Caroline listened to the bite of Charles’s shovel as he dug the latrine pit and pinched her lip between her teeth. He would be hungry after so much hacking at the half-frozen earth, and there was nothing she could do to hurry the beans without burning them.
Charles stowed his shovel in the wagon, lifted the spring seat loose, and set it down before the fire. It stood no higher than a step stool. Caroline made a little show of scraping the edges of the pot rather than sitting. The last thing she wanted were those boards across her back and thighs again.
Charles sat down with a little bounce. His knees sloped up higher than his hips, so he stretched out his legs and propped the heels of his boots—one, two—in the snow. He inhaled deeply and smiled. He would not rush her with words, but she knew he was hungry and waiting. Her own stomach had worn through the apple slice.
She spooned up three beans and tasted them. None were quite done. One, the largest, was firm in the center like a fresh pea. She glanced up over the edge of the spoon. They were watching her, eager for a verdict.
Caroline wavered. In the oven or on the hearth a bean like that might give up its bone in half an hour. Out in the open with unseasoned pitch pine, there was no telling how much longer. It was either tantalize them with guesses or serve almost-done beans now. Neither prospect suited her, but eating now would be less a hardship than waiting for a meal that might not improve with time. She swirled a drizzle of molasses into the pot, then dished up four platefuls.
They ate with thoughtful-looking faces, trying to keep their chewing inconspicuous. Charles handed over his plate without asking for a second helping. “That was a good hot supper,” he said.
Caroline flushed. He meant it—Charles always meant exactly what he said—but if she parsed that sentence on a blackboard, good would connect to hot and no further. It was not quite a bad meal, but they ought to have had better—a meal with more virtues than its temperature. She would rather do without any praise at all than be complimented for not failing completely.
She scrubbed the dishes clean with hard fistfuls of snow, thinking of her stove. Her stove, with its four round lids and good steady oven. Beside it, the neat stack of dry seasoned stove lengths. Every bean she baked in it came out a soft nugget of velvet. Caroline smiled a little at herself. It felt good to miss that stove, good as a long hard stretch. That was one thing she could let herself miss. It did not sting like other, dearer things.
Charles closed down both ends of the canvas tight as knotholes.
The wagon had a new odor with all of them sealed inside it: the moist, vinegary musk of skin encased all day long in woolen wrappings, their sweat chilled and thawed and now chilling again. And Charles had hung the new poncho up on a hook alongside his rifle. It added a dry, rubbery tang.
Mary and Laura watched Charles roll up the small straw tick from the pile of bedding and push it onto the floor at the front of the wagon.
“Where do we sleep, Ma?” Laura asked.
“Right down here,” Charles said, “where the spring seat was. Just like the trundle bed.”
The space was narrow, even for the small tick. Its edges curled against the sides of the wagon box and made a little nest of it. Their two pillows bunched together where the sides met in the center.
Caroline nestled one hot flatiron in each corner to warm the foot of the small bed while the girls stood on the big straw tick to be undressed. She worked their red flannel nightgowns quickly down over their red flannel underthings and tied their nightcaps fast under their chins.
First Mary, then Laura hopped down into the nest of straw. Both of them grinned through chattering teeth at the novelty.
“Snuggle up close, now.” They scooted together. Caroline laid two quilts over them. The third she tucked down in between the sideboards and the ticking, crimping the edges tight as a pie crust around her daughters.
Mary and Laura shivered gratefully under the stack of chilled blankets. Caroline watched them, so tired yet so clenched with cold that they fought to rest. She remembered how easily they had all settled down to sleep, warm and drowsy in the light of the cozy little bunkhouse fire the night before, and her breath hitched.
Suddenly it was not safe to look even that far back. Only forward. On the spring seat it had been simple. All day long she sat with the road reaching ahead and thought herself steadily forward. Toward the vague, bright notions of spring, the new land, the new house, the new child. Now there was nothing but the long still night before her, nothing to cast her thoughts onto but a blank wall of canvas as near as her toes.
No, it would be closer yet than that, Caroline saw as she and Charles undressed. Their own straw tick was longer than the wagon box was wide. A foot or more of it was folded under itself at one end. Unless he lay diagonally across the middle of the mattress, Charles must sleep with his knees kinked. Caroline was not sure she could stretch herself full.
She crawled across to the side nearest the girls and tried to crimp herself into something like a triangle to leave all the room she could for Charles. Mercy, it was cold. Cold filled every hollow straw beneath her. Her feet wanted to reach down for the hot flatiron she knew was somewhere beyond the icy stretch of muslin, but her body resisted and pulled her limbs in close to guard its own warmth. She would have liked to burrow into Mary and Laura’s little den, with her knees drawn up and the sides hugging her all around.
Charles lifted the quilts and a fresh rush of cold slipped in with him. He climbed quickly in beside her, closing the seam between them—his knees pointing into hers, her seat in his lap, his chin peaking at the crown of her head. The cold from his nightshirt rattled a shiver through her back. He slipped his arm under hers, settling his fist over her heart.
The gentle pressure of his hand melted her as though she were made of wax. One tear and then another burned across the bridge of her nose. She had kept her sadness so carefully lidded these last two days that it had thickened into a stock so rich she could smell the salt before she tasted it. Caroline’s throat narrowed so she could scarcely draw breath. Only a long thin note, too high to hear, seeped steadily through to warm the roof of her mouth.
In the morning, a thin frost rimmed the underside of the wagon cover—their breath, adhered to the canvas.