Charlotte placed the saddles under the tree the same way they always did.  But she couldn’t imagine, on this one night, turning her back on him.  She calmed herself, checked that her shirt was buttoned up to the neck, all the petticoats in place, nothing showing anywhere.  He was already rolled in his blanket, lying on his back, eyes closed.  She lay down beside him.  Sensing her breathing coming from the wrong direction, he opened his eyes.

She put her arm across him.  “Just for tonight,” she said.  “I promise no one’s asking for trouble, just…”

After the briefest hesitation, he unfolded his arms and opened the blanket.  She crawled over the edge and into it, close against him.  He pulled the blanket back around both of them.  She fell asleep listening to the night sounds and the slow steady beating of his heart.

20

20

The morning felt somber.  From the temperature already, Charlotte knew the day would be hot.  The horses grazed peaceably.  She went down to the creek and washed her clothes, also using the privacy to wash herself as she did every morning.  She didn’t allow herself to think of an actual bathing tub filled to the brim with steaming hot water, or how it would feel to soak in it up to her neck.

How did Ada’s mother do it, she wondered, taking care of five children’s dirty clothes?  She guessed that’s why a mother wanted girls and a father wanted boys, each greedy for more help with their own large set of chores.  On the Second Migration, the women to whom slovenliness was a sin would even, after all the scrubbing and rinsing, heat up their iron in the fire and press out the wrinkles on aprons and dresses.  And then it would rain again, making a mockery of all that work.  Not that that had any bearing on the matter.  Work was a way to stay pure and focused.

Charlotte listened to a mockingbird in the highest branches of a nearby cottonwood running through its repertoire of fifteen different songs, all of them stolen.  She eyed the hawk drifting in lazy circles and wondered if hawks ate mockingbirds.  If one of those mindless birds happened to take up residence for the night, she knew from experience that sleep would be hard to come by.  Their love of their own voice contained within it no reasonable set of hours, daylight or dark.  A doe and fawn stepped out delicately from the thick brush upstream.  She wondered if these were the ones Chace had spared.

He was there when she carried her wet garments back to the wagon.  She studied his face but could find nothing different than any other day.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes.  Are you?”

He nodded and she knew they would talk no more about it.

“Ducks,” he said, holding up a pair.