The Union Quilters (11 page)

Dorothea blinked back tears as she folded the letter. “Forgive me for that lengthy preamble, but I didn’t know how else to say it. Mary’s father received the casualty list from the battle by telegraph just this morning. Charley did not survive.”

Gasps and cries of distress went up from the circle. “Oh, poor, dear Eliza,” exclaimed Lorena. “Married less than a year. How will she bear it?”

Dorothea shook her head, as if she could not imagine how anyone could endure such a loss.

“My father sent word to her mother and sister in Williamsport,” said Mary. “They’re coming to care for her. She’s with her motherin-law now, at Charley’s boyhood home.”

“We’re her closest friends,” said Gerda. “We must do something.”

It was quickly agreed that they would provide food, comfort, companionship—anything Mary needed. Lorena offered to set out immediately. “I’ll go with you,” said Anneke, trembling as she put away her sewing. Albert slept peacefully in his basket at her feet, and Hans would be fine with the twins at home a little while longer. She was suddenly and profoundly ashamed. How could she ever have found any pleasure in the work of war? How could she have allowed herself to imagine that the conflict occurred in another country, to other people, that it was akin to a glorious adventure scribbled in broad strokes as in a cheap dime novel?

She longed to beg Eliza’s forgiveness, and that of all her friends who constantly feared the devastating blow the new bride had suffered, but she knew her confession would only pain the young widow and bring her no absolution. Never again, she silently vowed as she hastened after Lorena. Never again would she forget how close to home the war raged.

E
liza did not return to the Union Quilters. A month after Charley’s death, she sold the farm, half in cash and half on credit, to Charley’s cousin, a young man of barely eighteen who had generously plowed the fields and sown the spring crops in Charley’s absence. Charley’s aunt was even more thankful for the opportunity than the cousin. The young man had been counting the days until he was old enough to enlist, eager to do his part for the Union, but acquiring his own land changed his mind. In mid-June, when the hills surrounding the Elm Creek Valley were green and lush and the farmers’ fields sent forth shoots and stalks that promised a bountiful autumn, Eliza, clad in mourning black from head to toe, moved back to Williamsport to live with her mother and sister. Eliza’s mother confided to Dorothea that although the sale of the farm would give Eliza enough to live on frugally for several years, she intended to encourage her daughter to return to teaching after a suitable interval so that she might occupy the lonely hours with productive work.

Charley Stokey was only the first of many fatalities Company L suffered. Mrs. Barrows’s eldest son died of wounds suffered in the Battle of Williamsburg, and one of Dorothea’s former classmates succumbed to typhoid in a field hospital not far from where Charley had fallen. More Water’s Ford men perished in the pursuit of Confederate troops to the Chickahominy River. There were other casualties, men who had lost limbs or suffered blindness or were so debilitated by illness that they could not fight. As spring turned to summer, the first of these soldiers began returning home only to find themselves objects of intense curiosity or pity. They could not stir anywhere in the Elm Creek Valley without being pressed to describe their experiences, the adventures they had enjoyed, the horrors they had seen. The veterans Dorothea met bore their empty shirtsleeves or trouser legs or eye sockets as badges of honor, selfevident signs of their courage and heroism. Somber but determined, they seemed to want nothing more than to resume the lives they had left behind when they marched off to war. For the most severely wounded, this was not something easily accomplished. Some had sons old enough to help around their farms, sisters or wives who could mind shops and businesses, but others returned to their families unable to take up their former livelihoods.

“We must help them,” Anneke declared, tears in her eyes after Lorena described how a bachelor neighbor who had lost both legs had asked her to sew him a padded cushion for a cart so that he might hitch it to his mule and thus get to and from his job as a bank clerk without relying upon anyone to transport him. The Union Quilters agreed that the nation’s duty to wounded soldiers did not cease upon an honorable discharge, but the question remained what to do.

The wounded veterans’ needs evidently weighed heavily upon Anneke’s heart, for she declared that the funds raised by the Loyal Union Sampler, as she had named it, should be redirected to benefit those men. Her proposal sparked a heated debate among the Union Quilters, but in the end they decided that since they had asked for quilt-block donations to support Union Hall, they must use them for that purpose as planned. Instead of continuing to give all the money earned through their fund-raisers to the soldiers at the front, however, they would reserve thirty percent for the needs of their wounded veterans. Anneke seemed satisfied despite the defeat of her proposal, because the revised plan would allow them to begin helping the veterans immediately rather than waiting for the quilt to be finished.

The Union Quilters and the men of Abel’s construction team were engaged in a friendly competition to see who would complete their grand project first. Anneke collected their eightieth block on the same day Abel drove in the nail that completed the framing. A church sewing circle dropped off the blocks that pushed their total above one hundred on the same day a one-legged veteran finished the interior staircase. Hans jokingly complained that it was not a fair competition because the women could determine that they had received enough blocks and begin assembling the top whenever they chose, whereas the men could not decide that they had run out of time and forgo adding a roof or plastering the walls. To make things more fair, and because it would be easier to plan the layout if she knew how many blocks the quilt would contain, Anneke settled upon 121 blocks, or eleven rows of eleven blocks apiece, framed by a floral appliqué border. She told the Union Quilters that she and Prudence would begin the border right away rather than wait for the central rows to be collected, arranged, and sashed, and anyone who wished to help would be welcome to join them.

Overwhelmed with other responsibilities, Dorothea gave the committee her regrets. They apparently had not expected her to assist with the quilt assembly, for they regarded her with surprise, and Constance said, “Of course not, Dorothea. Your days have only the same number of hours as anyone else’s.” Dorothea wished for a few extra. She felt as if she were never at rest, and she rarely completed more than half of the items on her daily to-do list. Mrs. Hennessey was a tremendous help around the house and she doted upon Abigail, but the responsibilities of running Two Bears Farm fell to Dorothea alone. She had not realized how much she and Thomas had relied on each other while making the countless daily decisions and handling the unexpected problems that confronted the farm. The hired men knew their jobs well and performed their duties ably, and Hans was only a short ride away if an emergency cropped up, but Dorothea greatly missed being able to find Thomas in the fields, barn, or study and seek his advice. Letters were too slow and too unpredictable for matters requiring an immediate decision, so Dorothea had gradually become accustomed to deciding on her own. In the first few months of the war, when confronted with an unforeseen problem or opportunity, she would consult Thomas by mail and wait to hear from him before taking action. When ten acres went up for sale along the northern boundary of their land, she proposed that they acquire it for pasture, and then waited three weeks for Thomas’s reply before she went ahead with the purchase. Over time she grew impatient with such delays and would sometimes pose a question in a letter to Thomas but chose for herself before his reply arrived. Sometimes she asked herself what Thomas would prefer, but more and more often, she simply followed her own instincts. Eventually, she simply made the necessary decisions and informed Thomas after the fact. She had little choice, and she knew he would not be offended. If he had wanted a wife who could not think for herself, he wouldn’t have married her.

But what of other wives whose husbands had gone off to war? Dorothea considered herself quite independent and was accustomed to speaking her mind, yet even she noticed a subtle but unmistakable increase in her confidence and self-reliance since she had been obliged to run the farm on her own. How much greater the change must be for those wives left at home who, through habit and custom, had deferred to their husbands in all matters. Of course, as a mother of a young child, she had constraints upon her freedom, but it was a new and strange sensation to discover that for the first time in her life, she need please no one but herself in matters small but consequential—when to retire for the night, what to prepare for supper. She would gladly relinquish her new independence to have Thomas home and safe, but it was not her choice to make, so she supposed she ought to take what satisfaction from the situation she could.

If women like her all across the valley—all across the North, she could well imagine—were enjoying a new and unexpected liberty, she refused to take a step backward and allow a small-town mayor to intimidate her into giving up even one tiny part of hers. Thomas’s lawyer friend had advised her on a course of action, and now she was determined to embark upon it.

One afternoon, she saddled her favorite bay mare and called on the Bergstrom family. Hans spotted her first as she crossed the meadow near the young apple orchard Gerda had planted near the barn. “Gerda’s Folly,” her brother called it, mostly in jest, but it seemed to Dorothea that the trees thrived, although none had yet borne fruit.

Hans inspected the horse and praised Dorothea for the fine care she was giving it; it was no small matter to him, for he had bred the horse himself. He was making quite a name for himself as a horse farmer, not only in the Elm Creek Valley but also in surrounding counties.

“Still holding out?” she teased him, handing him the reins and accepting his assistance down from her horse. Since the first rumors of war had begun circulating through the valley and they discovered their mutual abhorrence of violence, they had to pretend to wager over which of them would give in to the relentless appeals to their patriotism, loyalty, and duty—and fears of insults, ostracism, or worse—and join the army. Hans insisted against all common sense that Dorothea was more likely to put on a uniform than he.

“Still holding out,” he replied, “although I endure the shame better than my poor wife does.”

“Anneke, ashamed?” Dorothea shook her head. “I can’t believe it. She adores you. I assure you she’s never said a single critical word about you that I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s not her way,” he said ruefully. “She doesn’t criticize me. Instead she praises all the brave souls who have enlisted, and reads aloud stories of heroism from the
Atlantic Monthly
, and makes impassioned speeches about the importance of preserving the Union and freeing the slaves. What she may not understand is that I agree with her, mostly. I believe the men who enlisted are brave, though also misguided. I like stories of heroism as much as anyone, although I don’t think heroism requires me to kill my fellow man.”

“Holding fast to your honorable convictions, though you may earn the enmity of everyone around you, is another form of heroism.”

“Tell that to Anneke. And to Gerda. She’s lost patience with our Mr. Lincoln and his slow, measured steps toward abolition. She wants slavery to end now, today, by force of arms if necessary, with no compensation offered to owners who voluntarily renounce slavery.”

Dorothea didn’t think much of Mr. Lincoln’s compensation proposals herself. “Gerda wants all slaves everywhere to be free, but especially Joanna.” Dorothea understood. She too was haunted by the faces of the runaways who were recaptured in their home on the day they were betrayed. “We sheltered two that night, a husband and a wife.”

“I remember,” said Hans, brushing the bay’s coat until it glistened like silk.

“I wish I could know what had become of them, but unlike Gerda, I don’t have an owner’s name or location.” She hesitated. “Sometimes I wish Gerda didn’t either.”

Hans paused and regarded her curiously. “Why not?”

“If, like me, Gerda didn’t even know where to begin, she might not waste so much time on a search that I fear is doomed to fail.” Dorothea reconsidered her words. “I don’t mean that the search isn’t noble, but she persists against all logic and all hope, and I worry that she’s exhausting herself and making herself vulnerable to melancholy.”

“Gerda has good reason to continue the search.”

“Yes, of course.” Instinctively, Dorothea glanced out the barn door, though it was unlikely anyone who didn’t already know the secret would have come upon them unnoticed. “And for Joanna’s sake, I hope she succeeds. But what will this mean for your family?”

Hans resumed brushing the horse. “I love the boy as much as if he were my own son. Anneke feels the same. But how can we hope that Gerda fails? She still believes that Joanna will be found and freed, and that a Union victory will hasten that day. As for me, I think Joanna is long gone, but if it does my sister any good to hope . . .” His voice trailed off and he shrugged.

“I suppose you could be right,” said Dorothea, although she was not sure how much good Gerda’s relentless, fruitless search was doing her. “Who am I to say there’s no chance?”

Hans shrugged in response and with a sigh, Dorthea went into the house to find Gerda and Anneke, entering through the kitchen door without knocking, as was the habit between their families. “Gerda?” she called, finding the kitchen empty. “Anneke?”

Hans had built his family a fine home, with two stories and an attic, four rooms downstairs and five above, with an innovative, efficient cookstove in the kitchen, a massive fireplace in the front room, and all the modern conveniences that were available at the time. He had hauled the gray stones to the site from riverbanks and creek beds, from his own land and from the countryside for miles around. He had taken one large limestone boulder to a stonecutter, who had squared it off and engraved it with the words
Bergstrom 1858
. This cornerstone had inspired Dorothea’s plan to engrave donors’ names on limestone markers for Union Hall, and that same stonecutter had donated his services in exchange for a prominent stone near the front entrance bearing his own name and profession.