The Quilt Walk (9 page)

“Look at this, Emmy Blue. These stitches are much too large and uneven to be acceptable, and you’ve sewn too close to the edge of the material. If I allow you to keep in the stitches, the fabric will unravel and you’ll have an unsightly seam. You must take them out.”

“But it’s only a doll’s quilt. Waxy isn’t hard on her quilts. She won’t know the difference.”

“I will, and so will you. You must do them over.”

“But, Ma.”

“No.” Ma’s tone was serious. “If you don’t learn to stitch correctly now, you never will, and your quilts will be an embarrassment. There is nothing so unattractive as a woman with sloppy habits. Take out the stitches on these last four pieces and sew them properly.”

I turned to Aunt Catherine to back me up, but she only smiled and said Ma was right, that if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing right.

I wanted to say I didn’t think quilting was worth doing at all, but I knew Ma would tell me I was brash. So I took the little scissors Grandma Mouse had given me and clipped out the bad stitches, setting me back half a day. Since I didn’t want to lose that time, I sat beside the fire and re-stitched the four quilt pieces before I went to bed. When I was finished, Ma looked at the work and nodded her approval, then ironed the seams to one side with her fingers.

After that, I stitched one circle of four pieces while I was sitting on the wagon seat, another on a quilt walk with Aunt Catherine and another while I sat beside the campfire after dinner. That way, the quilt would be finished three times as fast, and I would be done with it.

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Traveling in a wagon train was different from making the journey on our own. Our oxen and wagon were dirty because of the dust churned up by seventeen other Conestogas. It was noisy, too, with the din of oxen and horses and mules, drivers yelling, children screaming, cowbells clanging. Not that I minded.

The countryside changed after we crossed the Missouri River. I was used to grassy meadows, but now there was open prairie. Pa called the farms hardscrabble. The people living on them were poor and thin. They stared at us as we passed, sometimes raising an arm to wave but not smiling. “I bet nothing will ever hatch out of that farm,” Pa said, as we passed one field. Many times we camped on the dusty prairie, far from a stream. As water became scarce we had to be careful not to waste it.

The cakes and pies and stews that our neighbors had given us had been eaten long before we crossed the Missouri. And there weren’t any farmers to sell us fresh vegetables and dairy products now. Instead we ate prairie chicken that Pa shot, beans and bacon, slapjacks with black molasses, stewed peaches, ham biscuits, and cornbread that Ma and Aunt Catherine made on Sundays. Sunday was baking day, and Ma always made a dried apple pie. We liked dried apple pie, though Pa said we were liable to get tired of it by the time we reached Golden. He said some travelers were so sick of dried apples that they made up a song about them, and he taught it to me:

I loathe, abhor, detest, despise,

Abominate dried apple pies.

I like good bread, I like good meat

Or anything that’s good to eat.

But of all the poor grub beneath the skies,

The poorest is dried apple pies.

So give me the toothache or sore eyes

But don’t give me dried apple pies.

Tread on my corns or tell me lies,

But don’t pass me dried apple pies!

Our food was
plains
fare, Ma said, because the prairie we crossed was known as the Great Plains. I didn’t complain about the monotony of our meals, because I saw that everyone in the wagon train ate the same food, and some were less fortunate than we were, living on just beans and bacon, with never a taste of pie or gingerbread or even stewed apples or peaches.

Only the Schmidts ate better than we did. On Sundays, Mr. Schmidt baked a cake in a cast-iron Dutch oven and sometimes he made cookies with black walnuts, too. Joey shared the desserts with me, until Mrs. Schmidt called me a poor little beggar girl. After that, I told Joey I wasn’t hungry.

“Oh, don’t mind Ma. She’s homesick,” he said. I could tell he was embarrassed at the way his mother treated me.

I didn’t change my mind about Mrs. Schmidt, though. She complained all the time, telling her husband that he was a fool to sell their bakeshop and go west. She said Joey would grow up to be a wild Indian, that is, if he didn’t get himself trampled by a buffalo first. “And what about me?” I overheard her ask. “What will happen to me if you get shot in the head by an Indian or run over by a stupid ox? What will happen to me and Joey if you’re not around to take care of us?” And then I heard her mutter, “I should have married the hardware clerk, but I was a fool for sweet strawberry tarts.”

Mrs. Schmidt complained about the land we passed through, but Joey and I were fascinated by it. We discovered rocks that were smooth and black as night, and broken stones that gleamed as if they contained gold. I asked Pa about them, but he said they were just rocks. We picked up a snakeskin, flowers I’d never seen before, feathers, and eggshells. Ma told me that every Sunday I could choose one item and store it in a small drawer in the medicine chest that she had discovered was empty. Already it contained a speckled shell, brown with tiny dots of black and white. There were also two rocks, the red one so soft I could write with it, and the white one with the outline of a fern. There was a scarlet leaf and a dried flower. Ma called the flower a lady’s slipper, and said she did not know how it could have grown in that dry earth. I found a tiny green bead, like the ones on Buttermilk John’s shirt, and told Ma that an Indian must have left it for me. But Ma said it was more likely that it was lost by one of the travelers. Once, I discovered the arm of a china doll under a bush and added that to the collection, thinking how unhappy the doll’s owner would be when she discovered the arm had broken off. I wished she could know that it was safe in our medicine chest.

There was a little more room in the wagon, now that part of our food supply was gone, and I asked Ma, “Couldn’t we store some of our clothes in the wagon? Do we have to keep on wearing them all?”

Ma glanced at Aunt Catherine and didn’t answer me right away.

“Your ma’s proud,” Aunt Catherine said.

“I want to show your pa I will live up to my promise,” Ma said. Then to show the subject was closed, she added, “Let me see your quilt square, Emmy Blue.”

Only a couple of weeks after we left the Missouri, we began to pass dead animals, oxen and mules that had given out, sometimes a dog that had been run over by a wagon. I knew then that Pa had been right when he’d insisted I leave Skiddles behind. I wouldn’t have wanted my cat to be crushed under an oak wheel or attacked by one of the big dogs the settlers had brought along.

Then I realized that animals weren’t all that perished crossing the plains, because we spotted our first grave, a pile of stones with a crude wooden marker. The grave was new, I could tell, but the words painted on the marker had already begun to fade, and all we could read was “Alb rt K ne.”

“A man,” Pa said, when we stopped the wagon to see the grave. “I wonder what happened to him.”

“Or a boy,” Ma replied.

I thought then of Agnes Ruth, my little sister who had died, and wondered if Ma was remembering her and the other graves we had left behind in Quincy.

“It might have been a woman—Alberta,” Aunt Catherine put in. “Perhaps she had young children. Who would take care of them?”

“Others in the train. There are always mothers to take on the young.” Ma glanced my way as if to reassure me that if something happened to her, I would not be alone.

Ma’s words made me worry that one of them might get hurt or even killed. If something happened to Pa, would Ma and I be able to drive the oxen by ourselves? But then, would Ma and I even continue to Colorado Territory on our own?

What if it was Ma who got hurt or died, what would become of us? I wasn’t the only one who would be lost without her. What would Pa be like without Ma? She had the stouter heart.

Then I thought, what would happen to me if both of them died? Would Uncle Will and Aunt Catherine want me? Ma, Pa, Aunt Catherine, and Uncle Will were the people I loved most in the world. I couldn’t bear it if one of them were killed or even hurt in any way, and if something happened to all of them, I’d have to go back to Quincy and hope Abigail and her mother would take me in.

Suppose I was the one to get hurt, what would they do? They needed me. I ran back and forth between the wagons with messages. I took Pa’s place beside the oxen when he had some chore to do. If something happened to me, would I be buried like Alb rt K ne, left under a pile of rocks, remembered for only a few weeks until my name bleached away in the sun? Would Ma and Pa go on without me?

“Do you think anybody will remember whoever’s buried here?” I asked.

“We will remember,” Aunt Catherine said. She had gathered a bouquet of grasses and wildflowers, and now she put them on the stones covering the grave.

I’ll remember, too, I thought.

The Bonner wagon had pulled out behind us. Mr. Bonner said one of his wheels was not right and he wanted to check it. “Hatchett,” he called. “Give me a hand.”

Pa and Uncle Will looked at each other. Because they were brothers, both of them were named Hatchett. I wondered if each expected the other to help Mr. Bonner, but in the end, both went to him.

Mr. Bonner told his wife, “Well, get down off the seat. If we have to lift the wagon, we don’t want you in it.”

Even from where I stood, I could see Mrs. Bonner’s face turn red, and she jumped off the wagon and came to stand beside us. “The wheel plagues him,” she explained to Ma.

“Made by a scoundrel,” Mr. Bonner added in a loud voice.

Serves him right, I thought.

Mrs. Bonner spotted the grave. “Oh, how awful! To think of dying in this lonely place and buried far from loved ones.”

“We’ll see more graves before our journey’s over,” Aunt Catherine said. “Pray God it won’t be one of us.”

“I couldn’t bear to be left behind like that,” Mrs. Bonner said. Then she glanced at her husband and rubbed her wrist, which looked bruised. I could see her lip was split, too. “But I wonder if there are worse things than dying,” she added quietly. “And it would be peaceful, lying under the sod with only the wind to trouble one. I think it might not be such a bad fate at that.”

“There would be wildflowers, too,” I said. I had my quilt square in my hand, and I held it up to show her a strip with yellow flowers on it.

“Yes, I’d like that, to lie under a carpet of flowers. I believe I like flowers best of all God’s creations,” Mrs. Bonner told us. “Owen said in one of his letters before we were married that he loved roses, but I believe he loves the thorns better than the blossoms.” She put her hand to her mouth and lowered her head, as if she should not have spoken. “I must watch what I say. I am so used to speaking my mind. Owen says a tongue is a bad thing in a woman, and I fear he may be right.” She gave an odd laugh, one that told me she was scared. “Listen to me prattle on. Owen is right to teach me my place.”

“He is a handsome man,” Ma said at last. Ma rarely commented on people’s looks, because she said what was inside a person was more important. So when Ma said that Mr. Bonner was handsome, I knew she couldn’t think of anything else nice to say about him.

“Yes, isn’t he?” Mrs. Bonner replied. “My friends considered me a lucky woman to have made such a good marriage. And to think I met him through the letters. I could scarce believe my good fortune when I first saw him.” She leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “I had worried he would be an ugly man.”

“And it was his good fortune to find a beautiful wife,” Aunt Catherine said.

Mrs. Bonner shook her head. “I am plain. Even Owen says so. I fear he was disappointed.”

“Plain? Not at all! Why your face is like a doll’s.”

“Like Waxy’s, before she sat in the sun,” I added. Mrs. Bonner looked confused, until I explained that Waxy was my wax doll, whose face had softened from the sun’s heat.

“Not so fine, but at least I will not melt,” Mrs. Bonner said with a small smile. She looked at the quilt square I was stitching. “I wish I had brought my sewing with me. It would be an excellent thing to sit in the sun with it while we rest.”

“Do you quilt?” Ma asked.

“Oh yes. And if you will excuse my vanity, I was considered quite good at it in Fort Madison. But I am speaking about embroidery. It is my favorite, and I am afraid I am too proud of it. You see, I embroidered the pillow slips and sheets, the towels and tablecloths for my wedding trip, and I decorate my under things. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and showed it to us. The white linen square was embroidered with white flowers, and there was fine lace around the edges.

“Such delicate stitches. Why, there’s not a single mistake,” Ma said admiringly. “I am hoping Emmy Blue will learn to stitch as well.” She nodded her head at my quilt square.

For fear Ma would suggest I learn to embroider, too, I went over to where the men were working on the wheel. A spoke had split, and Pa was telling Mr. Bonner about wrapping it in wet buckskin.

“Never heard of that, but I guess there’s no harm in you doing it,” Mr. Bonner said.

Pa glanced at Uncle Will in a way that told me I knew he was angry. “Me?” he muttered. Mr. Bonner made no move to fix the spoke, so Pa went to our wagon, found a piece of buckskin, and whittled off a strip with his knife. He poured water over it, working the wetness into the buckskin, and when it was pliable, he stretched it, and then wound it around the spoke.

Ma saw that Pa was doing all the work. But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she removed her sunbonnet and examined it. “Worn out already,” she said, running her hand over the fabric. “I was vain and made it from fine muslin. I should have used calico, and a dark one so the dirt wouldn’t show. But it will have to do now.”

“I’ll make you a new one if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Bonner said quickly.