Alice's Tulips: A Novel

by Dallas, Sandra

  Nealie and Annie and I exchanged glances. “He’s the sheriff,” I says.

  “Don’t you think I know who he is?” Mother Bullock asks with a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Will you fetch him, or must I get out of my deathbed to go for him myself?” Mother Bullock’s eyes glinted as if she had an inflammation in them. You would think a dying woman would not be so mean-tempered, knowing that folks would remember her as she was at the end. But you could as easily thread a broom straw through a needle as expect Mother Bullock to go soft.

  I sighed, tightened my shawl around me, and picked up my mittens, but Annie took my arm. “Shall Annie go, lady? Annie runs fast. If Annie goes, you would not need to went.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Nealie says. “You’re wet, Alice, and likely you’ll catch a chill going back into the weather.”

  I was tired and cold and thought that Annie’s offer was a fine one, but Mother Bullock would not hear of it. “No. Alice is to go. And you best hurry, for I haven’t got long.”

  Annie protested, but Mother Bullock says sharply, “Be still, Annie. Go along, Alice.”

  “She’s got to warm herself first, or we’ll have two that’s dead in this house,” Annie says. Then she added darkly, “The hawk flew over twice.”

  Mother Bullock looked at me impatiently, however, so I drew on my mittens and, without a word to the others, I opened the door and went into the damp. The weather wasn’t the only thing I feared. I did not know what mischief Mother Bullock was about and thought perhaps it would be better if the sheriff came after she had passed on. I disbelieved Annie and Nealie would blame me if I had dawdled on the road. But it was becoming so bitter cold that I was likely to freeze if I did not move fast. So I hurried along, and when I reached Slatyfork, I found the sheriff right off.

  “Mother Bullock—Charlie’s mother, that is to say—she’s dying, and she wants you to come,” I tell him, removing my shawl to shake off the snow, then warming my hands in front of a little stove in the jailhouse. A teakettle steamed on top of the stove, and I hoped the sheriff would offer me something warm to drink.

  Instead, he stood up and put on his coat. “She’ll want to purge her soul,” he says. “I been expecting it. She’ll give me the proof.”

  “I don’t know what she wants, but I would like a cup of tea, if you please. I’m chilled to the bone.”

  “Be quick about it, then. I’ll saddle my horse and follow alongside your buggy,” he says.

  “I walked in. We’re saving the horse for spring plowing.”

  “You could’ve come faster with a buggy.” The sheriff studied me a moment, then went out to harness a team to a wagon, while I brewed a cup of tea. I poured it into a jar and took it with me when I got into the wagon, sitting on the board seat and holding the jar in both hands to keep them warm. The steam rose to my nose, then cooled, and I felt as if my face was covered with a layer of ice.

  “What’s she got to say?” the sheriff asks, hurrying the horses along.

  “I told you: I don’t know.”

  “Not likely something you’d care to hear. But likely something I would,” he says, gloating.

  “Perhaps you should take a lesson from the chicken, which cackles after she lays the egg.”

  I had hoped to offend him, but he ignored me and asks, “Does she say to send for a preacher?”

  “I thought you knew her.”

  He chuckled and glanced at me. “I been acquainted with her since she first come to Slatyfork. She had a nicer disposition then. I guess you’d turn sour, too, if you was married to Joseph Bullock. Might be that’s why she’s hung on so long, for fear of meeting up with him in the hereafter. He gambled, left his widow and boys a mountain of debts to pay off, but they done it. I misdoubt she still owes old Huff.” When we reached Bramble Farm, the sheriff jumped out of the wagon and tied the horses to a tree; then, not bothering to help me down, he went into the house without knocking, directly into Mother Bullock’s bedchamber. I hurried to keep up.

  “Well, Serena, they tell me you’re dying.”

  “You always did have a direct way of putting things,” Mother Bullock says.

  He took off his hat and sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Well, I’m sorry for it. I truly am. But you haven’t had much use for me these last years, so I figure you didn’t call me through this storm to make amends.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mother Bullock says. “Alice, tell Annie and Nealie to come in. This needs to be said, and I want witnesses. I never did fully trust you.”

  “What ‘you’ was you talking about?” the sheriff asked her.

  “You, of course.”

  Annie and Nealie came to the doorway, and the sheriff motioned with his hat for them to enter the room. He slapped the hat against his leg, and snowflakes flew onto the quilt.

  Mother Bullock waited until we were crowded around her, then opened and closed her eyes a few times. She glanced from the sheriff to me. Sheriff Couch looked at me, too, and my head began to spin. With all of us crowded into that little room, there was no air. My mouth was dry, and I reached for the jar of water beside the bed.

  “I got something to say about the killing of Sam Smead,” Mother Bullock says.

  My hand began to shake, and the water slopped out of the jar onto the floor. The sheriff saw it but didn’t remark on it. Nealie put her hand to her mouth to stop a cry, and Annie jerked up her head so fast, I thought she would crack her neck.

  “It’s time for you to know the truth,” Mother Bullock says. “I’d hoped you’d let things be, Josiah, but you never do.” I had an odd feeling she was enjoying herself, but if she was, I was not. There are two kinds of people in this world—those that go to the grave in forgiveness and those who die settling scores.

  “I promised to live until Charlie came home. I’d have told him and give him the burden of it. I am awful to hang on, but it’s plain I can’t do it this time.”

  “Get on with it,” the sheriff says gruffly.

  “In my own time,” she says, then gave a dry little laugh. “Are you afraid I’ll die and leave you wondering?” Mother Bullock coughed and motioned for the water. I held it to her mouth, and she sipped but didn’t swallow. The water slid out of her mouth onto her nightdress. “First off, have you ever known me to lie?” she asks the sheriff.

  “Not that I can recollect.”

  “Ever?”

  He thought about it. “No, I never knew you to lie, Serena.”

  “Then you’ll believe what I say?”

  “I expect so.”

  “Good.” She closed her eyes, then opened them and took a deep breath. “I kilt Sam Smead. Kilt him dead. It was me that done it.” Her hands fluttered on the coverlet like dying moths.

  The sheriff leaned forward until he loomed over the bed, his eyes as bugged as a fly’s. He looked at Mother Bullock for a moment, then turned to me, as if to ask whether he had heard her right. Nealie grabbed my arm and pressed her fingers into it, and Annie wrapped her hands in the quilt, turning them over and over in the coverlet until it was mussed into a ball.

  “I kilt Sam Smead,” Mother Bullock repeats, as if she liked the sound of it.”

  “You never—” the sheriff says, but Mother Bullock cut him off with a look.

  “Then just how did you do it?” he asks.

  “With an ax. I raised it high over his head and brought it down, split his skull. It made a sound like cracking a walnut.”

  “You couldn’t. You been dying too long,” the sheriff says.

  Mother Bullock looked around, then reached for the old leather-covered family Bible on the table beside her, and with one hand, she lifted it over her head. “That’s with my left hand, and I’m not as strong as I was last summer. You can’t doubt I had the strength.” She dropped the Bible onto the bed and slumped back onto the pillows. “You know I’m mean enough to kill a man, too.”

  “That’s the truth.” The room was very hot, and the sheriff unbuttoned his coat
, but he didn’t take it off.

  “Why did you do it?” Nealie asks. “What did Samuel do to you?”

  I knew Nealie hated Samuel Smead, but the sheriff didn’t, and he says, “She’s got the right to ask.”

  Mother Bullock nodded. “Alice told the reason before. Samuel Smead did not belong to the human species. Maybe you know it, too, Nealie.” Mother Bullock waited for Nealie to reply, but she only looked down at her heavy stomach, so Mother Bullock went on. “He was in the barn. I don’t know why, but he meant to do a meanness. I know that. Maybe he was going to kill the horse. Or he might have been waiting for Alice to do the milking, but she had gone to town. His mind wag as dark as the low regions of hell. I told him to git.”

  “And he wouldn’t,” Nealie says. “Nobody could tell Samuel what to do.”

  Mother Bullock nodded. “He sneered at me and raised his fist, but I told him I wasn’t afraid of him. He says I ought to be, for he’d burned a dozen farms and kilt eight or seven people, and I wasn’t nothing more than a mouse to him.”

  Nealie sagged against me, and I put my arm around her to hold her up. The sheriff saw how weary she was and stood up to give Nealie the chair.

  “I says to him he isn’t going to burn Bramble Farm, because Charlie’s got to have a place to come home to. He tells me Charlie’s a dead man, for the prisoner-murdering Rebs won’t let any Yankee soldiers come home. Then he called Charlie a coward and a fool.” Mother Bullock swallowed and looked at me. “He says Bramble Farm would be his because he intended to marry Charlie’s wife. That’s Alice.” Mother Bullock paused, thinking, then blurts out, “He said he had carnal knowledge of her.”

  The room was still. I burned with shame and wanted to explain. Instead, I waited with the others for Mother Bullock to continue, but she was done, and the sheriff had to prod her. “Then what happened?”

  “Well, I hit him with the ax, that’s what happened. He started toward me, and the ax was right there. If I hadn’t used it on him, he’d’ve killed me instead. Then I loaded him onto that old dogcart we use for hauling wood, and I dumped him out in the woods. I didn’t think about burying him, because nobody ever goes out that way. But I should have, for it’s caused a good deal of trouble for me and mine. I believe I have done the right thing by Charlie.”

  “There’s blood on the cart,” Annie tells him.

  “That don’t amount to a cuss. It could be pig’s blood,” the sheriff says.

  “Could be,” Mother Bullock tells him. “I guess you think I saved up all my lies so I could tell ’em just before I meet the Maker.”

  The sheriff looked uncomfortable.

  “There’s three others heard it—four if you count Joybell over there in the door.”

  Annie didn’t know her daughter was there and reached for her, putting her arms around the little girl and turning Joybell’s face into her apron.

  Sheriff Couch and Mother Bullock looked at each other a long time. Then the sheriff picked up his hat from the floor. “I never heard you tell a lie, Serena,” he says. He moved heavily toward the door. “I tell you again; I’m sorry you’re passing.” He looked at her over his shoulder, then put his on his hat. “You tell Martha I miss her.” He turned to me. “My wife went beyond five years ago.”

  “I don’t expect Martha needs me to tell her,” Mother Bullock says.

  “No, I don’t expect so.”

  “Now let me die,” she says, turning her face to the wall.

  I followed the sheriff into the big room. He put on his hat and buttoned his coat and says, “I guess anybody that was thought to have to do with Sam Smead’s death can rest easy now.” He went outside, and in a moment I heard the sound of the wagon as it pulled into the road. When I turned, Nealie and Annie were standing right behind me. The three of us looked at one another, but we didn’t say a word. So I guess now everyone will know I didn’t kill Samuel Smead, but you know it because I told you so.

  None of us expected Mother Bullock to live through the night, but she slept good. The next morning, she says, “If I go to heaven, I won’t be seeing Martha Couch there.”

  Please send your love and cheer to

  Alice Bullock

  November 30, 1864

  Dear Lizzie,

  Five days ago, Nealie waked me in the night. She had been dumpish all day so was not surprised when the pains started, but she waited to tell me until they were hard and regular. I woke up Annie to help me, but as Annie knows all about childbirth, she took charge. I boiled water and brewed a tea from the eggshells Annie had been saving; then, at Annie’s direction, I put a pair of scissors under the bed to cut the pain. “An ax works better, but . . .” She shrugged and didn’t finish.

  I did what I could for Nealie, rubbing her back and grasping her hand, while Annie saw to the birthing. “Look at her little ankles. I never saw such before. She’ll have herself an easy time of it,” Annie said once.

  It didn’t seem such an easy time to me, although the hard labor lasted only an hour. When it was done, Nealie had herself a fine boy. Annie turned him over and over, then told Nealie she had checked the signs and that he was all right. “Too bad he don’t have a caul,” Annie whispers to me. “But I expect he’ll be bright enough without it. Joybell, she was born with a caul. But she was born blind, too.”

  While Annie tended to the new mother, I took the baby into the big room near the fire and wrapped him up. I started to put him into the cradle we had ready there, then had a better idea. So I carried him to Mother Bullock’s bedside. “Here is a surprise,” I whisper.

  She did not reply, so holding the baby in one arm, I gently shook her shoulder. Then I put my hand on her forehead. Mother Bullock was gone. She had died in the night, and her body was already cold.

  We buried her the next day, in the flower garden, next to Jo. Knowing she would die in winter, Annie and I had already dug her grave so we would not have to chop through the frozen earth, and Annie, who is handy, had made a coffin. Mother Bullock had not cared for preaching, but burying a person without benefit of clergy seemed to be as bad as marrying without it, so we sent for the preacher. Others came, too, for the word had got out, and many admired her, even if they did not like her much. Some were just curious, I think.

  Before we washed the body, I clipped a long strand of Mother Bullock’s hair to braid into a watch fob for Charlie, although you know how much I detest such jewelry. Now I must write him the news. I do not want to sorrow Charlie, but if he has got her letters in the past, he will wonder why they have stopped. So I think it best that I am straight with him. He will take it hard, for there was affection of a sort between them. It will be difficult for him to come home to a house that is empty of her. But if Charlie does not come home, then perhaps it is best Mother Bullock did not live to know so.

  We will put up a wooden marker tomorrow. Annie has taken Mother Bullock’s death hard and wants to write a Bible verse on it. We have decided on Proverbs 31:27: “She looketh well to the way of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness.”

  I think her soul is deserving of your prayers.

  In sorrow,

  Alice Keeler Bullock

  10

  Snowflake

  The showiest quilts, the ones the women saved for good, were appliqued. Instead of piecing together tiny shapes of fabric, as in patchwork, women cut out and applied layers of material to a fabric base with all-but-invisible stitches. Patchwork quilts were judged by their geometric designs and precise joining of pieces; applique—or laid-on—quilts were known for their graceful curves and bold, sweeping designs. Piecework was almost always angles; applied work was generally curves. The first American appliqued quilts were made by cutting out colorful prints, often from imported fabrics, turning under the raw edges, and sewing them to a plain ground. Later, women made up their own designs. They folded paper and cut intricate abstract shapes, the way a child folds and cuts paper to make a snowflake. Or they drew familiar objects around them—curving vines an
d splashy flowers, farm animals and family members, and, in some cases, homey or biblical scenes.

  December 26, 1864

  Dear Lizzie,

  I have had but little time to write, although I have received your cheerful letters and grateful am I for them. I do not think I was such a good daughter-in-law, but thank you for kindly saying it. You are right to ask if I miss Mother Bullock. I surely do, and isn’t it the oddest thing? I guess I liked her right well after all. She was a worker and said things plain, so you did not have to puzzle her meaning. But what I miss more is talking to her about Charlie. There is no one left on Bramble Farm who knew him.

  The sheriff has told all in Slatyfork that Mother Bullock confessed to killing Samuel Smead, and he never heard her tell a falsehood in her life, he says. So he has no choice but to believe her, as she was an honorable woman. I don’t suppose anybody shall ever say that about my sacred self. Nonetheless, the attitude toward me has changed. At the post office, people inquire about my health and circumstances as if there never was an unkind thought given to me. Still, I sense a distance in a few, since people are ever reluctant to admit they were wrong about a thing.

  Mrs. Kittie is right friendly again, although that may be because she has decided I was right about Mr. Howard. She returned from her nuptial trip alone, expecting her beloved to follow in a day or two, but he has not been seen in Slatyfork since the wedding. Mrs. Kittie professes to be as happy as a hog in a cornfield, but her eyes are red. She has lost her appetite, too—so at least some good has come of the marriage.

  You might think that with crepe on the door, our Christmas would have been gloomy, but nothing was further from the truth. We were determined to have a jolly time for the girls’ sake, and so had the most agreeable Christmas yet on Bramble Farm. Nealie had heard about the foreign custom of cutting down small trees and bringing them into the house, then decorating them with candles and gingerbread cookies. It seemed an odd thing to me, but Annie and I chopped one down, then dragged it to the house and left it there until Joybell and Piecake had gone to sleep. We brought it inside, to Nealie’s amusement, for we had cut down an oak sapling, and the tree must be a spruce. So we went for another, then set it up in the middle of the room. We did not add candles, because they are scarce, and we are afraid of fire. But we had made gingerbread shapes, and those we propped on the branches. Of course, Joybell had smelt the baking so knew we were up to something, but we did not let her feel the clever little horses and trees and hearts we had cut out.