grew up since you left us, huh, Mary?' 'Catherine, I'm so happy for you,' Mary said, kissing her young cousin on the cheek. 'Well, here you are, Jonathan!' Mabel Garner's voice boomed again. 'You're either powerful good or powerful wicked, needin' that much time in church!' Her boisterous laugh followed. She was almost as big as Jonathan, wattle- chinned, red-faced, bespectacled, good-natured, and well- loved. Jonathan was used to her outspokenness by now, and it didn't bother him anymore. With her whole brood around her, she resembled a mother turkey, her head higher than theirs, gobbling away while herding the young ones. 'Come over here, boy!' Every man was a boy to Aunt Mabel.
When Jonathan neared the group, Mary said, 'Aunt Ma- bel's just told me that Catherine and Mike are to be married in June.' Jonathan had inherited this bunch of cousins when he married Mary, so it was more or less family news that the oldest of them was to marry.
Preoccupied as he was with other thoughts, Jonathan found himself hard-pressed to join in the felicitations. But the wo- men were giddy at the news and couldn't be hurried away from each other, so Jonathan waited on the fringe of the group. Uncle Garner and he talked man-talk.
Jonathan's attention was now and then diverted to Aaron, who was across the dusty stretch of yard where the rigs were tied, leaning against a wheel next to Priscilla. From the way she cocked her head and blinked up at him from under her bonnet, it was apparent that Jonathan didn't have a day to waste. Pris meant to have a wedding ring on Aaron's finger, and then it would be too late. Sunday was the perfect day for doing the asking, the one day a week that they slowed their pace and let the farm do the same. The chores, milking and feeding the stock, were about all they did. It was the Lord's Day, and they used it as such. Plenty of time to ap- proach Mary and Aaron and put it to them, time for whatever would follow after he'd asked it. 'Jonathan, you'd better listen up a bit better, 'cause by the looks of it you'll be going through the same thing soon with that brother of yours over there,' called Aunt Mabel. 'If ever I saw a lovesick calf, it's Priscilla Volence. You know wed- dings always come in threes, and Catherine's will be only the first one of the summer!' 'Well, it's what we're hoping for, isn't it, Jonathan?' Mary asked, glancing at Aaron and Pris while taking Jonathan's arm. 'That's Aaron's lookout and none of ours,' Jonathan said, 'but yes, we're hopin'.'
They all moved toward the rigs, and Mabel Garner's voice preceded them. 'You gonna shine that wheel all day, boy, or you gonna drive that pretty li'l gal home?'
The head capped with a wealth of russet curls came up, and a hand waved at Mabel Garner. Aaron was a slightly younger version of Jonathan, slim-bodied, straight- nosed, wide-mouthed, although his lips were more crisply etched. Aaron had an eternally amused look about him. Crinkling his brown eyes in a smile, he called back, 'I see a morning in church didn't put much benevolence in you, Aunt Mabel. Your tongue is just as disrespectful as always.' 'Never mind my tongue, boy, just watch your own!' she hollered. Then, more quietly, she added, 'That boy's got the same spunk his pa had.' She watched Aaron and Priscilla mount their buggy and leave the churchyard, followed by Jonathan and Mary.
Moran Township was still reaching for its prime. The grass along the roadside was a pale shadow, like the beard of a youth not yet shaved for the first time. The willows along Turtle Creek wore fat, adolescent buds, promising soon to burst into the fullness of maturity.
So it seemed with Mary. She was something to behold, Jonathan thought, looking like a schoolgirl, eagerly leaning forward, hands on knees, nostrils to the wind, sniffing it, tasting it. Sitting as she was, she might be mistaken for a child. Her form was so slight that it seemed the knot of honey-brown hair at the nape of her neck must weigh her down. The only hints of maturity about her were small breasts, evident only when she drew in her breath beneath her woolen coat, sucking in the spring as if some of its fecundity might remain with her if only she could capture it long enough. She was a woman waiting for the same awakening that Moran Township awaited, awaiting the fullness of her season.
Jonathan knew this. From the corner of his eye he studied her, her eyes the blue of a summer cornflower, always wide, excited. Her little face, so childishly round of cheek, told of her Slavic ancestry. When she smiled, her eyes became larger, rather than narrower. It was this that gave her the look of expectation and gaiety. Too, Jonathan had never seen her pout or sulk or feel sorry for herself, and perhaps it was this everlasting zest that made him hopeful now. 'There's just nothing in this world as good as April!' Mary claimed now, nose still windward. 'Except maybe May!' Then in her typical, ebullient fashion, she raised her arms skyward and recited: 'April away!
Bring on the May!
But never too soon
For then it is June.'
Then her hands slapped back down upon her knees, shoulders hunched as before.
How in tarnation was a man supposed to reply to a thing like that? Most of the time, like now, Jonathan didn't answer, for there was no answer in him, not in words anyway. 'Just imagine waking up one year and finding that April and May had skipped by without stopping…I don't think I could stand it!' she bubbled.
Jonathan thought she talked like a child some times, and he wondered if it was because she had no child to do its own talking.
She was going on, '…but I guess April and May can't pass fast enough for Catherine and Mike. Just imagine, Jonathan, a June wedding, and Catherine's at that! Oh, it'll be lovely; Aunt Mabel will see to that. And we'll dance…' Here she raised her arms again, a bit of her skirt caught up in her fin- gertips, swaying to the imaginary music. Jonathan enjoyed her merriment but found himself unable to respond to it, which was often the case with Jonathan.
So, with the Minnesota breeze ushering them home, they rode, the quiet man and the childlike woman, following the rig that skimmed the gravel ahead.
When Aaron Gray left Moran Township a couple of years before, Priscilla Volence had been just another of the gawky kids up the road. By the time he returned, the gawkiness had become female allure. Everyone in Moran Township knew she'd set her sights on him the first time she'd seen him back at the Bohemian Hall. When his head snapped around for a second look, he found her meeting his stare boldly before the expression on her face softened. The gossips of Moran had hashed over every move the couple had made since then. And now they were sure Aaron and Pris weren't long for the altar.
If Priscilla had her way, they'd be dead right. She'd been ready for marriage since that first time she saw him after his return from the city, and he knew it perfectly well. But Aaron was put off by the idea. She'd worked her simple wiles on him in the plainest country ways possible: being available whenever he called, making no firm demands, letting him see how well prepared she was to handle a family and a home. Their farms were so close together that he'd had countless occasions to see her handle her younger brother and sisters, helping her mother with the never-ending house chores, her father with the field chores. Oh, she was prepared for marriage, all right. All she needed was the asking. But there was no pushing Aaron Gray. He seemed satisfied to woo her until they both started losing their hair, and nothing could get a proposal out of him.
And what did Aaron think? Riding through that April morning, taking Priscilla home in her father's rig, he recog- nized how deeply he'd settled himself into her family. He was so comfortable with them all that it seemed as if he were already a part of them. Maybe that was why his hackles rose when he thought of marriage. It seemed he and Pris had never had the chance to think about marrying before every- body in the township had the knot tied for them.
He admitted that he'd given Pris more than enough reason to expect his proposal. They'd been constant companions for the last year, and once, but only once, they'd been more. Granted she'd given in to him only once. But that was enough to build her assumptions on. The memory of that encounter didn't set lightly on Aaron. He knew she wasn't the type to dally with every young buck in the county. Indeed, he'd been her first. And just because that was true, Aaron felt a responsibility toward Pris. But it made him feel he was being forced toward marriage. And he simply wasn't ready for marriage.
Still, habits are hard to break, and spending time with Pris wasn't exactly a hardship. She was pretty, she lived close by, and they had fun together. So here he was again, headed down to her place to while away a Sunday, driving her pa's rig like he'd already married into it!
None of the others in Pris's family had gone to church that day. Agnes, her mother, was due with her fifth baby. Coming up the rise now where his own driveway angled off to the left, Aaron asked, 'You want to go straight home today, or should we have breakfast with Jonathan and Mary?' 'It's best I get straight back,' Pris answered. 'Ma will need help with the meal and all.'
