Caroline: Little House, Revisited(70)

The rope trembled straight and taut, then went slack. He was at the bottom.

Oh, God, she prayed. Dear God. Her eyes reached and reached. There was nothing for them to fasten to but the moist brown walls of the pit. Sounds wafted up at her, sounds so muffled and magnified by their long ascent that she could not make them out.

Seven. Eight. Nine. If he did not shout, or tug at the rope within ten breaths . . . then what? Turn the crank? Run for help? Twelve. Thirteen. The rope jiggled and twitched. Caroline wrapped her fingers around it, felt the thin line of movement running through it. As long as it was moving, Caroline promised herself, Charles was alive. So long as it was moving, she would not let go of that rough jute, no matter how many breaths passed. Eighteen, nineteen.

Suddenly the rope twanged to the center of the well.

Caroline pushed herself from the ground. She took hold of the crank and yanked. It spun three-quarters of a turn and stopped so short, her shoulders jolted. She pulled again, wrenching the skin of her palms against the wooden handle. It wobbled but did not budge. There was not strength in her arms, nor the whole of her body to pull that crank.

I won’t breathe till I get out. The last breath Charles had taken would be pressing behind his teeth by now. Caroline shook the image away. There had to be a way—Charles was not so gallant that he would have gone down unless there was a way out. Frantically she searched her mind, calling up a blackboard charted in her own hand with wheels and axles, pulleys and weights.

Caroline ground her heels into the dirt until her almost-healed ankle was a welter of old and new pain. She refastened her hands to the crank and heaved, leaning backward so the weight of her belly swung her nearly to the ground. The windlass creaked, following. Caroline’s throat bulged with grunts she would not release as she propelled the leverage of her body up into the peak of the turn. Not one particle of energy would leave her unless she could direct it into the crank.

The crank reached the apex and continued moving—one full turn, then two, three.

Every strand of muscle in her arms burned. If they snapped or frayed before Charles reached the top— No, Caroline commanded herself. Only a few more turns and he would be out of reach of the fumes, high enough to risk a breath. Nothing mattered before that. Only give him time to breathe. So long as he could breathe, it did not matter how long it took to bring him to the surface. She could even stop to rest, once he breached clean air.

Caroline did not stop to rest. Her thrusting thighs and heaving back knew better than to surrender their momentum. She could picture his face, hear the echo of his voice telling Laura: By jinks, you’re as strong as a little French horse!

Little . . . French . . . horse, little . . . French . . . horse, her mind and her muscles chanted together as the crank turned over and over.

The load lifted from the rope so abruptly, Caroline panicked at the thought it had snapped. Instantly the weight redoubled, and she cranked with a new fury.

In the same second a hand appeared on the ground; another gripped the leg of the windlass. Caroline’s heart seemed to bloom past her ribs, brimming into her breasts and deep into her belly as she watched Charles spill himself onto the grass beside her. He slumped low over his knees, gasping, his boots still dangling over the edge. Caroline let go of the crank and put her hands to his back, feeling the air rush in and out of him. Above them the windlass squealed and spun. From the well’s gullet came a heavy whump.

“Scott,” Charles coughed, and tried to pry himself from the ground.

“Sit still, Charles,” Caroline said. He had not caught his breath.

She could not hold him down. He staggered to the crank, pulling and panting. Caroline scrambled up and took hold of the crank again. Together it was simple as winding a spool of thread. Up ran the bucket, and, lolling on top of it, Mr. Scott. Caroline braced the crank while Charles hefted him onto the grass. Scott lay there, slack and rubbery, as if the fumes had half melted him. Charles put two fingers to Scott’s wrist, then an ear to his chest.

“He’s breathing,” Charles said. “He’ll be all right, in the air.” A little shiver rattled him, then Charles dropped beside Scott, limbs splayed and eyes closed.

Caroline could not feel anything. The quivers of exertion in her muscles, the blood pounding through her limbs, the warm cascade of relief—all of it had been stripped from her. She blinked at him as he lay there, so very still. Safe or dead? The question drifted somewhere nearby, a puff of thought shadowing her mind as it passed by.

“I’m all right, Caroline.” The words rushed out on a sigh. “I’m plumb tuckered out, is all.”

The tips of her fingers began to tingle. Her palms burned where the grain of the windlass handle had bitten into the skin. “Well!” Caroline said, and a hot torrent came whirling up out of her. “I should think you would be! Of all the senseless performances! My goodness gracious! Scaring a body to death, all for the want of a little reasonable care! My goodness! I—” The child kicked, and the wobbly, watery sensation shattered her fury. Caroline snatched her apron to her face and sobbed.



Naked, she lies in the grass, the well a gaping hole between her splayed legs. A rope runs out from somewhere deep within her, down into the well. From the pit, the plaintive sound of Charles’s fiddle rises. With each note the rope vibrates, as though it is strung across the neck of the instrument. Fibers of jute chafe her thighs, scour the delicate channel leading to the rope’s source. She strains at it, the rope a writhing umbilicus between them, but Charles’s head does not emerge from the hole.