A Quilt for Christmas (14 page)

“Wheat bread,” Eliza said.

“Wheat bread.” Mother Stark sighed. “I ain't ate wheat bread in a long time.”

“I can fry up some bacon,” Eliza said, spreading butter on a piece of bread that she cut twice as thick as usual, but Mother Stark shook her head.

“Ain't time.” As she crammed the bread into her mouth, Mother Stark glanced around and spotted Nance, who was hopping from one foot to another in excitement. “Baby Nance! You come to your old granny,” she cried, opening her arms. “I love this child more'n I love side meat.”

The little girl ran to her grandmother, and the old woman swooped her up in an embrace, telling Nance how much she had missed her. “I loved all my children when they was little like this, but I was gladdest when my baby-making days was over. I had twelve, my own self, and lost the best ones. Them boys that lived turned out just like their pa, the tobacco-chewing old scamp.”

Eliza was about to ask if she didn't believe Hugh was better than the others, but she held her tongue. The Stark woman hadn't come to talk about her boys.

Mother Stark settled Nance on her lap, then leaned forward. “I won't ask where you got the colored girl hid. I don't want to know, because I don't want to lie to Dad if he finds out I been here and puts the leather to me.”

Eliza put her hand over her mouth at the news that Dad Stark beat his wife, and with a leather strap or a whip! No wonder Missouri Ann felt protective of her mother-in-law. Eliza sat down on the bench beside the old woman and took her hand. “Such an awful thing,” she said.

“Oh, I'm used to it. The boys make sure he don't do it too hard. Missouri Ann stood up for me once, and he took to her bad, until Edison made him stop. He sure would like you to come back, Missouri Ann, but don't you do it. I love my boys, but I know they got their ways. I was gladdest when you got away. I waited too long.” Mother Stark combed Nance's fine hair with her fingers, and Eliza thought it was a shame the woman had never had daughters who'd lived. They would have been a comfort to her, as Missouri Ann apparently had been. The old woman must be lonely with her daughter-in-law gone.

The wind knocked a branch against the house, and Mother Stark looked up sharply. “I best be going back. I come to warn you, Missouri Ann. You, too, Mrs. Spooner. Dad and the boys are coming back at sunup. They know you got the girl hid somewheres, and they'll tear up the place to find her. Wherever you got her, you get her out of there.” Mother Stark held Nance close. Then she stood up. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached under her shawl and pulled out a cloth sack.

“My scrap bag!” Missouri Ann cried, snatching it.

“I knowed you prized it, and I kept it hid until such time as I could give it to you,” Mother Stark said, pleasure in her voice at Missouri Ann's excitement. “I used a scrap or two myself, but most's there.”

“Why, you good old thing,” Missouri Ann said, and impulsively put her arms around the old woman.

“Now, now, don't carry on so,” Mother Stark said, embarrassed, and pulled back. “I got to go now.”

Eliza cut another slice of bread and spread butter on it, then handed it to Mother Stark. “We appreciate your warning, but tell me, why did you risk yourself by coming here?”

“Oh, it wouldn't go easy with Missouri Ann if Dad found out she'd tricked him. And she's as near like a daughter as I ever had.” The old woman looked down at the floorboards as if embarrassed. “I never told nobody—Dad wouldn't like it—but I never held with slavery. Being a wife sometimes is as near being a slave as a body can get, and it ain't a good thing. I wouldn't like to see that poor colored girl dragged home and hanged from a tree. Now I best get before Dad misses me.” She reached out and touched Missouri Ann's hand, but except for Baby Nance, Mother Stark apparently was not a hugging woman, so she didn't embrace Missouri Ann. “You take a care, girl.”

“I'll come for a visit and maybe bring you a spool of thread, if you don't mind,” Missouri Ann said.

“Don't you do it. Don't you come back, not for me, not even for a visit.” She glanced wistfully at Baby Nance and said, “I'd give a spool of thread for this one.”

Missouri Ann squeezed the woman's hand, then she and Eliza walked outside with her, into the rain. The rain was good. It would hide the mule's tracks, Eliza thought.

Mother Stark flung her leg over the mule, just like a man, and said, “You take care of that precious baby. I never missed nobody so much in my life.” She kicked the mule and rode off.

Eliza watched until Mother Stark disappeared in the darkness. Then she turned and rushed to the house. Clara couldn't hide in Luzena's covered wagon again. The Starks wouldn't be fooled a second time. Eliza would have to find a safer spot for her. But where? The men had already searched the places Clara could hide—the barn, the soddy—and they would surely search them again. Clara was too sick to run out into the fields in the rain. Besides, the men were likely to look there, too. Clara would have to go elsewhere. But where? Certainly not to John Hamlin's farm or to Ettie Espy's. The Starks would suspect both places. She went over the neighbors who might hide the woman, and then she knew. There was one place the Starks would never look. “Hitch up the buggy, Davy,” Eliza said. “I'm taking Clara off the farm.”

“Where?” Missouri Ann asked.

“To Mercy Eagles's place.”

“But she ain't against slavery. She said so at the quilting. She said it in town, too,” Missouri Ann protested.

“That makes her farm the ideal place to hide Clara.”

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

April 3, 1865

With Clara wrapped in a quilt and huddled beside her, Eliza drove the buggy down the lane and out onto the main road. Eliza feared the Starks might be waiting for her at the turn, although Mother Stark had assured her the men would not come to the farm until dawn. She'd said they had finished Will's jug of whiskey before they reached home, and once there, they'd started on their own corn liquor. They'd fallen asleep and wouldn't wake for a while. When he wasn't being mean, Dad Stark was either drinking or sleeping, Missouri Ann had told Eliza. “He's got a gizzard for a heart,” she said.

It wasn't just the Starks who made Eliza uneasy. If they weren't on the road, others might be. After all, John had warned the Starks weren't the only slave catchers who would be looking for Clara. And then there were always the tramps, the discharged soldiers and deserters, who would not hesitate to stop a woman driving a buggy late at night. She'd thought of bringing Luzena with her so that she could explain the child was sick and she was taking her to the doctor. But the doctor lived in the opposite direction. Besides, anyone stopping the buggy would see Clara curled up inside. Moreover, Luzena had already played a heroic part in keeping Clara safe. Eliza did not want to cause the girl further anguish.

The night was dark, with only a sliver of moon visible through the clouds. The hard rain kept falling, and the wind blew drops into the conveyance. Although she wished the skies would clear, Eliza knew that the rain offered protection, keeping at home anyone who did not have to be out on such a dreadful night. She flicked the reins against Sabra's back, but the old horse had settled into little more than a walk, and Eliza knew the buggy would go no faster. Mercy's farm was just two miles away, but with the time it had taken Davy to hitch up the buggy and Missouri Ann to dress Clara in warm clothing, then bundle her up in a quilt, it would be an hour or more before they reached the Eagles farm. Eliza judged it was already ten o'clock, so she wouldn't return home until past midnight. But as long as she was there before sunup when the Starks were expected, she would be all right.

The buggy wheel hit a rock, and Eliza felt Clara's head bounce against her shoulder and knew the woman was asleep. She wondered how Clara could sleep when her life was in danger, but perhaps she had lived her whole life in fear. Sleep was the best thing for her in her illness, and Eliza was glad the slave could rest. She snuggled up next to Clara and pulled part of the quilt around her shoulders and sank back against the seat. Despite the rain, she felt a kind of peace, as if she were alone in the world. The buggy seemed like a cocoon, and the rain made a sound like soft music. The blackness engulfed her, soothed her, and she felt almost safe.

Eliza thought back to the buggy ride so long ago, when she and Will had ventured out on a rainy day in the Ohio countryside. He had borrowed the buggy from a friend and had showed up at her farm, persuading her father to let Eliza go for a ride, just the two of them. Her father had protested, saying the rain that had come in the morning was liable to return, but Will had pointed to the bright sun and cloudless sky and said that even if the weather turned bad, the buggy had a top that could be raised to keep them dry. The drive had been lovely, past fields of wheat and corn. Goldenrod bloomed on the roadsides as well as asters, and Will had stopped to pick her a bouquet of the purple flowers. They drove farther than they should have, and when the rain came suddenly, it took the two of them to raise the buggy top. The top was cranky, and Will and Eliza were soaked by the time they got it righted.

“I should get you home before you come down with chilblains,” Will said, but Eliza told him the rain was warm, almost like a bath, and she was happy to sit in the buggy until the sun came out. It didn't occur to Will to drive home in the rain anyway, or if it did, he didn't say anything. Nor did Eliza. They sat in the buggy and talked, and then Will reached over and smoothed a wet strand of hair that had fallen across Eliza's face.

“I must look like a drenched chicken,” Eliza said, realizing that her hair was plastered to her head, for she had taken off her bonnet when they struggled with the buggy top. She was embarrassed at looking so unsightly.

“You look beautiful. I believe you are the most beautiful young lady in the world,” Will said. He had never paid her such a compliment. Indeed, those were words only a lover would utter, and Eliza was embarrassed and turned away, muttering, “Surely not.”

Will seemed a little taken aback at his forwardness, but having spoken, he plunged ahead. “I thought you were the prettiest thing I'd ever seen the day I met you, when I wasn't more than ten years old, and I never saw a reason to change my mind. I vowed then I'd marry you, too. Will you have me, Eliza?”

Eliza turned to him, astonished. Not only was her hair damp against her head, but drops of water ran down her face, and her clothes were wet against her body. She had known in her heart that they would marry. There had never been anyone else for either of them. But she had imagined Will would propose in a more formal manner, in her parlor, presenting her with a bouquet of flowers and perhaps getting down on one knee. But she was not a formal person, and the spontaneity of the proposal pleased her. She glanced at the asters he had picked. They were so rain soaked that Will had thrown them onto the ground. The flowers made her laugh, and then she glanced at Will, who had a horrified look on his face.

“I am laughing at the poor flowers and not at you,” she said quickly. And then she looked into his kind face, at the blue eyes as bright as a kitten's, his expression expectant, and she reached up and patted his damp curls into place. He looked as bedraggled as she did. “Of course I will have you, Will. If we can pledge ourselves to each other looking our worst, as we do now, I believe we can only look forward to better days.”

“My dear one,” Will said. He took Eliza's hand and raised it to his lips, and then he put his arms around her and kissed her.

Eliza had never been kissed before, and she wasn't sure it was proper for Will to do so until they were married. What if someone saw them? She glanced around, then laughed again, for who would be spying on them in the rain? And then she boldly raised her mouth and kissed Will.

“We will have a life filled with both sunshine and rain,” Will said.

“Sunshine and rain,” Eliza repeated, savoring the remark. Later, on their wedding day, she presented him with a quilt she had pieced in a design she had created herself and named Sunshine and Rain. “There are fewer rain squares, because I believe our lives will have more sunshine,” she told him, and it had. Will gave her his mother's old wedding ring, worn and thin, promising that one day he would buy her a gold ring with a ruby in it.

“A buggy would be more romantic,” she had told him, remembering their ride, and Will had promised that, too.

They had married only a month after Will proposed, and there were those who wondered at the abruptness of the ceremony. But Davy was not born until eleven months later. And then they had taken him to Kansas, not in a buggy, of course—they didn't have one—but in a wagon.

The buggy came later, and it was a surprise. Luzena had been a baby when Will rode Sabra, then a young horse, into Topeka. He had come home to the soddy late at night, long after dark, and he had called, “Come out, come out, Mrs. Spooner. Your husband may take his time, but he keeps his word.”

With Luzena in her arms and Davy beside her, Eliza had opened the door and found Will standing beside Sabra—and a buggy. It was not a new one, of course. Both of them would have considered such an extravagance wasteful. In fact, the buggy had been well used, but it had been finely built and was serviceable. Will had bought it from a man in Topeka whose wife had used it, but she had died, and he no longer wanted it. When Will told him he had long desired a buggy for his wife, the man had replied, “A good wife should not ride in a farm wagon,” and had named a fair price.

There had never been a ruby ring. It had become a sort of joke between them, Will promising it for their twenty-fifth anniversary, or maybe their fiftieth. He had mentioned it in one of his letters. Eliza tried to remember which one. She had read his letters over and over again when they arrived, but after his death, she had put them away, saving them to be read at special moments. She wanted the letters to seem new again, to open them as if she were reading them for the first time. And so she had put them into the candle box on the mantel. When Clara was safely gone, Eliza would reward herself by reading one of the precious missives.