Caroline: Little House, Revisited(57)

They unloaded the wagon right then and there, everything onto the ground with the canvas to spread over it. Then the wagon box itself came off the running gear and rested beside its freight. Goodness, it was small out in the open, all bare and swept and only a little more than knee-high in the tall grass.

Then, perched on the running gear, Charles rattled away toward the creek bottoms with his ax.



For most of the next two weeks there was little but the sound of that ax. Felling, chopping, hewing. The creak and tear of the bark and sapwood splitting away from the pale yellow heart of each log as he squared them off. They were lovely to look at, all neatly stacked and waiting to be joined together. The sun warmed the freshly hewn logs and every day Caroline could smell the smell of the house they would become, imagining it all around her. But she did not wait for the house to begin feeling at home. Each day the sun rose and set on the same sides of her bed. Good oak kindling piled up by the hour, and every bucket of water came from the same clean, sweet creek. And there was the unutterable luxury of a necessary, built of poles with a door and a plank seat.

With their daily movements they wore grooves into the land—to the creek, the necessary, the dishpan and washbasin, and around and around the growing stack of logs. Even Mary and Laura had their paths to their favorite little hills and hollows. First the grass parted, then it leaned and bent until at last it laid down in the dirt and was trampled under bare feet.

A day or two and the week returned to its accustomed shape. There were gaps where the churning and the baking ought to have been, gaps Caroline filled with the blandest of the preparations for the child. She cut squares of linen and painted them with boiled linseed oil to make fresh oilcloth, then fashioned flannel covers for them—one for each night of the week to guard the straw tick from leaking diapers. To protect her dresses she oiled rounds of silk trimmed to fit her breasts and backed them with linen. There was no wheat bran for filling, so there would be no proper pad to keep the leavings of the birth from soaking the bedclothes. More oilcloth would have to answer for that purpose. Caroline eyed the wagon cover briefly, then thought better of it. She boiled more linseed oil and painted the oldest of her tablecloths instead. In the scrap bag she found plenty of flannel rags to double her supply of sanitary towels.

Each of these small tasks drew her inward. Away from the land and yet strangely nearer it, for the child she prepared for would be a Kansan. Indeed, it already was so. Every time Caroline looked up from her work she could see the square Charles had paced off for the house, and inside that square was the place where the child would be born. Charles and the girls must work at making the land their own, but the child would emerge belonging to it.



In one day Charles built the house as high as Laura’s head. Two dozen logs, notched and hoisted and fitted. After supper they leaned their elbows on the short walls, admiring the neat square space. Charles pointed out where the door and windows and fireplace would be, while inside Mary and Laura ran gleeful circles. Jack barked and wagged outside, trying to lick at them through the chinks. Caroline ran her hands across the topmost log. Good oak, just as their house in Wisconsin had been, but younger, slenderer. A youthful little house.



In and out went the needle. In and out and in and then the ax struck wood and she was looking up at Charles again. He stood halfway up the wall with his boot toes wedged between the chinks, chopping a notch into the topmost log. Look, look, look, the ax seemed to say each time it bit into the wood. Watch, watch, watch. Caroline pulled her needle through the flannel. In the time it had taken him to raise that log, she had sewn no more than a half dozen stitches. Perhaps if she sewed in time with the ax she could manage to keep her eyes on her own work. Chop-and-stitch and chop-and-stitch and chop-and-whizz! came a little chip of wood sailing down to land at her feet, and there she was, watching again. She forced her eyes back into her lap. Rags. Flannel rags she would not need for months yet. Impatience crackled in her elbows and all up and down her back. She could not do such tedious work. Not with the whole house going up ten feet from her face. She would fly apart. Caroline jabbed her needle into the half-finished pad and dropped it into her work basket.

Out of the scrap bag came the long curtain made of pillow cases she had fashioned for the wagon loft. Cut in quarters, it would likely serve as curtains for the new house. Caroline fingered the pretty red blanket stitching along the hem. That would just match her checked tablecloth. She rummaged through the bag again and came up with a handful of snippings from Laura’s red summer calico. Enough, perhaps, for curtain ties—if she were careful. Caroline smoothed the pieces across her lap and smiled at the thought of crisp red and white curtains against freshly hewn oak walls. Her needle would fly so much faster if it were making something beautiful. Faster than Charles’s ax. But she could not measure and cut curtains for windows that did not exist. Not with so little fabric to spare. Carefully Caroline folded the calico and muslin together and tucked them back into the scrap bag. She took up the flannel pad again and her throat swelled with frustration.

Always, the scale of Charles’s work dwarfed her own. In the time it took him to build a wall or plant an acre, she might knit a sock or churn a pound of butter. One task was no less vital than the other; he could not build or plant barefoot and hungry. Charles knew that as well as she did and never failed to thank her for a new shirt or a good meal. But to have a hand in fashioning something that would not be consumed, worn out, outgrown—something as grand as a house? To be able to lean against that solid wall for years to come and know that she had helped put it there? Caroline thrilled at the thought.