Caroline: Little House, Revisited(28)

“That’s Pa again, pulling the tarpaulin across the roof,” Caroline said. It blundered up the wagon’s spine, bumping its way from one bow to the next.

“Lie back down with Laura,” Caroline told Mary when the tarpaulin flattened the canvas above them. “Be a good big sister and settle her if she wakes. Pa needs my help now.”

Once again Caroline climbed over the spring seat, the boards damp against her stockings where the poncho had lain. She had lost count of how many times she had hoisted her legs over that hateful backboard this day.

Caroline found the horse collars and crouched to untwist the ropes that held the mouth of the wagon cover shut. Without the wind driving them, they were staid as apron strings. Charles pulled the tarpaulin line taut and leaned in to secure it to the nearest bow.

“There,” he said. “Close up the cover and go on back to bed, Caroline. I can manage from here.”

Back Caroline went, over the spring seat and under the quilts, where she was informed that Laura did not like Kansas, either.

“Hush now,” she said. “We should all be asleep.” They heard nothing at all over the rain, and felt no movement for long enough that the stillness became conspicuous. The girls did not speak, but Caroline sensed their rising apprehension as the silence lengthened. No harm could have come to Charles, but surely something should have happened by now. It was as though he were standing stock-still in the rain. The raindrops ticked against the canvas like a clock until it seemed something must be wrong. His name sat waiting in her mouth, but she did not know whether she might alarm the girls more by calling out to him or by leaving the silence to deepen. And then Charles’s voice pricked the sidewall, so near to her pillow that Caroline’s shoulders flinched at the sound.

“Caroline?”

She closed her eyes. “Yes, Charles.”

“Lean up close to the sideboards and talk to the team,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s going to startle them something awful when I unroll the tarpaulin.”

Once more Caroline peeled herself from her covers to creep down the small hill of the straw tick, clucking her tongue. “Here, Ben; here, Beth,” she crooned, “poor wet things. Steady now. Easy.” Mary and Laura inched up on their bellies to whisper sweetly to the team. There was a snuffle and a nudge at the canvas. Laura flattened her palm against it.

“Ben’s nose,” she said. “I can feel him breathing.”

“How can you tell it’s Ben?” Mary whispered.

With a flap like a clothesline full of sheets, the tarpaulin unfurled down the side of the wagon. The horses’ chains hummed tight, jerking the wagon bed upward as Ben and Beth tried to rear back from the crashing canvas. Laura snatched her hand away, tumbling backward in her surprise.

Caroline listened to the chain links clinking, the horses’ heavy breath steaming from their nostrils. “Steady,” said Charles’s voice, “steady now,” and Caroline felt her own breath slowing at his words, whooshing softly over her upper lip.

Charles reached in over the tailgate and clattered through his toolbox. Caroline heard him lever out the iron stakes that held her pots over the campfire, and then he was gone. In a moment the clang of his hammer rang out shrill in the dark as he pounded the stakes into the ground.

As she settled Mary and Laura back to bed, Charles tugged the tarpaulin’s corners down to the stakes, gently rocking the wagon. The girls were asleep again by the time he came in over the tailgate and stood, arms half lifted to hold the drenched wings of his poncho away from his body.

“They’ll stand the weather all right for now,” he said.

Caroline nodded. Like a piece of dough laid into a pan, Charles always seemed to expand to fit whatever shape a task demanded of him. There was no need to thank him for such a thing, yet she felt so rounded with thankfulness that she did not move until a shiver shook him by the scruff of his neck.

Caroline handed him his nightshirt and a towel. “Drape your wet things over the crates,” she whispered. “I’ll see to them in the morning.”

She did not mean to watch. From her bed there was only his outline as he stripped off his rain gear and then his clothes, threads of glimpses like a spiderweb in sunlight. Charles pared off his shirt, and the movement silvered his wet shoulders and glinted along his spine. As he stepped from his trousers the loosed metal tongue of his belt buckle tinked a bright note in the darkness and Charles paused, turning half-toward the front of the wagon.

Could he see her, running her fingers down her braid the way he did when he was hungry for her? That was not what she wanted now, and so Caroline muted her palms against the straw tick. She wanted only to admire him as he stood, so bare and capable in the faint dusting of light.

Why a man of such breadth had chosen her, why he seemed to delight in her very narrowness, Caroline could not fathom. When she had consented to be his wife, his first indulgence had not been a kiss. He had instead reached out to place one hand and then another around her waist. His thumbs met at her navel, and Caroline watched the pleasure spread across his face. “A perfect fit,” he’d said as the warmth of his palms breached her skin and trickled through the deepest recesses of her body. Even now she wondered when he might have decided to kiss her, had she not risen up on tiptoe and offered her lips to him.

Now Charles straightened his back, his elbows windmilling upward, and Caroline heard the sound of his fingernails combing through his scalp. She smiled to herself. The one thing Charles could never do was tame that hair of his. With a shrug, his nightshirt snuffed out his nakedness and Caroline closed her eyes, penciling the shape of him onto her dreams.