Caroline: Little House, Revisited(80)
She stood, pressing the towel to her breasts, her feet reluctant to lift from the water. Carrie would wait, cozied up that way on her pa’s bare chest. With luck the baby might even fall asleep. But Caroline did not sink back into the tub. Moments ago she had wanted to stay in that warm, soft water, to pull it over her like a quilt and soak until morning. Seeing Charles and Carrie together, Caroline wanted only to be beside them.
She slipped her nightdress over her damp skin and fitted her body back into the hollow it had left in the straw tick. Between them was the little peak she and Mrs. Scott had made, lying so deferentially side by side. Caroline leaned across it and pillowed her head on Charles’s shoulder. She could not see his face lying this way, but as they gazed at the baby she began to see his features reflected in Carrie, as though Carrie were a little mirror tilted sideways. His narrow chin was there with no whiskers to hide behind, and his high hairline.
“She has your eyes,” Charles said.
She did, poor thing. “Newborn babies always have eyes like slate. They’ll brighten in time. Mary’s and Laura’s did.”
Charles’s whiskers brushed her forehead as he turned. She could feel him looking quizzically down on her. “Is that what you think of your eyes?”
“Ma always said they were gray as the December day I was born.” His were like a woman’s, such a delicate blue as she’d only seen painted on fine china.
He traced her brow bone with his thumb. “Your ma was wrong,” he said. “Your eyes are gray like flannel, and there’s nothing half so warm and soft in the world as flannel.”
Caroline’s eyes flickered up, then her face ripened with a smile as the compliment swirled through her. She pressed her cheek, red and round as an apple skin, into his shoulder.
He chuckled softly at her shyness, rumbling under the baby. Carrie crinkled awake.
The sounds the two of them made, his bass and her tremolo, rippled beneath Caroline’s skin. Her pulse burgeoned through her body, and a fresh burbling of blood warmed the path Carrie had made through her.
Caroline sat up and inched herself as far toward the headboard as the flannel pad allowed while the child gritched at the air and began to sputter. “Here, Charles,” she said and uncovered her breast. “Let me.”
Charles lifted the fussing baby from his chest as though her flinty cries might strike fire. Carrie’s lips buttoned onto her. Charles watched as the frantic movements of Carrie’s jaw subsided into contentment.
“Caroline Ingalls, you are a wonder.”
She looked down at the child, drawing its current of sustenance through her. Most any woman in the world could do as she had done, but Caroline could not deny his wonder. There was nothing Charles could not fashion, given the wood and tools to do it with, but she had formed this child—this creature of breath and bone—out of nothing but a spurt. She had not even begun with an intention. And now when the child cried, there was milk.
Charles looked out the window and then back at her. “I feel like a man who’s found Canaan,” he said.
The land of milk and honey. She saw it as he did, in the prairie grass, honey-gold in the wind, the running creek, the cow and calf, and now in the flow of her own milk. They had never wanted for shelter or game in the Big Woods, but this land was different. It seemed to lie with its arms open, inviting them to suckle freely of its bounty. When spring came she would trust her seeds to the good, rich ground. If this land would feed her children, it would become another sister to her. We came unto the land whither thou sentest us . . . , she thought, as if speaking to the place itself, and this is the fruit of it.
Twenty-Two
“You be Ma and I’ll be Mrs. Scott,” Mary said to Laura. “My rag doll will be the baby.”
Caroline’s cheeks ached from holding back her smiles. The new center of Mary’s world lay nursing in Caroline’s arms. Overnight Mary had become a miniature nursemaid: earnest, attentive, and entirely unconscious of how darling she was as she bustled about the cabin. When she could not fuss over her new sister, she practiced with her doll. It would only be a matter of time, Caroline supposed, before Mary tried to suckle that poor cotton baby. Caroline’s lips twitched at the thought. All day long, she wanted to let the delight tumble out of her, but she could not let Mary realize that her grown-up airs only made her more childlike.
Laura was braced against the doorjamb, having a tug-of-war with Jack over a stick of firewood. “I don’t—want—to play—inside,” she said, as though Jack were jerking each piece of the answer out of her.
“I’ll let you hold my rag doll,” Mary promised.
Caroline’s eyebrow arched. That was a sacrifice, coming from Mary. Laura was tempted, and her grip faltered just as Jack’s playful growl changed. He let loose the stick, and Laura plopped onto the ground. “Jack!” she cried as the bulldog turned from her, his throat rumbling. Then, “Oh! It’s a man coming, Ma!”
“You mustn’t shout, Laura,” Caroline reminded her. “Is it Mr. Edwards?”
Laura shook her head. “A new man.”
Caroline shifted to look outside. A bay dun, mounted by a sandy-haired man, was trotting up the path from the creek. Sunlight glinted off a pair of round spectacles, giving the rider the look of a schoolteacher. Jack erupted into a fury of barking, and the horse shied. Charles’s voice followed, calling off Jack and hallooing a welcome from the stable.