I don’t suppose anybody will recollect the number of eggs I candled or the times I swept the floor. Nobody remembers what gets used up, and I’ll be forgot when I’m used up, too. Quilting’s the only woman’s work that lasts.”

I told her to get out scraps and I would help her make her own quilt, but she shook her head. “I don’t have it in my fingers like you do. Charlie will have to remember me as best he can.”

I reached over and patted her old hand. “We’ve been badly used this week, both of us. Tomorrow, we’ll walk down to the meadow and look at the wildflowers, which are just showing theirselves. There’s nobody that can’t be cheered by them. Someday I’ll get you tulip bulbs and plant them by the house—yellow ones. Yellow is for joy and gladness and friendship. A yellow tulip is like sunshine.” I chattered away like that to keep Mother Bullock from gloomy talk, and after a time, she got up without a word and went to her bed.

We have not heard from Charlie since you were here, when he mentioned they were going on the march. It is hard for him to get stamps. We send them to him in each letter, but he has others to write, as he carries on a correspondence with Aunt Darnell and the McCauleys at Fort Madison, and so the stamps disappear. I have not heard from you, either, and am worried things are not going finely. Now, dear, write to me at once and let me know that all is well. If James doesn’t behave, then you can come back to Bramble Farm for good.

From your affectionate sister,

Alice Bullock

April 20, 1864

Dear Lizzie,

What a clever idea to throw a rag ball. I bet you were the hit of the season, and I predict many more rag balls to follow. I had thought such an event was like a quilting, for women only, who worked at tearing rags and braiding them into rugs. But men can tear and braid, too, and how smart of you to have a competition between the sexes. If I had enough rags, I’d throw such a party myself, because, as you saw, our floors are bare. Last winter, I tore the rags we had into strips, but they made only half a dozen balls, and they sit in a basket now. This year, we wear our rags.