Alice's Tulips: A Novel (30 page)

Nealie glanced up at me, surprised that I would ask such a delicate question, but she was dying to know the truth, too.

“Not at all, sis,” Mrs. Kittie says cheerfully. “A suit of clothes, some gloves, a diamond stickpin. Oh, I am not such a simpleton as some might think, for he did not get my spondulicks. That’s what my first husband called his money. I like the sound of that, don’t you? Spondulicks. I am sorry things did not work out with Mr. Howard, for I liked him very well, but he did not care a pin for me.” She touched a napkin to her eyes, although they were as dry as mine. Then she laughed and says, “But I am not in the least sorry. Can you imagine a better way for a rich old woman to enjoy herself than in dalliance with a young husband. You see, he will go to jail for bigamy, whilst I”—she put her hand on her breast—“I will simply be an object for sympathy.”

“You should have a stayed a maiden lady,” says Nealie, helping herself to a raspberry tart, then pushing the plate to me before Mrs. Kittie could claim the last one.

“No such thing, sis.”

“Have you heard from him?” I asks, handing Mrs. Kittie my cup for more tea.

“Indeed. He writes that it is all a misunderstanding, and that he is sick to dying with missing me. Hannibal is a poor place to be sick,” she replies, pouring the tea. “He has fever and was taken with the shakes from noon until sundown. It is lovesickness, he claims, but I wrote back, ‘Good morning, Mr. Ague.’ ” She chuckled. “Oh, it is capital how I have used him. Don’t you see?”

And I suppose we did. Except for being the object of conversation, which Mrs. Kittie does not seem to mind, she has had herself a good time, and no harm done—to her, at any rate. She disremembers all the trouble her foolishness caused me. But her cheerful nature and her raspberry tarts encourage my forgiveness.

I stopped at this point in my letter yesterday, intending to finish at my leisure, since with the snow, we have time on our hands. But just now, Nealie’s husband stopped on his way to Slatyfork to inquire if we needed anything or would like to make the trip. It is cold again, and the sore throat is very bad in town, so I did not volunteer to accompany him. But I said I would be grateful if he would carry this letter to you to post. I must hurry to finish. I told Mr. Smead if he is to be away again, he must send Nealie to us, for it is too cold for her to stay in the house alone with the baby, but he does not expect to leave, as his business outside is done with. I did not inquire what business that was.

While Annie toasts bread on a fork over the fire for Mr. Smead, I hasten to finish. I have not time to respond to your last letter, but will say quickly that I got a good laugh over your remark that as Charlie has traded away his watch, I will not have to make the watch fob for him out of Mother Bullock’s hair. You know how I despise hair decoration on one’s person, and I thank you for finding good in the worst of situations. Now, bully, bully for James in his promotion. You did not say, but I think I know how you celebrated.

In haste,

A. Bullock

February 22, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

After Mr. Smead left that day, we were not aware that Joybell was gone. I think I have told you she is afraid of men,
most especially Mr. Frank Smead, so it was no surprise that she had hidden herself. Annie and I thought she had crept into the bedroom or sneaked up into the loft, but after an hour or so, we discovered she was not here at all but had slipped out of the house. We were greatly distressed, because the snow was coming on very fast, a fierce sideways snow, blown by a wind from the north. Annie searched the barn, then the outbuildings, with no luck, and she returned to the house half-frozen. So I put on my shawl and old boots and said I would look in the garden, where Joybell liked to sit with Piecake while Mother Bullock worked the earth. My head was down against the angry storm, the coldest I ever was in. Still, the flakes pricked my face like ice needles. I started toward the garden. But the snow was thick and the wind swirled it about so that I lost my bearings and wandered around in the whiteout. The cold made me dumpish, so I tried to fix my eyes on a single flake and watch it fall to the ground, but there were so many of the flakes that I could not make out just one. I dared not sit down for even a minute for fear I would not be able to get up, so I stumbled on, my arms outstretched in hopes of encountering a familiar post or rail. Once I stepped on ice and broke through, my foot plunging into freezing water. I tried to return to the house, but I didn’t know where it was. I called over and over for Joybell, but it was a screaming winter storm, and my throat got so raw, I could barely hear myself. I think I was almost done for, when I felt icy fingers on my arm pulling me, and in a moment, I had grasped Joybell’s little hand. She drew me toward her until I bumped into a haystack, where she had burrowed to keep out of the storm.

“Is he gone?” Joybell asks. She yelled to be heard above the wind.

“Yes. Yes. Gone.”

“Us go back.”

“I don’t know the way. The storm is too bad,” I rasp, knowing the little girl could feel the cold but not see the thickness of the snow.

“Joybell knows,” she says. She gripped my hand, and before I could protest, she had started out into the snow.

“We’ll be lost,” I say.

I think Joybell might have laughed, but with the wind, I could not be sure. But why wouldn’t she laugh? If she can find her way in good weather, why would a snowstorm deter a blind girl? I do not know if her affliction gives her a keener sense of direction or if, being blind, she is not as easily distracted by snow. But in a few minutes, we were inside the house. Annie was frantic with worry, for I had been gone more than an hour, maybe three. She would have gone back into the blizzard herself, if she had not feared Joybell would return and find her gone. We were afraid Joybell had frosted her hands, and Annie wrapped her in quilts and put her to bed with hot bricks, but there was no damage, and the next morning, Joybell did not have even catarrh. She is as good as new.

I was not so lucky. Now, Lizzie, I don’t want you to worry, for the danger is past and that is why I have not wrote till now, but I froze one of my feet bad, and it had to be cut. The pain started after I began to warm up. First there was numbness then a tingling in my toes, finally a sharp pain that grew until I could not stand on the foot. Nor could I bear to put my my feet by the fire, for the heat made the pain worse. So I soaked them in cool water. That brought a little relief, but not much. I asked Annie to take down our copy of Dr. Foote’s
Plain Home Talk,
for with such a name, the doctor must have advice on feet. But there was not a word to be found on frozen feet (although there is a chapter entitled “Sexual Starvation,” which I marked to read at another time).

The pain grew worse, but I could get no relief, even from the laudanum left over from Mother Bullock’s sickness. Nor could we go for help, for with the storm, we were confined to the house. At first toes of my right foot looked blanched, like the skin of a plucked chicken, then they turned black, and I feared the worse. I felt terrible to think I might die, for I never cared to pass away young. Then I began to consider how awful it would be for Charlie to live through war and prison, only to come
home to find both mother and wife were no more. How strange to think he should survive the rebellion, while Mother Bullock and I would perish. Such thoughts swirled around in my head for days, for the storm went on and on, until I lost all track of time. The cold was awful, and we took the little girls into bed with us at night to keep them warm. We feared we would run out of wood and kept the fire so low that one of the teacups cracked when Annie poured hot water into it.

A time came when I began to believe my death was imminent—and deserved, for I have not told you all and there is something to atone for—and I considered writing final letters to you and Charlie and giving Annie instructions for disposing of my possessions. I told her we should have dug a second grave last fall when we prepared the one for Mother Bullock, for if I left this world, she would have to wrap me in a winding-sheet and put me into the hayloft until the ground thawed. Then, suddenly, the storm stopped as abruptly as if someone had drawn a curtain across it, and the sun appeared. Annie went outside for a look around and returned to say the storm was done for and the roof already smoked with snow. She wrapped her feet in gunnysacking and covered herself in both our shawls for her trip to Slatyfork to fetch the doctor. But when she opened the door, we heard sleigh bells, and there across the fresh snow came Mr. Smead. He had been snowbound in town and was just now returning home, and he had stopped to make sure Annie and I had survived all right. One look at my foot and he ordered Annie to bundle me up, and he carried me to the sleigh, and in an instant, we were on our way to town.

Lizzie, the details of it would shock you. Suffice it to say the toes have got left behind at the surgeon’s and most of the foot, as well. I am lucky to have any of my foot at all, and had the storm lasted a few more days, I would not be here to write you of it. The surgeon says he has had to remove the arms and feet of many soldiers who were left on the battlefield and froze their limbs. I suppose I am lucky I had to dispense with little more than those few little knobs of flesh. Still, I am greatly taken with
feeling sorry for myself, thinking my little toes are every bit as precious to me as arms and legs are to the soldiers.

The doctor said I might stay in the surgery to recover, but Mrs. Kittie heard of the operation and carried me to her house, which is as neat as a new pin, with a warm, clean bed for me and rich food. Her cook cared for my needs, the surgeon attended me every day, and if I had not felt worse than a stewed witch, I should have enjoyed myself considerable. “You will feel better when it stops hurting,” Mrs. Kittie tells me. When it did, the doctor pronounced me as good as I would ever be, with no sign of infection, and Nealie and Mr. Smead collected me. Now, Annie watches over me. I hobble around pretty good but think I will need the aid of a crutch for a long time, perhaps forever. And I must keep my feet warm, for when they are cold, there is a terrible stinging in the toes that are no longer there. Well, when I am old, I do not have to worry about corns hurting me on that foot.

Annie blames herself for what happened to me. “I almost could have see her if I’d thought, for I knowed the hay was her hidey-hole. Oh, I am full of misery, lady. I’ve been that bad.”

She had not been bad, I told her. The fault was mine. You will understand, Lizzie, when I tell you I chose to put on my patched old boots to go out into the snow, even knowing the right one was badly worn through. I could have worn the new ones you sent, but I wanted to save them for town, to make the ladies envious. So it is my vanity that has caused the loss of part of my poor sacred foot. Perhaps the dream last fall was a warning for me, not for Charlie.

I mean it when I say you must not worry, for I am, as a general thing, middling. It is quite certain that I shall live, and I have been such an object of my own pity that you may save yours for another occasion. I would have wrote you from Mrs. Kittie’s, but I did not want to alarm you before I could assure you that I was doing finely. But please to send a salve from the druggist in Galena, as all that is to be had in Slatyfork is lard.

Since I spend so much time in bed with my foot propped up, Nealie and Annie, with the help of Mr. Smead, moved my bed
into the main room, so I sleep there. Piecake insisted that her bed be moved beside mine, so she is my constant companion. She is too young to understand the surgery, but I think she knows something is amiss, because this morning, she climbed into bed beside me and patted my face and says, “Poor Mama.” She began calling me “Mama” last week, and I think I like it. I hope when the time comes, it will not be as painful to give her up as it was my toes.

With kind love to the girls, keeping
a measure for yourself, if you please,
Alice Keeler Bullock

March 10, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

You are the best of sisters. The warm slippers and three pairs of woolen stockings arrived in the last post, along with your kind letter of sympathy. I never knew what toes were for but have learned they are of great help in keeping one’s balance. Without them, I wobble like a rum pot and must use a stick to get about. I sit as much as I can and have done a good deal of piecing. I cannot get to town, except with Nealie, since I cannot walk so far and the horse has died. We hoped the tough old cuss would last through planting, but he took sick. We bled him until he couldn’t stand up, but it did no good. Annie found him in the barn breathing his last and drove him into the woods, which may sound cruel, but crueler yet would be if he had putrified in the barn and we had had to smell him, for we had no way of hauling away the corpse. Even at that, he died not far away, and we can smell his spicy odor when the wind blows from a certain direction.

Now we must decide how we will do the planting. Annie and I have talked it over and agreed not to ask Nealie or anyone else for help. Annie says we must trust the Lord. Well, it seems that the more I trust, the more I receive, so perhaps she is right.

Oh, Lizzie, what good news that you are going back to your
old house. Do you think General and Mrs. Grant will return to their little High Street house when the war is over? If so, you would be the neighbor of the most famous man in the world—more famous than Mr. Lincoln, I think. Why, I can just picture you dressed in your blue with the white lace, mauve ribbons in your hair, taking tea in your parlor with Mrs. General Grant and talking about the glorious victory, for surely it is coming.

With that hope, I close,

Alice Bullock

March 28, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

I am tired, too tired to quilt. My fingers might as well be wet noodles for all the good they do at holding a needle. I have but little time to myself, so I shall pen you only a few lines. Annie and I have been planting these last days, and it is the hardest work we ever did. I told you that the horse had died and we would not be beholden to anyone for help. So Annie put on the harness and drew the plow, while I held it, and together we went back and forth plowing the field. I think it would not be so bad if we could change places, but my foot is bad for walking, so I could not do the pulling. As it was, my infirmity made it mightly slow work. Mrs. Kittie stopped this afternoon and laughed at the two of us and repeated a song the Mormons sang as they pushed their handcarts across the prairie: “Some must push and some must pull, as merrily over the plains we go.” I did not think planting was such a merry venture and was about to ask if she would take a turn for Annie, when Mrs. Kittie pulled out a hamper filled with fruitcake and sandwiches and handed them around.