“No, Jonathan,” Aaron assured him offhandedly. “No, why—hell! It’s only a few weeks.”
“You’ll be home for Christmas, then?”
“That depends on when Getchner’s through with me here, huh?” A fleeting picture of the Yuletide living room at home limned Aaron’s memory, but he pushed it away.
“Mary’d be lookin’ for you,” Jonathan said, meaning that he would, too. But he simply couldn’t say so yet.
Aaron chuckled and answered noncommittally, “We’ll see, we’ll see. Meantime, I’ll need a few more winter things. Could you ask her to pack them up and send them out to me?”
“Anything, Aaron,” his brother offered.
They spent the time before the lantern dimmed making verbal notes on what should be sent to Enderland, guessing it wouldn’t take but a couple of days for a carton to get out there.
As if the morning knew the men’s jobs were finished, it signaled their release with the first, fine-flown flecks of snow. Getchner, at the seat of the buckboard, hitched his collar tighter to his red neck, anxious to roll. The men were arranging their packs on the crowded wagon, jostling one another in good spirits. Jonathan tossed his roll up, saying, “Stash that for me, Joe, will ya?” Then he, too, hitched his collar up, turning to Aaron. His breath was white in the crisp air as he admonished gruffly, “Now, you take care of yourself, boy, you hear? And we’ll be lookin’ for you, come Christmas.”
Aaron stood jamming his gloves on tighter, taking longer than necessary, jabbing the left hand against the right long after the gloves were snug. At last he reached one toward Jonathan, who clasped it tightly as Aaron said, “You’ve got a sight more to take care of than I do. You see to it, brother.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” And as he said it, they pitched together, roughly slapping each other’s shoulders, their gloved hands making dull thuds before Jonathan broke away to jump onto the buckboard. It jerked to life with a lurch as Getchner slapped the team into action. Aaron stood with shoulders hunched, hands in pockets in spite of the gloves. The wind blew from the northwest at the wagon’s tail, hustling it as it went, ignorant of the loneliness in the man who watched it go.
The men had been gone twenty-six days, but it seemed like a year. Then, at last, Jonathan’s letter arrived, saying they’d be in on the late-afternoon train. Amos and Tony had come to do chores for the last time this morning. Clem Volence took the rig to town and left it at Anson’s. All that was left to do now was wait.
The day had flown by. Mary had cleaned the already clean house, baked bread, and butchered a fat hen for noodle soup. It was a joy for her to be doing again for the men. It seemed as if the house itself took on an expectant air. The warmth of the range, the aromas of the foods, the scrubbed and polished rooms extended a welcome.
As the day flew, the last hour crawled. Mary’s footsteps returned again and again to the east window, where she watched for the rig. The weather had turned suddenly cold during the night, and she worried about their warmth, as if Jonathan and Aaron were children.
She smoothed her apron for the hundredth time; then, glancing outside, she caught first sight of the horse topping the hill. As if surprised at finding herself in an apron, she flew to the pantry, tearing at the ties to remove it as she went. Returning to the window, she saw the rig pull over the nearer hill, but the bonnet was up and she couldn’t distinguish any figures inside. Where was her shawl? In the living-room closet…She charged there to retrieve it and quickly threw it around her shoulders, gaining the porch steps just as the buggy drew up under the elms.
Jonathan was stepping down, his back to her and the wind, and she flew down the yard, down the wind, calling his name. His big, welcome arms circled her small shoulders, and his face was cold against her warm cheek. His mouth, though, was warm on hers as he tasted her welcome.
Releasing her, he scolded, “You’ll catch your death, girl. Get back inside.” And he turned to grab his roll from the buggy.
But glancing into the empty conveyance, she said, “Where’s Aaron?”
Jonathan swung back to face her, the roll between them as he answered, “Getchner asked him to stay on awhile.” He watched her face, but no glimmer of change marked it. The wind threw a stray strand of hair across her cheek, reminding him that she had only a light shawl on. “Get back up to the house,” he ordered easily. “I’ll be up as soon as I stable the mare.”
When he entered the kitchen she was kneeling beside his opened bedroll, picking stray wisps of hay from it. His spare clothes were in a pile beside her. She looked up and smiled at him, and he saw what he had not seen outside, how much she had grown. Her belly had rounded, and her thighs, as she knelt, formed a cradle for its bulge.
“You brought home half the harvest,” she smiled, sweeping the transient pieces of hay into her hand.
He turned to hang his jacket on the hook behind the door, chuckling as he crossed the kitchen to where she knelt.
“Maybe,” he said, reaching a hand toward her, “but it doesn’t need raking right now.” He made a tug at her hand. She rose and he noticed a new awkwardness that her added weight caused now.
She lifted the stove lid and brushed the hay into the fire, a jumble of thoughts and feelings threading her mind. In the five minutes he’d been home, Jonathan had shown a solicitousness to her that was unlike him. The hardness seemed gone from him. Was it because he’d missed her, or because Aaron hadn’t come back, or what?
He sat down in the rocker by the stove, sighing, “Ahh, home.”
She put the bedroll at the foot of the stairs and, coming back into the kitchen, caught Jonathan’s eyes on her stomach. As if acknowledging his glance, her hands went to it. She was suddenly self-conscious and could no more hide it than she could hide her newly acquired girth beneath her splayed fingers.
Jonathan cleared his throat.
“Mary,” he began, and she knew he was having his usual difficulty voicing his thoughts.
“Yes, Jonathan?” she urged.
He rocked forward, resting elbows on knees, rubbing his palms together as if he might find the words between them.
“Everything’s all right between Aaron and me.” He paused, then went on haltingly, “We talked…we talked like you said, and it’s good we did.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” she asked as gently as she could, but her question still cut into him. Some quiver of muscle at his temple told her he mistook her question, and she hurried on, “Oh, Jonathan, don’t look away from me. Didn’t I promise in my letter that there was no more between me and Aaron? Will you look at me like this every time I mention his name? He’s your brother, Jonathan. This is his house we’re living in. I must know.”
“Getchner asked him to stay on till Christmas or so. He didn’t know exactly how long. We settled our differences, though, and Aaron’ll be back before long.”
“To stay?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonathan admitted. “It’s a two-man farm, Mary.”
But she knew that. Instead of replying, she walked toward the pantry and got the coffee grinder. “I’ll get supper,” she said quietly, “and then you can tell me all about Dakota.”
She was on her way back to the stove when Jonathan rose slowly from the rocker, a look of near-agony on his face. “Dakota was lonely,” was all he said, but it stopped her in midstep and she whirled to reach her arms toward him.
“Oh, Jonathan,” she crooned as her arms went around his neck. He felt the coffee grinder dig into his shoulder blade, but he didn’t care. He crushed her against him, murmuring her name against her hair. The coffee grinder fell to the floor with a splintering crash, but they remained as they were, holding each other, sharing a new bond.
“I love you, Jonathan,” Mary whispered, and she found it was true. It was easier to love this warm Jonathan, easy to think he loved her, too.
Her words brought a quickening to his loins and a quick wish to his mind. I wish I could take her up to bed right now, he tho
ught as he ran his hands over her back, bringing her body tightly against his. But he forced a calm to himself, burying the thought that seemed suddenly prurient again when he opened his eyes to the kitchen light. Releasing her, he almost felt that she’d have responded, regardless of the time of day. He chastised himself, reluctantly turning Mary free, wondering what folly had captured him to even think such a thing, especially with Mary in her condition.
Mary turned to her supper preparations to hide her chagrin. Her body felt suddenly chilled, abashed at being turned away so abruptly. She had offered herself to Jonathan, and he’d denied her. Would this be the way of it forever? Her needs had been so simple before Aaron. She longed to return to that state, to quell these urgings that now overtook her without warning. But what had lain asleep in Mary had lain too long, rested too well. It seemed it would stay aroused for a long time to come.
Aaron’s decision to stay on in Dakota necessitated some changes in the early-winter planning. The serious snows had held off, but November’s temperatures dropped down below freezing, cold enough to keep meat, bringing butchering time. Jonathan and Clem Volence made plans to exchange help with the chore because it required two men. They butchered at Jonathan’s place one cold day in late November, out on the south side of the granary where the steam rose from a huge cast-iron pot. In spite of the chilling cold, the fire under the pot warmed Jonathan’s hands as he added ashes to the simmering water. A pulley and rope hung in the sturdy oak tree that had been pressed into such use many times before. Together he and Clem slew the hog, bled it, and hoisted it into the oak with the aid of the pulley. A large wooden barrel leaned on a cross-prop beneath the carcass, forming a kind of chute that held the boiling ash water. It regurgitated belching bubbles as the two men lowered the pig’s forequarters into it. The drenching and scalding continued as they slid the carcass up and down, removing bristles as it scraped against the barrel staves. The process was repeated on the rear end, with more scalding water and more scraping. On a table of saw-horses and planks the carcass was laid to be knife-scraped until the hide was clean and hairless.
“This time of year I wish I had a boy to help out,” Clem confided.
“Yup. A boy Priscilla’s age would be mighty helpful,” Jonathan agreed.
“’Course, I wouldn’t trade Priscilla. She’s been a big help to her ma since the baby came and all. We thought for a while there we might lose her to Aaron, but he sure ain’t been around much lately.” Clem squinted a look at Jonathan as he replied, but Jonathan remained his stolid self, scraping away at the carcass.
“Reckon Aaron doesn’t know what he wants right now.”
“That young Michalek has been hangin’ around a lot. Agnes don’t think near as much of him as she does of Aaron. That don’t faze Priscilla none, though—she just tells her ma to quit worryin’. Just the same, we miss seein’ Aaron around.”
“Mary misses seein’ Priscilla, too. Used to get together a lot on Sundays.” Jonathan stopped his scraping then and looked at Clem from under lowered brows. “Guess it’s not for you nor me to say what they do, though.” Then he reached for a board and drew it through the hog’s ankle tendons and said, “Let’s hoist ’er up now. She’s ready to be split and drawn,” and the subject of Aaron and Priscilla was put aside.
Mary came downyard, swaddled in mittens, scarf, and coat, a dishpan of salt water propped on her hip. “I came to get the heart and liver for soaking,” she called. They needed immediate attention if they were to be edible.
“We got ’em out,” Jonathan said, pointing to the tub at his feet.
Mary had suffered little nausea during her first six months of pregnancy, but at the sight of the unsavory tangle of innards in the tub, her stomach gave a sickening lurch. She took what she’d come for and hurried back to the house. But the chosen sections of gut also needed cleaning and scraping for sausage, and she finished her day with the gorge threatening to erupt from her throat. Even the fresh liver she fried for supper lost its usual appeal, but Jonathan ate heartily.
“You’re not eating much,” he noted, looking at her plate.
Involuntarily her hands went to her stomach and she said, “When the butchering is done, I’ll feel more like eating again.”
He was surprised. She never got sick at all. This was something new, and he realized the peculiarities of pregnancy were something they hadn’t shared at all. He wondered if there were other things that bothered her.
“I can finish scraping those sausage casings after supper,” he offered. And in spite of her queasy stomach, Mary smiled. It was so unlike Jonathan, and she understood his full intentions. His concern was all she needed right now.
“They’re all done, Jonathan, but thank you, anyway.” And he returned to cutting the meat on his plate, a bit flustered by a new, expansive warmth inside him.
The following day, he brought the quartered carcass into the kitchen table and sawed it into meal-sized pieces. These he placed on planks covered with dish towels, and left on the back porch to freeze overnight. Hopefully no wild animals would brave coming that near, even for a free dinner.
The hams, bacon, and side pork Mary put into brine crocks to soak and turn red as the saltpeter did its work. Slabs of lard, too, were cut and frozen in preparation for rendering. The grinding and frying down of the fat permeated the house for days with a heavy odor. Jonathan had packed the frozen meats into a barrel on the north side of the house long before Mary’s job was finished. The sausage-making took on a more pleasant aspect for her, although Jonathan mercifully boiled the hog’s head in the caldron in the yard. But when she cooked the meat from it with pearl barley and spices, it filled the house with a pungent garlic aroma, reminding Jonathan of the coming holiday. “It smells just like when Ma used to cook it at Christmas,” he said.
“I’m saving it for then. We won’t have our first taste till Christmas, just like when you were boys.”
“How’d you know we always saved it till Christmas? I never told you, did I?”
“No, Aaron did one time.”
“Oh…sure,” he said, glancing at the kettle that bubbled away on the stove, then back at Mary again.
“Do you suppose he’ll make it home for Christmas?” she asked.
“I hope so,” Jonathan answered, and he truly did.
“Me, too.” And for once her husband didn’t feel threatened by her words.
But the hams were smoked in the smokehouse, tied into sacks Mary had sewn for them and plunged deep within the loose oats in the grainary, for storage, and still no word had come.
At Getchner’s farm, a changed, quiet atmosphere filled the days. Aaron was kept busy, but the work was lighter, the days shorter. After the frenzied harvest activities Aaron felt the abrupt loneliness.
The Getchners took their trip to Fargo, and Aaron was left alone in the strange house. It might have warmed or charmed him, for it was a comfortable place, but it wasn’t his home and it left him wanting and lonely, remembering his own place.
It was a week before Thanksgiving, and Aaron pictured the kitchen at home, the table covered with geese being readied for market. His nostrils seemed to catch the smell of wet feathers and melting paraffin. How he hated picking pinfeathers! But he’d do it gladly to be home right now.
The slow-moving days brought Thanksgiving. He spent it alone, his thoughts miles away. The late-found understanding between Jonathan and himself had left him missing his brother and Mary equally. He found he was again thinking of them as a pair, and the longer he was away, the less he singled out one or the other in his thoughts.
The Getchners returned, and December blustered across the bleak Dakota landscape, the raw winds sweeping its flatness. Christmas was nearing, and Aaron waited for the word from Getchner, word that he was no longer needed. It couldn’t come fast enough. He’d had enough of the flatlands, the emptiness.
Some years, Jonathan and Mary had traveled as far as Osakis to find the best market for Mary’s dressed geese. This yea
r, though, Jonathan sold them all in Browerville. Mary had kept back two for themselves, one for Christmas dinner and another to be hoarded until midwinter, when it would be a welcome treat after a steady diet of pork and wild game.
They’d had no word from Aaron, and with Christmas only a week away, both Mary and Jonathan were anxious. Mabel Garner had written, inviting the Grays to join her great, raucous, crowded family on Christmas Day. But Mary’s condition forced them to decline. Also, they didn’t know if Aaron might make it home. So they waited uncertainly, not wanting to be gone if he arrived without warning.
In the wintery dusk the streets of Fargo were shimmering with lights. Motorcars and horses shared the roadways, parked or tethered, chugging or trotting. The backs of the horses gleamed wetly under melting snow. The hoods of the autos were dusted with it.
There were two hours to fill before the night train departed. Aaron had tried rare beefsteak at the Comstock Hotel, finding it surprisingly flavorful and juicy, as Jonathan had read it’d be. Wait till I tell Jonathan about it, he thought. Every thought now was of home. Passing ladies in their hobbled skirts, he tried to imagine Mary hobbling around the kitchen in one, and laughed at the thought. How could she jump the porch steps in a getup like that? Childish voices drifted along the street, and Newt Volence’s face came to him, one tooth missing. Through a bakery window he saw decorated delicacies, and he could almost smell the kitchen at home. Mary would be making holiday breads, he thought. The sound of a carol wafted through the evening as a door swung open. He paused and entered the department store where music was spinning off a gramophone. Standing before it, listening, he was approached by a mustached man who moved like a chipmunk.
The Fulfillment Page 22
