SYLVIA: HARVEST SEASON
By MERZ 
After overpowering her husband Sylvia finds love again

Petra learned to work her stones rather than just stack or 
mortar them.  She grew broad shouldered and strong armed.  
Beginning when she was fourteen she often hired out to 
neighbors to build with stone.  Her arms were thicker than 
her mother's, the despair of the boys in her school. One 
evening as he brought his team of horses to pull a stump 
for Sylvia, Charles Steward sat watching her work, using a 
single hammer and chisel to smooth a stone she had split 
with her sledge.  

"You have a real talent for working with stone, Miss 
Ragland," he told her.

She paused in her hammering and looked at him from under 
her safety glasses.  "Why don't you ever call me Petra?  
Everyone else does.  You've known me my whole life and you 
always call me Miss Ragland."

"I knew when you were tiny that you would grow up to be a 
pretty young girl. I need to remind myself you're the 
daughter of friends, not a pretty girl I should be making 
eyes at," he told her with a wink.

"But I didn't grow up to be a pretty girl.  I grew up to 
look like a football player, if they had real football 
players around here."  She looked at her arms, encased like 
sausages in the sleeves of the t-shirt she wore.  A downy 
layer of hair showed on her forearms. With her solid frame 
and dark hair and brows she resembled her father more than 
her slender mother.  "The boys in school are all afraid of 
me, like I was some kind of monster."

"All of them?  I bet there are some who aren't afraid of 
you but they don't think you've noticed them.  Those other 
ones know you are a pretty girl but are afraid of all the 
things they aren't yet themselves.  You should ask one of 
the nice ones who isn't afraid to go for a walk by the 
river sometime.  Show them they have more going for them 
than the silly ones who don't know you like they do."

Petra thought about this for a moment.  "Do you call my 
mother by her first name?"

"Yes, I always have," Charles answered, then blushed.

"Good," Petra told him and winked.  "My father became 
afraid of my mother when he found out she was so strong. 
Are you afraid of her?"

"Not in the way your father was," Charles answered slowly.  
"I guess in some ways I've always been afraid of pretty 
girls.  Maybe I should start taking my own advice."

"Yes, that sounds like a very good idea to me," Petra told 
him with a wide smile.  "You know where to find mother in 
the walnut grove, don't you, or would like me to lead you?"

"I believe I can find my own way now," Charles replied and 
moved on with his two horses.    

Charles led his horses uphill to the walnut trees.  Sylvia 
had cut one recently and needed to remove the stump to open 
the ground for new growth.  Around the base of the stump 
she had cut through roots and dug the stump free of all 
attachment she could see.  When he came up she greeted 
Charles as an old friend.

"It is a lovely evening, isn't it?" she asked him as she 
saw him gazing over the surrounding landscape.  Much of 
Sylvia's land enjoyed fine views of the surrounding farms 
and woods.

"Yes, and as the day gets on it's time I ask you to marry 
me," he replied, turning to look at her.        

Sylvia was startled, but returned his gaze.  "You don't 
know me," she replied after a pause.

"I have seen you raise your children and care for your 
land.  There isn't a woodlot in the state cared for as well 
as this.  I know you," Charles told her.

"Well, then I don't know you," Sylvia responded.

"You've known me nearly twenty years.  You see how my 
furrows lie straight on my farm below.  You know me from 
that.  You know how I treat my horses and how they treat 
me.  You have bought from my store since you came here to 
live.  You can't know many men better than you know me from 
these things."

"You've never seen my body," said Sylvia, walking toward 
him.  "My husband found it ugly, too strong and knotted 
like my trees."

"I have seen your trees and know the strength you have 
needed to care for them as you have."

Sylvia looked at Charles, then took her shirt by the hem 
and pulled it up and over her head, showing the strong body 
beneath.  She was built lean and slender.  Years of work 
had layered muscle on her frame in ropes and knots.  Veins 
crawled along under the skin that lay slack in some places 
as she stood still.  She undid her belt and stepped out of 
her shoes and trousers.  She lifted her arms and undid the 
clip holding her hair back, and let it fall loose in brown 
and gray curls.  She watched for Charles' reaction.  She 
clenched her fists and tensed her body, making muscles 
tighten and coil.  She raised her arms and flexed them to 
show the muscles rolling up from long ropes to tight 
mounds, crossed by veins hammering with blood.  "I was too 
strong for my husband.  Would you find me too strong as 
well?" she asked.

Charles undid the suspenders of his overalls and let them 
drop.  He removed his shirt and showed his square, solid 
body.  "When I team my horses I don't ask which is 
stronger.  They pull in the same direction and the work 
goes easier.  We should be the same, without a contest 
between us."  

He reached for her and ran his hand down her hard, sinewy 
arm.  He took her hand and held it as he looked in her 
eyes.  She passed a hand over his chest and shoulder and 
stepped closer to kiss him.  "My husband couldn't contain 
my passion and pulled away from me."  She took Charles' 
hard shaft in her hand as he lifted her and gently laid her 
upon the grass.  

When they came down from the hill they told Petra they 
would be married and live together in Sylvia's house.

Four years later Petra left to study art in college.  She 
had found some boys who weren't afraid of her, as Charles 
had known she would.  Still, she felt herself too strong to 
be captured by any man or boy.  At Christmas she wrote that 
she would stay away to work and to be with friends.  As 
spring came, she wrote that she would come home for 
vacation.  "I have found someone" she wrote.  "He has 
overpowered me.  I think we were meant to be together."

Sylvia saw the car drive up and Petra get out.  Petra 
walked to the other side, bent to the open door and lifted 
out a slight figure.  She carried him up the steps and into 
the house, then returned for his wheelchair.

When they were settled and unpacked in a bedroom 
downstairs, Petra brought out gifts made for Christmas 
months before.  She had three sculptures.  Sylvia's was 
carved from a pine burl and portrayed her chiseled face and 
upper body in deep cuts and sharp lines.  Charles' was of 
clay and solid.  It appeared as a stylized cube with the 
features of his smiling face in shallow, subtle impressions 
more recognizable to the touch than to the eye.  For 
Parker, off traveling on a research project for school she 
had made a sculpture from wire, thin and long and tough 
like him.  At dinner that evening the family joined hands 
with Petra's love, Virgil, to give thanks for all the gifts 
in their lives and asked for blessings on Parker and on the 
land they all loved.

The next day Petra began work on a ramp to the backdoor so 
she would not need to carry Virgil in the future.  The ramp 
was of stone and would stand for all the years ahead.  As 
she split stones to fit, Virgil sat on the ground holding 
her chisel as she swung her sledge to strike it true on 
every blow.  As since the day he met her, he never flinched 
from her strength.