Alice's Tulips: A Novel by Sandra Dallas

Mother Bullock I might need the money to buy tickets for you and the girls, she took out the book in which she keeps accounts and said she did not know how we could manage it, since we do not have enough for ourselves for the winter. Charlie’s enlistment money was used up a long time since, and he sends as much of his pay as he can spare, but Father Abraham’s cashier is three months late. Mother Bullock says Charlie takes care of Uncle Samuel, so Uncle Sam ought to take care of us, but families are not considered in this war. Except for apples, and there is little market for them, our crop was poor this year, and we bartered most of it. Mother Bullock says we have barely twenty dollars, and we must buy winter clothing for Annie and Joybell, and even Lucky, because we don’t pay them a red copper for helping us on the farm. Annie and Joybell don’t have shoes, and Annie has just one dress—my dress, which she, at last, has admitted to stealing.
    “I had but a rag when I come here, and it wasn’t proper. It got tore up on the way, and I didn’t have no fabric to take ravelings from. All’s I had to mend it was thread that was spun at home, which was too big for the needle. Then I lost the needle,” she says. “Then I had but the use of a Confederate needle.” When I inquired what that was, she replied, “A thorn.”
    I was angry with Mother Bullock for not telling me how things stood.
    “You are young, and I wanted to spare you the worry,” she replies.
    “Then you do me an injustice. You treat me like a child.”
    “Sometimes you act like one,” she says, then looked away. “It’s not easy for you here, I know that, Alice. I’d hoped you and Jennie Kate Stout would be close, but I see you’re not, and there’s none your age except Annie, who’s not our kind. Well, it’s hard for all of us, and you must bear up until the war is over, for Charlie’s sake.”
    There is one more thing—we are concerned for our safety,and you would be, too, if you came here. A group of raiders was so bold as to ride into town, where they ripped down the American flag hanging in front of a store, then thrashed the shopkeeper and burnt his building. They had come up from Missouri, and while they did not attack any of the farms, we all worry they will come back. Mother Bullock says it is a good thing she doesn’t have silver, else we would have to bury it to keep it from them. It is not known if they are the ones who have done the other deeds, or if there are other groups of bushwhackers afoot, too. Maybe the man I saw watching us by the creek the day we made cider wasn’t Mr. Samuel Smead after all, but a guerrilla. Annie saw him, too—and before I did. That was why she ran off as soon as we dressed, in hopes of catching him. But he disappeared before she reached him, and she said she disremembered to tell me. Of course, I never mentioned who I suspicioned him to be. Lordy, no. I said he must have been a horseman passing along the creek, who heard us making noise and came to have a look.
    She gave me an astonished look, then mutters, “A body’s foolish to think such.” But she has said nothing more and knows better than to tell Mother Bullock.
    Now that the harvest is over, except for our little patch of corn, we have gone to quilting again. It is good weather, quilting weather, warm enough to stitch outside. I am almost done with the patches for the Dominoes quilt. Annie quilts real good, and here’s something strange: She quilts with either hand. When I remarked on it, she laughed and says, “Well, that’s because I can’t hardly write with either hand.” I asked did she piece, and she says, “I piece, but I’d rather patch my coverlids. I take natural delight in it.” She makes laid-on quilts, the kind we call applique, but I never liked the look of them as much as patchwork.
    Charlie writes that his foot has healed nicely, good enough for dancing, and if he doesn’t get home soon, he may try to find him