Caroline: Little House, Revisited(44)

Caroline sat dumb. A compliment. Of course. He had no end of them—if not completely true then always sincere. Usually it was the sincerity that disarmed her.

Not this time. Yes, she could teach them all she knew, but her learning was a decade old. She would not let her own limits be imposed upon their daughters.

“Promise me, Charles,” she said. “No matter where we settle, Mary and Laura will have a formal education.”

He slowed the mustangs to study her. She watched the small muscles around his eyes contracting as he searched for something that would tell him what he had done to light such a flare between them. When he spoke the words were stripped bare. “Caroline, I swear to you—”

Caroline’s breath hissed back from the word. Even this was not worth making an oath of. “Please, Charles. Don’t swear it,” she said. “Only promise me.”

“I promise you. Our children will have proper schooling.” He broke her gaze only long enough to sweep his eyes quickly over her belly. “All of them.”

Caroline nodded. “All right,” she said, and her voice was her own again.

He moved to touch her and changed his mind, as though afraid she might singe him again. The last thrash of her anger went limp at that, and she felt too much at once. Grateful. Relieved. Repentant. And proud.

Charles gave the lines a little flick and the wagon sped up. Caroline waited for the wheels to carry them ahead, away from that spot, then crooked her hand into the crease of his elbow, squeezing softly to steady herself, to thank him, to apologize. He pulled it in against his side, forgiven.



Next day he was bright as ever. Caroline had sobered, troubled that she had so quickly managed to find limits in a limitless landscape. A pale scar from the hungry years, she thought ruefully, the same one that left her always mindful of the bottom of the flour barrel even when it was full to brimming. Never mind that she was plump enough now to dimple at the elbows. She still could not look at anything, it seemed, without gauging the needs it could satisfy and for how long. Not like Charles, who enjoyed everything the world laid before him right until the very moment it ran out. That alone was enough to tell her that his growing up had not been marred by want.

She had no desire to begrudge him his cheer, but it got to be a little like sunburn, sitting there beside him with no way to shade herself as he radiated happiness. Beautiful as it was, the view no longer fed her in the same way it fed him, and the more he feasted on it, the more keenly Caroline felt the lack.

What she felt was nonsensical, she scolded herself. Nothing had been taken from her. Nothing tangible would be denied her. Yet it pinched ever so slightly to watch Charles unfurling like a beanstalk beside her, knowing that Kansas offered her no similar satisfaction, no chance to reach beyond what she had been for the last ten years: Mrs. Ingalls, Ma. She could stretch forever toward that horizon and grasp nothing new.

As if it had grown out of her thoughts, a dull ache meandered across her right side and descended into her belly. Caroline followed it with the heel of her hand, but the narrow cord of pain was too deep to reach. The only part of her that could be counted on to expand in this place was her womb, she thought, and even that was half Charles’s doing.

Caroline moved to fold her hands together again and found her left had formed a fist in her lap. She had fairly balled herself up with envy. Envy, of all things, when everything they shared was bound to increase. And after she had vowed in the bunkhouse that first night to do all she could to keep her family worthy of Providence’s care. She wiped the damp palm across her skirt, uncrossed and recrossed her ankles. It helped some to break that selfish thought up and brush it away, but she did not know what to do with her hands, did not like the empty feel of them, or trust them not to clench up again. They needed something of their own to hold besides themselves, the way Charles had his reins and the girls their playthings. But what? She did not want to sit there with a wooden spoon or a skein of yarn in her lap. Her books and slate came first to mind, but they lay at the very bottom of her trunk, and anyway, she was not a teacher anymore and never would be again. Perhaps if she had never taught school, Caroline thought, never held an envelope filled with dollar bills she had earned herself, she would not feel so empty-handed now. Not even Mary or Laura would fill that space in the way she wanted.

Seeds. The little packets of seeds she had saved from the garden, and Polly’s, too. Those belonged to her in a way that nothing else inside the wagon did. Only she could not very well go digging through the crates to find them now. There was no call for it, no way to explain why she wanted them. The best she could do was fan out the handful of neatly labeled envelopes in her mind and imagine how the seeds folded safely inside would feel through the paper. There were the winkled round beads that were turnips, cabbages, and peas; the cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions with their sharp pointed ends; the flat squash seeds broad as fingernails; the tiny bearded carrot seeds. They had reached up out of the Wisconsin ground, and come spring she would work them into the Kansas soil so they could take root. Those lacy tendrils, finer than her finest crochet thread, would bore down through the dirt until they found something to grasp and hold themselves firm. Seeds always reached down before reaching up and out.

There was comfort in that.





Twelve




The willows along the Verdigris River traced a soft green line over the prairie. Their trunks were slender, and their young leaves not thick enough yet to provide much shade. Through the haze of yellow-green, Caroline could make out the tops of a few dozen haystacks on the opposite bank. They seemed to stand in crooked rows and squares.