They told me I didn’t really need to pay them for their help, but I explained that I was an officer of the court and I had to be careful about violating child labor laws. We agreed that ten bucks apiece was a fair price. It took us till lunchtime, but in the end we had over two hundred “rice” bags finished when Haywood and Isabel’s daughter Jane Ann came to collect them with Doris’s white wicker basket.
“Wait till you see what we’ve done with the potato house,” she said happily.
“I can take a break now,” I said, reaching for my car keys.
“No!” she exclaimed. “Aunt Minnie and Aunt April said to tell you to stay away. They want to surprise you.”
“What about us?” asked Mary Pat.
“It’s okay if y’all three come back with me,” she said. “Miss Kate’s gone to get barbecue for our lunch.”
They rushed to put on their jackets and follow her out to the car.
The house seemed so quiet after they left that I put on Christmas carols, then washed and dried Cal’s new sheets and pillowcases and made up his bed. The sheets were white with dark blue and black paw prints. The comforter and pillows were dark blue at the top with a border of white snowbanks and white wolves, which helped lighten the room a little, as did the white shade on his nightstand lamp. I hung crisp white curtains at the windows and white towels in his bath. The books and toys would have to come item by item as needed.
In the late afternoon, I lay down for an hour, then took a long hot shower and got dressed.
The rehearsal went off smoothly that night and the church looked lovely, dressed in its Christmas greens interspersed with masses of bright red poinsettias and tall white candles.
On Wednesday morning I had my hair done in nearby Cotton Grove, then Daddy drove me over to Aunt Zell’s in his battered old red pickup. He had bought a new suit for the occasion and Aunt Zell was right. He still is one fine-looking man.
He was in a reminiscent mood, and as we drove, he kept coming back to various family ceremonies—Andrew’s first shotgun wedding as compared to the one with April, Zach and Barbara’s big outdoor extravaganza at the farm that went on for three days and included a pig-picking and fireworks, Frank’s hasty marriage to Mae a whole continent away.
As we neared Dobbs, I said, “Tell me about yours and Mother’s.”
“Ain’t much to tell,” he said. “Won’t what I was brought up to, that’s for sure. Me and Annie Ruth, we just stood up together in the preacher’s front parlor in our Sunday clothes, sorta like Adam and Karen done. Your mama, though, she had to get married at First Baptist, same church as you and Dwight.”
“Had to?” I asked.
“Had to,” he said with a nod. “First, we was just gonna run off to South Carolina, but it was near ’bout killing her mother that she was gonna marry me, and Sue said the least she could do was let Miz Stephenson give her the fancy wedding she’d always planned on. The church was packed. Half of ’em was there to see what sort of roughneck I was, half of ’em was there ’cause they loved your mama, and the other half was there ’cause they was Knotts.”
I had to laugh. “Half the church will be family today, too.”
“Yeah, well, there was right much talk when Sister come in with all my boys and her gang, too.”
“You didn’t have a honeymoon either, did you?”
“Well, naw. In the first place, I didn’t have no extra money for a wedding trip, and Sue, she wanted to start being a mama to the boys right away. Like you with Cal.”
“Cal has a mother,” I said.
“Yeah, but you’re marrying his daddy.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be easier on you than it was for your mama. Some of ’em—Andrew and Robert and Frank—they was still sorrowing for Annie Ruth and they sort of blamed Sue for not being her. It took her a while but she gentled them all. Even Andrew. She wouldn’t never give up on him, even after he got the Hatcher girl pregnant.”
“I know,” I said. When Mother was dying, Andrew was one of the most grief-stricken. And the most guilt-ridden for the hostility he’d shown her when she first came to the farm.
“Yeah, I reckon you could say our only honeymoon was our wedding night. Sister kept the boys for me and next day we went and brung ’em home.”
“Well, one night’s enough, I guess, if you’re in love.”
“No it ain’t,” he said brusquely, as we pulled into Aunt Zell’s driveway. “And twenty-six years ain’t enough either. Was all we got, though, and I reckon we made the most of it.”
“You lived in the moment,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“I don’t know about that. I’m just saying we knowed what we had and we was grateful for having it.”
Portland and Aunt Zell were waiting for me on the side porch.
“Happy is the bride the sun shines on,” Uncle Ash said, giving me a kiss. He clasped Daddy’s hand in both of his. “How you holding up, bro?”
Daddy just smiled. “Reckon I’ll be fine once you pour me some of whatever that is you’re having.”
Uncle Ash laughed and took him on out to the sunroom to join Avery, who was tending bar this afternoon.
“Pour one for us, too,” Aunt Zell called after them.
“Not me,” I said. Butterflies were starting a fly-in through my stomach and I felt hollow inside.
