Alice's Tulips: A Novel (31 page)

She waited for us to begin eating, then asks, “Have you heard the news? What do you think?”

“The war is over?” Annie asks.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Kittie says, a little deflated, for nothing she
could say after that would be as momentous. “Harve Stout is in town. I have seen him myself.” Then Mrs. Kittie turned to Pie-cake. “Your papa will be here directly, precious thing.”

Piecake smiled and held out her hand, thinking, I suppose, that “papa” meant another cake. Annie and I exchanged glances, and of a sudden, Annie put her face in her apron and wept.

“Why, what is it? I thought you would be pleased to hear,” Mrs. Kittie says.

“What it comes down to is he’ll take Piecake away,” I says.

“Well, I’m sure he won’t know a thing about raising a baby,” Mrs. Kittie replies. When that did not comfort Annie, Mrs. Kittie says, “It is my belief he never cared much for Jennie Kate and married her only because she had let him take liberties with her, so why would he want her baby?”

“Because she is his, and because Piecake is most near the prettiest baby that ever lived,” I reply.

After we finished the plowing, we went to the house and made a bundle of Piecake’s things, for I am sure she will be gone by this time tomorrow. First Charlie left, then Mother Bullock, and now Piecake. I think when the war is done with, Annie and Joybell will be gone, too. I could live out my life alone here, turning myself into one of the old farm women in black cape and cap that we saw in the Market House in Galena. Do you think anyone would buy radishes and cabbages and parsnips from Old Alice Bullock, who stumbles along on a game foot? I would not blame you if you did not invite me to tea with your neighbor, Mrs. General Grant.

The wheat is in, but we have the corn to plant next.

With love from

Poor Alice

April 3, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

I will send this letter with Harve when he goes back to town. He is almost as good as home postal delivery.

Harve Stout called the very night of the day Mrs. Kittie was here, bathing and putting on a new suit of clothes before presenting himself. He gave me and Annie silver teaspoons he had stolen from a Southern plantation. “If I hadn’t jerked ’em, the next fellow in line would have,” he explains. “And I doubt he would have give them to any prettier ladies.” I had not known Harve was such a flatterer, but there is much about Harve that I am just learning. Then because Joybell was hiding in the bedroom and would not come out, he gave Annie a tiny fur muff to give to her—one that he had likewise stole. “That was the day we reconnoitered and found a large patch of turnips, which we jayhawked, too,” he says.

Piecake was asleep, and Harve said he would not wake her, but he sat down on a chair beside her bed and stared at her so long that the little creature opened her eyes and smiled at him. Harve says, “Why, she is some punkins. She knows me,” and he scooped her up. We did not disabuse him of that idea, although Piecake smiles at every man, for she is not as shy as Joybell.

“Little girlie, he’s your pa,” Joybell whispers, having crept out of her hiding place.

“Pa,” Piecake repeats, to Harve’s delight. Then she settled into Harve’s arms and fell asleep.

Me and Annie didn’t have the courage to ask what he planned to do about Piecake, but Joybell spoke up. “You taken our baby, mister?”

“I don’t know.” Harve said each word loud and slow.

“She’s blind, not deaf,” Annie tells him.

Harve ducked his head. “You want I should take Piecake?” he asks me.

“No!” Annie says.

“You don’t?”

“She’s our’n,” Joybell tells him.

So here is how we have left it. Piecake will stay with us whilst Harve decides his future and hers. He wants to farm, for he took a town job only to please Jennie Kate, who would not live in the country. Now he thinks he will sell the house in Slatyfork, then look about for something that pleases him. When he learned that Annie and I had been doing the plowing ourselves and saw the condition of my foot, he said he would commence our farm work as soon as he could acquire a team of horses. So now, Harve comes each day at sunup. Annie works alongside him in the field, and I have charge of the cooking. I had forgotten how much food a man eats, for Annie and I had subscribed to the philosophy of “cook small and eat all.” Harve’s favorite meal is a piece of peach pie between slices of bread for a sandwich. But it does not matter what or how much he eats, for Harve has stocked our larder, spending the bonus money he got for extending his enlistment another three months. He wanted to stay for the duration, but he had “hung his harp on the willow,” which is his way of saying he had got homesick.

He stays almost until dark, telling funny stories about his experiences in the war. Last night, he said he was within twenty miles of the Atlantic Ocean and near deserted just to go see it. Then Annie spoke up, to my surprise, and says, “Why, I seen it. It’s so big, I almost could not see across it.”

“Did you bathe in it?” I asks.

“Yes’m.” She made a face. “Why it’s just like falling in the brine of a pork barrel.” Harve slapped his leg and laughed until I thought he would choke.

Annie did not think it so funny and says, “I saw a pianna once, too.”

He is a good man, Lizzie, and very smart—much too clever to have married Jennie Kate, but I think I will never know his reason for that. Joybell is beginning to take a shine to him, and Piecake loves him already, I think. She wakes before dawn now and waits for the sound of Harve’s team. Then she rushes to the door, to be lifted high into the air. I have decided not to dwell
on Harve’s taking her away from us, but to cherish the days that all of us, including Harve, have together. Last evening, just before he left, Harve told us a story of a Wolverine who inspired his fellows to run like greyhounds into the enemy lines with the call, “Come on, brave boys. Don’t let the Tenth get ahead of you! Well, Alice, that Wolverine was Charlie Bull-head.” I did not tell him that Charlie had wrote me the same story, only his ended, “That Wolverine was Harve Stout.”

I had better stop for the present.

Alice Keeler Bullock

April 10, 1865

Dearest Lizzie,

Oh cow, Lizzie! It’s done with! Late in the afternoon, me and Annie heard gunshots. We looked at each other a long time, not knowing what to make of the noise.

“Border ruffians?” I asks at last. “Perhaps it’s guerrillas.” I shivered, for Harve had left early to take the plow to the blacksmith. Then in the far distance, we heard the church bell and what sounded like cannon fire, although I do not know how a cannon came to be in Slatyfork.

“Annie will see, lady,” she says. But at that instant, Harve arrived on a tear.

“It’s over!” he cries. “The War of Rebellion is finished!” He jumped down from the wagon and grabbed me in a fierce hug, then squeezed Annie, swung Joybell about, and threw Piecake into the air. “We’ll do the milking and go to town,” he says. Me and Annie took off our aprons, and I grabbed that old red-white-and-blue-ribboned hat for myself and Mother Bullock’s little flag for Joybell. Then we raced for Slatyfork.

By the time we got there, a happy crowd was hurrahing the Union. There were tall cheers, speeches, and musicians playing in the little bandstand. Tables were set out with gingerbread, ice cream, and striped candy. After a torchlight parade, fireworks
were shot off over the town. The church held a thanksgiving service that opened with a prayer and ended with a blessing, but more chose to give thanks at the saloon. I think Mrs. Kittie might have been one of them, for she pranced about the street with a young man on her arm and appeared to be drunker than twelve dollars. “We have won,” she cries, as if she had played a part in the victory, but perhaps she has. We all have in our way, for I think the women who sewed the warm quilts for the shivering soldiers did every bit as much as the man who makes nails. (I do not mean to take away from James’s contributions, but only to say that we women worked for victory, too. Oh, you know what I mean, Lizzie.)

Harve tried to buy toddies for me and Annie and himself, but was not allowed to, for everyone wanted to pay for drinks for the soldier boy. We sat on the grass and sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “Yankee Doodle.” And tears rolled down my cheeks when we sang “The Vacant Chair.” But oddly, they were for Mother Bullock, who should have lived to see this day, and not for Charlie, who I believe will come home at last.

The girls were asleep when we reached home. We put them to bed; then Harve left, and me and Annie went outside under the stars, for we were too excited to sleep.

“Might be we should tell the old lady,” Annie says, and we linked arms and went to Mother Bullock’s grave. “You tell her,” Annie says, suddenly shy.

“I think she knows already,” I says, then whisper, “Mother Bullock, I wish you could be here to see it. You deserve to be, and I want you here.” I stared at the wooden marker Annie had inscribed and asks, “You want to tell her anything?” When Annie didn’t answer, I turned to her and found her down on her knees in Mother Bullock’s flower garden. “What is it?” I asks.

“I been looking every morning till today. I swan, they must’ve bloomed this evening, after we was out. The old missus ordered ’em for you, ordered ’em special, then had me to sneak off to town every day for a week to see had they come. We waited
till you wasn’t around, and I got her out of bed, and me and her planted ’em to surprise you.” Annie glanced at me shyly. Then she smoothed down the grass and carefully picked a yellow flower and handed it to me, and I held it to my nose for the smell of it. “She tells me, ‘When they bloom, hand one to Alice and say they’re her’n.’ They’s tulips. She says to me, ‘Tell her they’re Alice’s tulips.’ ”

Until recent times, few women were encouraged in serious artistic pursuits. So instead of become painters and sculptors, they turned their everyday work into art—women’s art. They used their needles to create beauty in utilitarian objects such as bedcovers. A quilter might search her imagination for original quilt designs, but more often found inspiration in the simple world in which she lived. Then she chose the colors and executed the design as carefully as if she were painting on canvas. Still, she did not consider her work to be real art and rarely signed it. Most quilts are anonymous.

April 17, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

We heard the church bell again two nights ago but paid little attention, as we assumed it was another service of rejoicing for the war’s end. So we did not know its real meaning until the following morning, when Harve arrived. I was outside, making butter, and put aside the paddle and bowl and stood up to greet him. Most days, Harve is in a hurry, but that morning, the team moved as slow as if pulling a funeral wagon, an apt comparison,
I discovered, when he told me the news. Harve did not even wave, but slowly climbed down from the seat and wrapped the reins around the rail. Then he came to me and looked up with eyes that were red from crying.

“What?” I asked, steadying my legs against the bench, for I thought he must have information about Charlie.

“Mr. Lincoln has been murdered, shot by Southerners, the damned cusses. He expired yesterday.”

Annie came up behind me in time to hear the words and commenced to weep and moan, and my tears were unchecked, too.

“He is the greatest man that ever lived,” Harve says. “Now what will the Union do?”

Piecake rushed from the house to greet Harve, but instead of throwing her into the air, he picked her up and held her close; then we went inside for breakfast, although none but the girls could eat the buckwheat cakes. We worked until midday, then quit and went to town, where the scene was as forlorn a one as I ever saw. To think, the last time I had been there, we had celebrated the Jubilee with songs and huzzahs. Now flags were raised only halfway up their staffs, and several stores were shuttered. The street was as quiet as death, and people did not greet each other or talk, but clasped hands and shook their heads. Oh, how unfair that Mr. Lincoln led us bravely through this terrible time, only to perish at its end.

You must tell me how it is in Galena, where so much effort has gone into winning the war. I think we must all turn to General Grant to lead us through our great sorrow. It was as sad a day as I ever had, and I shall always remember where I was when I heard the dreadful news. If President Lincoln cannot survive the war by more than a few days, how can Charlie?

Yours in sorrow,

Alice Keeler Bullock

April 21, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

I have done what women always do in times of sorrow—I have picked up my needle. At first, I thought I would make a mourning quilt, to show my respect for the president. But Annie says, “He already knows he’s dead,” and I cannot argue with the logic of that.

So I decided to make something to show I am alive and went outdoors in the twilight to consider the pattern. I walked as far as Mother Bullock’s garden, where there are half a dozen yellow tulips in bloom now. And as I knelt down to smell them, I thought what a fine woman she was to plant flowers she knew she would not live long enough to see bloom. Right then, I knew what quilt I would make, and it was the most obvious thing—a tulip quilt, with the name Mother Bullock gave the flowers: Alice’s Tulips. I picked one of the yellow flowers and went back to the house and pressed it flat, then traced around it on brown wrapping paper. I cut out the shape and folded it and recut and divided it into sections, and now I have the templates. The overall design will be like your peony quilt, large squares with twining leaves and buds. Oh, I know, tulip leaves don’t twine, but it’s my quilt, and I can do as I please. I am so proud of my design that I intend to quilt my name into it, the first time I have ever done so. Why is it sewing makes women feel better?