Caroline tried to imagine the scene as it would appear to Charles: the Indians had not hurt her, had not even touched her, nor made off with anything of value. On the surface the encounter did not sound considerably different from the first two men who had come into the house months ago.
But it was. She had been wrong to be afraid of those first men. Caroline could see that now. Everything that had frightened her that day had risen out of her own dread of what they might do, not from anything they had actually done. Her fear had blotted out the subtle expressions and gestures that ought to have signaled civility, and so she had not understood that they were asking, not demanding. Green Shirt and Towel Thief’s behavior had been crude enough to violate not only her own standards but the Osages’ customs as well. There was no one thing she could point to as proof, yet Caroline was certain. All the courtesy she had been incapable of understanding before was entirely absent in them.
“If you had seen the way they looked at everything,” Caroline began. Charles’s face stopped her. All the sympathy she had wanted so desperately after her first encounter with the Osages was there in his eyes and mouth. It was so genuine, it hurt, and all the more because it was misplaced.
He believed he understood: his wife was afraid of Indians, the way a child fears the dark, and she had been left alone in the dark.
It was as if he had no concept of malice, Caroline marveled. He would trust anything, man or beast, until it gave him reason not to. And, she thought with a sudden gust of understanding, he takes for granted that the same is true of the Osages. No wonder then, that he could leave her alone, that he was so imperturbed by the Indians’ intrusions. Charles knew that she and the girls would do nothing to provoke them, and so in his mind they were safe. The realization made her woozy. Perhaps if he had gone to war, Caroline thought, he would know better. Charles Ingalls was something out of a world that no longer existed—or a better one yet to come. She felt the flicker of a smile even as her breath hitched. More often than not, that was one of the things she loved best in him.
Charles simply could not comprehend that she was at their mercy each time an Osage walked into the house. One Indian was like another to him. Unless there were weapons drawn Charles would never feel what she had felt, half-unbuttoned, with the baby clutched in one arm and the key all but burning a hole through her corset as those men pointed at her. Caroline tasted acid in her throat, remembering.
If she did not put that scene out of her thoughts, it would score her mind with ruts too deep to pull herself out of. Caroline closed her eyes and made a picture of nothing—only the softly moving darkness behind her eyelids.
She could banish the image, and that was all. The residue of everything she had felt remained, thick and unfamiliar in her chest. A sort of anger without heat, without focus. She did not want to aim it at Charles, but there was nowhere else for it.
Charles sensed it. He spoke and moved carefully, as though she’d been bruised and he dared not jostle her. The instant Carrie began to flail and bleat after her bedtime feed, he picked her up, eager to spare Caroline anything that might further trouble her.
He bounced and walked and patted. Tickled the baby, sang to her. Carrie was tired to a frazzle. Caroline could hear it in the breathy whine before each cry. Hweh, hweh, Carrie whimpered. Hweeeh-heh.
Caroline closed her eyes, touched her fingertips to her forehead, rocked in her chair. Still, the baby fussed. Leave them be, Caroline urged herself. Let him find his own way. But Carrie. Carrie could not say more plainly what she wanted, any more than Caroline could pretend not to understand.
“She can’t be hungry,” Charles protested as Caroline rose from the rocker. “And she’s bone dry.” If he had seen the thumb-shaped bruise on Carrie’s thigh when he diapered her, he had said nothing of it.
Caroline held out her arms. Charles seemed to shrug as he lifted Carrie into them.
Caroline nestled Carrie into the space between her breasts, fitting the little round cheek into her palm. The baby’s ear lay over her heart. Caroline enfolded herself around her daughter, so that every soft part of her body pressed gently against Carrie’s skin. “Shhhhhhhh,” she whispered, holding almost still. “Shhhhh.” Caroline began to sway, more gently than a breeze. The baby shuddered, panted, quieted. Out of the corner of her eye Caroline saw Charles’s expression, his half smile betraying a medley of admiration and hurt. Caroline leaned down to nuzzle her own cheek against Carrie’s hair and felt at once how the singular fit of their bodies excluded him. She was sorry for Charles, yet could not bring herself to separate herself enough from Carrie to open their tight circle to him. Selfish, she thought, selfish and spiteful, and closed her eyes so that she would not see if she had pained Charles further.
Into the long silence came the snap of the fiddle box’s clasps. The bow glided through rosin, then there were the hollow woody plunks of the fiddle itself being lifted from the felt and into its place beneath Charles’s chin. The bow sighed tentatively across the strings, then sang out.
“Blue Juniata.”
Oh, Charles, Caroline thought, helpless. And there she was again, back at the cornhusking dance when Charles had looked out across his fiddle strings and seen that she was looking back at him—and only him. He’d seen her face and known that his own furtive, hopeful gazes had not been wasted. Caroline could still hear the laughter, the thrum of dancing feet swirling around her. She remembered the blush blooming on her cheeks and her pulse tingling in her fingers and toes. And his eyes, those twinkling, teasing blue eyes that were known on both banks of the Oconomowoc—how those eyes had shone. They might well have said their marriage vows right then and there, Caroline had thought ever after.
The notes could just as well have been his hands, the way the music touched her. He was sorry. He could not have made it plainer, nor more sincere, with his own voice. Likely he did not know quite what he was apologizing for, Caroline thought. It did not matter to Charles. He would not hold to anything if it meant he could not also have her.
Caroline let out a little puff of air, the tiniest signal of defeat, and began to sing:
Wild roved an Indian maid, bright Alfarata,
Where flow the waters of the blue Juniata.
Strong and true my arrows are, in my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe adown the rapid river.
She sang it his way, adopting all the trifling mistakes she had so boldly chided him for that first time she heard him sing it—girl became maid, and snowy turned to sunny—every verse, just as he had written it into the little poetry booklet that even now was locked safely inside her trunk.
Her words met his music, and the two joined to form one seamless sound.
Twenty-Seven