looked for Mary on the porch. But the overturned basket told him the washing was done and she must be inside cooking dinner. He had un- hitched the team, leaving the marker at the edge of the field, and had driven the horses up the lane, walking behind them.
The wind carried Aaron's voice as he neared the yard, guiding them into a right turn with a
'Gee! Gee' guiding the team. Mary could hear him talking to the horses companionably as he came around their rumps and walked toward the well. She stood a few paces back from the screen door and watched him take the tin cup from the long metal finger on top of the pump. She knew he couldn't see her, but thrilled in anticipation as he leaned his head back to swill the sweet water, all the time looking over the rim of the cup toward the house. He hung up the cup, then pumped the handle again and cupped his hands under the rush of water and splashed his face, running his fingers back through his thick hair. She imagined the texture of it under her own fingers. Aaron turned and began walking to- ward the house. She skimmed a hand over her hair and turned to look busy at the stove. 'Jesus, girl, you look good standing here,' Aaron said, and she understood what he meant. 'It's where I belong.'
She put both of her arms around him and felt the wetness of the water on his face. He laid his cheek on hers, and it made smacking noises near their ears, with the moisture between their skins. When he released her, she picked up the skirt of her apron and toweled his face with it, then her own. 'Did you sleep?' he asked, leaning back but leaving his arms around her waist. 'Yes, way too long. Did you?' 'Like a cat who got the cream,' he answered, and saw a light blush come to her face. She escaped his embrace and turned her flustered attention to their meal.
'Thank you for filling the boiler, Aaron,' she said. 'Well, it's the least I could do for a lady I kept up half the night.' He came up behind her as she carried a bowl to the table, and tugged lightly on her tied-back hair. 'I like your hair pulled straight back like that,' he said, but she bobbed her head away, saying, 'I've never forgotten the wash water before. I don't know what came over me last night.' 'I do,' he said with a teasing grin. 'Me!'
His impertinence had her downright red by this time. Aaron was enjoying every minute of it. She looked as enchant- ing as a schoolgirl. Last night in the pantry she'd taken his teasing lightly, but today in the daylight she seemed so bashful. 'Mary, if I tease you it's because I'm happy, okay?' he asked.
She stopped in her path from table to stove and looked at him. 'Yes, Aaron,' she approved, 'it's just that it's new to me, that's all.' 'Many things are new to you since last night,' he said, 'but every one of them's fine and good.' 'Yes, I think so, too.' 'Okay,' he said, and they smiled at each other.
They sat down to eat then, but they'd barely begun when Aaron noticed she'd not set the teakettle on the hottest part of the stove for scalding their dishes later. 'You forgot the kettle,' he said, and she started to get up at the same time as he did. He said, 'I'll get it,' but when he lifted it he felt it was empty and went to the pump to fill it. Coming back to the table, he came up behind Mary and put his lips near her ear, whispering, 'Is something coming over you again, Mary? This forgetfulness is not like you.' He planted a bit of a kiss on her neck before sitting down again.
She blushed.
In the early afternoon they walked out to the cornfield behind the horses. Aaron had more marking to do, so Mary began the planting with the hand planter while he finished marking the last of the checkrows. He turned the horses free to crop the grass along the edges of the field before joining her with a second planter. Together they crossed and re- crossed the checkered field, hesitating at each x to push the seeds into the earth.
They broke to fill their seed canisters and later for a drink of water from the fruit jar Mary had left on the grassy verge in the shade of a rock. He opened the burlap-wrapped jar and handed it to her first. After she drank, she two-handed it straight across at him. But taking the jar from her he turned it until the side she'd drunk from was under his lips, the timeless gesture of a lord for his lady. She turned pink as he handed the jar back to her, but feeling a bit bold when he leaned up close, she kissed him on the corner of his mouth, rather surprising both of them.
They worked through the afternoon, thinking of evening. None of the usual monotony of the job struck them, for monotony is an affliction of the empty mind. Both of their minds were full.
As the afternoon glare wore low, they headed home, with the horses dragging the marker and Mary riding atop it. Chores were waiting when they got back, but this time when Mary had finished her own she didn't go to join Aaron in the barn to lend her ineffectual hand. She went in- stead to fix supper and take in the clothes from the line, folding and sprinkling them in preparation for tomorrow's ironing.
The last thing left hanging on the lines were the sheets, cut across now with dapples of late-day shadows. Aaron, walking between the outbuildings, saw Mary at the lines with her arms upraised, plucking at the clothespins and gathering the sheets high so they wouldn't touch the ground. At the sight of her there, as lithe and slim as the long shadows about her, he was struck again with the veritable perfection of their place here together.
Taking the sheets fresh from the line, Mary went to remake the beds, doing first her own, then Aaron's. In his room she thought about all the nights he'd slept there, wondered if he'd ever heard her and Jonathan making love, wondered what it would be like when they did it again, as they surely must.
The smell of supper cooking downstairs brought her back to reality, and she finished draping the coverlet over the bed and went down to tend to her cooking. She was busy when Aaron came in. He kept a stream of talk going as they busied themselves, he at the sink and she at the range. 'We got a good start on the corn today because of your help. Thanks, Mary.' 'No need for thanks, Aaron. I didn't mind it.'
'Still, you must be tired. You're not used to doing double duty in the house and fields.' 'The day went so fast it hardly seemed like work. Anyway, I'll be in the fields again at harvest time. This little bit of work will seem like nothing next to shocking grain.' 'The day went fast for me, too, Mary. Because you were out there with me.'
He had his shirt off, was lathering his chest and arms, and it was all she could do to keep from watching the process, while finally he dried with a towel. 'I missed you in the barn though. The cats asked where you where,' he teased. Then his voice changed. 'I told them you were up here putting clean sheets on the bed for tonight.' He said it quietly but not teasingly. She picked up Aaron's dirty blue cambric shirt from the back of the chair and was going to take it out to the clothes basket on the back porch, but he said, 'Come here to me, Mary.' And she felt a flash of heat go to her face. 'I've waited through a million corn seeds and a hundred hours of chores, and I can't wait any longer.' He was standing with the white towel slung around his neck, holding onto its ends.
She let the shirt fall back onto the chair and turned slowly to him. She went to stand in front of him and look up at his face, then back down to his bare chest, where a light mat of red-gold hair lay damp after the washing. Then he flipped the towel off his neck and around the back of hers, pulling her toward him. She put a hand lightly on his chest then and could feel the beating of his heart.
'Don't be afraid to touch me, Mary,' he said.
And her hand withdrew a little. 'It's not decent in the daylight,' she said. 'It's evening already…call it evenlight.' 'It doesn't seem right,' she repeated. 'Do you want to touch me, Mary? As bad as I want to touch you?' he asked.
Her hand was still poised uncertainly between them. She didn't answer aloud, only nodded in assent.
He took her hand and pulled it back onto his chest and moved it back and forth, across the fine, sparkling hairs, across his hard brown nipples. 'If you want it and I want it, what could be more right?' His hand still guided hers over ribs, navel, neck, jaws, and back down to his chest. 'I don't know,' she choked. 'I want you to touch me everywhere, like you touched my face last night,' he said, his eyes an intense dark brown. 'Oh, Aaron, you're beautiful,' she breathed. 'Am I, Mary?' he asked. 'Maybe it's because you're looking with your heart instead of your eyes.'
She reached to place her fingertips fleetingly on his lips, saying, 'I think I'm looking with both.'
He surrounded her then with his bare arms and chest. When his mouth came down on hers, she felt that her hands couldn't pull strongly enough on his back to bring his beauty into her. She rubbed the fingers of both hands straight and hard up the center of his backbone, surpris ing herself with the motions her hands made of their own volition.
His arms reached so far around her slim body that his hands rested on the soft sides of her breasts under her arms. He spread his fingers and felt the vague swellings there, but when he backed a bit away from her to caress
