Planting the small grains of wheat, oats, and barley during the following weeks, he contented himself with dreaming of the Angus. Aaron, pouring seed to fill the grain drill, wished that his brother would cease whistling for just one day, but Jonathan leaned to his work, whistling his way through the seeding. Aaron worked beside him while they finished the wheat planting and moved to the oats. They worked long days, staying in the fields to use even the last dusk-lit hour for sowing. But after the long hours with the sun in their eyes in one direction and the dust in their mouths in the other, evening chores waited for them. Jonathan seemed unaffected by the hours of arduous labor, but while milking at the end of the day, Aaron's hands ached, the winter- softened skin burned from the leather reins he'd pulled all day. It didn't warm him toward his brother any, either. Aaron continued to simmer at Jonathan's satisfied air.
Full spring rounded on them suddenly, bringing all her best out of hiding: bloodroots, Indian turnips, wild arbutus, and more. Dandelions with bitter leaves needed sweetening into wine, wild asparagus appeared on the dinner table, watercress made its once-a-year appear- ance in spring runnels, and comfrey needed gathering for next winter's medicinal brews. Even the ditches burst into an array of color as Indian tobacco, pennyroyal, and crow- foot blossomed again. The arborvitae berried, evergreens candled, oaks spoke after their long silence, elms blossomed and seeded, and birches popped their bark. Liverwort, trilli- um, and wake-robins appeared in the woods while the garden perennials shook their winter-flattened hair.
And everywhere the animals nested. Squirrels outspokenly hurried every which way. Gophers disappeared into the ground with bits of grass in their mouths. Swollen garter snakes and toads frequented the garden. The paired wrens returned to their house in the low-branched mountain ash. The barn cats had a litter somewhere, the female reappearing thin and slack, her underbelly swaying as she walked. Hens clucked in their nests, stubbornly refusing to lay again until they felt something alive move beneath them. The geese were laying and would continue as long as their eggs were taken. Mary collected them each day and kept them carefully until there were the fifty she wanted for a summer flock, when she would put them under the 'clucks' and let them have their way, but meanwhile she turned the goose eggs over daily, sprinkling them with water as the mother goose would have done with her bill.
Nature reaffirmed itself in celebration. And the three who lived and worked so closely with it felt its urgency.
But in mid-May, Mary's monthly flow started. She returned to the house and tore clean rags, stubbornly refusing to let it bother her. At midday she tore more and washed those from morning, taking them to spread on the sumac bushes in the woods behind the outhouse. She never hung them on the clothesline between the birches in the yard, for she thought they'd be indelicate strung out there, the stains never completely bleached clean. So they lay on the sumacs, covering the scarlet buds that were promising to bear leaf soon, she still stubbornly saying to herself, 'I don't care, and I hope Jonathan knows it!'
But the thought came unbidden: two weeks from now when he goes off to Minneapolis, it'll be the time of the month Doc Haymes and I believe in…the time he says a woman conceives…
She'd never been able to convince Jonathan to accept what Doc Haymes held to be true. But just like the animals, there were changes in her body then, swellings and flowing, ten- derness and sensitivity that it lacked at other times. She could never say to Jonathan, 'See, feel, I'm different now,' for he had always refused to believe the theory. But he knew darned well that she held it as true, and she wondered if he would notice those rags out there on the sumacs and figure ahead.
The sumacs were the last to leaf, and Jonathan caught glimpses of white through the redness of the licorice-whip branches, knowing what was out there again. He'd listened to Haymes's carp ing and lived with Mary's hopefulness long enough to reckon the days, counting them off from now until his trip. Not really admitting to himself their significance, he muttered, 'Flap-doodling old fool!'
5
The following Saturday, they went to town with the double box buckboard to buy potatoes for seed. The seat was wider than that of the trap, so they rode uncrowded, Aaron hand- ling the reins. His hands were raw, and he felt every shift of the leather in his palms.
They dropped Mary off at the Mercantile store and went off to see to the buying of seed potatoes. She shopped from a long list, for it had been a while since she'd come to town. She selected tinned foods, fresh crackers from the barrel, and visited with Sam Motz while he weighed the coffee beans and the seeds she'd selected for the garden, measuring them out by the ounce into small paper sacks. He drew vinegar from the wooden barrel in the strong-smelling back room and returned the crock jug to her, corked and filled. She treated herself to touching and admiring the bolts of materi- als, thinking of a dress for her cousin's upcoming wedding. Sam asked if she'd care to buy a length, but she had no eggs to trade that day, and, knowing the bill would run high as it was, she said no.
She savored her time in the store as she sa vored its smells-pungent, dry, sweet, and spicy all mixed in one. Acquaintances from town came in, and she visited with them.
Later, she waited under the awning on the boardwalk for the men to come back for her, but when the wagon pulled up, Aaron was alone. He said he'd be right back and went inside to pay the bill, then carried the boxes of food out, putting them on top of the potatoes that now lined the bot- tom of the wagon bed. When Aaron came out of the store for the last time, Mary was sitting on the high-sprung seat. He had a brown-striped candy stick in his mouth and handed one up to her before climbing up to take the reins.
She took the proffered candy, a peace offering, self-con- scious again with him beside her. 'Where's Jonathan?' She knew they'd already finished at the feed and seed store. 'He stopped off at the railroad station,' Aaron answered. 'The railroad station?' Her rising note questioned why. 'To check out the price of a train ticket to Minneapolis and a schedule.' 'He really means to go, then?' she asked. 'Yes, it looks that way,' Aaron admitted.
The strain was showing on his face. There were two deep, parallel furrows between his eyes. Maybe it was from frowning into the sun all day, but she suspected it was less from the sun than from their situation. He looked thinner and tired. She wished she could smooth his worry from him, dust it away with a light brush of fingers, but she now dare not touch him.
It was just a couple of blocks to the railroad depot, and as Aaron turned the horses toward it, he knew he had only the space of that three-minute drive to convey the thoughts it had taken him weeks to straighten out in his head. 'Mary, if Jonathan leaves, I'll have to stay. The place can't run itself. But honest, Mary, I'd never lay a hand on you…you know that. What Jonathan said is bound to be running through your mind, and now with him getting set to leave us like he said, I just don't want you worrying about what's going to happen. Because nothing's going to-I swear to you, Mary.'
It was the first time he'd said anything about it since Jonathan had brought it all up, and, try though she might, she couldn't hold that heat from leaping to her face. Aaron was looking directly at her, holding the candy stick forgotten in his hand. She returned his gaze as steadily as possible. 'Oh, dear God, Aaron, don't you think I know that? Did you suppose I don't trust you?' Seeing the color mount to his face, she knew what it had cost Aaron to say what he had. 'Well, it had to be said, Mary. We all shut up and never said a word about Jonathan's wishes, but it can't fester inside forever. Now it looks like he really means to run off to Min- neapolis, and there's nothing we can do about it. I just had to tell you, to put your mind at ease.' Then his attention turned again toward the team he was driving. 'Aaron,' she said, also looking now at the horses that pulled them toward the depot, 'Thank you, but you know I'd trust you even if you hadn't spoken up.' 'Even after what I said on the back porch that night?' The memory of his frank admission still burned him. 'I could ask the same thing after what I said on the porch, too.' 'No, you're…well, you're Mary,' he said, as if just being Mary put her above reproach, above compromise.
It was silent then, but Aaron heard what he'd said, and it suddenly sounded as if he'd said he could never consider her womanly, female, as if she hadn't the wherefore necessary to attract him. That wasn't the way of it at all, and he hoped she wouldn't think so. Jonathan had already robbed her of enough pride, but God, how the girl had stood up and re- fused to be cowed. Not many would have shown the spunk she had.
They were pulling up to the depot building then, and he turned her way and asked simply, 'Friends?'
And she nodded, her eyes lighting with relief and warmth. 'Friends.'
