“Very nice,” Caroline praised her. Mary puffed up like a vanity cake, muddling Caroline’s pride. Had she sown the wrong kind of modesty in that child? From the day Mary was born, Caroline had known that warding off vanity promised to be the greatest task in raising her. She had felt it welling in herself as she gazed on those delicate blue eyes and stroked the first golden wisps of Mary’s hair. How, she wondered then and ever after, had she made anything so beautiful?
Laura sat in awe of her sister. Caroline watched her fork a crumb of cheese from the center of her plate and taste it carefully, as though the food might be sauced with a new flavor after being blessed by Mary’s voice. Caroline sat down beside Laura and smoothed her little brown braids. They were so waxed with the week’s dust and oil, they would likely hold their shape without ribbons.
Once again there would be no Saturday bath, Caroline realized, just as there were no fresh loaves of light bread. At this hour the inside of their cabin would be fleecy with yeast and the breath of bathwater—unless Mrs. Gustafson, being a Swede, did her baking and bathing by a different timetable. Caroline scanned the dim expanse of the wagon. She thought of how the girls’ small white backs glistened in the yellow firelight as she poured warm snowmelt over them, and the feathery feel of their clean toweled hair. Buttoned into fresh flannel nightgowns, they would stand at her knees to have their hair braided tight and damp to make it wavy for Sunday. The little house glowed orange in Caroline’s memory.
She nibbled steadily at her dinner while the thunder numbed their ears, determined to enjoy the fruit and cheese before her rather than pine for what was behind her. But Caroline could not keep her thoughts confined within the wagon. Often Saturday nights she found time to read or crochet by the fire while her own bathwater heated in pots and kettles on the stove, easing herself into Sunday with the sound of Charles’s fiddle or his whittling knife. Tonight there was little to do but wipe the dishes and go to bed, and she said as much as she collected their plates.
Mary tugged at Caroline’s cuff. “Where are we going to sleep?” she whispered. Caroline looked over Mary’s head. The spring seat and harnesses filled the girls’ bed space.
“I can double up the small tick, sleep in the aisle,” Charles rasped.
“I wish I could make you a mug of tea for that throat,” she said.
Charles waved a hand. “It’ll pass.”
Caroline brushed the crumbs from the plates with a damp dishcloth and fitted them back into the crate while the girls squatted in the aisle with the chamber pail. They brought Caroline their soiled rags and she rinsed them over a bucket with water from the keg. It seemed foolish, spending drinking water on such things with the heavens spilling down on them, but she dared not tussle with the wagon cover again until the wind calmed.
Charles walked the chamber pail back to the tailgate and sat down on the molasses keg while Caroline readied the girls for bed. She laid the pillows so the lean of the wagon would tug at their ankles rather than their ears, and tied their nightcaps close under their chins.
Perched on the edge of the tick, they watched Charles unfold a tarpaulin the length of the aisle and lace a slender rope through the line of metal rings that bordered its edge.
“What are you doing, Pa?” Laura asked.
“Got to be ready—” He cleared his throat and shook his head.
“Pa is preparing a shelter for Ben and Beth in case the rain doesn’t stop,” Caroline explained as she folded the girls’ dresses and petticoats and tucked them into the carpetbag.
“Oh, Pa, do you have to go out in the rain again?” Mary asked.
“The horses must stand in the weather until Pa can cover them,” Caroline said. “Ben and Beth have brought us this far, and we must take care of them.” She paused with Mary’s blue wool half-folded against her chest, thinking what it would mean if either of the horses took sick. “Now let Pa work so he can rest.”
When he was done Charles rolled the tarpaulin up like a rug and doubled it in the middle. He carried the bundle to the tailgate and propped it alongside the kitchen crates.
“It’s time little girls were asleep,” Caroline said when he lifted the lid from the chamber pail and began to unbutton. “Let me hear your prayers.”
Mary and Laura got to their knees at the head of the aisle and latched their folded hands under their chins. Their two voices chorused Now I lay me, drawing the day closed like two ends of ribbon weaving a bow.
“And God bless Ben and Beth,” Laura added as a little flourish. Caroline smiled. All finished, they scuttled under the quilts and reconciled themselves to sleep. Caroline salved her sore hands with the softness of their hair and kissed them both goodnight.
Charles did not undress. He laid the small tick down in the aisle and wedged himself into the narrow trough it made. His shoulders were straightjacketed by the sides of the ticking, and his calves extended beyond its edge.
“I should wake you if I hear the wind calm?” Caroline asked.
Charles nodded. She handed him a pair of quilts, and he closed his eyes without another word between them.
An unexpected sense of solitude descended around Caroline as she undressed herself and unpinned her hair. She sat in her shawl and nightdress at Mary’s and Laura’s feet, reluctant, somehow, to join them under the covers in spite of the mounting chill. The wind and rain had melded into a curtain of sound, and there was nothing she need do—indeed nothing she could do—without waking Charles and the girls. She had not found a moment such as this for herself since Wisconsin. The stillness within the wagon cocooned her thoughts from the weather and its consequences, and Caroline settled into the quiet space within her mind. Tomorrow would be the Sabbath, and they would not move, no matter the weather. The storm had granted her a complete respite, as though she’d been unharnessed after a month’s worth of relentless forward momentum. The feeling was akin to the exhale that accompanied the unfastening of her corset each night. And why, she wondered idly, was she always inclined first to empty her lungs in the moment her body was freest to expand? Tomorrow she would only be still, like the psalm said, Caroline thought as she edged in alongside Mary—Be still and know that I am God.
“Caroline?”
Caroline felt her eyelids rise, but not a particle of light met them. She rose up on an elbow. “What is it?”
“The wind’s died down enough, I think I can rig something like an awning to shelter Ben and Beth,” Charles said. Caroline broadened her attention to the sounds outside the wagon. The sky still wrung itself overhead, but she could hear a difference in the way the rain struck the canvas. The drops fell freely now, no longer flung sidelong against the wagon’s western flank. “Is the poncho dry?” Charles asked.
She sat up and leaned across Mary and Laura to pat her hand over it. “Nearly.”
He beckoned for it, and his boots. She lifted the garments gingerly over the girls. Dirt crusted the soles of the boots. “Do you need help?” she asked, reaching for her shawl.