Caroline put her hand over the keyhole to muffle the click as she turned the lock. If Charles or the girls stirred enough to ask her what she was doing, she could explain, but she had no desire to. She opened her trunk and drew out the Bible and turned its pages until she found the words she was looking for.
And after the fire a still small voice.
From her apron pocket she drew out a sliver of wood so narrow, its tip tapered into a delicate curlicue. After supper she had walked the length of the stubbled line of grass until she found the stick of kindling Charles had used to light the backfire and pried a splinter from it with her fingernails. Now Caroline laid it across the paper, so that it underlined the verse. It would be impossible to see those words without remembering this day.
She had hardly spoken all evening. “Smoke,” she rasped with a tap of her fingertips against her aching throat, and that had satisfied them. It was only a portion of the truth. Behind her breastbone something like a small ember glowed softly, and Caroline did not want to douse it with talk. It was as though she harbored a tiny portion of the fire, and to her surprise, she wanted it to remain within her. So she kept silent, holding herself still around the fleck of warmth.
Carefully Caroline closed the Bible around the splinter and slipped it back into the trunk. She felt the way she had felt when her brother died, and when her children were born. Open, so that everything reached straight through to her heart. Entirely conscious of the current of life coursing through her. Until this day she had not noticed the concordant notes between the two. This was the feeling that came over her each time the veil between this world and the next was lifted. Today that veil had very nearly torn, and though no one had passed through it, Caroline still sensed its nearness and its thinness.
The scent of smoke wafted upward as she stepped out of her dress and hung it on its nail. Likely that smell would never fully leave the fabric. She wrapped her shawl close around her nightdress and went to stand a moment in the doorway. The bare, burned prairie stretched out beneath the moon, all black and silver. Like an ambrotype, Caroline thought, and wished that her mind could preserve the sight as clearly. It was not a scene that would lend itself well to a pressed metal frame propped against a mantelpiece. In the dark the line that separated the brown earth from the black all but vanished. Yet to Caroline it was as perceptible as the outline of her own skin.
That was how near the fire had come. That close and taken nothing. Rather, it had left something. Caroline rested her fist against her chest. With each beat of her heart her consciousness of the burn line seemed to momentarily intensify, as if her own blood were pulsing through it. Quietly she walked out from the house until the grass beneath her feet became stiff and dry. She crouched down and touched her palm to the earth. Warm.
Caroline let go of her shawl and put both hands to the ground, as though her cool skin might soothe the burned places—as though the prairie were a fevered child, and she its mother. A small portion of the heat entered her hands, and Caroline felt her body soften, as it did when she held her husband or her children. When she stood, she did not brush the ashy soil from her palms. She balled her two fists together, knuckle to knuckle against her chest, and held them that way all the way back to the house.
Inside, she bent over Charles and put her hands to his face. He stirred, half waking, and murmured something indistinct. Caroline climbed into the bed beside him. The sooty, sweaty smell of the fire still clung to his whiskers. She ran a toe lightly, so lightly, along the sole of his foot.
A sound, something less than a syllable, passed through his throat—the sound of everything else dropping softly from his mind. He turned toward her, slipping a hand across her ribs, his thumb settling just below her breast. Two bones, set farther apart than the rest, left a space where he could feel the flicker of her heart beating beneath the skin. Their feet slipped past one another again and again, the rough and smooth places crisscrossing in ticklish shivers. Caroline put her fingers into his whiskers. Charles kissed their tips as they brushed by his lips. Each kiss wakened the tiny spark of warmth deep within her. Kindling, she thought.
He lifted his body onto hers, forearms framing her head and shoulders. She closed her eyes as his hands burrowed into her hair. His long brown whiskers skimmed over her chin and collarbone, their tips grazing the bare skin along the yoke of her nightdress. She so lost herself in the feel of his fingers and thumbs kneading her temples and scalp that she felt that sweet unfurling, like a fist opening, even before Charles nudged his way into her. Caroline opened her eyes to watch the twinkle in his diffuse. It made her think of daybreak, the way the stars seemed to melt into a soft haze of brightness. From their very first night together it had become one of the things she relished most.
That first time had taken her by surprise, though not in the way she had expected. She had not known fully what to expect, aside from the surety that she must relinquish herself to her husband. Charles, she knew, would be gentle and so she had little fear of pain. Nevertheless, what she prepared for was a loss, however intangible. As he spread his weight gingerly over her, there had been one quick beat of panic she could not keep from rising to meet him. It is only Charles, Caroline had reminded herself, and resolved to be still and trust him to take whatever was his right as husband, and no more.
Instead she found herself slowly beginning to rock with him, astonished to see what her body could do to this man. Once within her he became like a boy in her arms, giddy and grateful, then nearly tearful with pleasure. What she felt was only an indistinct probing, not so much unpleasant as unaccustomed. Twice he moved just so and there were quick flickers of heat, glimmers of the brilliant flashes he himself seemed to be experiencing. The second of them had made her gasp at the delight telegraphing beneath her skin.
He’d stopped, drawing back as though fearful he might have burned her. “Are you all right?”
Caroline was panting softly. She could see it in the faint rise and fall of her breasts beneath her nightdress. “Yes, Charles.” And then, “Go on.”