When the final hymn was sung and the last of the dirt thrown onto the coffin, Sheriff Couch drew me and Mother Bullock to the edge of the graveyard, where he asked when I last saw Mr. Smead.
“I disremember. Not for a long time,” I reply.
“Not since Hannibal?” asks Mr. Howard, who had crept up behind us.
“Now, pet,” Mrs. Kittie says to him, while Mother Bullock looked at me sharply.
“What’s that?” the sheriff asks, scratching an eruption on his face and peering at me with eyes like coal lumps. I do not like him much.
Mrs. Kittie put her hand over her mouth, but Mr. Howard turned his yellow eyes on me and says, “Oh, Mrs. Bullock—Mrs. Alice Bullock, that is—and Mr. Smead were together in Hannibal. Didn’t you know?” He smoothed his fawn-colored gloves, then rubbed his hands together so that everyone would notice them. I had been with Mrs. Kittie when she purchased the pair. “It was disgraceful how the two of them went off together, her being a married woman like she is and the wife of a soldier to boot. But that’s the kind of hairpin she is. I know it distressed Mrs. Wales considerable, but she is too much the lady to remark upon it.”
He smiled at Mrs. Kittie, who smiled back, then knit her brows together in confusion, for she thought his words did not sound exactly right. My mouth was so dry, I almost could not speak. I swallowed a couple of times and says, “That’s a lie, and you are a liar.”
“That’s the way it was and no mistake,” Mr. Howard says.
“It was Mrs. Kittie’s doing. I would have done with him long since if not for her. You tell them how it was, Mrs. Kittie.”
She looked from me to Mr. Howard, who pouted a little. “I have promised not to speak of it,” she says at last. There was a murmuring in the background, and I turned to see the mourners close behind us. They had not missed a word.
“Alice asked me not to tell, and I have give my word,” Mrs. Kittie tells the sheriff. “I cannot break the promise now, even if she wants me to.” She wiped the sweat from her face, and Mr. Howard took her fat hand between his. Her hand was so wet, it was mighty apt to stain his gloves.
Mrs. Kittie was also mighty apt to stain my reputation. If she would not tell how Mr. Smead had pursued me against my will, I misdoubted anyone would believe my account of the wrongness he had done me. As I damned Mr. Howard’s lying heart, I glanced around for a friendly face but caught only Nealie’s stony eye. Others looked away. I grew dizzy in the hot sun and began to sway a little; then I felt a hand on my elbow. “Come, Alice. We must not leave Annie to do all the chores,” Mother Bullock says. Her voice was soft, but her grip was as strong as an iron skillet.
I would have fled with her that instant, but some word must be said in my defense, and if no one else would say it, I would have to speak myself. “You must not believe Mr. Howard. He is a crooked stick, out to make trouble for me for fear I will expose him as a fortune hunter not worth three cents,” I says. “Mr. Samuel Smead was as evil a man who ever lived. I feared him, and I hated him almost to death.”
The words were out of my mouth before I thought, and I could no more call them back than gather up the fluff of a dandelion. Nealie gasped, and Mrs. Kittie put her hand over her mouth. Mr. Howard nodded at the sheriff as though to say, You see?
“Everyone feared and hated Samuel Smead. He was a copperhead. I myself would not have been hard-pressed to shoot him,” Mother Bullock says quickly as she steered me away from the sheriff.
“Hush up, old lady. The rest of us knows things, too,” someone muttered.
A woman says, “The girl is a disgrace to Slatyfork, her and her sister, thinking themselves so high in the instep.” Lizzie, I have never put on airs in Slatyfork, and you were the picture of kindness whilst here. I could not imagine that anyone would speak such falsehoods of us.
Then a man spoke up. “Best you look into Jennie Kate’s death. Might be she killed her for the baby.” There was a muttering in agreement, and my face burned as I stumbled off behind Mother Bullock.
She and I did not speak of any of this on the way home, but I knew that what had been said lay heavy on her mind and that she deserved an explanation. So after supper, whilst Annie sat with her piecing and Mother Bullock rocked Piecake to sleep, I told them all that had happened at Hannibal, down to the grossest details. (Still, I did not mention the later encounter on Bramble Farm. If I could not confide in you all the facts of what happened that day, I surely would not tell them.)
I do not know if Mother Bullock believed me, but I am sure Annie did. “The Lord sees it all, marks it all down,” she says when I had finished the story.
So that is how things stand here. We go about our business, pretending none of this has happened. Neither Annie nor Mother Bullock has mentioned it again. Since I cannot discuss the affair with anyone, I turn to you for consolation. I have not heard from you in the longest time, Lizzie, and hope you can find the chance to write a few words. My troubles are bad now, but I worry about you, too. You must go out and find the solutions to the trials that beset you, whilst all I can do is wait.
We wait for word of Charlie, too. I tell Mother Bullock no news means he is alive, and she hangs on to that hope. We have had two cheerful letters from Harve, who contains his grief at his wife’s death right well. He calls me “Charlie’s better half,” but I have wrote back that any half is better than I am at present. Harve is a tender father, always inquiring about Piecake, and sent two dollars in the second letter. The money was spent on Mother Bullock’s health, although the old sawbones in Slatyfork is no more use at diagnosing illness than a rooster is at reading Mr. Longfellow. Mother Bullock continues to take the Wistars each day for the pain and the feebleness in her back that won’t let her alone. But it no longer has a salutary effect.
September 6, 1864. P.S. As I have not been to the post office to mail your letter, I shall relate a little about our wheat crop.
The wheat harvest is long since done, and we have fared not so good as we might, but tolerable well, considering that our crew was made up entirely of women. That was not our plan. But the man who operates the reaper was taken sick, and we could not get harvest hands. The few good men were long since taken, and even young boys and old men were not to be had. Annie scoured the countryside for workers but came home empty-handed. “What shall Annie do now, lady?” Annie asks me.
“We’ll have to put together a crew of women, or do it ourselves, I suppose.”
Annie nodded solemnly, which made me laugh. “I was only jesting, Annie.”
“Well, I say do it. There’s a plenty of women would rather harvest than cook and clean a house,” she says.
That made sense to me, for I am one of them. “We would have to use the old scythes, for I don’t know a woman who can operate the reaper.”
“Annie can.”
So we rented the two-horse reaper of a man who had gone to war, whose wife was glad for the payment, and there we were, half a dozen of us women following Annie and the clicking blades about the field. We started at the outside and went round and round, diminishing the size of the field each time. Annie taught me how to use the reaper, and she and I took turns cutting the wheat whilst the others did the binding and shocking. We were slower than men, of course, but I think our sheaves of wheat had a nicer, tidier appearance. The women were not paid, but divided amongst themselves the income from the sale of a third of the wheat. That came to more than we would have had to pay a crew, but without the women, much of our crop would have been wasted. The women seemed entirely satisfied.
You never saw such a hardworking group of harvest hands in your life. Men came from all over to watch, first with aversion, but by the time they left, I think they had a little respect for us. One said it was unwomanly for us to unsex ourselves by doing men’s work.
“Is it womanly, then, for us to starve?” I asks.
He studied us for an hour or two, sitting his horse like a sack of meal, then announced he would hire us as a crew to harvest his own crop,
but, of course, he would pay us only half of what he would a male crew.
“Might be I’d hire you to clean my house,” replies one woman, “but I wouldn’t pay you as much as a woman.” We were pleased to turn down his offer to harvest, since we had decided to help one another instead.
Mother Bullock took charge of the meals. I knew it would be a strain on her, but there was nothing else to be done. Here also was an advantage of female threshers: While a male crew expects to be waited on, a crew made up of women knows how much work it is to cook for field hands, and they pitched in. They carried food to the tables and cleaned up, and even washed the dishes. Some brought pies and cakes and bread enough so that Mother Bullock’s cooking was cut in half. What’s more, the women did not stuff themselves as men do.
I think it good our harvest is done with, for a little boy stopped today on orders of his mother to ask if Annie would help with their haying tomorrow. I offered my services, too, but he replies, “Ma don’t want no killer ladies. She says you run off your man to war and are killing the old lady with poison, too.”
Lizzie, have you heard from Billy? He ran off in early summer, but Mama kept it a secret until now. They had thought he joined the army, but now Mama asks if he has come to Bramble Farm instead. I would not tell her if he had for fear of what Papa would do, but the truth is, I have neither seen nor heard from him. Have you news of our brother? You know I would keep it a secret if you told me.
I am well in body at present and hope you are the same. As for my spirit, I cannot say.
Alice Keeler Bullock
September 12, 1864
Dear Lizzie,
Charlie is at Anderson ville Prison. We have had a letter from him, dated August 22, which I copy to you:
Dear Mother and Alice
I was captured on July 18 and am held prisoner at Andersonville Station. I caught a minie ball in my leg, and the surgeon tried to cut it off, but I says he could not have it, for my wife won’t let me through the door without two good Yankee legs. I worked the ball out myself and think the leg is some better now, and I am not a-going down. I’ll be sounder than a hickory nut in no time. Don’t believe what you hear about Andersonville. I would welcome good Yankee hardtack and desecrated vegetables, but eat all right without them. Me and two boys live in a shebang. It is as good as an India-rubber blanket for keeping out the rain—which is a regular Baptist downpour when it comes. You would not recognize me, for my face is speckled as a turkey egg from the sun, and my clothes are black with smoke from the sappy green pine logs we burn. The Rebs let me keep my bedroll when I came in. I bought a spoonful of vinegar with a three-cent piece and traded the fork for two onions, but have the spoon and the watch you sent, which I have carved with pictures of soldiers. I lost the watch key, but as there’s little use to tell the time here, I don’t miss it. Doll Baby, don’t be mad when I tell you I made a coat out of the quilt, for that is the best way to keep it from being thieved, and if winter comes, I will need it bad. But I expect to be exchanged before that. And when I get out, I am never going back to the army, for war is all hell broke loose, and I have saw enough of it. So I have done with soldiering and will be a farmer. Write to me a cheerful letter like you always do. I know things aren’t easy at home, but you never complain the way Jennie Kate did. But don’t send nothing, for the thieving here is awful, and you can’t blame the Rebs for all of it. A gang of Union soldiers called “raiders,” the worst band of drunkards, gamblers, horse racers, lawyers, and Irish that ever lived, robbed and murdered their fellows, but the Rebs cleaned them out. Don’t worry about me, for I am not licked by a good deal.
Hail Columbia and please do not forget your
Charlie K. Bullock
It’s as cheerful a message as could be under the circumstances, but it is told that the Reb guards read our soldiers’ letters and will not mail them if they say a bad word about the Confederates or their jails. We can be sure that Charlie is alive but can only guess at his state. But that is good enough for now. Mother Bullock says her greatest fear when Charlie went to war was that he would be kilt and the remains never found. Oh, Lizzie, I hate myself for telling Charlie not to come home if he lost his leg. Though it was said in jest, I am ashamed of it. I don’t care if he has to sit in a chair the rest of his life, I just want Charlie to come back.
My writing has got tottery, for I am very tired, so I will close, having told you the good news. Mother Bullock is much cheered by Charlie’s letter. Annie says, “If missus could see her boy again, hard times would leave her on the run.”
I hope that is so and that
hard times will also leave you and your sister,
Alice K. Bullock
September 20, 1864
Dear Lizzie,
Yours of September 8 at hand and grateful am I to have it and to hear of your news. Hurrah for James for his new position! Of course I do not believe it beneath him to take a job in his old factory; after all, he did not believe it beneath him to let his wife work in a dry-goods store or to take in a boarder. Besides, since no charges were ever filed against James, preventing him from clearing himself in the courtroom, what better way of showing to all that he is innocent than by working at the very factory he was accused of defrauding? It shows he is trusted and valued by the new owners.
No, I don’t believe it makes one bit of difference that he works in the factory instead of an office. An office man does not produce a single nail, and James turns out hundreds, so he is of much greater use to the war effort. I view an office a little like the War Department in Washington, staffed by cowards and shirkers; the factory is the infantry, doing the hard work and operating under danger. There is nothing wrong with starting out in a humble position, and I am sure James will rise. Now, you had ought to get rid of that boarder. I know you are above reproach, but few men can be trusted far, and it does not look right that he is there alone with you and the girls all day. You know the gossips are just waiting for you to give them a good reason to talk.
The root celler is filled with potatoes and other vegetables. The fruit is pretty plenty but rots before we can pick it, for there is just me and Annie. Mother Bullock tries to help, but she is weak, and while Joybell can feel for the grapes, she can’t climb trees for apples. We dry as much fruit as we can, but even some of what we gather is spoilt, for Mother Bullock works slowly, and we won’t let Joybell cut the fruit for drying. So Me and Annie work at it of an evening and put the quilting aside. I think we can stay out of the almshouse this winter, although we did not get so much as we had hoped for the wheat.
We have heard no more from Mrs. Kittie about the seven dollars she promised to pay each month for the rent of Jennie Kate’s house. If she can buy Mr. Howard lemon-colored gloves (he has become quite the dandy since moving to Slatyfork, and gloves are his especial passion), she can meet her obligation to Piecake. Still, Harve sends us money when he can. I do not know what we would do without that, for we are in need of clothes. My shoes have give out, so I am barefooted, but it will be warm weather for some time yet. Thanks to Providence, the cow is good and gives a quart or three pints at a time. We still have one horse, too; I do not know what we would do in the spring without it, for neighbors would not give us the loan of one—for fear I should murder it, I think. There is much shunning of me in Slatyfork. The quilting group—my quilting group—has begun meeting again after a summer repose. Others have joined, but I was not invited. I would not have known, except that Mrs. Middleton called on Mother Bullock and let slip that two new quilts have been finished.
“They are in the Iowa Four-Patch pattern that dear Jennie Kate designed,” she says.
“I designed,” I tell her. “I designed the Iowa Stripe.”
“Oh, no, dear. Mrs. Wales herself says it was Jennie Kate’s idea, and the others say it must be so.”
“I wonder they did not invite me to join them, as I was appointed to head the quilting. You know it yourself. You were there at the first meeting.”
Poor Mrs. Middleton looked flustered. “Perhaps you are not used to our ways. Slatyfork has never taken much to outsiders. People do not mean to be cruel.”
“They do mean it,” I says, leaving her with Mother Bullock and going outside to do chores. Lizzie, I am not the best person in the world. You know it better than anybody. But I do not deserve such treatment. When Mrs. Middleton left, she did not know I was in hearing, and she told Mother Bullock, “She is God’s cross, Mrs. Bullock. You are indeed a Christian for not sending her away.”
Well, I wish she would send me to you.
Alice K. Bullock
September 25, 1864
Dear Lizzie,
All hell has broke loose, and some believe I am the very devil. We had not been to Slatyfork in some time, so me and Mother Bullock went there yesterday, stopping off first at the post office.
As we went in, Lavinah Bothwell was holding forth, her feet wide apart, leaning forward and shaking her finger. Half a dozen listened. “I have seen her buck wood,” she says. “She handles the bucksaw as good as any man.” Mrs. Bothwell is a cousin to Aunt Darnell’s husband and a member of the Soldiers Relief, but not a very good one. She came to a quilting at Bramble Farm once and ate more than she sewed, and at last summer’s Soldiers Relief Fair, she donated a peach pie, and not a very good one, for the man who bought it said he could knock down a full-grown steer with a chunk of it.
Mrs. Middleton, who was amongst the crowd, glanced our way, and she says to Mrs. Bothwell, “Oh, do be still, old woman. You talk too much entirely.”
Alice's Tulips: A Novel Page 17
