by Jan Karon
He called Dooley. ‘Do we need to talk about parking?’
‘Th’ north strip. A couple of guys from th’ co-op will handle parking. No problem.’
A good thing. He did not want to be directing traffic in the north strip with his vestments flapping in the breeze.
‘Jack Daniel’s or Wild Turkey to bury a month before the big day? Harley’s running to town.’
Dooley laughed. ‘Whoever digs it up won’t be particular. An’ hey, Dad, by th’ way. We’re going to set a place at the table for Miss Sadie.’
Lunch cleanup: LACE
According to the chalkboard, it was her turn, but Cynthia insisted otherwise. ‘You look pale,’ said Cynthia. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Run up to Heaven and let me do this.’
As much as she needed to go to Heaven and work on his present, she needed something else far more—room to think about the phone call she just received.
She pulled on her jacket and walked across the yard to the bench Willie built, stopping along the way to deadhead the iris. That she had iris to deadhead was a marvel. She liked the crisp, clean snap as the spent blooms spilled their wine on her fingers. Olivia had taught her a lot about gardening, though she hadn’t realized it then.
No matter what, she couldn’t pass by the chickens, who, fond of the pleasures of free range, were latched in their run till after the wedding. There would be no feasting on expensive grass seed or scratching about in the straw. They came running to the wire fence, curious to find whether her hand would vanish into a pocket and come out with cracked corn. Yes! Into the air rose a shower of yellow morsels, catching the light and falling . . .
She sat on the bench and gave herself to a chill May breeze from the mountains that had consoled her since childhood. Even at school in Virginia she had never been out of sight of the Blue Ridge. It was real estate privately owned in her soul.
Over by the tree line the girls browsed fescue and clover. She counted them whenever she looked their way, making sure no one was missing.
‘Take time to look at the view,’ Beth advised when they talked yesterday. Her best friend and roommate from school would be coming from Boston with her mother, Mary Ellen, instead of with her husband, Freddie, who had walked out last Christmas, not even taking his clothes. Beth had been raised on a farm in upstate New York and knew a lot about natural beauty but hardly anything about men. As for Dooley’s friends who were coming, there was only Tommy, who played mandolin and guitar and banjo and used to live up the street from the rectory. Dooley really wanted to keep the wedding small and have his school friends visit when things were more settled. She knew them all, she would like that; some had kids now.
She fidgeted with her phone, took a photo of the cows in the green distance, and sent it to Dooley. She had come out here to try to arrange things in her head before she called him, but she couldn’t think and she couldn’t wait. She needed to hear his voice now.
He was tossing stuff into a giveaway pile; she heard a Dave Rawlings CD playing in the background.
‘It looks possible!’ she said, startled by her tears. Funny how people are surprised when prayers are answered. ‘They called early this morning. A few days before the wedding, they think. But they’re not sure.’
‘This is good.’ He was hoarse with his own feelings or maybe exhaustion or actually both. ‘Don’t worry.’
She felt the commingled rush of joy and fear. She could hardly believe it was happening at last, and yet the timing . . .
This was a hugely delicate situation. How would all the wedding commotion at Meadowgate affect Jack Tyler? It had been close to impossible over the last two years to keep such an enormous secret from their parents, while the Owens and Willie and Lily, even Beth, knew everything. In its own way this had been as intense as their commitment to vet school.
‘We have to stay calm.’ She gulped a breath. ‘We cannot get crazy.’ She was already a little crazy, but was doing all she could to hide it.
‘Let’s put craziness behind us,’ he said. ‘And about the weather—it should be against house rule to stress about it. If it rains, we get wet. So what, we’ll remember it.’
Truman leaped onto the bench and made himself at home in her lap.
‘Great. Okay. Yes.’ She breathed out, let it go; she had to let it all go. ‘It’s beautiful here. We’re getting rain tonight.’
‘Love you,’ he said.
‘Love you back.’
‘Miss you.’
‘Miss you more.’
She would say how much more, but it was impossible to put into words.
‘How are the girls?’
‘I just sent you a picture. If they only knew who’s headed this way!’
They laughed together. She was getting her breath back. ‘Wait till you see what Clarence is doing for the guest gifts. Amazing. It’s a really big order; two other carvers are working with him, they’ll deliver the Friday before.’
She was dying to tell him about his wedding gift; he was her best friend and it was strange not to talk about it. She stroked Truman, gave him a neck rub.
‘We decided about the dancing,’ she said. ‘If we get married on the porch, Harley and Willie will take the chairs away while supper happens in the barn. So, dancing on the porch!’ With ribbons and roses twined on the railings and lights sparkling in the trees and lanterns flickering around the yard like fireflies.
She wanted to feel like a firefly herself on the night of their wedding. If she could just find a dress.
He liked sitting with Cynthia in the glider, which did indeed glide. Smooth as silk for an old hand-me-down, and a perfect way to savor the evening downpour on the tin porch roof. He could hardly wait until tomorrow to see how the grass was coming along.
Nearly two years had passed since his wife had labored over the writing and illustrating of a Violet book—or any book. She seemed content these days to observe all manner of activity without being stirred to put it between covers. Chickens ruffling their feathers and dusting themselves, old dogs sleeping, quail mothers followed by their obedient broods—in times past, any sort of farm life would have had her up and running to the drawing board. Her contentment was a turn of events completely foreign to him and he loved it. Now he was the only child, as it were, enjoying the best of her daily affections. She had absolutely adored creating all those books, she said, yet nothing charmed or drove or inspired her to do it again.
She had been known to channel leftover energy into all manner of unexpected things, once laying waste with a hammer to the plaster of their kitchen walls, then finishing them after the manner of ‘ancient Italian villas.’
‘So what do you want to do?’ he said. Maybe more readings at bookstores—she liked that sort of thing.
‘I want to . . .’ She was pensive, choosing her words. ‘. . . live. Just that. Helping the kids get ready for the wedding, sitting here on the glider, making bow ties for the dogs—I’m finding all that enough.
‘Then there’s sleeping with my husband and listening to rain on a tin roof. Greatly enough!’
‘Anything else mulling around in there? Some deep, ungratified desire?’
‘The RV trip, remember? I’d love to do that. See the Oregon Trail, the national parks, I don’t know. Wear a ball cap and jeans, sit in the passenger seat and knit . . .’
‘You don’t know how to knit.’
She laughed; he took her hand and kissed it.
Their moderately old marriage burned with a steady flame, and that too was greatly enough.
Having sent a link to Olivia and Beth, she took her iPad around to everyone she could locate.
‘What do you think?’ she said, showing them a full-screen image. As for her own thinking, this dress was only sort-of-maybe-kind-of, but she could be wrong. She was getting the despe
rate feeling that a lot of her bride friends had experienced in their search for the perfect dress. Of course they had started earlier and hadn’t refused the help of their mothers, who were deeply invested in getting it right.
Father Tim moved his glasses down his nose and peered at the subject of interest. She figured he had seen a few brides in his time, he had good taste, he would know.
‘More than a hundred, I wager.’
‘Less!’
Cynthia was grating cheddar for her famous pimiento cheese.
‘What do you think?’
‘I’ll be darned. Smocking! We never see smocking anymore.’
‘Vintage,’ she said, defending it somehow.
Lily weighed in. ‘Looks big through th’ waist. If it don’t fit, my sister Violet can fix it. And if she can’t, Arbutus can. Arbutus is married to Junior Bentley.’
‘I know.’
‘And lives in a brick house,’ bragged Lily for the hundredth time, ‘with two screen porches.’
Beth’s review was totally brief.
No!
Olivia’s e-mail was diplomatic. You will look beautiful no matter what you wear.
Nobody liked this dress, herself included.
Bummer.
Willie had bushhogged the north strip today and would mow it with a lawn tractor on the fourteenth. As for himself, he and Harley had finished getting the floor timbers in, shop-vacc’d the loft and old grain room, and weed-whacked around the barn—a job to be done again prior to the fourteenth. Then he and Lace had cleaned bird and guinea poop off a vast target site beneath the rafters.
‘Look,’ she said, beaming, ‘I have calluses.’
‘Do you like having calluses?’
‘I do! I’m going to be a farmwife, you know.’
The Harley/Amber issue seemed to be fading from the collective household mind. Willie reported seeing the Toyota parked at the mailbox yesterday. Harley had gone out and stuck his head in at the passenger side but not for long, end of report.
‘So what’s going on with Harley and the Toyota?’ he asked Lace.
‘He’s not talking.’
‘Has he asked you about Las Vegas?’
‘He said they’d talked about it, but she decided she couldn’t leave her cats.’
‘Is his money in a shoe box or in the bank?’ He was a meddlesome son of a gun, a prime requirement for clergy.
‘In the bank, in a CD, with something in savings.’
‘What’s this about her being a hoofer?’
Lace laughed. ‘I meant to tell you. He said she danced in a show on Broadway years ago.’
Broadway? If that didn’t take the cake . . .
The burial of the bottle had roused a good bit of merriment in what had been a hectic day. He and Cynthia were in bed by eight. Indeed, the entire ménage was quiet, though he heard the house phone ring a few minutes ago.
Graduation tomorrow. He would make breakfast and they’d head out with Lace around noon. Yesterday Lily had lined up the men, including Hal and Blake, and given them all a haircut on the porch. Though he felt positively skinned, he was ready to see Dr. Kavanagh walk.
They turned out the lights, silent for a time.
‘Are you dead yet?’ asked his wife.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
She placed the phone on the charger. Her whole body was thrumming with a kind of low-grade tremor.
She had just sold five paintings to a three-time Academy Award nominee on the other side of the continent.
She would miss her lookout tower.
And sometimes she missed the children she had worked with at the nonprofit. She looked around the attic studio, at the walls hung with more of their art than her own. Luke’s wild, painted horses. Emmy’s huge raccoon faces. Eugene’s skyscrapers and whirling Van Gogh planets. Latisha’s row of strangely beautiful dolls . . .
When she and Dooley moved into the second-floor bedroom after the wedding, the view would be lovely but different. From this big attic window, she could look into the front yard and over to the clinic, and there was the green post in its bed of zinnias, waiting for the sign to be hung.
She went quickly to the other window, which was open to the breeze. The trailer was backing up to the cattle gate right now.
There was Jake from their hole-in-the-wall diner in Farmer. And their postmistress, Judy, who had been kind to them over their years of visiting Meadowgate. And there was Willie and Harley and Hal and Blake and Father Tim and Cynthia and all the farm dogs and a squad of neighbors lined up along the fence. How amazing! Their new bull was a complete celebrity.
She’d been working on Dooley’s wedding present and forgotten the time, and if she didn’t hurry, she would miss the whole show.
She tossed her hair into a ponytail and opened her jewelry box and took out the strand of turquoise beads. She loved these beads. He had given them to her when they finally knew the friendship ring was an engagement ring. She wore them only on special occasions, the most recent being his graduation yesterday.
And there was her cell phone ringing. That would be Dooley saying Where are you?
She slipped the strand of beads around her neck, fastened the clasp, and raced downstairs.
Yes!
She heard hooves thundering against the metal of the trailer bed, then clattering down the ramp.
Surely he would bolt into the pasture from the restraint of the trailer, but he stopped just beyond the ramp, silent as stone, looking ahead.
She drew in her breath, astonished by the authority of his massive shoulders and his immense poise.
He flicked an ear.
‘Holy cow,’ whispered Honey Hershell. ‘That’s some big guy you got there.’
Standing with his rump to the crowd in what Dooley called the ‘chill pen,’ Choo-Choo turned his head and gazed to the right, then turned his head and gazed to the left.
‘Go, Choo-Choo!’ yelled eleven-year-old Danny Hershell. But Choo-Choo stood motionless.
‘Man!’ said Jake. ‘Last time I saw that bull, he was chasin’ Emmet Holder through ’is turnip field. Emmet vaulted th’ fence and hit th’ road runnin’. I braked my truck an’ he jumped in, said, Floor it, Jake, that bull’s out to get me.’
‘Judy’s wearin’ red,’ said Honey. ‘She better step back from th’ fence, don’t you think?’
‘It’s okay,’ said Lace. ‘I looked it up. Bulls can’t distinguish red or green. It’s the matador’s cape that drives them crazy.’
‘Here’s y’r sign,’ said Harley. ‘It come on th’ trailer with Choo-Choo.’
BULL IN FIELD
KEEP OUT
‘I’ll jis’ lean it right here an’ me an’ Willie’ll git it on th’ cattle gate when th’ truck clears out.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Jake told her, ‘it’s th’ gentle bull, not the bad guy, who most often kills or maims ’is keeper.’
Honey was incredulous. ‘Kills? Maims? Are you kidding?’
‘Wikipedia,’ said Jake.
Choo-Choo faced the crowd now, with an unwavering stare.
‘Whoa!’ yelled Danny. ‘He’s lookin’ at us, he’s gon’ charge.’
Choo-Choo tossed his head, ambled away, and began to crop grass.
The co-op manager removed his cap and scratched his bald pate. ‘This ain’t th’ same bull as Choo-Choo.’
‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘I could ride this ol’ bull.’
Several onlookers had moved from the fence, were saying their goodbyes, congratulating Dooley and paying respects to his future bride. They had come to see a show and didn’t get one, and she was relieved. She had dreaded whatever tricks this creature might be up to.
The crowd stirred, had a laugh here and there, slapped one another on the back. There was Harley, toothless as a crone and sha
king hands as if running for county office, and Willie still peering into the chill pen hoping for a matinee performance.
She felt his arm around her shoulders and looked up.
‘Hey,’ she said.
Dooley drew her to his side. ‘There you go. Your pet bull.’
She could feel his heart pounding. ‘When does he get to meet the girls?’
‘First he gets five or six days in th’ pen. He needs to get used to being here. He’ll probably walk th’ perimeter of th’ fence a few times, checking for a way out. But there’s no way out, I guarantee it. Clean water, healthy grass, a little clover. He’ll have a good life at Meadowgate.’
She looked at the set of Dooley’s jaw, his determined gaze. Laughing, exhausted, working over a sick or wounded animal, whatever—he was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with looks, in a way she believed only she had eyes to see.
‘On th’ fourteenth,’ said Willie, ‘you gon’ be lookin’ at a full moon.’
‘Yayy!’ Clapping around the supper table.
‘If it don’t rain and hide it.’
‘Bo-o-o! Hiss-s-s!’
Willie grinned. He liked to stir up this crowd.
But she couldn’t find it.
It was either backless or had an uninspired neckline or the fabric was synthetic or it cost too much or it was just wrong.
Why was she punishing herself with the idea of a hundred-dollar dress? She would not touch the amazing amount of money that would be wired into her account on receipt of the paintings, but she could put a For Sale sign on her ancient BMW and park it in the lot next to the post office or dip into her savings just this once. She would never make this special journey again; this was her wedding. Finding her dress should be a fun, even extravagant experience. But she didn’t want extravagant—she was extravagant on canvas, and that was enough.
Having grown up with nothing, she might have spent all the money Hoppy and Olivia had provided along the way. But she had saved like a miser; the old I-will-never-be-poor-again scenario was real to her. Dooley was generous with his money but careful, and he had a stopping point—he knew how to think about the future. She was thinking about the future too, though most times it appeared in her mind as a complete blank.