“Don’t, Laura,” Mary said.
Charles blew one afresh, and then another. “There’s one for each of you to do as you like with.” Mary’s floated over Caroline’s head. She imagined drawing her number fourteen crochet hook through it, whisking its rims into latticed garlands—like the scalloped wrist, lying half-finished in her work basket. Its curves and lattices looped through her thoughts. She closed her eyes and let her threadless fingers work the pattern.
“I can’t sit here like this any longer,” Charles said. “I’m going out to see the lay of the land.”
Caroline straightened up. “In this weather?” He did not answer, only leaned to tug on his drooping socks. She tried again. “Charles, why not stay in and play us a hymn on the fiddle?”
“This kind of weather’s worse for the fiddle than it is for me. Best keep it warm and dry in the case. Won’t hold its tune anyway. How would you like to fetch me my poncho, Half-Pint?”
“Yes, Pa!”
Caroline sat helpless at Charles’s artfulness as Laura scrambled down past her. He knew Laura would not refuse, just as he knew Caroline herself would not contradict him and tell Laura to stay put.
“Here, Pa,” Laura said. Caroline was nearer. She thanked Laura and lifted the poncho from her outstretched arms. Moisture still clung like sweat to its shoulders.
“It’s wet yet from last night,” she told Charles.
Charles took the poncho from her. “I’ve got enough impatience flaming in me to dry it from the inside out,” he said as he threaded his head through.
Impatience—the very idea! They had not lost a minute of travel. Mired or not, they would have halted early and spent this day stilled for the Sabbath. Yet he would take himself out into the weather—in clothes soggy as day-old dumplings—as though they had not put some four hundred miles behind them in less than two months’ time.
“It’s Sunday, Charles,” she reminded him.
“It’s not work, Caroline.” He snapped his collar up to meet the brim of his hat. “Taking a walk doesn’t break the fourth commandment.”
Caroline’s lips fluted downward. A tart Whatever you think is best might give him pause if she slanted her words just so. But there was not room in the wagon for them to pry at each other this way. Not on Sunday, and with the girls underfoot. Better to have him doused and satisfied than dry and sullen in such small quarters. Caroline balled her fists inside her pockets and said only, “Be careful.”
He took his gun from the hook and ducked around the gray blanket. The wagon jerked like a slammed door as he jumped to the ground.
Caroline followed to tie the cover down behind him, then paused a moment behind the blanket-curtain. The muscles lining her backbone and the spaces between her ribs were weary of bracing against the tilt. Lately when she tired it was a bubbling sort of exhaustion, as though her muscles and joints were stewing in ammonia. She arched her back and spread her arms wide. The fringe of her shawl brushed the sidewalls. Caroline yanked her hands right back. Not even the canvas could leave her be.
Caroline unlocked her jaw and rolled it from side to side so that her ears crackled. One long inhale, then another, chilled her mouth before she went back around the blanket and over the spring seat to the girls.
Their faces as she settled down beside them plainly said, Well?
Caroline’s jaw bulged anew. Why must they always do and never simply be? Charles might have his solitary tramp, but there would be no respite for her. The children were like little tops that must be kept spinning, always spinning. And on Sunday they must spin slowly, quietly, without tipping.
“Why won’t the thunder stop?” Mary asked. “It makes my ears tired.”
“You must not complain,” Caroline retorted. Vinegar flavored her voice, and she knew by Mary’s sour look that she had tasted it, too. Caroline pulled another cooling breath across her tongue. If she were going to let her vexation flare outward, she would have done better to put her foot down with Charles than singe the girls. Then at least it would have served some purpose. Nor could she simply swallow her ire and leave the child beneath her apron to pickle in such brine. She had charge over their moods, and she would not squander it.
Caroline tuned herself to the rumble of sounds from outside and began to understand why Charles had been so insistent on examining the landscape.
“That is not thunder,” she explained. “There is likely a creek nearby. I shouldn’t wonder if the rain has flooded it.”
Indifferent to this news, they lay down with their heads propped at her hips. Mary picked at the row of jet buttons running down Caroline’s basque while she told them the story of Noah’s ark.
“Two by two by two,” Laura droned. “Pa and Ma, and Ben and Beth, and Mary and me.”
“One of us ought to be a boy, to make it right.”
“You,” Laura said.
Mary lifted her head and glared at Laura. “I don’t want to be the boy.”
“You came first, like Adam, so you have to.”
Mary sulked.
Caroline closed her eyes. Everything pressed on her—the wet canvas overhead, the girls leaning on either side, and the ripening child motionless as a stone in her belly. If she did not get out from under it, even for a moment, she would vanish under the weight of it all.
“I am going outside for my necessaries,” she said, drawing her shawl over her head. She paused reluctantly before going over the spring seat. It would be foolish not to ask. “Do either of you need to come?”
Laura shook her head. Mary seemed to consider. Please, no, Caroline silently implored. “Mary?”
“Not now, Ma,” Mary decided.
“Very well then. Sit nicely here until I come in.”
Caroline fetched her rag from the handle of the chamber pail and hunched out into the weather. The rain fell straight as threads from the sky. Crouched on the falling tongue, she lowered one foot as though she were testing a tub of bathwater. The mud enveloped it like a stocking. Step by step, she toed her way through the ooze and ducked under the tarpaulin.
The latrine was a round depression, less than knee deep. With her skirts clutched in one fist, she bailed a bucketful of rainwater from it, then straddled the hole.
Ben and Beth eyed her. Their fetlocks were curled and pointed with mud. She was near enough to Ben to touch the steam from his nostrils. It did not seem fair that she should foul the horses’ ground, but that could not be helped. Caroline turned her head and let go her water. It made no sound over the unfaltering beat of rain.
The moment she sat down on the spring seat the girls peeped around the gray blanket and watched her peel off her shoes. Her stockings had kept dry, but her shoelaces were so caked they must be put to soak before they stiffened into twigs. There was nothing to do for the shoes themselves but wait for them to dry enough to scrape clean.