Caroline: Little House, Revisited(8)
“Kiss your cousins,” Polly commanded her brood. “You might not ever see them again.” So the children solemnly kissed and hugged Mary and Laura, like little ladies and gentlemen performing a soundless square dance.
“You first, Caroline,” Charles said into the long pause that followed. “I’ll hand the girls up after.”
With Charles at one elbow and Henry bracing the other, Caroline stepped up onto the doubletree and turned to perch on the edge of the sideboard. She grasped a bow and swung her legs over the wagon box. Inside it smelled of hemp, pine pitch, and linseed oil.
“Upsy-daisy,” Charley Carpenter said as he scooped Mary up by the underarms. Her feet scrabbled in the air until her toes found the sideboard. Caroline steadied her with a smile and a pair of firm hands around Mary’s waist.
Before Mary’s shoes were on the floor, Laura was climbing between the spokes and the singletree. “I want to do it myself, like Ma did,” she insisted.
“You’re not tall enough to reach over the sideboards, little Half-Pint,” Charles said. Only the tips of her mittens peeped stubbornly over the edge of the box. Caroline could hear her shoes scraping at the boards for a place to grip. “Maybe by the time we get to Kansas you’ll be big enough,” Charles teased, hoisting her up.
Caroline settled the girls onto the straw tick with the old gray blanket as Charles shook his father’s hand and clambered in over the jockey box. With a lurch, he dropped down onto the spring seat beside her. Father Ingalls handed up the reins.
Charles cleared his throat. “All ready?” he called over his shoulder.
“Yes, Charles,” Caroline answered softly.
Father Ingalls tipped his hat and stepped from sight. Caroline craned forward, but the wagon’s canvas bonnet beveled out overhead, blocking her view. They had already said goodbye, Caroline reminded herself as she straightened her shawl and folded her hands into her lap. They were her mother’s hands, nearly as broad as a man’s. Like her mother, she kept them always folded, the long fingers tucked neatly into her palms.
Charles released the brake lever and the wheels hitched forward. The snap of movement loosed Caroline’s grip on herself. A sob juddered halfway up her throat before she could clasp it back.
Charles looked at her, the tears in his eyes only adding a luster to his excitement. Caroline tightened her cheeks to echo his smile as best she could.
Those she could not bear to leave sat close around her, yet as she looked backward through the keyhole of canvas at the blur of waving hands, Caroline could not help but wonder whether Charles and the girls would be enough.
Four
The town was muted with snow. A steamy chill hung in the air, as though the drifts were exhaling. Charles drove past McInerney’s and the Prussian dry-goods shops to the Richardses’s storefront. “Always one of them willing to strike a bargain,” Charles said. Caroline did not answer. Her back was striped with aches. The wagon rolled to a stop, and her body swayed with it. All the seven miles down into town she had held herself taut against the slope of the land. Now the leveling of the road left her unmoored, as though the steadying pull of the little cabin could no longer reach her.
Caroline held Laura on her hip and Mary by the hand as Charles and the two younger Richards brothers piled provisions onto the counter. To the food Charles added painted canvas tarpaulins, a ten-gallon water keg, and a pair of collapsible gutta-percha buckets. “Need more powder and caps, and lead for shot, too,” he said.
“What kind of firearms you carrying?” Horace Richards asked.
“Rifle,” Charles answered.
“That old single-shot muzzle-loader?” Linus Richards said.
Charles bristled. “One shot’s always been plenty for me.”
Linus Richards chuckled and put up his hands. “I’ll be the last one to impugn your aim, Ingalls. Nobody trades more bear pelts here than you do.” He glanced at Caroline and the children and dropped his voice only low enough to make her cock her ear toward the men. “Stalking a wild animal’s one thing—a mounted brave with a full quiver and tomahawk besides is quite another. All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t take my little ones into the Indian Territory without a decent pistol to level the field.”
Caroline felt Mary’s grip tighten as Horace Richards pulled two snub-nosed guns from under the counter. “We’ve got Colt army-model percussion revolvers and one brand-new Smith and Wesson Model Three top-break cartridge revolver.”
Dry at the mouth, Caroline put Laura down and guided both girls toward the row of candy jars. “You may each choose a penny’s worth,” she said. The girls looked up at her, their astonished eyes like blue china buttons. “Go ahead. You’re big enough to choose for yourselves. Any one you like.”
From a neighboring shelf, Caroline gathered castor oil, ipecac, paregoric, rhubarb, and magnesia while the men haggled and the girls pored over the sweets. “Let’s get two different flavors,” she heard Mary tell Laura. “I’ll give you half of my stick, and you give me half of yours. Then we’ll both have two kinds of candy.”
Caroline smiled. “That’s my smart girl,” she said.
Elisha Richards stood at the till with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his vest and his nails scratching beneath them as though he were tallying the Ingallses’s account against his flanks. With every undulation of his fingers, the sum mounted in Caroline’s mind, until her head seemed to teeter on her neck. The expense was well within their reach, yet she could not keep hold of the numbers any more than she could take her eyes from the storekeeper’s vest. It was cut from a rust-colored paisley that swirled her senses in a way she could not describe. Charles began to count one bill after another into Elisha Richards’s palm, peeling the wedge of cash like an onion, and the movement of gray-green against the paisley field made the room roll around her.