THE REVEREND’S WIFE, by Midori Snyder

It was funny the way it turned out. Hard in fact to feel any shame about it at all. No matter the fire and brimstone pouring out of Preacher Thomas’s sermons, God-afearing and God-avenging, hitting the Good Book hard enough to make sin jump up into your mouth and begin to testify. Me, I don’t need to testify. God knows me. Instead I just stay quiet and get to thinking how God has a mighty good sense of humor and doesn’t mind a little sinning now and again. That is, of course, if no one gets hurt and all parties wind up happy. I guess you could say Violet Thomas and I wound up pretty happy women. And our dear husbands, though they learned a thing or two about women, were never the wiser for it.

It started back about the time my husband Caleb and I returned from our honeymoon. The old buggy and mule had barely made it home, what with the mule getting cantankerous and refusing to move and the buggy losing bits and pieces of itself every time we took a bump. Caleb was furious, swearing at the mule and slapping the reins over its stubborn rump. But I was laughing my head off and could of cared less if the old buggy had fallen apart on the ground and left us stranded in the road. I was as happy as a lark. I was young, loose-limbed, and pretty. I’d just gotten married to the man I loved most and spent three days in a fancy hotel room with him, most of it on my back, my heels up in the air. My bones ached everywhere. I was bowlegged, rubbed raw, and my skin carried a strong musky odor. I got dizzy just bringing my fingers to my nose and inhaling.

“Hey now, Mr. Johnson,” I said, when the buggy finally groaned to a stop in front of our hitching post. “Are you fixing to carry me over the threshold?”

Caleb looked at me with those sharp blue eyes and grinned, his boyish freckles darkening with a blush. Sore as I was, I got heated up quick just looking at him. He jumped down from the buggy and ran around in front of the mule over to my side. I’d already sprung loose from my seat, panting like a rabbit, and was waiting for him. Neighbors had gathered on the road and were calling out greetings. But we didn’t pay them much mind.

Caleb scooped me up off my feet and after wrestling the door open, hoisted me into our little house. He kicked the door shut behind him and our neighbors’ voices were suddenly drowned out by the sound of Caleb’s heavy breathing. I can remember the smooth feel of the wood floor, and the fury with which we grappled right there in the front hall. My hands were too busy elsewhere, so I had to bite off his shirt buttons. My petticoats were all bunched up about my waist, my bloomers hanging off of one ankle. I yanked at Caleb’s trousers and praised God that we’d left the hotel in such a state that my husband hadn’t managed to put on his shorts beforehand.

Like a pair of cats on the stoop, we howled, rolled, and left stains on the wood floor with our joyous homecoming.

Well I guess that’s what a honeymoon is all about. What I didn’t figure on was that it could change so fast. A month after my wedding night I didn’t see any blood come at the usual time for it. I waited a second month just to be sure before I told Caleb the news. He was out back fiddling with the buggy wheels, grease all over his hands, his face kind of distracted by the falling-down husk of that old conveyance. When he figured out what I was telling him, well, you would have thought I’d hit him with a brick. His eyes opened real big, and he shook his head in disbelief.

“You sure?” he asked.

“’Course I’m sure,” I answered, a little testy that he should doubt me. “It’s something a woman knows, Caleb.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” he said, smiling, his face finally opening up to the wonder of it all. “I’m going to be a father.”

I was ready right then and there to go in and celebrate the moment with a good tumble in bed. But Caleb had other ideas.

“We’ve got to be more careful now, Rosalie. I don’t want to hurt you and the baby none,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down a while and let me fix you a sandwich? You sure you feel all right?”

Well, I didn’t want a sandwich, but I was touched by Caleb’s sudden tenderness. So I figured there was no harm in letting him wait on me a bit. Later I’d straighten his thinking out and let him know that even though I was pregnant, I was still capable of doing almost anything.

I lay down on the velvet sofa with a book in my hands while Caleb spent the day waiting on me, asking after my condition every five minutes, his eyes staring at my stomach as though a baby was going to pop out right then and there. I loved it. Yes I did. Until evening that is, when he made me dinner and then disappeared out back again for a long time, leaving me very lonely and bored. I could hear him hammering on the buggy, and every now and again the old mule braying while Caleb cursed at it. It was late in the night when I heard him finally come in the back door. A moment later he joined me in bed, stinking of axle grease, straw, and manure.

It didn’t matter though to me. I was waiting for him, feeling frisky and ready to start a night of play. After all I’d spent the day resting up. I had on my honeymoon nightdress, a band of lace just holding up a sheer drape of fabric over my newly developing curves. My breasts were rounder than a pair of peaches begging to be picked. But Caleb wouldn’t have any of it. He just held me close and told me that we both needed to get some sleep, what with the baby coming on and both of us having a long road ahead of us. I didn’t like the sound of that, but I let him have his way, seeing’s how he’d been so nice to me that day. Tomorrow, I figured, I’d get my way again.

Next morning Caleb was up bright and early and woke me. He was shaved, his hair slicked down with a sweet-smelling hair oil. He had on his wedding suit, a tie, and a hat. In one hand he held a cardboard suitcase and in the other, my tattered carpetbag.

“Where are you off to?” I asked, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“To work, little mother. Got the buggy fixed up and I’m going back to the road. I’m a family man now, and the best damn traveling salesman in this county. I’m going out to earn us a living. Take good care of yourself and the baby, Rosalie, and don’t worry none about me. I’ll write you every chance I get.”

“When are you fixing to come home?”

“Couple of months. Maybe longer if the money is good.”

“Couple of months? What am I supposed to do on my own for a couple of months?” I complained.

“Well, don’t you need to knit or something?”

“I don’t know how to knit,” I snapped.

“Well, there’s no time like the present to learn.”

And there it was. Just that simple. He leaned over and gave me a chaste kiss on the forehead and left, the mule braying, all the pots and pans tied on the side of the buggy clanking loud enough to wake the dead. But he was off to make our fortune. I sat on the bed feeling cheated out of a lover and cried my eyes out. As far as that man was concerned the honeymoon and all that sex was over and done for a while. We were now each in our respective places, him on the road to make money and me, stuck at home to get as big as a barn while I learned to knit booties. I wanted to throw up. In fact I did, though I can’t be sure whether it was my anger or my pregnancy that caused it.

In the weeks that followed I did manage to find ways to occupy myself during the day. The church in our town has always been a holding pen for women with a lot on their minds and not too many ways to express it. They go every day, pray loudly, sing feverishly, and make more food for the church socials than a president’s banquet. Every now and again I’d get an envelope from Caleb with a little money in it and a set of instructions on how much to save and how much to spend. I’d take my portion, buy a new hat and go to church, just to be surrounded by the company. And of course, to hear the preaching of the Reverend Joseph Thomas.

The Reverend Thomas was a man born with the fire of God coursing though his veins. He’d a long serious face that would grow pale as ice when the words come on him. Flames of righteousness seem to shoot out from his raven black hair and black eyes. His lips were a livid red and his white hands beat a golden dust from the pages of his Bible during his preaching. We women filled the front three pews, sweating profoundly under our fine hats, eyes half-closed to the driving incantation of his voice. And when it was all too much to bear, we shouted, surrendering our sins to the scalding flames of Reverend Thomas’s preaching. The man was like lightning let loose in the church, and we all held up our hands to receive a healing bolt from that electrified touch.

Church was all right for the day. But there was nothing to keep my mind off of myself and my loneliness at night. There I was, a healthy young woman with a growing appetite for life, burning alone in bed. My body was becoming lush, my limbs rounded and soft, my breasts standing up almost by themselves. Beneath the darkened brown nipples milk tingled like champagne bubbles. Even the surface of my skin had grown so sensitive that a breeze from the window might set me to moaning for something more. But there wasn’t anything more. Just my left hand tucked up tight between my thighs.

One night I lay in bed and decided something had to be done. I loved Caleb, but I hated being without him. It wasn’t enough just to possess his letters lying scattered over the bed beside me. True, he always told me how much he loved me and how much he missed me. But the last letter said he was staying on the road a while, maybe even until after the baby was born because the money was good. It made me miserable to think all I had of my marriage was a few dollars tucked away in an egg jar and a shelf full of pretty hats. I needed him. Wanted him. But if I couldn’t have him, then I wanted someone to help me in my need until he returned.

It wasn’t long before the image of Reverend Thomas came to my mind. I figured as he was a married man and a pillar of the church, he’d be above reproach and gossip. His wife Violet Thomas was a beautiful woman, with dark auburn hair and deep green eyes. She sang like an angel in the choir, and many women in the church envied her being married to the Reverend Thomas. But I always thought there was a kind of sadness in her eyes. A hurt I couldn’t figure. They’d been married five years and still no children. I wondered now if that was the cause of her sadness. I liked the woman and would have been more friendly to her if I hadn’t come up with my plan. I didn’t want to give her trouble. I was just hoping I could borrow her husband in a quiet sort of a way.

I counted on the Reverend Thomas knowing as little as Caleb about pregnancy when I went to him on that afternoon. He was at the church preparing his sermon in his office. He was looking very handsome to me at that moment, running his pale hand through his black hair, his head bowed to his writing. His stern features were full of intelligence and passion. He looked up at me and the breath quickened in my chest at the keen gaze of those dark eyes.

“Yes, Sister Rosalie? Can I help you?”

“I do hope so, Reverend Thomas,” I answered nervously, and lowered my eyes to my trembling hands. “Forgive me for asking this, Reverend Thomas, but do you know much about having babies?”

I heard him shift in his chair. “A man must protect himself from knowing too much of the sin of Eve,” he answered in a low voice.

I found his reply encouraging, figuring it to mean he knew little enough about it. I plucked up my courage, but kept my eyes on my folded hands.

“Well, Reverend, I’m newly pregnant. But the trouble is my husband, Caleb Johnson, he left to go traveling before we both knew about my condition. Well, that has left me in a terrible fix.”

“And what fix is that?” the Reverend asked.

“Well, a baby gets put together so to speak throughout the nine months he is carried in his mother’s womb. The husband does his job every night to see that all parts are well and truly made.”

At that, I glanced up to see how the Reverend was digesting this new bit of biology. He didn’t seem to find it strange. I went on.

“But my husband left before knowing that he had got me with child. And now I am afraid that without a man to help me every day, I will give birth to a deformed baby, without a body, without arms or toes.”

“Sister Rosalie, this is a hard thing for you,” he said, and I was delighted by the genuine concern in his face.

“I wonder, as you are a man of God, and the only one I can trust with this unburdening of my soul, if you would help me in my time of need. Help me to finish making my child, Reverend.” There was a moment of silence, and I let the words hang between us. “Confidentially, of course,” I added.

“You want me to help finish making your baby?” he asked slowly. I knew he understood me finally as a rosy blush started up from his collarbone and stained his pale throat.

“Yes, Reverend. There is no other man I could ask who would understand that this is truly a mission of mercy and not an occasion of sin. My husband and I need your help.”

I waited quietly while the Reverend struggled with the idea of serving God while making love to me. I must say, I didn’t make it easy for him. My blouse was tight, the buttons straining over my full breasts, and my skirt wrapped around the plump length of my thighs. Pregnancy had given my hair a soft gold luster, and my skin was polished fresh as an apple.

“When?” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him.

“I’ll say I’m to have Bible lessons, and I’ll come to you every day, here in the church office after the dinner hour.”

“Here?” he asked, his eyebrows rising. The room was small and cozy. There were only two chairs and the huge old mahogany desk spread over with papers and books. The desk looked a hard enough surface for my backside, but I wasn’t too particular at the time. There was more than enough room on it for two willing people.

“Well, I’d like it best here in the church, where I can keep my mind on the healing presence of God,” I said, and lowered my eyes again to my folded hands resting in my lap.

“Come tomorrow then,” the Reverend said, and I heard him swallow very hard.

“Thank you kindly, Reverend,” I whispered, and, without looking up, left his office, my heart charging like a racehorse rounding the homeward stretch.

Well, I won’t say too much against the Reverend Thomas. He was after all in his mind a man doing a desperate woman a serious favor. But when I began those Bible lessons I first learned that the Reverend was a man sorely lacking in the knowledge of pleasuring a woman. It made me understand at last the sadness in Violet Thomas’s eyes. Caleb was a lusty soul, not afraid to use his body, not afraid to hold and rock me until I just had to howl. That’s why I missed him so. Until I’d met the Reverend, though, it never occurred to me that another man might not be so generous of spirit as my Caleb.

But the Reverend Thomas had a fear about him, and a way of touching a woman that made her feel more like a serpent than a bedmate. I decided that as long as I was settled on the idea of getting the Reverend to help me out every afternoon, I might as well give him a few lessons.

Not that he knew they were lessons, mind you. He just thought I was explaining the right way to set about making up a child. “Please, Reverend, if you’d just kiss me here, it will be better for my baby. And here, too. Yes, I know it’s my breast, but it will help make the baby’s heart strong. And Reverend, move it in slower, that’s right, no need to hurry just yet . . . oh yes, that’s doing it nicely. Praise God, I think a little faster now if you please, Reverend. No sir, you’re not hurting me. I swear it. We’re making the legs today, and they’ve got to be strong. Give it to me strongly, Reverend.”

Oh my. Those afternoons on that mahogany desk were some kind of education. The Reverend was a good student, and he got to know by the sounds of my sighs, the heaving of my chest, the curving of my spine that indeed, he was pushing the clay of my unborn baby around just right. The only thing I had to stop him from doing was singing hymns while we were going at it. I was afraid we’d attract too much attention. Most people already knew I was pregnant before I came to the Reverend, so it didn’t raise too many eyebrows when I went every day for Bible lessons. They just figured that in my condition, I wasn’t thinking too much about sex, but God.

Well, I did think a lot about God. And thanked Him often for the wondrous changes in my body and the strange joy I found in making love while being as big as a prizewinning pumpkin. I’d be up on all fours, my huge belly suspended like the full moon over that mahogany desk. My climaxes were slow and long, a contraction of pleasure that began at the very bottom of my belly and rose in a steady rippling wave of heat. My breath came in hard gasps as the baby, furious at having his small space squeezed even more tightly by my fun, kicked his tiny legs into my lungs. The Reverend, leaning over me and holding on to my heavy breasts, came away with palmfuls of milk.

One day, I got a letter from Caleb. He was finally coming home the following month, just around the baby’s due date. I felt a kind of peace settle over me at last. I was so full and sated with my condition. The baby had turned and his head was like an orange wedged between my thighs, while the soles of his feet were tucked up under my heart. I went with heavy swaying steps to the Reverend’s office and sat down in the chair. My knees creaked and I crossed my swollen ankles. I looked at that man and realized that over the last months I had grown rather fond of him. He was a good man in his own way. Gentle, and now, loving enough to please any woman.

“Well, Reverend, our work is done,” I said with a sigh. “This baby is coming soon and thanks to you, I know my child will be born healthy and strong.”

“It has been a privilege, Sister Rosalie, to help you in this endeavor. And may God shine his love on you and your new baby.”

The Reverend looked disappointed when I left, but I was just glad that in all that time no one had ever found out about us. And I was confident no one ever would. I was pleased with myself that day and went home to await the birth of my baby and the homecoming of my beloved husband.

* * * *

“You are one lucky woman, Sister Violet, to be married to the Reverend Thomas. How that man can speak. Why it must just sweep you off your feet!”

I looked at the older woman beaming at me, knowing her to be too kind to be envious, and smiled politely. “Why thank you, Sister Laurel. I am honored to be his wife.”

It was true. I was honored to be Mrs. Violet Thomas, the wife of the very Reverend Joseph Thomas. But I wasn’t particularly happy about it either. Being married to the Reverend Thomas had its advantages and decided drawbacks. After all, he was well regarded in the community, and we lived in a comfortable style because of it. He was a man of passionate concern for his flock and for the teachings of God. But he didn’t have the same passion when it came to me, his wife. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me after his own fashion. He just felt that as a man of God it was important to distance himself from the temptations of the flesh.

If I had only known that before I married. I wanted the fire of his words to be realized in the fire of his embrace. I wanted children, a son to look up to his father, a daughter to stand graceful as a lily by my side. But in five years of marriage, the sex had been so meager that it seemed impossible that I would ever know the pleasure of conceiving.

The Reverend Thomas came into my room on the night of the full moon once a month. And that was all. We would begin by praying on our knees. That done, I would lie on the bed, my eyes closed, my face turned to the wall as he had instructed. At first I used to pray to myself that maybe I could sway him in my arms to a more lingering embrace. But he kept his mind on God. And singing “Praise My Shepherd Walk With Me,” he’d give me the solitary thrust of a man doing his righteous duty. No lover’s kiss. No warm embrace. It was all to protect us from the stain of Eve’s first sin.

There was nothing I thought I could do but endure the matter for the sake of my marriage and God. So I wasn’t prepared when the Reverend told me the truth about Rosalie Johnson’s baby boy. There had been a christening for the new baby and, of course, I was required to be there. Oh how the serpents of envy bit my heart looking at that beautiful child. He had red cheeks and strong limbs. He wailed, and both of his doting parents fussed over him. My breasts ached, my own emptiness seemed to mock me even as I congratulated the young woman on her new child.

It was later, at our dinner, that my husband revealed to me his role in creating that perfect child. The longer he talked, the more I stared at him in mute amazement. It wasn’t the sin of adultery that inflamed me. The man was innocent of knowledge and did only what he thought was right to help a member of his flock. But it was the sin of pride that I found intolerable. He was overproud of his handiwork. Proud that he had had some hand in sculpting the final form of that beautiful child. This man who would not give me my own child to hold, believed that he had been instrumental in allowing another woman to have hers. I was ill with hurt.

But I had my own pride to think of and my own dignity to uphold. I said nothing, other than a passing comment. I complained of a headache and went to my room to lie down. I took off my clothes and mother-naked lay down on the bed. All I could think of was the men that I had refused in the past. Those other men with warm hands and knees nudging me under my mother’s dinner table. Men who seemed overeager to hustle me into their marriage beds. But I had been charmed when I met the Reverend, pleased at last to meet a man who spoke to me with a quiet voice and a restrained hand. Now, lying on the bed, the silk counterpane cool under my skin, I prayed to be visited by every one of those eager men. I didn’t care about the extent of my sinful thoughts. I would have coupled with a hundred men if only one of them would have made me feel more like a woman and given to me a child. Bitter tears flowed out of my eyes.

The next day I packed my bags and, making an excuse, I took a coach and went to my mother’s house. I stayed there three months, wondering what was to become of me. Rage seared my soul, lashing out at the memory of that woman Rosalie leaning over her baby. Had I seen her wink at my husband at the christening? Had they really sprawled themselves like animals to copulate on the desk I gave him as a wedding present? Had he really been so undignified his trousers draped around his knees, while I sat at home, ignorant and barren? I thought of revenge, then dismissed it as too cold-blooded. What would I do? Steal her child, kill my husband, write a letter and then throw myself in the river? All of those ideas were worse than foolish.

But sometime later, when the heat of my anger had abated, I came to realize that there was a third road between angry-sorrow and angry-revenge. It was called the road to fair play. I would do unto another as was done to me, I decided. Not to hurt another, but to heal myself.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the Reverend. I wanted to come home. But as I was going to be carrying most of my mother’s jewelry that she had recently bequeathed to me while still living, I needed an escort. I told my husband that I feared traveling alone with so much wealth on my person. I asked if that nice Brother Caleb Johnson who traveled far distances on his sales routes might not assist me by accompanying me home on his next journey out.

I sent the letter and two weeks later got a reply in my husband’s firm clear handwriting. The Reverend had organized it all for me. Brother Caleb Johnson was arriving on such a date to bring me home again in his buggy. The Reverend figured it would take us about three weeks or so on the road as Brother Johnson had to stop at various stores where he had accounts. This suited me very well, and, for the first time in months, I smiled.

On the morning Caleb Johnson was to arrive, I took a good look at myself in the mirror. I was a still an attractive woman. I was older than Rosalie, but I had a full maturity that the younger woman had yet to acquire. She shone brightly like brass, but I was polished gold, gleaming with a rich elegance. I wore my long hair down, like an unmarried woman, and put a small dash of color on my lips. I was just finishing buttoning my cream-colored silk blouse when I heard the groan of the buggy wheels and the braying of Brother Caleb’s mule.

I hurried down, kissed my mother good-bye, and walked to the buggy. I can’t tell you how it pleased me when I saw Brother Caleb take one look and then another at me as I approached. He scrambled down from the buckboard with a quickness I could not have imagined and took my bags from me.

“Morning, Sister Violet,” he said, lifting his hat with one hand while the other hoisted my bag into the buggy’s hold.

“Thank you so much, Brother Caleb, for helping me in my time of need,” I answered. I gathered up my skirts, raising the hem well above my ankles and calves as I prepared to climb up onto the buckboard. Brother Caleb took me by the waist to help me and I heard the sharp intake of his breath as he glanced down at my bared legs. I pulled down my skirt, and he let go of my waist finally with a shy grin. I smiled back and hoped that Brother Caleb knew as little about the workings of a woman’s body as did my husband.

I didn’t feel much like talking on the first day of our trip. I just watched the road curving away before us, feeling a new sort of strength well up in me. After five years of hiding what was sensual in me, I was well pleased to find it not gone after all. I could see out of the corners of my eyes that Brother Caleb was watching me. Too many nights alone on the road for you, I thought. Too many nights away from that wife of yours. I’d turn suddenly and catch his glance, pleased to watch him fumble the reins while his face bloomed brighter than a June rose.

That night we stopped in a small wood. The buggy carried everything we needed to set up a tidy and comfortable camp. Caleb unhitched the mule, made a fire, then set beans and bacon on to boil along with coffee and biscuits. He unrolled two sets of sleeping blankets, laying them a discreet distance apart. I made a point of tucking my jewel bag under my pillow. We ate, chatted a while and then said good night. Slipping under the blankets, I pulled off my skirt and blouse, just so he’d know I was sleeping in my shift. He pretended not to notice, but I saw him cast a lingering gaze on my lace-covered stays thrown out last on top of my skirt and blouse. I listened to him wrestle with sleep, twisting and turning as if the nearness of me agitated him some.

I stayed awake a long time, waiting until I was sure he was asleep. Then I got out of my blankets, and, going to the buggy, stuffed all of my mother’s jewels into a second pouch hidden in my suitcase. I slipped back under the blankets and, staring up at the stars, wondered briefly if I had the courage. But when I looked over at Brother Caleb sleeping near me, I lost all doubts. He was partially uncovered and bare to the waist. He had a nice manly chest with a small patch of curly hair. One strong arm was flung out, and I started imagining what it might be like to be held tight by such an arm. So I pinched my cheeks until the tears come, then started crying out loudly.

“Oh, Brother Caleb, help me,” I sobbed.

He sat up with a sleepy, confused face, his hair tousled. “Wha-what is it?” he mumbled. “Are you all right, Sister Violet?” he asked.

“No, sir. I am not all right. Please help me. Oh God, help me.”

“What’s happening?” he said, now awake and alarmed at the sight of my tear-streaked face. “Are you in pain?”

“Yes, Brother Caleb, pain of the worst kind.”

He scuttled out of his sleeping blankets and came next to me. His trousers, worn low, clung to the sides of his slim hips. I inhaled the strong scent of male sweat and damp earth, and it made my heart beat like a tambourine.

“Do you know what happens to a woman when she is alone without her husband for a long period of time?” I asked tearfully.

“No, ma’am,” he said, with a light shake of his head, clearly puzzled by my question.

“Well, it happens that if a woman is not receiving enough fluids from her husband, then her body, craving that which it lacks, will begin to steal from the woman anything that is near it.” I held up the empty jewel bag.

Caleb Johnson stared hard at the empty bag, his brow pulled into a frown.

“I don’t quite understand you,” he murmured.

“It’s our bodies,” I said patiently. “Women have sinful and greedy parts. We are saved from them by the labors of a man. It is his attentions that keep us from stealing from ourselves.”

“Uh-uh,” Caleb answered, but I could see I wasn’t getting through to him. I drew a deep breath and decided to be blunt.

“In these last months that I have been away from my husband my body has turned against itself. It has stolen my jewels. Taken all them into itself. I can feel them cluttering up my womb. I need these jewels to pay for the new roof on the church.”

Caleb’s mouth dropped open. “Should I fetch a doctor?” he asked.

“No. I would be too embarrassed by my body’s betrayal to seek help from a stranger. I wondered if I might impose on you to help me regain my jewels? If you could provide me with the same attention I receive from my husband, I know my jewels will be given up. It would be the Lord’s work to save these jewels for the church, Brother Caleb.”

“Can’t it wait? You know, until you’re home and with the Reverend again?”

“In another day, my blood will be poisoned by these very same jewels living in my body. Please, Brother Caleb, you’ve got to help me.” I pressed my hands together in fervent prayer, aware that the neckline of my shift was gaping open. I saw the young man struggle to keep his eyes on my tearful face and not my heaving bosom.

It wasn’t much of a battle, and after about two heartbeats, Caleb ran his hand through his tousled hair and gave me his shy smile.

“Well, I suppose I could help you out. For the church, of course. Do I need to do it in any special sort of a way? You know, so as not to make the pain worse?”

“Only be firm with me. It’s the only way to teach that thieving part of me who’s master,” I said, nearly losing my breath in my excitement.

“Well, all right. I guess I can do that,” he said, and Unbuckled his trousers.

In gladness did I lie back on those blankets and allow Brother Caleb to teach my thieving parts a thing or two. Lord, the lessons they learned that first night. A few times over, in fact, before the dawn came. I had always believed it was meant to be like that—full of fire, pleasure, and sometimes just the edge of pain. I kept my eyes open that first time and saw everything that I had missed with the Reverend when my eyes were closed and my face turned toward the wall. I looked down the length of that man’s naked body and saw how a man swelled with desire. I watched fascinated as it rose in a sturdy column, standing upright with a mind of its own. I even held it in my hand, astounded by its weight and the warm throb of blood. I watched the way every muscle in that man’s thighs contracted as he pushed himself into me, the moonlight falling over the curve of his shoulders, the sweat slick on his chest. And then I looked up and watched his face as the surge come over him, making him grimace, growl like a wild animal, and then his features soften unexpectedly, like a child falling into sleep. How it all thrilled me.

The second time Caleb Johnson came to me that night, I didn’t watch his face, nor his body. I wanted only to know how good it could feel in my body. I traveled through my limbs, opening my senses as a woman opens doors in a house too long closed and locked. I took that feeling of pleasure into my fingertips until they glowed, light and porous. I let it enter my mouth through his hot kisses and fill up my chest. Heat loosened the tightness of my throat, released the breath held beneath my heart, flattened my hunched shoulders into the hard ground, and arrowed down into my belly. Caleb then turned us over, pulling me on top of him. He put his fingertips into my armpits, the heels of his palms cupped around my breasts.

Never had sex been so frightening and so demanding. I was allowed to do something. I was asked to be alive and participate. Suddenly there were no walls imprisoning my desire. Out there in the open forest I experienced vertigo, as though I had been pitched high into the air. The wind was cool on my heated skin. I spread my arms wide to catch the dark shadows of the swaying trees in my hands. The man beneath me stirred, his hips locked against mine, and I remembered that I was staked to the ground after all. I leaned forward, my hands braced against his chest, and started to move. But no matter how high I rose on that white column of flesh, he found me and pulled me down hard over him again. The night echoed with the smack of our bare skin meeting and then parting over and over again.

And when early dawn brightened a corner of the sky, and Brother Caleb had fallen off into sleep after a hard night of helping out his church, I slipped back to the buggy and found my suitcase. I fished around in the hidden pouch and pulled up my mother’s good diamond brooch. Getting back in between the blankets, I laid the brooch between my legs, like a shell washed up by the tide.

“Why look here, Brother Caleb, the first jewel has been returned,” I said, shaking the slumbering man awake. “I’m starting to feel better already,” I added.

Brother Caleb squinted at the brooch out of one eye and smiled. “Glad to oblige,” he said. And then pulling the covers around us again and tucking me under his arm, he went back to sleep.

So it went for the three weeks of our journey home. Night after night, Caleb offered his heartfelt services, and every morning another jewel appeared on my thighs. If he ever had a contrary thought about what we were doing, he never mentioned it once. By the time we were in sight of our hometown my bag of jewels was filled up again. And I was ready enough to return to my husband, the Reverend. Perhaps that seems strange. But the truth was that while I more than enjoyed the nighttime company of Brother Caleb, I did miss the conversation and the passionate faith of my husband. Brother Caleb took things as they came, never seeking to find the hand of God in any of it. I sorely missed the better parts of my husband’s learning and all the lively arguments we often had over issues of our church.

And there was something else, too. I knew that day when I stepped down from Brother Caleb’s buggy in front of my own house again, that I was with child. I knew it in the way my palms broke into a sweat, the sudden flush that heated my cheeks, and the spark of pain that pricked the sides of my womb. I could feel it in the shift of my hipbones opening into a wide bowl to hold the full wonder of a new life. I think even God was happy for me because I arrived home on the night of the full moon, and my husband was only too happy to take me to bed. The child would come close enough to the remembered date that he might never know the truth. And maybe it was me, or maybe it was my long absence from home, or just maybe I have Rosalie and Caleb to thank, but for the first time since we had lain together as man and wife, my husband and I looked at each other without fear as he entered me. And for the very first time that I could remember, he didn’t sing hymns but called out my name in the throes of his passion.

* * * *

Well, as I said in the beginning, it was funny the way it all turned out. I might never have known that Violet Thomas got me back with my own husband if I hadn’t gone and lost my jar of egg money. I’d hid it earlier in the day to keep the baby from swallowing the coins. But I was so fractious with work, that I clean forgot where I hid it. I told Caleb about it when he got back from one of his journeys, and, instead of helping me look, why he pulled me by the hand into the bedroom, laid me down, and made wild love to me all afternoon. And when he was done, he looked over at me with a smug grin and said: “There. That ought to fix it.”

“Fix what?” I said, still confused by this unexpected turn of events.

“Your thieving woman part. It went and stole the egg money because I’ve been gone from home too much.”

“Caleb Johnson, what are you talking about?” I asked, starting to get angry.

He told me then, and I almost wished he hadn’t. Told me all about helping Violet Thomas and her thieving parts. How she was afraid for her life. And how they were putting on a new roof with that money because of him helping her out. I just stared at him, too shocked to utter even one word. I was thinking to myself, that bitch Violet Thomas, how could she? That stealer of husbands, that hussy, that wanton she-devil cloaked in the ministry of the church. Damn her to hell.

But it did me no good to swear up and down about Violet Thomas. After all, she was only returning the favor I’d taken off of her. And after I’d calmed down and thought longer about it, I figured I didn’t really mind half so much. On account of Violet’s little tale about a woman’s thieving parts, my Caleb decided it was time he did his business in town, lest I go and steal all the egg money while he was out on the road. So now it’s almost as much fun at night again as it was the day we were married.

And as for Violet Thomas, well I saw her in church the other day. I had Caleb sitting on one side of me, trying hard to listen, and the baby on the other side, fussing. Violet was sitting alone, leaning her back against the pew and her arms resting over the rising bulge of her growing belly. She had a glow of pure happiness about her. Though he was in rare form that day, the Reverend looked a little tired around the eyes to me. I got to thinking it was probably all that hard work every night of shaping the ears, the nose, the fingernails, and the rest of his coming child.

Violet glanced away from the Reverend and caught my eye. I looked at her and she looked back at me. And with the fire and brimstone of the Reverend’s sermon hailing down around our ears, we just nodded at one another and smiled.