Cordell Bookatee kept his wife Poochie pregnant, her ‘Baby Down Below’ blouse clashing violently with the faded red suspenders and old jeans of his that she loved to wear. It was a way of keeping her close by him. Her older sisters had got religion and feminism, each of them within three months of the other. He didn’t begrudge a woman anything she could get on her own. But he didn’t know what to say to their obsessions, or to the magazines he’d never seen before that they had started leaving in the rack by the toilet.

Ms. Mother Earth News. The New Republic. The bright colors looked odd next to the more familiar Crafter’s Journal, Farmer’s Almanac, Pennsylvania Game News. He hoped they would just leave it alone, but knew from his life with Poochie that they would worry at him with their sharp tongues and teeth until he gave in. She was their sister, and that blood tie came with more than any husband could bear without scarring, sometimes.

Poochie had told him that she wanted babies and he had obliged her, with John and Carrie and Becca and Bethel. Cordell thought it was what she wanted, but when she had missed her period, peed on the stick for that fateful fifth time and slammed the bathroom door in his face, he knew that something irrevocable had passed between them. Her silence in bed that night had been as direct a message as a punch in the jaw.

“Baby,” Cordell said, sliding his hand over her side and between her breasts. Her shoulders shook against him. “I thought you wanted more kids.”

“Christ I didn’t think I’d get pregnant so soon.” She didn’t turn to face him, the way she always had.

“It’ll be fine. All the others went fine.”

Poochie hid her head under her pillow. “I’ve been changing shitty drawers for ten years. I just wanted a break.”

“But I thought children made it worth it, like that magazine article said. Motherhood is the mode of the new woman, the fullness of womanhood. Something.”

Cordell leaned over her and pulled at the pillow, trying to see her eyes. But she didn’t come out from under it, and after a bit he heard her mumble.

“What?” Cordell bit back something harder he’d planned to say.

“You are as dumb as a hedge fence sometimes, Cordell.” Poochie came up, eyes wet but smiling. “Fullness of womanhood. I can’t believe you read that.”

“Why not? I mean, Jesus. All those orgasm things. Like reading tittie mags, almost.”

“Cordell. God. This is not sexy. I just don’t know how I can do it .” She looked at him straight on. “I am done, Cordell. Just done.” She turned away, shoulders still shaking slightly.

He didn’t say anything back to her, trying to gather his thoughts, but before he could find words Poochie began to snore softly.

Cordell couldn’t quite turn his mind around how children and the fullness of true womanhood didn’t mix. Poochie had her own car and her job at the gas station, where the boss let her keep the young ones, Becca and Bethel. He worked what was left of the farm and painted houses when he could. So he resented Emilee and Flora’s constant evangelizing on behalf of their obsessions, but couldn’t say anything. Who would take care of the kids if they got pissy? When they managed to confront him, which was fairly often these days as they helped Poochie through her last trimester, he told them the same thing. “I keep pokin’ fun at her. She just takes it serious is all.”

Emilee in particular was persistent. She was always at him , leaning on top of the stanchion while he set up the milker.

“Katy’s not your slave, Cordell.”

“I know she’s not. The question is what are you?” Cordell shoved aside the cats that gathered around as he disengaged the milker and went on to the next cow. “She’s happy enough.”

“Cordell. You don’t need to be this way.”

“What way? Pooch. . .uh. . . Kate, does what she wants. I never beat her, never walked out, the kids all got clothes.”

He’d have to call in the vet soon; three of the cows he’d milked had runnels of blood on their legs. The fence was down somewhere.

“She needs something else.” Emilee spat into the drop. “Women need something else.” She had a hard face, too skinny by an inch, off-center by a hair, and altogether interesting to look at. Beautiful only by truly odd standards, like Cordell’s.

“Time was, women didn’t need anything but what God gave them by his grace and their ability. Time was, you girls didn’t need any of that other stuff.” Time was, he thought, that my dick didn’t make me the enemy.

“Times change, Cordell.”

Emilee had said the same thing when she had asked him not to call his wife of ten years Poochie recently . Cordell had looked at her, jaw-dropped, looked at Poochie, pregnant again, and bit his tongue. Poochie. Kate. Which one would she answer? He wondered if all those years had made her forget what her name was, and if that was part of the problem. Or that he had forgotten. He sighed and moved to the next row of cows.

Later on, in bed and after love, Poochie had told him to forget the name business, then rolled ponderously out of bed and gone to sleep in the rocker by the kitchen woodstove. He’d covered her with an afghan later on, the one Emilee had made that matched the doilies only by the firmest one-track imagination, and filled the teapot.

He stepped outside onto the concrete porch. He could hear the steel teapot as it ticked slowly in the cold of early fall. Things wound down in the fall, Cordell thought. He knew as sure as the chill sneaked under his collar that this situation was not winding down, and he needed to figure out a way to make it do. He needed it to live, in this house with this woman. As he wanted to and as she wanted to as well, he thought.

Cordell wanted Poochie to be a woman of today, whatever that meant when Emilee and those magazines said it. He wanted her happy. He wanted the kids happy. He wanted Emilee to stop making his life complex. He was only human.

He bent to catch some grass in his hands. He hadn’t cut it in a while. Along the side hill a cow lowed softly. He heard the constant thrum of his conscience alongside the women in his head. Poochie. Emilee. Oddly enough, even the magazine said that communication is great, but not everything, in a relationship. It didn’t say anything though, about names. When something banged against the stove, breaking his concentration, he couldn't tell at first if the voice he heard was the one in his head, or Kate calling out.

"Cordell, baby– it's time."

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