by Sarah Miller
Laura wilted onto Charles’s shoulder and buckled her lips over a sigh. “Why doesn’t Sunday ever wait until I’m tired?” she lamented.
Caroline’s cheeks twitched with a laugh she could not spill. A still and rainy Sunday might test any three-year-old’s forbearance, but none so sorely as Laura’s with the way she took after her pa.
Laura sat up again. “You aren’t too tired to make breakfast, are you, Ma?”
This time Charles could not bite back a chuckle. “By golly, Caroline, she’s found the only thing that’s allowed to grumble on Sunday—a stomach,” he teased. His rumbling laugh warmed the air.
Charles leafed idly through his weather journal as Caroline scraped the cold beads of molasses from their breakfast plates. “Hasn’t been a rain like this in years,” he said. “Not in our parts, anyway.”
She folded her apron into the kitchen crate and took in the length of the wagon. Disarray crowded every edge of her vision, most of all the big straw tick, its quilts splayed back and the sheets rumpling beneath Mary and Laura. Sunday or not, the bed must be straightened if the four of them were to have anywhere to sit. Caroline shooed the girls into the aisle. As she pulled the top sheet from the mattress a flare of aches lit the backs of her arms.
“Mary, please climb up on the bed and help me fold the sheets.” She handed Mary one end and began backing down the aisle with the other.
“I want to help, too!” Laura insisted, grazing Caroline’s bruised shin to reach for the hem.
Soreness blurted past Caroline’s elbows as she hoisted the bundle away from Laura’s fingertips. “Climb up beside Mary and take one of her corners,” Caroline told her. “There isn’t room for both of us here.”
Caroline’s breath began to heat the back of her throat as she stood idle, waiting for the girls to negotiate who should take which side. She would have done better to fold it herself in spite of her aches than let this sort of peevishness stain her morning.
“Mine’s wet, Ma,” Laura said.
“Mine, too.”
Caroline’s elbows went slack. Her end of the sheet brushed the aisle. “The weather makes everything feel damp today, girls. It can’t be helped. Now please, help me fold this sheet up nicely.”
“No, Ma,” Mary said.
The contradiction came within a hair’s breadth of lighting Caroline’s temper by the wick. She opened her mouth and found she had no words to parry such bald-faced disobedience—especially from Mary.
Mary climbed down and held up her corner. “It’s wet. See?” It was. Not clammy with cold, but more sodden than freshly sprinkled laundry.
“Is the bottom sheet wet, Laura?”
Laura tugged it up into her lap. “Yes, Ma.”
Caroline stifled a groan. She skimmed her hands across the mattress. All along the west end, the cover was heavy with moisture. Practically wincing with reluctance, she unbuttoned one corner and fished out a handful of damp straw.
Baffled, she touched the canvas wall above it. Dry.
“How in the world?” she wondered aloud, and then she saw. A tongue of the gray blanket had lapped out into the rain. Caroline pulled it, black and drooling, back under cover. In the places where the two abutted, the ticking had spent the night supping rainwater into itself silently as a cat at a saucer.
Caroline’s sigh formed a small gray cloud as her whole morning deflated under the weight of one soaked blanket.
With Charles’s help she spread the sheets, one over each side of the aisle, to dry as best they could. The gray blanket Charles strung from the front bows with its wet hem drooping, frown-like, toward the floor. The entire wagon dimmed. Caroline pulled the end of the straw tick across her lap and resigned herself to plunge her arms in to the elbows. At least it was soaked only at the foot, where she could sift out the wet straw without emptying the entire mattress. For that small mercy she managed a pinch of thankfulness.
It did not last long. Each stiff fistful of straw stabbed at her sore palms. Cold and pain numbed her hands until they became insensible to the task—her fingers could no more feel the difference between wet and dry than between nutmeg and pepper.
Caroline sat back and balled her fists beneath her arms. Two pillowcases full of straw slumped beside her, and more yet to come. “I declare, I don’t know what to do with all this.” In such weather it would sooner mildew their pillowcases than it would dry. Yet she could not bring herself to simply toss it out into the rain. Waste not, want not, her mother’s voice chimed, but what earthly use could there be for wet straw?
She might as well empty it out onto the boards before the spring seat to catch the muck from their shoes when they came in from their necessaries. And then how long before the wagon began to smell of a barnyard?
A thought cocked her head. “Charles, would it do any good to spread this under the tarpaulin for Ben and Beth?”
The question brought him to his feet like a slap of reins. “Wouldn’t do any harm.” He chucked her chin on his way past. “Leave it to a Scotchwoman,” he said.
Boredom saturated all four of them by noontime. They sat clumped in the utmost center of the gutted mattress, hitching themselves inward from its edges—edges Caroline knew would not dry before nightfall.
The girls were sullen and peckish. They did not complain, but Caroline could sense their moods fermenting. The slightest provocation and up they would foam. Charles was no help, twiddling with his compass and twitching as though every spat of rain were a backward footstep. She had never known a man so prone to rusting the moment his momentum was stilled. He had positioned himself, she noticed, on the west side of the wagon, as though cringing from the eastward pull of the sunken wheel.
Caroline drew her shawl to her earlobes and exhaled down into her collar, warming her neck and the underside of her chin with the feeble cloud of warmth. Cold limned her nostrils and fingertips. All the heat she could muster had settled at the back of her throat—two little burrs of it—and these she tried to smother. What glowed inside them did not belong to the Sabbath.
This was not the sort of stillness she had craved, with every inch of her laboring to rest. The energy her body needed to resist the cold tightened her muscles until they begged to be moved. Her mind itched just as badly, piling up a stack of undone tasks: the balding fabric at Charles’s elbow, the molasses piping on Laura’s sleeve, the thinning heel of her own stocking. A little droplet glimmered at the tip of Laura’s nose, winking in and out. The hot pinpricks in Caroline’s throat gleamed brighter with every breath Laura took. How long could the child leave it dangling there? As Caroline reached for her handkerchief, Laura’s mitten swiped the dribble free.
Caroline’s temper tried to rear, but there was not spark enough in it to burn past the chill. “Laura, please. Use a handkerchief,” she said, blotting the soiled wool. “We don’t know how long it will be before I can wash these mittens again.”
The scratch and hiss of a match interrupted her. Caroline and Laura both looked up. A tiny flame cored with blue lit Charles’s face, then dipped into the bowl of his pipe. He puffed, then exhaled a soft column of smoke. Caroline did not protest. Behind the blaze of sulfur, the pipe’s sweet smell ached of home. Charles lay back on an elbow and blew a languid ring for the girls. Laura reached up and tickled it into wisps.
“Don’t, Laura,” Mary said.
Charles blew one afresh, and then another. “There’s one for each of you to do as you like with.” Mary’s floated over Caroline’s head. She imagined drawing her number fourteen crochet hook through it, whisking its rims into latticed garlands—like the scalloped wrist, lying half-finished in her work basket. Its curves and lattices looped through her thoughts. She closed her eyes and let her threadless fingers work the pattern.
“I can’t sit here like this any longer,” Charles said. “I’m going out to see the lay of the land.”
Caroline straightened up. “In this weather?” He did not answer, only leaned to tug on his drooping socks. She tried
again. “Charles, why not stay in and play us a hymn on the fiddle?”
“This kind of weather’s worse for the fiddle than it is for me. Best keep it warm and dry in the case. Won’t hold its tune anyway. How would you like to fetch me my poncho, Half-Pint?”
“Yes, Pa!”
Caroline sat helpless at Charles’s artfulness as Laura scrambled down past her. He knew Laura would not refuse, just as he knew Caroline herself would not contradict him and tell Laura to stay put.
“Here, Pa,” Laura said. Caroline was nearer. She thanked Laura and lifted the poncho from her outstretched arms. Moisture still clung like sweat to its shoulders.
“It’s wet yet from last night,” she told Charles.
Charles took the poncho from her. “I’ve got enough impatience flaming in me to dry it from the inside out,” he said as he threaded his head through.
Impatience—the very idea! They had not lost a minute of travel. Mired or not, they would have halted early and spent this day stilled for the Sabbath. Yet he would take himself out into the weather—in clothes soggy as day-old dumplings—as though they had not put some four hundred miles behind them in less than two months’ time.
“It’s Sunday, Charles,” she reminded him.
“It’s not work, Caroline.” He snapped his collar up to meet the brim of his hat. “Taking a walk doesn’t break the fourth commandment.”
Caroline’s lips fluted downward. A tart Whatever you think is best might give him pause if she slanted her words just so. But there was not room in the wagon for them to pry at each other this way. Not on Sunday, and with the girls underfoot. Better to have him doused and satisfied than dry and sullen in such small quarters. Caroline balled her fists inside her pockets and said only, “Be careful.”
He took his gun from the hook and ducked around the gray blanket. The wagon jerked like a slammed door as he jumped to the ground.
Caroline followed to tie the cover down behind him, then paused a moment behind the blanket-curtain. The muscles lining her backbone and the spaces between her ribs were weary of bracing against the tilt. Lately when she tired it was a bubbling sort of exhaustion, as though her muscles and joints were stewing in ammonia. She arched her back and spread her arms wide. The fringe of her shawl brushed the sidewalls. Caroline yanked her hands right back. Not even the canvas could leave her be.
Caroline unlocked her jaw and rolled it from side to side so that her ears crackled. One long inhale, then another, chilled her mouth before she went back around the blanket and over the spring seat to the girls.
Their faces as she settled down beside them plainly said, Well?
Caroline’s jaw bulged anew. Why must they always do and never simply be? Charles might have his solitary tramp, but there would be no respite for her. The children were like little tops that must be kept spinning, always spinning. And on Sunday they must spin slowly, quietly, without tipping.
“Why won’t the thunder stop?” Mary asked. “It makes my ears tired.”
“You must not complain,” Caroline retorted. Vinegar flavored her voice, and she knew by Mary’s sour look that she had tasted it, too. Caroline pulled another cooling breath across her tongue. If she were going to let her vexation flare outward, she would have done better to put her foot down with Charles than singe the girls. Then at least it would have served some purpose. Nor could she simply swallow her ire and leave the child beneath her apron to pickle in such brine. She had charge over their moods, and she would not squander it.
Caroline tuned herself to the rumble of sounds from outside and began to understand why Charles had been so insistent on examining the landscape.
“That is not thunder,” she explained. “There is likely a creek nearby. I shouldn’t wonder if the rain has flooded it.”
Indifferent to this news, they lay down with their heads propped at her hips. Mary picked at the row of jet buttons running down Caroline’s basque while she told them the story of Noah’s ark.
“Two by two by two,” Laura droned. “Pa and Ma, and Ben and Beth, and Mary and me.”
“One of us ought to be a boy, to make it right.”
“You,” Laura said.
Mary lifted her head and glared at Laura. “I don’t want to be the boy.”
“You came first, like Adam, so you have to.”
Mary sulked.
Caroline closed her eyes. Everything pressed on her—the wet canvas overhead, the girls leaning on either side, and the ripening child motionless as a stone in her belly. If she did not get out from under it, even for a moment, she would vanish under the weight of it all.
“I am going outside for my necessaries,” she said, drawing her shawl over her head. She paused reluctantly before going over the spring seat. It would be foolish not to ask. “Do either of you need to come?”
Laura shook her head. Mary seemed to consider. Please, no, Caroline silently implored. “Mary?”
“Not now, Ma,” Mary decided.
“Very well then. Sit nicely here until I come in.”
Caroline fetched her rag from the handle of the chamber pail and hunched out into the weather. The rain fell straight as threads from the sky. Crouched on the falling tongue, she lowered one foot as though she were testing a tub of bathwater. The mud enveloped it like a stocking. Step by step, she toed her way through the ooze and ducked under the tarpaulin.
The latrine was a round depression, less than knee deep. With her skirts clutched in one fist, she bailed a bucketful of rainwater from it, then straddled the hole.
Ben and Beth eyed her. Their fetlocks were curled and pointed with mud. She was near enough to Ben to touch the steam from his nostrils. It did not seem fair that she should foul the horses’ ground, but that could not be helped. Caroline turned her head and let go her water. It made no sound over the unfaltering beat of rain.
The moment she sat down on the spring seat the girls peeped around the gray blanket and watched her peel off her shoes. Her stockings had kept dry, but her shoelaces were so caked they must be put to soak before they stiffened into twigs. There was nothing to do for the shoes themselves but wait for them to dry enough to scrape clean.
“Your shawl’s dripping, Ma,” Mary said.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Caroline answered. She swung herself out from under it. An arc of brown droplets struck the floor. More mud. At least she had kept her second-best skirt clean, Caroline thought as she flopped the muddied fringe out into the rain to rinse, then strung the shawl across Charles’s gun hooks to drip dry.
Colder now than she had been before, Caroline sat down on the straw tick and pulled a quilt over her shoulders. Again the girls served her those expectant looks. This time Caroline refused to meet their gaze, looking instead to the diamond-patterned mesh of the shawl hanging behind their heads.
It shamed her to realize that the rain had not put out that spark of selfish ire. In her own way she was no less impatient than Charles—only better able to hold herself outwardly still. How childish, to think herself above him rather than admit her envy that he could escape. Caroline let her eyes rest on Mary and Laura. Of the four of them, only the girls had acted their age, bearing the day’s trials with as much grace as could be expected from such young children. They deserved something of a treat.
Caroline reached for the work basket and cut a length of red worsted. She tied its ends together and strung the yarn over her hands.
“Oh, Ma!” Laura clapped. “Can we play cat’s cradle on Sunday?”
“May we, Laura. And no, you may not. But watch, girls, and listen.” Her fingers dipped in and out of the loops, playing over the strings like a silent fiddle. It had been years since she made the figure, but the pattern was familiar as a childhood tune.
As she wove the string, she told them the story of Jacob, who slept with a rock for his pillow, and dreamed of a ladder filled with angels ascending and descending from heaven.
“Cat’s whiskers,” Mary said when Caroline reached the middle of t
he yarn sequence.
“You must not interrupt, Mary.”
With a flourish Caroline twisted her wrists and Jacob’s ladder appeared in a mosaic of red triangles between her hands. The girls’ mouths popped open in delight.
Into their moment of wonder Caroline recited, “‘And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.’ And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’” Her heart beat faster as she said the words. Surely.
Caroline felt her gaze lift to the arch of the wagon bows framing her daughters’ heads. The rain still fell and somewhere beyond a creek still roared, but a warm shiver fanned across her back and down her arms.
“Do it again, Ma, please,” Laura begged.
Caroline blinked. Had the girls felt it, too? But Laura was looking only at the yarn. Caroline smiled and shook her head. To do it again would turn it into play. “But if you can tell me what is special about a manger,” she conceded, “I will show you how to make one from the cat’s cradle.”
“Bible-Mary laid her baby in the manger,” Mary piped.
“That’s my smart girl,” Caroline said.
They were taking turns with the yarn when Charles climbed inside and stood dripping in the space before the spring seat as though it were a porch. Water rained from his hem into a ring on the floor.
“Creek’s about half a mile from here,” he said. He took his hat by the crown and flapped it. An arc of droplets spattered the canvas wall. “Flooded so high I can’t even tell where the blasted banks ought to be.”
“Charles, please,” Caroline said, her hand at his elbow. She could not have his oath fraying the peace she had somehow spun out of this day.
“I know it. And I’m sorry, Caroline.” He dropped his hat onto the spring seat and flopped down beside it. “But we’re stuck here and that creek is only the half of it. There isn’t but a hand’s breadth of daylight between the mud and the front axle.” Great clods of mud rolled from his boots as he shucked them off. “Ben and Beth can’t hardly lift their own feet, much less pull. This ground’ll rust their shoes and rot their hooves if we leave them standing, even if we empty the whole straw tick under them.”
