Naked in the Winter Wind

by Dani Haviland

  Julian pushed together a small pile of stones next to the base of the fence post. He was smiling at Jody’s joke, but didn’t say anything. Jody looked over and said, “Are my jokes that bad, or is there somethin’ botherin’ ye?”

  “I want to ask you a favor,” Julian said with a large intake of air, finishing with a gust that could have blown out a candle at twenty paces. Yes, Jody could tell Wallace how it was between a man and a woman much better than he could, that was for sure. He took another deep breath, paused, blew it out, breathed in deeply, and then said, “I’d appreciate it if you would talk with Wallace about his wedding night and what to do.” He paused, kicking the pebbles hard across the yard, trying to gather courage. “I know the ladies liked him, but I really don’t think he’s—how should I say—experienced? I’ve not been married in a long time, and you’re still married, and well…”

  Julian was fumbling for words, getting red faced with frustration and embarrassment. He looked at the ground for inspiration and couldn’t find it. He took another deep breath as if to say something, but no words came out. Not only did he not know the right words to use, he didn’t know how to put even the wrongs ones together into a coherent request. He was also starting to get light-headed from all the deep breathing. Then he felt the heavy hand on his shoulder.

  “I’d be glad to help with this, shall we say, responsibility?” Jody gave an expression that was half grin and half grimace. He was proud of the fatherly task he had been asked to undertake, but was also scared, unsure of what he was going to say.

  “Ye ken, the men who told me about what to do and what to expect on my wedding night werena exactly right. My father dinna get the chance to give me the talk. He died before he could see me with a wife, or even a girlfriend. I dinna ken exactly what to say to the lad, but I do ken a few things not to say,” he said, laughing.

  The blush of tension was gone from Julian’s face, and the start of a smile was on Jody’s. “I’m verra glad that Evie has been marrit before. She’ll ken what to do, but I dinna want him goin’ to his marriage bed without an idea of how it should be done. I,” Jody faltered, then regained his composure, chin out and spine straight, ready to shoulder the responsibility. “I had better have that talk with him now, before I lose my nerve. You can stay here and hold the fence down, or move some fresh straw into the stalls. We willna be havin’ too many people over this afternoon, but there’s no need to have a foul smellin’ barn fer their horses. Besides, if some of them take to drinkin’ too much, they can jest sleep it off on the clean beddin’.”

  Jody reached over and grabbed the wooden pitchfork, propped against the fence. “Use it well, my friend. Ye have the easy task.” Jody wiped the sweat off of his upper lip with the back of his hand. “Aye, ye have the easy task,” he mumbled as he walked away.

  Ӂ Ӂ Ӂ

  Jody stomped his feet as he climbed the steps, trying, but not succeeding, to crush his childish insecurity about discussing sex.

  I could tell the difference between Jody and Julian’s footfalls, but not between his and Wallace’s. Since Wallace had just come in, it had to be Jody. “Come on in, Jody, I’m decent,” I hollered.

  “Of course, yer decent. Who said ye werena decent?” Jody asked, truly confused. Then it dawned on him what I had meant. “Oh, all right. Weel, ahem, I came to ask Wallace to come help me outside fer jest a bit. I need a hand movin’ a couple of fence rails, and Julian is busy with a…another chore.” He smiled at the mental image of Julian holding down the fence as his other chore.

  “I’ll be right there,” Wallace said. “I just came in to see how my little family was doing.” He turned from looking at Wren to me. “Do you need anything before I go?” his hand still stroking little Wren’s forehead.

  “Yes,” I replied, “please send in a cool, gentle breeze, but not too gentle. I want to be able to feel it, but I don’t want to get knocked down either.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said, smiling, then turned to Jody. “Ready?” he asked.

  Jody took a deep breath, held it, and then blew it out in a huff. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  Wallace and I stared at him, both of us wondering how much trouble setting fence rails could be. He repeated it again, softly this time, and without the hurricane blast. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Ӂ Ӂ Ӂ

  Julian saw the two tall men coming out of the house, picked up the pitchfork, hailed them with it, and then walked around the back to the haystack, relieved that Jody doing the deed, not him.

  Jody walked up to the same spot where he and Julian had been standing. A slight smile appeared—now it was Wallace’s turn to help him hold down the fence.

  “Where are we going to put in the rails? This one looks fine.” Wallace saw the slightly contorted scowl on his father’s face. “Are you all trigh? You look like you’re choking on a bone or…”

  Jody snorted and said, “No, we dinna need to be changin’ out perfectly fine fence rails, and I’m not chokin’ on anythin’ but words. Ye see, yer other father wanted me to have a talk with ye about yer, um, yer…”

  “Wedding night?” Wallace suggested, an open, inquiring look on his face.

  Oh my God, Jody thought; he doesn’t have any idea of what’s going to happen! He looked at Wallace again and saw that he had the most innocent, pleading look on his face. He had a ‘please tell me, father, I need to know: will it hurt, will she bite me, am I going to explode’ expression of a scared three-year-old.

  Wallace burst out laughing. “I got you, didn’t I?” he said. He kept laughing as his father’s face changed from shock, to anger at being made fun of, to laughing right along with him.

  “Aye, ye got me,” Jody conceded. His laughter turned into light seriousness. “Now, yer father said that he never had the talk with ye. He wanted to make sure ye dinna have some wrong ideas about…weel, ye ken, the weddin’ night. And, weel, it will be more than jest one night if ye have a good wife, and I’m sure Evie will make ye a good wife.”

  “I’m sure she will. And for the rest of it, I was reared around horses and other animals. It can’t be that much different, can it?” Wallace asked with total sincerity.

  Jody rolled his eyes, leaned back against the fence with a small thud, and said, “Yes, it can and is that much different.” He looked into his son’s eyes, trying to gauge if he was teasing again. “Ye really dinna ken, do ye?”

  “Well, no, I’ve never ‘been’ with a woman, although I have kissed a few. Things ‘happened’ when Evie and I, well, we got carried away kissing, but we had our clothes on the whole time. I know what a woman looks like without clothes, sort of, but I never touched one all over. What I did touch felt mighty good, though,” Wallace said with alacrity, indicating that he was definitely looking forward to being married.

  Wallace came out of his reverie and asked bluntly, “So what’s different with what happens between a man and a woman, and between two other mammals?”

  “Weel, first off, ye do it face to face, mostly. Ye can do it jest about any way the, um, parts will fit together, but fer the first time, I suggest face to face.” Jody was flustered, but didn’t want to leave Wallace ignorant on his first encounter. “And use yer elbows. Ye dinna need to be squeezin’ the air out of yer new bride, after all. And if she makes a verra ugly face and little squeakin’ noises, that’s a good thing. Make sure she makes the faces and squeaks before ye, er—before ye finish…”

  Jody looked over at Wallace to see if he understood. At first, there was a blank stare of uncertainty. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes widened—he knew.

  “I’ve seen that look!” Wallace said. “One time when Evie and I were…kissing, she made this horrid face, and then she went limp, almost collapsed. And she was grinning...” His focus drifted off with the memory of their encounter in the garden. “She said she got hers first, and then I got mine. Well, I know what I got, but now it makes sense. Women get that, too?”

  “Aye, they do, if yer
doin’ it right.”

  Father and son became silent, looking away from each other into the woods, neither of them ready to return to the awkward discussion. Then they both spoke at the same time. “If ye have any questions,” Jody began, just as Wallace said, “If I have any questions…”

  They both laughed and stared at each other’s shoulders, still too embarrassed because of the topic of their conversation to look each other in the face. Then Jody put his hand on his son’s shoulder, looked him in the eye, and said, “Dinna worry; jest love her, respect her and protect her, and ye’ll have a wonderful marriage. It worked fer me, and I’m sure it’ll work fer ye.”

  Wallace said, “Thank you, father, thank you very much,” and started to walk past him to the haystack, intending to help Julian with the straw redistribution task.

  Jody’s face flashed recall, and he raised his hand to stop his son from leaving. “I have somethin’ fer ye. I ken ye canna get yer hands on yer money to buy yer wife a proper ring, but ye’ll be wantin’ to give yer bride a token of yer marriage. So here, Sarah gave me a bit of ribbon to use as a necklace fer it.”

  Wallace opened his hand and Jody put a length of black silk ribbon with an ancient silver coin attached to it. “I think that’s Athena,” he said as he pointed to the face on the coin, “and I’m sure this is Pegasus on the back.” He turned over the coin to reveal the struck impression of a flying horse. “See, someone punched a couple of holes here, so the ribbon went right through to make a lovely necklace.”

  Wallace looked carefully at the coin, and then up to Jody with a raised eyebrow, asking ‘where did you get this?’ without words.

  “It’s a long story, but whether it’s worth lots of money or nae, there isna anyone here in this land who could change this coin into anythin’ but a pretty piece of jewelry. Jest dinna let one of the bairns put it in his mouth when he gets older. It’s a bit messy gettin’ it back,” he said with a smile of remembrance.

  Ӂ Ӂ Ӂ

  I decided that a salad would be good for lunch. It was too hot to cook inside, and I had just been given two fish as a wedding present by our neighbor Hannah’s younger brother, Jedediah. The fish could be wrapped in mud and set in the fire outside to slow-bake. It wouldn’t be tuna salad, but flaked trout mixed with mayonnaise on greens sounded yummy. Jedediah said he wanted to give me a present because I was so pretty, but I think he just wanted an excuse to come see the babies.

  “You had them all at once?” he asked.

  “Well, not exactly. It was kind of like a cat having kittens. They came out one right after the other,” I said.

  “Did it hurt?” He looked over the edge of the playpen at the babies who were getting their air bath in the late morning shade. “Hannah says the ladies always scream somethin’ terrible when the babes are comin’. She puts wadding in her ears, it gets so bad.”

  Just then, Jody hopped up the steps to the porch. “Weel, some women screech and holler so bad, ye’d think they were dyin’, but Miss Evie here, she was quiet as a…as a fish in the water.”

  “Really?” asked Jedediah. “Do you mean that it doesn’t hurt when you have three at a time?”

  “Oh, it hurts, all right,” I said. “I just found out that it hurt more when I yelled.”

  “Oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot. Da would give me a whippin’ for sure if I didn’t tell you. Mr. Pomeroy, Da said that there was some soldiers muckin’ around the mill yesterday afternoon. He didn’t know who they was, but he figured they was up to no good, and that I should tell you right away. Except that I forgot about the right away part. I wanted to bring Miss Evie and the babies something, so I stopped and caught these fish. It’s okay, isn’t it? That I didn’t come here right away, I mean.” Poor Jedediah looked as if he could feel the spanking on his bottom while he was talking about it.

  Jody said, “Ach, its fine. You had better go on home and tell yer da that ye told me, and that I’ll look onto it. And ye dinna have to tell him about the fish, aye?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” he said as he walked backwards away from the house toward the trail. “Thank you very much,” he said again, and then turned around and began his race home, sprinting like a short distance runner in an heroic attempt to make up the time lost with the fishing expedition.

  Jody looked at me, shrugged, and explained, “No use the boy gettin’ whipped fer doin’ a good deed fer ye. I canna go back in time and start checkin’ on the soldiers sooner. I dinna think the lad will be makin’ the same mistake again—with or without the strap. I’ll leave with Julian now to see to it. You stay here and let the others ken what’s goin on.”

  I watched dejectedly as Jody strode purposefully toward the barn. He stopped suddenly and turned around sharply. I could tell by his face that he had just remembered something. He came back to where I was, wearing a grin like the fox that had just found the key to the chicken coop. He patted his sporran, and then opened it. “Jest fer the ceremony, here, take the somethin’ borrowed. That is, of course, unless ye want to consider it somethin’ new. I’ll be sure to take it back after the weddin’ so it wilna be hauntin’ ye. I heard someone is comin’ by later with the somethin’ blue, and I ken ye have a somethin’ old comin’ yer way soon. Dinna fash,” he consoled, “We’ll be back before ye can miss us.”

  “But…” I started to say something, but thought better of it. I’d heard that phrase ‘be back before ye can miss me’ one too many times. “God bless,” I said instead, hoping that Jody hadn’t heard the fear in my voice.

  He was halfway to the barn when he called back to me, “Oh, and tell Wallace that we’ll be back fer the weddin’. We wouldna want to miss that.”

  I pulled apart the rag-wrapped parcel he had given me. Jody had ‘gifted’ me the smartphone he had been holding onto for the last couple months. Now I would have it as a something borrowed, or ironically, something new, ‘jest for the ceremony.’ Funny man. It was new as in ‘this cell phone is so new that it hasn’t even been thought of yet, much less created.’

  I stashed it in my pocket. I really didn’t want it. I didn’t like to be reminded of the life I used to have but knew nothing about. At least I didn’t have to clean it, feed it, or worry about it giving me fleas. “Nice pocket,” I said softly, “you just stay here in this nice pocket, wee black box, and don’t give me any reason to toss you down the privy.”

  ***46 Clyde Returns

  Wallace and Evie’s wedding day

  All the major chores had been completed in time for the big celebration. Wallace was behind the house, musing while he busied himself with the never-ending project. The steady tug, tug of clearing out the weeds in Evie’s vegetable garden was soothing. He really didn’t mind the task; it was actually therapeutic. Yanking and pulling out the bad stuff, and seeing immediate results for his effort—if only life was that straightforward.

  However, no matter how much time he spent on gardening, the weeds always found their way back. Wedding and weeding. Evie would be sure to have a joke or a pun about how he was burning hours on one, waiting for the other. “Wally weeding while waiting for the wedding?” he recited to his audience, the magpies in the tree, eating the last of the mulberries. “I’ll have to try that one out on her and see what she thinks. Even if it is a groaner, she’ll smile for me. Helen of Troy may have had the face that launched a thousand ships, but Evie has the face that lights up this whole colony.”

  He hoped that there were enough weeds to keep him busy until the wedding. He had been waiting for this day for months. Well, not so much the wedding day, as the wedding night. The warm glow he felt was more than just the weather, exercise, and thinking about his first day and night of being married. He realized that after this evening, he and Evie would be together forever—a well-matched and contented husband and wife like Sarah and his father, Jody.

  The summer’s heat had really kicked the garden into high production mode. Those tiny seeds Evie had salvaged from the tomatoes and dried peppers from José’s ran
ch really took off after she planted them outside. She had sowed the seeds early, when the garden was still frozen in places. She insisted on keeping her little dirt-filled rag pots in the house so her tomato and pepper plants could get an early start. He had extended the windowsill for her so she could set the seedlings in the sun. “Besides, the soil has to be warm for the seeds to germinate. When it stops freezing at night, I’ll plant them in the garden. I’ll bet we have tomatoes by the Fourth of July.” And she was right; they had tomatoes by the Fourth of July and dozens, scores, more every day.

  He had brought along one of the large woven baskets she had made when pregnant to collect today’s harvest. That seemed so long ago. Back then, he had been dubious about eating a tomato, but she assured him they were not poisonous, and actually had lots of vitamins and antioxidants in them. He had been a bit embarrassed because he didn’t know what those were. “Oh, they’re just fancy words that mean they’re good for you. You won’t get scurvy if you eat one of these every day.”

  Wallace was contentedly picking the red fruit—what he had been told once upon a time were love apples—when he looked up and saw Jody and Julian quickly and quietly saddling their horses. It was obvious by the sharpness of their movements that they were in a hurry. Something must be wrong for them to be leaving so soon before the wedding.

  Wallace sprinted toward them, hurdling over the rail fence like a two-legged jumper horse. Jody saw him approaching and pulled Aries around so they could speak before he left, motioning for Julian to proceed.

  Julian nodded in acknowledgement, then turned back to look at Evie. She was on the porch, arms crossed in front of her chest, helpless and frustrated that she couldn’t assist her friends and family. The frown on her face was almost enough to pull the brightness from the sunshine. Julian waved his arm to her with a wide good-bye. She grimaced in reply; his false smile hadn’t fooled either one of them. He kicked his horse’s flanks and swiftly took off to investigate the commotion, hoping that whatever was wrong was easy to repair.