Vows

by LaVyrle Spencer

  "Thomas Jeffcoat, for shame!" she scolded.

  "Good-bye, Emily," he returned with a note of warning.

  "Good-bye, Thomas," she whispered, kissing the end of his nose. "You're going to miss me when I'm gone."

  "Yes I will, if you give me half a chance."

  "I love you, knees and all."

  "I love you, smoke and all. Now will you get out of here?"

  "What are you going to say to Charles?"

  "None of your business."

  "After we're married, I might invite him to supper sometime."

  "I'll tell him you said so."

  "Fine."

  "Fine."

  "And I might invite Tarsy, too."

  He scowled menacingly.

  "All right, all right, I'm going. Are you coming courting tonight?" she asked blithely from the doorway.

  He rose from the bed, giving her a flash of ugly knees and bare calves as he said, "Always keep 'em guessin', that's my motto," and closed the bedroom door in her face.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later Tom found Charles down at Edwin's livery stable. When he stepped inside, there was the man he sought, hitching up a pair of Tom's own horses to a buckboard, with bandaged hands.

  Tom closed the door and the two stood staring at each other, then Charles returned to his task, bending to connect a tug strap to the doubletree. Tom approached slowly, his bootsteps sounding clearly through the cavernous barn. Near Charles, he stopped.

  "Hello," Tom said, looking down at Charles's worn Stetson.

  "Hello."

  "Where are you taking my horses?"

  "Out to the mill for a load of wood to put up the last goddamned stable I'm ever gonna build for you."

  "Need some help?"

  Charles peered up past his hat brim with a sarcastic gleam in his eye. "Not from any broken-down cripple with two cracked ribs."

  "Yeah, well, look who cracked 'em."

  Charles walked around to the other side of the team and continued buckling harness parts.

  "I hear your hands got burned."

  "Just the backs. The palms're still working. What do you want?"

  "I came to thank you for hauling my carcass out of that building last night."

  "You're one hell of a lot of trouble, you know that, Jeffcoat? This morning I'm wishing I would've left you in it."

  "Bullshit," Tom replied affectionately.

  From the far side of the horses came a rueful chuckle, then, like an echo, "Yeah, bullshit."

  Charles squatted and Tom stared at his boots, visible beneath the team's bellies. "I'm marrying her at the end of next week."

  "What day?"

  "I don't know."

  "Saturday?"

  "I don't know."

  "You marry her Saturday, I'll have the damn barn done by Friday. You marry her Friday and I'll have it done by Thursday."

  "What does that mean?" Tom stepped around the horses just as Charles stretched to his feet. Their eyes met directly.

  "You didn't expect me to hang around and be your best man, did you?" Charles nudged past Tom and kept a shoulder intruding as he threaded the reins through the guides. "I'll be cracking a whip over that building crew, then I'm gone."

  "You're leaving?"

  "Yup." Charles folded his lips tightly to his teeth as he moved to the other side of the team.

  "Where to?"

  "Montana, I think. Yeah, Montana. There's a lot of open land up there, and the big drives are winding up there. Plenty of rich ranchers settling in Montana and all of them needing barns and houses … buildings'll be going up all over hell. I'll be rich in no time."

  "Have you told Emily?"

  "You tell her."

  "I think you should."

  Charles laughed mirthlessly and threw the other man a cutting glance. "Take a leap, Jeffcoat!"

  "You don't have to go, you know."

  "Like hell, I don't. I'd hang around here and I'd have her one day, come hell or high water, but it might not be till after both of us were old married folks raising a batch of kids. Wouldn't that be just fine and dandy?"

  "Charles, I'm sorry."

  "Don't make me laugh."

  "For what I said last night at the fire."

  "Yeah, well, don't be. Pinnick just thought a little faster than me, that's all. Damned old drunk … if I'd've lit the fire myself I'd be on my way to Montana already instead of wasting another week puttin' up your damn barn." The horses were hitched. Charles clambered onto the wagon and took the reins. "Now open the door so I can roll, you two-bit iron twanger."

  Tom slid back the great rolling doors, then stood outside with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his hat pulled low over his eyes as he watched Charles pass him with the rig.

  To his back Tom shouted, "You take care of my horses, Bliss! You can't put 'em away dry like a darned old piece of oak, you know!"

  "And you take care of my woman, 'cause if I hear you didn't I'll come back and kick your ass clear to the other end of the Bozeman Trail!"

  "Shee-it," Tom muttered, watching the wagon roll away. But when it was gone, he remained beside the open doors, feeling bereft and heavyhearted, and missing Charles even before he was gone.

  * * *

  Chapter 21

  «^

  The marriages took place on a day in early March when the chinook winds descended the eastern slope of the Rockies, fanning the earth with a breath warm as summer. A real snoweater, the townsfolk observed, stepping out their doors at midmorning, recognizing the warm, dry current that came each year unannounced. It brought the smell of the sea, from which it originated, and of the earth, which it bared along its way, and of spruce and sprouts and spring. Billowing down from the Big Horns across the wide Sheridan Valley, the chinooks flattened an entire winter's snow in a single day, sipped half of it up and sent the other half glistening in runnels that caught chips of sun and scattered them back toward the cobalt sky. They breathed on brooks and streams, which chimed with a tinkle of breaking ice to the unending background sigh of rushing water. They brought an unmistakable message—rejoice, winter's over!

  By high noon the transformation was well underway, and when the bells of the Sheridan Episcopalian Church pealed, they drew a congregation whose winter spirits had been magically lifted.

  They came in open carriages, breathing deep of the warm air and turning their faces to the sun. They came smiling, happy, dressed in lighter clothes and lingering outside to soak up the miraculous day until the last possible moment.

  That's where they all were, outside in the chinook and the sun, when Edwin Walcott's finest Studebaker landau came briskly down the street with its twin tops down, making no excuses for shunning Victorian mourning in honor of this glorious occasion. The landau itself gleamed in yellow paint with black trim, and Edwin had chosen his blackest black gelding. Jet, to do the wedding day honors. Along Jet's shiny black flanks the harness was studded with cockades of white ribbon trailing streamers that undulated gracefully as the gelding, enlivened, too, by the chinooks, pranced smartly. In his mane more ribbon was braided and on each of his blinders and between his ears perched a crepe-paper rosette. The wagon traces looked like maypoles, twined with ribbons and rosettes and wands of pussy willows. The landau itself was nothing short of a bower. Cockades, streamers, and more pussy willows circled its seats, nestled in bunting of pale green net that had been fixed in the downturned bonnet.

  In the front seat sat Fannie Cooper, in ivory, holding an enormous net-swathed hat on her head while beside her Edwin Walcott perched proud-chested and beaming, wearing a dapper beaver top hat and cutaway coat of cinnamon brown, holding a buggy whip trimmed with yet another paper rose and streamers.

  Behind them rode Emily Walcott, wearing her mother's elegant silver-gray wedding dress, with a sprig of dried baby's breath in her hair, beside Thomas Jeffcoat, dashing in dove gray—top hat, gloves. Prince Albert coat, and striped trousers. Squashed between their knees on the edge of the sea
t rode Frank Allen Walcott, sporting a new brown suit with his first winged collar and ascot, beaming fit to kill, standing up well before his father drew rein, waving and hollering at the top of his lungs, "Hi, Earl, look at this! Ain't this something!"

  So the wedding guests were laughing when Edwin drew Jet to a halt before the Sheridan Episcopal. Frankie clambered excitedly over Tom's legs and leapt down to show Earl his new duds and to exclaim over the decorated landau. Edwin slipped the buggy whip into its bracket and vaulted from the wagon like a man of twenty, unable to dim his smile as he swung Fannie down. Tom alighted less agilely, hiding a clumsy plaster cast beneath his wedding finery, but when he reached up a helping hand to his bride-to-be the eagerness on his face was unmistakable. With his gray-gloved hand he took her bare one, squeezing it much harder than necessary, sending her a silent message of joy.

  "They're smiling," he whispered, with his back to the church.

  "I know," she replied secretly while stepping down. "Isn't it wonderful?"

  They were smiling—the entire waiting crowd—infected by the obvious happiness that shone from the faces of the nuptial couples as they alighted from the carriage with not a garment of black in sight.

  Emily and Tom faced the crowd, watching Edwin and Fannie move before them up a pair of wooden planks that Reverend Vasseler had provided as a moat across the streaming ditch, Edwin keeping a possessive grip on Fannie's elbow. Tom claimed Emily's elbow, too, as they followed the older couple, who were receiving felicitations, left and right, even before the vows were spoken.

  Reverend Vasseler waited on the church steps, with Bible in hand, smiling down on the new arrivals, shaking hands with each of them as they stopped on the step below him.

  "Good morning, Edwin, Fannie, Thomas, Emily … and Master Frank."

  "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" Edwin spoke for all of them.

  "Yes, it is." Reverend Vasseler scanned the flawless sky as a wayward Chinook breeze lifted his thinning hair from his forehead and set it back down. "One would think the Lord was sending a message, wouldn't one?"

  Upon the heels of the minister's benign postulation they entered the church in procession, with Vasseler himself in the lead, followed by the resplendent couples and Frankie, then the entire fold.

  The organ played and the wind came in the open windows. The church was trimmed with more pussy willows and white cockades on every pew. Frankie sat up front between Earl and his parents, and when the sound of settling bodies silenced, Reverend Vasseler lifted his chin and let his voice ring out clear and loud.

  "Dearly beloved … we are gathered here today, in the sight of God, to join this man and woman…" The minister paused and shifted his gaze from one couple to the next. "…and this man and woman … in the state of holy matrimony." Smiles broke out everywhere, even a small one on the face of the man officiating.

  The smiles disappeared, however, at the speaking of the vows, for when Edwin took Fannie's hands and gazed into her eyes, the love that radiated between them shone as unmistakably as the silver in their hair.

  "I, Edwin, take thee, Fannie…"

  "I, Fannie, take thee, Edwin…"

  There was a special radiance in the older couple that sparked tears in the eyes of many looking on and held them in thrall as Edwin, upon the last words, placed Fannie's right hand over his heart and covered it with his own for all to see.

  Then Tom and Emily faced each other and once again hearts went out to them as they clasped hands and exchanged vows with their eyes even before doing so with their lips. They emanated a serenity surpassing their years as they stood before God and man, conscious only of each other, and spoke their vows in voices that could be heard clearly in the rearmost pew.

  "I, Thomas, take thee, Emily…"

  "I, Emily, take thee, Thomas…"

  When their last words were spoken and a blessing called down. Reverend Vasseler opened his arms wide as if in a blessing of his own, and said. "Now you may kiss your brides."

  As the two couples exchanged their first married kisses, the women looking on drew handkerchiefs from their sleeves while the men stiffened their spines and stared straight-on to keep from divulging the fact that their eyes, too, held a conspicuous glint of moisture. Emotions billowed even more as, upon the heels of the first kisses, the newlywed couples broke apart and exchanged partners. Edwin kissed his daughter, and Tom his new mother-in-law, followed by a heartfelt embrace between the two women and a congenial handshake between the two men. The organ burst forth with recessional tidings, and four smiling faces turned toward the open rear doors, poising for a moment with arms linked, four-abreast, as if to tell the world that love, honor, and respect went four ways among them.

  Arm in arm, Emily and Tom led the exit, followed by Edwin and Fannie, who, while passing the first pew, collected a smiling Frankie and left the church holding his hands between them.

  Outside, rice flew, and the brides ran across the bouncing wooden moat and boarded the ribbon-bedecked landau and drew their skirts aside while two happy husbands stepped up behind them. Frankie scrambled into the front seat and begged to take the reins, beaming like a full moon when Edwin said yes and handed him the supple buggy whip with the streamers trailing from its handle.

  They rode through town with the brides crooked in their husband's arms, nestled in a bower of pussy willows and white roses, followed by the splash of shoes and kettles trailing through the swimming streets behind the Studebaker.

  At Coffeen Hall they were feted with a wedding feast provided by their friends, customers, and fellow church members. The celebration lasted into the late afternoon and by the time it ended the chinooks had stolen the last of the snow and left behind a naked valley waiting for its spring raiments.

  An hour before sunset, two brides and grooms boarded the landau once more. Frankie stayed behind, waving them goodbye in his bedraggled, food-stained wedding suit. He would spend the night at Earl's, and tomorrow, he promised his father, he and Earl would wash down the landau as a wedding gift of their own.

  But now, it wheeled through the March mud as spattered and bedraggled as the two boys had looked, its streamers soiled and its rosettes crushed. No matter. Soiling it had been joyous and memorable.

  The evening was mellow, the sound of the wheels a susurrus. Edwin drove while Fannie pressed her cheek against his sleeve. In the backseat Emily sat holding hands with Tom in the folds of her pearl-gray skirt. Her cheek lay not against his sleeve, however, but straight toward the wind, for it was warm with expectation while Tom squeezed her hand fiercely and their thumbs played games of pursuit and capture.

  At Tom's house Edwin brought Jet to a halt. He turned, resting one arm along the top of his seat, looking back at his daughter and her new husband.

  "Well…" His smile passed affectionately between both of them. "Happy wedding day," he said with soft sincerity. "I know it's been for us." On the seat he took Fannie's hand and momentarily shifted his smile to her.

  "For us, too," Emily returned. "Thank you, Papa." Over the back of the seat she kissed him, then Fannie. "Thank you both. It was a wonderful day, and the landau was a grand surprise."

  "We thought so," Fannie agreed. "And it was certainly fun picking those pussy willows, wasn't it, Edwin?"

  They laughed, momentarily relieving the heart-tug that accompanied the moment of good-bye as a daughter left her father's abode forever. Tom alighted and helped Emily down, then stood beside the carriage looking up at the couple above him. He reached and took two hands—one of Edwin's, one of Fannie's, squeezing them earnestly. "Don't worry about her. I'll make sure she's as happy as the two of you are going to be, for the rest of her life."

  Edwin nodded, uncertain of his voice, should he try to speak. Tom released his hand and leaned forward to kiss Fannie. "Be happy," she whispered, holding his cheeks. "Happiness is everything."

  "We are," he replied, and stepped back.

  "Fannie…" Emily, too, accepted a kiss while fresh emotions welled
up.

  As usual, Fannie knew how to end the delicate moment with the proper mixture of affection and finality. "We'll see you tomorrow. Congratulations, dearling."

  "You, too, Fannie."

  "Good-bye, Papa. See you tomorrow."

  "Good-bye, honey."

  The landau pulled away, trailing bedraggled streamers. A bride and groom watched it go, but even before it reached a corner they had turned their regard to one another.

  He smiled.

  She smiled.

  He took her hand.

  She gave hers gladly.

  They walked to his house together. At the porch steps he said, "I'm sorry I can't carry you in, Mrs. Jeffcoat."

  "You can do it on our silver wedding anniversary," she told him while they mounted the steps shoulder to shoulder. He opened the door and the two of them entered his kitchen, where all was silent and serene and bathed in sunwash. They locked palms, standing close, toe to toe, projecting ahead not twenty-five years, but a single night.

  "It was a wonderful wedding day, wasn't it?" he said.

  "Yes, it was. It is."

  "Are you tired?"

  "No, but my feet are wet."

  "Your feet?"

  "From crossing the yard."

  "You're home now. You can take your shoes off anytime." His grin, unformed, remained a mere suggestion in his eyes.

  "All right, I will, but will you kiss me first? It takes a long time to take shoes off."

  He smiled wide, overjoyed at her lack of guile. "Oh, Emily … there's nobody like you. I'm going to love being your husband." They stood so close he had only to bend his arms to tip her against him. He kissed her obligingly, averting his face to meet her upraised one, gathering her into the curve of his shoulder while they stood almost stock-still against one another, twisted slightly at the waist. It was a sweet beginning, tasting each other with unhurried ease, letting their mouths form and fit and feast while remaining still everywhere else.

  When their mouths parted—a hairsbreadth only—she seemed to have forgotten how to move.