Chapter 21

Cassie

Yirmeyah and I collaborated on supper, with me supplying the hamburgers and him chopping and slicing, and locating the condiments. We'd thought about going out, but we'd eaten at a fancy restaurant downtown the day before, after the wedding, and though I'm not a rural lady the way Yirmeyah's a country boy, I do like things simple on occasion. So we at on the back porch, which was really just a slab of concrete at the back of the house, sitting on lawn chairs and holding paper plates in our laps and dripping mustard on ourselves.

By the time we finished it was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to sink, for October is fall and the days are shorter then. I was beginning to get slightly chilly in my sundress, though Yirmeyah had put on a shirt when we'd first gone outside earlier, and he still had it on and probably was nice and warm still. I looked over at him, where he was holding his paper plate and looking out over the yard with a faraway expression on his face.

"Yirmeyah," I asked, partly to startle him and partly because it was a genuine question in my mind, "do you think I'm pregnant yet?"

It startled him all right. "Say what!"

"I just wonder if I'm pregnant yet."

Looking at me that morning hadn't caused it, nor had any of our glances or touches during the day, but this caused him to turn darker as the blood came up in his face. "Cassie Hudson, you're one surprisin' girl." It was the first time he'd ever called me a girl, and I guessed that it was a Texas idiom, since always before he'd referred to me and any other female over the age of 18 as a woman or a lady. "I hadn't even thought o' that."

"Well, think of it, Yirmeyah. We did, you know, try very hard last night to make me pregnant."

If I'd thought he was blushing before, I was wrong – for the first time since I'd known him the tan couldn't hide it, and he was distinctly pink. "Cassie Dearborn Morrison Hudson, are you tryin' to give me a heart attack?"

I had wanted a reaction, and I'd gotten one better than I had ever hoped. I laughed at him, and reached out to seize his hand, bringing it to my chest where it rested, above my dress, on my skin. "Adown, I love you, and I love the way your hand feels when you touch me, and I love the way you look at me, and I love the way you look. I love your laugh and your accent and I love the way you made me feel last night and I love the way I was able to make you feel. But Yirmeyah, I love the thought of having your baby. I want to get pregnant. I confess that I asked the question partly to get your goat, and I've got it most gratifyingly, and I'll treasure your reaction as long as I live. But I also want to be pregnant. I hope I am pregnant already, and if I'm not I'm going to keep after you till I am, because I can't think of any greater way for you to love me than to give me your baby."

His hand was trembling against my skin, and I knew it wasn't from anger or sorrow, but from the intensity of his love for me. And his voice trembled too when he spoke. "Cassie, what you said – that's what I'd say if it were in me to make that kind of a speech. It's not though. I'm demonstrative in my own way, but not like that. But ... but I can't think of any greater way for you to love me than for you to give me your baby."

We rose together, and another mischievous thought came to me, even as I was burning for him in my body and my heart and my mind. "Yirmeyah, I remember when I was a little girl, I thought preachers never had sex."

"Well, where on earth did you think PKs come from?"

"I know now where preachers' kids come from. But back then I don't know what I thought. I knew that other people had sex – I said I was a little girl but I must have been 13 or 14, now that I think about it – but somehow I couldn't imagine a preacher having sex."

By now we were in the house, walking down the hallway toward the bedroom, our hands still clasped together. He turned his head and looked at me, and his grin was infectious. "Cassie, I'm gonna show you just how wrong you were." The look on his face was love, and desire, and mirth, and a sort of amazement at what I'd come up with. "And even if I didn't want us to have a baby, I'd work at it just to prove you silly. 'Cause my love, you are silly."

We went in the door of the bedroom, and I reached for his shirt, and began undoing the snaps. "Silly, yes. Your love, assuredly. And in a hurry – oh, Yirmeyah, hurry up!"

Yirmeyah

Cassie had hit me with a freight train. It wasn't anything wrong, nothing wicked – not between husband and wife. But it was still a lot more forward than I'd have been. I could discuss the matings of cattle and hogs and never turn a hair, though I'd been a farmer's son instead of a rancher's boy. But that little wife of mine came up with those absolutely frank questions and comments and I felt myself turning as red as a side of beef.

And yet what she said was what I felt. I had learned enough during our dating, and some the night before, to tell me that women don't approach the thing quite the same way men do. Though I would never, and could never, betray my wife, the fact was that my body would respond to a naked woman – I knew it to be true – even if I cared nothing for her. Even if I was shoving her out the door in disgust at her depravity, my body would still react. Women aren't like that. Oh, they have physical desire – if I hadn't known it already, Cassie's fire the night before would have proved it. But I didn't think she could ever feel desire for someone she didn't love. I might actually hate a woman, and still find her physically desirable – though I had no desire to hate anyone, nor to test the notion. But if Cassie hated a man, I don't think she could ever have desired him.

In a way I envied her. I flatly didn't want to be so susceptible to female beauty that I would react to someone besides my wife. I wished that I could think of the thing so practically. We men sometimes do think with our bodies. I suppose women do too, at least some women – at least there are women who act that way. But I would rather, if I were doing the choosing, have my love determine what I find desirable. I'd rather be able to only react to my wife.

But I can't change what is. And so I tried to roll with that mortifying punch that Cassie had thrown at me. It was a pair of punches, actually. Somebody once said that there ain't never been a horse that cain't be rode, and there ain't never been a rider who cain't be th'owed. I've never been on the rodeo circuit, and I'm a farmer instead of a cowboy anyway. But I know that she'd th'owed me good, and I suspected that was one "horse" I'd never be able to ride the way she could.