Caroline

by Sarah Miller

  “I’ll tie down the wagon cover,” Charles decided.

  No. The word flashed through her whole body, bright and sizzling cold. Then, with a shudder, it flashed out again. Charles had jumped to the ground, leaving the spring seat jiggling back and forth behind him. He yanked at the canvas straps so harshly that Caroline could hardly keep hold of her thoughts with the wagon shuddering around her. He was only being careful, she told herself, by securing the cover so tightly. He had never in his life knowingly put them in danger. She must trust his intuition as she had trusted her own.

  “They may have to swim, out there in the middle,” he said as he sat down beside her again. “But we’ll make it all right, Caroline.”

  Another pinprick of unease struck her, and her body recoiled ever so slightly from the wall of her corset. She had not asked for reassurance. It could only be himself Charles was reassuring, and it had not worked. Everything about him was pulled taut as the wagon cover—his mouth, the grimacing muscles around his eyes. He had the reins wrapped so firmly around his fist as to make the skin stand out in little bulges between the leather. Caroline looked again at the line of ruts. They pointed so clearly into the creek, there could be no questioning this as a ford.

  As the wheels dropped into the ruts Laura piped up behind them, “I wish Jack could ride in the wagon, Pa.”

  If Laura took to the new baby half so quickly as she had taken to that secondhand bulldog, Caroline thought, she would count herself lucky. Charles did not answer. Had he even heard?

  “Jack can swim, Laura,” Caroline said. “He will be all right.”

  One by one the mustangs’ legs cut into the flowing water, carving wide V shapes across its surface. Then came a little sideways tug as the creek began wending its way between the spokes of the wheels like a needle pulling a thread through cloth. Charles slapped the reins again and the team continued gamely forward.

  Caroline watched the water lap gently at their bellies with a sympathetic shiver. It crept steadily up the horses’ sides until their wet black backs shone patent leather smooth in the sun, then disappeared altogether. Beneath her, Caroline felt as much as heard the creek sloshing now and then at the underside of the floorboards.

  They were already nearly halfway across. Charles leaned back a little and the rigid angle of his elbows eased. He smiled bashfully at her, a smile like that of a boy suddenly no longer frightened of the dark. Caroline unclenched herself and felt the gentle hug of her corset welcoming her back. Then the reins drooped. The mustangs had hesitated, their ears swiveling upstream.

  There was no time to ask what or why. A gush of water came splashing at the sideboards. It hit with a jolt that jostled Caroline’s jawbone, then pushed its way under and around the wagon box. The furrows around Pet’s and Patty’s necks melted away as the current scooped them up. The wagon gave a funny sort of dip and then they were floating, horses and all.

  Instinctively Caroline scooted inward, lifting her feet from the floor, but no water breached the seams. Only the churning of the mustangs’ hooves reverberated through the water and up the wagon’s wooden tongue into the box. Caroline felt the faint echo of their chugging in her chest as though a steam locomotive were passing.

  “Gee!” Charles called out, and Caroline’s attention expanded outward. He was half standing, leaning with the reins, trying to steer the mustangs toward the right.

  Upstream. It felt immediately wrong. They always forded crosswise so that the horses could work with the current, not against it. Caroline searched the opposite bank for her bearings. Nothing aligned. No opposing set of ruts, nothing. It might have been a different creek altogether. Even the willow trees lining the shore hunched closer overhead, as though they had shrunk. No, Caroline realized, not shrunk. It was the creek itself that had risen, enough to catch hold of the willows by their lowermost leaves and slant the boughs downstream.

  Caroline looked out beyond the horses’ heads. There was the ford, already some rods upstream from where it had been when they set out moments before. The surge had washed them past in a matter of seconds. Caroline watched with one hand over her mouth as the landing place began slipping out of sight altogether.

  The wagon was a boat, with no rudder or oars but the two black ponies. Pet and Patty snorted and paddled mightily against the current, but it was all they could do to hold the wagon in place. Then for a moment they began to gain ground. The sound of the water striking the side of the wagon box stopped. Quiet opened up like a hole around them. Caroline did not like it. Her stomach plummeted just half an inch and stopped short.

  They had fallen without falling, Caroline thought without fully understanding herself, plunged into a hollow whose depth she had no way of sounding. From under the surface came an almost imperceptible tremor, and Caroline knew her answer was on its way. The creek was marshaling itself. She felt it coming, a gathering rush from upstream.

  Caroline spun in her seat. The water must not reach the girls. It would pull them downstream like the willow boughs. Mary was already crouched down on the straw tick, but Laura sat straight up, her blue eyes violet with excitement. Caroline’s mouth went dry in one breath. There was next to nothing she could shield them with.

  “Lie down, girls,” she commanded. They dropped as though her voice had knocked them over. It was not enough. She whipped the gray blanket down over them. “Be still, just as you are. Don’t move!”

  The current came at the wagon in a great, muscular arm, caught hold of the back of it and swung it like a pendulum. The shore went swinging with it, out of sight until there was nothing but water before them. Caroline flattened herself backward against the spring seat. The whole of the creek was coming at her as though it would leap straight into her lap. It crashed and foamed against the boards, inches from her knees. Dark drops of spray shot up and dotted her skirt.

  The water reared the mustangs backward, straining the pole straps that bound them to the neck yoke. They snorted and kicked and pulled, their noses inching nearer and nearer the narrow pole that joined them to the tongue. Then with a whinny the creek forced them up again. Caroline gasped and gripped the seat as the front of the wagon tipped upward, pried by the tongue.

  The leather straps and steel rings would likely hold, but the wooden yoke? Caroline flinched at the thought. With the weight of two horses yanking each of its ends backward even a good hickory pole might snap like a twig broken over a man’s knee. The long tongue was only a little less vulnerable. If either of them splintered, the mustangs would come crashing into the wagon box. They must keep fighting the current, Caroline realized, if only to keep the wagon intact. Swim, she willed them, swim. But Pet and Patty were as frightened as she was. The creek had them in a chokehold. Their necks straightened, their noses pointed to the sky. Caroline could see the whites of their eyes.

  “Take them, Caroline!”

  The reins were in her hands and Charles’s hat and boots on the floor before she understood what was happening. He stepped one stockinged foot up onto the corner of the wagon box and sprang from it into the creek. The wagon gave a terrible lurch behind him and—

  Caroline’s breath, her blood, stopped cold. The image of him leaping held itself frozen before her. It was as though her senses refused to register anything further.

  But she had seen what happened next. Already she could feel the print of it on her memory.

  The water had closed over his head.

  Instantly the creek sealed itself as though he had never been there at all. Every ripple that belonged to Charles was gone.

  Caroline waited with the reins in her hands and his name in her throat. She must not scream, must not frighten the girls, must not frighten the horses. Everything in her had dropped with him. She pulled back against the feeling and the reins tightened with her. She would hold the whole wagon afloat this way until Charles surfaced if she had to. Her eyes looked nowhere but the place where he had disappeared.

  But it was not the same place, she thought with a
cold flash, nor the same water. All of it was moving—creek and wagon and horses, water and wheels and hooves. And somewhere, moving with it or through it or against it, her husband. The creek might take hold of him—might already have hold of him—and sweep him away without her ever seeing.

  Pet’s collar jerked to the left and she seemed to stumble, though Caroline knew there was nothing solid beneath her hooves. Caroline pulled hard on Patty’s outside line for balance. Patty’s head swerved to the right and Pet’s came with it, yanked by the crossline, but the collar did not right itself.

  Something was snagged in the harnessing. The trace or the belly band or the breast strap—she could not be sure.

  Caroline did not know what to do. She could not keep pulling—the bit was already notched too deeply into Patty’s cheek—and she could not let up. Whatever it was had a firm hold. She could feel it herself in the lines. It took all her strength to hold them away from the drag. Then, oh then, the water beside Pet burst open, and there he was.

  Charles.

  Caroline saw his breath spray from his mouth in a mist of droplets and her own lungs unlocked. He had grasped the traces and was hauling himself up along Pet’s side. His shoulder plowed up a swell of water before him.

  He took hold of Pet’s throat latch. All Caroline could see of him were his head and his fist, tight under Pet’s chin. His own narrow chin barely breached the surface; the creek had him by the whiskers. Then she heard him speaking. Not the words, but the sound of them, so light and calm, they buoyed Caroline just enough that she could begin to think more than one moment ahead.

  The mustangs must not give in to their panic. Not with Charles in the water beside them. She could not steer. Her arms were no match for the push and thrust of the current. But if she held the reins up high and steady, Caroline thought, Pet and Patty might not have to struggle so to keep their heads above the water.

  Slowly, Caroline began to feed the lines out straight. She heard a rustle behind her and her attention splintered. Laura had come out from under the blanket. When, she did not know. Caroline did not turn around. She could not take her eyes from Charles. Until he was out of that water, there could be no room in her consciousness for anything else.

  “Lie down, Laura,” Caroline said, and Laura did.

  Caroline honed all her focus back into the reins. Slowly she lifted the lines, searching for the right height, the right amount of tension. Too much would signal Pet and Patty to stop. Too little and they would flail. Higher, higher—there. Just below her shoulders their heads leveled, chins parallel to the water. Now, steady, she told herself. She pulled gently, firmly, backward until the graceful curve of the mustangs’ necks began to reappear. The roar of the creek fell away from her ears as Caroline concentrated. Her arms measured the ever-changing tension in the lines and matched the two sides to each other. With Charles encouraging her, Pet was pulling harder now than Patty. Caroline slid to the left end of the spring seat, cocking the reins to soften Patty’s bit so that she might swim ahead and match Pet’s pace. Suddenly both reins softened in her hands. She wrapped them double around her fists, quick, to take up the slack.

  Something had changed. Caroline felt it immediately in the lines. The leather in her hands was no longer taut with frenzy. It did not pull at her arms, but hung balanced between herself and the team. She had done it. The horses had regained control of themselves, and Caroline was driving—driving them up the center of the creek. They made no forward progress against the current, but that did not matter to Caroline. Pet and Patty had stopped straining skyward, and that alone was enough to thank God for. All the power it had taken to fuel the mustangs’ panic returned to their chests and legs, and they charged stubbornly at the water.

  There was no more time than that to be thankful. Again Caroline felt a drop in her stomach. This time the sensation hovered below her navel, rolling from side to side, unable to balance. It made her want to slip from the spring seat and spread herself flat across the floorboards. The whole wagon was moving in a way it had never done before. Two months of jolting and rattling, rocking and swaying, and this was both new and wrong, a sideways sort of teeter running right down the underbelly of the wagon. Like driving down a ridgepole, Caroline thought, and edged back toward the middle of the spring seat.

  It happened too fast to brace for. The wagon tipped sideways and every muscle in Caroline’s body snapped inward. Crates and boxes shifted behind her. The carpetbag on its hook swung out at her. Just as quickly the floor leveled, but Caroline did not release herself. Everything in her held its place, striving toward her own invisible center. Only her eyes dared move.

  She could see no cause. Nothing had struck them. The water had not risen nor become more turbulent. She could even make out what Charles was saying to the horses.

  “Come on, Pet. Gee over, Patty.”

  Charles. He was trying to coax the horses away from the middle of the creek. Of course. That was why the wagon had teetered. It was too light to stand upright with its broad side exposed to the strength of the current. But the wagon must be turned to face the bank if they were to make landfall safely. There was no other chance. The thought of all that water heaving again at the sideboards whitened Caroline’s knuckles. It would either turn them or topple them—right over onto Charles.

  Caroline repelled the thought. She would not, could not allow that scene to unfold—not in her mind or before her eyes. There was not even time to think of such a thing. Once the wagon began to turn, those horses must swim faster than the water flowed or the current would overtake them. Charles could not do that alone, not up to his neck in the creek. Caroline coiled up her courage and hauled the reins sideways. As the horses’ necks angled toward land, Caroline felt her weight begin to shift from beneath and knew the creek’s hold on the wagon was tightening. She slapped the lines hard, again and again. One crackling spray of water after another shot up from Pet’s and Patty’s backs. The little mustangs jolted and the wagon swung.

  Caroline watched nothing but Charles, clinging to Pet. The willows blurred behind him. Water smacked and splashed at the boards, the overspray leaping up to strike sharp drumbeats against the thin canvas walls. Caroline prayed with her fists clenched and her eyes wide open.

  Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

  Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

  All at once the wagon and the creek ceased their grappling. The wagon moved as though it were a bullet careening down a rifle barrel.

  “Haw!” Charles called out, and Caroline obeyed quicker than the team, quicker than thought, pulling the lines toward the western bank without knowing why. She saw it then, a brown flat place a few rods distant. The break in the trees seemed to be racing toward them. Instinct drew the reins toward her body. Safe from capsizing, they must not now cripple the horses or the wagon in landing. She could not slow the creek, but she would slow the team what little she could.

  The iron tires struck and bounced against the creek bed. Caroline rocked forward, then sharply back. Charles shouted, but Caroline could not hear what he said. Sand and iron ground together beneath her. Everything from the tin plates to the churn dash rattled. Then the sound of wood scraping wood as the wagon tipped and it all skidded toward the tailgate.

  Charles shouted again and there he was—rising, running, out of the creek—shoulders, back, and legs shedding water.

  The shock of the wheels turning on solid ground sent Caroline’s teeth clattering down on her tongue. Her eyes clamped shut against the pain. When she opened them, the wagon was still. So still. The rushing and the flowing and the roaring, all of it was over. Charles stood panting beside the shining wet mustangs with his clothes clinging to his skin.

  Caroline found herself trembling so violently she could not let go of the reins. All the terror she had not had time to feel still had hold of her; every
thing that had not happened suddenly fanned out before her, bright and terrible. Her voice quavered, “Oh, Charles,” and blood rose from her bitten tongue with the words. Had she been able to move, she would have had him in her arms.

  “There, there, Caroline. We’re all safe.”

  Better perhaps that she could not reach him, Caroline thought as she shivered and shook. There was enough thankfulness in her to crush him, and just the other side of that, a hot spurt of outrage. At him, at herself. She had known—they had both known—something was wrong, and because they could not put words to it they had gone into that creek anyway. With no one else to depend on, they had failed each other. There was no place in country like this for such mistakes, no place at all, and so she only half listened to Charles trying to soothe them all with his praise of the tight wagon box and strong horses. Brushing aside her fear had nearly just cost more than she could pay, and she would not do it again now, not if it shook her apart.

  “All’s well that ends well,” Charles was saying, and that was so. But it would not have begun at all, Caroline knew, if they had listened to their own good sense. Even with creek water streaming from his whiskers, Charles could overlook that part of it. He was always facing forward, that man. Never back.

  Laura’s fingers filled the spaces between the boards at Caroline’s back. “Oh, where’s Jack?” she cried as she pulled herself up from under the blanket.

  Jack. Caroline’s shaking halted all at once. Her conscience bulged up so hard and solid, she could feel nothing else. They had left him. She had left him. It was not Charles who told Laura the bulldog could swim. Caroline remembered how Jack had growled at the Indians on the street, yet did no more than scrunch his eyes shut to brace himself for Laura’s mauling hugs. He had asked nothing of them but to be allowed to follow behind his ponies, and she had abandoned that steadfast creature to the creek. She could picture him standing on that shore just as plainly as though she had turned to look. But she had not.