Caroline

by Sarah Miller

  Caroline nodded. It meant more weeks, but that could not be helped. At least now, with her trunk at the end of their bed, she could pull out her lap desk and pearl-handled pen any time she pleased.

  She sat a few moments on that trunk after tucking the girls into bed, taking in the feel of the place. Moonlight tinged the canvas roof a soft pewter. Already Caroline knew she would miss that luster when Charles finished the roof with wooden slabs.

  “Come out here, Caroline, and look at the moon,” Charles called softly. Caroline rose and ducked under the quilt Charles had tacked up for a door. He sat sideways on the spring seat, arms open for her. Caroline sat down on his knee and settled in against him. Charles pushed the heel of his boot into the ground, bobbing the spring seat comfortably beneath them almost like a rocking chair. His thumb caressed her upper arm in slow harmony.

  Caroline looked at the round white moon hanging free in the sky. Without trees or clouds to frame its light, there seemed to be no end to its reach, no end to anything at all. Darkness had melted the horizon; only the faint border of stars made it possible to separate earth from sky. Caroline closed her eyes and all of it melded together—the sphere of the child floating inside her, the circle of Charles’s arms around her. Bounded and boundless.

  Seventeen

  “Mary! Laura!” Charles called. “Come and see what Pet has to show you.”

  Caroline followed them to the little log stable at a distance. She knew what it must be, but she had not expected it to be so new. The spindly black filly was still glistening, the meaty smell of the afterbirth unmistakable in the cool morning air.

  The girls were oblivious, having eyes only for the creature’s delicate legs and long, long ears. Caroline could smile at their wonderment, but she herself felt none of it. The sight of that pony, entirely unruffled, with her new little filly standing on one side and her own twin sister on the other turned Caroline all slack inside, disappointed, almost. For the hundredth time, she found herself wishing for Polly. Charles and Edwards had raised the stable in a single day, finishing only the night before. It was as if that filly had been waiting for the stable to be built—waiting until everything was ready to welcome her and then stepped out into the world the very next moment.

  It would not be so simple when her time came.

  Charles would have the cabin finished by then, of course. There would be a bedstead and a hearth and her own crisp-ironed curtains fluttering at the windows well before summer faded. All the same, Caroline knew she would rather lie on the floor, behind a quilt door and a canvas roof, if only Polly could be there with her.

  Caroline did not say a thing when Charles saddled Patty and set off toward the bluffs. It was not that she wanted to gallop across the open prairie under that hot white sun. Given the choice she would much rather spread a quilt on the grass in the shade of the house and have a Sunday school with her girls. It was only that he had these chances to unhitch himself from everything, and she did not. There was never the extravagance of an afternoon all to herself, to do no more than sit down with her desk in her lap and write a letter to Eliza without a single interruption. Envy, pure and simple, and nothing she said to herself would snuff the resentful flicker in her throat. If she spoke aloud Charles would hear it, too, and so she only waved as he trotted away. No sense in marring his pleasure simply because she could not partake of it.

  “What’s the matter with Jack?” Laura asked.

  Caroline looked up from the bake oven. The hair on the back of the bulldog’s neck was bristling. Pet ran a nervous circuit and whickered for her foal.

  It was as though a wind passed, touching only the animals. Caroline had felt nothing, not the least stir of unease. That in itself sent a little shiver across her arms. “What’s the matter, Jack?” she asked. He seemed to raise his eyebrows at her. Caroline turned a slow circle. Nothing, as far as she could see. Nor a sound. She watched Jack’s nose quiver into the wind. A scent, then?

  Her first thought, always: Indians?

  Could Jack’s and Pet’s noses perceive the difference between one race and another? More likely they could scent the dead things the Indians adorned themselves with—the skins and feathers, teeth and bone. Caroline had not seen an Osage since that day on the street in Independence, but she remembered the tufts of hair that fringed their leggings.

  All this time in Indian Territory, Caroline thought, and not one Indian. Even Charles had not seen them—only their deserted camping places. When she asked why, he had answered in that careless way of his. Oh, I don’t know. They’re away on a hunting trip, I guess.

  And when they returned, Caroline wondered? Her breath shortened at the thought. Charles had made no proper claim on this land yet. They had not paid a cent for it, had not even filed on it. Supposing they did have papers from a U.S. land office—what weight would that hold with Indians? When the Osages found this house standing where nothing had been before, they would come for their rent as the storekeeper warned.

  There was Jack, she told herself, already on guard. And she had the rifle, and the revolver, too, though Caroline could not think where it had been put. Under the wagon seat, her mind answered automatically, but that was not so anymore.

  The pony came streaking up from the bottoms like a hawk diving straight for them. Caroline could not see the rider—only a brown blur hunched low against the animal’s straining neck. Fear pinned her to the ground, a cold stake right down her backbone. It did not matter. She did not have time to move. Pony and rider tore past her before she saw that it was only Patty, Patty and Charles. Patty’s hooves cut a great slash in the ground as he wrenched her to a stop just beyond the stable. The pony shuddered and panted, dripping with sweat. Charles jumped down and spun around to scan the bluffs.

  Caroline turned and searched the horizon, too, expecting a war party with arrows notched. Nothing but the wind moved through the grass behind him. “What is it?” she said. “Why did you ride Patty like that?”

  “I was afraid the wolves would beat me here,” Charles gasped. “But I see everything’s all right.”

  “Wolves!” she cried. “What wolves?”

  “Everything’s all right, Caroline,” he said. “Let a fellow get his breath.”

  Everything could not be all right, not with the way his hand was shaking as he mopped the sweat from the back of his neck and out from under his whiskers.

  “It was all I could do to hold her at all,” Charles panted. “Fifty wolves, Caroline, the biggest wolves I ever saw. I wouldn’t go through such a thing again, not for a mint of money.”

  Caroline wanted to fold her ears shut, to pretend it was anyone but Charles describing how that pack of buffalo wolves had surrounded him, how he’d forced Patty to walk among them as they frisked and frolicked like dogs. If anything had happened to him, if just one of those wolves had taken a mind to— The thought loomed so large, she could hardly see around it. Widowed and pregnant like her own ma, his child a living ghost in her belly. Her whole life Caroline had carried the memory of how Ma had dropped where she stood at the news of Pa’s shipwreck, as though the weight of that fatherless baby had yanked her to the ground.

  “I was glad you had the gun, Caroline,” Charles was saying. “And glad the house is built. I knew you could keep the wolves out of the house, with the gun. But Pet and the foal were outside.”

  Caroline bridled so suddenly the fear fell right out of her. Why had he gone off at all if he had reason to worry about the stock? Did it never occur to Charles that it might behoove them all to worry about himself now and again? “You need not have worried, Charles,” she said, holding her voice exactly level. “I guess I would manage to save our horses.”

  “I was not fully reasonable at the time,” he apologized, and some small part of herself Caroline hardly recognized was satisfied that he had been scared out of his wits. Perhaps he would remember that the next time he took it into his head to trot off toward the horizon.

  “We’ll eat supper in t
he house,” she said.

  “No need of that. Jack will give us warning in plenty of time.”

  If they ate inside there would be no need of warning, but she did not bother saying so. That sort of logic held no sway with Charles.

  “Caroline.” Caroline felt her mind stir, then sink back toward sleep. “Caroline. Wake up.”

  His voice made no sense. She could hear Charles breathing heavily beside her, yet the words came from above. She lay in the near silence, listening to that rhythmic huff . . . huff until something prickled her awareness.

  Caroline’s eyes sprang open. It was not Charles panting beside her. It was a wolf, the sounds of its warm breath leaking between the chinks in the logs.

  Charles stood with the rifle over his bent arm. “There’s a ring of them all around the house,” he whispered. “Take this. Careful. It’s loaded and half-cocked.” The revolver. Caroline took the warm stock in her hand and leaned into a bar of moonlight to see the cylinder. All six chambers were full. Charles gestured toward the west window and went to stand beside the east window. Caroline knew he was watching the stable. She could hear the horses now, snorting and pacing.

  Slowly Caroline crept to the end of the straw tick and began to raise herself from the floor. First to all fours, then she laid her free hand on the lid of her trunk and pushed herself to her knees. With the sound of the wolves’ breath so near, she dared not put her fingers into the chinks for balance. Another shove against the lid brought her eyes level with the windowsill.

  Caroline paused to look through the window hole and the revolver in her hand became no more menacing than a popgun. Those wolves, she saw at once, could do as they pleased. Charles had said he’d never seen bigger wolves in his life, but these creatures were so impossibly large they looked like bears crouched beneath wolf skins. She counted fourteen of them before the ring curved out of her sight. Between the rifle and the revolver she and Charles might be able to discourage them. That was all. If that pack set its mind on breaching the cabin, it would.

  The thought did not frighten her. On the contrary—if the wolves had wanted to come inside, Caroline judged, they would have nosed the quilt door aside and devoured all four of them in their sleep. But they had not. Until they did all she and Charles could do was signal their intent to protect themselves.

  Caroline sat down on her trunk and pulled her shawl from its peg. She propped the revolver’s barrel on the windowsill, pulled back the hammer to full cock, and slipped her finger inside the trigger guard. So long as the wolves sat still, Caroline’s thoughts kept still, suspended in an aura of calm. If the wolves came nearer, she knew her finger would squeeze the trigger before her mind formed the command, and so there was no need for her thoughts to go straying ahead.

  The wolves made not a move, as though they sensed how near they could come without provoking a reaction. They sat, neither welcoming nor threatening, more acknowledging the boundary between them. Even Jack did not advance, did not so much as put his nose beyond the quilt hanging in the doorway. All of them silently watched one another. The moonlight glinted on the wolves’ shaggy coats and made their eyes glow deep and green-gold. What part of her, she wondered, did the animals fix their gaze on? What feature most proclaimed her human—her clothing, her hairless skin? More likely her hands, Caroline decided, and the gun they held.

  From the west side of the cabin came a long, smooth howl. As Caroline watched the wolves outside her window showed their white throats to the moon and a circle of sound rose up from them. The sound enveloped the cabin, reverberating all the way into the soft marrow of Caroline’s bones until she felt it might lift her away. Was it music to them, she wondered, or prayer, the way it ascended into the sky?

  Before she could rebuke herself for thinking something so profane Laura was up—straight up, clutching the quilt so tightly Caroline could see the little points of her knees and toes beneath the taut fabric.

  At the sight of Charles with his gun Laura’s grip on the bedclothes loosened.

  “Want to see them, Laura?” Charles asked.

  Laura nodded and went to him. Caroline knew she ought not take her eyes from her window, but she could not help it. The tableau of Charles lifting Laura to the windowsill captivated her in a way the motionless wolves could not. The child believed so wholeheartedly that no harm could reach her as long as her pa was near that her fear all but vanished in an instant.

  That was as it should be, Caroline supposed. She herself had hardly any recollection of such a feeling. She had been five years old the last time she saw her own pa. Looking back, she remembered the terrible sensation of the earth rocking beneath her feet at the news of his death better than anything that came before the day the schooner Ocean sank. Caroline stroked the smooth metal seam of the revolver’s grip with her thumb as the memories moved past her. Eventually the world had become stable enough that she could trust her footing again, thanks first to Papa Frederick and then to Charles, but the shadow of that dreadful day lingered still. Ever after she lived alongside the knowledge that nothing on this earth could protect her completely.

  Before they slept another night, Charles had built the doors for the house and the stable both.

  Then for three days he was gone, helping Edwards raise his house and barn. Three days, alone with the girls. He came home for supper, of course, slept every night beside her and was there for breakfast in the morning. Edwards’s claim was only two miles away, but it did not feel the same as when Charles was out all day hunting or working the land.

  Always before, their separate labors were bound up in the same endeavor. With the straw Charles brought her from the threshing Caroline wove the hat that would shade his neck while he sowed the grain she would bake into bread. From that harvest came yet more straw, and round and round it went, like “The House That Jack Built.”

  Now Charles was away, engaged in something apart from her. Not that she begrudged Edwards. Not one bit. If not for Edwards’s help, they might have been sleeping in a tent the night the wolves encircled them. This was a plain trade, a simple back-and-forth between two men, and when it was over Caroline had no doubt she and Charles would resume their usual rhythm.

  That was not the trouble. That was not what made her thoughts dreary and her smiles limp, even when the wind carried the sound of his approaching whistle up from the creek bottoms.

  Caroline did not know quite what it was until after supper the second night, when Charles said, “Bring me my fiddle, Laura, I want to try out a song Edwards sang.”

  His eyes twinkled mischievously as he felt for the notes. It was a catchy melody with a good strong beat, well-suited for an accompaniment of swinging axes and hammers. Likely she would find herself humming it over the butter churn one day.

  “What are the words, Pa?” Mary asked.

  The bow gave a little squawk, and Charles colored ever so slightly. “Well, you know, I don’t seem to remember any more than the tune,” he said quickly.

  Caroline knew from his grimace that the words were not fit for mixed company. That in itself was no great shock. She could imagine Charles and Edwards indulging in the occasional oath or bawdy song, just as there were things women would speak of only if there were no men within earshot.

  Caroline rested her folded arms across the shelf of her belly. There, she thought. That was what she had been missing while Charles was away. Not her husband’s company, but the chance to share her own. The girls had their games and giggles, the men their brash hijinks. Caroline had only herself.

  Before the roof, before the floor, came the fireplace. Charles might have dug himself a well first and saved himself hauling water from the creek to mix the mud for plastering between the chimney stones. Instead he built the chimney and hearth, so she would not have to tussle with the elements to keep her cookfire going. That was the sort of husband Charles Ingalls was.

  Caroline sat in the shade of the north wall, turning scraps of red calico into curtain ties and watching Charles s
tack the chimney stones while the child tumbled lazily beneath her ribs. It seemed to have discovered its limbs, its movements more purposeful now, more akin to a spoon stirring a pot than the tentative winglike flutters of the past several weeks. The straighter she held her back, the more room it gave the both of them, but her muscles were tired of bracing her spine like a ramrod all day long. Her corset helped only so much. The straw tick, with nothing but the dirt floor beneath it, did not help at all.

  Truth be told, what Caroline wanted most in that house was a chair. Not an upturned crate or log to perch on, but a true chair, with a back and arms. She would cook outside all summer long, if only there were a chair to ease her weary back after supper. Her mind strayed to her rocker, and she smiled wistfully. But Charles, in his thoughtfulness, was building her a fireplace—and fairly wearing himself out in his hurry to please her, lifting stones and hauling water and clay for mud.

  He stood back, smearing the sweat from his forehead into his hair and setting it all askew.

  “You look like a wild man, Charles,” she teased. “You’re standing your hair all on end.”

  “It stands on end anyway, Caroline,” he said, flopping down flat on his back beside her. “When I was courting you, it never would lie down, no matter how much I slicked it with bear grease.”

  He had tried, she remembered, valiantly. The slightest whiff of rosemary swept her back to their courtship, when every doff of his hat had filled the room with the smell of that herb-scented grease. Caroline combed her fingers through the unruly brown mass, remembering how her younger brother and sister used to hold their noses and tease, Is Rosemary Ingalls coming to call? “You’ve done well to build that chimney up so high, all by yourself,” she praised him, twiddling a lock between her fingers.

  His forehead shifted beneath her palm as he lifted his eyebrows to smile up at her. Just for a moment, Caroline let herself conjure a picture of the pleasurable diversions they might take, right here on the quilt, if there were not two little girls romping in the grass nearby. A sweet, warm current coursed through her at the thought. Caroline closed her eyes and turned her face to the breeze, letting the soft wind whisk it from her.