Caroline

by Sarah Miller

  Caroline flew to the washtub, doused a fresh burlap sack, and ran with it to the western furrow. She beat and beat at the ground. She trampled the grass, slashed at the bare roots with the heels of her shoes. That it was not yet burning did not matter. She would allow the flames no easy place to roost.

  The first spark alighted in her hair. Caroline raked it loose and smothered it in her fist. There was no pulse or squirm like the dickcissel. It ceased to burn and was gone. More sparks, and more dropped from the sky as the western flank of the fire swept alongside the furrow. One and another and another, slow to burn, yet accumulating faster than she could extinguish alone. She ran and panted and swung, while all around her the heat built into something so dense it felt liquid. Beside her the flames roared and vibrated and reached.

  The sack was no longer a sack, but a ragged, sooty flap. Her exposed skin seemed on the verge of blistering.

  Then up from the south came a rush of cold so startling, it struck her like a splash of water. Caroline whirled.

  Nothing there. Nothing at all—the fire was passing, leaving the air so cool against her skin, she might have been naked. As she watched, the head of the blaze reached the plowed field north of the house and veered off to the west. Away.

  Four or five small fires remained inside the furrow. Caroline walked to them and put them out. As she did so, each shred of muscle in her shoulders throbbed to life. She lifted an arm and pressed her closed eyes into the crook of her elbow. They were gritty with soot, and the sweat stung. Cool air seeped into a torn seam where her sleeve joined her bodice.

  When she lifted her head the land smelled scorched, like burnt bread. Through the haze of smoke she saw Charles moving toward the washtub. A flicker of red caught her eye, and Caroline’s body snapped toward the house, her sack raised. Red calico, and above it, two small white faces peeping round the doorway. As they moved cautiously forward Carrie appeared, dangling like a puppy from one of Mary’s forearms; in the other Mary clutched her rag doll.

  Caroline felt a swelling within herself. It pressed against every edge of her body, so light she was utterly weightless. Relief.

  She crossed the yard to the house and went down on her knees before them. Her fingers touched their cheeks, but her hands, sodden and dulled with the sting of burlap, could not feel them. Caroline put her lips to each of their foreheads in turn, poised in the shape of a kiss. With her lips she felt their presence. When she pulled away she saw the smudges where her chin had brushed their noses. The slight lift of her cheeks as she smiled squeezed two fat tears past her swelling eyelids. “The backfire saved us,” she assured the children. Her voice trembled as she said it. “And all’s well that ends well.”

  Mary’s eyes welled. “I let the dinner burn,” she said.

  Behind them Caroline saw the cookware on the hearth. The cornbread was charred, the pan of berries blackened beyond smoking. That was all they had lost to the fire. Her laugh came out a dry bark. It scraped her throat and watered her eyes. Caroline hugged Mary close, kissed the salt from her cheeks, and smoothed her hair. “You didn’t let your sisters burn,” she whispered.

  Caroline put her hand over the keyhole to muffle the click as she turned the lock. If Charles or the girls stirred enough to ask her what she was doing, she could explain, but she had no desire to. She opened her trunk and drew out the Bible and turned its pages until she found the words she was looking for.

  And after the fire a still small voice.

  From her apron pocket she drew out a sliver of wood so narrow, its tip tapered into a delicate curlicue. After supper she had walked the length of the stubbled line of grass until she found the stick of kindling Charles had used to light the backfire and pried a splinter from it with her fingernails. Now Caroline laid it across the paper, so that it underlined the verse. It would be impossible to see those words without remembering this day.

  She had hardly spoken all evening. “Smoke,” she rasped with a tap of her fingertips against her aching throat, and that had satisfied them. It was only a portion of the truth. Behind her breastbone something like a small ember glowed softly, and Caroline did not want to douse it with talk. It was as though she harbored a tiny portion of the fire, and to her surprise, she wanted it to remain within her. So she kept silent, holding herself still around the fleck of warmth.

  Carefully Caroline closed the Bible around the splinter and slipped it back into the trunk. She felt the way she had felt when her brother died, and when her children were born. Open, so that everything reached straight through to her heart. Entirely conscious of the current of life coursing through her. Until this day she had not noticed the concordant notes between the two. This was the feeling that came over her each time the veil between this world and the next was lifted. Today that veil had very nearly torn, and though no one had passed through it, Caroline still sensed its nearness and its thinness.

  The scent of smoke wafted upward as she stepped out of her dress and hung it on its nail. Likely that smell would never fully leave the fabric. She wrapped her shawl close around her nightdress and went to stand a moment in the doorway. The bare, burned prairie stretched out beneath the moon, all black and silver. Like an ambrotype, Caroline thought, and wished that her mind could preserve the sight as clearly. It was not a scene that would lend itself well to a pressed metal frame propped against a mantelpiece. In the dark the line that separated the brown earth from the black all but vanished. Yet to Caroline it was as perceptible as the outline of her own skin.

  That was how near the fire had come. That close and taken nothing. Rather, it had left something. Caroline rested her fist against her chest. With each beat of her heart her consciousness of the burn line seemed to momentarily intensify, as if her own blood were pulsing through it. Quietly she walked out from the house until the grass beneath her feet became stiff and dry. She crouched down and touched her palm to the earth. Warm.

  Caroline let go of her shawl and put both hands to the ground, as though her cool skin might soothe the burned places—as though the prairie were a fevered child, and she its mother. A small portion of the heat entered her hands, and Caroline felt her body soften, as it did when she held her husband or her children. When she stood, she did not brush the ashy soil from her palms. She balled her two fists together, knuckle to knuckle against her chest, and held them that way all the way back to the house.

  Inside, she bent over Charles and put her hands to his face. He stirred, half waking, and murmured something indistinct. Caroline climbed into the bed beside him. The sooty, sweaty smell of the fire still clung to his whiskers. She ran a toe lightly, so lightly, along the sole of his foot.

  A sound, something less than a syllable, passed through his throat—the sound of everything else dropping softly from his mind. He turned toward her, slipping a hand across her ribs, his thumb settling just below her breast. Two bones, set farther apart than the rest, left a space where he could feel the flicker of her heart beating beneath the skin. Their feet slipped past one another again and again, the rough and smooth places crisscrossing in ticklish shivers. Caroline put her fingers into his whiskers. Charles kissed their tips as they brushed by his lips. Each kiss wakened the tiny spark of warmth deep within her. Kindling, she thought.

  He lifted his body onto hers, forearms framing her head and shoulders. She closed her eyes as his hands burrowed into her hair. His long brown whiskers skimmed over her chin and collarbone, their tips grazing the bare skin along the yoke of her nightdress. She so lost herself in the feel of his fingers and thumbs kneading her temples and scalp that she felt that sweet unfurling, like a fist opening, even before Charles nudged his way into her. Caroline opened her eyes to watch the twinkle in his diffuse. It made her think of daybreak, the way the stars seemed to melt into a soft haze of brightness. From their very first night together it had become one of the things she relished most.

  That first time had taken her by surprise, though not in the way she had expected. She had not known fully
what to expect, aside from the surety that she must relinquish herself to her husband. Charles, she knew, would be gentle and so she had little fear of pain. Nevertheless, what she prepared for was a loss, however intangible. As he spread his weight gingerly over her, there had been one quick beat of panic she could not keep from rising to meet him. It is only Charles, Caroline had reminded herself, and resolved to be still and trust him to take whatever was his right as husband, and no more.

  Instead she found herself slowly beginning to rock with him, astonished to see what her body could do to this man. Once within her he became like a boy in her arms, giddy and grateful, then nearly tearful with pleasure. What she felt was only an indistinct probing, not so much unpleasant as unaccustomed. Twice he moved just so and there were quick flickers of heat, glimmers of the brilliant flashes he himself seemed to be experiencing. The second of them had made her gasp at the delight telegraphing beneath her skin.

  He’d stopped, drawing back as though fearful he might have burned her. “Are you all right?”

  Caroline was panting softly. She could see it in the faint rise and fall of her breasts beneath her nightdress. “Yes, Charles.” And then, “Go on.”

  He descended again, tentatively. This time the overwhelming sense was of enveloping him, of embracing him entirely, and all at once the last of her apprehensions fled. Her body yielded, a sudden ripening, welcoming him deeper.

  Charles had sensed the change and his pace had quickened until he whimpered and shuddered. Caroline felt a hot spurt and then it was done. He shivered all over and sank down around her. Caroline lay still beneath the pounding of his heart, listening to the luff-luff of his breath falling into her hair. In a few minutes he raised his head to look at her, a little abashed, and she had ventured a smile.

  “It was all right?” Charles asked. “I didn’t hurt you?”

  She’d wanted to tell him no. Nothing he had done had put his own pleasure above causing her pain. There had been a fleeting sting at the outset, but Caroline did not see how he could have prevented that. Likely he had felt it himself, so she shook her head. It eased him considerably, but there was still something pinched in his expression. If not for the fact that he was able to meet her eyes she might have mistaken it for shame. Perhaps, she’d thought as she studied him, she did not know Charles Ingalls well enough yet to decipher these ever-so-slight anglings of lips and brow. And then with a warm rush she recognized the shape his features made.

  Beholden. He had looked for all the world as though he felt beholden to her. Caroline herself perceived nothing of the kind. He had taken nothing from her. Indeed, to have him feel that way was a gift in itself, a kind of power she had never anticipated. Caroline put her palm to his cheek and coaxed his head down onto the crocheted yoke of her nightdress. With her fingers she combed his whiskers.

  As she’d lain there with him beached upon her an unexpected sense of pride welled up within her until she felt nearly regal. That he could lose himself so fully in her was a revelation.

  Now his body planed against hers, shaving away thin curls of pleasure. He had learned, in the ten years since, to give, and she to take all that he offered. Rare were the times when it was not enough. Charles had never knowingly left her hungry for more. And yet, Caroline thought as she moved with him, she did crave more—of everything. All her life she had longed to breach that pale and hazy boundary between enough and plenty. All her life she had forbidden herself from wanting to reach toward it, telling herself in her mother’s voice that enough is as good as a feast.

  It is not so. The heat in her chest flared into her belly and beyond as the traitorous thought broke free. It is not so. It was only something Ma had desperately needed her children to believe.

  Tonight she would feast, Caroline promised herself, and with the tilt of her hips and the clutch of her thighs she made plain her desire. Charles gave a luxuriant sigh and nuzzled his cheek against her neck. Emboldened, Caroline murmured to him of how often she imagined his fingers, so nimble on the fiddle strings, plucking the same sweet chords from the softest folds of her body. She felt his skin flush and the swell of his excitement. Caroline let go of herself, of everything but Charles. He did not use his hands, but the cadence of his movements became so fluid and familiar, Caroline could not escape the notion that he was enacting a melody upon her. With her eyes closed she could picture the matching strokes of the bow across the strings. Charles moved in that same smooth pattern until her every nerve was honed to its brightest, keenest edge, the rhythm building until at the last her body trembled in a final vibrato.

  When he had caught his breath Charles whispered, “None knew thee but to love thee, thou dear one of my heart.”

  The chorus of “Daisy Deane.” She had not imagined it, then. The music had been in his mind and in his flesh. Caroline smiled broadly into the darkness, anticipating the memories her mind would conjure the next time he played that song. The day had consumed every ounce of her, yet Caroline could not remember the last time she had felt so vibrantly alive.

  The next day was not washing day, but Caroline filled the washtub and brought out the clothes she and Charles had worn the day before. There were two small black-rimmed holes on the back of Charles’s shirt, just at the shoulder blade, that she would have to patch. At the front of her own dress, the skirt was scarred with places where fire had eaten into the braided trim along the hem. Beneath that the calico itself was badly scorched. Caroline sighed. The trimming could not be salvaged. Nor could the dress be worn without fraying the remains of the hem further. And it was her new dress, made from the lilac calico Charles had brought back from Oswego. To mend the skirt properly would require more braid or ribbon—yards of trim she did not have.

  Look at what you do have, her mind insisted mechanically. Her chest and throat tightened in resistance. No, said another part of her, equally frustrated that she could fall back so easily into that old habit.

  Caroline made herself pause, the way she did before speaking to the children when they were at odds with each other.

  Might it be possible, she asked herself, to mourn the one while rejoicing in the other? The loss of a dress was a small one. It did not compare with all the irreparable things that might have gone up in smoke. But it was a loss, and she would allow herself to feel it. She touched the charred fabric lightly, so as not to break the fragile threads. It was so new, she had not yet memorized the pattern of the soft gray leaves printed across the lavender ground.

  The sorrow was as sweet as it was fleeting. Caroline had barely acknowledged it before it had passed. Like rinsing away a stain before it has time to set, she thought as she set to work.

  She took up the soap—lye soap, itself made of ash from good Wisconsin hardwood—and rubbed it into the smoke-darkened places. “Ashes to ashes,” she murmured.

  By the time Charles returned from the Scott claim she was squeezing the last of the suds from the clothes. The stains were not gone, especially where the smoke and the sweat had mixed, but they had faded enough that Caroline was satisfied the garments would not appear marred.

  “The Scotts are all well and safe,” Charles said. “They’d seen Edwards as well. His place wasn’t touched. The fire never crossed the creek.”

  “I’m thankful for that.” She held out his shirt so that he could see the holes.

  “Close call,” he said. “Never felt a thing. There was talk,” he added, fingering the burned places, “that the Indians set the fire to drive off the settlers.”

  Caroline let the news settle, working it over in her mind as she pressed the fabric against the washboard. Then she spoke as though the idea were of no consequence. “They’ve already agreed to leave.”

  Charles nodded. He dipped up a bucket of rinse water from the well for her before replying. “I didn’t say I believed it.”

  “But Mr. Scott does.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mrs. Scott.”

  He did not answer that. Likely he couldn’t, but
Caroline knew. The way Mrs. Scott had spoken of the Indians before the fire left no room for doubt. For all her kindness to her neighbors, Mrs. Scott had seemed to savor the thought of what depredations Indians—any Indians—were capable of, as though it vindicated her hatred for them. Caroline could not say whether she herself hated them any less, but she found nothing to relish in it. Nor was it a conviction she cared to cultivate any more deeply.

  She sat back on her heels to look at him, her hands submerged in the cold rinse water. “If I am to live here, Charles, it cannot be under the cloud of what the Indians might have done, or may do.” She said it without force. It was not a threat—only a fact. “I’ve seen enough that I can already imagine more than I care to.”

  He understood. Or rather, he agreed. He did not understand. Charles would never share her sentiments toward the Indians. He could stand before an Indian man without feeling his viscera clench and his bowels shudder, without the fine hairs on every surface of his skin rising up in a feeble attempt at protection. Caroline’s body told her to be afraid, and she obeyed it; there need not be a reason. Charles’s did not.

  Caroline could not change his response to the presence of the Osages any more than she could change her own. Yet Charles was willing to abide by her condition. He had agreed with only a moment’s consideration, without coaxing or scoffing. Warmth swarmed suddenly around her heart, and Caroline surprised them both with a smile. Charles smiled back without knowing why, happy, as always, to have pleased her. She would let that be enough. Caroline heard her thoughts and spared another smile, for her ma this time. More than enough.

  “Come here, Caroline. And you, Mary and Laura.”

  Something to see, Caroline guessed. Perhaps an animal, by the way Charles called out to them—low and slow, so as not to frighten whatever it was away. Unless there were a bison grazing in the yard, she could not think what would make him interrupt her work. Caroline gave a scolding smile to the crochet thread in her hands. It was not work, really. The mending was done, and the half-finished row of scalloped lace she had begun so long ago in Wisconsin had been so tempting, there at the bottom of the work basket. So she had let herself pretend it could be used to disguise the burned hem of her lavender calico, even though its pattern was far too elaborate for an everyday dress. Her hands delighted in the intricate movements, so unlike braining hides and wringing laundry that she was not vexed each time the thread snagged on the rough tips of her fingers. How long since she had made something beautiful for its own sake?