Caroline

by Sarah Miller

  And now Charles’s voice was boring a hole through her concentration. With a sigh, she realized she had lost count of the stitches. She set the lacework back into the basket and stood, treating her back to a luxuriant stretch. “Let’s go see what Pa has to show us,” she said to Mary and Laura.

  The girls ran outside ahead of her, scampering over the board Charles had propped across the doorway to keep Carrie indoors. In the weeks since the fire she had begun creeping across the floor, pulling with her hands and scooting her knees along behind. Soon she would be crawling. Now Carrie followed her sisters as far as she could, then gripped the board with hands and mouth. “We’ll have to ask your pa to tack a strip of canvas to that edge,” Caroline told the baby as she hitched up her skirt to step out. Otherwise the child would chew off a mouthful of splinters.

  Caroline reached up to shade her eyes against the sun. When she could see, she stopped short. Her hand dropped to her chest. At once she understood why Charles had called her name first, before the girls. Never in her life had she seen so many Indians. Scores of them, mounted and on foot, with baskets and bundles, all pointed west.

  “Oh, the pretty ponies! See the pretty ponies!” Laura cried, clapping her hands. “Look at the spotted one.”

  It was plain from the way the ponies were packed that the Indians were leaving. Blankets, hoes, cookpots. They had left nothing behind. “Mercy,” Caroline heard herself say. She had not expected to watch them go—only to learn one day that their camps were empty, that they had fulfilled their agreement with the government and moved south of the Kansas line.

  “Thank God,” Caroline said. She meant it, but she did not feel it. Not yet. Here before her eyes was an answered prayer, and she could neither rejoice nor reflect, only witness its happening. Now that it was happening, Caroline wondered what she had supposed she would feel. Glad, relieved? She felt so little, she could not put a name to it. The moment flowed by without seeming to leave a mark.

  Near the head of the procession rode the Indian agent, a white man of about forty, with a dark beard and eyelids that sloped gently downward at the outer corners. A ghost of a memory grazed Caroline’s thoughts as he passed. Not so much a recollection, but a sensation, as though for a fleeting instant she inhabited the mind and body of a child who was accustomed to looking up into a face like that one.

  Pa, she thought with a warm shiver, and her feet carried her to within a few yards of the procession. Not Papa Frederick, but her own father. In all the years he had been gone, she had never seen eyes so much like Pa’s. Her brothers had inherited fragments of his smile, his hands, even his voice, but not one of them had his eyes. Had she known the agent’s name, she would have called out to him, just to see those eyes looking down on her once more.

  Instead the man rode on, and Caroline stood suspended in her memory as one Indian after another passed through the space he had occupied. For the first time Caroline felt safe enough in their presence to observe them with no other thought than to see what they looked like. The shape of their faces fascinated her. They were unmistakably different from her own. The planes were flatter, the lines straighter. Even the plumpest of cheeks appeared oblong instead of round. If their skin were white and their hair done up in curls, Caroline thought, she would still know the difference, just as she would know a spaniel from a bulldog.

  It was Mary who recognized one of them. She gave a little gasp and took Caroline’s hand, hiding her face behind it as though she were a bashful toddler. Caroline saw the faded green calico shirt and a sizzle of fear crossed her own belly. That was the man who had flung the key to her trunk at them when it would not fit the lock of the provisions cabinet. She remembered the sound of it as it careened off the toe of Mary’s shoe and skittered across the floor.

  At his knee he wore beautiful fringed garters, woven in bold zigzags of green, blue, and black. Had he been wearing them that day in the cabin? Caroline could not recall anything beyond his glare and the movements of his hands.

  He did not acknowledge them now, did not so much as look in their direction. Caroline straightened her back and thrust out her chin, determined that he should notice them. He would look her in the eye and see that she was not afraid now. But he did not. He rode by, gesturing with his free hand as he talked with the man riding alongside him. Caroline felt as though she’d been slighted. Was it possible that what had happened inside their cabin did not hold enough significance to stand out in his memory?

  She scanned the line of Indians, looking to see whether the first two men to frighten her were here, too—the ones who had come asking for food before Carrie was born. Caroline could recall nothing of them but swaying silver earrings and prominent rib bones. A dozen of the men riding past might fit that description. Some of them looked toward her. Others did not. Caroline recognized none of them.

  She turned her attention to the women. Nothing the men had done had frightened her so much as the sounds the Osage women had made last autumn in the early hours before dawn. Those endless, wailing notes had come from their throats. Their voices were so quiet now, it did not seem possible. Each one that passed carved a hollow feeling deeper into Caroline’s center. In all this time, as Caroline longed for her sisters and her mother, Mrs. Scott had been the only woman she’d seen. Now, dozens. Sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, none of them with the slightest link to her.

  No, Caroline realized, that was not so. Some of them must be wives or mothers of the men who had come into the cabin. Was there one among them who had received a loaf of cornbread, tied up in a towel with a pine tree embroidered at the corner? Perhaps that towel was folded carefully into one of the bundles tied to the horses, or incorporated into a garment. Caroline studied the women individually as they passed. Their hair, so smooth at the parting it looked wet, was so enticing that Caroline put her hands into her pockets to keep her fingers from fidgeting over the imagined strands. Their clothing was an assemblage of deerskin and calico, in vibrant hues she had not worn since she was a child. Rich yellows, reds, and violets, decorated with beads, fringe, and ribbon work. Through the fabric Caroline could see the shape of their uncorseted breasts against their chests and the way they puddled on the women’s laps. One woman, a little older than herself, lifted her blouse to nurse an infant, and Caroline could not avert her eyes from that bare brown breast. She had never seen a nipple so dark.

  What did Charles think, looking at such women? Was he imagining running a hand over that sleek black hair, as Caroline herself was?

  “Pa,” Laura said, “get me that little Indian baby.” Caroline turned in surprise. She had never heard such a tone from her daughter. Laura was not asking, she was commanding. Beneath the firmness, her small voice quivered with desire. Coming from a man’s mouth, that timbre would mean avarice, or lust.

  “Hush, Laura,” Charles said.

  She only spoke faster, her voice rising, “Oh, I want it! I want it! It wants to stay with me. Please, Pa, please!”

  Laura did not look at Charles as she begged. Her eyes were fixed on what she wanted. Caroline traced Laura’s gaze and saw an infant tucked into a basket that hung over the flank of a piebald pony. There was nothing to set it apart from the other Osage children, except that it seemed to be looking squarely back at Laura. “I declare, I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Caroline said.

  “Hush, Laura,” Charles said again. “The Indian woman wants to keep her baby.”

  “Oh, Pa!” Laura said. Her voice cracked. Tears spilled down her face and dripped from her chin.

  Caroline did not know what to say. Some of the Indians were looking at them now. What would they think—what might they do—if they heard Laura and understood what she had said? “For shame, Laura,” she chided, and regretted it immediately. Laura had lost all hold of herself. She could hardly breathe enough to sob. Caroline crouched down beside her daughter and asked, softly, “Why on earth do you want an Indian baby, of all things?”

  Laura panted and hiccoughed bef
ore she managed to answer. “Its eyes are so black,” she whimpered, looking past Caroline through a blur of tears. As if she were no more than coveting a dress for its buttons. It made no sense. Laura knew it, too, and grimaced with the effort of trying again. Caroline wiped Laura’s cheeks with her apron, hoping the touch itself might help her grasp what Laura was trying to convey. It did not. Whatever Laura felt, she did not have the words for it. It was too large, and she was so small she could neither contain it nor release it. All she could do was look up at Caroline with eyes that begged to be understood. Beseeching. Caroline knew the word well enough, but she had never seen it like this. Laura’s misery was so raw, Caroline could feel the throbbing of it herself.

  “Why, Laura,” she said, and suddenly she was the one pleading. “You don’t want another baby. We have a baby, our own baby.” The rest of the words caught in her throat. She gestured toward the doorway, where the crown of Carrie’s dark little head was visible above the board.

  Laura tried for an instant to agree. Then her face crumpled. “I want the other one, too!”

  Her outburst struck Caroline’s face like a wind. She sat back on her heels, too bewildered to try anything else. “Well, I declare!” she said.

  “Look at the Indians, Laura,” said Charles. “Look west, and then look east, and see what you see.”

  Laura obeyed, and Caroline with her. The line of Indians seemed to rise up out of the grass to the east, then sink back into the west, as though they were as much a feature of the prairie as the creek and the bluffs. When Laura turned back, the black-eyed baby was out of sight. Caroline braced herself for a fresh surge of desperation and protest. Instead Laura accepted the blow as if she were grown. The expression slid from her face until her features were slack. Her shoulders jerked with jagged, silent sobs. However incomprehensible its cause, Laura’s grief was real. The sight of it left Caroline staggered, as though something had been taken from her, too.

  Caroline took Laura’s hand and held it until the last of the Indians had passed. She wanted Carrie more, to turn her back to the Osage procession and take the baby up in her arms so that Carrie might feel how vital she was, no matter how many black-eyed Indian babies might pass through the dooryard. But it was Laura who needed her, not Carrie, though Caroline could think of nothing to do but stand by the child until Laura had absorbed the brunt of her loss.

  “Are you ready to go inside?” Caroline asked when the Indians were gone. Laura shook her head. “All right. We’ll sit on the doorstep awhile.”

  Caroline sat down with her back propped against the doorway and pulled aside the board that separated them from Carrie. The baby scooted out and found her place in Caroline’s lap. Caroline’s body eased some as Carrie settled back against her. Carrie knew perfectly well where she belonged. Caroline stroked Carrie’s plump knee with her palm—round and round, as though she were polishing it.

  It was time for dinner, and Caroline could not compel herself to move. “I don’t feel like doing anything,” she said to Charles, “I feel so—” She did not know how to say what she meant, any more than Laura had. There was no single word for it. The weight of the Indians’ departure, balanced against the lightness of her relief, had left her blank inside. Everything she could feel was outside of herself—the smoothness of Carrie’s knee under her palm, the curve of the baby’s spine against her chest. “So let down,” she finished. That was not it, but it was as near as she could manage.

  “Don’t do anything but rest,” Charles said. Caroline did not have it in her to smile, but her cheeks rounded at his tone. He had not spoken to her that way since she was pregnant.

  “You must eat something, Charles.”

  “No,” he said, looking at Laura. “I don’t feel hungry.” He went to the stable then and hitched the mustangs to the plow. She and Laura and Mary were not hungry, either. Together they sat, watching the path the Indians had worn across the yard. Blade by blade, the grass would grow up through the footprints and horse tracks. There would be no trace of their leaving.

  Thirty-One

  Caroline set down the pails and lifted the back ruffle of her bonnet so that the breeze could find the nape of her neck. Three rows remained to be watered: the carrots, the sweet potatoes, and the tomatoes. One thing never changed, and that was the everlasting heaviness of water. Pail after pail she pulled from the well and toted to her kitchen garden. Each dainty plant must have its dipperful if it was not to suffer during the long afternoon.

  The soil here was sandier than she was accustomed to. It was warmer to the touch and easier to work, but did not hold water in the same way. Water splayed outward over the surface of the ground before sinking in, leaving only a thin layer moistened. Caroline had shown Laura how to carefully press a little dimple into the earth around each stem, so that the soil might cup the water long enough to soak the thin white roots. Twice a day Caroline bent double all along the length of each row, emptying each dipper of water where it could do the most good. Laura begged to help, but Caroline diverted her to digging a shallow trench around the perimeter, to ensure no rainwater fell out of reach of the seedlings. Careful as Caroline was with the dipper and pails, her hem was always damp and gritty by the time she finished. Laura would no doubt douse herself to the kneecaps.

  Mary sat on a quilt spread over the grass, minding Carrie and sorting out remnants of calico from the scrap bag to sew her own nine-patch quilt. Caroline shook her head fondly, watching Mary arrange her favorites into pretty patterns. Five going on twenty-five, that child.

  A gleeful squeal came out from under the sun canopy Caroline had contrived out of a pillowcase draped across two crates. The string of Indian beads dangled from one of the wooden slats, and Carrie lay in the shade, jabbering at the brightly colored beads. Caroline considered the three rows of plants still waiting for water. They would not wilt in five minutes’ time. She sidled down on the edge of the quilt and propped herself on an elbow at Carrie’s feet. The hair that had been fine and black as soot had given over to a warm golden brown. Her knobby little knees and elbows were rosying up like crabapples. A smile ripened Caroline’s cheeks to see it. Caroline reached up to tinkle the beads with a fingertip. Carrie flapped her arms at the air and squealed. Caroline put her hand to the baby’s belly. Its warm curve reached up to fill her palm.

  “Letter for you, Ingalls,” Mr. Edwards’s voice called.

  Caroline bounded up from the quilt, lightened with hopes for the circulator. “Mind the baby, Mary,” she said as she smoothed her hair and strode out to the edge of the field where Charles and Edwards were meeting. “It’s good of you to remember us at the post office, Mr. Edwards,” she said.

  “Just got back from Independence last night,” he replied, handing Charles the envelope. “News should be pretty fresh. The clerk there at the post office said it hadn’t been sitting but a week or two yet.”

  It was addressed only to Charles, in a hand she did not recognize. Caroline felt fidgety as a child while she and Charles and Edwards exchanged pleasantries: news from town, an invitation to supper, a polite refusal. Edwards had hardly turned his back to head home before Caroline was holding out a hairpin for Charles to slit open the envelope. “Who is it from, Charles?”

  “Couldn’t be anybody but Gustafson.”

  A single sheet of paper. He read it once, then Caroline saw his eyes return to the top of the page and begin again. He said nothing.

  “Does he send any news of Henry and Polly?”

  Charles turned the letter over, then looked inside the envelope. “I don’t know.”

  “Charles?”

  Charles licked his lips. “He’s reneged. Can’t make the payments, so he’s moving out—moving on. That twenty dollars he sent last summer is the last money we’ll see from him. The property defaults to us.”

  No more payments. Caroline’s mouth went dry. Every dollar and a quarter the Swede did not send was an acre lost. “How much is left in the fiddle box?”

  “Not q
uite twenty-five acres’ worth. Thirty-one dollars and twenty cents.” He turned to the plow and slapped it gently with the letter. “Could have had forty acres for what this cost. Don’t that beat all. Traded fifty dollars in furs for a steel plow and the only land I can afford to till is seven hundred miles away.”

  “The land office wouldn’t have traded furs for acreage,” Caroline said gently.

  Charles whipped his hat down onto the freshly turned furrow. “Damn it all.”

  Caroline winced at the strike of his words. She glanced back at the girls. They were watching. Not scared yet, but alert that something was happening. Caroline moved so that they could not see Charles’s face and lowered her voice. “If we raise a crop—”

  “This ground won’t raise anything but sod potatoes and sod corn until the grass roots have rotted out.” Charles pronounced sod as though it were a vulgarity. “We can’t raise anything of value in time to make payment.”

  “We’ve lived here a year without paying.” Caroline trailed off, unsure where that feeble thought was headed.

  He spoke fast, already impatient with the figures—figures she knew just as well as she did. “Government allows thirty-three months from the time we settle to make proof. That leaves less than two years to raise two hundred dollars beyond what we need to live. Plus two dollars just to file our intent to preempt. I don’t see how we can do it. Thirty-one dollars isn’t even enough to see us home, much less through two more years.”