by Ann B. Ross
Lord, I hoped he had the wedding ring. What with all I’d had on my mind, that was the one thing I’d forgotten to check on. Well, if he didn’t, it was too late to worry about it. I slipped off my engagement ring and loosened my wedding band, readying it to hand to Sam if he needed it.
There was a stir in the crowd as Miss Morgan began a more traditional selection, and people turned in their chairs when Hazel Marie stepped off the stairs and into our view. Moving with grace, a bridesmaid’s pride glowing on her face, she carried her bouquet at her waist as she glided along the winding aisle between our guests. She turned her head toward Mr. Pickens, who stood at the back of the room, and I thought her heart would jump out through her eyes. She looked lovely—in spite of that skimpy dress that would probably have Emma Sue fanning the air again.
I heard Little Lloyd suck in a breath as he whispered, “Mama.” I patted his knee, as she walked beside us to her place opposite Sam. She smiled at Little Lloyd, then at me, and I hoped it was an assurance that Binkie was able to make it to the altar alone.
Oh, Lord, I thought, we should’ve had somebody give Binkie away, in spite of the harsh words she’d had to say about the practice. At least, she would’ve had somebody to lean on in her weakened condition. Too late, though, for Miss Morgan struck up the wedding march with all the power at her command, which was considerable, for I saw the vases on my mantel shake with the vibration. If that didn’t get Binkie moving, I didn’t know what would.
The guests turned with one accord as Binkie appeared, sighing at the sight of her. She was beautiful, glowing as if she’d never had a second thought in her life. Hazel Marie had done wonders with Binkie’s hair, to say nothing of the makeup that hid all the signs of her earlier indisposition.
Binkie tottered briefly as she started through the guests, then she lifted her head, locking her eyes on Coleman. Joy lit up her face, and her steps steadied as she seemed drawn to him alone. I glanced at Coleman and was struck by the wide smile on his face, so remarkably different from the usual grim and serious demeanor of grooms I’d witnessed heretofore. I was looking at a happy man, and it did my heart good, considering all I’d gone through to get him to that point.
As Binkie approached the arch, the guests turning with her as she passed, Coleman held out his hand and gathered her to him. At last, I thought to myself, Coleman has her. He’d take care of her, and I could breathe easy for the first time since it had all started a week before.
It was all so affecting that I had to dab at my eyes again, and Lillian, stirred by the same tender emotion, blew her nose.
Binkie was so intent on Coleman, and probably on another internal threat, that she forgot to hand her bouquet to Hazel Marie. Hazel Marie had to reach over and take it from her, but that was only a minor hitch in the proceedings.
Still, though, there was a nagging worry in my mind that something else would go wrong. And to that end, I could’ve smacked Lieutenant Peavey to kingdom come when he rose to regale us again with song. If I had thought of it, I’d’ve told him to limit himself to pre-wedding singing so the ceremony could continue apace. Every minute counts when you’re trying to get something to move along. Instead, I had to grit my teeth and listen to him warble something about everything starting from this moment on.
Little Lloyd leaned close and whispered, “That’s Shania Twain.”
Well, hardly, I thought, but I nodded in response. Frankly, I didn’t care who it was as long as Lieutenant Peavey finished in a timely manner so the Reverend Mr. Abernathy could get on with it.
At last, the lieutenant and the piano came to a stop, and the Reverend Mr. Abernathy beamed up at the expectant—and expecting—couple. “Dearly beloved,” he said, his voice clear and confident, not at all intimidated by the preponderance of Presbyterians in the audience. “We are gathered together to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. Let us rejoice in this moment that the Lord our God has seen fit to bring about.”
Thinking that the Lord hadn’t been the only one working to bring the moment about, I bowed my head. The reverend continued in prayer, blessing the long-awaited union of Binkie and Coleman. I don’t know whether it was the power of his prayer or the culmination of all I’d been through to get to this moment, but my heart lifted at the thought of a mission finally accomplished, and relief flooded my soul.
“Deputy Coleman,” the reverend intoned, “do you promise before God and these witnesses to take this woman to be your wedded wife, to love and to cherish, to have and to hold in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, and in sickness and in health, till death do you part? Say, I do.”
Coleman looked down at Binkie, tightened his arm around her, and said firmly, and with all the love in the world, “I do.”
“Miss Binkie,” the reverend said, as I cringed at having forgotten to tell him that her name was Elizabeth. No matter, I hoped, since the powers that be knew who she was. “Do you promise before God and these witnesses to take this man to be your wedded husband, to love and to cherish, to have and to hold in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, and in sickness and in health till death do you part? Say, I do.”
Binkie looked up at Coleman, and my heart skipped a beat at the glow of happiness on her face. Then, her smile faded as she began swallowing hard. I leaned forward, yearning to answer for her, watching as she swallowed again. Oh, Lord, I thought, she’s going to throw up all over Coleman and the Reverend Mr. Abernathy.
Instead, a crescendo of moans undulated from the crowd outside, surrounding us with waves of sound, and above it all a single voice bellowed a spate of indecipherable words. A shiver ran down my spine at the strangeness of it. Every guest in the room turned toward the door, shifting in their chairs, and Mr. Pickens and some of the deputies moved quickly to see what was going on. Binkie and Coleman turned, too, distracted from their primary purpose. Even the Reverend Mr. Abernathy looked somewhat sidetracked, as the din increased in volume and intensity.
I jumped up from my chair and grabbed Binkie, turning her toward the reverend. “Say I do, Binkie,” I urged her. “Forget what’s going on out there and say it.” I gave her a shake, hoping I wouldn’t dislodge anything.
She nodded, looked from the minister to Coleman, then said, loud enough to be heard over the rustling and whispering of our guests as well as the rising rumble of the crowd outside, “You bet I do.” Then she grinned, as I sagged in relief, still holding on to her arm and Coleman’s.
“Pronounce them, Reverend,” I urged. “For the Lord’s sake, pronounce them before something else happens.”
The Reverend Mr. Abernathy smiled a slow smile, raised his hand in benediction, and said, “Before God and this congregation, I now pronounce you man and wife. Be fruitful and multiply, and may the Lord bestow His grace upon you.”
No need to tell them that, Reverend, I thought, as I collapsed in my chair, released from my burden at last.
Chapter 37
As if the pronouncement were the signal, a number of guests rose from their seats, their faces strained with concern, as they prepared to hurry outside to see what the disturbance was.
“The ring, Sam!” I said with some urgency.
But Sam was already handing it to the Reverend Mr. Abernathy, who, seeing the imminent loss of witnesses, said, “With this ring, I do thee wed.” Which I thought the groom was supposed to say, but Coleman repeated it and put it on Binkie’s finger where I hoped it would stay forever and ever, amen.
Then the reverend raised his voice over the stirring and scraping of chairs as the guests began to push into the aisle. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Coleman Bates. God bless you, each and every one.”
I leaned across Little Lloyd and Lillian, and waved to get Miss Morgan’s attention, which was on whatever was happening outside. “Play!” I said. “Get some order back in here!”
And did she ever. She swung back to the piano, and I’d never heard such an exhilarating recessional as she produced. Hazel Mari
e thrust Binkie’s bouquet into her hand, just as the bride and groom all but ran down the aisle, happier than any newlyweds I had ever seen.
As they went through the door and out onto the porch, the proceedings lost the last vestiges of the high and serious purpose I had intended. The guests began to push and shove, anxious to follow the couple and see what was causing the commotion outside. Chairs fell over in the crush, voices were raised in the tumult and I heard Mildred Allen screech “That’s my foot you’re stepping on!”
I bowed my head, leaning it on my hand, so overcome with relief at getting that unborn child a legitimate father that I was hardly disturbed by the general uprising inside and out.
Hazel Marie took Sam’s arm to follow the wedded couple, as they were supposed to do, even though the aisle was now mobbed with wedding guests.
Sam leaned over and said, “You and Little Lloyd get behind us, Julia. Lillian, take the Reverend Mr. Abernathy’s arm and don’t let him get run over. Everybody stay close, now.”
As Lillian, Little Lloyd and I rose from our seats to follow Sam and Hazel Marie, Lieutenant Peavey vacated his spot by the piano and came over to us. “I’ll go in front,” he said. And even with those ruffles on his shirt, his authority asserted itself to a marked degree.
“That’ll certainly help,” I said as his massive body slid in between us and the mob of people still trying to get out the door. “And I want you to know I enjoyed your singing ever so much. You have a remarkable voice.”
I don’t think he heard me, for he didn’t acknowledge my compliment. Of course, there’d never been much he’d ever acknowledged from me, given the fact that he rarely gave me the time of day.
Slowly but firmly, Lieutenant Peavey exerted some crowd control, clearing the door and directing the guests onto the porch and out into the yard where there was room to spread out. As I emerged from the press and onto the porch, I saw long shadows stretching across the grass, thrown by the afternoon sun. Even though the yard had plenty of shade, it was still, in Mr. Pickens’s words as he mopped his face and took Hazel Marie’s hand, “hot as hell.”
Binkie and Coleman were standing, hand in hand, at the edge of the yard, gazing intently at the spectacle across the street. The roiling, moaning crowd of miracle-watchers now included more local residents brought out by the continuing live coverage of another television crew. A reporter and a cameraman were staked out on the opposite side of the crowd, as far away from the hose hooked up to my house as they could get. Tiffany, I noticed, was not among them. The wedding guests, drawn by the television camera and the hoarse cadences of a preacher in full cry, merged into the crowd, forming a melting pot on Polk Street.
We finally stepped out onto the lawn, and I came to a dead stop, my hand clutched onto Little Lloyd’s shoulder. “Thay Lord!” I gasped, overcome with the unnerving sight that greeted me.
An extension ladder was propped against the wall of the Family Life Center and, holding on for dear life with one hand, was Pastor Lance Petree at the very top of it, some two and a half stories above the concrete sidewalk. With his free hand, he wielded a long-handled brush as he scrubbed at the white lines of the alleged image. A hose, running full-stream as water gushed down the ladder and onto the street below, was draped over a rung of the ladder. Pastor Petree had obviously made free use of the hose, for not only was the wall of bricks dark with water, he’d soaked himself from head to toe. His hair, usually blow-dried to a fare-thee-well, clung to his head in wet strands, and his face was red with exertion and righteous indignation.
At first I couldn’t understand a word coming out of his mouth, so stunned was I and so unsettling was the moaning of the crowd as they watched Pastor Petree scrub and scrape at the woman on the wall.
As I watched, Pastor Petree’s words began to make sense. Well, I’m not willing to go that far, but at least I began to make out their meaning. “A desecration! That’s what it is! It’s not a miracle! Listen, people! This is not of the Lord; it’s Satan’s work, put here to mislead you and to profane the house of the Lord. It’s a sacrilege, I tell you!”
Lord, the man was beside himself, especially since the wetting of the wall and all his scrubbing hadn’t made a dent in the white lines of the image. If anything, his efforts had brought the lines into even greater relief. I could almost make out the woman myself, but I didn’t believe in such things.
“Sam,” I said. “Get that fool down before he breaks his neck.”
“He’s got a head of steam, Julia,” Sam said, standing there shaking his own head. “I think we’re going to have to let him run his course. Actually, he’s probably safer up there than if he came down.”
By this time, Lieutenant Peavey and a group of deputies had moved out among the murmuring people, reassuring them and keeping them contained across the street from the ladder that swayed with every push and pull of Pastor Petree’s brush.
Emma Sue Ledbetter dashed across the street and leaned against the foot of the ladder to steady it. “Bless you, Lance Petree,” she yelled. “The Lord bless you for your efforts! I’d be up there helping you if I didn’t have on a skirt.”
My eyes rolled up in my head at the thought of her climbing a ladder. It hadn’t been often in the course of our relationship that I had longed for the presence of Pastor Ledbetter, but I did then. At least if he’d been with us, he’d have done things decently and in order, as the Book of Church Order recommends we conduct ourselves.
“Come on, Little Lloyd, Lillian,” I said, moving across the yard. “Let’s get the guests back inside for the reception. We need Binkie and Coleman for the receiving line. Where are they? This is supposed to be a wedding, not a three-ring circus.”
But in spite of our urging, nobody would budge, not even Binkie, who said she wasn’t about to go inside. The show was too good to miss, even for food.
“What’re we going to do?” I wailed to Lillian. “All that food’s going to waste!”
“Least you got ’em married,” she said. “Thank the Lord for that blessin’.”
“Bring the food out here, Miss Julia,” Little Lloyd said, with the great good sense he often surprised me with. “You’ve got all those card tables in the garage, and we can have them set up out here in no time.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I decided, determined to make the best of the situation. “Get Mr. Pickens and Miss Wiggins’s boyfriend to help you. And whoever else you can round up. Sam, show them where to put the tables, over there near the crape myrtles where there’s some shade, I think.”
As Little Lloyd ran to get Mr. Pickens, who was busy telling Hazel Marie she looked pretty enough to kiss and he had a good mind to do it, I hurried into the house to instruct James and Emmett. Momentarily struck with the waste of my beautiful table in the dining room, I nonetheless told them to load the silver serving pieces and commence taking them outside. They were eager enough to join the fray, since all the kitchen help had been watching events from the back. I ran down the hall to the linen closet and grabbed several white sheets to serve as cloths for the card tables I intended to string together.
I thought to myself that with an AME Zion wedding conductor and a Presbyterian pastor-turned-street-preacher the last thing I needed was a Baptist dinner on the grounds. But it couldn’t be helped. I took out Harriet’s magnificent centerpiece to grace the tables and, before long, guests began to fill their plates and eat with a ringside view of the show Pastor Petree continued to put on.
Soon the tension began to ease off, so I hurried over to Lieutenant Peavey and urged him to let his deputies, who were off duty after all, come and fix their plates.
He shook his head. “We’re in the midst of crowd control, Mrs. Springer,” he said, scanning the crowd over my head.
Following his eyes, I saw Raymond standing by the hedge that lined the sidewalk. “I believe I can help with that,” I said and walked over to invite him and his friends to the table.
They were reluctant at first to abandon the
miracle on the wall to Pastor Petree’s ministrations, but as it was fairly obvious that the pastor was making little headway, they could safely leave him to it. Still, they seemed hesitant to partake of a wedding feast they’d not received a formal invitation to.
“Tell them, Raymond,” I said. “Tell them they’re more than welcome. You go first while I invite some of these out-of-staters.”
He gave me that shy smile of his and nodded, especially when Little Lloyd came over to us and added his two cents in Spanish. Soon some of the crowd formed an orderly line, still keeping their eyes on Pastor Petree, while Lillian started piling their plates full. Binkie and Coleman, laughing and chattering in broken Spanish with Raymond, stood at the head of the table seemingly having the time of their lives.
Mr. Pickens stood to the side, his arm around Hazel Marie, laughing in his usual disrespectful manner. Knowing him, he’d never let me live this down, but I didn’t care. In fact, as I watched, wedding guests began to mingle at the tables with the newly invited, filling their plates like they hadn’t eaten in a week. I saw Sam pick up a little boy dressed in his Sunday best, and take him and his plate to the porch steps where he could eat in comfort. I looked over the blended crowd that filled my yard, and felt my heart fill with goodwill. Binkie had wanted a wedding that was informal and fun, and that’s exactly what she was getting. Although Pastor Petree’s continued exhortations from the top of the ladder weren’t adding to my sense of fun.
I’d about had enough, so I walked across the street to crane my head up to look at Pastor Petree, who’d lost most of his congregation to the wedding feast. Still, he was preaching his head off and scrubbing the stubborn stains as if his life depended on it.
“Pastor,” I called. “Wrap that up and get down from there. I’ve had enough of street preaching for one day.” And standing clear of the free-flowing hose, I reached over and shook the ladder so that it wobbled against the wall.
But he was caught up in some spirit-filled exuberance, scouring the wall and expounding at the top of his lungs on the evils of superstition, and paid me no mind.