But Mary lay beside him thinking nothing would ever be okay again. She’d been squandered by her husband, had compromised herself, and had denied Aaron the right to claim his baby. How could conceiving a child in the midst of such deception be okay?
Mary slept fitfully at last, but when she did, Aaron was there in front of her. He held his arms out and smiled at her, an invitation to his embrace. She ran a few steps toward him, but Jonathan came riding across her dream on the back of a large black bull. The bull came between her and Aaron, and she knew it would charge her if she took another step.
“Be careful, Mary,” Jonathan warned. “Be careful with my baby.”
“It’s my baby,” came Aaron’s hollow voice from beyond the bull. The bull and its rider blocked Aaron from her sight, but she could hear him calling that hollow cry over and over again, and soon the cry was mixed with her own and with the laughter of Jonathan as he sat on the bull’s back. The confusion of sound grew to a great din, and the bull became riled and wild and he charged off in a strange direction toward a waiting green field of hay, taking Jonathan with him. It was a long way to run to Aaron and she ran and ran and it hurt her distended stomach but she knew that when she reached him the hurt would be gone…I’m coming, Aaron…She held her belly to keep the pain away…Aaron’s arms were so near…but just as she reached him she found herself confronted by an army of potato bugs and she slapped crazily as they neared her ankles.
Her dream actions lapped over into semiconscious brushings that roused Jonathan. He awoke Mary, but he was too sleepy to wonder what had caused her to thrash around, and she was left alone once again.
15
August bore down without consideration for a pregnant woman. It came on hot and dry, pleasing the farmer instead. While Mary labored for long, sweat-drenched hours over the boilers that held her canning, the men toiled in the dry dust of the wheat and barley fields. Coming in only for noon dinner and at the end of the long afternoon, Jonathan and Aaron rarely saw Mary bending and stooping over the endless vegetable rows in the garden, but at the end of the day they both saw the redness of her skin from the sun and the neatly placed rows of filled fruit jars that stood on the tabletop, waiting to be carried into the root cellar under the pantry. Sometimes there would be dishpans of cucumbers on the porch or pails with the second crop of string beans. Then they would sit together in the last evening hour, snapping beans or scrubbing the cukes on the back porch for pickling the next day. The three of them never talked much anymore, but it was easy to chalk it up to the fact that they were all exhausted.
Aaron often found small jobs to keep him away from the house in the evening if there were no vegetables on the porch. None of them mentioned the night of Al Duzak’s visit, when Aaron had taken a bottle of wine out to the granary and finished it off all alone, drinking himself into a sick stupor that took two days to wear off.
By late August, Mary’s usual trim, flat belly had begun thickening perceptibly, and she sometimes unbuttoned the top button of her skirt and petticoat to make breathing and bending more comfortable. It wouldn’t be long now before she would be asked the reason for her newly blossomed shape. Few women would make any bones about coming right out and asking if she was pregnant. She wondered whether she’d mind it when the first one asked. Some penchant for privacy made her want to hug the knowledge to herself for just a little longer.
The one person who knew was Aunt Mabel. After church one Sunday, Mary had told her, “You were right, you know. I’m going to have a baby.” Then she quickly warned, “Shhh, I haven’t told anyone else.”
“Laws! How happy you must be, child. I can’t believe it myself. Now you remember what I said about takin’ it easy, and no overworking, you hear? I’ll come help you at threshing time, ‘cause it’ll take a heap o’ cooking for those galoots who’ll help thresh. You seen Haymes yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, I had mine without no doctor badgerin’ and probin’, but Haymes is a good man. You go visit him and mind what he says—we don’t want you droppin’ this one early on.”
“Yes, dear.” Mary placated her with a small laugh.
“And don’t go overdoin’ when those threshers are due. I’ll get there and do the heavy work, mind!”
“I’ll mind,” Mary agreed, thinking Aunt Mabel was being overprotective, but loving it.
Uncle Garner owned a steam engine and threshing machine that crisscrossed the county at harvest time. The threshing crew traveled with the rig, slept with it, ate as much food as it ate wood. With Uncle Garner gone so much of the time now, Aunt Mabel looked forward to spending a day or two in Mary’s company and at the same time helping her with the heavy cooking necessary for the threshing crew.
The grains were ripe and waiting: oats, barley, and wheat. Every farmer worked from dawn until dark, driving the horses that pulled the binder. As Mary walked behind the binder during the hot August afternoons, she alternately loved and loathed the chore of shocking; loved it because it put her near Aaron, loathed it for its backbreaking weariness. Aaron and Jonathan alternated jobs, sometimes driving the team, sometimes shocking, with Mary’s help in the afternoons. Much as they were concerned for Mary, the men knew her help was needed if the grains were to be ready when the threshers arrived.
Driving the team, Aaron spent much time looking behind him, keeping a constant eye on the twine box as the twine was payed out to tie the bundles. True, the twine box bore watching, but it wasn’t necessary to watch it as much as he did. Aaron craned around to catch a look at Mary, to wish she needn’t brush grasshoppers and spiders off her legs.
Jonathan worked and whistled a lot, now and then catching some chaff in his throat as he inhaled. Aaron’s neck grew stiff from its craned position, and he was relieved when it came his turn to shock.
Six bundles were stood up and a seventh was spread on the top, the flared tail of the top bundle holding the uprights in place. The fields of shocks made a continuous pattern that grew each day, the number of shocks increasing until the pattern was complete, the shocking was done, and the stacking could begin.
When the shocking was done, the bundles had to be pitched up onto the hayrack by hand, the rack inching up and down the field behind the horses, the three workers filling and refilling it after each ride to the barnyard where the stack was made. At long, weary last, the golden stacks stood hunched in the barnyard, kernels turned centerward, where they lay in a final sweat while nature loosened the grain for threshing.
The sweat might be final for the grain, but not so for Jonathan, Mary, and Aaron. They had all hoped for a respite from the hard work, but word came that the threshing rig was nearing, and Mary sent a letter off to Aunt Mabel on the day they finished stacking, telling her they expected the threshing crew any day now. There was no telling when the rig would appear, creeping up on the horizon like a giant prehistoric monster. It moved along from farm to farm at its best harvest pace. Aunt Mabel preceded it by only one day.
She bustled into the yard, and a tired but healthy Mary took one glimpse out the screen door at the rotund figure alighting from the carriage and flew outside to be hugged against her aunt’s generous chest.
“Aunt Mabel!” But no words could tell how happy Mary was to have her there. The great, loving bear hug was as welcome as the threshing crew would be.
“Well, it looks like I beat your Uncle Garner here,” were her first words.
“I’m happy you did,” said Mary as she backed off with happy tears reflecting the late harvest sun from her eyes.
The men were working downyard, stacking wood to feed the steam engine when it arrived, but a shout from that direction brought a halloo to Aunt Mabel and she waved back at the men. They stopped their work to glance at one another, one of them thinking, Help is here for Mary at last, the other thinking, The threshing crew can’t be far behind now.
The specially fattened hens were in scalding water, raising the stench of wet feathers to mingle with the aroma of b
aking bread. The two women came into the mixture of these smells as they entered the kitchen.
“Looks like you been busy, girl,” said Mabel Garner. Her presence filled the room in a homely way. She was plucking feathers before Mary had crossed the room to carry her grip into the front room. Mabel’s special status gave her a right to questions Mary would have resented from others, and it didn’t take Aunt Mabel long to start.
“You’re lookin’ mighty good, but you better take care of that sunburn, girl.”
“I’ll put some salve on it tonight,” said Mary as she came to join her aunt at the feather-plucking.
“Tonight, my eye!” Mabel scolded. “You do it now and leave this mess to me. You been out there shocking, have you?”
“Well, the men needed a hand if it was to be done in time.” Remembering her aunt’s admonition to take care of herself, Mary turned away as if to make light of her heavy field work.
“What do them men think you’re made of, anyway? You got no business out there in your condition.”
“It didn’t hurt me at all.” But Mary was pleased by her aunt’s concern. She enjoyed being coddled, which she rarely was.
“Well, it took you so long to get that way, we don’t want no grain crop undoing what it took you and Jonathan seven years to do.”
Mary had pulled a tin of ointment out from under the wet sink, and Mabel Garner saw her niece holding it in her hand and looking at it in an odd way. Mabel thought, Something’s troubling the child. But when she said as much, Mary brightened. “No, nothing’s wrong. How could it be when you’re here at last?”
The older woman’s affection for this slight, sunburned lass with the new roundness at her middle made her answer a bit gruffly, “I’ll give that Jonathan more’n a little piece of my mind for settin’ you to field work like that!” Then, with a specially hard tug at a clump of feathers, she grunted, “Humph! Damn them men, anyhow!”
But when Uncle Garner appeared, it was a different story. His threshing rig appeared over the east hill the next day at midmorning. Mabel Garner waited in the yard along with the three Grays, and it was hard to tell who was the most eager for the rig to pull to a stop. Jonathan pointed down to the new woodpile, and Uncle Garner waved to his wife with a smile as he drove his team down that way and finally pulled up with a “Whoa!”
Mabel Garner unabashedly hugged him as he stood beside the wagon. He planted a neat kiss on her cheek, slapped her on the rump, and said, “Got work to do, woman!”
“Damn if you don’t, Mr. Garner!” his wife laughed. Both of them had happy, wholesome smiles on their faces, which spoke of feelings rich with their age and their years together. Aaron didn’t miss it, and neither did Mary.
The threshing crew numbered nine, and when the slick, long belt was eased onto the pulley, the men in the farmyard became a part of the machine. The stoker loaded wood into the woodbox that fired the boiler. Aaron fed bundles into the thresher. One of the men who’d arrived with the rig was tending its operation, another was leveling the spewing grain around in the double box as it filled. Another double box waited to be filled while the first was driven to the granary, where one man shoveled it in and Jonathan waited to push it into the farthest corner of the bin.
The straw pile, cast off to one side, grew in proportion to the dwindling of the grain stacks. The men sweated outdoors while the women sweated indoors. The heat of Mary’s sunburn was multiplied by the radiating heat from the stoked range, yet the cooking went on.
Noon dinner was only the first big meal. It seemed the hungry workers could put away mountains of spuds, gallons of gravy, quarts of pickles, dozens of rolls, and roasters full of chickens. But appetites were totally whetted again by midafternoon, when an enormous lunch of sandwiches, pies, cakes, and hot coffee was wolfed down while the big engine kept puffing away under a full head of steam. By evening the chaff covered the yard with its dusty coat and the men scratched ineffectually at the pesky stuff where it mixed with sweat and encrusted their skins. No part of the body was immune to it.
“Them men ain’t gonna have no armpits or crotches left, they go on scratchin’ like they was at dinnertime,” Mabel Garner commented wryly, making Mary laugh.
“Look at Tony. What’s he doing?” The two women were standing in the kitchen doorway, the men down by the well washing up for supper.
“I’d say he’s feelin’ his oats!” Mabel Garner laughed as Tony Vrensek danced a crazy jig, scratching and rubbing himself in disgustingly funny places. Suddenly Vrensek catapulted for the cattle tank and dove in, startling a cow, which backed off with a complaining moo. The man came up spluttering, wearing a cap of green moss from the cow tank. The men hooted their enjoyment.
“What is it makes them men go crazy when threshin’s over?” Aunt Mabel questioned no one in particular, enjoying the scene down at the cowtank and Mary’s laughter.
“Well, girl, we’d best get the platters loaded. They’ll be ravenous. Especially Tony, after takin’ that swim!”
It was completely dark by the time they finished supper, which meant that the crew would wait until morning to move on to the next farm. They’d finished this one, and the haymow was filled with snores and snorts as the weary men bedded down in the sweet wild hay, thinking nothing of its itch after what they’d already been through.
The crew was fed breakfast before dawn and moved on, leaving full grain bins. Even so threshing left a curious empty feeling in its wake, the void of a thing completed, the hesitation before stepping into winter with hands idle. Even Mabel Garner felt it and hadn’t any of her usual rackety chatter as she sat with Mary over a final cup of coffee.
“Guess I never got a chance to get after that Jonathan, did I? You see that you take it easy, Mary.”
It grew quiet, and from outside somewhere came the sound of the grindstone as one of the men sharpened an ax. It brought to mind the coming of winter, the wood to be put up, the separations that lay ahead.
“Jonathan and Aaron will be going to hire out in Dakota again this year,” Mary said quietly, and Mabel heard the lonesomeness in her voice, as if she were already alone.
“Are you worried about being alone in your condition?”
“No, not really worried. I just dread the loneliness, like every year.”
“Yup. It ain’t easy bein’ without your man.”
If only you knew, Mary thought. But she said, “This is the last year I’ll have to be completely alone, though.”
“Aw, that’s the spirit, honey,” her aunt replied. “I’ve been expectin’ you to do more talkin’ about the baby but since I been here you hardly said a word about it. Somethin’ botherin’ you, child?”
The truth of what was bothering her welled up in Mary and brought with it a desire to tell Aunt Mabel the whole thing. But such honesty would only cause the other woman unnecessary concern. Mabel would worry herself sick if she knew. So instead, Mary reached over to pat the workworn hand that lay on the tabletop. “I’m just tired, I guess. We’ve been too busy to talk since you’ve been here, and now that the work is done, it’s time for you to leave. I just hate to see you go.”
“If you ain’t talked about the baby, I guess it’s because you’re scared like we all are when it’s our first one,” Mabel offered.
“I’m not scared, really,” Mary said.
“Then what? You sure ain’t happy.” Mabel Garner had that way of getting at the eye of a thing.
“I’m just not used to the idea yet. It takes a little time, I guess.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time when them men leave. Meanwhile, you cheer up and try to think of the blessing you been handed here and what a joy it’ll be when these here dull days’re done. It’s only natural, you bein’ a little blue now, but wait and see—it won’t last.” Mabel Garner knew that for a fact. She’d been through it enough times herself to know the feeling, and she worried about Mary being left alone while the men went out to Dakota.
“Are the men going to the sam
e place as last year?”
Mary hated the thought of their going, but there was nothing she could do about it. “Yes, the same place. Jonathan’s already written to Enderland, and he’s just waiting for word to come. He and Aaron will leave when the grain’s ready out there.”
This time it was Mabel’s turn to pat a hand and say with gruff affection, “Chin up, child, the time’ll pass before you know it.”
The morning that Martha Culley finally put her oversized Bohemian nose in Mary’s business, she did it when Aaron was within earshot. They were all out in the churchyard again on a Sunday in late September. The women were clustered near enough to the knot of visiting men so that Aaron heard every word.
“You’ve put on a little weight, haven’t you, Mary?”
Aaron’s ears had already pricked at the voices behind him.
“A little, I guess.”
“Couldn’t be you’re pregnant at last, could it?”
At last! Aaron thought. Why, that insufferable crow bait had her nerve to say a thing like that. He had no way of knowing Mary was wishing she could spit point blank in the middle of Martha Culley’s eye. Aaron heard Mary answer coolly, “Why, I believe it could be, Martha.” Then, like a gaggle of excited geese, the women flapped and squawked and wrapped their wings around Mary, then broke ranks to gather their ganders in and tell them the juicy news. Aaron thought the congratulations would go on forever after the first shrill voice announced, “Mary and Jonathan are going to have a baby.” He stood there among the well-meaning men and women with a rock in his stomach, and ground his teeth behind his pasted smile. Someone said, “It took you a while, Jonathan, but better late than never.” And Jonathan nodded and rocked back on his heels like a strutting rooster. Mary’s smile was tight, and she kept her hands crossed loosely in front of her as if shielding her unborn child from the carping flock. “I suppose you want a boy, eh, Jonathan?” another voice asked, and Aaron heard his brother reply, “Sure thing.” Then there was laughter and backslapping before someone whacked Aaron on the shoulder, saying, “So you’re gonna be an uncle, Aaron! What d’you know about that!” He kept his smile broad and thought, I know a damn sight more about it than you’ll ever guess. But he answered, “They waited a long time for this,” which was true enough yet feeble enough that he could force himself to say it. When his eyes flicked across Mary’s they both smiled a little bigger, but the others couldn’t tell these were forced smiles. To add his old touch of brotherly affection, Aaron dropped his arm lightly around her shoulders for all to see, squeezed her arm, and said, “She’ll be a hell of a mother.” Then dropped his arm while he smiled at Jonathan convincingly and said, “Congratulations, Jonathan.” Jonathan nodded, and the babble went on around them.