“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 bot
h 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.
It was late afternoon when the room was put back in order. The curtains hung in crisp peaks, scratching against the wall; antimacassars lay crisply on the arms and backs of chairs. Spirits of lavender on a lump of salt ammonia sweetened the air like summer, and the old decorative plate covered the chimney hole high up on the wall. Mary studied it, sitting in the kitchen rocker, which took the place of the heater stove for the summer. The plate pictured an old mill beside a brook, surrounded by velvety grass and heavy trees. She’d studied it often and knew it as well as the rest of the house. Most times the peaceful scene filled her with a homey contentment.
It lent no such satisfaction today. She was weary. While her hands were busy, she’d held her worries and doubts at bay, but now, when she relaxed her guard, they assaulted her anew. As if Grandfather Gray had come walking across the velvety grass by the mill up above her, wondering why she sat so forlornly in his old front room, she answered his unasked question.
“Seems like your grandsons need me between them to settle down this hornets’ nest here, but I feel like I’ve already been stung by both of them. Jonathan first with this whole fool thing—he’s the one who stirred it up. And then Aaron, acting so skittish. And both of them carrying on like fools. I wish you were here to talk some sense into them both. I could use a steadying hand, too, maybe.”
Then, realizing she’d been talking out loud, Mary thought what a goose she must seem. She stamped a foot and got up from the rocker to make supper, muttering, “Great big fools…”
It was a busy week that left little time or energy for paying social calls, so they didn’t make it down to Clem and Agnes Volence’s to see the new baby. The field work started in full force for the men, and spring housecleaning filled Mary’s days.
They were up early, worked too long, and ended the days weary. It really would be best to wait until Agnes was up and about again, Mary thought, and put off the visit to the following week.
Aaron hadn’t had time to go down to settle things between himself and Pris, either. But they always went to the Bohemian Hall Saturday nights, and he figured they’d have time together then to straighten things out.
On Saturday night he cleaned up, hitched up the buggy, and headed down the hill to the west. As he turned into the Volence driveway, the corncrib seemed to accost him, and he recalled Pris’s anger in its full force. She was going to take some gentling tonight, he knew, but he could handle almost anything after the week he’d just been through.
He left the horse and rig under the box elder and walked up on the back porch. It was bright inside, and someone was playing the organ in the front room. When he knocked, he heard footsteps running; then the door flew open and Newt and Gracie stood there grinning.
“How come Pris ain’t goin’ to the dance with you?” Newt questioned without preliminary. Cora nudged Newt’s ribs.
Aaron chucked him under the chin and said, “Well, I hope she is. I came to get her just like always, didn’t I?”
“But her’n Cora already went with the Kveteks.” The Kvetek family lived across the road.
“I told her she best wait and see first if you was comin’ to get her,” Gracie told him, “but she was in a huff and said she wasn’t waitin’ around no longer.”
Aaron ruffled her hair and said, “That’s okay, honey. I’ll see her down at the dance hall, anyway. How’s that new baby?”
“He looks just like me,” Newt bubbled. “Ma said.”
“Well, we’ll come down soon and see him, okay?”
“Wanna see him now, Aaron?” Newt asked hopefully, pulling on Aaron’s hand.
“I better get down to the dance before Pris finds another beau. But I’ll be back soon, huh?”
“Okay, Aaron.”
He left them waving him off and headed for the hall. Priscilla had never gone off to the dance like this, not since they’d been going together. He hadn’t thought about her not being home—she’d always been before. Tonight, just when he’d decided to play things her way, now when he needed her there to steady him, she’d decided to stomp off to the dance and show him what-for. Well, maybe he deserved it, but why—oh, why!—did she have to choose right now?
The Bohemian Hall was heaving like the sides of a winded horse. Aaron could feel the ground shake clear outside. Settling the horse and rig, he could hear the sounds of the Shymek brothers, hard at the music. The lilt of the piano came through the windows, joined by a fiddle and concertina.
The hall served as Grange, polling place, township meeting house, and theater for school programs. Every Saturday night it was a dance hall—and the Bohemians gave it no pity.
Inside, Aaron could feel the rhythmic quaking of the plank floor as the dancers beat it to a polka step.
The building was fronted by a small room that served as kitchen or taproom, depending on the occasion. The large main room was lined with tables and benches on three sides. Aaron scanned the scatter of benches, looking for Pris. He saw Cora first, for she sat facing the door at a table with Mr. and Mrs. Kvetek and their two daughters. Pris sat with her back to the dance floor, but the minute Cora saw Aaron she quickly leaned toward Pris. He detected a slight turn of her head in his direction, but she gave him only a quarter profile.
So she’s still got her back up, he thought.
The dancers were dancing a waltz as he began threading his way through the crowd toward her to ask her to dance, but two single men reached Pris just as Aaron began to make his move. She walked out to the floor with one of them. Aaron had worked his way too near the Kveteks’ table to change course now, and as he passed it he glimpsed Pris waltzing off to his right, while Cora called, “Hi, Aaron,” with a singsong inflection he didn’t like one bit and a glance toward Pris.
Smart-aleck snot-nose, he thought. He heard her and one of the Kvetek girls giggle as he moved off toward the taproom to buy a beer. He stayed back there by the wooden kegs to down the beer and consider the situation.
Pris didn’t waste much time hangin’ out her shingle! But he’d told her this was what he wanted, hadn’t he? She was dancing with Willy Michalek again, and all Aaron could do was wait it out. But she finished the whole set with Michalek, and Aaron had another glass of beer while he waited for a new set to begin.
When the music struck up again, he crossed the floor and stepped behind Pris’s chair. “Dance, Pris?”
“Sure, Aaron,” she accepted.
The two punks across the table didn’t smirk or giggle this time, but avoided looking at him as he took Pris onto the floor.
“What did you tell Cora about us?” he asked. “She acts like I’m a cockroach she just found in her cream.”