Calico Ball

by Kelly, Carla

  It really wasn’t true. Victoria complained when Mary returned from the guardhouse that she wasn’t paying her to neglect her duties. Mary finally took a page from Sergeant Blade’s book and gave her employer the Sergeant Stare.

  “You bullied me into making fifteen calico dresses for this stupid ball,” she snapped. “The ball is in two days, and after that I will do whatever you need, at least until I leave.”

  Her former friend burst into ready tears and spilled out her own misery at having to decorate that barn of a commissary warehouse for the ball and round up glass dishes and cups for the desserts, which would probably include pounds and pounds of raisins, and what could they do about that? Snow had stopped any wagon trains from Fort Russell north. At least the hostiles were hunkered down on their reservation to the northeast and no one was going to lose any hair, and she didn’t think she and the lieutenant were going to be together much longer.

  That last bit of misery popped out before Victoria could close her mouth in time. She put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and tearful.

  Mary’s head ached. She wanted to rush to her tiny room and flop on the bed, yearning for solitude to untangle her own thoughts. At least she was leaving Wyoming without the baggage of a marriage gone wrong, or at least at cross purposes, since one or both of the parties were too childish to apologize and try again. Instead, she held out her arms to Victoria, because under all her own turmoil, Mary was kind.

  They cried together, Victoria sobbing because she was still a spoiled, pouty thing with her prettiest years probably already behind her, and Mary because she suddenly did not want to leave without her man, who probably thought, when she came right down to it, that she was too childish or maybe even too Seneca. How could she know? He was busy with his usual duties, plus making a coffin, which had to render a man melancholy, at the least. There was no time to talk.

  She soldiered on in the morning, because Indians did that as well as troopers. She marched herself to the commissary storehouse and used her own money to buy raisins, which she wrapped in fabric scraps. She watched for the child she had first seen weeks ago, trudging behind her mother to the killing floor for scraps. She gave away her raisins.

  The word must have got out, because other dark-haired children came for raisins, which meant more trips to the commissary. She handed out raisins, and sewed dratted dresses, and wished for money to buy better food for little friends cast adrift in that uncertain land where the truly poor existed.

  Whether he knew it or not, Private München turned the guardhouse duty room into her haven. On the day when only one dress remained, the rest having been handed over to delighted owners, he produced a doll made of white ticking and stuffed with lint from the hospital steward, who was also German and who liked to share a drink now and then with a fellow German.

  “Fräulein, with these scraps, think of the dresses we can make.” He set the doll beside her sewing machine. “Do you have yarn for hair?”

  She did. Mama had sent her with a skein of black yarn to knit herself some mittens. “I do. I’ll get it when I go home for luncheon.” She held the doll and imagined other dolls with black yarn hair. She knew three little girls about to lose their mother who might need a small distraction. Four girls, counting the hungry one with raisins on her mind.

  Her mistake was mentioning the matter to Victoria when she hurried home for a quick sandwich of nothing much beyond army bread and canned meat of mysterious origin. “We’ll have the last dress done at the end of the day. After that, Private München and I are going into the doll business.”

  Victoria clapped her hands, looking more cheerful than Mary had seen her in a week. “What a delightful notion! We can send all the dolls you can make along with the dresses to poor children in Chicago. Mary, this is wonderful.”

  She tried to set Victoria straight. “These dolls are staying here. There are Indian children here who need our attention.”

  Victoria wouldn’t have it. “All our efforts are for the women and children rendered homeless by the Chicago fire. You promised.”

  “I promised no such thing,” Mary fired back. “I have nearly done my task for you. We are using the scraps for another purpose.” She left the house before Victoria had time to finish her next sentence, angry and certain she would get a visit soon from Captain Hayes’s wife.

  Head down against the wind and snow, Mary crossed the parade ground, desperate to see Sergeant Blade, who had plenty of his own worries and no time for hers. The badgers were starting to circle her lovely web, and she wanted to fight back this time, patience be hanged.

  Private München heard her out in silence, shaking his head. “When this last one is done,” he said, indicating the half-finished dress, “it’s back to the cells for me.” He brightened. “Can you drag out this dress while I make more doll bodies?”

  “I can and will,” she said and started picking out a perfectly straight seam in the skirt.

  It was worse than she thought. Exactly one half hour later, Captain and Mrs. Hayes arrived in the duty room. Her heart in her throat, Mary looked up from the next seam she was picking out.

  “She is making dolls and doll clothes now for the Indian children here and refuses to consider sending them to Chicago, along with the dresses and money we will raise,” Gertrude Hayes said, pointing an accusing finger in a most theatrical gesture, as if there were many seamstresses in the tiny room and Mary needed to be singled out.

  Mary swallowed. She had never needed to stand up for herself at home, not with big brothers and a respected father who clerked for a judge. She had coasted through her life, pampered, well fed, and happy. She also remembered lessons about silence and quiet tears and standing her ground, if need be. She knew those lessons would never apply to her, until finally, at a fort far west of her ancestral home, they did.

  Mrs. Hayes was looking at her husband, a captain with the brevet of major, a Medal of Honor recipient for some remarkable bit of military daring at Antietam, a man used to obedience, respected. “William, what are you going to do?”

  Private München slipped next door to the duty sergeant’s office, abandoning her, or maybe not. He came back into the duty room at the same time she heard someone else running from the other office.

  Captain Hayes cleared his throat. “Miss Blue Eye, the dolls should go to Chicago and the worthy poor.”

  The little spider prepared to defend her web. “There are worthy poor right here, Captain, if you please,” she said. “Mathilde, the wife of your Arikara scout, is dying. Sergeant Blade is making her a coffin, as I am certain you know.”

  He nodded. “Bill Curly is a good and faithful scout.”

  “Bill and Mathilde have three daughters. I want to give them comfort with dolls and dresses to play with, something to distract them from the sorrow coming their way soon. There is another little girl who follows her mother to the killing floor for meat scraps and offal. I doubt she has ever had a doll of her own. I am making a doll for her, too. I know there are others.”

  Mary spoke simply, ignoring Mrs. Hayes. She knew enough about women to know that Mrs. Hayes could easily make her husband’s life miserable. He was the leader of his troop, she reasoned, and maybe that would be enough to sway her argument. If not, she would not surrender the dolls without a struggle.

  “We’re dealing in scraps, sir,” she said. “Some ticking and some lint. The yarn is mine. Please, sir.”

  The outside door to the duty room opened, and Sergeant Blade stood there, breathing hard. He must have run from the quartermaster warehouse where she knew he was making the coffin. He was out of uniform, and his sleeves were rolled up to expose muscled forearms covered with sawdust. Mrs. Hayes sniffed and stepped aside, as much as she could in a small room with too many people and far too much anger.

  Captain Hayes looked like a man who had just seen the coming of the Lord. “Sergeant Blade, kindly reason with Miss Blue Eye and let me get to work.” That last bit was directed at his wife, who glare
d back.

  Rowan shook his head. “She’s in the right, Captain. She was asked—no, told—to make dresses, and she has fulfilled that task. Scraps are scraps. That’s all Indians get, so what’s the harm done? You and I both know that matters out here will only worsen. I say we leave her alone to her work of charity. Real charity.”

  Mrs. Hayes narrowed her eyes. “I never thought a sergeant in the US Army would side with . . . with . . .”

  “An Indian?” Rowan asked. “Yes, I am on Mary’s side. She has done what you demanded, ma’am. Don’t ask more than she is willing to give.”

  “What will she do?” Mrs. Hayes demanded.

  “I have no idea,” Rowan said with a smile, “but I lay odds on Mary to see that four little ones get dolls with fantastic calico wardrobes.”

  Apparently Captain Hayes agreed. “There you have it, Gertie,” he said. “I am figuring out next year’s budget. Unless you want to help me with that, I suggest you go home and leave the tailors to their work.”

  The door slammed. Captain Hayes grinned at Mary and rubbed his hands together. “It’ll be cold as can be in my quarters for a few nights, but what the hell? As you were, Miss Mary Blue Eye. Make those doll clothes. Sergeant, back to work.”

  He left the room, chuckling to himself, and obviously a husband who knew his wife pretty well. Mary couldn’t help but think of Shell and His Pony.

  Private München went into the adjoining office, muttering something about checking the flat irons, which gave Sergeant Blade perfect leave to gather Mary close. She wasted not a moment and practically leaped into his arms, shivering with the effort of standing up for herself.

  “I hope Captain Hayes won’t give you a difficult time, Rowan,” she said into the sawdust on his shirt. “Thank you. I was afraid of what I was going to do to that dreadful woman.”

  “I recall you mentioning something once about the Iroquois League and scalping techniques,” he said into her hair.

  “Oh, you! I would never do such a nasty deed.”

  “Kiss me, then, and send me back to work.”

  She kissed him, pulling him close and pressing her lips softly against his, despite the sawdust. He did smell nicely of pine, and that was no liability. He took the liberty of patting her hip, then apologized, his face red.

  “Go to work,” she said. “We can settle up later.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” he told her. He started whistling before he even closed the door, and the little spider sat down to continue the unbroken web.

  The last dress found its way to a grateful sergeant’s wife by midmorning the next day. By then, Private München had finished three more doll bodies, down to the black yarn hair, which he neatly sewed into black braids. He left the faces blank because neither of them knew how Sioux, Arikara, and Crow felt about personification. They cut out little dresses until after dark, then plotted tomorrow’s strategy.

  They decided on simple dresses, held together by two hooks and eyes and a ribbon sash. Mary dashed back to the Mastersons’ and returned with four of the lieutenant’s handkerchiefs, begged for and given to her by a surprisingly cooperative Victoria. Perhaps word had gotten around that Sergeant Blade was even more formidable than anyone had previously imagined and Mary should be helped, for the good of the garrison. Mary was far too wise to question anyone’s motive.

  The lawn handkerchiefs turned into nightgowns, on which Mrs. Hayes herself obligingly crocheted scalloped edges. The surgeon’s wife found scraps of blue wool uniform fabric and hand sewed cloaks herself, to Mary’s amazement.

  “Hats would have been nice,” Mary told Private München when night came on, “but I promised to help Sergeant Blade.”

  She went to the quartermaster warehouse to sew the blue-and-white mattress ticking into lining for Mathilde Frere’s coffin.

  Rowan had scrounged a mattress pad from the post surgeon’s supply. He helped her tack the lining down and sat back, his eyes tired, to watch her sew it in place. She glanced over at him a time or two and watched him sleep sitting up.

  She finished at midnight. Sergeant Blade walked around the coffin, running his hand over the sanded pine, then making sure the hinges didn’t squeak. “I’ll paint it early in the morning, and then we’ll wait,” he said.

  She would have gone directly home, but as Rowan walked her by the guardhouse, Mary heard the sound of the treadle louder than usual, which meant someone was pushing down extra hard through stiff fabric. Curious, she dragged herself up the few steps and peeked in the window.

  She opened the door to see Private München finishing the last of four bags made of canvas, just the right size for dolls with wardrobes. He looked up with a guilty expression, so she knew better than to ask where or how he had acquired canvas.

  “You’ve been working so hard for me,” she said.

  “It’s cold in the cell,” he told her. “This is better.”

  “I wish I could pay you.”

  “You have, fräulein.”

  Rowan walked her home. “Tomorrow’s the big day?”

  “Yes. Since Mrs. Masterson and Mrs. Hayes have been surprisingly helpful today, I told them I would assist with finishing touches on what I will laughingly call the ballroom.”

  “They’ve been stringing Fourth of July bunting today, and the band has been practicing. A person could almost dance to their music now.” He chuckled. “The commissary clerk has developed a tic in his eye, but he’ll recover.”

  “I think refreshments will be limited, at best,” Mary added. “I wish a supply wagon had been able to get through.”

  “No one wishes that more than I do.”

  “You were expecting something?”

  “I was, but there might be an advantage to this isolation currently foisted upon us,” he said as they walked up the front steps. He put his hands on her shoulders. “It might mean you can’t leave as soon as you want to.”

  Mary looked into his tired eyes and knew they mirrored her own. She rested her cheek against his chest, and his arms went around her.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry to leave, Mary,” he said.

  The day of the calico ball was like the day before, but with less wind and snow. Mary looked out her small window that was growing increasingly iced over, longing for a place where spring came when it was supposed to, then ushered in a mild, humid summer, the kind that left her cheeks smooth and soft and not peeling and tough from high plains wind.

  She missed the little picture she had loaned to Mathilde Frere. Rowan had told her that Bill Curly had hung it right by her bed. He said she looked at it all the time now.

  Mary lay in bed, steeling herself to throw back the warm covers and rush into her clothes. Lately she had started dreaming of dresses and dolls and charitable women who chased her around the guardhouse duty room, demanding this and that. And what could she do about that, since she was a spider? Oh, enough. She made the leap from bed, dressed quickly, and laid a fire in the kitchen range.

  The little house was starting to smell fragrant with coffee when someone knocked. She hurried to the front door to see Sergeant Blade. She took his arm to pull him inside. He shook his head and pulled back.

  “Mathilde died this morning, while I was painting her coffin.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, and meant it. Who would take care of her three daughters? She thought Bill Curly was a good man, but what happened when a good man went on detached detail with his troop? What then? So many questions.

  “Rowan, take the three dolls. Maybe the girls will want them right now. Leave me the one doll for my own particular urchin.”

  He smiled at that. “She’ll be by for more raisins any day.” He touched his hand to his hat brim. “No dance for us tonight?”

  “No dress,” she reminded him. “I’m truly sorry, because it would have been fun.”

  The sergeant seemed to take the disappointment in good cheer, which left Mary a little irked, because she was still Mary, after all, and wanted a few more yea
rs to mature and improve her character, or so she reasoned.

  “A person can plan and plan, and everything still changes,” he said. He tugged the collar higher on his overcoat. “On the bright side, a supply wagon from Fort Russell is stuck at Hunton’s stage station. With any luck at all, it might be here tomorrow or by the Fourth of July, depending.”

  “Alas, too late,” she said with a laugh. “Mrs. Masterson told me the ladies were wishing for those canned oysters to arrive in time for stew tonight.”

  She waved him into the cold again, wondering if there would be a funeral, wondering how the little girls would manage without their mother, and wondering why she wasn’t so overjoyed at the prospect of leaving. She wanted to go home. Didn’t she?

  The day passed quickly. As promised, Mary swept the commissary warehouse floor over and over, looking each time for some improvement and seeing little. She quickly hemmed the last remaining yards of her pretty, dark-blue fabric on the Singer still in the duty room. By the time she finished, the hospital steward had drafted two nearly healthy patients to return the sewing machine to the post surgeon’s quarters.

  She asked the duty sergeant if she could say goodbye to the tailor, only to be informed that Private München had been released to D Company again. He had left behind four doll hats woven of broom straw and lined with calico. She took the little dainties with a smile. She would wait a few days, then drop the hats off to their new owners, because every lady needs a hat.

  She took her ironed material to the commissary warehouse and let Victoria arrange it on the white bedsheet loaned by the medical department. Her employer set the punch bowl on top and pronounced it successful.

  “I’d like the fabric square back when the evening is over. I’ll take it back to New York as a souvenir of the dress that wasn’t and the dance where I didn’t,” she joked, and Victoria laughed.

  Mary strolled home in the gathering twilight. The wind had died down, and the sun was setting in a fury of vivid pinks and purples that softened into lavender before it turned ordinary again. She heard laughter behind her and saw Victoria and her lieutenant walking arm in arm. Maybe there was hope for the Mastersons. It couldn’t be easy for a spoiled girl to turn into an army wife overnight. Perhaps things would work out, and fifty years from now in 1921, when the lieutenant was a general and Victoria terrorizing servants in Washington, DC, the Mastersons would look back on their time at Fort Laramie with fondness. Stranger things had likely happened.