“Don’t, Mary…don’t,” he pleaded, seeing her tears. He felt like a puppet who’d made a careless move and entangled itself in its own strings. “You’re tearing me apart. If you don’t stop, I swear I’ll grab you again and kiss you right here before God and my brother both.”
She knew if she didn’t control her tears he’d make good his threat—his promise—so she got the upper hand over her tears again, but still looked bruised. She realized the injustice of her withholding from Aaron her precious secret. Whatever it cost her, she must tell him and tell him first before Jonathan. It was the only consolation she had to offer him.
She looked quickly toward the barn, but it was quiet, the cats sitting outside the door. Oh, please, God! Don’t let Jonathan come out yet, she thought before looking up at his brother, hoping that her face revealed the depth of feeling she had for him.
“What I have to tell you is the most important thing in the world to us, Aaron, but the most painful.”
He took a turn glancing down at the barn before turning a puzzled, questioning look at her.
She drew in a ragged breath and tried to erase the strain from her face so that his memory of her telling him would not be grim.
“Aaron, I’m going to have a baby.”
She caught the full impact of his surprise as his mouth dropped open at the same instant Jonathan emerged from the barn with two milk pails. Aaron looked thunderstruck but struggled to regain a casual countenance as Jonathan approached. But it didn’t work. Aaron had been gone from the barn long enough that Jonathan had guessed something was amiss. Mary picked up her chicken water and hurried away toward the coop, thinking she was fleeing like a coward, but unable to stop herself. Aaron was left to fill the void hanging between himself and his brother.
“I meant to come back down, but Mary needed a little help with the chickens and geese. Sorry, Jonathan.”
“Yup. It’s all done now, anyway,” answered Jonathan, heading for the house, leaving Aaron there alone to damn the poor timing, which had cut Mary away from him again, and at the most inopportune moment.
For several days, no chance came up for Aaron to question Mary. It wasn’t a conversation to be picked up with the risk of interruption, or with the risk of being observed.
The work that Jonathan did, Aaron did beside him, so they were together most of the days. The wild hay was cut and left to dry. Tying the hay into bundles in the hot, dry field, Aaron went over and over again the simple statement Mary had made.
Aaron, I’m going to have a baby. Not “Jonathan’s baby”…not “your baby.” Just “a baby.” Would she know whose it was? Was it his own or Jonathan’s? If she didn’t know whose it was, it would be torture for them all.
Mary had the advantage of knowing who the father was, but it was little consolation, for she was feeling Aaron’s confusion as keenly as he, and was impatient to answer his unasked question. Her impatience was compounded by her wish to be able to tell Aaron that Jonathan hadn’t sought her out in bed since his return. She truly didn’t understand why he hadn’t, but knew it wouldn’t be long before he did again.
She felt compelled to tell Aaron the entire truth before she broached the subject with Jonathan. If this should be impossible, Mary would feel a kind of disloyalty toward Aaron. This was what confused her, for in her heart she knew Aaron could never claim the baby outright. Yet Jonathan would, even knowing it wasn’t his. Why, then, the disloyalty toward Aaron? Shouldn’t she feel it toward her husband, instead?
Jonathan was the only contented one of the group. Harvesting any crop always filled him with a sense of fulfillment, and this year the taking of the wild hay meant a new pasture for Vinnie to forage in.
Vinnie.
Yes, Vinnie was the bright spot in Jonathan’s life. Not a day went by without his stopping by the wild hay to admire the bull and play the imaginary game of watching a hayfield filled with Vinnie’s pure-black offspring fattening for market. When the bull caught the flicker of any motion, his head came up and his red eyes followed the movements as he stood dead still. The alert pose was accented by the breadth of his powerful body, which was growing fast in the rich, nurturing Minnesota summer. Vinnie’s stance would be held until Jonathan neared the fence. Then his natural curiosity would take over, and he’d approach the fence with an unblinking eye, studying the familiar man. The man and the bull would stand eye to eye, at ease with each other while they carried on a conversation.
“Hey, big boy, you’re lookin’ fine. Come on over.” And Jonathan held a clump of fresh, long grass invitingly toward Vinnie.
But the bull took his time, studying the man, listening to his soft, low voice.
“Come on, now, it’s the least you can do to step over to the fence after I come clear down here to see you.”
The bull relented, made a low grunt, flared his nostrils, and stepped nonchalantly toward the proffered grass.
Jonathan scratched Vinnie’s face, enjoying the grinding sound as the bull scratched the grass.
“You like that good stuff, huh? Good. You just eat to your heart’s content because we gotta grow you up and get you breedin’. Any breedin’ to be done around here’s gotta be done by you, you know. There won’t be any done by me. But it don’t matter, Vinnie…” And after a long, quiet pause, the bull’s head jerked a little as if he wondered why the man had grown quiet. Jonathan seemed to hear the bull’s question.
“I don’t mind. She hasn’t told me yet, but I’m pretty sure of it now.”
The bull stretched his head forward, then shook it, rolling it left and right.
“Hey, I said it’s all right, didn’t I? Of course I’m hoping it’s a boy. If it is, then between you and me, I guess we’ll have pret’ near everything we could ask for, huh?”
A heavy hoof on the ground answered him.
“All you gotta do is grow up a little more, and by next spring we’ll start building a herd for my son, okay?”
Sometimes a snort came from the bull while Jonathan stood deep in pensive thought before shaking himself alert once more.
“Yes…all a man could ask for…”
And so the two became friends, and Jonathan poured out his feelings and expectations, both of which seemed to grow in proximity to the bull’s pasture. To the bull Jonathan could speak with ease, and he always felt understood, his tongue becoming glib while the bull listened.
Jonathan was content, feeling the fullness of life. He saw this fullness in the maturing bull. He witnessed it in the ripening fields. He sensed it in Mary. But he blocked out Aaron’s part in it and trusted that everything would somehow work out for the best.
One evening while the men were both in the barn finishing chores, a strange rig drew into the yard. Mary stepped out onto the porch to greet the driver. As he stepped from his wagon, she thought his face was slightly familiar.
“Hello,” she called from the porch.
“Hello, Mrs. Gray,” the man greeted her as he started through the gate and came toward the house. When he reached the steps he extended his hand and said, “I’m Aloysius Duzak from over in Turtle Creek Township.”
“Well, of course.” Mary remembered him now. “How are you? What brings you up this way?”
“I tell you, Mrs. Gray,” Duzak said, “I hear your husband bought a prize-winning bull, and I drove over to see if I could get a look at it.”
“I don’t know why not. Jonathan’s so proud of that bull, he’d be happy to show it to anyone.” Mary came down from the porch, and they began walking toward the barn as she continued, “He’s still out here doing the milking. Come on down and talk to him.”
“I sure appreciate this. I’ve been hearing so much about the animal, I wanted to get a look at it for myself. It’s a Black Angus, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And he’s Jonathan’s pride and joy. He went all the way to Minneapolis to buy him and had him shipped up here on the train.”
“That’s what I heard,” Duzak responded.
 
; When they got to the barn Mary introduced Duzak, but Jonathan and Aaron both seemed to know him already as they got up to shake hands with him.
They exchanged greetings before Jonathan asked, “What brings you up this way?”
“A little curiosity about that new bull of yours. Wondered if I might take a look at him.” Duzak rocked back on his heels as he asked the question, and Jonathan clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Sure thing. I’m just finishing up here.”
But Aaron interrupted, saying, “Go ahead, Jonathan. I’ll finish up. We’re nearly done, anyway.” And he resumed his hunkered position beside the cow he’d been milking when Duzak came in. The cows were never tied and the barn had no stanchions, so as Jonathan turned to leave the barn, his cow sensed the man’s leaving and began backing up to head for the open door to the barnyard.
Jonathan flapped his hands at the cow and slapped her on the rump, saying, “Hold it, boss, you’re not done yet.” Then he called to Mary, who was already out the door. “Can you come here and hold this one until Aaron gets a chance to finish her?”
Mary came back into the barn and held the cow the only way she could—by taking her place on the milk stool and making milking actions that yielded little milk but kept the animal pacified until Aaron could take over.
The voices of Duzak and Jonathan trailed away as they left the barn.
The two cows chewed their cuds, and the comfortable sound soothed Mary. Everything else was quiet. Mary had a tranquil sense of going back to the beginning, sitting there in the barn with the pair of cows and Aaron, just like that first evening after Jonathan had left. Her milking was ineffectual, as it had been then. The closeness of the barn created the same earthy intimacy as it had last spring. The same feeling of expectation was in the air.
Aaron had little milking left on his cow, but it seemed to take an eternity while precious minutes alone with Mary were slipping away. He figured they might have half an hour together while Jonathan walked to and from the wild-hay meadow. His hands worked like pistons, and his heart seemed to be doing the same. He had to get these damn cows out of the way before he could talk to Mary. This was too important to risk being distracted, even by the cows, so Aaron hurried, hurried.
There was always something special about looking at Mary when they were alone together, as if Jonathan’s absence gave Aaron the right to her. Seeing her squatting there on the milk stool, his heart responded to the scene being repeated in so much the same way as their first evening together. She looked up at him silently, then they exchanged places.
No matter how firmly Mary had resolved to get through this without breaking down and touching him, it was like it always was. She stood beside him and crossed her arms over her stomach to keep her hands off him. He began the milking, then raised his eyes to her, and they looked at each other while the steady rhythm of the milk fell into the pail, Aaron not needing to watch it to know where it would fall.
“Aaron, I’m not very strong-willed,” she confessed.
“That’s because you love me, Mary,” he said.
But she drew her fists up and pressed them against her temples, saying, “Don’t say that, Aaron.” And she stepped back a step, as if by moving away from him she could combat her feelings. “I have to get over it, that’s all.”
“Tell me about the baby, Mary. I’ve got to know.”
He stood up and lifted the pail safely away while the cow moved toward the door, separating him and Mary for a moment. When it was quiet and they stood facing each other again, she said simply, “The baby is yours, Aaron.”
He heard it many times, though she said it only once. It seemed to resound off the barn walls, and the more he heard it, the weaker he became, until he thought he’d drop the pail of milk. So he set it down on the floor.
Then, like a fighter who has suddenly had the wind knocked from him, Aaron’s breath swooped out. “Jesus Christ.”
He covered the space between them in a leap, lifting her off her feet. He held her suspended, crushed against his chest, and swayed back and forth with her until she felt an ache in her groin from hanging that way so long.
“Put me down, Aaron. It hurts,” she said against his neck.
He reacted swiftly, guiltily, setting her on her feet and turning her loose in one swift movement.
“Oh, Mary, I’m sorry. Are you all right?” He looked like the ache had struck him instead of her, and he dropped one big hand to her belly, covering it and her own two hands that were pressing it.
“Yes. It’s all right,” she assured him. “I just have to move a little slower to keep that from happening lately.”
She stepped back then and started talking before he could reach for her again.
“Aaron, I wanted you to know about it first…before Jonathan. He doesn’t know yet, but now I’ll be telling him. After that, I’m not ever going to talk about it with you again.”
“But, Mary, it’s my…”
She cut him off. “Let me finish this, Aaron, or I never will. There’s only one way it can be. Jonathan hasn’t touched me since he came back, so he’ll know the baby isn’t his. I won’t have to tell him so. But I’m going to promise him it won’t ever happen again between you and me, and I’m going to try with all my might to keep that promise.”
“You can’t mean this, Mary,” Aaron said. But she stopped him again by rushing on.
“I have to mean it, Aaron. There’s no way you and I could live, trying to get over the disgrace, if we admitted the baby is yours.”
“There are other places we can live besides Todd County,” he said.
“There’s no place,” she said with finality.
“The hell there isn’t,” Aaron argued, half in supplication and half in anger.
“We knew it when we started,” she said.
“When we started, I didn’t know this would happen. It changes everything.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m Jonathan’s wife.”
“But it’s my child.”
“At his request,” she stated, hating herself for having to say it.
“Are you saying you believe all that hypocritical claptrap he threw at us that I owed him this? Or are you saying you made love with me because he asked you to?” His facial muscles were drawn up hard, and it hurt her that he’d become angry.
“No, Aaron. Oh, don’t be angry. I didn’t say you owed the child to Jonathan. I…I’m pregnant because I love you and not because Jonathan asked what he did. But I have to get over it and make a new life with Jonathan.”
“And my baby?” he asked simply.
But she dared not look up or answer.
“I’m asking about my baby,” he repeated. “Can you look at me and say you want to give my baby to another man?”
Tears came to her eyes, and she pleaded, “Don’t, Aaron.”
But he pulled her chin up with his hand and she was forced to meet the hurt in his eyes. “Don’t, Aaron?” he asked quietly. “Don’t fight for my life? It’s my life you’re carrying, and you say you’re going to give it away to another man.”
“It’s not just another man. It’s your brother. How could we be allowed to live in peace, knowing—”
His words covered hers again, though. “Brother be damned! At least we’d be living. Apart, we’re dead.”
“What would we tell the child when he grows up?”
“The truth,” he answered. “That he’s ours because we loved each other.”
“While I was married to your brother?”
They stood with their eyes locked, the weight of her question pressing on their consciences.
“We can go away to another state. It’s a big country. We can live anywhere in it.”
“How?” she asked.
“I have some money,” he said, “and the house.”
“Do you believe Jonathan will pay you for your house so you can run away with me?”
They stood in hurtful silence together, slowly realizing that she was right
.
“You tried the city once, Aaron, but you told me how you hated it. It’s farming that’s your way of life. How could you go away from the farm? This is where your life is.”
He came near her again and placed his hand gently on her stomach. “This is where my life is. How can I live here without it and you?”
In the end she was the stronger of them. She pushed him gently away, saying, “Even if I learn to love Jonathan again, it won’t mean I loved you less. I’m telling him tonight about the baby, and everything will change after I do.”
She slipped out the barn door then, and was gone. He stood there with everything aching in him.
It was dark when Jonathan went up to bed. Mary was already there, but no lamp was lit. He felt his familiar way up the stairs and undressed. When he got into bed beside her, something told him that she was still awake. After he had sighed his usual bedtime sigh and settled onto his back, she coughed softly in the dark. It was quiet for a while before her voice came to him.
“Jonathan?”
“Ahuh,” he grunted.
She lay with the blood pounding in her ears, her throat tight, and her palms damp. He could hear her breath, short and shallow, and he knew before she said it what she had to tell him. When she didn’t go on, he turned his head toward her in the dark. “What?”
“I’m going to have a baby.”
With the words came a sharp pain of disappointment that caught at her hammering heart, giving her voice a catch. After all the years of waiting to tell her husband this, telling him now was empty, bitter.
“I reckon I knew it already,” he said, and her relief was great.
She wondered what all he’d guessed about herself and Aaron, but still didn’t really want to know.
“It’s what I wanted,” Jonathan said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be…” Here he swallowed. “It’ll be ours. I mean, people won’t question that I’m the father,” he said, telling her that he knew the child was Aaron’s.
She was silent, guilty.
“It’s okay,” Jonathan assured her, but, less than assured himself, felt the truth swiftly burn through him as if a new rope had sizzled through the slack grip of his innards. “It’s okay,” he repeated.