Caroline: Little House, Revisited(27)
“Oh, Pa, do you have to go out in the rain again?” Mary asked.
“The horses must stand in the weather until Pa can cover them,” Caroline said. “Ben and Beth have brought us this far, and we must take care of them.” She paused with Mary’s blue wool half-folded against her chest, thinking what it would mean if either of the horses took sick. “Now let Pa work so he can rest.”
When he was done Charles rolled the tarpaulin up like a rug and doubled it in the middle. He carried the bundle to the tailgate and propped it alongside the kitchen crates.
“It’s time little girls were asleep,” Caroline said when he lifted the lid from the chamber pail and began to unbutton. “Let me hear your prayers.”
Mary and Laura got to their knees at the head of the aisle and latched their folded hands under their chins. Their two voices chorused Now I lay me, drawing the day closed like two ends of ribbon weaving a bow.
“And God bless Ben and Beth,” Laura added as a little flourish. Caroline smiled. All finished, they scuttled under the quilts and reconciled themselves to sleep. Caroline salved her sore hands with the softness of their hair and kissed them both goodnight.
Charles did not undress. He laid the small tick down in the aisle and wedged himself into the narrow trough it made. His shoulders were straightjacketed by the sides of the ticking, and his calves extended beyond its edge.
“I should wake you if I hear the wind calm?” Caroline asked.
Charles nodded. She handed him a pair of quilts, and he closed his eyes without another word between them.
An unexpected sense of solitude descended around Caroline as she undressed herself and unpinned her hair. She sat in her shawl and nightdress at Mary’s and Laura’s feet, reluctant, somehow, to join them under the covers in spite of the mounting chill. The wind and rain had melded into a curtain of sound, and there was nothing she need do—indeed nothing she could do—without waking Charles and the girls. She had not found a moment such as this for herself since Wisconsin. The stillness within the wagon cocooned her thoughts from the weather and its consequences, and Caroline settled into the quiet space within her mind. Tomorrow would be the Sabbath, and they would not move, no matter the weather. The storm had granted her a complete respite, as though she’d been unharnessed after a month’s worth of relentless forward momentum. The feeling was akin to the exhale that accompanied the unfastening of her corset each night. And why, she wondered idly, was she always inclined first to empty her lungs in the moment her body was freest to expand? Tomorrow she would only be still, like the psalm said, Caroline thought as she edged in alongside Mary—Be still and know that I am God.
“Caroline?”
Caroline felt her eyelids rise, but not a particle of light met them. She rose up on an elbow. “What is it?”
“The wind’s died down enough, I think I can rig something like an awning to shelter Ben and Beth,” Charles said. Caroline broadened her attention to the sounds outside the wagon. The sky still wrung itself overhead, but she could hear a difference in the way the rain struck the canvas. The drops fell freely now, no longer flung sidelong against the wagon’s western flank. “Is the poncho dry?” Charles asked.
She sat up and leaned across Mary and Laura to pat her hand over it. “Nearly.”
He beckoned for it, and his boots. She lifted the garments gingerly over the girls. Dirt crusted the soles of the boots. “Do you need help?” she asked, reaching for her shawl.
Charles shook his head. “You stay in with the girls. The noise is likely to wake them.” He shouldered the rolled-up tarpaulin. A rope dangled from either end.
Caroline followed him down the cockeyed aisle, hearing more than seeing him secure one of the ropes to the tailgate latch, then loosen the cover and lean out to boost the rolled-up tarpaulin onto the roof. It landed with a thump, sagging the canvas and jostling the hickory bows. He hesitated. “I may need you to open the front of the wagon cover so I can tie a rope inside.”
Caroline tested her fists. The palms were tender yet, but so long as the wind did not wrestle with her as it had before she would manage.
“All right, Charles.”
The girls stirred as Charles threaded himself through the opening and into the rain. All Caroline could see of him were the toes of his boots as he strained to push the tarpaulin farther across the roof. In a moment a whiplike crack snapped overhead—the other end of the rope, landing halfway across the roof. Then it hissed against the canvas as Charles reeled it back for another throw.
Mary bolted up on her hands and knees before Caroline knew she was awake. “Ma?”
Caroline waded back through Charles’s bedding to reach her. “It’s only Pa, making a tent for the horses.”
Mary crawled into her lap and augered herself close against the soft new curve of Caroline’s belly. “I don’t like it here,” she said in a pouting tone Caroline would have corrected under any other circumstances. “Where are we?”
“We are in Kansas,” Caroline said.
“I don’t like Kansas,” Mary declared.
Again the crack came, this time farther toward the front of the roof. There was a little lift of the wagon as Charles jumped to the ground. A few heartbeats passed, then the front of the wagon dipped with his footsteps as he mounted the falling tongue then passed from singletree to doubletree to sideboard.