Caroline: Little House, Revisited(3)
“Sweets to the sweet,” he said, handing them each a sugared ginger cookie. “And something for your ma.” A quick little inhale betrayed Caroline’s hopes for a letter. She looked up eagerly as Charles flopped a drab bundle tied with twine from his shoulder onto the bed. The whoosh of its landing fluttered her stacks of linens.
“There you are, Caroline—thirty yards of osnaburg canvas and the stoutest thread goods in Pepin.”
She sat back on her heels. “Thirty yards!”
“Fellow in the dry-goods shop said four widths ought to be enough to stretch over the wagon bows, and it’ll have to be double thick. Need extra to double-sack all our dry provisions besides. How long will it take to make?” Charles asked. “Lake Pepin’s solid as a window pane, but the cold can’t hold out too much longer.”
Three doubled seams more than twice as long as she was tall, plus the hemming and the sacks. If each stitch were a mile, her needle could carry them to Kansas and back dozens of times over. Caroline’s fingers cramped to think of it. “No longer than it will take you to bend those hickory bows and fit up the wagon,” she told him.
He chucked her under the chin. “Got some extra crates for packing, too,” he said.
On mending day, she gave herself over entirely to the wagon cover. Laid flat, it stretched from one side of the big room to the other. In the time it took Caroline to fetch her papers of pins, Laura had already taken to tunneling under the carpet of canvas.
“Mary, be a good girl and take Laura upstairs to play with your paper ladies,” Caroline said after she’d scolded Laura. “There isn’t space to have you underfoot down here. If you play nicely until I’ve finished, you may cook a doll supper for Nettie on the stove tonight.”
Mary needed no more enticement than that. She took her sister by the hand and marched Laura to the ladder. Caroline straightened the lengths of fabric and settled down to her long chore. With every stitch she pictured the journey in her mind, envisioning the views the hem now before her would soon frame.
When the pads of her thumb and forefinger grew rutted from the press of the needle, Caroline laid the canvas aside to dip the steel knives and forks in soda water and roll them in flannel to keep against rust, or to melt rosin and lard together to grease the outside of the bake oven, the iron spider, and Charles’s tools. With the leftovers she would waterproof their boots and shoes.
By noontime the close of the center seam was less than an arm’s length away. She might have finished it before dinner, if not for a burrowing sensation low in her middle that would not be ignored. Caroline pinned her needle carefully over her last stitch and stepped out from under the stiff blanket of fabric. Her forearms were heavy with fatigue from holding the everlasting seam at eye level.
“Girls,” she called up the ladder into the attic, “I’m going to the necessary. Keep away from the fireplace and cookstove until I come back.”
“Yes, Ma,” they sang out.
It took longer than she intended; where before the slight pressure of her womb had driven her to the chamber pail three and four times between breakfast and dinner, now the child had taken to making her bowels costive.
She could not hear the girls’ voices overhead as she stripped off her shawl and mittens in the narrow corridor that led in from the back door. A twist of unease tickled the place she had just voided. “Mary? Laura?” she called. Giggles in return, muffled. Caroline cocked her head, not entirely relieved. “Girls? What are you up to?”
She strode into the big room and stopped short. Her rocking chair stood twisted halfway around, bare of its canvas cloak—they’d dragged the wagon cover over the table and benches and made themselves a tent of it. Her needle dangled in a widening gap that formed the flap of their door.
Caroline threw up her hands and dropped into the rocker. A woman can resolve that, whatever happens, she will not speak till she can do it in a calm and gentle manner, she recited to herself as she waited for the flare of temper to ebb. Perfect silence is a safe resort, when such control cannot be attained. “Come out of there, the both of you,” she said evenly after another moment.
They crawled out on hands and knees. “We’re playing ‘going west,’” Laura explained. “I’m Pa, and Mary’s Ma, and this is our wagon.” Laura was so earnest, Caroline pinched back a smile in spite of herself. Mary stood by, sheepish.
Caroline made herself sober. “You know better than to tangle with my mending,” she said, mostly to Mary. “Our wagon cover must have good strong seams to keep us safe and dry. You may not play—”
“Aw, Ma,” Laura mourned.
“Laura. It’s very rude to interrupt. You will have more than enough time to sit under it when we go west.” She looked again toward Mary. “There will be no doll supper tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mary said.
“And no bedtime stories from your pa,” she told Laura. Caroline stood and gathered up the span of canvas. “Now set the table for dinner and sit quietly in your places while I repair this seam.”
Caroline felt as though she needed a good starching. Dinner had not been started, the wagon cover still lay in pieces, and already her body simmered with exhaustion. Well, there was no great loss without some small gain—at least she would not have to hover over the cookstove with Mary and her pattypans.