The end of June was nearing. This was the last time of comparative restfulness before the onslaught of long harvest- ing hours. It was a time that lent itself well to weddings. The entire township was looking forward to Catherine Garner's and Michael Garek's wedding, for everyone was invited. Mary looked forward to it with relief, for it would bring re- laxation that she sorely needed.
During the week preceding the great day, she imagined all the activity going on at the Garner house and offered to help Aunt Mabel with the preparations, but the red-faced woman shook her head, wattles rippling beneath her chin, and bellowed, "You done enough for me in years past, girl, and I got a tribe of my own to crack the whip to. You stay home and take care of those two big louts of yours, and don't show your face at my place until you're ready to have yourself a proper fling!" Appealing to her cousin Catherine did no good, either, for Mabel Garner would have her way, so Mary's help was refused.
But the entire Garner family was put to work for days. While Aunt Mabel and the girls cooked and baked, Uncle Garner and the boys prepared makeshift dinner tables and benches, which would seat the crowd in the farmyard. Also constructed was a wooden platform to serve as an open-air dance floor. Those too busy helping in the kitchen on a wedding day often returned on the next evening to take their enjoyment on the dance floor. If it rained, the dancing would be held either in the partially empty hayloft or in the living room of the house. Mabel Garner said she'd be damned if any of her neighbors found a cobweb or smatter of dust behind her furniture, and she pushed her brood of children to work cleaning the already spotless house. But for once they didn't mind because their mother, though an exacting taskmistress, was in the height of good humor.
Across Moran Township, men hurried through their chores before cleaning up and dressing for the long-awaited event. Some of these looked forward to the rarity of being excused from evening chores, having arranged for neighboring youngsters to tend these for them. Failing this, for most of the youngsters would also be attending the festivities, many hoped to convince some young lad to leave the regaling at dusk, long enough to do the chores. As the day progressed and kegs of beer were consumed by the men, they would become generous. Many a lad would end the day with a well- greased palm in return for taking care of someone's evening chores.
Mary wore the yellow dimity dress again, and although she kept her hair in the familiar knotted coil, she wore it pushed higher on her head, sweeping it back from her center part rather than down over her ears. She left Jonathan closing the kitchen windows and door and walked toward the rig. Aaron jumped down to hand her up. She'd pulled on only her left glove. He reached out to take her bare right hand, and as he did so, his back was to the house, shielding her from Jonathan's view. He brushed her hand with his lips, and with a relaxed smile, said, "Mary girl, you look beautiful."
She withdrew her hand as if it had been burned, and quickly pulled her glove on. I've been doing so well all these weeks, she thought. I won't let my resolve slip now. Still, Aaron's manner held a trace of his old brotherliness, so she put on her own old way and responded, "Likewise, sir. The groom himself might feel overshadowed." Then she jumped up into the carriage seat. And everything seemed okay between the two of them again.
Jonathan could hear them bantering as he approached the rig. "I know what's in the fruit jars I carried out, but what's in the other package under the seat, Mary?" "It's the bean jar I had you and Jonathan buy last week when you went to town." "Isn't that just like a woman? Here I've been expecting a mess of pork and beans to show up in that pot on our dinner table, but instead, I find it wrapped for another man's table." "And isn't it just like a man to buy a wedding gift and ex- pect to try it out before he gives it away?" she rejoined.
Their laughter seemed genuine, and Jonathan joined in, thinking how good it was that they were all in a good humor again. It seemed as if there'd been too little laughter the last few weeks. He refrained from thinking of the probable cause of the strain that was beginning to show around the edges of their lives. Today the strain seemed to have gone. It promised to be a grand day.
The churchyard was filled with noisy Garners. Waving a greeting to the Grays, Mabel Garner yelled, "Ain't this some day? Somebody said there was a weddin' here today so I come along, but damned if I know whose 'tis. Can't be none of my own, 'cause I sure ain't feelin' old enough to be a mother-in-law yet!"
Uncle Garner was spit-shined and smiling, proud of the robust woman on his arm. "Mother, you don't look old enough," he said, and for once her bellowing was silenced. There was a pleased gleam in her eye as Uncle Garner ushered her toward the church door.
The vows were spoken. Catherine was radiant and Michael was nervous and Mary cried. The church was crowded and stuffy. Women fanned themselves with gloves and prayer books. Toward the end of the service Mary felt the closeness become dizzying. But then the service ended and the back doors opened to let the air flow in. The new bride and groom ran out, followed by their parents and the rest of the congreg- ation, their ears buffeted by Mabel Garner's voice even before they reached the doors.
Everyone repaired to the bride's home, the line of wagons, carriages, and calashes raising dust down the gravel road all the way from the church to the Garner farm four miles away. When all the guests had arrived, the yard was dotted thickly with wagons. The horses were turned into the near, fenced pasture, for they would spend a long day here. Their wedding feast would be the lush June grass. It was a day for children to pick up a prized penny or two by unhitching horses for the arriving guests or fetching horses from the pasture when a guest left. At a gathering like this, the kids outnumbered the adults, and the yard swarmed with them. Ladies were kept busy mixing lemonade and nectar at the well to keep the thirsty young horde happy. As the day wore on, some would be sick from too much sweet stuff and some would be tipsy from the beer they'd nipped when glasses were left unattended by grownups.
Uncle Garner had tapped the beer kegs under a shady tree and by the end of the day the grass would be flattened there, the mud smelling yeasty where the spigots had dripped. In another spot in the yard, ice cream was being frozen, and the call went up for another able-bodied man to turn the crank. Children ran past the washtub and stole any ice they could lay a hand on, considering it nearly as big a treat as the ice cream would be. Ice was a precious commodity in June. Uncle Garner had chopped it from a frozen pond in March, hauled it from there to his ice house, packed it with insulating sawdust, and kept it frozen all these weeks.
Mabel Garner's front parlor was converted to a gift room, and the packages were left there. Most gifts were wrapped in brown paper or newspaper, but many were not wrapped at all. Since brides were not showered with gifts beforehand, the collection in the parlor was impressive. A good share of these were homemade: quilts, dish towels, feather ticks, doilies, pillows, and small pieces of furniture. There was also a large assortment of kitchenware, enough to set any new household on its feet. Dishes, crocks, porcel- ain and iron cookware, churns, paddles, mason jars (most of them filled with home-canned foods), silverware, and a variety of small kitchen tools-Catherine would need all of these.
She cried upon entering the gift room, moved by the magnitude of Bohemian generosity.
But the kitchen was the center of activity as a raft of cooks worked to feed the guests in shifts, starting first with the impatient children. Customarily, the bride's mother was ex- cused from kitchen duty after the week of hectic preparations she'd seen to, but Mabel Garner blustered her way in and out, saying, "That'll be the day, when a bunch of whipper- snappers put me out of my own kitchen!" And she helped serve the food she and her girls had been readying all week.
There were platters piled high with kolacky, rich, fruit-filled breads; mushroom-shaped kulich; roasters filled with meat- stuffed cabbage rolls, called sarma; and the ever-present dumplings, studded with caraway seeds and swimming in chicken-cream gravy. Mountains of mashed potatoes were carried to the tables in the yard. Ham in thick raisin sauce raised expressions of ap proval and made the children's tongues circle their lips in anticipation. Coffee was brewed in two-gallon pots, the freshly ground beans mixed with raw eggs, shell and all, for Mabel Garner claimed the shells made it clear.
When the first shift of adults came to take their places at the table, the coffee had reached perfection. The children's plates and silverware were being washed for the shift of adults who'd be seated at the table next. And the food kept coming.
Above the voices in the farmyard rang the sound of horseshoes. Children had begun making darts of corncobs, sinking long chicken feathers into the soft pith centers and hurling them in contests of distance and accuracy, the corncobs spiraling through the air in perfect balance. In the crowd were master storytellers and comedians. Two buffoons appeared from downyard, one crawling on hands and knees, harnessed in Uncle Garner's horses' gear, pulling a plow manned by his friend. The crowd milled around, and their impromptu comedy gained momentum from the hoots of laughter and knee-slapping of those gathered around.
Again Mabel Garner's voice rang out above all those around her, as she called to the man holding the reins, "Seth Adams, you could plow your fields faster with the nag you're steering there than with those two old pieces of crow bait you call horses!"
And surprisingly, Uncle Garner raised his voice to tease, "Never mind her, Seth. It takes one old piece of crow bait to recognize another!"
And Mabel's laughter swooped while her fist shook in her husband's direction.
It was in the middle of this merriment, as Aaron was en- joying the antics along with everyone else, that he felt a tug and, looking down, found Newt Volence pulling on his arm. "Hi, Aaron," said Newt.
In a spontaneous action, Aaron scooped the little boy up in his arm, and Newt gave the man a big hug, pasting his sticky face against Aaron's as he did. "How's my boy?" Aaron asked, feeling a keen pleasure at seeing the rapscallion again. "My belly kinda hurts," the imp confessed. "Well, I think I know why," Aaron kidded. "If your belly's filled with half as much food as your face is, it's bound to hurt!"
Newt proceeded to rub a grimy hand across a cheek and a corner of his mouth, leaving a smear of dirt plastered where only the food had been before. "How come you never come to see me no more, Aaron?"
Much as he liked holding the boy, Aaron feared for his suit coat under Newt's grimy paws, so he set the mite down and squatted beside him. "Been mighty busy with the planting. I had to help my brother get the crops in, you know." "Aw, shoot, plantin's done a long time ago. How come you ain't come since then?" "Well, I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it lately, I guess." Then Aaron asked, "How're you getting along with that new baby?"
"Aww, he ain't no fun. He can't play with me, and every- body yells at me not to get too close to him, and I can't make no noise in the house or nothin'," the child confided. But he wasn't to be sidetracked. "Why don't you come to my house no more, Aaron? I like you better'n that old baby, anyway." "Well, I've just been too busy. You know Jonathan went clear down to Minneapolis on the train and bought a real special little bull calf, and we've been busy building a fence for him." "Aw, shucks, Aaron, one little bull calf don't take much fencin'."
The child was dauntless, and as Aaron stood up, laughing, he replied, "Shucks is right! I guess Jonathan and I should have thought of that ourselves, Newt."
But just then Priscilla approached, and when she got to Newt she scolded, "Ma was wondering where you were. She said to tell you she saw you snitchin' somebody's beer and you are not to drink any more of it, you hear?" "I hear," Newt said, scuffling a foot in the dirt, his face downcast.
Pris looked up at Aaron then, squinting into the sun. "Hello, Pris. How have you been?" "Howdy, Aaron. I'm fine. Busier than ever, helping Ma around the house with the new baby and all." "I says Aaron should come to see us again," Newt put in here, looking up at the couple standing high above him. "Huh, Pris?" he asked when she made no reply.
"Yeah, sure. We'd all love it, Aaron. We really would." But her voice was noncommittal.
He looked down at her pretty face and felt a lonesomeness for something she or he had missed, something they had missed together, and answered, "I'll do that again someday soon." He was sorry Newt heard it, for the little fellow would take him at his word and undoubtedly wait for the visit that would not come.
Pris gave her little brother a nudge. "Come on. Ma says she wants to talk to you and she can't leave the baby." As she herded the little boy away in front of her, he turned to wave a sticky farewell to Aaron. Aaron then heard Newt ask, his face turned up to his sister as he hurried along with her, "Hey, whatsa matter with you and Aaron?" But he didn't hear her reply.
Mary had been sitting on the grass under a linden tree at the edge of the shaded yard when the pair of comedians raised their hullabaloo. She saw the meeting between Aaron and Pris, and, try though she might, she could not stop a twinge of jealousy from constricting her heart. She didn't have time to dwell on it, though, for Aunt Mabel plopped down beside her on the grass, having finally been turned out of her own kitchen. "Fetch me a glass of beer, sonny!" she yelled imperiously to a boy nearby. "I worked up a sweat with all that laughin'! How you doin' girl? You havin' a good time?" "I really am, Aunt Mabel. I don't know when I've felt this relaxed. Of course, it's easy to feel that way at your place. You know, it's just like home to me." "I still like to hear you say that, girl, and that's as it should be. Ain't none of my own girls means more to me than you." "Well, then, you should have let me come and help you this week just like your own had to. I can tell an extra hand would have been kept busy." "Pshaw!" Mabel Garner snorted. "I set them kids to work, and the place never knew what hit it!"
Mary couldn't help laughing. The boy came back with a glass of beer for Mabel Garner and a telltale mustache of foam on his mouth. "You let up snitchin' that stuff, boy, or you'll be sicker'n a hog in a barley patch!" she admonished him, then raised the glass to down half its length before smacking her appre- ciation and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I suspect you kept yourself busy enough without comin' to help around here this week. I seen them strawberry pre- serves you brung for Catherine, and they're as pretty as if I put 'em up myself." "I put them up this week, but just barely! Aunt Mabel, you know what I did? I fell asleep cleaning berries. I don't know what came over me, but I was cleaning berries in the kitchen, sitting at the table, and I got so tired. The men were nearly due for dinner, and I knew it was time to start the meal. But before I knew what hit me, I was sound asleep and Jonathan was waking me up. I've never done a thing like that before in my life. And no dinner ready for Jonathan and Aaron. I felt so foolish!"
Mabel Garner picked a blade of grass and bit on its soft, sweet end, took a swig of beer, and said, "Used to happen to me all the time when I was first pregnant." She was looking off again at the comedians across the yard. "When you were first pregnant?" Mary's voice was quiet. "Why?" "Most natural thing in the world for a woman's body to call for rest with all the changes that's goin' on inside it then. Happens mostly at the beginning and the very end."
Of course, Mabel Garner knew how badly her niece missed having children of her own, and she didn't wish to raise any false hopes in her. Yet, with no mother near at hand, Mabel felt it her duty to question Mary. Anyway, she considered herself the nearest thing to a mother Mary had, after the years the girl had lived with the Garner family. "You had any other signs, Mary?" she asked. "No." But she hesitated before adding, "I'm not sure what some of them might be." "You missed any of your monthlies?" "Not exactly. I'm a couple weeks longer than usual, but I hadn't thought much of it." "Well now, mind, I'm not sayin'…it could be anything at all, but you been sick? Throwin' up or anything?" "No." "You feel unusually thirsty lately?" "No." "You get dizzy spells?" "No."
But after she said it, Mary remembered the day in the berry patch when she'd accused the sun of making her dizzy. She'd spent hotter, longer hours in the garden before which had not affected her like that day. "Sometimes when I have to stoop over for a time, like berry-picking, I get kind of light-headed, but I figured it was just the heat." "Did it happen any other times?" Mabel was being very casual now, while Mary's insides were jumping and shaking and doing all kinds of monkeyshines. She sat up and hugged her knees to get a grip on herself, both inside and out. "Just in church this morning. I felt a little light-headed, is all. But it was awfully close in there." "You ever feel like fainting in church before?" "No." "Well, girl, you sure got the signs of an expectin' mother. How about hungry…you been awful hungry lately? You get the feelin' in your throat after you eat like the food's fillin' your whole neck?" "I–I don't remember. I don't think so." "Well, you watch for it. It's a sure sign you're pregnant. When you're young, you got a constitution like iron and you can eat anything. But get pregnant and your food likes to roil your insides. Even if you don't get sick, you get that full, burning feeling in your throat."
Mary was sitting there gripping her knees and looking, to Mabel Garner, as if the feeling were in her throat right now. "Now, it's too early to tell, girl. But you take care of yourself and rest a bit between chores until you know. If your monthly hasn't come in a couple of weeks, you can be pretty sure." "Please don't tell anyone yet, Aunt Mabel." "Don't be foolish, girl. I wouldn't take that pleasure away from you after all these years you been waitin' to do it yourself." "Thank you…thanks, Aunt Mabel," Mary said, leaning over to kiss the sunburned cheek beside her. "I've got to think for a while now." Then she got up and excused herself.
Mabel Garner wasn't piqued at Mary's sudden departure. She knew she'd planted a seed of mighty long-awaited hope in Mary's heart. A thing like that'd bear some dwellin' on, and she knew Mary needed time alone to do just that. "The good Lord's been holdin' out on that child long enough," she mused to herself, watching the slim from walk away. "It's a damn sight time He came around!"
There wasn't much space to be alone in the busy farmyard. Mary wandered among the people, returning greetings, stopping to talk when others approached her, but she avoided long conversations for she found her mind swaying with a force of its own. It was impossible to keep from touching her stomach. As if what Aunt Mabel had said was certain, she crossed her arms over her front, pulling her forearms against the place where she thought a new life lived. She knew that if it were true, the life had been placed there by Aaron, for Jonathan hadn't sought her since his return from the city. She hadn't bothered to ask herself why, for Jonathan was not a demanding husband, and found the need only occasionally. She remembered how in days past she'd sometimes had to turn his way first, when she'd been reck- oning on Doc Haymes's calendar. She was accustomed to lengths of time sometimes longer than this had been, times he didn't approach her, especially at this time of the year when the field work seemed to fill him.
Jonathan was pitching horseshoes in a foursome and, watching him, she recalled how he'd requested the liaison between herself and Aaron, but it was little consolation now. Would this bring about a rift between the brothers?
He sought her out later and said he was going home to do chores and would return in time for the dancing. She smiled at him, quailing inwardly, wishing she could go home with him, for she again felt dully tired and remembered Aunt Mabel's directive to rest whenever she could. But it would look strange if she were to miss the dance, so she stayed be- hind. She saw Aaron stop Jonathan as he left the yard, but Jonathan motioned Aaron to stay. It stung her heart. She imagined him saying, "Should I come home and help you with the chores, Jonathan?" and her husband replying, "Naw, I'll do it. You stay." And again she envisioned an end to their brotherliness. Aaron turned as Jonathan left the yard and, seeing her studying him across the way, smiled and raised his chin in a kind of backward nod, a nonchalant greeting. She again put her arms across her stomach.
Darkness fell and lanterns were set around the yard to light the plank floor. Now and then there would be the flash of a dish towel in the lantern light as one of the women was abducted from the kitchen by an impatient partner. Mary took a turn at kit- chen duty but no partners came to abduct her, and in her present mood she was grateful. The children danced on the dance floor when they could get by with it, and on the grass when they couldn't. But one by one their number dwindled as tired babies were bedded down on blankets in the straw- filled wagons to sleep while their parents raced the clock into Sunday.
Mary had lost her yen for dancing and spent the night anxious to go home, but Aaron captured her once and in- sisted on a dance. He was polite, though, and kept his dis- tance. She was glad when the dance was over. He noticed how quiet she was, that she hadn't had any of her usual chatter. He made no comment, for he thought her pleasantly worn out from the day's festivities.
The long day ended well past midnight with Aunt Mabel calling to all the leave-takers to return next day and help them finish off the remaining food and enjoy some more dancing before the floor was taken up. With the moonlight to guide them, the horses moved off homeward, bearing their weary owners. Some slept, to awaken in their own yards, finding that the horses had made their way unaided by hu- man direction.
In their rig Mary rode home sandwiched again between Jonathan and Aaron, her stomach sometimes gently buffeted by her husband's elbow while its side rested softly against Aaron.