Alice's Tulips: A Novel (32 page)

Write me of James’s plans—and yours.

Love from,

Alice Bullock

April 26, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

Oh, such wonderful news to know you are pregnant again! I wonder you did not write it sooner, or perhaps you thought I would disapprove. Well, I do not. Two years ago, things were
going poorly, but now they are going finely, and I think a baby would bring gladness to your little family. Only if he is a boy, please be so good as to not call him Abraham. Or Ulysses. With that happy event to anticipate, I think James would be wise to stay in Galena, especially since I do not agree that a supervisory position in a nail factory is beneath him. Is he really as well enough acquainted as he thinks with General Grant to ask for an appointment in Washington? Of course, you are right in saying that General Grant is in need of James’s talents, but, Lizzie, is it not foolhardy for him to quit one position before he is certain of another? With the rebellion over, so many soldiers are returning home, and the competition for jobs will be keen, with the boys in blue getting first choice. Of course, I know nothing about the situation, so I shall concern myself with advising you what to wear when you call at the White House.

Oh cow! Lizzie, I don’t mean any of that. Why would General Grant care a pin for James? Your husband has too high an opinion of himself, and if he quits his job, you will have to move into the poorhouse.

No, there is no word yet of Charlie. Harve says that even if Charlie set out at once from Andersonville, it would take him two weeks to arrive in Keokuk, but two weeks is up, and we have not heard. Harve checks every day for a telegram before coming to Bramble Farm.

Nealie called yesterday with young Tom, who is a pretty boy, although he does not have Piecake’s sweet disposition. He is beginning to look more like Mr. Frank Smead, who looks like Mr. Samuel Smead, so the truth of that situation will never be known. Nealie and husband have planted oats, wheat, and timothy. I am surprised, because I thought that now that the war is done with, Mr. Smead would move to one of the Southern states. But Nealie says that he never was a true Southerner.

“I will tell you something that will come as a surprise,” says she. “You may have wondered that Frank was away so much during the war. Well, he was on intelligence missions.”

I looked up sharply. “Frank Smead was a spy?”

“For the Union,” Nealie adds quickly. “My husband was as loyal a Union man as your Charlie.”

“Oh” was all I say, for I remembered his angry outburst when the Negro spoke in Slatyfork.

Nealie seemed to read my mind. “Don’t you see? He spoke against the Union and the Negro so people would think him a copperhead. It was all part of the plan.” She lowered her voice, although no one was around to hear. “He knew Samuel was one of the ruffians, and he believed people would think him no better than his brother, so it was all a perfect ruse. I could not tell you before, for if Samuel had found out the truth, he would have harmed Frank for sure.” Nealie asked me to keep the information in confidence, and I was glad to agree, for I have not decided the truth of it. “I will tell you another secret,” she says. “It was old Mrs. Bullock who asked me to come to church that morning in October and ask if you would care for me when the baby was born. She said you had been a friend to me, and I must be one to you.” Then Nealie adds, without further explanation, “I am grateful to Mrs. Bullock that she told the sheriff she killed Samuel.”

“Do you believe it?” I asks.

“Do you?”

The day was not done with Mr. Samuel Smead. Harve has been studying the farm to see if we might plant hemp, as there is talk of a ropewalk going in at Slatyfork, and in the evening, he came to the house with an ax he had found in the woods. “I wonder what fool would come to lose such an ax,” he says. My knees buckled, and I grasped hold of a chair, saying my foot had given out. That was not the cause of my weakness, of course. The ax was the one I had taken the day I met Mr. Samuel Smead by the currant bushes.

Now, Lizzie, heed the words
about James from your hard-spoken sister,
Alice Bullock

April 27, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

My letters are not so long these days, but there are more of them, thanks to Harve’s journey back to Slatyfork each night. I am glad I can trust him not to snoop, although I shall seal this letter with extra wax.

After supper, whilst Annie put the girls to bed, Harve and I went outside, where I sat on the bench and watched him walk back and forth. He is a big man and moves as if it is an effort, putting his whole body into every step and turn. We have planted corn, oats, wheat, and Indian corn and had talked at supper about putting in peanuts, what the Southerners call “goober peas.” They are popular in the South, and many Union soldiers developed a taste for them, but I’d said the decision was Charlie’s.

Harve paced with such deliberation that at last I asked if something troubled him.

“That talk of peanuts made me think what if Charlie don’t come back.”

“I have it in my mind he will.”

Harve sat down on the bench beside me, and I could feel the weight of him. “He’s got sand, Charlie has, and if anybody could make it, he would. But it’s been two weeks and then some, with no word. Charlie’d have sent a wire if he was alive. I don’t want you to give up hope, but I’m just asking, what if he’s dead?”

“I don’t believe he is, Harve.”

He sighed. “Here’s the truth of it, Alice. You got to think of the future. I’m not saying you have to decide right now or nothing, but I want you to think if he don’t come home, what would you say if I offered myself? I’d be willing if you was.”

Lizzie, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to smack Harve for his impertinence. But I could see he was dead serious, and I did not want to give offense, so I says, “You have caught me by surprise.”

Harve took that as encouragement and presented his case. “I
don’t dip nor chew nor nothing, and you could sit on my lap and pull my whiskers. I wouldn’t mind.”

That had little appeal to me, and I wanted to tell him to pull his own whiskers, but I would not be so unkind.

“I’m a worker. Jennie Kate didn’t complain about that. You’re pert. Charlie always said so, and I can see it for myself.” He took a deep breath. “I got to have somebody to take care of Piecake.”

Well, there it was. Harve doesn’t care for me any more than I do for him, but he needs a mother for his child.

“I mean, we ought to wait a bit, because maybe Charlie will come back after all. But if he don’t, would you have me?”

Well, I wouldn’t, Lizzie, even with Piecake in the bargain. I tried to think of a nice way to let Harve know, but just then, Annie came out the door and walked to the well. She set down the bucket and ran her fingers through her hair, then threw back her head and looked up where the stars were just coming out. She drew the water, then took a dipperful and drank, spilling on her dress and laughing. “Harve,” I whisper. “There’ll never be any man but Charlie for me, but I think there’s someone else who’d make Piecake a good mother and you a fine wife.”

“There is?” Harve reared up his big head and looked at me.

I nodded at Annie.

Harve looked at her, then back at me and grinned. “Do you think
she’d
have me?”

“I do.

At that, Harve jumped up and took the bucket from Annie and carried it into the house, leaving me alone. Now I wonder if I should have kept him on my string. What if Charlie doesn’t come home? Harve could run the farm, and I could have Piecake as my own. It doesn’t seem such a bad bargain. But when I think about being in bed with Harve, I believe I’d rather have the hairbrush.

Love from

Alice K. Bullock

April 29, 1865

Dear Lizzie,

Harve made his intentions known to Annie that very night. I thought she would jump at such a match, which is far more brilliant that she ever could have hoped for. She likes Harve finely, and he is the only man who has, come to Bramble farm who doesn’t scare Joybell. When she told me Harve had offered himself, she said slyly that he did not need a dose of wild comfort. When I asked the meaning of that, she says, “It’s manhood medicine. I don’t reckon he’ll have the need of it.”

Then she slumped down beside me and says mournfully, “But it don’t matter. I told him I cain’t. I just cain’t.”

“You won’t marry him?” I asks, surprised.

“There’s things. . . . I told him there’s things. . . .” Annie put her head in my lap and began to sob.

“You don’t like him?” I asks, lifting her head.

“I like him right well,” Annie says, sniffing back tears. “Joybell, too.”

“You don’t have a husband, do you?”

“Oh, no.” Annie wiped her eyes on my apron and sat up. “I ain’t worthy of him. That’s what. I done a terrible thing.”

Lizzie, she has had a hardscrabble life, and who would criticize anything a mother did to care for her blind child? “Harve’s a good man. He would understand that you had to scratch out a living as best you could,” I says.

“You know it’s worse than that.”

“Coming to Bramble Farm? The stealing? Why, that’s between me and you and Mother Bullock, and it was forgot long ago. Besides, Harve has told us all about the reconnoitering he did in the army. He wouldn’t blame you.”

“Oh, lady.” Annie put her face into her hands and shook her head back and forth, but she did not weep.

“What is it?”

“You know what it is. I kilt that terrible bad man is what.”

Her words were so muffled, I wasn’t sure I had heard her right. “You what?”

“That Mr. Smead devil, the one that done everybody so much bad. I kilt him. I swan! I can’t marry Mr. Stout with blood on my hands.”

I drew a deep breath and put my head down to keep from growing faint while I tried to make sense of her words. “Mother Bullock said she killed him.”

Annie sniffed. “Wind stuff, that was. She said it ’cause she thought you done it.”

We were still for a moment. The stars were polka dots in the blue-black sky. One dot streaked across the darkness, and I crossed myself, making an
X
on my chest. “Why did you do it? Was he after you?”

“Joybell. He was messing with her. He catched her in the barn when me and the old missus was in the field and you in town. He did first one thing and then another.” Annie clenched her fists, and the skin on her face grew tight. “He been a-waitin’ a long time, and watching her from far off, like the day we swimmed. He come gassin’ and bio win’ to the house by the creek. That’s how we chanced to move in here. There weren’t no snake. I warned him off, but evil was in his blood so bad, he couldn’t stop himself, and he said he’d come back and likewise. That morning, I come in from the field ’cause the hoe broke, and I heard Joybell crying, and I picked up the big hay knife from the stack, and I run for the barn. Joybell was all tremblish. Her dress was pult up, and Mr. Smead had her legs spread out, and he was having his way with her. I got there too late for that. I said I’d kill him, but he just laughed and told me I wouldn’t be able to kill him any more than you done, and you’d had you an ax. Said he’d forced you just like he’d done Joybell, and now it was my turn. I hit him on the head with the hay knife. Hit him and hit him, and when he didn’t move no more, I told Joybell to wash herself in the horse trough and hide in the haystack. I loaded him on that old cart and hauled him out to the woods. Joybell’s
fretted herself sick ever since, but lady, I can’t have did nothing else.”

Annie turned to me with such anguish on her face that I put my arms around her and we both cried. Oh, Lizzie, I could not tell even you what happened that day in the woods, but now that Annie has said it aloud, I will admit to you that Mr. Smead threw me on the sharp rocks of the path and ravished me, pressing me into the stones until my skin was torn in a dozen places. At the critical moment, I could not bring the ax down on his head. When he was done with me, he sneered and said he no longer cared to marry me. Then he spit on me and went off, leaving me bruised and bloody in the path. I could not bear to touch the ax again, so left it behind. I know you have wondered about the details of what transpired but knew my anguish and did not press me. Well, there is the truth of it.

“I ask forgiving,” Annie said simply, looking down at her hands. “I let them suspicion you ’cause if they’d’ve known it was me, they’d’ve hanged me for sure. If it come down to hanging you, I wouldn’t’ve keeped it a secret.” She nodded her head up and down, then from side to side. “Still, it weren’t right, letting folks think you done a wicked thing, when it was me.”

“If Joybell was mine, I would have done the same,” I says.

“You would?”

I squeezed her hand. “Yes.”

“What shall Annie do now, lady?” she asks. “Annie’s flurried.”

I shifted so that I could rub my bad foot, which had begun to torment me. Both Annie and I go barefoot most of the time. “Do you want to tell Harve?”

“Oh Lordy, lady, no, but it ain’t right, keeping it from a husband.”

“I’d say anything that happened before you met Harve is none of his business. You don’t expect him to tell you everything, do you?”

Annie shook her head.

“You will do a disservice to all of us if you do. Piecake won’t have a mother, and you’d betray Mother Bullock. She knew you’d done it. How else would she have known about the cart?”

“She lied for me?”

“It was her deathbed gift, and it’s poor pay indeed to call her a liar.”

Annie looked awed. “Nobody ever done such for me before.”

“It’s women’s lies, Annie. There are things women have to keep to themselves.” I tried to get up but couldn’t, so Annie stood and took my arm, pulling me up. “Here is what you will do,” I tell her, looking her full in the face. “You killed a bad man, and maybe you saved some lives in the doing of it. You did a good thing, as did Mother Bullock in taking the blame. So be right in your mind about it. Don’t tell the sheriff, and don’t tell Harve. If you have the need to talk about it, come to me.”

Annie thought that over for a long time. Then she says, “If you need to talk, you can come to me, too.”