A Quilt for Christmas (8 page)

Four of the five had quilted together for years. They thought to put aside sewing bees when their husbands joined the Union army but decided they needed the day with each other. Talking about fears and hardships made them realize they were not alone in their troubles. Telling each other about their small joys—the letters from the camps and battlefields, the triumphs of their children, the first shoots sprouting from the seeds—made such pleasures seem even more important. And when the news came that husbands had died, the new widows were sustained by the love and support of the others. “How could I cope with this war without my quilting friends,” Mercy Eagles had said, and the others had nodded their agreement.

Besides, the quilts were being stitched for an Independence Day celebration, where they would be auctioned off for the benefit of the soldiers. “Nobody could fault a widow for spending one day a month working for war relief,” Mercy had told Eliza.

The gatherings refreshed them, and for Eliza, they brought a sense of normalcy for a few hours. She would savor a remark and think she would repeat it to Will. Or she would ask for a recipe, because Will would like the dish. And she would smile as if Will were still alive, before realizing she would never confide in Will or sit with him over dinner again.

For all of the women, the quiltings became the highlight of each month. They looked forward to the gatherings, each bringing food to share and children, of course. The little ones were romping through the orchard just then, playing war with sticks for guns.

“Eliza, you are indeed the best stitcher in Wabaunsee County,” Ettie announced in her strong voice.

Eliza was deep in thought, and a moment passed before she realized Ettie was talking to her. “Oh, but those stars are not mine,” Eliza protested. “Missouri Ann made them.”

The women turned to Missouri Ann, who blushed and bent over her needle in embarrassment at the attention.

“I suppose that's the best compliment a body could give you, mistaking your work for Eliza's,” Anna Bean told Missouri Ann.

As the others nodded, Ettie exchanged a glance with Mercy Eagles. The women had not been happy when Eliza announced that she could no longer be part of the group unless Missouri Ann was included.

“But she will spoil our little friendship,” Mercy had said. “We've quilted together for years and never felt the need to bring in anyone else.”

“Four is a perfect number for a quilt frame. Five will set us off our pace,” Anna Bean had added.

“Besides, she's a Stark,” Ettie had reminded Eliza.

“Only by marriage, and you know yourself, because you were at church on Christmas Day, how she escaped from those people. She has been a great help on the farm. I can't imagine how I got along without her. She's very like a sister to me now,” Eliza told them. “Besides, she lives with me. How can I ask her to stay to herself while the four of us stitch?” The conversation had taken place before Will's death, and Eliza was glad she had insisted on Missouri Ann becoming part of the group. Without her friend, Eliza could not have made it through those first dark days of death.

Because they were generally kind women, the others had not been able to answer.

After just a single day of sewing, the women had accepted Missouri Ann as one of them. “She's fast and her stitches are small,” Ettie observed. At more than fifty, she was the oldest of the group—and the largest, taller by two inches than Eliza and weightier by half. Some thought she was frosty-nosed, but her friends knew her to be a kind woman who would share her last potato. Her husband had been one of the first to join up, and later, two sons had enlisted. One of them had been killed at Shiloh.

“And when Missouri Ann opens her mouth, she has something interesting to say,” Anna said, sending a sly glance at Ettie, who was known to gnaw a subject to death, just as a dog would a bone.

“I believe she fits, and she's a worker,” Mercy added, and that had settled it. Calling a Kansas woman a worker was the best compliment anyone could pay her.

Now the women stopped to admire the stars Missouri Ann had made for the quilt. It was a Log Cabin, a much-loved design because a few of the first homes in the county had been log cabins, Eliza had explained to Missouri Ann when she chose the pattern.

“Is there a Soddy quilt?” Missouri Ann had asked.

“It would have to be all browns and dirty.”

Eliza and Missouri Ann pieced the Log Cabin squares using scraps of red for the centers, because red represented the hearth, the center of the home. They placed a series of dark strips along two adjacent sides of the red squares, and light strips on the other two sides. Then they stitched the finished squares together to make a second pattern, called “Barn Raising.” The quilt was a pattern within a pattern. What made the quilt different from other Log Cabins were the white stars that Missouri Ann cut out and appliquéd to each red center before the “logs” were added around the sides. She cut the stars without a pattern. Some were lopsided, the legs unequal, and the sizes varied. But the quilters were charmed by the variety. They spent several minutes deciding whether to quilt an outline around the stars or to make an
X
through the red square. They decided on the latter, perhaps because the stitching would go quicker.

“I never saw a thing so pretty. Why, with this quilt over you, you'd know you were sleeping under the sky,” Anna said. She was a little thing, not more than a few years over twenty, with the blue eyes and yellow hair of a china doll. Eliza was amazed that such a delicate woman could work so hard. Anna had always been fashionably dressed, with clothes she made herself and wore over hoops, and her children were as spotless as children could be. When Eliza had first seen the Beans' little stone house, she'd thought it looked like a drawing from
Peterson's Magazine,
with its antimacassars and a paisley shawl draped over the love seat, the vase of beaded flowers, an arrangement of dried grasses. Now Anna did the plowing and planting, too. Eliza noticed that Anna's dress was frayed, and the sleeve soiled, the jacket loose. The woman was barefoot, as well, although she still wore hoops. The war had taken its toll on her, but then what woman whose husband had gone to war hadn't suffered? At least her husband was still alive, Eliza thought, then bit her lip. She would not let herself think “what if”—what if Anna's husband had died instead of Will. She would be glad that Cosby Bean was still alive.

“I believe I'd like to make a quilt like this with stars, a good quilt that I could pass down to my daughter and granddaughter so's they'd remember Cosby fought to save the nation,” Anna continued.

“You think someday our granddaughters will sit like this over a quilt frame, maybe right here in Wabaunsee County, Kansas?” Mercy asked.

“I hope it won't be in wartime,” Eliza said. “I'd rather think of them stitching in happier days, without any worries—and without any slaves to be freed.” Or husbands dead on a battlefield, she thought. She hoped their granddaughters would not know such sorrow.

“Cosby doesn't approve of slavery, but he didn't join up to free the slaves. He's fighting to preserve the Union,” Anna said.

“It's the same thing, ain't it?” Missouri Ann asked. She had taken eight tiny stitches on her needle and pulled it through the quilt, making sure each stitch was tight.

“It is, and it isn't,” Ettie explained, glancing at Missouri Ann's stitches, then nodding her approval. As the most outspoken woman in the group, Ettie liked to preside over discussions, and the others generally yielded to her, because she was considered a deep thinker.

The women were silent, until Eliza said, “Well, what of it is and what of it isn't?”

Ettie paused to make a tiny knot that was all but invisible, and snip off her thread. She removed the inch left in her needle and tossed it onto the ground “for a bird's nest,” she said. Then she cut a length of thread, put it through her needle, secured the end in the quilt, and began stitching again. “It was slavery that caused the South to secede, and the North went to war to keep them from doing it. But you've seen how some of the Union supporters here treat our free Negroes, like Andy Jones that works for Print Ritter. I think they would rather throw food to the pigs than give it to a starving colored man.”

“I think some of the men's gone off to the war to have a good time,” Missouri Ann said. She blushed when she saw the others had stopped stitching and were staring at her, as if they wondered whether that had been Hugh's reason for joining up.

“I suppose that's so,” Eliza said, thinking that was exactly why Missouri Ann's husband went for a soldier.

“Hugh went to save the Union,” Missouri Ann said quickly.

“Then why didn't the other Starks join?” Ettie asked.

“I couldn't rightly say,” Missouri Ann replied.

“Because they're copperheads,” Davy interjected. The women had not seen him standing near them, and they paused.

Eliza admonished him, saying he should keep such thoughts to himself unless asked. She shooed him away with her hand.

“I heard her say it,” the boy insisted. He pointed his stick gun at Missouri Ann. “A copperhead's almost as bad as a Secesh.”

“Mrs. Stark is our friend and guest, and you will not say another word. The idea!” Eliza glanced around the circle and shook her head. “Davy hates the Johnnies because they killed Will. That's what causes him to say such things.”

“But it's true,” Missouri Ann told the women. “Hugh was different, but the rest of the Starks, they don't like Negroes any more than a yellow dog. Dad Stark said a black man that's freed, well, you might as well shoot him, for all he's worth.”

Eliza drew her arms to her sides and didn't look up. She wondered if Missouri Ann felt the same way as the Starks. They'd never talked about it.

It was Mercy, her needle poised over the quilt, who asked Missouri Ann if she agreed.

“No, ma'am, I do not. Dad Stark said they're dumb enough to drown in a pitcher of water, but I knowed free Negroes that was smarter than some with the name of Stark. When I growed up, my pa was a follower of John Brown. He said John Brown was a saint of the Lord.”

“Amen,” said Ettie. “It looks like we're all against slavery.”

“Well, if we aren't, why are we quilting for the Union?” Eliza asked.

“I don't care a peach pit for black folks,” Mercy said, her dark eyes flashing. “If it wasn't for them, Nathaniel would be alive.” Mercy had not lived in Wabaunsee County as long as the others. She had moved there only four years earlier with her husband and two daughters, who were now eight and twelve. Eliza had met her in the post office and had been taken with her right off. Who wouldn't have been? She was so vivacious that Eliza hadn't realized until later that Mercy was plain-looking, of average height, with black hair parted in the middle and pulled tightly behind her ears into a knot. Her clothes had been unremarkable, severe dark browns, but they set off Mercy's bright face and dancing eyes. When Mercy announced she loved to quilt, Eliza, without asking Anna and Ettie, had asked her to join their group.

Now Eliza, shocked at her friend's words, looked up from her stitching. “Surely you don't blame the Negroes for the war.”

“And why not? If the coloreds hadn't come to America, they wouldn't be slaves, and if there weren't any slaves, there wouldn't be a war.”

“But they couldn't help it,” Ettie said. “They didn't choose to be slaves. They got snatched up out of Africa and brought here and sold.”

“Maybe they should have killed themselves then. All's I'm saying is I don't want them in Wabaunsee County. I'd as soon shoot one as let him on my farm.” She paused and added, “I never thought slavery was such a bad thing. I'm surprised you don't hate those people, too, Eliza. Will would be alive if it wasn't for them.”

For a moment, Eliza couldn't think of how to reply. She wished Will hadn't been killed, wished it more than anything in the world, but she blamed the South, not the Negroes. “You think it's all right to own slaves?” she asked at last.

Mercy shrugged. “They get plenty to eat and a place to sleep and don't have to pay taxes.”

“They don't own land,” Ettie told her.

“I say it's not such a bad life. Maybe it's the natural order of things.”

“Well, I say God's no more in favor of slavery in America than He was of slavery in Egypt,” Eliza said, catching her thread as she pulled her needle through the quilt, causing it to knot. She picked at the knot with her needle, her head bowed to hide the tears that had formed in her eyes. The sudden mention of Will's name did that to her. She stared at the quilt, while she blinked back the tears, thinking of her husband lying under the Christmas quilt for only a few nights. She wondered what had happened to it.

“The slaves in Egypt were Jews, just like the postmaster in town, not colored people,” Mercy said. “I wouldn't be in favor of selling the postmaster into slavery.”

“Who'd buy him?” Missouri Ann muttered, then covered her mouth with her hand as if she shouldn't have spoken. The others burst out laughing, which diffused the tension.

But Ettie wouldn't let things lie. She said that although President Lincoln had freed the slaves, she'd heard there were slave catchers who kidnapped free Negroes in the North and took them South to sell. She turned to Missouri Ann. “And I heard Dad Stark is one of them.”

Missouri Ann looked up and found the others staring at her. She shrugged. “I wouldn't know for sure, but I heard Dad Stark say they ought to snatch up Andy Jones and sell him down South.”

“But Andy's been free ever since I've been in Kansas. The idea!” Ettie said, jamming her needle into the quilt with such force that she pricked her finger. “Now look what I've done. I've bled on your quilt, Eliza.”