“What’ll you care in the dark?”
“Same’s I’d care about a bald wife. Makes it harder to do your duty, and besides, she’ll have ugly kids. And if you’ve looked around some lately, you’ll notice how many ugly kids there are. You notice that? You take a look at all the grannies and the old men. Not bad-lookin’, most of ’em. A few ugly ones, but not many. Then you look at folks the age of Plentitude and Rejoice and younger, down to about our age. There’s more ugly ones. Then you look at the young ones, the age of Chastity, and you’ll see what I mean. Lots of babies bein’ put away because they’ve got split lips or their feet are wrong, somehow. Lots of crossed eyes and crazy teeth and funny, squinty-up faces. Like something went wrong somewhere.”
Vengeance got a peculiar look on his face, but he didn’t say anything. What he was thinking was that Papa had married first when he was twenty-five years old. And Grandpapa had been less than that. Now here Firstborn was, almost forty, and Retribution was thirty-five, Vengeance himself was thirty-four, and the only females around were seven or eight years old!
“Not much point in you goin’ off and catchin’ one of those Women’s Country females,” he said with a deep and abiding anger. “Likely Papa would only take her away from you if you did.”
AT THE WIFE-HOUSE of Rejoice Brome, Firstborn Brome, forty years of age, sat in the half dark of the kitchen talking with his fifty-five-year-old mother. His brothers, Vengeance, Diligence, Determination, and Preserved by the Lord, were all down at the bachelor house. His sister, ten-year-old Modesty, was carding wool in the shed out back. His other sister, Gratitude Brome, now thirty-two, had been married off at age fourteen to Elder Gavin, over the mountain, and her mother had not seen her for several years, though Firstborn had. He had ostensibly come, as was considered reasonable, to bring his mother what news there was about her daughter.
“She just had her twelfth,” he told his mother. “Eight of ’em livin’. She said to tell you somethin’ broke this time, but she’s not too miserable over it. Said you’d know what she meant.”
Rejoice nodded, making no comment. She thought she knew what Gratitude was trying to say. “Next time you see her,” she murmured, “you might suggest she ask for your Aunt Susannah. Susannah’s mama or grandma—I forget which it was—was caught out there in the outside and brought into the Holyland. She knew quite a bit about female kinds of things, and she taught Susannah.”
“I didn’t know that,” Firstborn said in a tone of wonder. “Who caught her? Susannah’s mama or grandma, I mean?”
“I think it was Elder Demoin, when he was just a young man livin’ in the bachelor house. Anyhow, it could be Elder Brome would let Susannah go do some nursin’, if Elder Gavin would allow it. Only other woman I heard of with any healin’ skill is clear over four valleys. She’s a Simpson, I think. She’d be real old now.”
“I’ll tell Sister,” he said, staring at the floor between his feet. “Mama…?”
“Yes, Firstborn?”
“What I really did was I come to ask you about some-thin’.”
“I’m sure Papa could answer anythin’ you want to know.”
The middle-aged man flushed, red showing darkly at the edge of his beard. “Don’ want to ask Papa. Want to ask you!”
“All right, son. Just so long’s you remember I’m only a woman and don’t know much about things.” Rejoice kept her face calm and quiet, just as she always did. It was easiest just not to show anything, not to seem to want anything. Then, pretty soon, if you lived long enough, you got to be a granny and life got to be pretty good for a little while before it ended.
“I got me a wife,” he said.
“I know you do, son. All your Aunts and me, we was at your marrying. You got Humility Gavin for a wife.”
“She cries,” he said. “She cries.”
Rejoice thought this over very carefully. There was things a woman could say and there was things a woman couldn’t say. Questions a woman couldn’t ask. “She cry all the time, or just some time?”
“Some time.” He flushed again.
She decided to risk it. “Like, when you got your duty to do?”
“Like then.”
“She cry like… like’s she’s hurt?”
“Like that, yeah. She’s got no business crying, and I chastised her for it, but it’s like she can’t help it, and it puts me off doin’ what I got to do.”
Rejoice sighed. Oh, she thought, I wish there was some female in heaven a woman could pray to. I wish there was somethin’ a woman could look forward to. “I tell you what, son. You tell Humility to boil a fat chicken. Don’t let her put any salt in, or anything but just the chicken. You have her skim off the fat and put it in a pot someplace cool. When you got to do your duty, you smear that fat all around the duty place, you know, and likely she won’t get hurt so bad.”
He thought for a moment. “Like a wagon axle, huh?”
Rejoice nodded, unable to trust the voice inside her which was screaming, “Yes, you stupid, cruel ramsheep of a man. Like a wagon axle, only you’d care more about the wagon.” Instead, keeping her voice very quiet, she said, “You see, Humility’s only fourteen years old. She’s not quite grown yet. She’s not… she’s not really big enough yet.”
“Well, that could be,” he said. “But she’s the only one I got.”
“Well then, maybe you’d like to bring her down from your place to visit with your Aunt Susannah. Maybe she knows somethin’ that could help some.”
“I don’t hold with visitin’ around,” he said stubbornly. “Women visitin’ around breeds mischief. That’s what the Elders always say. You womenfolk get together at Holydays and Thanksgivin’ time and
