Alice's Tulips: A Novel

Alice’s Tulips

Also by Sandra Dallas

The Diary of Mattie Spenser
The Persion Pickle Club
Buster Midnight’s Café

ALICE
’
S TULIPS
. Copyright © 2000 by Sandra Dallas. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Design by Nancy Resnick

Illustrations by Jackie Aher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dallas, Sandra.

Alice’s tulips : a novel / Sandra Dallas.—1st ed.

          p.    cm.

ISBN 0-312-20359-4 (he)

ISBN 0-312-28378-4 (pbk)

1. Iowa—History—Civil War, 1861–1865–Fiction.
2. Military spouses—Fiction. 3. Young women–Fiction.
4. Farm life—Fiction. 5. Quilting–Fiction. I.Title.

    PS3554.A434A79    2000

10  9  8

for my sister Sheila

The idea for
Alice’s Tulips
came from three sources over maybe three years’ time. Diane Mott Davidson, the wonderful culinary mystery writer, suggested an epistolary novel, longtime friend Carol Shapiro found my Friendship quilt (the source of many of the names in the book), and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, held a show of Civil War quilts. Thanks, ladies. In addition, for help with research, I am grateful to Stanley Kerstein and Joel Goldstein in Denver, to Fred Boyles and Alan Marsh at the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia, to Bill Wilson in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and to the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library and the Iowa Historical Society. Thank you, Jane Jordan Browne and Reagan Arthur, for your faith, Arnie Grossman for your friendship and help through tough times, and Bob, Dana, and Kendal for your amazing love.

Alice’s Tulips

A Friendship quilt was presented to a beloved friend or family member on an important occasion—a marriage, an anniversary, a move west, an army enlistment, for instance. The quilt became a remembrance of loved ones left behind. Names and sometimes a sketch or sentiment were embroidered or signed in permanent ink on patchwork blocks. The blocks were assembled into the Friendship quilt, also known as a Signature, Presentation, or Album quilt. Among the most popular quilt patterns were Churn Dash (Love Knot), Double Monkey Wrench, Hole-in-the-Barn-Door, Shoo-Fly, and, after the Civil War, Sherman’s March.

December 3, 1862

Dearest Sister Lizzie,

Are you surprised to hear that Charlie has gone for a soldier? You knew he would do it, I told you so, but he left sooner than we ever expected. Now I am shut up with his mother on Bramble Farm, and she is no better for conversation than prune whip. If I didn’t have you to write to, I think I should die. I have no close friend at Slatyfork, and you know I can’t write my true
thoughts to Mama or to most friends back home in Fort Madison—not after the way they passed it around why I married in haste and young, being yet sixteen, although Charlie was twenty-one. By now they know they were wrong, but I still do not think kindly of them. Me and Charlie never did anything wrong until we got married, although, Lordy, I was tempted. The day I walked into that dry-goods store in Fort Madison and saw him the first time, I knew he was my life’s companion, and he felt likewise. I don’t know why Mama and Papa were so set against it. After all, they approved of you marrying James when you were still fifteen, and moving off to Galena. I guess they believed James had a future but that Charlie would always be a clerk. Or maybe, me and you being the oldest and the only girls, Mama wanted me to stay at home to care for the six little boys. Well, I don’t care about any of them as much as I do you, Lizzie. Me and you were always as close as two apples on a stem, and I know I can write you frank, without you giving me what for.

My Charlie is a gay little soldier, and a tiger to fight the Johnny Rebs. Why, he is as full of fight as any swill tub, though he himself took the pledge so is dry as the ash heap. (We’ll see about that after he is in the army awhile, however, for Charlie likes his good times.) They had better watch out, those Secesh. Charlie won’t have a fear for his safety. He worries that the war will be over before he can get himself some scalps. Oh, I wish I could be a soldier, too, and shoot the Southern fire-eaters and be the one to hang old Jeff Davis higher than Haman. But no, I must be left behind with Charlie’s mother on a farm. I wish Charlie had not gone, but to tell him to stay in Slatyfork and not enlist, well, I might as easy try to cut the morning mist with scissors.

The folks here gave our boys a first-rate send-off. This is the biggest regiment raised in the vicinity, and the town did the boys proud. Charlie and the other recruits marched off grand. People drove in from farms and ran from the shops and stood in the road bareheaded, shouting hurrahs as the soldier boys marched smartly along. The church bells rang, and a brass band led the
parade, blasting out the “Battle Cry of Freedom.” Little children threw flowers, ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and gents who’d climbed on top of the bandstand in the square cried out, “Union forever!”

Then marched the Wolverine Rangers—for that is what they have called themselves—eighty-six fine soldiers who shook the earth with their thundering footsteps. Oh, it was a fine time, with only a few scowls on the faces of traitorous copperheads. Here along the Missouri border, I am sorry to say, copperheads are as thick as princes in Germany. One of them called out, “Ho for old Jeff Davis,” and a group of boys thumped him. Myself, I don’t care so much about freeing the slaves, nor does Charlie, but we both say the Union must be preserved.

It’s my guess that Uncle Abe has used up all the single boys, and now he’s asking the family men like Charlie (more of that presently) to sign up. Most are joining now to get their hundred-dollar bonuses, instead of waiting to be called up by the government, in which case, they would not get a plug nickel. Some call it “greenback patriotism,” but I say it’s little enough to pay a wife for being left behind to work Bramble Farm, and a hardscrabble farm at that. This was the last place made when the world was created, and the material ran out.

Charlie says he will give all but ten dollars of his bonus to Mother Bullock for the farm, which doesn’t set well with me. “Charlie, which one is your wife?” I asks. “Well,” says he, “I don’t want you to worry about any creditors, so I’ll give it to the old lady.” He’ll keep five dollars for himself and will make me a presentment of the other five. Since it’s as good as in my pocket, I spent a dollar of it at the mercantile for a hat with red, white, and blue streamers, which I wore to the parade. Mother Bullock did not approve of the purchase and scolded, saying that if Charlie doesn’t come back, I will have to wear black bonnets for the rest of my life, and who would give me back my dollar?

“I would wear black for only a year at most, for there are others to take Charlie’s place,” I reply, with a wink at Charlie. He laughed, but Mother Bullock scowled. She spent a nickel on
a flag to wave at the parade, which is a bigger waste of money, for I can wear the bonnet ever so often (if Charlie doesn’t get killed, that is, and I believe the bullet has not been molded that can harm him), but she won’t wave that flag again until the war ends.

Sister Lizzie, what do you think, I was asked to make the battle flag for the Wolverine Rangers! Charlie said when the subject of it came to be discussed, he rose right up and volunteered my name. Then Harve Stout—he was the lightning rod agent before he joined up—said his new wife, Jennie Kate, sews better. (The talk is Charlie was sweet on Jennie Kate before he went to Fort Madison, but it was the other way around. She was sweet on him, but he didn’t care for her any more than a yellow dog. My presence in Slatyfork as Mrs. Charles Bullock, a bride of one year, does not sit finely with her.) Charlie spoke up for me, and even though I have been here only two months, I was requested to make the flag. It is handsome indeed, with the head of a wolverine, cut from red madder. I applied the head onto canvas, using good stout thread; the flag may get shot up by the Rebs, but that wolverine will never ravel. Charlie carried the colors in the parade, and as he passed by, he dipped the flag to me, although Mother Bullock thought he saluted her. Well, let her, the old horned owl.