Prayers for Sale Page 6

  “Not too forward, not at all. It’s likely my favorite story.” Hennie stuck the tip of her needle into the fabric and wiggled her fingers to get the kinks out of them. She wondered how it was that the rheumatism crippled them so much that she could barely grasp a rake and had to use both hands to lift a heavy pan off the stove, but it didn’t affect her quilting. Don’t think too closely, she told herself, just be grateful. When it’s raining pudding, hold up your bowl.

  The girl, too, lifted her pretty head from her sewing. Her needle hand was poised above the quilt, as she watched Hennie.

  “Won’t you be tired of hearing me talk?” Hennie asked.

  “Oh no, ma’am. You remind me of home. Your talk is pleasing to me.”

  Hennie told herself she was an old fool to ask the girl the way she had, just to get her to tease for a story. What if Nit decided she was indeed tired of the old woman’s ramblings, that she asked only to be polite? But Hennie had a feeling the girl did indeed like her stories, that she would mingle them with her own and tell them long after Hennie was gone. Stories were a living thing. They changed to suit the teller or the times. Hennie liked the idea that a part of her would remain behind in the stories after she moved to Fort Madison.

  The old woman picked up her needle. The thread was almost used up, so she took a back stitch, then worked the thread under the quilt top and snipped off the end. She cut a new length and licked its end, then with the aid of a magnifying glass that was wired to the end of the quilt frame, she threaded the needle. “Remember, I was still Ila Mae back then,” she began.

  The seasons following the war were harder than the war itself. After the peace came in 1865, Ila Mae worked her fields alone, not minding the hard labor because it exhausted her and she could sleep without thinking about Billy and Sarah—especially Sarah. Billy at least had had a little chance at life, but not the baby. Ila Mae wasn’t able to bring herself to walk by the place at the creek where the little girl had drowned, not only because her child had died there but because Ila Mae was a little afraid she might seek the same fate—although how a grown-up girl could drown herself in that little bit of water, she didn’t know. Still, there were days when Ila Mae didn’t understand why she bothered to live. She’d lost everyone she loved, and she was tempted to join them. But she didn’t, because she knew that Billy would want her to keep on living.

  The war had been difficult enough, what with men gone and shortages and the home guard riding in and taking what it wanted. But things only got worse once the fighting was over and done with. Men came through the woods then, desperate men who stole Ila Mae’s corn and ate it green, took clothes off the line, or came up to the door, demanding a handout. Some of the soldiers were starved and anxious to get on home, and she didn’t mind sharing what she had with them, thinking maybe some woman somewhere had divided her supper with Billy. But other men frightened her. Their eyes glittered, and she saw madness in them. More than one looked at her in such a hungry way that Ila Mae rushed into the house, latched the door, and took down the shotgun. She always carried a knife in the pocket of her apron, and she knew she could use it, especially if Abram or any of his fellows came around. Abram himself had left out after the town turned against him, disappeared someplace, but Ila Mae didn’t know but what he might sneak back, so she still carried the knife.

  Ila Mae thought she would live on that farm forever, alone, for what choice had she? Where could she go? She didn’t know anyplace but Tennessee. Most of the boys she’d grown up with had gone to war and hadn’t come back. Two or three of the men in town came around and looked her up and so forth, talking sweet, saying they’d always admired her and that she needed a man to protect her. But Ila Mae knew that she needed protection from them, for it was the $500 that Barton Fletcher had been forced to pay her that they were after. She didn’t fancy a fortune hunter who’d expect her to cook and clean, plow and plant and harvest for him, while he loafed in town, spending her money.

  So that first winter after the war, she made the harvest by herself and filled her root cellar with vegetables and her pie safe with bags of dried apples and wild cherries. And she chopped enough wood to see her through the winter. Sometimes she gathered for quiltings with the other war widows, but not often, because they all were that close to starvation to spend time on fancywork. Those who made quilts didn’t use good fabric but cut up worn blankets and Confederate uniforms and pieced tack quilts. There wasn’t time for real quilting.

  Ila Mae survived the winter, but with spring came a sadness so great that sometimes she wasn’t able to get out of bed in the mornings. She saw the endless years stretching out ahead of her, the days all the same, herself alone. When she heard birdsong, Ila Mae remembered Billy singing as he went about his work, and when she saw dogwood flowers looking as if they were floating in the dark woods, she remembered the blessed morning Sarah was born.

  The weight of what she had lost pressed on her heart. She couldn’t stand to know she’d never have a boy put his arms around her and tell her she was as pretty as a May morning or hold her hand as they walked across their fields in the moonlight. There’d be no baby to play under the quilt frame, no boys she would teach to read, no daughter whose hair she’d braid with wild daisies.

  As the weather grew warm, Ila Mae went often to the place where Sarah was buried. She sat by the little grave as the sun made its way from one half of the sky to the other, not caring that there was planting or hoeing to be done. She paid a man two of her dollars to carve the baby’s name on a tombstone and place it at the head of Sarah’s grave. She’d have paid for a marker for Billy, too, but she never knew where he was buried.

  When she wasn’t in the fields or the family cemetery, Ila Mae walked—across the fields, through the woods, along the Buttermilk Road, wherever her feet took her. She was in the biggest kind of grief. Other women had it worse, them with no land and no money, along with no man. But because they were hers, Ila Mae’s troubles seemed hardest to bear.

  One morning, after she came in from planting violets around Sarah’s stone, Ila Mae found a neighbor waiting. He’d been to the post office and brought her a letter that had been sitting there for a week or a month, he didn’t really know. Ila Mae never went for the mail, for anyone who would have written to her was dead, so she couldn’t imagine who had sent the letter.

  “You go over a sight of ground in your perishinations. I feared to leave this in the house where somebody might appropriate it. They steal such as you’ll never know,” the neighbor had said. “I’ll be bound to say, I wish you had a man like Billy to help you, for farming turns a woman old.”

  So does war, Ila Mae thought, but didn’t say so, for she was not the only woman worn out by the past few years. She put the letter aside and drew water from the well and offered the man the dipper. Then they sat under a tree, talking about crops and the weather, little things, the way husbands and wives did. After he left, Ila Mae was more troubled than ever, for it was comfortable being with a man. It was always the little things—the talk of whether rain would come and how pretty the apple blossoms were that year—that brought home to her that she was alone. She remembered how Billy always picked the first apple blossoms and put them into a tin cup for her. They made the house smell like springtime. Billy said apple trees were a double blessing, first for the blossoms and then for the apples.

  After the neighbor left, Ila Mae only stared at the letter, not opening it. Her days were so much the same that a piece of mail was an exciting event, and she wanted to savor it, to wonder who’d written the letter and why. She waited all day and until after she ate her supper and put away the dishes. It was dark then, and Ila Mae laughed to think she’d waited so long that there was no daylight to read by.

  She went to the little hanging candle cupboard that Billy had presented to her after Sarah was born. It was crude, with a single drawer and, above it, a shelf covered by a slanted flap on which Billy had carved stars and the year of Sarah’s birth—1864. Ila Mae
kept her money in the drawer, under a rat trap, thinking no one would believe she had hidden the coins beneath such. Under the flap she stored her few candles, safe from mice. She hadn’t lit one since Billy went off to war, but why was she saving them? A letter was as special an occasion as she was bound to have. So Ila Mae removed one of the tapers, lit it with an ember from the fireplace, and placed it in a tin holder on the table, where it sent out a pale circle of golden light.

  She held the envelope for a moment, frowning at the writing, which was even, the capital letters a series of flourishes that seemed familiar, a little like her own. Using the knife she kept in her apron pocket, she slit the envelope. As she removed the sheet of paper, a tintype fell out. Ila Mae studied the picture of a woman and two men, and then she knew who had sent the missive. She propped the picture against the candlestick and smiled at her friend Martha Merritt. The two had gone to school together, until Martha’s father, a Northern sympathizer, moved his family to Pennsylvania, for the home guard had made things too hot for those not in favor of the Confederacy.

  Martha’s likeness, in a paper frame marked “W. G. Chaimberlain, photographist, Denver,” showed a woman much older than Ila Mae’s childhood playmate, but she was Martha nonetheless, and she sat between two men. Perhaps one of them was Martha’s husband. Hennie put the letter on the table, smoothing the fold lines so that the paper lay flat. Then she began to read out loud, so that she could linger over every word:

  Dearest Friend Ila Mae

  I hope this finds you in good health. We have got through the war fine. I am sorry to hear from a mutual friend that Billy was killed and also your daughter, and I offer sincere sympathy. I married a Yankee soldier, and we have moved to Colorado Territory to make our fortune in gold mining. Enclosed is a picture of my husband, Charles Grove by name. He is on the right. You can see he is as handsome as a peddler and as good a man as ever lived.

  The other is Jacob Comfort, Mr. Grove’s pard in the war, and he is the reason I write after so long a silence. I showed Mr. Comfort your likeness, taken when we were girls at school, and told him you are cheerful and not afraid of hard work, can write and cipher (also that you have chestnut brown hair and blue eyes, although you are tall.) Now, here is the truth of it: Colorado Territory has many men and few women; Tennessee has too many widows. Do you not see a common solution to both problems? The widows of Tennessee ought to move to this place?

  I said as much to Mr. Comfort, who considered the situation and said if you are willing, he would like to correspond with you. But, says I, it will take months for letters to go back and forth, and between them, Ila Mae might decide to marry with someone else, if she hasn’t already. Why do I not write her and invite her to come to Colorado Territory? Mr. Comfort is so taken with the idea that he proposes to pay your way, and if you don’t care for him upon meeting him, the money is of no consequence, since he will throw himself off a mountaintop. He is a good man, Ila Mae, as kind as his name, clean and industrious, not like many who inhabit the camp—Middle Swan, by name. I would fancy him myself were I not already married to Mr. Grove, who is my true love.

  I believe it would be a good thing for you to come here to the Swan River and see for yourself what the opportunities are. If you do not care for Mr. Comfort, you will find others who would be pleased to make your acquaintance, men of good character, not just old bachelors. If one of them does not suit you, why, there are other opportunities for a woman. And I, of course, would be pleased to see again my oldest childhood friend, for I miss those happy days when we sat and sewed together. They live in memory only, and they will never return. Please respond at your earliest convenience. Your affectionate old playmate awaits your reply.

  Martha Merritt Grove

  P.S. Mr. Comfort says he would send you a separate likeness of himself, but he believes it would be a waste of money. Says he, if you like, he will send you a lock of his hair to poison the rats with. You see, he has a sense of humor like your own, not such a bad thing in a marriage, I have discovered.

  MMG

  March 11, 1866

  Ila Mae reread the letter before she set it aside to study the tintype. Martha’s husband was indeed a well-made man—tall, for he loomed over Martha, with dark, curly hair and such a pleasing countenance that her friend must have fallen in love at first sight. But Mr. Comfort was the one who interested Ila Mae. He had a plain but open face, his eyes set a little too close together, but they were intense. And he had a firm mouth that suggested resolve. His hair was thin, and Ila Mae chuckled to think that the man had offered to send her a precious lock of it. She was not able to gauge his height, for the three subjects in the tintype were seated, but he appeared to be shorter than Mr. Grove. Ila Mae, who was indeed tall, did not care to look down at her husband. Nor could she tell his complexion, for the tintype was dark, and the cheeks of the subjects had been tinted pink. But she liked the look of Mr. Comfort’s hands—stubby but thick, hands made for work. He was not a man to sweep her away, but he appeared to be a solid man. Ila Mae had been swept away by Billy, and that could last her for a lifetime. A solid man would suit her.

  The idea of traveling all the way to Colorado with the hope of matrimony struck her as foolish. But it amused her, too, and as she folded the letter and returned it to its envelope, Ila Mae smiled, grateful to Martha for a few minutes of pleasure. She would write tomorrow, refusing her friend’s offer.

  Ila Mae did not sleep well that night. She awakened several times to remember the letter and the likeness of Mr. Comfort. As she lay in the dark, the possibility of her moving to far-off Colorado seemed remote, and she would tell Martha so. But when she awakened in the morning after a few hours’ sleep, she believed that leaving Tennessee was a wise course. Why should she stay? She had no family, and before too many years passed, she would wear herself out with the heavy farmwork. There was Sarah’s grave, but it was a place of death. It was in Ila Mae’s heart that Sarah lived. And Billy, too. Billy had told her once that if anything ever happened to her, he wouldn’t want to live where he was reminded of her every day. Remembering that, she felt that Billy was telling her it was all right to move on.

  Ila Mae thought about Colorado all that day. And the next. She didn’t reply to Martha’s letter for a week, and when she did, Ila Mae told her friend that she was willing to give Colorado Territory a try.

  She wouldn’t take Mr. Comfort’s money, however. Ila Mae was determined to pay her own way, so that she would not be beholden to anyone. She would look him over and decide for herself—and appraise the other men in the camp, as well. And if none of them suited her, she would find a way to make a living on her own. Surely there was a need for a woman who could cook and launder, sew and quilt and even make bonnets. Did women hunt for gold? Perhaps she, too, would find a gold mine. Before Martha’s letter had arrived, Ila Mae believed she would spend the rest of her life as a caretaker of the past. But now she saw a future, one with a husband and maybe children. Besides, a move to Colorado would be an adventure. Ila Mae had not realized until then how predictable, how ordinary her life had become.

  As soon as Martha’s response to Ila Mae’s reply arrived, asking how soon she could leave, Ila Mae sold her farm to a neighbor and made arrangements to go west with a group of gold seekers. Many in the South were heading for the gold fields to make a new start, so finding a wagon train to join was not difficult. Ila Mae agreed to travel with a man taking a sickly wife and two small boys to Colorado, sharing their wagon and victuals in exchange for cooking and tending the children. Because there was little room in the wagon, the man grumbled when Ila Mae insisted she be allowed to take more than her trunk. But she threatened to outfit her own wagon rather than leave behind her tender possessions—the Friendship quilt her friends presented to her just before she left, each one of them working a Churn Dash block and signing it, and the quilt frame and candle cupboard, both made by Billy.

  The family she traveled with left her in Denver, where Ila Mae found a freigh
ter leaving for the Swan River. He was a large man, who needed the wagon bench for himself, but he said he would take Ila Mae along if she and her accumulations could find a place among the freight.

  Ila Mae arrived in Middle Swan in a chill rain, wrapped in the Friendship quilt and huddled on top of a mountain of provisions. The camp did not impress her. It was raw new, the log buildings thrown up like jackstraws along a mud trail, and not a one of them was painted. Neither flowers nor grass softened the houses, and there were no trees, only stumps where the pines had been cut down for firewood or building material. She wondered if flowers grew in that high, cold place, for she could not imagine living without them.

  She had never heard so much noise. Freighters yelled as they flicked their whips at burros blocking the trail, and the burros protested in their honking bray. The thud of axes and scraping of saws swept down the mountainsides, along with the clatter of waste rock as it was dumped into yellow piles that spilled out of mine openings high above town. The miners added to the frenzy, yelling instead of speaking. The sounds of fiddles and singing came from three saloons housed in the finest buildings in the town. The excitement was different from the calm, lazy ways of White Pigeon, and Ila Mae was swept up in it.

  As luck would have it, Martha was standing in front of the assay office, her husband and Mr. Comfort in tow, just as Ila Mae’s freight wagon came to a stop. They had come each day for a week, hoping to be there when Ila Mae arrived. When Martha saw her friend, she whooped and rushed to her, skirts dragging in the mud.