Caroline: Little House, Revisited(104)
Had he been Henry, or Peter, Caroline would have taken hold of his arms and leaned her cheek against his then. Instead she laid a hand on his sleeve and pressed, gently. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Edwards,” she said.
His long, flat smile all but cut his face in two. “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Ingalls,” he replied.
Twenty-Nine
They prepared for the purchase of the plow, both she and Charles, as though it were an impending birth. When they ate from their first harvest, it would join them with the land, not unlike how Mary had joined them. Her existence had fused them in a way they could not otherwise achieve, even when their bodies were linked one within the other. So it would be with the plow and the prairie. The blade would part the soil, so that it could be filled with seeds. As soon as the crops had put down roots and began reaching up out of the ground, there would be no mistaking to whom this quarter section belonged. After that, the papers and the filing were a formality.
Every pelt nailed to the cabin wall, scraped clean, and worked soft before the fire was as good as a banknote, stacked up against the purchase. All winter long, the talk was of little else. While they worked, they spoke of the seeds Charles would buy, not only this year but the next and the next, and of which section of earth would best suit each variety. Charles had every acre mapped out in his mind, and he could twist and turn his plans for each one like a kaleidoscope. Hearing him talk night after night of the varying patterns, Caroline savored the knowledge that the plow was already rooting Charles to the land. From time to time he must hunt, of course, but the planting, watering, and hoeing required that he stay within earshot of the cabin. With luck, Caroline promised herself, she and the girls might never be alone with the Indians again.
There was no time for music that season. Instead there was the rhythmic slop and slap of brain slurry rubbed onto dried hides. Charles brought her the brains, which she screwed into canning jars until they were needed. If it was cold enough, they were put out to freeze. When it was not, she put the jars in a pail and lowered them down into the cool shaft of the well.
Once a hide was scraped and stretched and dried and soaked, Caroline heated a bowl of water on the hearth until it was just warm enough to bathe a baby. Then she unjarred a brain and kneaded it into the warm water, grinding the soft bits between her fingertips to form the milky slurry that Charles would rub into the rawhide to tan it.
With the head of a dulled hoe, Charles scraped the moisture from the brained hides until they were barely damp. Jack sat beside him, waiting to lick up the accumulated scum of liquid rawhide that Charles wiped from the blade every so often. Finally he wrapped the hides around the bedpost and worked them back and forth—as though polishing the toe of a shoe—to turn them smooth and supple.
All winter long, the house smelled of brains and skins and sweat. Caroline took to looking out the east window as she worked. There would be her kitchen garden. She could see it as clearly as Charles could see his fields of corn and sod potatoes: cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions, squash and carrots and beans, all drenched in the morning sun. In the afternoon, the cabin would shade the plants from the harshest heat. She would plant them as she always had, so that the rows of colors would meld from one to the next in a living rainbow. All those seeds had come from home. Wisconsin seeds bred in Kansas ground. Like Carrie, Caroline thought, and smiled. Alongside Polly’s cucumbers there would be sweet potatoes, from Mr. Edwards, for she had saved one back from Christmas dinner. As soon as the ground softened and the sunlight grew less watery, she would bring in a few spadefuls of earth and start the sweet potato in a flat before the window. Perhaps when Charles went to Oswego for the plow, she could busy herself and the girls for an afternoon with that small task.
They were both of them giddy the day Charles set out for Oswego. Giddy and giggly, for Caroline had a case of hiccoughs that interrupted every attempt Charles made to kiss her goodbye. Carrie squawked in surprise with every spasm that jostled her. Caroline laughed herself breathless. Finally Charles kissed Mary and Laura all over their faces and said, “Give that to your ma!” They just about knocked her down with kissing her.
The next days were chill and muddy, but Caroline could feel a change in the cold, as though a warm breath had been exhaled into it. Each evening before supper the girls came in rosy-cheeked, a faint halo of sweat dampening the hair beneath their woolen wraps. In the morning, the lines of the hopscotch squares Caroline had traced in the yard for them the day before were crystalized with frost.
The first three days passed easily. On the fourth, the girls ticked like pocket watches, conscious of every minute. “Last time it was only four days,” Laura complained on the fifth morning.
“Pa came home so late on the fourth night, it might as well have been five,” Caroline reminded her.
Laura frowned as though she’d been tricked. “Today is five. That means Pa has to come home today.” she declared. Caroline made no attempt to dissuade her. Charles would be home or he wouldn’t; nothing she said would soften Laura’s disappointment if he did not arrive on time.
Neither could she pretend that her own anticipation was not buoyed higher and higher as the day passed. Every few minutes she glanced up from plucking the prairie chicken Mr. Edwards had brought the day before to glance down the creek road. The wagon would be brimful. Not only with the new steel plow and the seeds, but fresh sacks of flour, sugar, and cornmeal. Caroline thought of salt pork, fried until the fat had crisped, and licked her lips. That would be a treat to savor after so much lean winter game. She had not asked for anything for herself. There was nothing she particularly wanted, except perhaps a letter. With the expense of the plow, there might not be enough to spare for extras, though she hoped for Mary’s and Laura’s sakes that there would be. Surely a stick of penny candy, at least. Charles never forgot his girls.