The Quilt Walk (2 page)

Abigail looked at me as if there was something wrong with my mother. Ma caught the look and said, “You need not fear, Abigail. I have my wits about me.” Then she took a broom handle and knocked it against a cushion on a chair. I understood her meaning, and cried out, “No, Ma. I’m sorry. Don’t whip me.”

She pretended to make a few more whacks, then said, “This is our secret, girls. Now go to the barn to play where the ladies can’t see you.” Before she left, she cut a piece of gingerbread for each of us.

That was the last time that Grandma Mouse suggested I learn to sew.

“Emmy Blue is helping in other ways,” Ma said whenever Grandma Mouse brought up the subject of my making a quilt to take to Golden.

“Well, I hope Colorado Territory is not so uncivilized that she will fail to become a proper young lady,” was Grandma Mouse’s reply.

That was exactly what I had hoped. And that was exactly why I was excited about going to Golden. After all, Golden was the Wild West. I’d be so busy watching out for Indians and hunting for gold that I’d never have to pick up a needle again.

Chapter Two

GETTING READY

G
randma Mouse and Grandpa Bluestone said Pa had no business taking Ma away from the farm, or me either, since it was the only home I’d ever known.

Ma would never say a word against Pa, especially to her mother, even if she didn’t agree with him. “Colorado Territory is such a healthy place for Emmy Blue to grow up,” Ma would say. “We’ll leave all the damps of the Mississippi behind us. And my husband will have a chance to become a businessman. It might be a little difficult at first, but Thomas knows best.”

“Best for whom?” Grandma Mouse sniffed. “Tom Hatchett thinks only—”

Ma cut her off. “I’ll have you say naught about my husband.”

“But you’re going as far away as the moon.”

“Not so far, Mother.”

“Well, it seems like it.”

“How far is it, Ma?” I asked.

She thought a moment. “Farther than sunset.”

Even though Grandma Mouse didn’t approve of our moving to Colorado Territory, she was at our house almost every day, helping Ma make cheese and sauerkraut and pickles, and to smoke hams and cure bacon for our trip. The three of us gathered nuts and made dried apples. Ma bought molasses and vinegar, barrels of flour and sugar in big cones wrapped in blue paper. She’d soak the paper in water to make blue dye—in case Colorado didn’t have dyes, she said. She packed bags of cornmeal and rice, coffee and tea, salt and saleratus, which some people called baking soda.

During the winter, Ma and Grandma Mouse and Aunt Catherine made candles and stitched sheets and pillowcases of dark cotton that wouldn’t show the dirt. And the three of them pieced quilts.

Pa told Ma to leave the quilts behind. “They get tore up too easy,” he said. But Ma put her foot down. “I’d as soon leave Emmy Blue behind as my quilts,” she told him in such a strong voice that Pa put up his hands in surrender. Still, he complained that the wagons would be packed to overflowing.

Ma’s quilts were special. She was known all over our part of Illinois for her fine stitching and precise piecework. She made a Feathered Star for her bed and a Twinkling Star for mine. Stars were her favorite design because, she said, we ought to sleep under stars. She’d even put a star into the baby-sized Medallion Quilt she’d made after my little sister Agnes Ruth died. Ma used scraps in it that were left over from the dresses she’d made for my sister. Before she quilted it, Ma had embroidered “Agnes Ruth, God’s Precious Child, 1859” in the center. Sometimes she took out the memorial quilt and ran her hands over it, but she never put it on a bed. Nobody ever slept under Agnes Ruth’s mourning quilt.

Pa worked as hard as Ma did to prepare for our move west. He and Uncle Will bought two sturdy Conestoga wagons, with big canvas covers stretched over hickory hoops and wheels that were made of narrow-grained oak. The wagons were big enough that Ma could stand up inside one. The men spread tar over the sides and bottoms of each of the wagons to keep out the water when we crossed rivers. They purchased lengths of pipe and kegs of nails; doorknobs and window latches; sheets of glass and fancy lumber for finishing the inside of the office block. And when spring came, they loaded it all into the two wagons, along with tools and a tent.

Meanwhile, Ma and Aunt Catherine set aside the food supplies, the clothing, and our personal belongings. Grandma Mouse didn’t want to help them pack, but I did.

“Why are you burying the teacups in the flour barrel, Ma?” I asked, watching her thrust one of her precious brownwhite-and-gold Tea Leaf pattern cups deep into the flour.

“That’ll keep them from getting broken. It’s a long ride over hill and prairie and across rivers. If the wagon tips over, our cups will be safe,” Ma replied, and laughed. “I hope we will be safe, too.” She touched the end of her nose with her hand, leaving a trace of white flour. She looked like baking day.

Aunt Catherine handed Ma another cup and said to me, “Don’t you remember we hid the silver teapot in the sack of rice so it wouldn’t get banged up, and we buried the eggs in the cornmeal to keep them from cracking? And we stored the lucifers in a bottle with a cork so they wouldn’t get wet?” She shook her head. “You can’t start a fire with a wet match.”

“We’ll have to learn to adjust,” Ma said. In fact, she had already begun to do just that. Pa told her she couldn’t take both the tin plates and the china plates. One set would have to be left behind. Because she knew the china plates would get broken if we used them on the trail, she gave them to Grandma Mouse and packed the tin set.

“Adjust like you adjusted your skirts?” I asked. The two of them had hemmed their skirts well above their boot tops, which Grandma Mouse had said was scandalous. Ma did look odd in hers. She had gotten fat since Pa had come home, and the hems on the front of her dresses were uneven.

“Do you want me to be fashionable, or do you want me to let my skirts drag in the dirt and wear them out?” Ma asked me.

She smiled at me as she wiggled another teacup into the flour. “I have to say our skirts are now more comfortable, although I would not wish to enter Golden dressed in a skirt that topped my boots. When we get there, I will let down the hem on my best dress, the black one, for I want to make a good impression.”

“On the Indians?” Aunt Catherine asked.

“Catherine,” Ma warned. “I’m sure Colorado is perfectly civilized.”

Pa came into the house then and looked at the foodstuffs in the kitchen. “Can’t you cut down on some of it?” he asked.

“On what?” Ma replied. “Don’t you want us to have enough food to reach Colorado Territory?”

“Then other things must go. We’ve packed and repacked. There isn’t room.”

“What do you want me to take out—the blankets and sheets, the skillet? I’ve already put aside the china plates, the rocker, and the washstand that was your wedding gift to me.”

“Something else must go.”

“There is only Emmy Blue. Do you propose to leave her behind?”

I looked up, my mouth open. They wouldn’t leave me with Grandma Mouse, would they? When Ma saw the look on my face, she said she was only joking. “I wouldn’t leave you. I love you as much as a wagon train of people,” she whispered. Then she told Pa, “Perhaps you could leave off some of the fancy lumber.”

“We need it. How will we build the business block without it?”

Pa glanced around the room at the boxes of foodstuffs that had not yet been loaded into the wagon. And then his eyes lit on the horsehair trunk, which had come from Grandma Mouse, her initials, EB, on the top, done in brass nails. She had given it to Ma for the journey, saying it would be mine one day, because EB were two of my initials, Emily Bluestone.

“The trunk,” Pa said. “It will have to be left behind.”

“It has our clothes in it.”

Pa thought a moment. “Meggie …,” he said.

Ma looked at him as if she knew what he was about to say. “No, Thomas,” she said. “Not our clothes.”

Pa looked away, then said, “You can take only the clothes you wear. There is no room for a trunk, no room for your clothes.”

“But Thomas—”

“I have decided, Meggie.”

Ma closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but she did not reply. She knew better than to argue with Pa when his mind was made up.

“Ma,” I asked later. “Does that mean I can take only one dress?”

Ma did not answer. Instead, she opened the trunk and looked at the clothes neatly folded inside. “No, Emmy Blue, it does not.” She slammed shut the trunk lid. “I have an idea, but we will not tell your pa. It will be a surprise.”

Chapter Three

HO FOR COLORADO!

I
didn’t have the least idea what Ma meant until the next day when she woke me in the morning. I slipped on my new dress, the one she had made for me from blue calico, and buttoned it, but as I reached for my shoes, Ma said, “Not yet. Lift your arms.”

I frowned at her, not knowing what she wanted, but I did as I was told and raised my arms.

Ma put my old red dress on top of the blue one and fastened it.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Your pa said we could take only the clothes on our backs. So we are wearing all of them. I promised your father we would wear them all the way to Golden. Now raise your arms again. She picked up my third dress, the ugly brown one that I didn’t like, and tugged it over my head. Then she covered me with two aprons.

“Do I have to wear both pairs of shoes?” I asked, and Ma laughed.

I looked closely at Ma then. She had on her yellow dress on top of her green one, and peeking out from under those two was her good black dress. All those clothes made her look fatter than ever. “Now button your shoes while I fix breakfast,” she said.

A few minutes later I came down the stairs and said, “Waxy’s ready to go.” Waxy was a doll with a wax face that Grandma Mouse had given me. I was a little old for dolls, but I’d had Waxy ever since I could remember. She was a friend, and she might end up my only friend on the trip if there weren’t any other children. Ma glanced at the doll, then began to laugh. “Oh my, Waxy is wearing all her clothes, too. And she has two hats on her head.”

The neighbor women who had come to see us off gathered around and laughed at Waxy too, as fat as a cat in all her dresses and petticoats, although they seemed embarrassed that Ma was dressed that way. “How silly,” one muttered.

“Why didn’t you just hide your skirts in the flour barrel like you did the china cups?” another asked.

“Now, now,” Ma said, for she would not abide any criticism of Pa. She smiled at the women and said, “Catherine and I agreed to this. I expect Catherine must be twice as big as I am, for she has twice as many clothes.” We’d find out soon enough, because we would stop for Aunt Catherine and Uncle Will down the road.

The women drew their shawls about themselves in the cold morning. It was only March, but Pa said we had to get an early spring start. The earlier you go the more grass there is for your oxen. The men crowded around the wagon while Pa checked the contents a final time. He moved the last of the foodstuffs into the wagon, setting them beside the box that held the tin plates, forks, and ladle, a vinegar flask, the coffee grinder, and frying pan. The boxes were stored near the opening in the canvas wagon cover so that Ma could get to them each morning and evening. Pa’s razor and shaving strop, Ma’s candle molds, and other small items were stored in pockets Ma had sewn inside the wagon cover. Shovels and picks and coiled ropes hung from the inside of the wagon.

When he was satisfied, Pa drew the puckering strings attached to the wagon covers, and tied them tightly, leaving an oval-shaped opening, like a window at each end of the wagon.

I looked around for Abigail. She and her mother, who was Ma’s closest friend, had promised to see us off. I saw them in the distance, hurrying toward us, each carrying something. At first I thought they were bringing Skiddles to say good-bye, but whatever they had wasn’t wiggling.

The day before, when I had asked where we should place Skiddles’ bowl in the wagon, Pa had looked at me strangely. “We can’t take a cat with us, Emmy Blue.”