Alice's Tulips: A Novel (13 page)

That night, Mother Bullock offered to read the Bible chapter aloud, freeing me for sewing. I was never so glad to hear the Bible in my life. I have now passed the story of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt. She was lucky it happened in Genesis and she did not have to endure the rest of the Old Testament. I am thinking of reading two chapters each day to get this Bible reading done with, but it would be just my luck that the war would end before I finished, so I would have doubled up for nothing.

It is good news that James has tempered his drinking. Your way of rewarding him is as clever a thing as I ever heard, but, Lizzie, your back is not good, and I fear you will injure it. You must be limber as a circus acrobat. I would like to try it with Charlie when he returns, but he will wonder where I got the notion and conclude I was stepping whilst he was away. I hope he has not stepped. You hear terrible things about temptations for soldiers.

I bid you an affectionate farewell.

Alice

December 26, 1863

Dear Lizzie,

I have had one Christmas with Charlie and two with Mother Bullock. Now, which do you think I like best?

You have not heard from me before now because I have been working—as a domestic. No, I don’t intend to tell Mama, so neither of you need worry that I would hurt your standing in society. Lizzie, I didn’t mind it one bit, and I wasn’t treated common, and I made twenty dollars. It was real nice being in a good house among pretty things again, and the work wasn’t a bit hard, although I cleaned from attic to cellar, then whitewashed kitchen and parlor. Mrs. Kittie Wales complained at the last quilting that she was too feeble to do her work, although she is a big, strong woman, as far as I can see. She said she would hire someone but was afraid of being robbed blind. Mother Bullock volunteered me. I was surprised, but now I wonder if the two of them had decided on it previous. Well, I’ll say this for Mother Bullock: She doesn’t care so much what people think, not when it comes to hard work and money anyway. When I said I did not know that Charlie would like me hiring out, Mother Bullock says, “Pride causes many an empty stomach. If the choice was Charlie’s, I expect he’d rather me and you would eat.” Well, I expect that was my choice, too.

I did not waste the money, as when I bought that hat. My dollar is a goner on that score. But I spent part of it on a present for Charlie, which I put into his Christmas box. Me and Mother Bullock sent him gingersnaps and condensed milk and cheese. She knit him two pairs of stockings (I added a note saying we were concerned about his “sole”), and I made him a warm shirt. Then I spent four dollars on a silver watch. The watch being for a soldier, it was engraved free, with “Charles Bullock from Alice Bullock, Loving Wife, December 25, 1863.” I am disappointed that it is only silver, not gold, but Mother Bullock says we need the money for ourselves, and it was the best I could do. Flour has gone to four dollars, and cheese is fifty cents.

We had as nice a Christmas as we could under the circumstances—the circumstances being Charlie was away and we are poor. I made a pocket for Mother Bullock out of the yellow goods from Nealie, and Mother Bullock gave me a little gold cross I never saw before. She said it had belonged to her angel mother. Mrs. Kittie gave me a good cloth coat, but since I already have one, I passed it on to Annie, who never had a woolen coat before. Mother Bullock and I knit hat and mittens for Joybell. We paid extra for the soft wool—bright blue, the color of her eyes, although Joybell doesn’t know it. I wonder if she knows about color.

“What’s it?” Joybell asks when I put it in her hands.

“Mittens. And a hat,” I says.

Annie examined them. “Not so hatty as cappy,” she says, putting the hat-cap on Joybell. I never saw a color suit anyone so well. Joybell wore them all day and had to be coaxed to take off the mittens at dinner.

Because it was Christmas, I put on my yellow satin that shows off my shoulders. Mother Bullock asked wasn’t I too fancy for a log house, but I replied I might as well get the use out of it, because it would be out of fashion by the time the war is over.

“Not in Slatyfork,” she says. She is right about that.

We had invited Lucky to join the four of us for dinner; Mother Bullock said it being Christmas, we should include him. Annie didn’t mind, and Joybell doesn’t know he’s different. Only Aunt Darnell would object, and she is still away in Quincy—a Christmas blessing indeed. We had a fine dinner of ham, which we had smoked ourselves last fall, gravy, potatoes, ash cakes (pancakes made of cornmeal, water, and salt, baked on a hot brick), applesauce, and plum pudding (which does not suit me any better than it does you), but no chess pie or Lady Baltimore cake, as at home.

Mother Bullock didn’t say no when I got out the cherry bounce, although she did not take any herself. Me and Annie and Lucky had a glass, and we were having as good a time as ever since Annie arrived, when we heard sleigh bells. It was almost
like Christmas at home, with friends arriving. In a minute, the Smead cutter came into the clearing. When Lucky saw who it was, he ran off. Annie made her excuses, but I said it was Christmas and she and Joybell should stay for the fun. Annie is as good as any of us and deserves to enjoy herself, but I had my own reason for wanting her to stay: The more people in the house, the less likely I would be cornered by Mr. Samuel Smead. I did not have to worry on that score, because he divided his time amongst all of us, and if anyone got more of it, then it was little Joybell, although Annie went distracted when he took the little girl onto his lap. And I myself did not care to hear him say, “They must whip you plenty to make you such a good girl.” I know it for a fact that Annie does not lay a hand on her.

I think Mother Bullock had a sociable time, because she told me to fetch another jar of cherry bounce and said that when she was a girl, it wasn’t Christmas without a candy pulling. So nothing would do but that we cook up a batch of molasses taffy, and when it was done, we stretched and stretched it, then made ourselves most sick by eating too much. When Annie said she would take Joybell to the shack to bed, Mr. Samuel Smead offered to drive her in the sleigh, because it was too cold to walk and the bells would make Joybell laugh. But Nealie said a sleigh would not go through the woods. Then Mother Bullock said it being Christmas, Annie and Joybell should stay the night with us.

Mr. Samuel did manage to take my right hand and say it would look prettier with a ring on it. “Why, I have the only ring I need on the other,” I reply, holding up my left hand, with Charlie’s band on it.

“You tease,” he says, then whispers, “You know I don’t care to be teased.

“Oh la.”

When Mother Bullock told Nealie I’d bought Charlie a watch with the money I’d made working for Mrs. Kittie, Nealie looked surprised. “If I’d known you could be hired, Alice, I would have done it myself. I need help with my sewing, and you are the
best needlewoman I know. Would you come to me? You could stay a week and not have to worry about going back and forth in the weather.”

“We have need of her here,” Mother Bullock answers for me, but this time I was glad.

“That’s too bad,” Mr. Frank Smead says. “Me and Sammy have to go to Missouri for horses, and I would like it if Mrs. Bullock would keep Nealie company. I worry with niggers running about.”

“Bushwhackers, too,” Nealie adds.

“Perhaps Miss Annie and her daughter could stay with you,” Mr. Samuel Smead says.

“Oh, I can’t sew,” Annie says quick.

“Maybe it mighten not be such a bad thing,” Mother Bullock says at last. “It’s not good that Nealie’s alone.”

So here is the outcome: In a very few days, after the men leave, Nealie will come for me, and I shall stay as long as I like, up to a week. Lizzie, I think it will be a good time. I told Nealie that good meals and fun would be pay enough for my time, but she intends to give me cash, and I do not mind starting the year a few dollars ahead. There is nothing wrong with working out to make a living.

So, now you know how we spend Christmas in the country. Please to tell me the particulars of your Christmas in society. And give me the details of that “special Christmas treat” you had in store for James.

With regards for the New Year

to my most worthy sister and her excellent husband,

Alice Keeler Bullock

Women quilted their social beliefs. Precluded from politics and an active role in national affairs, they made opinionated quilts to express their views on temperance, suffrage, politics, and slavery. During the Civil War, women made quilts of patriotic blue or gray to keep their soldiers warm. Northern women donated quilts to the United States Sanitary Commission to raise money for soldiers’ relief. Confederate women helped pay for a gunboat with the sale of their work. Seamstresses on both sides of the conflict designed quilts with stars and stripes, eagles and flags, and appliqued or inked sentiments. One quilt design, the Pea Ridge Lily, is named for the battle it survived.

January 30, 1864

Dear Lizzie

I am not so fond of the cold weather as I once was. Lately, it has been disagreeable in the extreme. A sleety snow commenced the day I was to go to Nealie, and I thought she would not dare venture out to collect me. She did, however, saying she would have come even on shank’s mare, but the roads were good
enough for a sleigh, pulled by a mare with four shanks. Mother Bullock wrapped hot bricks in flannel for our feet, and we made the return trip uncommon warm.

Nealie’s place was cold as the graveyard, for the fire had gone out. While Nealie busied herself inside the house, I chopped wood to keep from taking a chill, and since I am pretty good with the ax, I chopped enough to last my stay. The kitchen was entirely comfortable when I went inside, and Nealie had a stew heating on the cookstove. We ate it with the best loaf of bread I have tasted since leaving Fort Madison. One cannot make such a good loaf of wheaten bread in a hearth’s brick oven, which is either too hot or too cold. (But then, Annie’s ash cakes would not taste half so good made on a range, so there is the trade.) Well, Lizzie, I ate so much in my six days at Nealie’s, I can barely button my dress and will have to wear a corset—corsets not being in general use here except for church and formal events. I am beginning to think Slatyfork is not such a bad place after all.

Nealie had asked me to come for dressmaking, and you never saw anyone with such a head for style. I made her a Zouave jacket with brass buttons and gold trim, and it is a smasher, although Nealie surely does not need it. She has more clothes than anybody I ever knew, even Persia Chalmers at home. That is because Nealie’s father took a trunk of clothes in payment for a horse and sent them to her, she said. But none fit, so I spent my time ripping out seams and adding and subtracting so that Nealie could wear the pretty things. Do women in Galena favor the garibaldi skirt? Nealie has heard they are popular, but Slatyfork being so much behind the times, we do not know, and I said I would inquire of you.

It snowed harder than ever the first three days I was there, and we were snowbound, just me and Nealie and Jack Frost. We could not have left that house if General Lee’s army was marching toward us. So we built up the fires and kept snug, and at night I curled up in a real feather bed—the first I have slept in in over a year—covered with as many quilts as I needed. Nealie has
dozens. “I see you made yourself the required thirteen before you married,” I says.

“Oh, no. You know I quilt only so-so. Father got those in trade, too.”

“Does he ever sell a horse for money?” I asks.

“Not so much these days.”

Still, he must do a good business, I thought, because Nealie has many fine things, including jewelry, which she does not wear much. Mr. Samuel Smead was wrong in saying she would have demanded the ring with the red stone, because Nealie does not seem to care much for baubles. I did
not
take the ring with me, of course. It was tied up in a handkerchief at home, until I decide what to do with it. I would like to throw it away, but what if it is valuable after all? Perhaps I could send it to you to be sold.

While Nealie wants for nothing, she has a great secret, as I discovered, and I would not trade places with her for all the dresses on earth. Here are the particulars:

You know how I like to lie abed, won’t get up for less than five cents if I don’t have to. So with the feather tick and warm quilts at Nealie’s, and no Mother Bullock to chide me, I abused the privilege, not rising until after sunup. Even then, I took my time about it and did not put in my appearance until Nealie had done chores and prepared breakfast. She did not mind my laziness. Quite the contrary. She said she enjoyed doing for me and urged me to sleep as late as I wanted. “What does it matter if the sewing is done at eight in the morning or at noon?” she asks. You can see why I like her. But I vowed I would surprise her at least once with a warm kitchen and breakfast, so one morning, I got out of bed well before dawn, and, quiet as a spider, I sneaked down the stairs, shoes in hand. But I heard voices in the kitchen and stopped. I didn’t want to intrude, of course. Oh, all right, Lizzie, I was nosy and wanted to find out what was going on without anybody knew I was there.