“Your shawl’s dripping, Ma,” Mary said.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Caroline answered. She swung herself out from under it. An arc of brown droplets struck the floor. More mud. At least she had kept her second-best skirt clean, Caroline thought as she flopped the muddied fringe out into the rain to rinse, then strung the shawl across Charles’s gun hooks to drip dry.
Colder now than she had been before, Caroline sat down on the straw tick and pulled a quilt over her shoulders. Again the girls served her those expectant looks. This time Caroline refused to meet their gaze, looking instead to the diamond-patterned mesh of the shawl hanging behind their heads.
It shamed her to realize that the rain had not put out that spark of selfish ire. In her own way she was no less impatient than Charles—only better able to hold herself outwardly still. How childish, to think herself above him rather than admit her envy that he could escape. Caroline let her eyes rest on Mary and Laura. Of the four of them, only the girls had acted their age, bearing the day’s trials with as much grace as could be expected from such young children. They deserved something of a treat.
Caroline reached for the work basket and cut a length of red worsted. She tied its ends together and strung the yarn over her hands.
“Oh, Ma!” Laura clapped. “Can we play cat’s cradle on Sunday?”
“May we, Laura. And no, you may not. But watch, girls, and listen.” Her fingers dipped in and out of the loops, playing over the strings like a silent fiddle. It had been years since she made the figure, but the pattern was familiar as a childhood tune.
As she wove the string, she told them the story of Jacob, who slept with a rock for his pillow, and dreamed of a ladder filled with angels ascending and descending from heaven.
“Cat’s whiskers,” Mary said when Caroline reached the middle of the yarn sequence.
“You must not interrupt, Mary.”
With a flourish Caroline twisted her wrists and Jacob’s ladder appeared in a mosaic of red triangles between her hands. The girls’ mouths popped open in delight.
Into their moment of wonder Caroline recited, “‘And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.’ And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’” Her heart beat faster as she said the words. Surely.
Caroline felt her gaze lift to the arch of the wagon bows framing her daughters’ heads. The rain still fell and somewhere beyond a creek still roared, but a warm shiver fanned across her back and down her arms.
“Do it again, Ma, please,” Laura begged.
Caroline blinked. Had the girls felt it, too? But Laura was looking only at the yarn. Caroline smiled and shook her head. To do it again would turn it into play. “But if you can tell me what is special about a manger,” she conceded, “I will show you how to make one from the cat’s cradle.”
“Bible-Mary laid her baby in the manger,” Mary piped.
“That’s my smart girl,” Caroline said.
They were taking turns with the yarn when Charles climbed inside and stood dripping in the space before the spring seat as though it were a porch. Water rained from his hem into a ring on the floor.
“Creek’s about half a mile from here,” he said. He took his hat by the crown and flapped it. An arc of droplets spattered the canvas wall. “Flooded so high I can’t even tell where the blasted banks ought to be.”
“Charles, please,” Caroline said, her hand at his elbow. She could not have his oath fraying the peace she had somehow spun out of this day.
“I know it. And I’m sorry, Caroline.” He dropped his hat onto the spring seat and flopped down beside it. “But we’re stuck here and that creek is only the half of it. There isn’t but a hand’s breadth of daylight between the mud and the front axle.” Great clods of mud rolled from his boots as he shucked them off. “Ben and Beth can’t hardly lift their own feet, much less pull. This ground’ll rust their shoes and rot their hooves if we leave them standing, even if we empty the whole straw tick under them.”
She looked at the limp socks slouching past the ends of his toes. “Are your feet dry?”
“I haven’t the foggiest. I’m too wet everywhere else to know the difference.” Beneath the poncho’s seams his shirt and pants were dyed dark with streaks of wet.
She pulled a pair of his winter socks from the carpetbag. “Here. They’re not clean, but they’re dry. For now, at least.” Charles took them without a word.
Though his mood was no brighter, all the sharpness had gone from it. He was only cold and wet and disappointed. Caroline watched him pull the socks from his wrinkled white toes, and all her sympathy reached for him. If her shawl were dry, she would have liked to drape it around his shoulders. The quilts would do just as well for warmth, but they would not enfold him in the same way. Instead she finger-combed the fringe of damp whiskers away from his neck.
“You were right, Caroline,” he said, shaking off a shiver. “I shouldn’t have gone out.”
“Just so you’re here, Charles,” she soothed, blotting his collar with a towel. “I only wish I could contrive a hot meal for you.” She gave a fleeting thought to heating a mug over the lantern for tea.
“I’ll warm soon enough, now that the rain can’t reach me.” He looked at the girls stringing yarn over their fingers and cocked an eyebrow at Caroline. She only smiled and nodded toward them. “Tell Pa what you learned from that yarn today.”