Sylvanus Now by Donna Morrissey

within, waiting, wanting to infuse her body with a dozen squalling infants. And who reigns then, huh? Who reigns in a houseful of shrieking, squalling babies?
    Misery, she answered herself. Nothing but misery.
    Yet here he was, catching up to her, his fingers strong and warm as they touched her arm, his eyes liquid soft as they invited her to come sit. He closed his hand around hers, all tender and firm as though it were a finch he held, and pointed toward a white speckled rock near the brook, wide and flat enough to sit on. She allowed him to lead her, but he might as well have been the fevered Apollo, for her back was like an oak as she sat, her heart shielded by bark.
    Pulling away her hand, she sat, folding her skirt around her. “So, what makes fishing such a heavenly thing for you?” she asked, supplanting his nicely pressed suit with oilskins—a guarantee against forgetting that this was no prince sitting beside her, merely a fisherman, anchored to the sea, and the momentary lapse into fantasy back there, just that, a fantasy.
    But it was nice, the quiet of the meadow, drummed into being by the falls extinguishing all other sounds except that of the birds flitting about and the wind playing with her hair. What harm then, given his unsolicited pursuit, to linger a while and loosen a few leaves for his laurel?
    “You have pretty hair,” he said, stretching out on the grass beside her, reaching out to touch a strand that hung straight as flint across her shoulder.
    “Don’t do that,” she said abruptly, and he pulled back, a deep flush darkening his face. She shrugged, as caught as he was by her reaction, and leaned forward, the fine strands slipping forward, screening her cheek. “Well, then, what is it about fishing you likes so much?”
    He lay back, clasping his hands behind his head, squinting contemplatively into the heavens. “Hard to say any one thing,” he began after a pause. “It’s the whole thing, I suppose. Makes me feel worthy—rich, if you like. Yeah, that’s it—it makes me rich.” He grinned as she peered at his rubber boots. “Never mind a man’s boots. Not always money that makes a man rich. I suppose you’ll be buying all kinds of pretty shoes once the plant starts up.”
    “I dare say it’ll be lots of fun,” she replied, “getting all dressed up and driving to Hampden, and passing everybody from Hampden all dressed up and driving to Ragged Rock.”
    “Sounds like you hates where you live.” He rolled onto his elbow, his eyes all curious again, watching her. “Supposing, then,” he asked, as she shrugged a noncommittal reply, “a house was so nice that it made whoever was living in it joyful? If, say—well, you know,” he floundered at her puzzled look, “if it made a person so joyful, she then rested in God? What I’m saying,” he persisted, “is you don’t have to be keen on a place so long as you’re keen on your house.”
    “Perhaps. If I could live all by myself somewhere.”
    “Mother was always singing with the larks, and for sure she had a big enough crowd. Can be lots of room in a house. That’s what we always says of Mother, how she kept to herself—despite her brood—and was never surly, no matter how hard she was taxed.”
    “Maybe it’s like you said—she never heard nothing, only bubbling water. Anyway, that’s probably what I’d be like,” she added, a mite contrite as his mouth tightened.
    “Bet I knows what you’d like—the sound of all that money clinking and all them fine shoes and cars it’ll buy. That’s what you’d like to hear.”
    She sniffed. “And is there room in your house for that?”
    “In my house there will be many rooms,” he half quoted. “A man knows from the first when a woman needs a lot of rooms. From the proud way she holds herself and scorns them asking her to dance. Eb Rice’s, couple of weeks ago,” he replied to her questioning look. “I was watching you through the window.”
    Her chin jutted out,