Free The Fulfillment by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

child trying again and again to catch the spinning box-elder seeds that spiraled down toward her outstretched hands. She’d been told it was lucky to catch the seeds before they touched the ground, but always just before they fluttered into her grasp they reeled out of reach. Events now whirled around her, leaving her unfavored and luckless. She’d thought Jonathan had accepted her and Aaron’s refusal, and now he’d come up with this other ploy to nudge his notion into reality. She was convinced now that his going served his other purpose. Divining that, Mary knew she must now try to reconcile her differences with him, take a step toward a normal relationship in light of his coming trip. It was she who’d turned him away in the first place, she who must turn toward him again.
    â€œJonathan, I’m sorry I turned you away,” she said.
    She needed to say no more, for the dandelion wine had warmed him and he rolled onto his side and took her in his arms. But before kissing her, he said, “I reckon you had reason.”
    His lovemaking was familiar, for its pattern never changed. When he reached for her, she was there in her own familiar way, and when he rolled her onto her back and entered her, there was a comfortableness that seven years had created. But when he lay spent, they knew there were other things between them tonight.
    In her there was a desperation, a clutching effort to settle this tension among the three of them.
    And for Jonathan there was a kind of resurging hope.
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    The trip, the buying of the bull became a panacea for Jonathan. The bull symbolized all he hoped to accomplish, and he spent elated hours imagining herds of hornless Black Angus cattle roaming over the land, all because he had had the foresight to buy one small bull.
    Ah, but that bull would be something.
    Planting the small grains of wheat, oats, and barley during the following weeks, he contented himself with dreaming of the Angus. Aaron, pouring seed to fill the grain drill, wished that his brother would cease whistling for just one day, but Jonathan leaned to his work, whistling his way through the seeding. Aaron worked beside him while they finished the wheat planting and moved to the oats. They worked long days, staying in the fields to use even the last dusk-lit hour for sowing. But after the long hours with the sun in their eyes in one direction and the dust in their mouths in the other, evening chores waited for them. Jonathan seemed unaffected by the hours of arduous labor, but while milking at the end of the day, Aaron’s hands ached, the winter-softened skin burned from the leather reins he’d pulled all day. It didn’t warm him toward his brother any, either. Aaron continued to simmer at Jonathan’s satisfied air.
    Full spring rounded on them suddenly, bringing all her best out of hiding: bloodroots, Indianturnips, wild arbutus, and more. Dandelions with bitter leaves needed sweetening into wine, wild asparagus appeared on the dinner table, watercress made its once-a-year appearance in spring runnels, and comfrey needed gathering for next winter’s medicinal brews. Even the ditches burst into an array of color as Indian tobacco, pennyroyal, and crowfoot blossomed again. The arborvitae berried, evergreens candled, oaks spoke after their long silence, elms blossomed and seeded, and birches popped their bark. Liverwort, trillium, and wake-robins appeared in the woods while the garden perennials shook their winter-flattened hair.
    And everywhere the animals nested. Squirrels outspokenly hurried every which way. Gophers disappeared into the ground with bits of grass in their mouths. Swollen garter snakes and toads frequented the garden. The paired wrens returned to their house in the low-branched mountain ash. The barn cats had a litter somewhere, the female reappearing thin and slack, her underbelly swaying as she walked. Hens clucked in their nests, stubbornly refusing to lay again