And then, “Jack! Oh, Jack!”
The surprise struck her like a blow. Only Jack, filthy and bedraggled and thrashing with glee. Caroline threw up her hands as though she might hold back the shock, fearful that she had not the strength to feel one more thing. She could not speak, could not laugh until all the guilt and worry rolled from her at the sight of his waggling stump tail. Then she wanted most to cry and could not do that, either. The instant Jack saw her he sprang to her, nearly bowling her over. He scrabbled and pawed until she bent down to try to touch him. But he did not want petting. He licked and licked her wrists and palms and plunged his snorting nose into all the folds of her skirt until Caroline knew—it was her smell he wanted. Wanted to coat himself in it, so that he might never lose it again. Somewhere out on the open prairie he must have scented her, standing alone in the tall grass outside the campsite, and he had followed.
She had led him home.
Thirteen
The morning breeze pushed Caroline’s skirt to and fro as if she were a school bell. The fabric hugged her belly and the small of her back by turns as Charles strode away across the grass.
It ought to have made her feel small, alone on such a vast and empty plain. Instead she felt a fullness that had nothing to do with the outward billow of her skirt. The whole day stretched before her, with no wagon wheels cutting through it. Beside her the big washtub stood full and shining in the sun.
Without woods or walls to partition the space around her, the sense of that word—alone—blurred. The distance between them might expand until they lost sight of one another, yet they were all in the same place. Or rather, on it. The prairie did not contain them, but held them on its great open palm. Only the girls were small enough to make a forest of the tall grass and disappear beneath its surface. Their voices flitted up from the weed tops like the dickcissels’, and for the first time she could remember Caroline did not fret to have them out of her sight. All she need do to find them was stand in the wagon box and watch for the dimpling of the grass.
Caroline’s heels clicked lightly down the floorboards and her tongue mimicked the lively tsk-tsk-tsk of the little yellow-splashed dickey birds chirping around her as she straightened the boxes and slouching bundles. One jig-like call made her pause to listen with the half-gathered bedclothes in her hands. What must the bird who sang such a song look like—vivid as a crazy quilt or drab as a sheet? She finished stripping the linens from the beds and dropped the bundle over the side of the wagon. There lay the fiddle box on the bare straw tick, muffled between the pillows. In all these weeks they had not once reached into that box for music. Only greenbacks. She would ask Charles to play tonight, she decided, and tucked the blankets neatly around it. If he were not too tired. It had been too long.
It felt both right and wrong to use the day for a washing. Thursdays belonged to the churn, not the washtub, but after rattling across all those many miles the wagon itself felt so much like the inside of a churn that Caroline could not think of taking up the dash and pounding away at anything so delicate as cream. And anyway, there was none to be had. So it would be the laundry instead.
Caroline looked tentatively over the rim of the tub at the flat circle of water. Her own face looked back at her, just the same. The slightly uneven widow’s peak beneath the neat white parting of brown hair. The lower lip that seemed always mournful or stern, no matter how sweet the thoughts behind it. Whatever changes this journey had wrought in her, they had not yet broken her surface.
Pleased, she smiled at herself and quickly blushed at the way her face bloomed back at her. Suddenly Caroline did not want to look away. The unexpected sweetness of her own modesty held her captive. This must be the smile that made Charles’s eyes twinkle so when he teased her. She could feel the familiar contours of it, but had never seen the rosy flush, nor the dark ruffle of lowered lashes. No wonder he showed her no mercy.
Now she was too much pleased, and the charm of the reflection faded. Enough of that, then. Caroline rolled up her sleeves and tucked her skirt between her knees. She dipped her fingers into the pannikin for a smear of brown soft soap and began.
First the great bundle of sheets and pillowcases. Her knuckles stung with cold as she plunged the fabric in and out of the water. With the handle of the rake she pried the yards of sopping muslin from the tub and wrung them out inch by inch before starting all over with the rinse water. Then towels, dishcloths, white underthings, and red flannel underthings. Last of all she carried the carpetbags out into the sun and stacked the heap of muddied winter clothes in the grass beside the washtub.
The folded dresses, pants, and shirts were stiff as canvas from weeks of wear. Caroline shook out her own everyday brown flannel and lowered it into the tub. The gray water crept hungrily up the hem, melting the caked dirt away. She threaded her hands deep into pairs of stockings and strummed them over the washboard until the dingy footprints disappeared from their soles.
Sweat ringed her underarms and collar. In her mind she fancied she could sketch the line of every blade of grass pressing into her knees. But never before had Caroline taken such pleasure in a washing. Everything she worked with her hands beneath the water came up softer, brighter, more itself.
She laid the drying clothes out like paper dolls on the grass. Caroline stood back thoughtfully taking in their colors and shapes: Charles in brown and green, herself and Mary in shades of blue, and Laura’s little sprigged calico in just the bold shade of red Caroline longed to wear. Together all of them gently bent the grass, so that Caroline saw the soft imprint of her family on the land.
The image lingered pleasantly in her mind well after the clothes were ironed and folded away. When Charles came whistling home and the girls ran scrambling to meet him, the picture seemed to come alive. They rose out of the grass in a small billow of color and movement—Charles with Laura by the hand, Mary skipping alongside. Caroline smiled. Laura never could get enough of her Pa.
A pang of worry struck her. How might things change for Laura if this next baby were a son? Charles was not a man to play favorites, but there was no mistaking the softness in his eyes when he looked on something he loved. She had seen it kindling inside him these last days, as they drove across the prairie, and now she could hear it in his voice, telling Laura of all the bounty he had seen living in the grass and streams.