Caroline

by Sarah Miller

  They waited better than an hour while Charles searched, his whistle shrilling through the creek bottoms again and again after his voice would no longer carry. An hour with Laura so desperately hopeful that Caroline could not bear to look at her when Charles returned. Instead she saw Charles’s face, saw him meet Laura’s wishful gaze and know for the first time in his life he had failed his little Half-Pint. Caroline did not know how so much disappointment would fit inside one small wagon.

  Charles said nothing to either of them. There was nothing to say. His clothes were dry, and there was no bulldog trotting behind him. It was past time for making camp. He climbed to the spring seat and flicked the reins.

  It was a wasted meal. Not one of them could eat, yet they picked and pushed at their food until it was as good as sand on their plates. Her own looked like the creek bank, all grit and muddy molasses. Caroline’s throat burned and swelled as she scraped the plates over the latrine pit. Even the scraps were wasted without Jack there to finish them.

  God that doesn’t forget the sparrows won’t leave a good dog like Jack out in the cold, Charles had promised Laura when she begged for Jack to be allowed into heaven. The sentiment soothed the child, but it was no consolation to Caroline. Her conscience throbbed all the harder to think of it: After all her answered prayers for protection on this journey, she had left one of His creatures without so much as a backward glance. She could ask for nothing after this. Nothing but forgiveness.

  “We’ll camp here a day or two,” Charles said when she came back to the dishpan. “Maybe we’ll stay here. Good land, timber in the bottoms, plenty of game—everything a man could want. What do you say, Caroline?”

  Everything a man could want. Caroline’s hands stilled beneath the cooling dishwater. And a woman? Caroline did not dare look inside herself to ask such a thing. She did not want to be inside herself at all, did not want to be part of a person who had been so selfish. After this day, it would be mercy enough simply to arrive.

  “We might go farther and fare worse,” she ventured. Asking without asking.

  Charles knew her better than that. He waited for the rest, watching her over the glow of his pipe as she scrubbed guiltily at the dishes. “Anyway, I’ll look around tomorrow,” he answered when she said no more. “Get us some good fresh meat.”

  Caroline nodded. She rinsed the dishcloth and walked out of the bright ring of firelight. When her hem rustled against the tall grass, she stopped and laid the dishcloth to dry over the long yellow blades. Caroline looked out into the wide open darkness. All this time, was this the place they had had been moving toward? She imagined the little campfire with a roof and walls around it, the heart of a small house with Charles smoking and the girls yawning drowsily in the flickering light.

  A howl wavered into the air, the sound cutting a thin line into the blank space around her. Caroline felt it slide through her, too, tickling the gaps between each bone of her spine as though she were no more solid than the sky. As she turned from the prairie to the campsite the darkness became palpable against her back. Caroline refused to let it make her shiver, or hurry. The girls must not see their ma flushed from the grass like a frightened grouse, not by a sound as familiar as thunder. Anyway, she was not truly frightened. Charles’s rifle and pistol were loaded, and there was the fire just steps away. She only wished again for something thicker than a shawl to mark the boundary between herself and all that dark and shapeless space.

  “About half a mile away, I’d judge,” Charles said.

  Mary and Laura looked at each other. Both of them knew well by now how little time it took to cover half a mile.

  “Bedtime for little girls,” Caroline sang out softly.

  Her fingers were down to Mary’s fourth button when Laura cried, “Look, Pa, look! A wolf!”

  Charles had the rifle butt notched into his shoulder before Caroline saw what Laura was pointing to. Two molten globes hovering in the long grass where she had just been standing, each reflecting the firelight like the brass disc behind a kerosene lamp. Eyes. Creeping closer. She heard the click of Charles cocking the rifle and held her breath for the shot. None came. The animal had crept another step, then stopped still—a perfect target.

  Charles did not fire. He lifted his cheek an inch from the stock and peered over the tip of the barrel at those motionless eyes. “Can’t be a wolf,” he said, “unless it’s mad.”

  Caroline hefted Mary into the wagon without feeling it happen. She leaned down for Laura and Charles shook his head. His finger was loose on the trigger now. “Listen to the horses,” he murmured. Caroline cocked an ear. Nothing but their teeth snipping at the grass. Nor was she afraid, Caroline realized. Her body was poised for it, and yet she felt no sensation of fear. Alert, yes, and cautious, too, but though she kept herself and Laura held safely back, her mind seemed to lean forward, curiously drawn toward the riddle of what that creature might be. “A lynx?” she guessed aloud.

  “Or a coyote,” Charles said, picking up a scrap of firewood. “Hah!” he shouted, and pitched it toward the shining eyes.

  Any sensible animal should have bolted. This one dropped to the ground. To spring, or cower? Quicker than bullets, Caroline put herself between Laura and the animal as slowly, inexplicably, it began to crawl toward Charles.

  Caroline felt so strange. The animal’s eyes seemed to scrape the ground. Please, those eyes said. It was pitiful enough to make her wince. No wild creature would humble itself so, unless it were sick or hurt.

  Charles walked toward the edge of the firelight, the gun out before him.

  “Don’t, Charles.” Whether she meant don’t shoot, or don’t move, Caroline did not know. The darkness around the creature began to thin as it continued forward. The swirl of a shining black nose took shape. Then a bone-yellow glint of teeth, pointing straight to the sky.

  The burst of sound came from all around her. Charles shouting, Laura screaming. Everything moved in the wrong direction. Caroline reeled forward as Laura and the creature tumbled together in the dirt.

  And then, “Jack! Oh, Jack!”

  The surprise struck her like a blow. Only Jack, filthy and bedraggled and thrashing with glee. Caroline threw up her hands as though she might hold back the shock, fearful that she had not the strength to feel one more thing. She could not speak, could not laugh until all the guilt and worry rolled from her at the sight of his waggling stump tail. Then she wanted most to cry and could not do that, either. The instant Jack saw her he sprang to her, nearly bowling her over. He scrabbled and pawed until she bent down to try to touch him. But he did not want petting. He licked and licked her wrists and palms and plunged his snorting nose into all the folds of her skirt until Caroline knew—it was her smell he wanted. Wanted to coat himself in it, so that he might never lose it again. Somewhere out on the open prairie he must have scented her, standing alone in the tall grass outside the campsite, and he had followed.

  She had led him home.

  Thirteen

  The morning breeze pushed Caroline’s skirt to and fro as if she were a school bell. The fabric hugged her belly and the small of her back by turns as Charles strode away across the grass.

  It ought to have made her feel small, alone on such a vast and empty plain. Instead she felt a fullness that had nothing to do with the outward billow of her skirt. The whole day stretched before her, with no wagon wheels cutting through it. Beside her the big washtub stood full and shining in the sun.

  Without woods or walls to partition the space around her, the sense of that word—alone—blurred. The distance between them might expand until they lost sight of one another, yet they were all in the same place. Or rather, on it. The prairie did not contain them, but held them on its great open palm. Only the girls were small enough to make a forest of the tall grass and disappear beneath its surface. Their voices flitted up from the weed tops like the dickcissels’, and for the first time she could remember Caroline did not fret to have them out of her sight. All she need do
to find them was stand in the wagon box and watch for the dimpling of the grass.

  Caroline’s heels clicked lightly down the floorboards and her tongue mimicked the lively tsk-tsk-tsk of the little yellow-splashed dickey birds chirping around her as she straightened the boxes and slouching bundles. One jig-like call made her pause to listen with the half-gathered bedclothes in her hands. What must the bird who sang such a song look like—vivid as a crazy quilt or drab as a sheet? She finished stripping the linens from the beds and dropped the bundle over the side of the wagon. There lay the fiddle box on the bare straw tick, muffled between the pillows. In all these weeks they had not once reached into that box for music. Only greenbacks. She would ask Charles to play tonight, she decided, and tucked the blankets neatly around it. If he were not too tired. It had been too long.

  It felt both right and wrong to use the day for a washing. Thursdays belonged to the churn, not the washtub, but after rattling across all those many miles the wagon itself felt so much like the inside of a churn that Caroline could not think of taking up the dash and pounding away at anything so delicate as cream. And anyway, there was none to be had. So it would be the laundry instead.

  Caroline looked tentatively over the rim of the tub at the flat circle of water. Her own face looked back at her, just the same. The slightly uneven widow’s peak beneath the neat white parting of brown hair. The lower lip that seemed always mournful or stern, no matter how sweet the thoughts behind it. Whatever changes this journey had wrought in her, they had not yet broken her surface.

  Pleased, she smiled at herself and quickly blushed at the way her face bloomed back at her. Suddenly Caroline did not want to look away. The unexpected sweetness of her own modesty held her captive. This must be the smile that made Charles’s eyes twinkle so when he teased her. She could feel the familiar contours of it, but had never seen the rosy flush, nor the dark ruffle of lowered lashes. No wonder he showed her no mercy.

  Now she was too much pleased, and the charm of the reflection faded. Enough of that, then. Caroline rolled up her sleeves and tucked her skirt between her knees. She dipped her fingers into the pannikin for a smear of brown soft soap and began.

  First the great bundle of sheets and pillowcases. Her knuckles stung with cold as she plunged the fabric in and out of the water. With the handle of the rake she pried the yards of sopping muslin from the tub and wrung them out inch by inch before starting all over with the rinse water. Then towels, dishcloths, white underthings, and red flannel underthings. Last of all she carried the carpetbags out into the sun and stacked the heap of muddied winter clothes in the grass beside the washtub.

  The folded dresses, pants, and shirts were stiff as canvas from weeks of wear. Caroline shook out her own everyday brown flannel and lowered it into the tub. The gray water crept hungrily up the hem, melting the caked dirt away. She threaded her hands deep into pairs of stockings and strummed them over the washboard until the dingy footprints disappeared from their soles.

  Sweat ringed her underarms and collar. In her mind she fancied she could sketch the line of every blade of grass pressing into her knees. But never before had Caroline taken such pleasure in a washing. Everything she worked with her hands beneath the water came up softer, brighter, more itself.

  She laid the drying clothes out like paper dolls on the grass. Caroline stood back thoughtfully taking in their colors and shapes: Charles in brown and green, herself and Mary in shades of blue, and Laura’s little sprigged calico in just the bold shade of red Caroline longed to wear. Together all of them gently bent the grass, so that Caroline saw the soft imprint of her family on the land.

  The image lingered pleasantly in her mind well after the clothes were ironed and folded away. When Charles came whistling home and the girls ran scrambling to meet him, the picture seemed to come alive. They rose out of the grass in a small billow of color and movement—Charles with Laura by the hand, Mary skipping alongside. Caroline smiled. Laura never could get enough of her Pa.

  A pang of worry struck her. How might things change for Laura if this next baby were a son? Charles was not a man to play favorites, but there was no mistaking the softness in his eyes when he looked on something he loved. She had seen it kindling inside him these last days, as they drove across the prairie, and now she could hear it in his voice, telling Laura of all the bounty he had seen living in the grass and streams.

  The game he carried did nothing to contradict his flourishes of excitement. Two fat fowl hung from his belt, and in his hand was a rabbit so outlandishly large its feet brushed the ground with every swoop of his arm.

  Charles held up his catch to her and said, “I tell you, Caroline, there’s everything we want here. We can live like kings!” The monstrous jackrabbit dangled from his fist, its long belly neatly silt. Where its vitals should have been, there was only a glistening cavern. A drop, then two, of rosy pink blood splashed the ground before her.

  Caroline’s viscera lurched. The dead rabbit loomed too large, a glory of waste and feast. She was thankful she had never seen it living. All the power and vibrance were gone from it, and what was left would feed them for no more than a day.

  Be that as it may. Caroline shook the shudder of regret from her shoulders and took the rabbit by its ears. It was dead and they must eat. If she could not make the creature live again she would roast it up fine, wrapped in slices of fat salt pork, and they would take nourishment from every morsel.

  Caroline scraped the bones from Charles’s plate into the bake oven.

  “Bet it weighed near seven pounds, field dressed,” he said. Boasting, almost. She could not blame him. Not one fiber of the jackrabbit had gone to waste. Tomorrow there would be the good thick broth with dumplings for supper. The hide was pinned to the wagon box. She could hear Jack working over the head and feet beneath the wagon, and this once the rough sounds pleased her.

  The sun nestled itself down into the horizon, tinging the water in the dishpan with shades of pink and orange. Caroline scrubbed slowly at the plates as the colors deepened. She was tired and sore from leaning over the washtub. But it was not the same weariness she had become accustomed to. Not the indifferent fatigue of travel, nor even the drain of childbearing. That never fully left her. Something she could not harness for herself was busy, always busy—building, feeding. At odd times she tired unaccountably, and that was when she was most conscious of the current of energy flowing past her to that teeming place. It was akin to the feeling of strength rebuilding after sickness. Even her thoughts were short of fuel, leaving her at times almost lightheaded.

  This was earned, a vigorous sort of fatigue that came from doing, and the grateful cooling of muscles pulled and stretched under the sun, and Caroline greeted it with matching gratitude.

  Behind her, Caroline heard the familiar snap of two metal clasps. She turned from the dishpan and found Charles with the fiddle box open on his lap. The whiskey-colored wood gleamed rich and warm in the firelight. Caroline left the tin plates to dry themselves and sat down by the fire.

  One by one the strings twanged and wavered and then found their steady centers. Four pure notes emerged, and then with the tiniest twists of his fingers Charles sweetened them in a way Caroline had never yet learned to describe. Those sounds were a tune in themselves. They carried memories of firesides and cornhuskings and sugaring-off dances reaching all the way back to the threshold of her youth on the banks of the Oconomowoc. Her heart rose, tight and aching, to hear them at last. No matter what songs he played, those four notes always sang out first in welcome. That, more than anything, was the sound of home.

  There was nothing to hold the music close around them, and so it rose with the smoke, higher and higher until each silvery note seemed to pierce the sky. Caroline wished for something to send out into the deepening night with it. Something sweet and fine and all her own. There was nothing but her voice, and she could not imagine her low contralto rising to meet the stars.

  Yet Caroline felt a loosening in he
rself as the bow stroked the strings. Until the music began to release it she had not known that she had been holding on to anything at all. A space opened inside her as she listened, widening with each long note. Coaxed by the fiddle, she was opening herself to this place, for Charles’s songs were not strutting out at marching tempo. They ambled and danced, not reaching beyond the horizon, but wheeling upward within it.

  At last, then, he was settling. Caroline’s throat swelled so fast the gladness nearly choked her. She pulled in a cool thin breath and held it. The song and the night air swirled through her, indistinguishable from one another. Nothing but the fiddle had spoken to her, and she was overcome. And Charles? He had eyes only for the strings, rocking so gently in time with the music that his contentment was unmistakable. Did he choose such melodies deliberately to match his spirits, Caroline wondered, or were his hands so connected to his heart that his mind did not enter into it at all? She watched his hands, now. The lightness of his fingers on the strings sent little tendrils of warmth through her. There was nothing in the world he touched more delicately, not even her own face.

  All around them the blue-black bowl of sky throbbed with stars. The bow caressed the strings so softly they seemed to whisper, and Charles’s voice, deep and mellow, melded with them:

  None knew thee but to love thee,

  Thou dear one of my heart . . .

  Caroline lifted her eyes from his hands and found him gazing at her in the same way he had gazed at the fiddle strings. Delight bloomed all through her. She had no strength for modesty when he made his feelings so plain. She might hold her pleasure within herself, but she could not keep the effort from showing. The spread of her lips and the rounding of her cheeks gave her entirely away. And anyway, who was there to see? To have such a man, as content to hold her in his sight as in his arms, and never indulge him—well, that would be a waste. Selfish, even. Let him look as long as he liked, then, Caroline decided, and this once let him savor her pleasure, too.