The Fulfillment (4 page)

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 women.”

“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 frustration 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 belligerence 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 implication 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 arguments. 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 dimmest 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 coming.

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 borrow 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 summer 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 afterward? 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 sweetening 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.

Aaron awoke
to the sound of the lifter and lids ringing through the house as Jonathan made a fire in the kitchen range. It had become Jonathan's job, by tacit agreement, just as filling the woodbox in the evenings had become Aaron's. Making the fire had been something their pa did when he was alive. It was a task for the man of the house, and no matter that Aaron's ownership ought to give him that status, the four years' difference in their ages made it fitting for Jonathan to assume the role.

Aaron was only sixteen and Jonathan twenty when that load of potatoes had overturned, burying their ma and pa as they delivered the wagonload to the potato warehouses in Browerville. It had been natural for Jonathan to take over as the head of the house.

They worked the land together, but it was Jonathan who signaled their first spring seedings, gauged the need for cultivating, judged the grain's maturity, called for its reaping and threshing, decided how much of the harvest would be sold and how much kept for seed, which fields would lay fallow and which used
for grazing, which section of woods needed thinning at woodcutting time, which sow would be slaughtered, which cow would be bred, which heifers would be kept and which sold.

His decisions were not so much edicts as effects, for they were born of his oneness with the land, his simple knowing of its every need. Aaron sensed this and accepted it without rancor, even when Jonathan wrote, “Come home, Aaron, the farm needs you.” He came back from the city then, and things were pretty much as they'd been before.

But now, hearing the iron ring of the stove lids, it seemed Jonathan called him, ringing the lids like a schoolmarm might ring the bell for a tardy pupil, and Aaron resented it for the first time.

When he came into the kitchen it was empty but the fire was snapping. Jonathan had already gone to the barn and Mary wasn't up yet. Standing by the range, savoring its heat on the chilly morning, he made an effort to shake off his resentment, blaming it on the argument they'd had last night. But it stayed with him while he took his jacket from the hook behind the door and shrugged it on, heading outside.

The April morning was lost on Aaron, spring's specialness remote from his mind. The yard, still half-locked by winter, waited for spring to release it. The transient robins hadn't returned yet, but the ever-present sparrows twittered around the chicken coop and granary, looking for kernels the chickens had missed. Pale patches of green showed across the yard where the first brave grass had poked its way into the new sea
son, hesitating as if reserving the right to duck back under if it didn't like what it found. Inside the barn the cows, grown heavy and lazy over the winter, turned inquiring eyes on him as he entered. A couple of barn cats came out of somewhere to sit on the step of the big, open, east door, nosing the air and waiting to cadge their cream. Everything was the same as always. Everything except Jonathan and Aaron.

They worked silently together, their routines meshing from long practice: filling the troughs with fodder, squatting on their milk stools, making the empty pails ring, setting the froth-topped pails aside, filling the tins for the cats, moving to the next cow. But neither spoke. The words of the night before were still between them. Aaron had too many more he'd like to add, while Jonathan had too few. Knowing they'd only make the situation worse if they hashed it over again, both remained silent.

Mary saw them coming up the yard with the milk pails and was determined to keep things sensible. If she knew anything about these two, she knew they'd brood and stew until there'd be no living with either one of them. They came into the kitchen, mouths drawn. She was bound to set them right. Doubtful herself, fearing her own misgivings, she nonetheless resolved to do her best to restore peace among them.

“Mornin', Jonathan. Mornin', Aaron,” she said as they set the pails down.

They answered together, but then the room was quiet again and Mary's heart fluttered again with doubt. She went to the breakfront and got a clean dish towel, as always, and went to wet it
at the sink. Aaron turned toward the cistern at the same moment she did. Any other day he'd have pumped the handle while she wet the towel and squeezed it, but today he hesitated, backed off, and left her to do it herself. She took the pails into the cool, concrete buttery under the stairs and covered them with the wet towel as she always did. Before going back into the kitchen, she placed her hands to her cheeks, then dropped them to smooth her apron and chastise herself for being so vulnerable in Aaron's presence. She could see it was up to her to settle him down. Aaron was as twitchy as a cow's tail at fly time.

“Hurry with your washing, then,” she called, coming up out of the buttery into the kitchen again. “Breakfast is all ready.”

The men never washed until after chores, and they did it at the kitchen sink, stripping off their shirts while they did. The kitchen range and the sink were side by side on the north wall. Usually, while Mary took up the food, Aaron was beside her, washing. But today he left his shirt on, opened up the front, and washed himself inside it, suddenly self-conscious with her moving about right there beside him. When he came to the table his shirt had damp, uncomfortable spots where he'd gotten it wet.

“Are you spreading today, Jonathan?” she asked, passing him a bowl of fried potatoes.

And Jonathan was forced at last to talk.

“It's thawed. It's ready to spread.”

“Have some side pork, Aaron.” She thrust the platter toward him. “Which field are you starting with?” She looked directly at him, forcing him to answer in an everyday way.

“I suppose the south ten.” They always fertilized the south ten first, but Aaron knew what she was up to, and to make it easier on her, he added, “Right, Jonathan?”

Jonathan looked briefly at his brother, nodded his assent, and answered, “Yup, the south ten.”

It was a start, anyway.

“Before you go out there, will one of you fetch me the big crock from the shed? I need it for the pork today,” Mary said.

They answered at once:

“Sure, Mary.”

“Yup.”

She quelled the irritation that rose in her stomach as they glanced at each other hesitantly across the table.

“Thank you, Jonathan.” She settled that.

They went out after breakfast, putting on boots at the back porch step and heading off across the yard. Jonathan returned with the crock she needed, then left again. During the day she'd catch sight of them at times out in the barnyard where the frozen pile of manure was thawed enough to use. They need time to thaw, too, she thought, watching them pitch together, filling the spreader before it disappeared out to the field again. She wondered what they had to say to each other, but when they were out of sight she returned to her pork. It took her mind off them for a while, anyway.

Pork was their mainstay. It was butchered in the fall, after the freezing weather had settled in for good. The frozen pieces were stored in a wooden barrel on the north side of the house until the weather warmed enough that it might
spoil. Then, what remained was fried down slowly until its fat rendered and could be poured around the meat again, preserving it for the warm months ahead.

Mary worked with the pork all during the day, packing the crock until it was full to the top. The house reeked, and in the afternoon she opened the windows and the back door to let the spring breeze freshen it.

She could hear Jonathan whistling somewhere outside and knew his spirits must be lighter than they had been that morning. The first field work usually did that to him, made him more alive than at any other time of year. She and Aaron sometimes teased Jonathan about his whistling, telling him the robins wouldn't return until they heard him. It was just a thing Jonathan did. The feelings he couldn't put into words, he warbled in his tunes.

All day, Mary felt herself caught in the middle between Jonathan and Aaron. When they came in for supper, the crock was sitting on the floor, all packed with fried-down pork and fat. When she tried to lift it, they both offered to help. Aaron ended up doing it. Why had such small favors suddenly taken on the hint of chivalry? It had never mattered before who helped her do small things.

At supper, Aaron flinched when he reached for the sugar bowl at the same time she did. She pretended not to notice.

“Tomorrow I aim to get this grease smell aired out of here,” she said. “I think we can get along without the heater stove in the front room. If you two would move it out, I'd do it all properly and
give the front room a good spring cleaning tomorrow.”

“Spring getting to you, Mary?” Aaron asked, reaching again for the sugar bowl.

“I guess it has. Me and Jonathan both, I guess. Did I hear you whistling today, Jonathan?”

But her effort fell flat, for Aaron made none of his usual jokes about his brother's whistling. There followed an uncomfortable silence.

Finally Aaron said, “We can take the wood stove out after supper, so it'll be out of your way come morning.”

“Yes, do that.”

When they were done eating, she cleaned up the kitchen while they dismantled the black stovepipe and carried it in pieces out to the back porch, followed by the stove itself and the silver asbestos pad from the floor under it. It was dirty work, and they needed washing to get rid of the soot they'd gathered while doing it. Mary had finished putting the kitchen back in order and left it to them. Aaron's unaccustomed modesty had made her uncomfortable once already today while he was washing up. But he'd better snap out of it, and quick, she thought, because she wasn't catering to such foolishness after today!

Jonathan finished washing first and turned the sink over to Aaron. Aaron was dipping warm water from the reservoir when Jonathan said, “You know that Black Angus we talked about this winter?”

“Yeah.”

“You still in favor of me buying it, like you said?”

“You know more about it than I do. If it sounds like sound business, then go ahead.”

“Mary said the same thing.”

“Then do it. You don't need our okays, but you got 'em just the same. So what's holding you up?”

“Nothin'. Nothin' at all,” Jonathan replied.

Aaron was bent over the washbasin lathering his face and neck when Jonathan continued.

“Except, I'll have to make a trip to Minneapolis to do it.”

“Mary'd enjoy a trip like that.”

“She agreed to stay behind and help you with the sowing. I figure we won't have it done yet when it's time for me to go.”

“You know she can't take the field work,” Aaron argued, not able to say that Jonathan must not leave her behind, no matter what.

“It'll only be for a few days, is all.”

“When you going?”

“Cattle Exposition is the last week in May. I'd want to go then to get my pick of the bulls. And so I can talk to the sellers and learn a little more about the breed.”

“There must be someplace around here you can buy one and save yourself the trip.”

“Like I said before, nobody in these parts ever tried breeding Angus. All they think of is pork. I mean to get the jump on the beef business around here. The magazines say beef is the way the whole country'll be eating before long, and they claim it's Angus they'll prefer.”

They'd talked this over during the winter, and Jonathan, as usual, made good sense.

“So go ahead if you've decided. Maybe we'll have all the crops in by then. It's hard to tell.”

“You sure you don't mind?”

“Naw,” Aaron mumbled into the towel.

“Good.”

Jonathan left the kitchen and headed upstairs to bed. Left behind in the kitchen, Aaron leaned both hands on the edge of the sink, gripping it, staring down at the floor. He felt drained. Only one day since Jonathan had brought this unspeakable idea up among them, and his nerves were already strung out like fence wire. Now his brother had taken it one step further, providing a time when he and Mary would be left alone. Hah! If it weren't so absurd, it would almost be laughable. But there was nothing funny about the situation at all. Today he'd acted like a schoolboy, flinching every time Mary came within touching distance, but he saw that this must end and knew he'd best treat her like he always had before. It seemed best now, too, if he patched up things with Pris. The sooner the better.

 

In the morning Aaron seemed more like his old self. “Leave some walls standing,” he teased, “don't scrub the plaster off.”

“No chance, the way this place is built,” she threw back at him as he left the yard with Jonathan, “but I can guarantee it won't smell like fried-down pork tonight.” It was a relief having him treat her again as he had in the past. It worked on her like a tonic, and she tore into her work feeling lighter than she had since this whole thing had started.

She spent the morning scrubbing the walls with borax to combat the summer insects that might creep indoors. She boiled the lace curtains in turpentine water until they were bleached, rinsed them in gum arabic, and stretched them on the wood-and-nail frame to dry. She took the stovepipe pieces from the porch into the yard and brushed the insides of them, making them ready for summer storage. She was just finishing when Aaron came up the board path at dinnertime.

He laughed as she stood up to go into the house with him.

“You look like you're the rag that's been drug through the stovepipe,” he teased, touching some soot on her nose. But she instinctively shied away from his touch, just as he'd done from hers the day before. She brushed distractedly at her nose, annoyed by her skittishness. Then she turned toward the house.

“Dinner's hot,” she said as Jonathan came up the walk. They all went inside together.

In the afternoon she scrubbed the horsehair sofa with naphtha, took cold tea to the varnished woodwork, beat the rugs that had hung on the line all day, washed the windows with vinegar water, and ironed the antimacassars. She loved this old house and had felt comfortable with it from the very first. She had a feeling for it much the same as Jonathan had for his land. It was her domain, and she took pride in it. The house reflected her love just as the fields reflected Jonathan's. It had been built by his grandfather, the first Gray to homestead the land in the mid 1800s. Jonathan and Aaron both told the story of
how their grandfather had earned it by doing stumping for others here in Todd County. Using nothing but a grub hoe, he'd removed stumps, clearing the land for a mere ten dollars per acre until he'd earned enough to buy his own farm. His first crops of corn and potatoes had been planted among the tree stumps he'd not had time to clear from his own acreage that first season. Thus, his first harvest had been taken from among the stubbled remains of the trees he'd felled and timbered for the building of his own homestead. Aaron was the one who was fondest of telling that story, maybe because the house was his now. But Mary often remembered it herself, and the spirit of that first homesteader burned in her with pride. True, the house was Aaron's, but she'd been its caretaker for seven years and there was no use denying it would be hard to leave it when Aaron got married.