The Quilt Walk (4 page)

Pa looked at me hard, and that made me feel scared. “Are we going to make it?” I asked.

“Oh, we’ll get there all right. I’m just telling you to be careful. Watch what you do, and don’t run off. Wagon trains don’t always wait for lost children.”

“I’ve never been lost.” It’s true there were so many things to attract my attention that I often fell behind when I was out with Ma and Pa, but I’d never gotten lost.

“That’s because you’ve never been anyplace that isn’t familiar,” Pa replied. “You’ve never seen a prairie. It’s vast. It spreads from horizon to horizon with nary a tree or a house for a landmark. Why, sometimes, a person can’t tell east from west. I know of grown men who’ve gotten confused in all that emptiness.”

“Do they find their way home?”

“Oh, I guess most of them do, but often somebody has to go out looking for them.”

“Is it scary, the prairie, that is?” I liked walking along with Pa. We’d never talked much before, because I’d been younger when he left for Colorado Territory the first time. After he came back, he was too busy planning for our trip west to pay much attention to me. He’d told Ma that the West would be a good place for me to grow up, but he’d never told
me
that.

Pa walked for a while in silence. “It can be scary when the storms come. It can thunder like the saints are firing Sharps rifles up in the sky, and there can be lightning like bolts out of hell. And then the rain will come, so thick you can’t see from me to you. And when the storm is over, there’s so much mud that you have to put blankets or quilts under the wagon wheels to get enough traction to move out of it. The mud’s that thick, just like your ma’s gravy.”

I wondered what Ma would think if Pa put one of
her
quilts under a wagon wheel.

“It’s beautiful, too,” my father went on. “In the spring, the wildflowers on the prairie shine like a box of jewels. And the prairie grass in the fall turns the color of the gold the prospectors find in Colorado.”

“Have you seen bad storms?”

“I have. I saw buffalo stampede, too. There were buffalo as far as you could see, as thick as prairie grass. Something starts them off, and the buffalo run and run all the way to tomorrow, sweeping up cattle and oxen.”

“Well, they won’t sweep up our oxen,” I said. “Our oxen don’t go fast enough to be swept up in a herd of turtles.”

Pa laughed. He never laughed much. Lately, he worried about the farm, about getting ready for the trip, or about whether he could sell the farm for enough to buy the lumber and nails for the building in Golden.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “The trip west from the Missouri won’t be easy, Emmy Blue, but there will be good things about it. The air’s clean in Colorado Territory. There aren’t any damps in the West like along the Mississippi River, no fogs or heavy mists that fill up your lungs, give you the malaria or the consumption. The sun comes out every morning, bright and yellow as a twenty-dollar gold piece. At least, I think so. I haven’t seen a gold piece for a spell.” He laughed again.

“And the people. I think I like that best of all about the West. There’s gold to be discovered and stores to be built, money to be made, and they don’t want to waste time. I think you’ll like it, Emmy Blue. There’s freedom out there, though maybe not yet for your ma. She likes quilting bees and tea parties, and Golden will have them one day if she’ll give it time. You’re more like me. I don’t expect you’ll mind too much if you can’t sit in the parlor and thread needles, any more than I would.”

I never thought I was like Pa, who could be moody and curt, and who made decisions without consulting Ma. As I walked along in the dust that the oxen stirred up, I realized I really was like him in some ways. I liked adventure. I didn’t care for the idea of growing up to be like Grandma Mouse, sitting in her chair with her needle, never missing a thing that happened around her. I realized I was made up of both of my parents. I liked Ma’s gentle ways, but like Pa, I was restless with all the rules about how girls had to behave. I was half of each of my parents, it seemed like the two of them were fighting inside me.

Chapter Five

SLEEPING ON THE GROUND

W
e didn’t go very far that first day. We hadn’t even reached the Mississippi when we stopped to camp. Aunt Catherine declared we should have spent one more night at home and left early in the morning so we’d have a full day of travel. “Why, I’ve a mind to walk back home and get the paring knife I left behind on the drain board this morning,” she said. “I’d do it, too, if I didn’t have to go all that way wearing every dress I own.”

I wanted to tell her what was obvious, that she could take off the top dresses and Ma and I would keep an eye on them until she got back, but I wasn’t sure Aunt Catherine would appreciate my speaking up. She had been in a complaining mood all day.

Ma didn’t seem to mind that we’d gone only a little ways. She had practiced cooking over a campfire for a month, and she moved efficiently, taking the food box out of the back of the wagon and laying out the utensils. Of course, all she had to do was make coffee, since our neighbors had loaded us down with cakes and meat pies, boiled ham and fried chicken, bread, buttermilk, and boiled eggs. Pa had certainly found room for all that in the wagon. There was enough food for a week, Ma said, as she removed the food from the box.

Pa built a fire. Ma ground coffee and added it to the water in the pot, then set it on the coals to boil. Aunt Catherine sat down on a rock and held her hands over the fire. Since it was March, the weather, as in the mornings, was still cold at night. The smoke blew into her eyes, so Aunt Catherine moved to the other side of the fire. But the breeze changed directions, and the smoke drifted over there, too. “Smoke follows beauty,” Ma said, but Aunt Catherine only grunted and waved the smoke away from her face.

When it was time for bed, Aunt Catherine said, “I never slept on the earth.”

“Me neither. It’s an adventure,” I replied.

“More like a hardship,” Aunt Catherine grumbled.

Pa sighed. I thought he ought to tell Ma that compared to Aunt Catherine, she was a good traveler, but Pa wasn’t much for compliments. I curled up in my blanket and tried to go to sleep, but I wasn’t used to sleeping on the ground, either, and it took awhile for me to settle in. So I lay there awake, listening to the sounds of the night—a dog howling, a cow mooing, birds cooing. It was dark, because the trees hid the stars, and the moon wasn’t up yet.

After a bit, Pa whispered to Ma, “Aren’t you going to sleep under that quilt those women gave you before we left this morning?”

“My Friendship Quilt?” Ma had been lying down, but now she sat up and faced Pa.

“I forgot that’s what you called it.”

“What else would you call a quilt made by your closest friends?” Ma asked. “Why, I’d rather go cold than put it down where it might get dirty.”

“Well, it’s a quilt, isn’t it? What good is it if you can’t use it?”

Ma sighed. “You don’t understand, Thomas. A quilt’s not just a bed cover. It’s more than a collection of scraps. A quilt is a work of art. That quilt and my memories are all I have to remember my friends. Spreading the quilt in the dirt would be like my using one of your letters from the war to scribble a marketing list on.”

“You saved them?” Pa asked.

Ma lay back down, and in the light of the moon, which had just come up, I could see her eyes were open. She turned toward me, and I shut my eyes, because I didn’t want them to know I was listening. Ma said in a low voice, “Those letters are precious to me, Thomas. If something had happened to you, they would have been all I had left. Mother is keeping them for me until I can send for them. My Friendship Quilt is precious to me, too.”

Pa didn’t answer, and in a moment, I heard him snoring. I waited until I thought Ma was asleep, too, and then I got up and climbed into the wagon, removing the little quilt that Abigail had made for me. I wrapped it around Waxy, then held her in my arms and looked out at the sky until my eyelids were too heavy to stay open.

When I awoke, Ma was leaning over the campfire with the skillet. Aunt Catherine was taking her time folding her blankets and putting them into the wagon. Then she sat down on the wagon tongue and watched as Ma dished up breakfast for Pa and Uncle Will. “Come on, Cath. We still have yeast bread and fresh greens. Better eat up. It won’t be long until all we have are beans and bacon, bacon and beans.” Ma said.

Aunt Catherine just looked at Ma and didn’t stand up. In a moment, Ma took her a plate of food and a tin cup of coffee. “We can’t do a thing about our situation, so we’ll have to enjoy it,” Ma said.

Aunt Catherine didn’t reply. Instead, she took a bite of food.

“Now where’s Emmy Blue?” Ma asked. I sat up before Pa could poke me with his foot and tell me I was dawdling. “How did you sleep?” she asked me.

“The ground’s lumpy,” I said.

“No complaining,” Pa ordered.

“I’m not complaining. Ma just asked me. I slept all right. It’s Waxy who had a time of it. She wanted her feather mattress.”

Uncle Will laughed at that. “You see, Cath, only fine ladies have trouble sleeping on the ground.”

“I’m not a wax doll,” she told him. “You didn’t tell me when you asked me to go to Colorado that I’d have to sleep on the cold earth.”

I frowned as I folded my blanket and put Waxy’s quilt back inside the wagon. Where else did Aunt Catherine think we’d sleep? If the wagons didn’t have room for our trunks, surely they wouldn’t have room for beds.

Pa and Uncle Will yoked the oxen and we started off. The oxen were pokey, but I didn’t care. I liked walking along beside the team with Pa. He knew the birds by their songs and told me the names of the ones that were singing. He identified insects that scurried across the road and pointed out animals that we saw in the bushes, plants, and among the toadstools.

We watched a turtle crawl along the road, going slower than the oxen. “Can I keep him for a pet?” I asked. After all, a turtle wouldn’t run away.

“There’s no room for pets,” Pa told me.

I thought about Skiddles and hoped that he was happy. I thought of Abigail and wondered if she missed me. I missed her.

At noontime, when the sun was highest in the sky, we stopped to let the oxen rest and we ate a cold midday meal. We still had plenty of food left from what the neighbors had given us, so dinner was a feast.

I was helping Ma store the leftover food in the box when I saw Uncle Will nudge Aunt Catherine with his elbow and point his chin toward Ma. “Do your part, Cath,” he said. “You can’t expect Meggie to do all the work in her condition. If you’re going west with me, you’ll have to pitch in.”

I frowned, wondering what he meant by “her condition.” Was he worried that Ma had gotten so fat she couldn’t cook?

“I won’t have Meggie waiting on you,” Uncle Will continued. “There’s time for you to go back. You could be home by nightfall if you walked fast. Make up your mind now.”

I looked at Aunt Catherine, whose face was white as she stared at Uncle Will. “You’d go on without me?” she asked.

“That’s the way of it. You’ve never been a shirker before, and I won’t have it now.”

Aunt Catherine didn’t say a thing, only searched Uncle Will’s face, until Ma called softly, “Cath, you’re taller than I. Would you reach this box into the wagon. Honestly, I don’t know why a wagon has to be this high. It wasn’t designed by any woman, I can tell you that.”

There was a long silence, and then Aunt Catherine said softly, “Yes, Meggie, I’ll help you.” She and Ma lifted the box into the wagon. While Pa and Uncle Will hitched up the oxen, Ma said, “Cath let’s you and me walk for a time. My backside is sore from sitting on that board seat, and I bet yours is, too. Emmy Blue will take my place in our wagon, and I imagine Will can do without you. Those oxen don’t need us. Besides, it’s less than a mile to the river.” When Aunt Catherine hesitated, Ma said, “What would I do without you, Catherine? The only reason I didn’t put up a bigger fuss about going west was I knew you’d be with me.”

The two of them started out ahead of us. Then Uncle Will lifted me into our wagon. As he did so, he said to Pa, “Your wife’s quite a woman. I think Catherine might have walked all the way back home if it weren’t for Meggie.”

“Oh, she’d have gone with you,” Pa said.

Later, as Pa walked beside me, flicking his whip at the oxen, I asked, “Do you really think Aunt Catherine will stay with us instead of going back home?” I hoped she wouldn’t leave, because Ma would indeed be lonely without another woman.

“Of course, she’ll stay with us. A woman’s to go wherever her husband goes. You remember that, Emmy Blue.”

“But what if she’d gone back and taken Ma with her?”

Pa laughed and told me, “Your ma knows her duty.”

He went up to the lead ox then, and when he could no longer hear me, I said to my doll, “Let’s think a long time before we get married, Waxy.”

Chapter Six

ACROSS THE MISSISSIPPI