Then another sound broke the stillness. A young
man from a neighboring farm came stealthily across
a field and climbed a fence. He also came to
the hill but for a time did not see her lying almost
at his feet. He looked toward the house and stood
with hands in pockets, stamping on the frozen ground
like a horse.
Then he knew she was there. The aroma of her
crept into his consciousness.
He ran to kneel beside her silent figure. Everything
was different than it had been when they crept to
the hill on the other evenings. The time of talking
and waiting was over. She was different.
He grew bold and put his hands on her face, her neck,
her breasts, her hips. There was a strange new
firmness and hardness to her body. When he kissed
her lips she did not move and for a moment he was
afraid. Then courage came and he went down to
lie with her.
He had been a farm boy all his life and had plowed
many acres of rich black land.
He became sure of himself.
He plowed her deeply.
He planted the seeds of a son in the warm rich quivering
soil.
* * * *
*
She carried the seeds of a son within herself.
On winter evenings she went along a path at the foot
of a small hill and turned up the hill to a barn where
she milked cows. She was large and strong.
Her legs went swinging along. The son within
her went swinging along.
He learned the rhythm of little hills.
He learned the rhythm of flat places.
He learned the rhythm of legs walking.
He learned the rhythm of firm strong hands pulling
at the teats of cows.
* * * *
*
There was a field that was barren and filled with
stones. In the spring when the warm nights came
and when she was big with him she went to the fields.
The heads of little stones stuck out of the ground
like the heads of buried children. The field,
washed with moonlight, sloped gradually downward to
a murmuring brook. A few sheep went among the
stones nibbling the sparse grass.
A thousand children were buried in the barren field.
They struggled to come out of the ground. They
struggled to come to her. The brook ran over
stones and its voice cried out. For a long time
she stayed in the field, shaken with sorrow.
She arose from her seat on a large stone and went
to the farmhouse. The voices of the darkness
cried to her as she went along a lane and past a silent
barn.
Within herself only the one child struggled.
When she got into bed his heels beat upon the walls
of his prison. She lay still and listened.
Only one small voice seemed coming to her out of the
silence of the night.
I
Rosalind Wescott, a tall strong looking woman of twenty-seven,
was walking on the railroad track near the town of
Willow Springs, Iowa. It was about four in the
afternoon of a day in August, and the third day since
she had come home to her native town from Chicago,
where she was employed.
