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 pen- chant 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 ma- chine 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 catch- ing 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 dir- ection 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 baking 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
