Out in the fields was the place where Jonathan did his best thinking. There he found expressions and feelings that seemed to avoid him everywhere else. Between him and the land, it seemed, he could work out most anything. All of his twenty- eight years he'd lived on this land, and it had never failed him. At times he felt he might have sprouted right out of it, breast-fed by its nectars, nurtured by its grains, and made secure by its perennial richness. When in doubt, the land was there. It gave back all he put into it. So he gave it his best. He worked it in love, and it returned his faith.
Walking on his soil that spring afternoon, he thought how easy it was to drop a seed into it, how effortlessly the land returned it. Far easier to ask a return of that kind than to ask what he was setting out to ask of Aaron and Mary. "Consider, Aaron, if you were to father Mary and me a child."
He said it aloud, and it was good on his ears. Yes, that'd do just fine as a beginning. What would come to follow he couldn't guess, but Jonathan was fey to do the asking, no matter what.
He would keep his arguments all stored and ready to voice-somehow-and would divine just how to voice them when the time came.
But the time never came that day, while Jonathan's words were fresh on his mind. He returned from his walk in the late afternoon, and Aaron wasn't home yet. At chore time, he still hadn't returned. Then when the milking was done and Jonathan returned to the house, Mary said she'd seen Aaron heading for town and figured he'd gone after Doc Haymes for Agnes.
So Jonathan went to sleep that night with the question unasked, but through the following day it remained in his mind just as he'd rehearsed it, and by the end of the day, when they were all three in the kitchen around the big old claw-foot table, he was tense from the weight of it.
One thing worked in his favor. Agnes Volence had had her baby last night, and Mary had that queer urge to talk about it, like she always did after news of a birthing. "We'll have to all go down there to visit, as soon as it's respectable. Maybe the end of the week or so." She was mending something she held on her lap, and she didn't look up.
Aaron was drawing a handful of cookies from an old molasses pail in the middle of the table. He glanced at Mary, reading her intention immediately. "You wouldn't be planning to do a bit of matchmaking while you pay your little social call, would you?" he asked. "Why, Aaron, no such thing. It's just common politeness to visit the new parents. You know that."
"It's not common politeness to go calling within a week of the birth. Agnes will more'n likely still be in bed." "And what better time to take a cake down there than when they're likely to appreciate it?"
She looked across at Aaron and put the thread in her teeth to bite it off. When she bit something off she was prepared to chew it, and he figured the sooner he made his peace with Pris the sooner Mary'd let up on him. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "We'll see. What do you think, Jonath- an?"
And then Jonathan did the strangest thing. He jumped. Or flinched, rather. "Jonathan?"
Mary couldn't see Jonathan's hands, for the oilcloth cover hanging over the edge of the table hid them from sight. But she could tell he was wiping his palms on his thighs. "Is something wrong, Jonathan?" "Wrong?" But Jonathan had a frog in his throat, and he had to clear it before he could continue. "Just that everybody is having babies but us."
He didn't look at Mary, so he missed seeing her eyes drop quickly back to the work on her lap. "Excuse me…" Aaron rose from his chair as if to leave. "No. I want you to listen," Jonathan said, staying his brother with a hand on his arm. "I got something to say, and it's for both of you."
Aaron glanced at Mary, but she kept her eyes on her nee- dlework. He sat back down slowly.
"We've been married seven years now. That's a long time. And there are no babies." "I think this is between you two, and I've got no place in it." Aaron started to rise again, but a word from Jonathan stopped him. "Stay."
And though Aaron stayed, he did so reluctantly while Jonathan went on. "We all here know what happened when we were boys-how we both got the mumps, Aaron, you and me. They left me"-here Jonathan swallowed-"I mean, we all know I can't father babies." "We don't know that for sure, Jonathan," Mary said. "I haven't given up hope." "Well, I gave up hope, Mary, and you're just fooling yourself anymore," Jonathan said. "There's no call to hurt her," Aaron said quietly, remem- bering what they'd talked about the night before. "Well, this place needs children, and they won't spring from me."
Jonathan's palms were cold and damp on his thighs. His tongue, like a thick, swollen cork, threatened to stop up his mouth. "But you, Aaron, they could spring from you." It came out half question, half something else. But it was out. Before he dissolved in his own sweat, Jonathan hurried on. "You're the natural one, Aaron. You're my brother. You see how there ought to be a child, don't you? It's not a thing I ask lightly." He looked at Mary, and her hands were still, her face expressionless.
Aaron's impatience erupted. "I'm getting pretty damn sick of everybody in five counties pushing me to get married. First it's the townspeople, then it's Pris, then Mary, and now you, Jonathan. It isn't bad enough that the others push only for a wedding. Here you are, pushing for an heir! If people would leave us alone, maybe I'd be more in favor of the idea, but I'm not even ready to marry Pris yet, let alone have ba- bies!" "I'm not talkin' about you and Pris." "Well, what the hell are you talkin' about?"
Jonathan's Adam's apple rose and slid back into place. This whole thing had gone wrong from the start. Mary had a puzzled look on her face. He wanted to ask this for her sake, too. He wanted to give her this, but how could he get her to understand? The sweat rolled down his temple. Dampness made dark stains on his blue cambric shirt. "I said, what are you talkin' about?" Aaron repeated.
It was now or never. "I'm talkin' about you and Mary."
The silence in the room was broken only by the tick of the pendulum clock on the kitchen wall. "Me and Mary?" Aaron asked it in a quizzical way, as if he weren't sure he'd heard the question right. He didn't look at her, but he sensed her awful stillness, and it cracked the outer layer of his disbelief. "Before either of you say anything, I got to explain-" "Christ almighty! Explain! If I understand what you're asking, you got more than explaining to do. You got some apologizing!" Aaron was on his feet now and leaning toward Jonathan across the table. "There's nothing between Mary and me. Nothing! Do you hear me, brother?" "I know…" was all Jonathan could get out before Aaron raged on. "Mary's your wife, man! Your wife! You'd best look at her and see what you've done in the last minute here." Aaron pointed a shaking finger at Mary. She sat staring at Jonathan with enormous eyes, her mouth working.
And Jonathan knew he need not plumb too deeply to see how he'd hurt her. "Why, Jonathan?" she asked at last, and her voice was a quiet croak. "I want us to have a son, and I give up hoping I could father one. It came to me that you and me had those mumps together, Aaron, but you being those four years younger than me, well, they didn't go down on you like they did on me, and I figured-"
But Aaron cut him off again. "Oh, no, you don't! You don't lay the guilt on me, Jonathan. Yes, we suffered side by side and you came out of it worse off than me, but that doesn't mean I owe you this that you're asking." "I didn't mean you owe me. You know I'm not handy with words. But I thought about this plenty over the whole winter, and it appeared to me you and Priscilla were getting mighty close, so before you up and married I thought-"
Once again he was cut off, this time by Mary. "Oh, Jonathan, you thought of it all winter? You planned on asking us all that time?" There was such hurt and bewilderment in her eyes that both men looked away rather than see it. "Aaron's your brother. I'm your wife. The asking aside, did you think of the sinfulness of it? Did you think of that?" "I did. And I've done some praying over it, and I'll gladly take the sin onto myself if there is sin. But there's nothing between you and Aaron. You said so, Aaron, and I could see that. Maybe the sin lays in the coveting, like the command- ment says." "You can't just bend and twist the words to suit your needs! You took those words and you chiseled off all the corners till they fit some hole in your scheming head where you wanted them to fit, and that makes it right?" "I said I'd accept the blame, Aaron." "Accept, hell! You'll accept nothing because there'll be nothing to accept! No blame! No sin! No baby! It makes me laugh to think you even believed we could get by with it. Just how do you think the fine women of Moran Township would take to one of their own showing up at church with a bastard son in her arms? Have you thought of what they'd do to Mary?" "They'd never know it wasn't mine, Aaron. Look at us. You know how much we look alike? The child would have the looks we both got from Ma and Pa. Nobody could look at it and say it's yours, 'cause if he looked like you, he'd look like me, too. And I'd call it mine. It wouldn't be no bastard."
Aaron still stood leaning on the table, glaring across at his brother.
"I think the only bastard here is you!" he shouted.
Mary leaned toward him and touched his arm, firmly but quietly demanding, "Sit down, Aaron. There's been enough hurt done here already. We'll not add more by saying things we'll all regret later."
Aaron sat down, but the black look of rage stayed on his face. "Jonathan," Mary said, "I never complained about there being no babies, and if I acted like I held you responsible, I'm sorry. But what you're asking is wrong. It's wrong for Aaron and me, and it's wrong for you. How could you ask such a thing?"
Jonathan swallowed a great lump of love for her that welled up in his throat. He needed to make her see that he'd asked it out of love, but his wooden tongue was not easily commanded. "Mary," he began, but the words were so hard to place between them, "Mary…I…it was a thing I wanted to give you, like I couldn't give you a baby." "To give me, Jonathan?" "Every woman should have the chance…I couldn't see no other way to give it to you."
Tears welled up in Mary's eyes, and a confusion of feelings tightened her chest. "There's nobody else I'd ask except Aaron," Jonathan went on, "I thought maybe he'd see it my way, like maybe some deed of goodness he could do you…and me, too." "But Jonathan, there's got to be love before…" Here Mary looked at Aaron, and for the first time she became embar- rassed. His anger was partly under control, and with its going she had no de- fense against self-consciousness. "It's not as if there's no love at all," Jonathan said. "And I can see the need in you, Mary. I can see you need what nature intended. Would it be unkind if Aaron could give you that?"
She could see that Aaron's jaw was tightly clamped shut, the muscles quivering as he kept his silence. Suddenly the things they'd said last night, those confidences exchanged so innocently, became laden with meanings neither Aaron nor Mary had intended, and her eyes flashed quickly away from his when she sensed that he was thinking the same thing. "And for myself," Jonathan was going on, "well, there'd seem more purpose to working the land with a son to take it on one day. He could even tie this place together again-the whole place might be his-not split apart like Pa left it to us two."
Aaron leaned his elbows on the table and folded his knuckles together, pressing them against his chin while he scowled at Jonathan. "You weren't kidding when you said you'd thought about this all winter, were you? You damn near planned the whole future for us, didn't you, Jonathan? Only you never said how we're all supposed to live with this when it's over and done. That's it! It'd never be over and done. It'd be a guilt we'd carry forever, can't you see?" "I can see it could be that if we let it be. But it could be a blessing in many ways." "Jonathan, you're being a self-righteous hypocrite, and you've never been before. I can't be lieve what you're saying." And Aaron shook his head, as if doing so would negate all that Jonathan had said. He covered his face with his hands and listened to his brother. "I'd just ask you both to think about it, and consider if…" But his words faltered at last.
With his face still in his hands Aaron said, "Jonathan, you realize that you're sitting in my house and what I'm consid- ering right now is asking you to get out of it?" Then he rubbed his hands downward, as if to wipe away his weariness and clear his eyes. When he did, he saw Mary with her eyes on her lap, hands idle, and the look on her face made him instantly sorry for what he'd threatened. "Aw, hell, I didn't mean it. For better or for worse, we're here sharing the place, and I'm not throwing you out, neither of you. Pa sure picked a hell of a way to split up this prop- erty, though." "I'm sorry," Mary said then, and Aaron realized she was frightened. "Mary, I didn't mean that like it sounded. You belong here as much as Ma ever did, and you've got every right to be here. It's your home whether it belongs to Jonathan or me-that part doesn't matter. When I marry is time enough for us to change it." Then, in an effort to dispel the over- whelming oppression around them all, he added, "Right?"
No one answered. Just the ticking clock imposed itself on the quiet. "It doesn't bear thinking about, Jonathan, and it never could," Aaron said, "whether I marry Pris or not. Suppose I do marry her? Then she's part of this, too. There's such a thing as faithful ness, and I feel it, whether I'm married yet or not." "I figured when you went to the city there were other wo- men." "What I did in the city is no business of yours! Any women I knew there have nothing to do with this or with Pris." "Oh, Jonathan, don't!" Mary cried, and there were tears on her face at last. "Don't say any more. We are not things, not animals you can pen up together at mating time!" "I said it all wrong, I know." "And you've said enough!" Aaron charged, pushing his chair back and rising in one angry movement. "Just don't say another word. Not one more word." And he slammed out the door, leaving Mary and Jonathan in its reverberations. But before the air had quite stilled he came back and stood just inside the kitchen door, looking across the room at Mary. "I'm sorry, Mary," he said. "I had no part in this." And she knew he'd felt it necessary to clarify that point after all he'd told her the night before. But he'd slammed back out before she could say, "I know."
She could not face Jonathan any longer, so she picked a jacket from the hook behind the kitchen door and went out, too, closing the door more quietly than Aaron had. But the click of the latch censored Jonathan as firmly as when Aaron had slammed the door.
Aaron took his anger to the barn. He stormed down the yard, flung the barn door open, and charged inside. It was clean and quiet, no work to be done. And nobody to listen to his arguments. In frus- tration he slammed his open palm against a wooden beam.
One would not guess it just then, but he was a man of easy temperament, usually slow to anger. His way was the way of light response, a word of jest. He was uncomfortable with anger and tried to avoid it.
How, then, had the last two days spawned such belliger- ence in him? Like mushrooms during long summer rains, the events of the last two days had sprouted out of nowhere, growing so fast they seemed to close around Aaron. He was angered because they'd grown out of his control.
It didn't help when Aaron recalled all the remarks he'd made last night to Mary, remarks that echoed now with im- plication he'd absolutely not intended. "Nature's been giving me a hell of a time lately. It takes two to do a lot of things. A man's needs can sometimes be greater than his common sense." Did I really say all those things to Mary, he thought. The memory of how he'd let his foolish tongue run wild blistered his conscience now, creating bubbles of fear, fear that Mary might somehow mistake his intentions, especially after all that was just said in the house.
He knew both Jonathan and Mary understood the reason he'd left the farm for the city two years before. He'd gone to give them privacy, hoping they'd accomplish in his absence what hadn't happened while he lived with them. Feeling like the outsider in his own house, he'd left it to them, gone to that miserable city to work in sweatshops among strangers, giving Jonathan and Mary time alone. But nothing had come of it, and after a year Jonathan had written, asking him to come back home. It was a two-man farm. They'd made it so after their pa died. In his absence, Mary had worked in his place. But she was a small woman, city-bred, and much as she loved the country, she never did take to field work. They all knew it was hard on her. And Jonathan wanted Aaron to come back, and so did Mary, he wrote. Aaron had come, and gladly-leaving behind the hated city and carrying with him the memory he now ruefully referred to as "the time I went to town."
Now the memory came back to Aaron, and with it the threat that he might have to leave the farm again. Surely there'd be no living together as they had before. Why, he couldn't sleep in the house tonight! Not on the other side of their bedroom wall!
So Aaron climbed to the haymow, still simmering. But the hay was nearly all gone from the loft, and what was left lent small comfort, compacted as it was from months of winter storage. He was exhausted after the long day yesterday at the Volences', the turmoils of tonight, and last night's argu- ments. When the heat of his anger cooled somewhat, he was left in the comfortless barn, tired and cold, and he finally gave in and returned to the house and his room, sleeping like a drugged man, worn beyond caring who was on the other side of the wall.
When Mary came back to the house, it was dim and still. Jonathan had left a lantern in the niche at the bottom of the stairs. There was no where for her to go except to bed, but she wouldn't take the lantern up. She couldn't face Jonathan yet, even in the dim- mest lantern light.
She blew out the flame and made her way up the dark stairwell, hoping he would be asleep. But the house was old and dry, and it creaked, signaling to Jonathan she was com- ing.
He lay very still, with his arms folded under his head, watching her come in and change into her nightgown in the moonlight. She brushed out her hair and braided it, taking an endlessly long time. His heart beat out the minutes until she finally climbed over the foot of the bed to her place between him and the wall.
It had always been a spot where she'd felt such security, with Jonathan there on the outside, but tonight she felt trapped in it, held there by Jonathan's elbows, which loomed just above her pillow. She knew he wasn't asleep, but hoped he'd say nothing. When he spoke quietly in the dark, she jumped, realizing how tense she'd been. "Mary?"
She didn't answer. "Where'd you go?" "Just walking." "You gave me a scare, being gone so long." "I didn't think you'd miss me if I didn't come back."
She couldn't help saying it, even though she knew it wasn't so. She wanted him to know how he'd hurt her. "You know that's not so, Mary. This is where you belong." "Yes. In your bed, not Aaron's."
"You've been seven years in my bed, with no babies." "And you need one that bad, you'd send me to Aaron?" "It was a way that come to me, Mary." "Well, it's no way at all."
Jonathan inhaled deeply. "I said it all wrong, I know. I meant to say it better, so you'd understand." "Oh, Jonathan, it doesn't matter how you said it, it only matters you did. There's no good way to ask a thing like that." "But don't you see? It's something I wanted for you, too. I see you going year after year and still lookin' like a child yourself…and everybody else has got more kids than they need. I can see the need in you." "But you had no right to ask it of Aaron and me." In an impatient voice she continued, "It's not a seed you just bor- row like a punkin seed, Jonathan. You might want a punkin like the one in your neighbor's punkin patch, but planting a punkin seed is different than a man's."
He was quiet then, still lying with his head on his arms, looking at the ceiling. After a space he said, "I had such plans for the place, you know, always thought of working it into something even better to pass on to a son."
She lay, like him, staring at the ceiling. "I was proud of all those plans, too, Jonathan. That sum- mer I came from Chicago to Aunt Mabel's-why, I had no intention of staying. I was only coming to help her out for the summer. When you came along in Uncle Garner's thresh ing crew and started talking about this place, I could nearly see it before you ever brought me here. You made me proud of all the plans you had, and I was willing to share them with you. But this plan now-there's no sharing it." "Are you sorry you came to this place with me, Mary?" "I'm not sorry I came, Jonathan, only sorry about this…this obsession you have, about the baby." "Obsession?" "You've got it in your head that without a son you're working for nothing. But that's not true. You've got…we've got…a lot. And yes, I'd like a child, too, but I'm not willing to sell my soul to get it. I'm not going to let the need of it change me like it has you." "Change me?" He turned his head to look at her beside him. "Didn't it change you, Jonathan?"
He didn't answer. "Well, then, how did you come to where you could ask what you did tonight?"
He knew she was crying then because she turned her face toward the wall. "I did wrong, Mary," he said, and reached out to touch her, not knowing much about comforting her, for he'd never had much cause to do so. "Oh, Jonathan, how can we face Aaron in the morning?" "We'll weather it, Mary." It sounded hopelessly inadequate even to Jonathan, but he didn't know what else to say. "How?" Her crying was audible now.
He patted her arm, leaning above her on an elbow. "We'll weather it somehow," he repeated. Her arm under the nightgown was warm, folded across her chest, and he could feel it rise and fall with her breathing. She never cried, and Jonathan realized what a feeling of concern those tears had evoked in him. She was such a child-and he hadn't thought to hurt her this way. How could he take away that hurt? "We could try again," he said, moving his hand onto her breast, feeling her stiffen at his touch. "This way? And then you think this will wash away all the sourness of today like you wash away the clabbered milk from a pail? Well, it takes a while in the sunshine to air that sourness out, Jonathan. I might need a while of sun, too, before I sweeten."
She made a shrugging push with her shoulder, nudging his hand off her breast until he retreated it to her arm. It was the first time she had ever denied Jonathan. "What does that mean, 'sweeten'?"
She was exasperated that he could fail to understand the depth of her hurt, and her reluctance to quickly accept him again. "Sweeten means sweeten! I mean I can't just so quickly forget what you would have me do with Aaron if you had your way. Now, here you are, wanting your way with me again. Well, which is it you want, Jonathan? I can't follow your change of mind fast enough." "You're talking nonsense. I only meant to comfort you."
"Well, it was no comfort. The kind of comfort I need is the kind that starts with 'I'm sorry' and builds from there." "I didn't mean to hurt you by it." "But you aren't sorry. Are you, Jonathan?"
His hand squeezed her arm lightly as he answered, "For the hurtin', yes. For the askin', no." Then he lay back down with his hands folded beneath his head, as before. "If you're not sorry, then we're in bad shape." "We been in bad shape, as far as a baby is concerned, for years. And you're getting where you're grabbing at even those ideas Doc Haymes has been putting in your head. But I've gone along with that, and it didn't work, either. It's just more proof I can't be no father, that's all." "But I believe what he says is reasonable, that a woman is…well…that a woman is prime on special days each month. We just haven't given it enough time." "Well, if it's so reasonable, then maybe it'd work in your favor with Aaron. It'd prove to me that Haymes was right." "Is that how you figured it? And then what about after- ward? Did you figure I'd be your wife again and we could pretend nothing ever happened between Aaron and me?" "I don't know. I thought if he was to marry Priscilla, it might all work out." "You and I have to work things out and leave Aaron out of it."
She seemed to be suggesting that maybe she was sweeten- ing a bit, but her next words belied that. "I never turned you away before, Jonathan, and I know it's not right, either, but I got to have some time to mend my mind a bit. Let's just both drop off and work on that mending for now."
She turned on her side, facing the wall, shutting herself away from him, and even though his caress had been meant only as a consolation to her, he found now that her cold, curled back raised a yearning he hadn't known was there. For, as she said, she'd never turned him away before.