Caroline: Little House, Revisited(15)

“Go to sleep,” Caroline soothed. “It’s only the ice breaking up.” Laura held fast to Caroline’s gaze until another crack snapped her eyes shut. Caroline cupped her palm over Laura’s ear, stroking the little girl’s temple with her thumb. Laura smiled drowsily.

There is a happy land, far, far away, Caroline hummed. Her teeth clenched with the effort of holding back a quiver from her chin. They had traveled hardly ten miles from home, but in a heartbeat the breaking of the ice had driven a wedge a week wide into the distance back to their own little cabin.

Under her fingers, Laura’s pulse had slowly quieted into a beat of feathery kisses. Caroline drew up her knees, making a nest of herself. Laura was too big now to fit inside it as she once had, but her breath, still tinted with maple sugar, filled the small spaces between them.





Six




By morning, Caroline’s hip and shoulder could feel the floor through the straw tick. Soreness warmed the backs of her thighs when she rose. She rubbed the heels of her hands down the muscles along her backbone and winced. There was only so much she could blame on the spring seat. The rest was her body retaliating for being kept so tightly clenched the day before. Caroline closed her eyes and released as much of the lingering tension as she was able. Today there would be no more goodbyes, she reminded herself, no reason to hold herself so rigid. Today they could go cleanly forward.

To her hands, the morning was hardly distinguishable from any other. Caroline dressed and washed, laid the girls’ clothes to warm before the fire, put fresh water over the beans, and swung the kettle into the heart of the fire. She fried up a dozen strips of bacon, then laid four thick slices of chilled mush into the drippings. The edges crisped like cracklings in the grease.

Charles came whistling in to his breakfast, as he so often did. His tune tickled her. A perfect match to the day, as usual. “Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon! Wait for the wagon and we’ll all take a ride!” he sang for Mary and Laura.

His cheeks gleamed from the cold, and their eyes were bright with excitement. In the pan the fat popped and sizzled merrily around their breakfast. The whole morning was beginning to shine.

“Wouldn’t wonder if the ice broke up today,” Charles said to Caroline. He doused his mush with syrup. “We made a late crossing. Lucky it didn’t start breaking up while we were out in the middle of it.”

Caroline opened her mouth and then closed it. Had it truly come to him only now? She could not help herself. “I thought about that yesterday, Charles,” she said quietly.

He looked at her as though he had spotted her lathering her chin with his shaving brush. Not angry, only puzzled by what earthly use she might have for such an idea.

Laura’s fork had stopped moving. A long bead of syrup trickled down her chin and onto her plate. Caroline could see the terrible picture widening behind her eyes as Charles’s words sank in. “You’re frightening somebody, Charles,” she murmured.

He hugged Laura up against his side. “We’re across the Mississippi!” he sang out as though they had just now stepped from the ice. “How do you like that, little half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up? Do you like going out west where Indians live?”

Caroline winced. Why must he stoke Laura’s eagerness so? The child would be smoking with curiosity by the time they reached the Territory. If the western tribes were as bold as Concord’s Potawatomis, such eagerness would not bode well. A brush or two with the Chippewas might have nipped Laura’s appetite in the bud, but their cabin had been mercifully free of Indian intruders.

“Yes, Pa!” Laura chimed. “Are we in Indian country now?”

Caroline steered the conversation with a low, steady voice. “‘Indian country’ is a long, long way off. We must drive across Minnesota, and Iowa, and Missouri first,” she said, making the names sound long and foreign. “It will be spring before we see the Kansas line.”

“Oh.” Laura ducked her head and poked at her mush. She looked embarrassed, as though she had done something wrong but did not understand what. Caroline’s appetite faltered. She had not meant to subdue Laura quite so thoroughly. Caroline dismissed her schoolmarm tone and tried again. “The sooner we all finish our breakfast,” she coaxed, “the sooner we will be in Kansas.”



Caroline checked over the room one last time. Nothing showed that they had been there except for the neatly swept floorboards and a few lengths of leftover maple added to the kindling pile. She opened the door to go.

Outside, the air was poised on the edge of freezing—moist, as though the lake had spent the night exhaling through the cracked ice. Charles’s voice boomed out to greet them:

Where the river runs like silver, and the birds they sing so sweet,

I have a cabin, Phyllis, and something good to eat.

Come listen to my story, it will relieve my heart.

So jump into the wagon, and off we will start.



Laura let go of Caroline’s hand and ran ahead to be swung up into the wagon box. Mary waited while Caroline carefully latched the bunkhouse door.

“I don’t like riding in the wagon very much, Ma,” she said. “Can’t we stay and make this house pretty?”

Caroline held out her hand. “Pa will build us a pretty new house in Kansas.”