“Yes, they’ll be married here. You can all meet him then.”
“And his family, too, of course. Surely they’ll be coming here for the wedding?”
“I don’t believe you can count on meeting the groom’s family,” I said with sudden inspiration. “They live all the way up in Pocahontas County, and it would be more than a day’s journey for them to travel all the way out here to Little Sewell for the wedding. Of course, it’s only going to be a small affair, anyhow. Just close friends and family. Zona’s not one to make a fuss.”
Actually, she was. She’d have had the reception at the Old White and invited the governor if she had the money and the bloodlines to get away with it. At least I had hoped she would wait until spring to have the ceremony, but the groom was uncommonly anxious to get the wedding over with as quick as he could. I was sure that Zona would have preferred months of giving herself airs about her impending nuptials, to dwell on the details of her wedding clothes and such, but she said that she liked a man who knew his own mind, and she let him have his way. She might have wanted to make sure she’d hooked him without delay, in case, given time, he might somehow find out about the Woldridge baby. I had warned all her brothers never to mention it, but there’s no telling what young’uns will say if you’re not watching them.
The ladies in the church aisle blinked, digesting my explanation, and I thought I had talked my way clean out of it, but then one of them said, “The groom’s family? But surely they’ll want to see him—”
They might want to if they hadn’t already seen him go through it twice before.
I did push past them then. “I have to get home, ladies. Jacob’s out there waiting in the wagon, and the boys will be fractious, a-wanting their dinner.”
I hurried away before my Bible-toting interrogators could think up any more questions.
In the summertime, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike is like a road through paradise. The wide green valley of gently rolling meadows is bounded north and south by a wall of darker green mountains, dotted in spring by white-blossomed apple trees and the pink flowers of redbuds, and in August by clumps of goldenrod and patches of purple pokeweed. The land is better for farming than out our way, so the fields are rich with crops or full of fat-bellied cows and shining horses worth more than a year’s pay to some folks. It was a landscape of peace and plenty in the sunshine of a summer afternoon, but whipped by the harsh winds of late November, the magic was gone. In the gray light of an autumn afternoon, brown stubble fields swept away from either side of the road toward bleak hills, dark with leafless trees. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Shue would find that road a wearying trial on their way back after the ceremony, but perhaps they would be too excited to notice.
We hadn’t far to travel, from home to Soule Chapel, and I had quilts wrapped around every one of us, over our coats, but we still shivered in the slow-going wagon while the wind gusts eddied around us, and the gray clouds that seemed snagged upon the treetops threatened to spit rain on us at any moment. I resolved to leave my bonnet in my lap under the quilt until we actually got to the church, because the rain would turn its ribbons and silk flowers into a sodden mess. Jacob and the boys were in their church clothes—the only good ones they had—and if they got soaked, there would be nothing I could do about it except to wrap them in more quilts and pray that they wouldn’t catch their deaths of colds from the wet chills.
The only one who didn’t seem to mind the weather was the bride herself. She sat on the front seat of the wagon, wedged between her daddy and me, with such an expression of rapture that you’d think she was on her way to be crowned.
It was Saturday, the twenty-eighth of November: Zona’s wedding day, and one day shy of the birthday of the Woldridge baby, who would not be mentioned today or ever.
I tried not to think it was a judgment on the coming marriage that the weather was foul and forbidding. After all, there is a reason that most brides choose to wed in the summertime, for then the weather is one less thing to worry about. I had mentioned to Zona that she and her beau might want to wait six months for more clement weather, but by then Mr. Shue’s insistence on a hasty union had converted her to his way of thinking, and she stamped her foot and declared that she would not be dictated to by the almanac. I do believe she thought that the day would show fine and sunny simply because she expected it, but like many a woman before her, she learned to live with disappointment.
Zona was with us for the journey from the house to Soule Chapel, and her groom would be meeting us there.
“You’ll have to keep an eye on our menfolk,” Zona told me that morning. “Else they might come to the wedding looking like nothing on earth. Daddy might try to wear overalls if you don’t watch him, and the boys haven’t the least notion of what still fits or what’s clean. Just make sure they don’t embarrass me. I’ll be too busy getting ready myself to fool with them.”
I promised her that I would see that the menfolk were suitably dressed, although I did wonder who would be there to be impressed, since none of the folks from here would be dressed in fancy clothes, either, but I did my best to make the family presentable with what we had. The food was ready for the reception afterward. I had made three apple pies and a pound cake to take to the church. If it had been summertime, I’d have been able to use berries or peaches for cobblers as well, but at the end of November, about all I could manage were the pies and the simplest of cakes: a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour—they say that’s how the cake got its name. I was sure that some of the other women would also bring food for the reception. For births and deaths and weddings, we all pitch in to honor the occasion.
The pies and cakes were wrapped in a clean cloth and stowed in a crate in the back of the wagon, with H. C. guarding it so that the younger ones wouldn’t put a foot through it, squirming around.
“A wedding on a Saturday,” I said aloud to Jacob, mostly to have something to listen to besides the wind. We were waiting for Zona to finish getting ready and come out. “There’s an old saying about that: Wedded on Saturday, no luck at all.”
Jacob toyed with the reins while he thought about it. “Didn’t we get married on a Saturday, Mary Jane?”
“No. It was a Thursday, Jacob, but most people don’t have much of a choice. The church is in use for services on a Sunday, and the rest of the days are taken up with work.”
“I reckon rich people could pick any day they wanted,” said Jacob. “So could farmers, maybe, but the loggers and the shopkeepers and suchlike couldn’t do it, and they couldn’t even go as guests unless the wedding was held when they weren’t a-working, so a weekday wedding wouldn’t have many guests.”
I sniffed. “I wouldn’t mind not having many guests at this one anyhow.” But Jacob was right, of course. It wasn’t the day of the week that was making me fret about the outcome of the marriage. It was my misgivings about the marriage that was making me worry about everything else.
There were more buckboards and buggies in the yard outside the church than I had expected, which didn’t mean that the wedding couple was rich in friends, just that the occasion meant there was something to do on a dreary Saturday afternoon in Meadow Bluff. Strictly speaking, some of them probably weren’t invited, but nobody would turn them away. Our church was called Soule Chapel, named some fifty years ago for the Methodist bishop Joshua Soule, though he never visited here. It was a white country box of a building with big double doors, painted green, and the pointed spire that in these parts marks a church as Methodist. It didn’t have stained glass windows, but since the tall side windows looked out on a forest of hardwoods, the view was pretty enough for three seasons of the year, when the leaves were in all their glory. Not in late November, though.
When we went into the sanctuary, we saw that on the table next to the pulpit someone had placed a big salt crock filled with red and gold leaves and branches of red cotoneaster berries, which brightened up the room just as well as flowers would have. There was an old p
ump organ up at the front, next to where the choir stood, and rows of oak benches instead of pews. The woodwork had been newly polished and smelled faintly of beeswax. It was a simple but pleasant house of worship, and the ladies of the congregation had done well to make it festive. I wondered why the happy couple seemed so hesitant about getting married here. I thought Zona might be afraid that somebody knew her secret and would let it slip, but Edward Shue didn’t know that, yet he seemed even warier over getting married here than she was. The only thing I could figure was that he might be shy among strangers, especially since Zona knew everybody here while he was the odd man out.
I sent Jacob and the boys up to occupy the front bench on the bride’s side of the church, where his brother Johnson Heaster and his wife were already seated, while I stayed back to be with Zona. There wasn’t anyone sitting on the front bench across the aisle, though; apparently no one from the groom’s family was coming, or if they were, they were cutting it mighty fine. I did wonder for a second whether Mr. Shue’s former wife, or more likely their daughter, would turn up for the ceremony, but I dismissed that thought as fanciful. From what Zona had said about the way they behaved toward one another when they met in the courthouse, I didn’t think either of them wanted to come within five miles of the other one.
Anyhow, that bench stayed empty.
Zona made a beautiful bride. She wasn’t wearing a long white dress, because nobody around here can afford the foolishness of a fancy dress that you only wear once, and besides the weather in November was too cold to make it practical, but she looked formal and solemn in a dark satin dress with an apron sort of overdress, a high choker collar, and big puffed sleeves. She wore a matching satin bow at the back of her hair. I thought she looked more elegant than that groom of hers, who showed up sporting a bow tie on a white shirt and a slightly rumpled gray suit jacket with wide lapels.
I leaned over and whispered to Zona so nobody else could hear me, “You’d think that after two previous weddings, the fellow would have had something more fitten to wear.”
Zona scowled at me. “It’s only a half-hour service,” she muttered. “It’s what comes after that counts.”
I didn’t hold out much hope for that, either, but they did make a well-matched pair to look at. The minister did his best, but of course he had only just met the groom. During the ceremony, he stumbled over the pronunciation of both their first names—Elva and Erasmus, which neither of them ever used—but they just smiled. The pair of them stood up at the altar and said their vows loud and clear, looking at each other with shining eyes, as if they were alone in the world. They were a handsome couple, and they knew it. There are marriages held together with less, I told myself, but it felt like whistling in the dark.
Zona was all smiles afterward at the little get-together in the church meeting room. She only scowled once, and that was when she looked out the window and noticed the rain pelting down from a sky that looked like a sheet of lead. “I did hope it would be a fine day for my wedding! After all, it only happens to you once.”
I pressed my lips together and turned away quickly before I could say what I was thinking: Maybe your new husband used up his good-weather allotment with his first two tries.
Zona was mostly surrounded by her cousins and her old school friends from Meadow Bluff, but there were a few new-made friends from Richlands there as well, laughing and talking. Her new husband was standing on the other side of the room, over near the refreshment table, looking as stiff and awkward as any new-married man. He was eating a hunk of my pound cake with his fingers, and he didn’t seem much interested in whether anybody went over to talk to him or not, so I made myself stroll over to wish him well. Edward Shue was family now, and it was my duty to try to be civil to him.
“Congratulations, son-in-law,” I said. “It was a lovely wedding, but I’ll bet you’re glad it’s over. Men usually are.”
He smiled and nodded, with a mouthful of cake.
“That’s the pound cake I made. If there’s any left after the reception is over, you must take it home with you.” I looked around the room. “And you must make us acquainted with your side of the family, Mr. Shue, now that we’re all connected. Speaking of being family, what would you like me to call you now? Seems like you have a good many names to choose from. Erasmus?”
“Oh, Trout’ll do me,” he said, still trying to swallow his cake.
Well, it wouldn’t do me, I thought. Who ever heard of such a silly name for a grown man? “I believe I’ll stick with Edward,” I said. “Such a nice name, same as the Prince of Wales.”
He smiled, and I could see that the comparison pleased him, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. I was thinking that if he kept on eating the way he was, he’d soon be as fat as the Prince of Wales, who looked like a tusk hog in the recent pictures they printed of him. Talking about English royalty made me miss my father and wish he had lived to see his granddaughter married, but we had lost him nearly ten years ago. I wondered what he would have thought of the groom.
“And your family from over in Pocahontas County? Didn’t they make it to the wedding?”
Edward Shue finished his cake in one big gulp and washed it down with a tin cup of cider. “My family? They couldn’t make it today on account of the weather. I reckon I’ll take Zona up to meet them one of these days.”
“Take me where, hon?” Zona came hurrying over, and gave her groom a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. “I just came over to get me some cake. I didn’t eat a thing all morning. Wedding nerves. Could you cut me a big piece, hon?”
He looked her up and down, and he wasn’t smiling back. “You shouldn’t eat cake, Zona. You don’t want to go getting fat, do you?”
Zona went pale and her eyes widened. “But I haven’t eaten a morsel yet today. And anyway, you always said I was beautiful.”
He glared at her, like he was daring her to talk back to him, and I saw her lip began to tremble. I didn’t want them to make a scene in front of a room full of people, so I put on a smile and said quickly, “Now that the wedding is over with, you can begin your life together over in the Richlands.”
Zona’s sparkle returned, as if a cloud had passed. “Oh, that house my handsome husband got for us is a beautiful place! It’s not even a quarter mile off the Midland Trail, and real close to Mr. Crookshanks’s smithy. The house used to be the home of Mr. Livesay himself, the man that ran the mill, but Trout’s renting it from him. It has an upstairs, and a front porch, and a fenced-in yard, and everything!”
Edward beamed at her. “It’s a peach of a place. I can just see Zona here turning that yard into a perfect flower garden with every color in the rainbow abloom from springtime until fall.”
He might be able to picture it, but I couldn’t. Zona had no more use for flowers than a blind mule unless they were presented to her in a bouquet. She certainly hadn’t the patience to weed and water a big garden. She might do some gardening to get vegetables for the dinner table, but not just for the sake of a pretty yard. Zona didn’t say anything, though, and I held my peace, but it did cross my mind that they might have been wise to get to know one another better before they tied the knot. That way there would have been fewer disappointments in store.
I smiled. “I’m looking forward to seeing your new place, then.”
Edward gave me a wide-eyed stare that looked almost like alarm until he remembered to smile. “Why, you’ll want to wait awhile before you visit us, ma’am. We ain’t got the place put to rights yet.”
“Well, I didn’t think you would yet, of course, but I thought I’d come over soon and see if there was anything we could help you with. I could make you some curtains, and Jacob is handy at making furniture—nothing too fancy, but it would serve.”
Zona brightened when I said this, and she looked up at her new husband with a hopeful smile, but he was already shaking his head. “I reckon Zona and me will want to see to all that sort of thing ourselves, thank you all the same. I’ll buy her some materi
al, and she can sew the curtains by herself. That way she can be proud of making the home her very own. But we’ll have you and the family come over one of these days, when the weather turns fine.”
“Well, I guess you newlyweds need your time alone,” I said, but I was more uneasy than I let on to them. Zona had never made curtains in her life, and I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for her being able to do it now. Riding for a fall, I thought.
After that, I spent some time chatting with Cousin Sarah while the newlyweds went around and shook hands with everybody and thanked them for coming.
“Mighty fine pound cake, Mary Jane.” Jacob’s brother Johnson, brushing crumbs from his coat, kissed my cheek. Johnson was a friend and neighbor as well as kinfolk, and I was glad to see him. He farmed fifty acres near us in Meadow Bluff, but he never made us feel like poor relations.
“I’m glad you like the cake, Brother Johnson. It was the best I could do in haste, it being after harvest time.”
“It was short notice, I know, but I think the nuptials went just fine. And Zona made a beautiful bride. She did you and Jacob proud.”
I sighed. “I just hope it takes. I’m praying for them.”
“Well, he’s a nice-looking fellow, that Mr. Shue, and he couldn’t want for a prettier missus. What do you know of his people?”
“Next to nothing, Johnson.” I lowered my voice. “But Zona’s not his first wife.”
He smiled. “Let’s hope she’s his last one, then.”
A little while later, Jacob collected me, and said we needed to be starting back, because he didn’t want to be on the road after dark, when the cold really set in. “I reckon it’s too late and too cold today to go all the way to the Richlands to see where the newlyweds will be living,” he said. “We’ll have to visit them some other day.”
I sniffed. “Don’t hold your breath for an invitation.”
The Unquiet Grave: A Novel Page 7