Those early January days before the fire, her shawl had become a doubled embrace, its arms cradling her and the baby both. Seeing the familiar work of her hands wrapped around the child who was still too new to be believed, Caroline had begun to be able to think of Mary as hers, and of herself as Ma.
She looked down at Mary now. Such a big girl, yet still small enough to take refuge in that same nest of red worsted. Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. She leaned down to brush her cheek over the top of Mary’s head, wishing it were her daughter’s hair meeting her skin instead of the rabbit-fur hood. When the new child came, Caroline vowed to herself, she would bind it to her with these same threads.
Somewhere in its cushion of salt water that child floated and rolled. The farther Beth’s feet sunk, the deeper the saddle rocked. Mightn’t it be enough to encourage the small being within to brush against her, to give some assurance of its vitality? Caroline pulled her awareness from the touch of the saddle and stirrups, the horse’s flanks, and Mary’s back as best she could. She could sense her womb’s shape and weight, a smooth sheath of muscle poised above her hips. Nothing more.
Caroline exhaled her disappointment. Mary settled back into the space it made, surprising Caroline with the solidity of her presence. Not even quickening yet, and already the child to come could deprive its sisters of her attention, and with Mary right there in her arms. Caroline considered Mary, how she had calmed, and could not help absorbing that same calm herself. Their comfort spiraled one into the other, as it always had. From the very first, she found she could not suckle her baby girl without feeling nourished herself.
It was a kind of sorcery: What her girls believed of her, they made real, and in so doing fed back to her. Every day it happened, though never with the magnitude as it had during the storm. Their faces cried out for a refuge, steady and serene, and that is what she had become, lifted from her own doubts by the sheer force of their need.
Caroline closed her fist over Mary’s bare fingers. The palpable warmth she passed into those cold little hands left her wondering: How much of what they loved in her was real, and how much was fashioned from what they envisioned her to be?
At the lip of a small rise, a stand of trees cupped a plot of open ground. There Charles had fashioned an open-ended lean-to of branches and canvas. Two forked boughs stood on either side of the entrance with a third strung between them—very like the stakes and spit that held her pots over the campfire. Two more slender poles angled backward from the forks, forming supports. A tarpaulin made the roof.
Beneath it, Charles had laid the boards from the wagon loft over a crisscross of limbs to raise a floor a few inches above the spongy ground. The platform was just larger than the big straw tick.
It was as she had expected: small, sturdy, and adequate. With the time and means available, he could have built nothing more elaborate.
Charles halted the horses and looked back for her approval. His face pained her. He so wanted to please her, and this was all he had to offer.
Caroline did not have so large a thing as a smile to give in return, but she would not let him be disappointed. There was something smaller and truer she could offer.
“You’ve done well, Charles,” she acknowledged. Saying the words broke a little path through her resignation. Again that ray of thankfulness shone out for a man who so rarely failed to furnish their needs. Still, she did not relish the thought of using such a bleak little thing. Well then, that was all she would do—use it. They would not live in it.
Charles plopped Laura inside the shelter and reached up for Mary. “I’ll dig a latrine pit and a trench for runoff in case the rain comes again. We’re nearer the creek than the wagon, so at least we won’t want for water.”
That was a fact. Caroline could hear the creek churning louder yet than before. By the sounds of it she must not only clarify every bucket with alum but boil the filtered water before it would be fit for drinking or cooking. Caroline put that task to one side of her mind. The tea must be boiled anyhow, and she needed no water to fry bacon and corn dodgers.
Charles built the fire so high, the sound of its burning was like horses galloping. “Tore a few pages from the back of my weather journal for tinder,” he admitted. The flames roasted Caroline’s cheeks deliciously until she felt crisp as a potato skin. How she would relish a potato! First her teeth snipping through the skin, then sinking into the powdery white inside, hot as steam turned solid. Nothing in the world filled a cold belly like a potato. She could feast all day on roasted potatoes—potatoes and thick slices of white bread quilted with butter. Perhaps even a mug of sweet milk, hot from the udder. Such a meal would be velvet on her tongue after all these weeks of salt meat and cornmeal.
Caroline’s stomach grumbled at her, and she set to work. She fried bacon, quick and sizzling. Hot pinpricks of fat spat onto her hands, and she did not flinch from them. The iron spider hissed as she spooned corn dodgers into the drippings. Her mouth watered. Much as she craved the fleecy white meal in her mind, she could not keep hold of her imagined feast with those smells and sounds before her.
In between turning the food she steeped two great mugs of tea for herself and Charles. Each golden swallow ringed her throat with its warmth. For Mary and Laura there was nothing but plain hot water. Filled straight from the kettle their tin cup would blister their hands as well as their mouths, so they squatted patiently beside it and took turns blowing ripples across the steaming surface. Such good girls. Caroline wished again for milk, to cool their cup and treat them to cambric tea.
It did no good to warn them of the bacon, nor Charles. Sparkling hot, the strips of meat branded their mouths and salved their chapped lips with fat. Mary and Laura grinned at each other as their tongues juggled the hot meat. Caroline felt her own smile glistening as she watched. What potato, what bread could fill her as much as the sight of them all warm and dry at last? Caroline set her plate aside and stretched out her legs to toast the soles of her shoes.
“I’m leaving the Colt with you and the girls,” Charles told her. “Under the carpetbag. You remember how to fire it?”
Caroline nodded.
“Good. If you need me for anything in the night, fire a shot,” he continued. “But don’t worry if you hear the rifle before daybreak. Going to see if I can find us some fresh game.”
Caroline raked the last flatiron from the coals and wrapped it in flannel for him. He pocketed the hot bundle.
“Good night,” he said.
She did not reply.