“Get out from here, Pete McLean,” she grumbled, shooing him away. “You filthy nasty. And you better not forget to feed Cyrus his supper!”
“Don’t you worry ’bout Cyrus. He gets his supper before I get mine.”
Hattie followed John around to the back of the house. “Mama ain’t one to let on,” she said, “but I know what this means to her. Thank you.”
He smiled. “You might not wanna thank me tomorrow, when you got half the town traipsin’ over this yard.”
“It’ll be fine,” Hattie said. “Brung you some fresh coffee.” She set the thermos down beside him as she left to join Junie and Aunt Babe.
John understood why finding a wedding site had been a struggle for Pete and Dovey. His mother, they all knew, might refuse to set foot in any of the churches in town. And if they got married in the Picketts’ barn, everybody from First Baptist would spend the whole wedding wondering where the snakes were. Lila had offered her house, but John and Dovey were afraid his mother would declare it “a Ballard wedding” and refuse to come. Finally, Pete and Dovey had come home from the Dairy Queen late one afternoon and announced that they had found the perfect place, halfway between both families and special to the two of them.
Dovey laughed when she told him how Aunt Babe planned to use their wedding to get her house redone. She had told them she couldn’t think of it otherwise, what with her old place needing a coat of paint so bad and that sorry, piddling little porch she had to make do with. Naturally, she told Pete she wanted her house painted red, but Hattie had prevailed on her to consider her second-favorite color, yellow. John and Pete had completely repaired the house, painted it a soft, buttery shade, and added a white porch and trim. The old shotgun had never looked better.
With all the trim finished, Pete and John began loading scrap lumber into their trucks, packing up tools, and clearing away paint buckets. By the time they cleaned up the yard, it would be time for supper, which Dovey and Lila would have ready for them.
John couldn’t believe how much he missed Lila. While he and Pete worked on Aunt Babe’s house, Lila and Dovey had been busy calling caterers and ordering flowers and getting the wedding announcement out. They had barely gotten it into all the church bulletins the Sunday before the wedding. The only time John saw Lila was over supper, and somebody was always with them—Pete and Dovey or Lila’s father. Every night, John and Pete would eat their supper and then go back to the house and hook up shop lights to work a few more hours before they went home and fell into bed. Right now John would give anything for just an hour alone with Lila when he wasn’t too exhausted to hold his head up. But that would have to wait.
Thirty-six
APRIL 7, 1968
“Hattie, don’t you even think about puttin’ that apron on.”
“But Mister Ned, look how them caterers got the coleslaw ahead of the barbecue! Everybody knows the barbecue comes first! Bet they put the sauce with the sweet tea and the lemons with the baked beans.”
Hattie was clutching one of Aunt Babe’s favorite aprons in her hands and watching in dismay as the caterers from Childersburg set up long buffet tables right on Hollow Road. Aunt Babe’s yard was just big enough to hold all the folding chairs for the wedding guests, so the food had to be set up in the road. Cars could park on either end of the tables, but anybody wanting to drive past them would just have to wait till after the reception.
“Aunt Babe, can’t you do anything with her?” Ned asked. He was standing at the foot of her front steps, looking up at the two women on the porch. They wore new Sunday dresses with matching hats and gloves, which he had bought for them—pale pink for Hattie and bright red for Aunt Babe.
Aunt Babe had been happy to go shopping with him in Birmingham and didn’t pay one bit of attention to the price tags. Hattie, though, was another matter. Early in their shopping trip, Ned had to resort to threats. “Hattie, I swear if you don’t get away from those sale racks, I’m gonna drive off and leave you in Birmingham. Just pick you out a pretty dress and quit frettin’ over the price.” Right now he could tell she was itching to take off her pearl-buttoned gloves, tie on her apron, and show those caterers how it was done.
Suddenly, though, Hattie was distracted from the buffet table and its ill-placed coleslaw. “Why, that looks like Reverend Patterson’s car pullin’ up,” she said. “What’s he doin’ here?”
Ned smiled. “Pete and Dovey made me go over to his house and personally invite him. They said you’re gonna make a fine preacher’s wife.”
Hattie shook her head. “I don’t know what them young’uns think they know,” she said.
“Looks to me like they know plenty.” Ned chuckled, walking out to greet Reverend Patterson.
“Seems like yesterday I was helping you get ready for your first spring dance,” Lila said as she fussed with Pete’s tie and stepped back to look at him. “All grown up.” Pete was wearing a new navy suit she and Dovey had picked out for him.
He smiled. “You planning to get all weepy on me?”
“You better believe it.”
He hugged his mother and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you too, sweetheart. And I want you to be just . . . so, so happy.”
“Same to you,” he said with a grin.
“Now, Pete, I don’t know what kind of notions you and Dovey have gotten into your heads, but I can explain—”
He stopped her with another hug. “Nothing to explain, Mama.” He offered her his arm, just as she’d shown him the night of that first dance with Dovey. “May I escort you to your big ole Buick, ma’am?”
“You may.” Lila laughed, taking his arm. The two of them left the farmhouse together, ready for a wedding.
“Dovey, honey, you got any idea how to do this?” John was standing in front of Lottie’s mirror, struggling with his necktie.
“Let me see,” Dovey said. But when he turned and saw her standing there, he forgot all about the tie.
She was dressed for her wedding—his little girl, a bride. She must’ve looked at fifty dress patterns, but in the end she had asked her Aunt Lydia to re-create the dress she wore to that first dance with Pete—sleeveless, scooped neck and back, Empire waist. It looked completely different in white silk and antique lace. Dovey wore her hair down with a simple veil—just a single layer of very delicate lace that fell from the crown of her head all the way down her back. Pete had given her a strand of his grandmother’s pearls as a wedding present. She wore them around her neck, along with his locket.
She smiled at her father. “Well, say something, Daddy.”
He opened his mouth to tell her how beautiful she looked and how proud her mother would be and how much he loved her—but no words would come out. So he just put his arms around her and held her close.
Dovey kissed her father on the cheek, then stepped back, tied the Windsor knot, and straightened his collar.
John held his daughter one last time before he had to stand on a porch in front of all those people and give her away.
With all the guests in their seats, laughing and talking, the First Baptist choir gathered beside Aunt Babe’s steps and began to sing.
Come, thou fount of ev’ry blessing,
Tune my heart to sing thy grace.
Lila’s father escorted her to one of two empty chairs out in front of all the others and then took his place on the row a few feet behind her. Pete’s grandparents on his father’s side had died when he was a little boy, but his McLean aunts and uncles came. So did John’s mother and her entire clan. Altogether, the family—including Aunt Babe, Hattie, and Reverend Patterson, at Pete and Dovey’s request—filled six rows of chairs stretching all the way across Aunt Babe’s yard.
The front railing and columns of the new porch John had built were covered with garlands of greenery and pink roses. Two white wicker baskets, brimming over with flowers, rested on pedestals on either side of the steps.
As Pete came out the front door with Br
other Jip, Lila stood up, and everybody else followed her lead. John escorted Dovey down the side porch and around front, where Pete waited for her at the top of the steps. Cyrus trotted around from the backyard and took a respectful position at the foot of the steps.
“You all can be seated,” Brother Jip said to the guests as the choir finished singing.
As bittersweet as this moment was for any father, John couldn’t help smiling at the expression on Pete’s face the first time he saw Dovey in her wedding dress. The preacher would have a time getting words to come out of the boy’s mouth because he looked dumbstruck.
“Who gives this woman in marriage to this man?” Brother Jip said.
“I do,” John answered almost in a whisper, kissing Dovey’s hand before placing it in Pete’s. He went down the steps and took his seat next to Lila.
“Dearly beloved . . .”
Lila was already starting to cry, and they hadn’t even exchanged rings yet. John reached into his suit pocket and gave her the crisp white handkerchief Dovey had carefully ironed and folded for him, just like Lila showed her. Lila dabbed at her eyes but was clearly getting overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment, the tears flowing faster by the minute.
Their chairs were so close together that John was sure no one behind them could see—and if they could, well, they’d just have to see. He reached over and took Lila’s hand. She looked up at him and smiled. The two chairs out front, placed so that the two of them could have a little privacy and see the wedding together, with their backs to the rest of the crowd—that was Dovey’s idea, and now John knew why she had planned it so.
“Dovey, if you will take this ring and place it on Pete’s finger,” Brother Jip was saying.
John tightened his grip on Lila’s hand ever so slightly.
“. . . And now, by the powers vested in me by the state of Alabama, I pronounce you husband and wife. Pete, you may kiss your bride.”
Before Lila and John had time to think about it, their children were married.
The crowd was thinning out now that they’d had their fill of barbecue and wedding cake. Miss Paul and the Picketts were the first to leave. Aunt Babe’s yard was strewn with rice, thrown at Pete and Dovey as they ran for Lila’s Buick and drove away to their honeymoon. Reverend Patterson had offered to take Hattie home and was escorting her to his car as Geneva walked her father to his Cadillac, making him promise to come over to her house and stay for supper. Aunt Babe had gone inside to lie down. She even let Cyrus come in with her. Lila had heard her grumbling, “They’s just so much of these white folks me and you can take—ain’t that right, Cyrus?”
As car doors slammed and friends said goodbye, Lila walked down to the buffet tables to tell the caterers they could start cleaning up. She scanned the few small clusters of people left in the yard, looking for John. Just as she was beginning to panic for fear that he might have stolen away, she spotted him leaning against one of the pecan trees next to Aunt Babe’s house. In the afternoon heat, he had taken off his jacket and tie, unbuttoned his collar, and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He smiled at her like he had been waiting for her to find him.
They had picked out her dress together the same day they bought his suit. At the first store, when she told the saleslady she was the mother of the groom, out had come a bunch of brocade dresses with satin-cuffed jackets and shimmery wraps and pearl buttons and rhinestones all over the place. But then they went to Loveman’s, where John immediately spotted a dress of pale blue silk and chiffon, simply cut. It was sleeveless, with a V-necked front and back and a fitted waist. The skirt fell just below Lila’s knees and floated around her legs.
“You don’t need any ornamentation, Lila,” he had said. “Anybody can see that.”
John gave a little nod toward Aunt Babe’s backyard, which was surrounded by tall cedar trees. Aunt Babe always said your front yard was for show, but your backyard was “for yo’ own self,” and she didn’t want “no meddlesome noseys” snooping around hers. Years ago, Daddy Ballard had sent over field hands who planted those cedars to give Aunt Babe her privacy.
Lila followed John all the way into the strange-looking gazebo where he had waited with Dovey before the wedding. The seconds ticked by as they stood silently, facing each other. Their friendship had been so comfortable and easy, but now they had started down a riskier path. The two-week separation, coming just as they were taking those first tentative steps together, had made them unsure of their footing.
“Remember me?” he said.
She nodded. “You’re that mysterious, exhausted man who’s been showing up at my supper table every night and disappearing right after dessert.”
There was something a little sad about his smile as he reached out to brush her hair away from her face. “I won’t disappear anymore.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He looked a little overwhelmed, so she let him take his time. “What is this thing anyway, Lila?” he asked, looking around at the gazebo.
“It’s supposed to be a Chinese pagoda,” she said. “Aunt Babe’s been fascinated with China ever since a foreign missionary spoke at her church. When she found this in a catalog, she tore the page out and taped it to Daddy’s windshield, so he took the hint.”
He smiled at her. “Sounds about right.”
“Want me to tell you more about mail-order architecture? Because I could go on and on. We could cover Sears, the Green Stamp store . . .”
He shook his head, taking her hands and pulling her very close to him. “I missed you so much, Lila.” He said it like it was a terrible thing to endure. “I don’t . . . I don’t ever wanna miss you again.”
The way he was looking at her, all she could manage was a whispered, “You don’t have to.”
Thirty-seven
APRIL 13, 1968
The log cabin was completely hidden away. From their front porch, Pete and Dovey could see the Smoky Mountains soaring into the sky. This time of year, the air was cool and crisp. Across the back of the cabin was a deep covered deck overlooking a waterfall that spilled into a gushing stream below. It had a chaise lounge for two, which had become the newlyweds’ favorite spot after supper every night.
Aunt Geneva had rented the cabin for them. When she stopped by Aunt Babe’s to see how the porch was coming along and discovered that Pete had forgotten to plan a honeymoon, she had thrown up her hands and said, “But that’s the most important part!” Seeing Pete’s dismay, she had given him a big hug and said, “Now, don’t you give it another thought, honey. Aunt Geneva knows a thing or two about romance. Just leave it to me.”
She had outdone herself. Tonight Pete and Dovey were snuggled under a blanket on the chaise lounge, listening to the waterfall.
“I think waterfalls might be my very favorite thing in the whole world—besides you, of course,” Dovey said, smiling up at Pete. “Is this Friday night or Saturday night?”
“Sorry to say it’s Saturday.”
“A whole week has gone by?”
“I know.” He sighed. “Hey, you know what we should do, Dovey? We oughta plan a special trip every year—someplace neither one of us has ever been.”
“That won’t be hard for me. I’ve never been anywhere.”
“Ain’t exactly a world traveler myself,” he said. “Tell you what. Every time we take a trip, we’ll spend the last night of it plannin’ where to go the next year. That way we won’t be sad when it’s time to leave because we’ll have something to look forward to.”
“Can we really do that—go somewhere every year?”
“Sure. Maybe not this time of year, though. I’ll be plantin’ cotton.”
“So what’s a good time? Maybe August?”
“Sounds perfect. Where you wanna go?”
“I guess I’d like to see the ocean,” she said, “but you’ve already been to Florida.”
“Just Panama City. How ’bout we start in Pensacola and drive all the way across Missis
sippi to New Orleans—follow the water the whole way. We could take two weeks if we wanted to.”
“Are you serious?” Dovey sat up a little so she could see his face.
“Absolutely.” He kissed her as she snuggled back onto his shoulder.
They were quiet for a minute before she said, “You’re not done yet, are you?”
“With what?”
“With Isaac.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s not finished. I can tell you’ve thought about him some this week.”
“No I haven’t—” He stopped. “I don’t know why I still think I can hide anything from you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been thinking about anybody but you on our honeymoon.”
“Don’t be sorry. You feel what you feel. I think I can help, though. I was wrong before.”
“When?”
“Way back in the beginning, when I said you were looking for a way to tell Isaac goodbye. That was only half of it. You need a way to remember him too.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you’ll find a way. You always do.”
Epilogue
NOVEMBER 30, 1968
Daddy Ballard stood with Reverend Patterson and Hattie as half the town looked on, with Geneva’s family, Pete, Dovey, John, and Lila at the front of the crowd.
“Mrs. Patterson, if you’ll do the honors,” Daddy Ballard said, handing Hattie a pair of scissors.
Hattie cut the big white ribbon stretched across the doorway of the new town library named for her son. The crowd applauded before lining up to file inside and have a look around. The county and the high school had libraries, and there were a couple of small ones in neighboring towns, but Glory had never had one all its own.
Pete and Dovey had come up with the idea on the way home from their honeymoon. Isaac loved books, they reasoned, and some of the other libraries weren’t entirely welcoming if you didn’t happen to be white. So a library that was open to everybody would be the perfect way to remember Pete’s friend.
Missing Isaac Page 26