Caroline: Little House, Revisited(16)

Mary lingered. She seemed anxious, as though she did not like the feel of disobeying yet could not bring herself to move. Caroline reached into her pocket for the little triangle of brown felt. “See what I’ve found for Nettie to wear? A traveling shawl.”

Caroline helped Mary wrap the fabric over the doll’s shoulders and lap its ends together. “Nettie says thank you,” Mary said. A flush framed her polite smile, as though she were suddenly feverish. “Ma?”

Caroline squatted down and touched her forehead. No warmer than a blush, but Caroline knew something was wrong. Mary had not resisted like this in leaving their own cabin behind. “What is it, Mary?”

Mary did not look at her. Her whisper steamed out in a hot, high-pitched little wail. “Nettie doesn’t like crossing lakes.”

What a splash of relief. Caroline smiled. “You tell Nettie she has nothing to worry about. There are no more lakes to cross.” Mary took her hand and squeezed. A soft little squeeze, yet the depth of reassurance it contained watered Caroline’s eyes. Caroline gave a gentle press back and together they walked to the wagon.

“See Nettie’s new traveling shawl, Pa?” Mary said. “Ma made it.”

“Finest traveling shawl I ever saw,” Charles said, and hoisted Mary over the sideboards. Traveling shawl? he mouthed to Caroline.

She felt her cheeks dimple and put a mittened finger to her lips.



Four o’clock? Or maybe half past, Caroline guessed by the thinning of the light between the evergreens. The way her breasts throbbed made her wish it were later. They were always tender at this stage, but this feeling was something altogether different.

This morning she had left the top two hooks of her busk unfastened, as she sometimes did at home, to spare her breasts the pressure. By midday Caroline had promised herself she would not make that mistake again. Each frozen rut, each icy mudhole that shattered under the wagon’s weight sent an unwelcome burst of heat juddering through them. The daylong embrace of her corset would have been so much the better. For the last hour or more she had sat with her arms folded tight beneath her breasts, bracing against the jolts.

“How far have we come today?” she asked.

“Oh, fifteen, sixteen miles,” Charles said.

It did not seem far enough, when the day before they had managed ten and all that time at the store besides. But Caroline was tired and sore, and with supper yet to fix. Her stomach was just beginning to scratch at itself. “It will take better than an hour to lay a fire and finish the beans,” she said.

“Whoa there,” Charles called to the team.

The wagon jerked to a halt. Caroline winced. Everything was instantly quiet. Behind her the girls’ heads popped up like two rabbits peeking from their burrow.

“In that case, we’ll camp right this minute.” Charles scanned the roadside and shrugged. “It’s as likely a place as any. There’s enough snow, we won’t want for water no matter where we stop.” He turned to Mary and Laura. Their mittens made a dotted line across the back of the spring seat. “Unless you girls think we should keep on?”

“No, Pa!”



Every step across the board floor made Caroline’s numbed toes feel bigger than her shoes. Corners of crates and boxes poked into the aisle, catching at her skirts as she brushed past. Most all of her neat stacks had jiggled into raggedy looking piles.

Caroline did not stop to set them right. She went straight for the kitchen crates and fished out one spongy wedge of dried apple from the sack. The water in her mouth began devouring it before her teeth had bitten it through.

Outside, Charles cleared a place for the fire and hammered the irons into the ground on either side. While he laid the sticks Mary and Laura brought him, Caroline strung the crosspiece and chain for the kettle.

It was an unruly little fire that flashed hot as sunburn on her face and hands, and no further. Her apron was warm to the touch when she tucked her skirt between her knees to stir the beans, but the heat did not penetrate. Everything from her earlobes back was left chill and clammy.

Caroline circled her spoon through the mass of warming beans. The way some of them struck the wood made her wonder if she had waited too long to stop for supper. They had soaked all night and all day, with a parboiling at breakfast and another at noon, and still they were not soft. Some had not even split their skins. Caroline reached for another stick of wood, then changed her mind. The flames already stroked the bottom of the kettle. It was not the fire’s fault, then—it was her own. She had not accounted for how much heat the open air would steal away.

Caroline listened to the bite of Charles’s shovel as he dug the latrine pit and pinched her lip between her teeth. He would be hungry after so much hacking at the half-frozen earth, and there was nothing she could do to hurry the beans without burning them.

Charles stowed his shovel in the wagon, lifted the spring seat loose, and set it down before the fire. It stood no higher than a step stool. Caroline made a little show of scraping the edges of the pot rather than sitting. The last thing she wanted were those boards across her back and thighs again.

Charles sat down with a little bounce. His knees sloped up higher than his hips, so he stretched out his legs and propped the heels of his boots—one, two—in the snow. He inhaled deeply and smiled. He would not rush her with words, but she knew he was hungry and waiting. Her own stomach had worn through the apple slice.