Alice's Tulips: A Novel (22 page)

“Frank Smead?” I turned to Mother Bullock. “Poor Nealie.”

The sheriff took a step forward and looked into my face. “No. The dead man’s his brother. I think you knowed him—Sam Smead.”

Lizzie, there have been too many deaths these last years, but this is one I do not mourn. Now that it is done, perhaps I’ll sleep better. I am never free from thoughts of what happened that dreadful day.

From your sister,

Alice Keeler Bullock

Made by loving hands, quilts were presented to family and friends as symbols of affection. So it was natural that hearts became a popular design motif. They were scattered throughout one-patch quilts, hidden in Crazy quilts, and incorporated into Baltimore Albums. Sometimes they were the primary design element, as in Hearts and Gizzards. If she signed her work, a quilter might embroider a heart next to her name. Or she could incorporate hearts into the quilting design itself, making a pattern from folded paper or tracing around a heart-shaped cookie cutter.

September 4, 1864

Dear Lizzie,

There now is more talk of Mr. Smead’s death in Slatyfork than there is of war. Perhaps people are so tired of the endless deaths far away among our boys that they are relieved to gossip about a murder close to home. It is public now: Mr. Smead was murdered! Because the body was badly rotted, it was thought he had met with an accident or died of natural causes. But upon serious investigation of the remains, Sheriff Couch says Mr. Smead was the
victim of foul play. There are cuts on the bones, and the skull is bashed. While no one cared for Mr. Smead during his life and in fact, some demanded he be tarred and feathered or even hanged for his Secesh views, many now say he was not so bad as he seemed. In fact, someone was heard singing the old Jeff Davis refrain, changing the words so it went “Hang Sam’s killer from a sour apple tree.” Opinions of people certainly change after they are dead, don’t they? Well, not mine. I thought he was a blackguard whilst he lived and is still a blackguard now he’s dead.

Mother Bullock supposed the killer was a soldier, perhaps a deserter or one who was mustered out and was desperate for a stake. We see the soldiers every day along the roads, most going home but some just wandering. Mr. Smead was finely dressed always, and going about alone, he was an easy mark. Mother Bullock told the sheriff as much, and he replied the thought had occurred to him. But Mr. Smead was found with his gold watch and nearly twenty dollars in his possession, so he was not robbed.

“Likely one of his enemies did it, then, plain and simple,” Mother Bullock says. “It is known he had many. Mr. Smead was a copperhead and heartily disliked. You know it yourself. With so many of our boys getting kilt by the Rebels, someone decided to even the score by cutting him all to pieces and sending him to hell.”

“Perhaps,” Sheriff Couch replies.

“Myself, I say the world is better for his leaving.”

“So you say.”

Nealie and Mr. Frank Smead held a burying service, which was attended by many, mostly out of curiosity. Me and Mother Bullock went to show our respect for Nealie. Besides, with the body found on Bramble Farm, there would be talk if we had stayed away. But attending the burying did nothing to forestall the gossip. The service was short, and neither Mr. Frank Smead nor Nealie cried. The only person who did was Mrs. Kittie, who would carry on over a dead mouse. “Such an awful destruction of life,” she wails. Mr. Howard took out his handkerchief to dry her tears and told her she was too tenderhearted.

When the final hymn was sung and the last of the dirt thrown onto the coffin, Sheriff Couch drew me and Mother Bullock to the edge of the graveyard, where he asked when I last saw Mr. Smead.

“I disremember. Not for a long time,” I reply.

“Not since Hannibal?” asks Mr. Howard, who had crept up behind us.

“Now, pet,” Mrs. Kittie says to him, while Mother Bullock looked at me sharply.

“What’s that?” the sheriff asks, scratching an eruption on his face and peering at me with eyes like coal lumps. I do not like him much.

Mrs. Kittie put her hand over her mouth, but Mr. Howard turned his yellow eyes on me and says, “Oh, Mrs. Bullock—Mrs.
Alice
Bullock, that is—and Mr. Smead were together in Hannibal. Didn’t you know?” He smoothed his fawn-colored gloves, then rubbed his hands together so that everyone would notice them. I had been with Mrs. Kittie when she purchased the pair. “It was disgraceful how the two of them went off together, her being a married woman like she is and the wife of a soldier to boot. But that’s the kind of hairpin she is. I know it distressed Mrs. Wales considerable, but she is too much the lady to remark upon it.”

He smiled at Mrs. Kittie, who smiled back, then knit her brows together in confusion, for she thought his words did not sound exactly right. My mouth was so dry, I almost could not speak. I swallowed a couple of times and says, “That’s a lie, and you are a liar.”

“That’s the way it was and no mistake,” Mr. Howard says.

“It was Mrs. Kittie’s doing. I would have done with him long since if not for her. You tell them how it was, Mrs. Kittie.”

She looked from me to Mr. Howard, who pouted a little. “I have promised not to speak of it,” she says at last. There was a murmuring in the background, and I turned to see the mourners close behind us. They had not missed a word.

“Alice asked me not to tell, and I have give my word,” Mrs. Kittie tells the sheriff. “I cannot break the promise now, even if
she wants me to.” She wiped the sweat from her face, and Mr. Howard took her fat hand between his. Her hand was so wet, it was mighty apt to stain his gloves.

Mrs. Kittie was also mighty apt to stain my reputation. If she would not tell how Mr. Smead had pursued me against my will, I misdoubted anyone would believe my account of the wrongness he had done me. As I damned Mr. Howard’s lying heart, I glanced around for a friendly face but caught only Nealie’s stony eye. Others looked away. I grew dizzy in the hot sun and began to sway a little; then I felt a hand on my elbow. “Come, Alice. We must not leave Annie to do all the chores,” Mother Bullock says. Her voice was soft, but her grip was as strong as an iron skillet.

I would have fled with her that instant, but some word must be said in my defense, and if no one else would say it, I would have to speak myself. “You must not believe Mr. Howard. He is a crooked stick, out to make trouble for me for fear I will expose him as a fortune hunter not worth three cents,” I says. “Mr. Samuel Smead was as evil a man who ever lived. I feared him, and I hated him almost to death.”

The words were out of my mouth before I thought, and I could no more call them back than gather up the fluff of a dandelion. Nealie gasped, and Mrs. Kittie put her hand over her mouth. Mr. Howard nodded at the sheriff as though to say, You see?

“Everyone feared and hated Samuel Smead. He was a copperhead. I myself would not have been hard-pressed to shoot him,” Mother Bullock says quickly as she steered me away from the sheriff.

“Hush up, old lady. The rest of us knows things, too,” someone muttered.

A woman says, “The girl is a disgrace to Slatyfork, her and her sister, thinking themselves so high in the instep.” Lizzie, I have never put on airs in Slatyfork, and you were the picture of kindness whilst here. I could not imagine that anyone would speak such falsehoods of us.

Then a man spoke up. “Best you look into Jennie Kate’s death. Might be she killed her for the baby.” There was a muttering in
agreement, and my face burned as I stumbled off behind Mother Bullock.

She and I did not speak of any of this on the way home, but I knew that what had been said lay heavy on her mind and that she deserved an explanation. So after supper, whilst Annie sat with her piecing and Mother Bullock rocked Piecake to sleep, I told them all that had happened at Hannibal, down to the grossest details. (Still, I did not mention the later encounter on Bramble Farm. If I could not confide in you all the facts of what happened that day, I surely would not tell them.)

I do not know if Mother Bullock believed me, but I am sure Annie did. “The Lord sees it all, marks it all down,” she says when I had finished the story.

So that is how things stand here. We go about our business, pretending none of this has happened. Neither Annie nor Mother Bullock has mentioned it again. Since I cannot discuss the affair with anyone, I turn to you for consolation. I have not heard from you in the longest time, Lizzie, and hope you can find the chance to write a few words. My troubles are bad now, but I worry about you, too. You must go out and find the solutions to the trials that beset you, whilst all I can do is wait.

We wait for word of Charlie, too. I tell Mother Bullock no news means he is alive, and she hangs on to that hope. We have had two cheerful letters from Harve, who contains his grief at his wife’s death right well. He calls me “Charlie’s better half,” but I have wrote back that any half is better than I am at present. Harve is a tender father, always inquiring about Piecake, and sent two dollars in the second letter. The money was spent on Mother Bullock’s health, although the old sawbones in Slatyfork is no more use at diagnosing illness than a rooster is at reading Mr. Longfellow. Mother Bullock continues to take the Wistars each day for the pain and the feebleness in her back that won’t let her alone. But it no longer has a salutary effect.

September 6, 1864. P.S. As I have not been to the post office to mail your letter, I shall relate a little about our wheat crop.

The wheat harvest is long since done, and we have fared not so good as we might, but tolerable well, considering that our crew was made up entirely of women. That was not our plan. But the man who operates the reaper was taken sick, and we could not get harvest hands. The few good men were long since taken, and even young boys and old men were not to be had. Annie scoured the countryside for workers but came home empty-handed. “What shall Annie do now, lady?” Annie asks me.

“We’ll have to put together a crew of women, or do it ourselves, I suppose.”

Annie nodded solemnly, which made me laugh. “I was only jesting, Annie.”

“Well, I say do it. There’s a plenty of women would rather harvest than cook and clean a house,” she says.

That made sense to me, for I am one of them. “We would have to use the old scythes, for I don’t know a woman who can operate the reaper.”

“Annie can.”

So we rented the two-horse reaper of a man who had gone to war, whose wife was glad for the payment, and there we were, half a dozen of us women following Annie and the clicking blades about the field. We started at the outside and went round and round, diminishing the size of the field each time. Annie taught me how to use the reaper, and she and I took turns cutting the wheat whilst the others did the binding and shocking. We were slower than men, of course, but I think our sheaves of wheat had a nicer, tidier appearance. The women were not paid, but divided amongst themselves the income from the sale of a third of the wheat. That came to more than we would have had to pay a crew, but without the women, much of our crop would have been wasted. The women seemed entirely satisfied.

You never saw such a hardworking group of harvest hands in your life. Men came from all over to watch, first with aversion, but by the time they left, I think they had a little respect for us. One said it was unwomanly for us to unsex ourselves by doing men’s work.

“Is it womanly, then, for us to starve?” I asks.

He studied us for an hour or two, sitting his horse like a sack of meal, then announced he would hire us as a crew to harvest his own crop, but, of course, he would pay us only half of what he would a male crew.

“Might be I’d hire you to clean my house,” replies one woman, “but I wouldn’t pay
you
as much as a woman.” We were pleased to turn down his offer to harvest, since we had decided to help one another instead.

Mother Bullock took charge of the meals. I knew it would be a strain on her, but there was nothing else to be done. Here also was an advantage of female threshers: While a male crew expects to be waited on, a crew made up of women knows how much work it is to cook for field hands, and they pitched in. They carried food to the tables and cleaned up, and even washed the dishes. Some brought pies and cakes and bread enough so that Mother Bullock’s cooking was cut in half. What’s more, the women did not stuff themselves as men do.

I think it good our harvest is done with, for a little boy stopped today on orders of his mother to ask if Annie would help with their haying tomorrow. I offered my services, too, but he replies, “Ma don’t want no killer ladies. She says you run off your man to war and are killing the old lady with poison, too.”

Lizzie, have you heard from Billy? He ran off in early summer, but Mama kept it a secret until now. They had thought he joined the army, but now Mama asks if he has come to Bramble Farm instead. I would not tell her if he had for fear of what Papa would do, but the truth is, I have neither seen nor heard from him. Have you news of our brother? You know I would keep it a secret if you told me.