by Sarah Miller
She looked at the limp socks slouching past the ends of his toes. “Are your feet dry?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. I’m too wet everywhere else to know the difference.” Beneath the poncho’s seams his shirt and pants were dyed dark with streaks of wet.
She pulled a pair of his winter socks from the carpetbag. “Here. They’re not clean, but they’re dry. For now, at least.” Charles took them without a word.
Though his mood was no brighter, all the sharpness had gone from it. He was only cold and wet and disappointed. Caroline watched him pull the socks from his wrinkled white toes, and all her sympathy reached for him. If her shawl were dry, she would have liked to drape it around his shoulders. The quilts would do just as well for warmth, but they would not enfold him in the same way. Instead she finger-combed the fringe of damp whiskers away from his neck.
“You were right, Caroline,” he said, shaking off a shiver. “I shouldn’t have gone out.”
“Just so you’re here, Charles,” she soothed, blotting his collar with a towel. “I only wish I could contrive a hot meal for you.” She gave a fleeting thought to heating a mug over the lantern for tea.
“I’ll warm soon enough, now that the rain can’t reach me.” He looked at the girls stringing yarn over their fingers and cocked an eyebrow at Caroline. She only smiled and nodded toward them. “Tell Pa what you learned from that yarn today.”
While Mary and Laura told Charles about the manger and the ladder, Caroline considered the provisions. Until the cornbread ran out it had not occurred to her that nearly every bit of food they carried, from the salt pork to the flour, was raw. Even with sixty-odd dollars lining the fiddle box, they could not afford to keep making whole meals of crackers, cheese, and dried apples. She had enough flour to fill a washbasin and more water than she could ask for, yet she could not bake so much as a crumb. As a child, she could not have imagined such a conundrum. There had been want back home—during the spare times in Concord there was many a day without anything better than breadcrumbs in maple sugar water—but never in her life had she gone without for need of a cookfire.
Caroline tied on her apron and waited as though the garment itself would tell her what to do. If such a thing could speak, it would surely be in her mother’s voice. She knew what her ma would think to see her standing stock-still among sacks of food and thinking she had nothing to eat. Ma, who had fed a whole litter of children, sometimes down to the last pinch of dust from the flour barrel. Her mother would have wept for joy to see crates half-filled with salt pork and bacon, and only four mouths to fill—just as she had wept at the stranger who gave her a barrel of flour on credit. Caroline no longer recollected his face, but that barrel stood like an altar in her memory. All of them had knelt down on the spot to thank Providence for it; she could still feel the kitchen floorboards under her knees.
Caroline grasped the knife and carved the cheese into chunks large enough to fill their hands. They would eat it in spite of the expense, and give thanks for their plenty.
The girls nudged closer as she lay down beside them, seeking her warmth. Their teeth had clinked like china as they shrugged out of their coats and hoods and into their cold nightgowns. The best she could say for the sheets was that they were no wetter than anything else by the time she tucked them back over the limp ticking.
Now Caroline felt a thin layer of herself rising through the quilts to shelter her girls, as she always did when they were so near. Even when they were not seeking protection, Caroline could not help making a shield of herself between them and the world.
Their warmth was welcome, yet Caroline wished Mary and Laura could sleep in their own place, that it could be Charles alongside her instead. With Charles she could release that motherly hovering and settle fully into herself—and into him. To lie fitted side by side, bolstering one another without a word. That was all she wanted. Even after ten years of wedlock, Charles treated her touch, her very presence, as something he must earn. When she could give to him unasked, his deference became a gift to both of them. It would do them both a world of good after such a day as this had been. A man so chilled and stymied should not have to huddle alone on the floor. Yet tonight they must be Pa and Ma, not Mr. and Mrs. Ingalls.
Ten
“Pack up a few pounds of provisions, Caroline,” Charles called in through the canvas. “I’ve found a place to camp. Little rise just to the south.”
Caroline leaned out over the tailgate. Sometime in the night the rain had stopped. It was brighter, too, with the sun beginning to press against the clouds, yet cold enough still that she kept her shawl pinned at her collarbone.
“Charles?” she asked. “You don’t mean to leave the wagon?”
“I can’t see any way around it. Guess I’ll have to sleep here. Won’t be any worse for me than the last couple nights. Just give me time to lash together a shelter,” he said as he untied the ropes that held the team’s awning. “Hand me my ax?” he asked.
“Come in and have some breakfast first,” she insisted. With a grin, he hoisted himself up to steal a kiss good morning from her parted lips.
Caroline scooped a helping of dry oats into each bowl, then sprinkled them with brown sugar.
“Like the horses eat?” Mary asked.
“Eat that up and you’ll be strong enough to pull the wagon,” Charles said. His own bowl was empty before Caroline sat down. “I’ll be back soon as I’ve got a framework up,” he said. He pulled a length of twine from his pocket. “Roll up the bedding in the big straw tick. I’ll need the loft boards to make a floor.”
The roar of the creek scrubbed Caroline’s ears as she winnowed the kitchen crate down to bare essentials. Thankfully the sound did not prod at her a thousand times over as the storm had. Without the rain-beat constantly delineating the canvas’s perimeter, she noticed, it seemed as if the wagon had expanded overnight. She paused to consider the space around her. Cramped as it had felt the day before, the wagon would likely dwarf whatever shelter Charles was “lashing together” out in the open. Caroline’s next thought pinched at her: Kansas promised Charles a boundless horizon, yet they were hardly inside the border and already her own meager territory was shrinking.
It would not be forever, she reminded herself. Only until the creek went down. In the meantime they all must have hot food and flatirons to warm their bellies and their beds.
Caroline licked her lips and released the bitter little cloud. “Selfish,” she murmured, and shook her head. Always, it was selfishness that blighted her. What business did she have brooding over elbow room—as though Charles would do any less than his utmost to shelter them? As though he had ever done anything other than his level best for them.
Caroline pulled her mixing bowl and cutting board back out of the crate. She must do no less to keep them nourished in both body and spirit. If she sliced the bacon and measured out the beginnings of corn dodgers right here, dinner would be ready for the fire the moment she arrived at the camp.
In her vigor, Caroline knocked the floor through the bottom of the cornmeal sack with her enamel mug. The sound startled the girls. They came running up the aisle to peer down into it.
“Is that all we’ve got left?” Mary asked.
“There is another great big sack under the loft,” Caroline said. That was so, but it was not full. By now it had likely thinned worse than the straw tick. Before they moved on she would have to gauge Charles’s map against what remained.
Caroline tipped her bowl and brushed the meal back into the sack. She reached for Mary and Laura’s tin cup and began again. Until she knew how much time the delay would consume, she must measure with the smaller cup no matter how much distance the map showed yet to traverse.
Salt, lard, and saleratus went into the bowl, then Caroline covered it with a towel and took stock of the rest of the foodstuffs in her kitchen crates.
Both her dredging box and the flour sack were better than half-full. That would see them through when the meal s
ack gave out. And there were the beans. The time they must sit stranded would let her make good use of the beans at last. The brown sugar and molasses had not fared so well, but that deprived only their tongues. At least in this weather she did not have to worry about the sugar seizing up.
The meat was another matter. She had not thought to scrape the bacon since before the rain, and in the damp the usual stubble of mold had grown thick and mossy. Caroline upended the slab and shaved the green free. The salt pork had long ago gone from pale pink to a soapy shade partway between yellow and gray. That was no matter. Salt pork paled just as soon in a pantry as in a wagon.
Aside from the cornmeal, Caroline reckoned she could make do until the end of the week without pulling from the stock beneath the loft. She topped the crate with her apron then shooed the girls from the straw tick to roll it up, pillows and all.
Caroline did not count how many trips it took Charles to ferry the necessary materials and supplies to the campsite on horseback. Each load loosened the space inside the wagon so agreeably, she hated even more to think of leaving it. Then he came for the planks that formed the sleeping loft.
One by one Charles levered them up and carried them out while Caroline kept back, silently folding her pillowcase curtain. That small stretch of planks had let her mind divide the wagon box into three room-like sections—one for traveling, one for sleeping, and one for everything else.
Until now, they had been only paused. But with their living space dismantled and their things strewn between the wagon and the campsite, the sense that they were stranded rushed in to fill the empty places.
Only one thing appeared unmoved—her trunk, standing off to one side. The moment her gaze fell across it Caroline steadied. She had not seen it in weeks.
Caroline waded through the sacks to spread a hand over the peak of its belly. A picture of what lay inside built itself layer by layer in her memory. Everything rich and fine and delicate, all of it sleeping beneath her palm—untouched since Wisconsin.
“Mary, hand me my work basket, please.” With one hand still on the lid, Caroline fished into the compartment that held her steel crochet hooks and pulled out the key to her trunk. There was no reason to open it, except that she wanted to. Caroline turned the key and lifted the lid no wider than a slice of bread. The smell of newsprint, dry and crackling, met her nose. Caroline inhaled softly. That reassuring scent and all the others behind it unfurled into her lungs. It was like stepping back across her own threshold—home, packed tight and snug and waiting.
There was no more she needed to take from the trunk than that. Caroline latched the lid and slipped the key into her pocket.
“Aren’t you going to put the curtain in?” Mary asked.
“It would not fit,” Caroline said.
“You didn’t try,” Laura said.
“You must not contradict, Laura,” Caroline said as she lifted the girls onto the lid. She stood by a moment, held by their upturned faces. It made such a pretty picture—all the precious little things she loved best in the world, stacked together.
“It’s not far, but the first half mile isn’t fit for you and the girls to walk,” Charles explained. “Ground down here’s so waterlogged it’ll swallow you to the knees if you step in the wrong places.” He lifted one heel to show the slick of brown streaking his calf. “Ben and Beth have been back and forth enough they’ve got the shallowest route pretty well figured. If you ride with Mary, I can lead both horses and still carry Laura on my arm.”
“Aw, Pa,” Laura cried. “I don’t wanna be carried.”
“Laura, be still,” Caroline said. She did not care for Charles’s plan any more than Laura did. Or Mary, for that matter, who silently telegraphed her reluctance through the clutch of her mitten. Caroline squeezed back, disguising her own jitters as reassurance.
There was no other way. They owned but one saddle, and so she must ride Beth astride while somehow keeping hold of both Mary and the saddle horn. She lifted her chest and leveled her chin. If this is the way it must be done, then she would do it.
Caroline let go of Mary’s hand and kilted up the front of her skirts. Holding to a wagon bow she felt with her right foot for the stirrup. When her heel snugged tight against the loop she eased her left over Beth’s back. The horse’s girth opened a wide wedge of space between her knees. Caroline’s hamstrings twanged.
“All right?” Charles asked.
Caroline nodded, and Charles lifted Mary into her lap. Her daughter’s knuckles turned pale as they clenched the saddle horn.
Caroline put her arm around Mary’s waist. Her other hand reached for the saddle horn. With her calves she hugged Beth’s flanks, gripping her thighs against Mary’s.
“Beth’s not going to have sure footing,” Charles warned both of them. “She may lurch and sway, but she won’t fall.” He caught Caroline’s eye. “I wouldn’t put either one of you up there if I didn’t trust her.” Of course not. She knew him well enough to know that. Still, hearing him say it eased her mind even if it did not loosen her grip. “You be a big girl and hold fast,” he said to Mary.
Mary nodded, huddling closer yet over her handhold.
Charles crooked his arm into a seat for Laura. “Climb on, Half-Pint.”
“Please, Pa?” Laura asked, looking longingly at Beth. “I won’t be scared.”
“Makes no nevermind who’s scared and who isn’t. I can’t lead Ben and Beth and carry more than a little half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up.”
Laura obliged. Charles shouldered the tailgate back into place and cinched down the canvas one-handed before clucking the horses forward. Beth began to walk, her careful gait rocking Caroline from the hips.
Behind them the wagon stood beached like a small ark. Caroline wished she could have sewn a keyhole or a latch string into its cover. Anyone who happened by might untie the ropes and see plain as plain what they carried. All that remained of their provisions, her trunk, the fiddle. Good heavens, Caroline thought—the fiddle box and its secret lining of greenbacks. If anyone helped themselves to that it would leave them doubly bereft.
“Charles,” Caroline called, her voice pitched high enough to stop him midstep. “The fiddle box?”
He patted his breast pocket. Caroline nodded, only partially eased. Her shawl slipped with the movement. Every step tugged it a little lower. It was not pinned high enough, but she could not let go of Mary to adjust it.
“Wait, Charles.”
Caroline let go of the saddle horn to unpin her shawl, opening it wide. “Lean back into me, Mary,” she said. Mary hunched her spine backward, still clinging to the saddle. Caroline put her palm to Mary’s chest and hugged her gently in. “Let go now,” she coaxed. “Hold on to me instead.” Mary uncrimped one fist and latched it to Caroline’s arm. Then the other.
Quickly Caroline swathed the long ends of the shawl around her, bundling Mary close. She anchored the knot with the pin and said, “All right, Charles.”
Again her hips rolled with Beth’s steps. Secured against her ma, the tension left Mary’s body, and as the terrain began to steepen she and Mary buttressed each other like a pair of hands pressed together in prayer.
How long had it been since she last held Mary swaddled like this? The shawl, the rocking, the small body finding ease against hers—all of it carried her back to that first winter with Mary.
Those early January days before the fire, her shawl had become a doubled embrace, its arms cradling her and the baby both. Seeing the familiar work of her hands wrapped around the child who was still too new to be believed, Caroline had begun to be able to think of Mary as hers, and of herself as Ma.
She looked down at Mary now. Such a big girl, yet still small enough to take refuge in that same nest of red worsted. Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. She leaned down to brush her cheek over the top of Mary’s head, wishing it were her daughter’s hair meeting her skin instead of the rabbit-fur hood. When the new child came, Caroline vowed to
herself, she would bind it to her with these same threads.
Somewhere in its cushion of salt water that child floated and rolled. The farther Beth’s feet sunk, the deeper the saddle rocked. Mightn’t it be enough to encourage the small being within to brush against her, to give some assurance of its vitality? Caroline pulled her awareness from the touch of the saddle and stirrups, the horse’s flanks, and Mary’s back as best she could. She could sense her womb’s shape and weight, a smooth sheath of muscle poised above her hips. Nothing more.
Caroline exhaled her disappointment. Mary settled back into the space it made, surprising Caroline with the solidity of her presence. Not even quickening yet, and already the child to come could deprive its sisters of her attention, and with Mary right there in her arms. Caroline considered Mary, how she had calmed, and could not help absorbing that same calm herself. Their comfort spiraled one into the other, as it always had. From the very first, she found she could not suckle her baby girl without feeling nourished herself.
It was a kind of sorcery: What her girls believed of her, they made real, and in so doing fed back to her. Every day it happened, though never with the magnitude as it had during the storm. Their faces cried out for a refuge, steady and serene, and that is what she had become, lifted from her own doubts by the sheer force of their need.
Caroline closed her fist over Mary’s bare fingers. The palpable warmth she passed into those cold little hands left her wondering: How much of what they loved in her was real, and how much was fashioned from what they envisioned her to be?
At the lip of a small rise, a stand of trees cupped a plot of open ground. There Charles had fashioned an open-ended lean-to of branches and canvas. Two forked boughs stood on either side of the entrance with a third strung between them—very like the stakes and spit that held her pots over the campfire. Two more slender poles angled backward from the forks, forming supports. A tarpaulin made the roof.
