The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton Read Free Book Online

against the barn, with May’s blouse unbuttoned, her breasts rising and falling, so white in the moonlight, against Willard’s dirty hands. May could see the color of his eyes, even in the dark of the haymow.
    Just before the whole town exploded with how sinful the two young people were, they saved themselves by getting married. “It’s a miracle,” the church ladies said under their breath, “that her belly is as flat as an iron.” They wondered if there was a baby hid somewhere in a dresser drawer or stashed amongst the bulrushes. I have my theory: I don’t think they went all the way. May doesn’t seem the type, somehow. Aunt Sid described May’s lacy wedding dress, and I didn’t interrupt her even though I knew the dress from memory. It’s the same one I wore at my wedding, shortened and tucked up. May had a garland of white roses in her curly hair, and bright red lipstick on her mouth. Her eyes were huge, because she didn’t have an ounce of fat on her face, due to the way true love affected her appetite. She gazed at Willard Jenson with his patch of hair on his head, fertilized by the good Lord to make it grow double time, and she knew that this day was one of rescue and mercy. She had the feeling that all her years and years of doubting love were over.
    They moved into Willard’s house, on the other side of town, by Abendroth’s farm, the one with the fake deer nuzzling the flamingos, and the Blessed Virgin Mary birdbath. Willard had some of Honey Creek running through his land. Sometimes it comes to me, the name Honey Creek, and I think about what the two words mean. A creek filled with honey, all gold, not even one bee remaining. Thick honey oozing on through the fields. Honey Creek doesn’t resemble anything of the sort. It isn’t gold. Indians probably named it. It’s black in the springtime, from the mud and the farmers’ chemicals rushing along the bottom, until it broadens up where the mill used to be. There’s an antique store in the building now; it’s off the main road so it doesn’t do a bit of business. Right down under the store the creek settles into a deep blue pond. All the dogs in town pack and sometimes they end up swimming there in the summer, except the Labrador retriever at the post office, tied up on a two-foot string.
    May and Willard Jenson had Brown Swiss milk cows and several thousand barn cats, and Willard did threshing in the fall for neighbors. They weren’t going to get rich but they had enough; they didn’t have to eat dandelion greens and shoot woodchucks for dinner. Aunt Sid tells the story of May’s birthday, the time Willard bought her a radio. May shook her head and said, “I don’t believe it,” about ten times. After Sidney left they probably went upstairs to bed. May folded her legs around Willard’s scrawny hips, the famous bones that stuck up sharp enough to cleave watermelons. May didn’t care about getting cut in half. She screamed joyfully, hoping her whole family on the other side of town could hear.
    Being married made her fairly kind and charitable toward animals and other people. She stroked the cats and kissed them on their foreheads. She wanted to have a baby, even after washing thousands of diapers every other day of her life. If I erase each one of May’s wrinkles and the wart, I see her in the morning, in a wooden bed with four posters, stretching and yawning, remembering the night, closing her eyes to go back to sleep as if she thinks she’s the bank president’s wife. She’s wearing a plain cotton nightgown and I imagine her pretty. She’s waking up and feeling over to Willard’s side, although he’s been out three hours already milking and she thinks how nothing could ever take away her happiness. She feels as full as a big old cow pond where cows come to drink all summer, and it never dries up, because it’s fed through the earth by an eternal spring.
    She gets up and makes breakfast for her husband. She says the word over and