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
5
Drunkard’s Path
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.
“You promised you wouldn’t ever again,” Nealie says, sounding pitiful. “I don’t want any of it. You know I don’t. If anyone suspicions you, we’ll have to quit Slatyfork, just like all the other places. There’s meanness about you, and it’s got worse than ever. Oh, I should have taken your brother’s warning before we married and had done with the whole family. Now take these with you, and get you gone before Mrs. Bullock wakes.” She lowered her voice, so’s I couldn’t hear. Then Mr. Frank Smead’s voice rings out, “Shut up!” and there was the sound of a scuffle, and I took a step toward the room, but stopped myself, knowing it would only go worse with her if her husband found me listening. There was a sharp crack, and I could not tell at first which of them was on the receiving end, but Nealie cried out, and then says, “If you do it ever again, I’ll tell, and you know what your brother will do. He has promised to protect me.”
At that moment, I knew I had misjudged Mr. Samuel Smead. He has faults aplenty, but it would seem he is all that stands between Nealie and violence from her husband. And here’s another thing I know: Mr. Frank Smead is one of the marauders and has jayhawked all of Nealie’s pretty things. No wonder she does not wear her jewelry in public: She dare not, because it is plunder and might be recognized. As I crouched there, my shoes gripped in my hand, I thought how lucky I was to be married to a man as good as Charlie. What if I had married Mr. Frank Smead and found myself in Nealie’s boots? I would be trapped. Mama and Papa would be disgraced if I left my husband and went home, and James would have made you turn your back on me. How horrid to have no one to turn to, to be married forever to a scoundrel, a man who is thief, killer, and worse, for many of the women who were set upon by bushwhackers were ravished. I heard of one man and wife who were cornered by guerrillas, who held the man down, then took turns raping the woman. After they left, the husband told his wife she had not resisted enough, for she was not badly bruised, so he beat her almost to death. And to think that one of those plunderers might have been the man standing just on the other side of the door. Mr. Frank Smead is dishonest enough to steal pennies from the eyes of a corpse.
Then I heard him say in a voice filled with natural-born meanness, “Mrs. Bullock is as uppity as a nigger. I might could teach her a lesson, too.” Nealie protested, and there was another crack. Lizzie, nobody but you has ever stood up for me before. Now, to think Nealie risked her safety to defend me from her own husband! I decided I must go to her, to prevent her from being used bad on my account. But I heard the outside door open. “I’ll let it went for now, but she’ll get her due,” he says.
“Go. Please go,” Nealie says so soft, I could barely hear her. She closed the door, and at the sound of the bolt, I stole away, and not one minute too soon, for as I reached the bedroom, the inside door of the kitchen opened, and Nealie would have caught me. Safe in my room, I felt my face burn up, so I drew the curtain and laid my cheek against the cold glass of the window. As I looked out, I saw Mr. Frank Smead go into the barn, then come out on his horse, braced against the cold and snow. He rode by the house, and I drew back so he could not see me. But I felt a chill as he passed under my window and out through the wintry barnyard. Had he tried to hurt me, neither Nealie nor I could have stopped him. He has a gizzard instead of a heart.
As soon as he was out of sight, Nealie came quietly up the stairs and paused at my door, and I held my breath so she would not know I was awake. After a time, she left, and I stood quietly for three-quarters of an hour before I made loud sounds of getting up. When I emerged into the kitchen, neither me nor Nealie remarked on her husband’s visit, and Nealie, I am sure, does not know I am aware of it. But the event had made me anxious, and I knew my fingers would be no better than dumplings for stitching that day, so I said I had had a dream that Mother Bullock was ill, and I needed to go home instanter,
as my dreams often came true. Me and Nealie were as gay as could be on the way to Bramble Farm, and I arrived in good spirits, as far as anyone could judge—Mother Bullock, that is. I was relieved to be absent from the Smead house but filled with remorse as I wondered if I had abandoned Nealie in her need. Because you are my sister, you will say I did right to concern myself with my own well-being, but I am not so sure. Who will protect us women if we do not protect one another?
I asked Nealie to stay the night with us, but she would not, and as soon as she was gone, I told Mother Bullock my head felt large and rang like a kettle and I feared I had caught cold. Then I went direct to bed. In truth, I wished to crawl into her arms and tell her all, but she is not such a person, and besides, what would be the good of alarming her? I cannot go to the sheriff, for where is the proof? And poor Nealie might be arrested as part of a conspiracy. At the very least, she would be disgraced, and for no other reason than being the wife of a man who has done wrong. Lizzie, you of all people will understand why I could not do that to her. I have learned a lesson from your situation, and I shall be her friend, no matter what.
Mother Bullock inquired about my stay, and I told her it had gone finely, which satisfied her. In awhile, she brought me a tea made from pennyroyal for my cold and a supper of milk toast. I never ate my supper in bed before and said after my treatment by her and Nealie that I misdoubted I was Alice Bullock, but thought instead I might be the queen of France. Mother Bullock murmured something about being lonely without me, at which declaration, I almost dropped my supper bowl. On reflection, I think I misheard her.
And even if I didn’t, she spoiled the remark by waiting until I was almost asleep to let me know we had got a letter from Charlie. He has recently come through a sharp skirmish, with a bullet going through the sleeve of his coat, the closest he ever came to getting shot since he joined up. It made him think about why he is fighting. The letter is such a fine one that I wanted to send it to you to read, but Mother Bullock would shoot me before parting with one of Charlie’s letters, so I am copying down a little of what he wrote, and here it is:
Alice's Tulips: A Novel Page 10
