Epilogue

Monica was not pregnant when they returned to Wide Ford. Both Bobby and Monica were relieved, but the plans for their marriage went forward anyway.

They were married by the college chaplain in a small ceremony that wasn’t announced. Even so, it was attended by what seemed like half of the town, as well as Bob and his two daughters, of course. They were bridesmaids. There was no honeymoon. They lived with Monica’s mother for two years while Bobby took a heavy class load and graduated mid semester in his fourth year. His specialty was in planning and implementing extraction systems, and ascertaining extraction risks for minerals that had to be mined underground.

He was lucky, in the sense that he was offered a job immediately by a company in Kansas that mined and processed gypsum. He was unlucky in the sense that while his specialty helped, his job wasn’t strictly in that direction. As the junior engineer in the company, he was assigned as the compliance specialist. He was responsible for ensuring that operations complied with health and safety regulations, both state and federal. Nobody in management liked the compliance specialist, because he slowed production sometimes. That was why the new guy got stuck with the responsibility (and blame, if anything went wrong) for compliance. On the other hand, the men and women who worked in the mine, deep underground, loved him, because he made sure they got to go home every day, alive.

Marysville, Kansas, where they lived, was only 90 miles from “home” and Bobby and Monica visited there frequently. The house they rented in Marysville was too small for the family to come and stay overnight in.

Once they moved in, Monica stopped taking her birth control pills and began trying to complete the task her mother had set for her when she was nineteen.

Bobby was enthusiastic about it as well, and they expected her to become pregnant soon.

Julie graduated from high school and, since Bobby had a wife, and she’d seen Wide Ford, decided that mining wasn’t attractive any longer. She went to the vocational technical school in town and became a certified wind turbine technician. Her job entailed working in the nacelles of commercial windmills, repairing and replacing generators, gearboxes, converters and other associated equipment, all of which was generally located 212 feet off the ground. She had to climb a ladder to get to each job, which meant she stayed in fantastic shape.

She met men on the job, other technicians, mostly, but nothing clicked. When she was nineteen, she asked Monica for permission to let Bobby impregnate her. Monica, who had gotten used to the fact that her husband serviced his sisters whenever they all visited Bob’s house, consented.

A year later Julie delivered a healthy seven pound daughter, who she named Emma. Within three weeks of delivering her baby, she was climbing windmills again.

Because Julie was trying to have a baby, Barbie went off the pill while she was a senior, and didn’t tell anybody about it. At Christmas, she and Julie compared swollen bellies and Monica complained that she still had to wait until Bobby graduated before she could start their own family.

Bob was perturbed that Barbie hadn’t told him what she was doing. She said she was sure it was his, because the last time she made love with Bobby she’d still been on the pill. On top of that, Bobby had been trying to get Julie pregnant, so Barbie didn’t sleep with him.

When her baby, a healthy little boy was born, she named him Jonathan and, as she let him suck from her nipple, she told Bob she didn’t want to go to college, and that she wanted to keep living with him.

The next year, she was hired as a classroom assistant in the same school her father taught at.

While Julie had been pregnant, there came a time when her belly was too big for her to do her job and she was transferred to desk duty. While she was there, she saw a man named Jeff in the office frequently. She wasn’t sure what he did, but he was one of what the technicians called “the suits.” Out of the blue, one day, he introduced himself and had asked her out on a date.

She was surprised, and a little shocked. She looked down at her maternity top and said, “I’m kind of pregnant, here.”

“Yes, but you’re not wearing a wedding ring,” he pointed out. “Am I wrong in believing you’re not married?”

“You are not wrong. I am not married,” she said.

“So I’m allowed to ask you out. Unless your boyfriend is a gorilla. Is he a gorilla?”

“I assume you mean big and mean and muscular, as opposed to the animal,” she said.

“You assume correctly.”

“I have no boyfriend, neither man nor beast,” she said. “I don’t generally go out on dates.”

He stared at her belly.

“That suggests you do,” he said. “Or you did one time, at least.”

“I’m flattered, but I think I’ll take a rain check,” she said, trying to be civil. He seemed nice, but she wasn’t looking for a relationship. She knew she should, but she just didn’t feel like putting in the work it would take.

“Deal,” he said, grinning. “One rain check for a date, just to get to know each other a little bit.”

He was in and out of the office a lot and she found out he was in safety compliance, like her brother was. She also learned he was divorced. That was all she knew about him, though. When she went back to work in the towers, she didn’t think she’d see him again.

She was wrong. He showed up at her work site one day and climbed the tower just to do an “inspection” of her work environment.

She was surprised, but not worried.

“Are you stalking me?” she said, but she smiled when she said it.

“I hope not. I guess I needed my fix. I was always able to see you every once in a while before you had the baby. How is he, by the way. Or she.”

“Her name is Emma and she’s fine. She eats like a horse. So, why are you here?”

“I can’t help it. You fascinate me.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Don’t have a clue,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “There’s something about you ... maybe a level of confidence that’s unusual in a woman. And, of course, you’re a knockout.”

“That’s a sexist thing to say,” she laughed.

“Not if it’s true,” he said. “If it’s true, it’s just a fact.”

“Well, isn’t your boss going to wonder why you’re out here climbing turbines? If you get fired, you won’t be able to get your fix.”

“Not at all. It’s my job,” he grinned. “I am currently inspecting this job site to ensure that it meets all the standards our benevolent government insists are critical to our continued health and safety.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, do you have your M-383-KY earplugs with you? These generators make significant decibels during operation.”

“I have mine,” she said, smiling. “Do you have yours?“

“Oh. Well, no, but the job sheet said you were replacing a generator core temperature probe, so I knew the turbine would be shut down.”

“So, since the turbine is shut down, if I didn’t have my earplugs, that would be fine, too?”

“Of course not. I’d have to initiate corrective action.”

“Such as?”

“Well, education is always a good thing. I’d have to get you alone, say over dinner, and educate you.”

“Ahhhh, now I see. You don’t give up easily, do you?”

“Not when I’ve finally met the woman who makes my heart race.”

“Ha! You already met one. I asked around. You’re divorced.”

“So you do care!” he sighed, hamming it up.

She told him he’d made the climb for nothing, and he left. But over the next month he “happened” to be in many of the same places she was. He always seemed to have a legitimate reason to be there, in terms of his position with the company, and on many occasions he neither looked at her nor spoke to her. But he was there.

She didn’t feel threatened. He didn’t give off that kind of vibe.

Another month went by and she saw him every week. One day, he was talking to another suit, wearing a hard hat, when she came down from the tower she’d been working in. She walked over to him as the other man left.

“If I go out with you, will you stop hounding me?”

“Hounding? I am injured! All I do is slave away, making sure that you keep living, so the world will bask in your beauty, and you call it hounding?”

“Some women might call this sexual harassment,” she said.

“I sincerely hope you are not one of them,” he said. “My ex wife thought I was sexually harassing her because I asked her to go topless in the back yard.”

“Was there a privacy fence?”

“Of course. What do you take me for?”

“A boob man,” she replied, smiling.

His eyes dipped to take in her own milk-engorged breasts. She expressed milk for the sitter to feed Emma with and, since Emma was a glutton, she had to pump a lot of it. Her breasts had grown a cup size as a result. He didn’t let his glance linger, but when he raised his eyes and saw he’d gotten caught staring, he didn’t look guilty, either.