Alice's Tulips: A Novel (7 page)

“You mean washing shirts and plowing fields?” I asks. That brain is getting me into trouble for sure.

“I expect you know what I mean,” she says. “It is a step toward hell.”

“Well, hurrah for hell!” I says. (No, I did not say it, but I thought it.)

Lizzie, they played waltzes, schottisches, and polkas, and I would not have missed it for any consideration. We did not have dance cards. Instead, the men bought tickets, which they presented to the ladies, and it was considered disloyal to the Union
to turn down any man. There was a blacksmith as big as an oak tree and stinking of sweat, but I couldn’t refuse him. Fat as he was, he was as light as egg whites when he danced. I took a turn with a schoolteacher who had feet as small as a girl’s, but he was clumsy, and I think he must be the one who started the tear in the ruffle.

He stepped on my arch, as well, so I hoped to sit out the next dance or three, but then a gentleman held up a ticket, and before I knew it, I was whisked onto the dance floor by the handsomest man in attendance—Mr. Samuel Smead. He is more nimble than any man I ever danced with, except for Charlie. We flew around the floor, and many people stopped to admire us, for you know I can keep up. When the dance was over and another man came to claim me, Mr. Smead presented me with two tickets, instead of one, so, for the benefit of the Union, I could not refuse him. Each time one dance ended, he gave me a ticket for the next, until they were all used up, and then he went to buy more.

The moment he left, Mother Bullock, the spoilsport, rushed over and pinched my elbow between her bony thumb and forefinger and says, “For shame. You are Charlie Bullock’s wife, and you are making a spectacle of yourself. I forbid you to dance, for I am shocked.” Mother Bullock shocks easy. She leaned close to me. Mother Bullock does not bathe much, as she considers it a hazzard to her health, and she gave off a peculiar odor.

I guess it was the fault of learning about my bad brain, for instead of turning red with embarrassment and looking for a place to hide, I blurted out, “I am dancing for the Union, and proud of it. If dancing raises enough money to win the war and bring Charlie home, then how can you deny me, old woman?” Mr. Smead came up then with a handful of tickets, and I left her sputtering over a reply. I wondered if she might leave without me, and I then would have to stay with Jennie Kate or beg a ride with Nealie. But when the ball was over, I found her asleep in our wagon.

After the last dance of the evening, Mr. Smead says, “I never
expected to meet a girl as pretty and accomplished as you in this place. You can expect to see more of me.”

“My husband is a Union soldier,” I says primly. Then he looked so forlorn that I had to laugh, and he took my hand and kissed it! Oh, Lizzie, it is such fun to flirt, and no harm done. It’s not right, me living with a sour old woman while Charlie is off having his fun. It would serve him right if I was to have an admirer.

With love to all from your pretty
and accomplished sister with a selfish brain.
Alice Keeler Bullock

P.S. I almost forgot to tell you. Charlie was out on a scout and shot another Reb. He wounded him bad, because there was lots of blood on the ground, but he doesn’t know if he killed him. I should have told Mother Bullock that my dancing bought her son a dollar’s worth of bullets.

The log cabin quilt begins with the small center square, usually red. Strips of fabric are added to the sides—darker shades on two adjacent sides, lighter shades on the other two, so that the block is divided diagonally into darks and lights. Strips are added until the block reaches the desired size. Then blocks are assembled with the darks and lights forming their own overall pattern—Barn Raising, Sunshine and Shadow, Straight Furrows, Streak of Lightning, Windmill Blades. Legend says that these quilts played a part in the Abolitionist movement. Runaway slaves knew that when a Log Cabin quilt was made with a black center and hung on a clothesline or thrown over a fence, the house was a safe stop on the Underground Railroad.

August 12, 1863

Sister Elizabeth,

I know I lie when it suits me, even to you, but I didn’t lie about the ruffle, so you best take back what you wrote. I think you are not nice to say what you did. Someone stepped on the ruffle, just like I said, and it couldn’t be helped. It was for the
good of the Union. But since you have gone off your feed, I’ll send you my pink bonnet to make up for it, even though the bonnet is nicer and costlier. Please to be particular to see that it is not torn. Don’t you ever ask to borrow from me again, either.

Your sister,

Mrs. C. Bullock

August 17, 1863

Dear Lizzie,

I wrote you before that we have had night riders in the area, and they do terrible things. All about here are afraid, especially me and Mother Bullock, since we have no man to protect us, except for Lucky, and he’s more afraid of the bushwhackers than we are. They plunder what they can and destroy the rest, and are worse than rodents, for even a pack rat will leave you something. Last week, they set fire to a farmer’s cornfield just three miles away, and when his wife tried to stop them, they did awful things to her—vulgar things, so I won’t tell you, but you can guess. I think I would rather die than be ravished, and I think I would kill any man who tried it. Then they slit her throat. So everybody here keeps a close watch these days. Me and Mother Bullock had been worried because there were horse tracks on our land, coming from near the creek. We paid it little mind at first, thinking it might be soldiers going home, although most of them travel by shank’s mare and stay to the road.

Then things began to disappear. I told you about the shoat. We lost hens and eggs, too, but thought it was weasels. But weasels wouldn’t take a crock of butter from the springhouse or steal the washing off your bushes, including that brown dress, which was ruined when I burnt it last winter. So then I got to wondering if Lucky was stealing from us. After all, the contraband we heard talk in Slatyfork said it was the slave way to get back at Old Massa by stealing from him. And Lucky was brought up in slavery ways. In case it isn’t Lucky sneaking around, Mother
Bullock has begun tying the dog in front of the house each night. He has a loud bark and looks as mean as Stonewall Jackson, although he wouldn’t hurt anybody.

Then on Wednesday last, me and Mother Bullock came in from the fields three or two hours early, and when we reached the barn, we heard a squealing inside. Mother Bullock thought a fox or a coyote had got in, and real quiet, she sneaked into the house and took down the shotgun, which is just above the door, and she motioned for me to grab the pitchfork. We went inside the barn, but by then, everything was quiet, and I said maybe it was rats fighting.

She thought that over. “Rats don’t sound like folks laughing. Foxes, neither.” She squinted because it was dark in there, and looked around the barn “Hand me over the pitchfork. There’s something in that hay. You know how to use the shotgun, Alice?”

“Yes’m.”

“Then stand aside. I’ll poke the pile with this sharp pitchfork, and you shoot whatever comes out.” She talked loud, then waited a minute. When nothing happened, she took a step forward and yells, “I’m going to stick this fork all the way through this hay, then do it again, and you shoot it when it runs. You hear that?” She waited, then says, “You in there. Git!”

The hay moved a little, and pretty soon, a bony arm stuck out. Then came a girl behind it, wearing my brown dress! She sidled around the barn until she was out the door, us right behind her, and Mother Bullock pinned her against the wall with the fork. She was the sorriest thing I ever saw, so thin, the sun shone through her. It would take three of her to make a shadow.

She looked as if she had been used hard, but she didn’t appear dangerous, and I was a little disappointed and says, “I misdoubt we caught the midnight assassin.”

“You the one stealing from us?” Mother Bullock asks.

The girl didn’t answer, just kept looking back over her shoulder toward the barn.

“Girl, I asks you a question,” Mother Bullock says. But she still
wouldn’t say a word, just kept glancing from us to the barn door, scared green, acting rabbity.

Then it came to me. “There’s another in there.”

Mother Bullock jerked her head around and squeezed her eyes to see inside, but it was too dark to make out anything. “You go fire the shotgun in that hay,” she tells me.

“Yes’m.” I started for the door.

“No, lady!” the girl says, speaking for the first time.

I stopped and looked to Mother Bullock, who says, “She’s got a man in there, and they’re up to no good, stealing from hardworking folks that have got a son in the army of the republic.”

“Maybe her man’s a deserter,” I says. “Or a raider. Might be they’re the ones setting the fires.” I got all worked up and aimed the gun inside the barn.

“No!” the girl cries. She moved so fast that in no more time than it takes to tell it, she had jumped away from Mother Bullock and grabbed the shotgun out of my hands. “Stand off. I swan, I kilt before,” she says real fierce. But she was shaking.

“We wouldn’t have hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. “But I can’t abide a thief.”

“Can’t help it. It’s steal or starve,” she says, then calls into the barn, “Come on out now.”

We didn’t hear a sound from the barn, but of a sudden, there was a little girl standing in the doorway. She could have been six or four, just knee-high to a duck, and she was the prettiest girl ever you saw, with eyes cornflower blue and her hair the paler than pale yellow of buttercups.

“Come here, Joybell. You’ns come right here.”

Joybell ran forward—right into a fence post. She smacked her head so hard, she fell down and lay there as still as a rock. The string-bean girl set down the shotgun and ran to her. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at the two of them, but Mother Bullock shook her head at me.

“Maybe there’s more in there,” I says.

“If there was, they wouldn’t have sent the baby out. This girl-woman’s
just like a momma bird protecting her young. That’s how come she run out of the barn the way she did, to draw us away.” Mother Bullock moved toward the two of them but didn’t close in.

“Keep away,” says the girl, putting herself between Mother Bullock and Joybell. “You don’t have no least idea what I’ll do if you touch her.”

“I know some about doctoring. I could look, see how bad she bumped her head. We won’t hurt you,” Mother Bullock says. The girl-woman looked at Mother Bullock for a long time, deciding whether she could trust us. Then she shifted so that Mother Bullock could see the baby.

“Joybell, is it?” Mother Bullock asks.

The girl nodded. “Joybell Tatum. I’m Annie Tatum. Pleased to meet you.”

Mother Bullock knelt down and turned over the little girl. She had a long cut on her forehead from where she’d snagged it on a nail sticking out of the post, and it oozed out blood all over her face. “We’ll carry her into the house, out of the sun. Alice here will help you.”

I handed the gun to Mother Bullock and says to Annie, “You take her shoulders. I’ll carry her feet. How come she ran into that fence post? Was she looking at the sun?”

“Ain’t her fault. It’s the Lord’s. She was that way when she was born a baby.”

“She’s blind?” I asks.

“As a stone. If you’re going to help me tote her, you best set to.” I picked up my end of the baby, and we carried her into the house and laid her on my bed. Mother Bullock poured water into a basin, then took out a clean rag, and she wiped the girl’s forehead.

“She going to be all right, ain’t she?” Annie asks.

“Her head’s tore up bad. She might’ve caught it on a nail. I’ll mix up wheat flour and salt, but that won’t stop up all the blood. The only way I know to do that is sew her up.”

“Sew her?” Annie asks. “I cain’t do it.”

“Alice will.”

“I never sewed a person.”

“I guess you will now,” Mother Bullock says. “You’re the one thinks she’s so good at it. Get you a needle and a thread and hurry, before the poor little thing wakes up.”

“White thread or black?” I asks Annie.

“White. She’s a white girl. Cain’t you see that?”

I got out my sewing basket and cut a length of thread, then pulled it across a piece of candle to make it slide better through the skin. “Single thread or double?”

Mother Bullock thought that over. “Double. So it don’t pull out.”

I threaded the needle, then drew up a chair to the edge of the bed so I could lean over and see Joybell good. “You keep her head pinned down. I’ll hold the rest of her,” Mother Bullock tells Annie as she sponged fresh blood off Joybell’s head. She got a tight grip on her shoulders.

I took a deep breath and put the needle through the skin at the end of the gash. “What stitch?”

“What stitch?” Mother Bullock asks back.

“Feather stitch? Cross stitch? Buttonhole? I got to know what stitch to use.”

“Just stitch it!”