Alice's Tulips: A Novel (26 page)

“I expect I would.” He laughed, too, but his eyes didn’t. They were bright and hard, and he slid them over to me. “But I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hated him more than Miss Alice here.”

“I had thought better of you, Josiah. Others at Slatyfork, most especially the women, are jealous of Charlie’s wife because she’s young and pretty, and I fancy more than one wanted Charlie for herself. Alice is from outside, and there are some mothers here who felt Charlie had no business going elsewhere for a wife. Lord knows, Alice has her ways, and I don’t like them much. She’s vain and wasteful, and too caught up in fashion. She is prideful of her sewing. But that’s not call to turn such meanness on her. People here are that bad to her, I can’t tell you about it all. Maybe it is the war that has got us all down. The Rebs are far away. We don’t know them. Alice gives a face to hate. And to think she suffers for the likes of Samuel Smead. Their hatred is worthy of a better cause.” Her eyes bored into the
sheriff’s, and he was uncomfortable, but he didn’t look away. “The soreheads have stirred up trouble, that’s all.”

Without looking at me, she turned and went inside. I started to follow, but the sheriff grabbed my arm and held me back. “Might be those mothers of daughters will have their chance with Charlie again,” he hissed. “Might be Charlie would come home a widower. I expect we’ll know soon enough.” They he stomped away, leaving me shivering.

I beg pardon for burdening you with my troubles, Lizzie. I will speak of them no more for now.

You have asked my opinion of your boarder. I do not know him—but, of course, not knowing about a thing has never stopped me from having an opinion. It is this: You ought to go to church with a woman friend instead of with him. Now that James is working and has taken the pledge, you must do your best to show your faith in him. It harms your reputation being seen about Galena with another man, and it makes no difference that the two of you are friends, with no word of impropriety ever having passed between you. Am I not an example of what trouble is stirred up by gossip? What matters is appearance. Oh, dear, did I just write that? I think I am turning into Mama. I know I am not my brothers’ keeper, but I think I may be my sister’s.

We have not heard from Charlie but have got another letter from Harve, who writes every week, and I write him, too. Even without the quarter-dollar he sent in the last post, we were glad to hear from him, because he writes such clever things. The Secesh are desperate for artillery and sometimes paint logs to look like cannons, he says. During a lull in a battle, one of the Wolverines threw a piece of hardtack to the enemy with a note attached: “Here’s ammunition for your wooden cannon.” In a few minutes, back flew the hardtack with a note from a cracker: “Wrong kind. Got any sticks?”

Harve wrote us another story about some Wolverines taking refuge in a house owned by two spinsters, who hid in their bedrooms, the doors locked and bolted. The whole house was enfiladed by enemy fire; then a shell exploded, blowing apart the
attic. When the fighting had quieted, one old maid opened her door and called to the other, “Oh, sister, are you killed?”

“No,” came the reply. “Are you?”

Kiss the girls and give them much love from

Alice K. Bullock

November 7, 1864

Sister Lizzie,

No, no, no! Do not be tempted, but tell the boarder to leave at once. If you will not think of your reputation, consider the girls. You had not wrote before that James had withheld connection. Four months! Oh, Lizzie, how can you stand it? He is as mean a husband as ever was. I have gone without for near two years, but that is because Charlie is away, not because he turns his back on me. I think about me and Charlie romping in bed, of course, lots, but even more, I miss Charlie putting his arms around me and taking me on his lap and stroking my head. Lordy, I wish he was here. Perhaps you should ask James to take another walk down under the bridge.

Harve wrote about a strange coincidence, which I shall relate: He stopped at a Secesh house for a drink of water and learned the name of the owner was Osnun. “Why, I knew a man named Redman Osnun in Iowa,” He says. “Could he be your son?”

“The same,” replies the father.

“And what of him? Is he well?” Harve asked.

“You have killed him at Shiloh,” the old mother says, taking the corncob pipe from her mouth. Then she began to weep and scream and hit Harve with her tobacco bag. “A braver boy never lived, and you have killed him dead. You are a butcher.”

“No ma’am. I was not even a soldier when Shiloh was fought,” Harve protests.

“You have shot him,” the mother repeats, snatching up a wooden spoon and beating on Harve’s chest with it.

Gentleman that he is, Harve would not tell the old folks that
their son was the greatest coward that ever lived, afraid of his own shadow, and if he was shot, it must have been in the back, for surely he was running away.

Now, listen to your

Sister Alice

P.S. Maybe James should come home one night and find you dressed naked except for your apron. I do not think he could resist that. Of course, you would have to send the girls out, make sure it was not the day for the iceman’s delivery, and
get rid of the boarder.

November 9, 1864

Dear Lizzie,

I do not like to write such a gloomy letter as this one, especially since I have not wrote anything cheerful in the longest time. But what is there cheerful to write about? I ask you. If these are not hard times, I hope I never see them.

I had a dream two nights gone that will not leave me, and as I cannot talk of it with Mother Bullock, who disbelieves in such things, or Annie, who believes in them too much, I turn to you. Dear Sister, please help me make sense of it.

The nightmare was about Charlie. I dreamed of a dreadful smell and reached for a handkerchief to hold over my nose, but I hadn’t one and must make do with my hand. The smell grew stronger as I entered a room that was piled high with pieces of bodies—arms and legs and noses, and even heads—all discarded in a heap on the floor. “Why, these belong to you,” says a surgeon in a bloody apron, holding out two arms with hands attached. “These, too,” he adds, nodding at a pair of legs lying under a cot. I did not understand until I looked close at the body on top of the cot. It was Charlie, grinning at me. He wore nothing but a shirt, the sleeves rolled up so that I could see he had no arms at all. And his legs were stumps no longer than an ear of corn.
Beside him was a bloody saw, and I knew it had been used to cut off the limbs, for I have recently heard just how it is done. A surgeon cuts through the flesh and muscle with a knife, leaving only a flap of skin. Then with a few quick movements of a saw, he slices through the bone. The artery is tied, then the flap of skin sewn over the stump.

“You see, I used a herringbone stitch,” says the doctor, right proud of his work. “Gold thread, too, and I embroidered my name on the stump.”

“I wish I could see that, but they got my eyes,” Charlie says, turning his bloody face to me. His eyes were dull and cloudy, like bad pearls.

The surgeon held out the arms to me again. “You going to take them for a souvenir? It you don’t want them, I’ll throw them away with the others.” He lifted his chin to indicate the heap of amputed parts of soldiers’ bodies. “No one will buy them, so we feed them to the pigs. They’re first-rate for fattening hogs.”

At that, I woke up and lay in bed the rest of the night, shaking and crying. Most dreams are nonsense after you have gotten up and lit the candle, but this one was as real as if I had experienced the event myself, and I have not got it out of my head. Now I am afraid to go to sleep for fear the dream will come back. Lizzie, I never thought hard about Charlie being maimed like that. I knew he might be killed, or maybe wounded a little and have to sit with a stiff leg stuck straight out. When I saw Sartis without a hand that time in Slatyfork, I thought Charlie might even come home with a little piece of him torn away. Then I’d have to help him cut his meat. I even thought it would be romantic if he came back with a long scar that would grow white and puckered over time. But I never thought he might return without both legs or arms or his face shot away.

I don’t know what caused me to dream such a terrible thing. Perhaps it is my own wickedness, for there is evil in me you do not know about. Or it might have been watching a group of boys play amputee in Slatyfork. One hopped around with a leg tied up behind him. Another had his arm inside his shirt. A third little
boy had tied a handkerchief over his eyes and was being led about by a chum, who stopped me and begged money for “the brave soldier boy.” Two girls in aprons stood over another lad lying on the ground with a bandage on top of his head. All three cried that he would surely die by dark.

But, Lizzie, what if something else caused the dream? Is it a presentiment? I stopped this letter just now to get out the dream book I bought at the Soldiers Relief Fair. It says that to dream of both arms being cut off means captivity and sickness. Charlie is already captured. Does this mean he has taken sick? I should warn him to be careful, but how do I do that? For the guards read the letters sent to prisoners and would throw away one that sounded so foolish.

The dream frightened me too much to go back to sleep, so after I stopped crying, I went into the big room, where I found Annie sitting in Mother Bullock’s rocking chair, her hands clasped. “Oh,” I says, “it’s not a good night for sleeping.”

“I peeped in on the old lady, but it ain’t her. I sneaked a look at Piecake, too, whilst you was tumbling around in bed,” Annie says, rocking back and forth, shaking her head. “It ain’t fair if it’s Joybell. Oh, I been asking the Lord, please, sir, not Joybell.”

At first, I thought Annie had had the same dream, but that was impossible. “What are you saying?”

Annie shook her head, looking down at her hands. “You seen it, too, last night, and didn’t remark on it neither, thinking I wouldn’t know. But I did, and I didn’t sleep. You neither, from the way you was thrashing about.”

I sat down in a straight chair and drew my nightdress around me and shivered, for Annie had not made a fire.

“I thought for sure it would be the old lady, but she breathes good,” Annie muttered.

“I don’t understand, Annie.”

“The hawk. It flew direct over the house, and as if that ain’t enough, it turned and flew back again, to make sure. It was calling a corpse. A hawk over the house is as sure a sign of death as ever was. Everybody knows it.”

“Oh, that’s—” I started to tell her I didn’t believe in such things, but maybe I do and don’t know it. If I am so bothered by my dream of Charlie that I ask your help in its meaning, how can I disbelieve Annie’s superstitions?

Then Annie stopped her rocking and looked straight at me, her eyes wide. “It’s me, ain’t it? It’s punishment. Oh Lordy!” She began to cry softly, and I put my arms around her, but she wouldn’t be soothed, and I went back to my own chair.

That afternoon, Nealie stopped on her way back from town with our mail. I was gripped with fear that there would be a letter telling Charlie was dead. But there was only a letter from Harve, and it added to my gloomy mood, for he was out of sorts when he wrote it. It seems Harve is sick of war and expects to come home when his enlistment is up. He asks if I will give him a chicken dinner and a cherry pie, for all he can buy is mule meat and tomcat wienerwurst. He bought a dish of “squirrel stew” from a woman, which he thought tasty enough until he had finished it and she told him it was made of rats. The Southern women are that hard up for food. One mother served her children “Poll Parrot soup,” made from the family pet.

Mother Bullock does not leave her bed much, and I do not think her days will be many in this world. I have been to town once for more pills, but we are out of money now, and I do not know what I shall do when this supply runs out. I think the end is near. I don’t know what I would do without Annie, for I would be alone in this house with a dying woman and a baby. And perhaps we will not have the house for long at that; I have begun to think about the debts Mr. Huff talked of. Mother Bullock has said no more about them, but I think Mr. Huff intends to take advantage of our situation when she is gone. Who would take my side and defend me? I could lose the farm, and Charlie would have no place to come home to. Well, I suppose I should take comfort in knowing some have it worse. I could be Mrs. Kittie, set to marry a scoundrel. Can you imagine a wedding night with the gangly-legged, needle-nosed Mr. Howard? Or with Mrs. Kittie, for that matter? I am glad I did not dream about that!

Lizzie, I am sorry to burden you with my foolishness. I never put stock in a dream before, but I am in fits over this one. I would be grateful if you would give the subject some thought and write your opinion. Please tell me I have got anxious over nothing.

Nealie says she will come to us next week.

I hope your little home is cheerier than mine. I put my faith in the the songwriter who says, “Good times are a-coming.” I wish he had said when I could expect them.

Give my love to the girls,

and write that things with you are improving.

Alice Bullock

November 20, 1864

My dear Lizzie,

I am glad my little plan did the trick with James. Oh, I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he walked through the kitchen door and found you dressed—or undressed, I should say—exactly like Mother Eve. Of course I understand you are too private to put the details on paper, but I expect a full accounting when I see you.
I
know James is not worthy of you, but little did I know he thought you believed so, too, and did not want connection with him. I am glad he has got over that misunderstanding.

I think you had not yet got my letter about the dream when you wrote. It is still vivid. I put it aside during the day, but thoughts always turn darker at night, and I dwell on it then. I asked Nealie if she attached importance to dreams. She has come to stay with us and shares my bed, and last night, she called out, “Sam.” But when I asked her about the dream the next day, she said she did not recall it and was sure I had misheard her. I am determined to consult a phrenologist next time one is in Slatyfork.