“I won’t have you lifting logs,” he said at last. “But do you think you could brace them while I lift the other end and square the join?”
Caroline did not say one word. All her childish excitement would spill out if she opened her mouth to say so much as Yes, Charles. She simply nodded and followed him to the west wall.
The logs that formed the northern corner jutted toward her like oversized pegs. Charles lifted the end of the fallen timber onto the highest one and propped it with the heels of his hands. “Hold it this way. Don’t try to grip it when I lift the other end. It has to be able to move some while I position my side—just lean so it can’t slip off.” Caroline planted her feet and slanted her body forward to put her hands beside his. “That’s it. The notch in the wall underneath will keep it from sliding the other way.” He went to the south corner and hoisted the other end. “Now hold steady while I fit this into the notch.” The log rocked, then wobbled and dropped squarely into place. Caroline pushed herself back from the wall. As she did her end slid into its notch.
Charles propped his fists on his hips and bobbed his head in approval. “That’s all there is to it.”
Together they built the house one log higher, then another. Each time Charles squatted down and took the end of the log in both hands, levering himself back up with a thrust of his calves. Then he bent his knees and with a grunt, hoisted the end up to his shoulder. Caroline never tired of watching—the swoop of his knees, the spring from the balls of his feet, the deft flip of his palms as the log reached his chin. He grinned at her each time.
There were moments he was like something out of a book, that man, too grand and vivid to be fully real. With him, there were times when life had the feel of a story larger than themselves. All winter as he talked of going west, Caroline had caught glimpses of it as he saw it—a current pushing forward with purpose and momentum. What else could account for why she stood on this blank square of map with one end of a log in her hands? For his part, she did not know what he saw in a woman such as herself, what made him look at her the way he did, as though she were a song he had sung, come to life. Caroline shied a little to imagine what kind of song anyone could make out of her. It would be akin to exalting something as commonplace as a quilt, or a pan of milk.
Caroline did not see what happened. She only felt the jolt pass through the timber and down her elbows. Raw wood scraped, and suddenly the log was nosing down toward her.
She hitched herself sideways, going up on tiptoe to boost the log from beneath with her shoulder. Her foot caught in a hollow and one knee buckled. The log’s weight shifted toward the notch of her neck, pressing her down. Caroline’s thigh muscles surged upward. Too late—her knee could not straighten under the load. Her shin threatened to splinter like a matchstick. Every hinge in her body wavered as though it were on the verge of melting.
“Let go!” Charles called. “Get out from under!”
It was not a matter of letting go. Her hands bore none of the weight. It was her shoulder. She could not lift it from her shoulder. Her only hope was to throw her body down faster than the log could fall. Caroline let both knees buckle fully and thrust her hands up against the wood, hurling herself outward.
All the points of her body struck the ground—knee, hip, elbow, shoulder.
She lay waiting for the crack, expecting to be split like a pitcher and feel herself spilling out onto the grass.
No crack came. Only the steady weight of the log on her foot, and, smothered somewhere beneath that, pain. She was not sensible of the pain itself, only a strange sensation pushing hard against the log, impatient to be felt.
“Caroline!” Charles was beside her, and Laura.
“I’m all right.” Her voice was a gasp, the words nearly a lie. She was hurt, that was certain. How badly she could not tell. But she would mend or manage without; Caroline knew that already. Nothing vital in her had broken.
Charles lifted the log free. Pain bulged up into the space it left behind, so large for an instant she feared her shoe might burst. Caroline pulled herself tight. If she could hold her body tightly enough, she thought, she could shrink the pain down small enough to fit back inside her.
“Move your arms,” Charles demanded. “Is your back hurt? Can you turn your head?”
Caroline did not want to move anything. Simply exhaling sent flames of hot and cold racing through her ankle. But she had never seen such a look on Charles’s face. Not even with the creek rising nearly to his ears had he looked so horrified—white and trembling, and hardly an inch from tears. Gingerly she moved and turned. He looked to her middle, too frightened to ask aloud.
Caroline pulled all the awareness she could muster away from her throbbing foot. If anything had gone wrong with the child she could not feel it. The log had struck nothing else. That she was sure of. The rest amounted to no more than a stumble. Caroline tried to smile for him and managed mostly to wince.
“Thank God,” Charles said. He cradled one arm behind her shoulders and another across her belly and helped her sit up. He looked at her, and his face seemed to shimmer with the effort of holding his relief in check.
Caroline laid a hand on his arm. “I’m all right, Charles,” she said again, her voice far from steady. “It’s just my foot.”
With shaking fingers he stripped off her shoe and stocking and pressed into the raging flesh to feel the length of every slim bone and work each joint. “Does it hurt much?”
“Not much.” A bald-faced lie, and no compunctions. Anything to make him stop.
“No bones broken,” he said. “Only a bad sprain.” The prodding stopped, but his eyes did not leave her foot. He stared at it, puffed and purpling in his palm—for once in his life overcome by what might have been. He ran his other hand over his forehead and up through his hair. His breath was shallow through his nose and open mouth.
“Well, a sprain’s soon mended. Don’t be so upset, Charles.”
“I blame myself. Should have used skids.” He still held her heel in one hand, his head in the other.
She could not sit on the ground any longer, or Charles would be the one to break. That was something Laura must never see. Caroline put her palms to the ground and pushed. Without a word between them Charles’s arms were right where she needed them to be. Caroline felt him bracing for her weight and knew he would carry her, but she did not need Laura to see that, either. She pressed herself forward until his arms began to lift with her. Only a little wobble and she was upright on her good foot. Caroline stood still a moment, panting. Then she bent her grimace to resemble a smile and said, “Please bring my shoe and stocking, Laura.”
Fifteen