Caroline: Little House, Revisited(20)
Only a little more pressing was the matter of who would help her when it came time to bear this child. Even a stillborn babe must have hands to catch it. At home she never needed to explain. She had only to ask Charles to run for Polly, and he understood.
Always it had been Polly at the foot of the bed, Polly, with her face so stolid that Caroline could hardly consider quailing at the pain. That was the one thing she could not bring herself to try imagining: a different face looking up from between her knees, different hands reaching where none but Polly’s had reached before. Worse yet was the thought of no one at all.
Caroline knew what Charles would look for in land: good running water, timber, and plenty of game. Not one of those daily necessities could be sacrificed for the momentary need of a claim alongside a neighbor with a wife, and so she kept these thoughts to herself as each day made another small stitch in the long gap between them and Kansas.
Nights, she and Charles took to sitting before the fire, talking. Or rather, Charles talked while Caroline concentrated herself on the mending.
“What’s that?” Charles asked.
Caroline held a yard of the fabric up before her. Some days before a set of threadbare pillowcases had caught her eye in the scrap bag. In spare moments she had split their side seams and joined them into one long stretch. “A curtain,” she answered. “To go under the loft.”
“Looks fine. I’ll help you hang it in the morning.”
Caroline smoothed it thoughtfully across her knees. “I thought I’d blanket stitch the hem in red first.”
Charles smiled and gave his head half a shake. “Here,” he said. He handed her his mittens. The tops of them hinged backward to uncover a row of finger gussets; when she put them on, only the tips of her fingers were left exposed. He watched her adorn a few inches, then said, “Wherever we are, you’ll always contrive to make it look like home.”
Caroline’s breath caught. For a moment she thought the baby had given a little flutter, but it was only a quick beat of delight at his compliment.
“Thank you, Charles,” she said.
He balled his fists into his pockets and tipped his head back to look at the sky. “If I could build a roof so fine and high as that, I’d never want to move again.”
Caroline watched the firelight stroke his whiskers. He was a man in love with space. Every mile they traveled seemed to loosen him. How, she wondered, could she learn to find such ease in being wholly untethered?
“Charles, tell me how it will be in Kansas.” Like a child asking for a bedtime story. “Not the giant jackrabbits and horizons. Tell me how we’ll live this first year.”
“Well, I figure we ought to save all the money we can toward preempting our claim. For a quarter section at $1.25 an acre we’ll need $200 plus filing fees, and the land office won’t take pay in pelts. So I’ll hunt and trap this winter and trade furs for a plow and supplies enough to last until Gustafson’s payments arrive. Should be plenty of game to see us through until spring. Then I’ll plow up a plot for sod potatoes and another for corn. Land won’t raise more than that the first season. The next year we’ll sow fields of wheat and oats and anything else we want.”
“I’ve brought seeds from our garden,” Caroline said, “and Polly’s. She sent me with the best from her pickling cucumbers.” Those cucumbers would be like a little taste of Polly herself—crisp and sharp with vinegar.
What, Caroline wondered, would make the home folks think of her? When they wanted for music, even the music of laughter, they would pine for Charles, of course. What taste, what sound might make their hearts whisper: “Caroline?” Perhaps no more than a fragment of red cloth in their scrap bags.
Caroline swallowed hard. Forward, she coaxed herself. Not back. “And the house?”
“The turf’s so thick out there, some of the emigrants carve up the sod and use it for bricks. Makes walls a foot thick, easy. Keeps them cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and there’s no end of supply.”
“Oh, Charles! Not a soddie?” A house of dirt, the walls crumbly and hairy with roots. She shuddered as though one of them had reached out to brush her back.
A glint of consternation, then, “I’ll build anything you say.”
Caroline regretted the sound of her words as soon as she’d heard them. She gave a half-wincing smile and spoke more carefully this time. “I hadn’t thought of anything but good clean wood.”
“Then that’s what we’ll have,” he said, good-naturedly as ever. “I expect the timber won’t be so big as we’re used to, so it’ll have to start small.” She could see his mind pacing the place out in the space beyond the campfire. “One room, say twelve by fourteen, with a fireplace at one end, and windows east and west. Puncheon floor. A good slab roof will do as well as tar paper and shingles, and cheaper, too.” His voice slowed to a leisurely sway as he plotted out the details. Caroline’s needle stilled to listen to him. “Dunno if there’ll be enough fieldstone for a chimney in those parts. I halfway hope there isn’t—I’d rather patch a stick and daub chimney now and then than spend the next thirty years plowing stones out of my fields.”
His eyes had focused on a spot just outside the firelight. The depth of his concentration made it seem as though the darkness were no more than a doorway into something real and solid. Caroline fancied she could reach through it and touch her hand to the latch string. She joined her gaze to that spot, testing the feel of it. Her heartbeat quickened. Suddenly she craved a destination as much as she craved the taste of Polly’s pickles. Kansas was too vast a thing to pin herself to, and Montgomery County only an empty square on Charles’s map, without a single dot of a town. Caroline could not conceive of the infinitely smaller speck she herself would make on that map.