Unfortunately, his hands are not on her breasts. One rests on the soft hair of his chest and the other is concealed by the blue cotton roses of the top sheet. Quinn is sleeping, fell asleep almost instantly after he showered and ate.
Maggie sits up, blue roses dropping from her shoulders and breasts to reveal futile nakedness. It is harvest, and outside the bedroom, the earth spills its seed with shameless abundance. Her husband is not so generous. He sleeps, exhausted by the harvest, made a eunuch by the land. They are all like this in September: Myra’s husband, Judy’s husband, even the young and beautiful Genevieve’s husband. The men don’t know it, but the women discuss this on the phone. None of them have had sex for at least three weeks. Their husbands are too busy or too tired from working in the fields, but the women are not jealous of the land. The women do not resent the smell of grain dust on their men’s clothing the way they would the perfume of a mistress because they are agreed that the earth is not female, despite the earnest mother earth imagery used by the inexperienced poets published in the Environment section of the Star-Phoenix. They laugh gently at the comparisons.
The women know that for a season at least, the earth is male. A polygamous male, a sultan, in fact. Myra, who has been spending her restless nights with steamy romance novels, suggested this. Maggie agrees. The men are willing slaves to the sultan. She and Myra discuss what it is like to be in a harem, to wait weeks, even months for one night of sex. The women listen to the weather forecasts, and while the men dutifully pray for sun, they secretly hope for rain.
She loves Quinn’s hands. The cracks in them are permanently darkened with machine oil and dirt. This does not come off on her skin when he touches her, does not leave pale smudges across the slope of her breasts or a telltale line along her thigh. They are considerate hands. She imagines them in winter, un-gloved, searching all the secret places where her pleasure hides. She leans over and kisses one of his knuckles, but he does not wake up. The nipple of one breast brushes against the fine hair on his arm. She stops breathing, tries to hold onto the sharp, sweet tingle, fearing the pleasure will be exhaled with her breath. The window is open, and a tiny breeze, like a fingernail pulled lightly across her skin, makes her aware of the surrounding air. Another gentle gust, insistent, wraps tendrils around her flesh, caressing like fingers.
She gets out of bed carelessly, purposely rocking the mattress, but her husband’s eyes are still closed, and his breath comes in soft, regular half-snores. The sheet lies flat across his thighs. No blue roses spring to life. She turns away, resigned, and walks toward the open window, enjoying the shivers feathering over her nakedness. She listens. There is a murmur outside the window, a beckoning sound. The soft, shy place between her thighs becomes fierce. Her own fingers reach down to stroke, to soothe the restlessness. The wind is warm as breath on her breasts. As the beckoning grows louder, she stills her hand, straining to hear the sound. The wind again, rustling through the wheat field beneath the bedroom window; the field sounds like a lover, like soft sighs and sheets tangling, like a whisper on her bare shoulder.
Her robe is hanging on the bedroom door. She wouldn’t think of going outdoors without covering herself, even though her closest neighbours live nearly two miles away, and the road by the house has been quiet for over an hour. She slips on the robe and ties it loosely before leaving the house. She uses the back door and does not turn on any lights. There is a quarter-moon that lights the way. Barefoot, she walks quickly to the field, her feet sinking slightly into the soft soil that has been abraded and revealed by tractor tires. At the edge of the field she unties the robe and lets the wind part it, lets the wind blow against her and lift the hair from her neck. At its urging, she allows the robe to fall into the dirt. Her breasts look large in the moonlight, and her body seems to have a thousand places to hide its pleasure. Dark places under arms, beneath nipples, in hollows of elbows and knees, between toes and fingers. She is more shadow than surface.
Short of breath as a girl held close in her first slow dance, she steps into the field of grain. The stalks of wheat reach almost to her breasts. The leaves and stems caress her, brushing lightly against skin, sliding between her legs as she walks forward. Each step is pleasure. She feels a heat within her like the sun on her back when she weeds the garden, a pleasant warmth that promises burning, yet she is cool where the night air meets the slight wetness in the shadowed place between her legs. Exciting, contradictory sensations. She feels enveloped by the wind and the wheat, feels the seed against her thighs. Eagerly, she arches her back to take the pleasure, offering herself to the field while her husband sleeps.
A week later, it rains. The morning after the first rainy night, her husband looks at the robe covering the breasts he has touched and sees a faint smudge of dirt on the lapel. He resolves to use more soap when he washes his hands. Myra and Judy, who are more careful housekeepers, wash their bathrobes twice a week in September. Genevieve has no robe to wash. When the men go to town to run wet-weather errands, the women share laundry secrets over the phone.