sometimes be bigger than his common sense, you know? And women have a hard time understand- ing that. But a woman's needs are so different.' 'A woman's needs aren't different at all, and don't you think they are. We all want pretty much the same-marriage and love and children.' 'In that order?' 'Most of the time.' 'It doesn't always happen so for a man.' 'That's nature, Aaron.' 'Yeah, well, nature's been giving me a hell of a time lately, then.' 'Maybe it hasn't been easy on Pris, either.' 'Whose side are you on?' 'I can't take sides, Aaron. You know I can't. I care enough about both you and Pris to want to see you happy. Both of you.'
She paused. 'But you see, Aaron, there's something you should under- stand, and it's what happens to a woman when another woman has a baby. It's like nature plays a trick on her, makes her think of it as her own. Hearing the news the first time, she'll hold fast to her own belly, just as if it were growing there. And no matter who the father is, for a time he seems special-as if she herself had been touched by him. Why is it she asks so many questions of an expecting woman? Well, it's because the more she hears, the more she shares-the discomforts and the joys. She hears about the quickening, and for a time it's hers, too. She hears of a heartbeat, and it might as well be beating inside herself. And the birth-she takes a share in that, too. And to see a newborn child is to want one of her own, whether she already has two-or twelve. It doesn't matter. Because that's the trick nature plays on her. It makes all women think of babies in terms of themselves.'
Under his hand Aaron could feel her toes, curled tightly now, as some might clench a fist in intensity. 'You plead Priscilla's case too convincingly for it to be only her case,' Aaron said, smoothing his hand over her feet, looking down at them. He looked up at her, huddled shiver- ing above him. 'I'm sorry, Mary, for being selfish and going on about myself.'
She drew her robe tighter about her. 'No, Aaron, that's not true. If you're selfish, then so am I, but I don't see us that way. I see us as two people who have to talk about what needs saying.' 'Don't excuse me so lightly. I should have had more sense than to go on-' 'More sense than to what?' She cut him off. 'To air a few feelings that needed airing? That's all we're doing, you and I.'
And it was all they were doing. But it occurred to Aaron how unseemly it would be if anyone knew how freely they'd talked. Here in Moran Township the straitlaced matrons would not understand that a talk so personal could take place innocently. He was amused at the thought of some pucker- faced old harridan pursing her mouth in sour shock. Gossip was the thing they thrived on, and Aaron disliked it. 'Oh, but if the town gossips could hear what we've been talking about, they'd choke in their sleep.'
It hadn't occurred to her before, but the thought of it brought a bubble of mirth to her lips. 'Oh, Aaron, I expect they would,' she laughed.
And the night, sealing them against self-consciousness, carried their laughter on its uncensoring ear.
2
Out in the fields was the place where Jonathan did his best thinking. There he found expressions and feelings that seemed to avoid him everywhere else. Between him and the land, it seemed, he could work out most anything. All of his twenty- eight years he'd lived on this land, and it had never failed him. At times he felt he might have sprouted right out of it, breast-fed by its nectars, nurtured by its grains, and made secure by its perennial richness. When in doubt, the land was there. It gave back all he put into it. So he gave it his best. He worked it in love, and it returned his faith.
Walking on his soil that spring afternoon, he thought how easy it was to drop a seed into it, how effortlessly the land returned it. Far easier to ask a return of that kind than to ask what he was setting out to ask of Aaron and Mary. 'Consider, Aaron, if you were to father Mary and me a child.'
He said it aloud, and it was good on his ears. Yes, that'd do just fine as a beginning. What would come to follow he couldn't guess, but Jonathan was fey to do the asking, no matter what.
He would keep his arguments all stored and ready to voice-somehow-and would divine just how to voice them when the time came.
But the time never came that day, while Jonathan's words were fresh on his mind. He returned from his walk in the late afternoon, and Aaron wasn't home yet. At chore time, he still hadn't returned. Then when the milking was done and Jonathan returned to the house, Mary said she'd seen Aaron heading for town and figured he'd gone after Doc Haymes for Agnes.
So Jonathan went to sleep that night with the question unasked, but through the following day it remained in his mind just as he'd rehearsed it, and by the end of the day, when they were all three in the kitchen around the big old claw-foot table, he was tense from the weight of it.
One thing worked in his favor. Agnes Volence had had her baby last night, and Mary had that queer urge to talk about it, like she always did after news of a birthing. 'We'll have to all go down there to visit, as soon as it's respectable. Maybe the end of the week or so.' She was mending something she held on her lap, and she didn't look up.
Aaron was drawing a handful of cookies from an old molasses pail in the middle of the table. He glanced at Mary, reading her intention immediately. 'You wouldn't be planning to do a bit of matchmaking while you pay your little social call, would you?' he asked. 'Why, Aaron, no such thing. It's just common politeness to visit the new parents. You know that.'
'It's not common politeness to go calling within a week of the birth. Agnes will more'n likely still be in bed.' 'And what better time to take a cake down there than when they're likely to appreciate it?'
She looked across at Aaron and put the thread in her teeth to bite it off. When she bit something off she was prepared to chew it, and he figured the sooner he made his peace with Pris the sooner Mary'd let up on him. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'We'll see. What do you think, Jonath- an?'
And then Jonathan did the strangest thing. He jumped. Or flinched, rather. 'Jonathan?'
Mary couldn't see Jonathan's hands, for the oilcloth cover hanging over the edge of the table hid them from sight. But she could tell he was wiping his palms on his thighs. 'Is something wrong, Jonathan?' 'Wrong?' But Jonathan had a frog in his throat, and he had to clear it before he could continue. 'Just that everybody is having babies but us.'
He didn't look at Mary, so he missed seeing her eyes drop quickly back to the work on her lap. 'Excuse me…' Aaron rose from his chair as if to leave. 'No. I want you to listen,' Jonathan said, staying his brother with a hand on his arm. 'I got something to say, and it's for both of you.'
Aaron glanced at Mary, but she kept her eyes on her nee- dlework. He sat back down slowly.
'We've been married seven years now. That's a long time. And there are no babies.' 'I think this is between you two, and I've got no place in it.' Aaron started to rise again, but a word from Jonathan stopped him. 'Stay.'
And though Aaron stayed, he did so reluctantly while Jonathan went on. 'We all here know what happened when we were boys-how we both got the mumps, Aaron, you and me. They left me'-here Jonathan swallowed-'I mean, we all know I can't father babies.' 'We don't know that for sure, Jonathan,' Mary said. 'I haven't given up hope.' 'Well, I gave up hope, Mary, and you're just fooling yourself anymore,' Jonathan said. 'There's no call to hurt her,' Aaron said quietly, remem- bering what they'd talked about the night before. 'Well, this place needs children, and they won't spring from me.'
Jonathan's palms were cold and damp on his thighs. His tongue, like a thick, swollen cork, threatened to stop up his mouth. 'But you, Aaron, they could spring from you.' It came out half question, half something else. But it was out. Before he dissolved in his own sweat, Jonathan hurried on. 'You're the natural one, Aaron. You're my brother. You see how there ought to be a child, don't you? It's not a thing I ask lightly.' He looked at Mary, and her hands were still, her face expressionless.
Aaron's impatience erupted. 'I'm getting pretty damn sick of everybody in five counties pushing me to get married. First it's the townspeople, then it's Pris, then Mary, and now you, Jonathan. It isn't bad enough that the others push only for a wedding. Here you are, pushing for an heir! If people would leave us alone, maybe I'd be more in favor of the idea, but I'm not even ready to marry Pris yet, let alone have ba- bies!' 'I'm not talkin' about you and Pris.' 'Well, what the hell are you talkin' about?'
Jonathan's Adam's apple rose and slid back into place. This whole thing had gone wrong from the start. Mary had a puzzled look on her face. He wanted to ask this for her sake, too. He wanted to give her this, but how could he get her to understand? The sweat rolled down his temple. Dampness made dark stains on his blue cambric shirt.
