Caroline: Little House, Revisited(52)

Caroline watched nothing but Charles, clinging to Pet. The willows blurred behind him. Water smacked and splashed at the boards, the overspray leaping up to strike sharp drumbeats against the thin canvas walls. Caroline prayed with her fists clenched and her eyes wide open.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.



All at once the wagon and the creek ceased their grappling. The wagon moved as though it were a bullet careening down a rifle barrel.

“Haw!” Charles called out, and Caroline obeyed quicker than the team, quicker than thought, pulling the lines toward the western bank without knowing why. She saw it then, a brown flat place a few rods distant. The break in the trees seemed to be racing toward them. Instinct drew the reins toward her body. Safe from capsizing, they must not now cripple the horses or the wagon in landing. She could not slow the creek, but she would slow the team what little she could.

The iron tires struck and bounced against the creek bed. Caroline rocked forward, then sharply back. Charles shouted, but Caroline could not hear what he said. Sand and iron ground together beneath her. Everything from the tin plates to the churn dash rattled. Then the sound of wood scraping wood as the wagon tipped and it all skidded toward the tailgate.

Charles shouted again and there he was—rising, running, out of the creek—shoulders, back, and legs shedding water.

The shock of the wheels turning on solid ground sent Caroline’s teeth clattering down on her tongue. Her eyes clamped shut against the pain. When she opened them, the wagon was still. So still. The rushing and the flowing and the roaring, all of it was over. Charles stood panting beside the shining wet mustangs with his clothes clinging to his skin.

Caroline found herself trembling so violently she could not let go of the reins. All the terror she had not had time to feel still had hold of her; everything that had not happened suddenly fanned out before her, bright and terrible. Her voice quavered, “Oh, Charles,” and blood rose from her bitten tongue with the words. Had she been able to move, she would have had him in her arms.

“There, there, Caroline. We’re all safe.”

Better perhaps that she could not reach him, Caroline thought as she shivered and shook. There was enough thankfulness in her to crush him, and just the other side of that, a hot spurt of outrage. At him, at herself. She had known—they had both known—something was wrong, and because they could not put words to it they had gone into that creek anyway. With no one else to depend on, they had failed each other. There was no place in country like this for such mistakes, no place at all, and so she only half listened to Charles trying to soothe them all with his praise of the tight wagon box and strong horses. Brushing aside her fear had nearly just cost more than she could pay, and she would not do it again now, not if it shook her apart.

“All’s well that ends well,” Charles was saying, and that was so. But it would not have begun at all, Caroline knew, if they had listened to their own good sense. Even with creek water streaming from his whiskers, Charles could overlook that part of it. He was always facing forward, that man. Never back.

Laura’s fingers filled the spaces between the boards at Caroline’s back. “Oh, where’s Jack?” she cried as she pulled herself up from under the blanket.

Jack. Caroline’s shaking halted all at once. Her conscience bulged up so hard and solid, she could feel nothing else. They had left him. She had left him. It was not Charles who told Laura the bulldog could swim. Caroline remembered how Jack had growled at the Indians on the street, yet did no more than scrunch his eyes shut to brace himself for Laura’s mauling hugs. He had asked nothing of them but to be allowed to follow behind his ponies, and she had abandoned that steadfast creature to the creek. She could picture him standing on that shore just as plainly as though she had turned to look. But she had not.

They waited better than an hour while Charles searched, his whistle shrilling through the creek bottoms again and again after his voice would no longer carry. An hour with Laura so desperately hopeful that Caroline could not bear to look at her when Charles returned. Instead she saw Charles’s face, saw him meet Laura’s wishful gaze and know for the first time in his life he had failed his little Half-Pint. Caroline did not know how so much disappointment would fit inside one small wagon.

Charles said nothing to either of them. There was nothing to say. His clothes were dry, and there was no bulldog trotting behind him. It was past time for making camp. He climbed to the spring seat and flicked the reins.



It was a wasted meal. Not one of them could eat, yet they picked and pushed at their food until it was as good as sand on their plates. Her own looked like the creek bank, all grit and muddy molasses. Caroline’s throat burned and swelled as she scraped the plates over the latrine pit. Even the scraps were wasted without Jack there to finish them.

God that doesn’t forget the sparrows won’t leave a good dog like Jack out in the cold, Charles had promised Laura when she begged for Jack to be allowed into heaven. The sentiment soothed the child, but it was no consolation to Caroline. Her conscience throbbed all the harder to think of it: After all her answered prayers for protection on this journey, she had left one of His creatures without so much as a backward glance. She could ask for nothing after this. Nothing but forgiveness.