by Jan Karon
He didn’t exactly know.
‘We will be a husband and a wife. And you and your dad and I will share our lives right here on the farm with all the animals you’re going to meet. We’ll keep each other safe. We’ll all be family.’
He tried to listen but could not. ‘Are you on TV?’
‘No. Why?’
He shrugged.
‘You can call me Mom. If you’d like that.’
He hung his head and shrugged again.
‘So let’s put your bag on the bed now and your dad can put it on the shelf later. We have something for you.’
She got down on her hands and knees and pulled a box from under the little bed. She would save for later the toys the social worker said he would like—a wooden train and airplane, the cars—because right now, everything was too much.
‘Would you like to open it?’
He sank to his knees, holding Roo, and she helped him get the tight lid off the first box.
Look!’ she said. ‘Jeans. And khakis. Even red plaid pants! Your dad picked those. And shirts. And pajamas. And . . .’ She held up a new jacket. ‘To match your eyes. Would you like to try it on? You can take off your suit jacket.’
‘I hate this ol’ stuff,’ he said, ashamed, tearing off the suit jacket.
‘We can put it in the church sale and you’ll never see it again!’
He dropped the old jacket on the floor and she helped him put on the new jacket. She thought this was like having a layette for a boy no longer a baby.
‘I think it looks great on you,’ she said. ‘What do you think? Does it feel good?’
He nodded yes. He couldn’t imagine having so much stuff with tags on it.
‘Tomorrow morning you can pick an outfit to wear to the family breakfast. And another outfit to wear when your dad and I get married.’ She felt a kind of electrical current wink on inside when she used the M word.
She pulled out another box and sat back on her heels.
‘May I hold Roo while you open it?’
‘No,’ he said, and fumbled the lid off with one hand.
He caught his breath. More than anything, he had always wanted boots.
He looked at her without meaning to and saw the expression on her face, the way she was looking at him, and thought he should say something but he didn’t know what it should be. It was like there was a huge fight going on inside him. He wanted to lie down on the little bed and curl up and cry and cry and cry and at the same time he wanted to run and run and run and holler and laugh really hard. And hug the mom.
‘These boots is tight.’
‘They’ll break in,’ said the dad. ‘It takes a little time. They’re actually a half size bigger. You’ll grow into ’em before you know it.’
They had walked out to see the chickens and take a look at the cattle.
‘See out there at the tree line? Five heifers. Red Angus.’
He had watched Sesame Street when his granny was asleep and could count pretty good. ‘One, two, three, five, six. I mean four, five.’
‘Good job! Whoa, look comin’ here, Jack Tyler.’
He backed away from the fence.
‘It’s okay. Stand close to me.’ The dad touched him on the shoulder and he stood close to the fence again and close to the dad’s leg, but his heart was beating fast.
‘This is Choo-Choo. Choo-Choo, this is Jack Tyler.’
It was big as a trailer, big as a building, big as a mountain, and was looking straight at him, flicking its tail.
‘You must never go inside the fence, okay? Never. This is a big bull and most any bull can be very dangerous. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘You know what dangerous means?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Never stick your hand through the fence to pet him. Also very dangerous. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ He would never stick his hand through the fence to pet this scary huge monster.
‘Look at the musculature,’ said the dad. ‘The way he’s designed. The poise in this enormous creature is phenomenal.’
There was a happy look on the dad’s face as the bull lowered its huge head.
‘Man!’ said the dad.
He watched the dad for a time, then stood up as tall as he could in his new jeans and new blue shirt and new boots, and looked at the bull with long eyelashes eating grass.
‘Man!’ said Jack Tyler.
He was heading up to pack for the trip back to Mitford tomorrow night.
At the foot of the stairs, Sammy gave a shout from the library, where he and Jack Tyler were shooting pool.
‘Call us butter,’ said Sammy, ‘’cause we’re on a roll!’
D and I are in love~ with Jack Tyler.
After our walk-through, JT ate his supper as if starved, had a bath and put on his new pajamas. He is truly precious with a tender spirit. D and I tucked him into bed and prayed for him and I thought I would read to him but that would be a story about other people and places. We decided he might like to know about the people and places that belong to him now so he can begin a story all his own.
So D and I told him about his grandpas and grannies and the attic room where he can play on rainy days and how he has lots of uncles and aunts and barn cats and guineas and one day maybe llamas and he was asleep while we were still talking~ foundered by dread and wonder and strangers and pizza.
I cannot believe how all this makes me feel, the bigness of it in my heart. Dooley went to sleep too while I was telling the story but woke up when Sammy and Harley came looking for him to shoot a game of eight ball. I guess that was the bachelor party! I am so excited, Lord, and so exhausted and thankful and goofy. Beth is on her way, should be here any minute. Tomorrow everything will change and stay the same, all at once.
‘. . . believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.’
Rmr
‘It’s scary to think of being a wife and a mother all at once,’ said Lace. She had finished blow-drying her hair and was in her pj bottoms and the faded T-shirt that said Love Is an Act of Endless Forgiveness.
‘I’ve read all the training stuff they gave us, but it can’t tell you everything. I hope I never let Jack Tyler down in some terrible way. I’ll be flying by the seat of my pants; I hope people won’t be disappointed in how I do it.’
‘Just be who you are,’ said Beth, ‘because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.’
‘Who said that?’
Beth laughed her ironic laugh. ‘Adapted from Dr. Seuss. So what’s in the bridal bouquet?’
‘Seven Sisters roses, stephanotis, and kale.’
‘Kale?’
‘Because it’s sort of crisp and ready for anything.’
‘I never knew that about kale. You’re biting your nails.’
She had tried so hard to stop doing that. Gloves maybe would work.
‘We all have a big breakfast together in the kitchen around ten—Father Tim’s brother Henry is coming up from Charlotte in the morning with Harley. There’ll be sixteen or seventeen of us. And the musicians will be here at two and you can rehearse. Then we’ll have a walk-through of the ceremony with everyone. I’m thinking that before I get dressed, I’ll take Dooley over to the clinic to see his wedding present. Just the two of us, we’ve hardly had five minutes together in days.’
‘He’ll be blown away. Who will ever again be given such a fabulous, fabulous present?’
She hadn’t mentioned the possibility of big winds. She went to the window and opened it. Clouds racing. Moon full.
Breezy.
‘I want to remember everything,’ she said, closing the window. ‘Pray that I can remember every
thing.’
‘Breathe,’ said Beth. ‘It helps.’
They turned down the covers—eleven-thirty—turned off the lamps, and got into bed.
‘How did you feel?’ said Lace. ‘I remember you seemed so poised, so collected, even though Freddie was late.’
‘I was not poised and not collected. You know how I have this armor plate that I use way too much. I’ll love singing your love song tomorrow because I never felt that way about anybody ever. Freddie was crazy, but I was way crazier to marry him. There were red flags all over the place. God tried to tell me, my parents tried to tell me, you tried to tell me. But no, Freddie and I went out there and wreaked havoc.
‘I look at your beautiful, simple, recycled dress and think how selfish I was to ask for a dress that cost more than my dad’s first car. My sweet dad, I spent the rest of his life making that dress up to him, though he found it hilarious that I sold it on eBay. He was such a sweet guy. Mom and I miss him every day. Your dad is a sweetie, too, and your mom, and Dooley’s parents. We are so blessed, Lace Face.’
‘Thanks for being my best friend ever,’ said Lace. ‘I’ll sing at your wedding.’
‘You can’t sing!’ said Beth.
‘True,’ she said. ‘But for you, I would try.’
Everybody was asleep.
‘Everybody except me, James Herriot, creeping sore and exhausted towards another spell of hard labor.
‘Why . . . had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been crazy to pick a job where you worked seven days a week and through the night as well. Sometimes I felt as though the practice was a malignant, living entity; testing me, trying me out, putting the pressure on more and more . . .’
Everybody was asleep here, too, all but the country vet. At two in the morning, he’d waked up in the bed where he always slept at Meadowgate and heard the wind. He lay facing the wall, reading the handwritten James Herriot quote illumined by the full moon.
Hal had given the quote to him years ago, as a reminder to carefully evaluate any notion of mixed practice. He had pinned it to the wall, done the evaluation, and chosen to work with small animals. But . . .
One of the basic principles in raising cattle was to know they’re creatures of habit and obsessive about food. They would brook no slack for the frivolities of a wedding—he’d have to get out there early with the grain. The heifers were on a growth plan of several pounds a day and the pastures weren’t yet improved enough to get the job done without grain. Maybe he’d check them one more time before the ceremony . . .
He closed his eyes and turned over.
They had known weather was moving in but, obeying some unspoken house rule, had resisted talking about it. All except Willie, who had pulled him aside, urgent. Gusts up to sixty miles per hour. Okay, so they got everything even more safely under cover and checked with the tent guys—they would be willing to come out and take it down but couldn’t come back on Sunday and put it up again. In any case, rest assured that they had laid on extra guy wires and anchors, and given the probability of a north wind, the tent would be somewhat protected by the stand of trees across the road. Which was, in his opinion, stretching it.
He and Willie and Harley and Lace had turned the stacked chairs on their sides beneath the shed, set the rental crates in the center of the barn aisle, and stuck the buckets of roses in the middle stall. As for the cattle, they would hunker down at the tree line—not the best place in high winds, but that’s what cattle do.
He opened his eyes.
His heart kicked, then did a racing beat. How could he have forgotten? He sat up, startled.
Jack Tyler! Right here beside him on the cot.
In the light of the moon, he looked to see whether the boy was breathing. Yes. Steady. Jack Tyler was out cold from the hard business of being passed from one hand to another.
He was somehow stunned by the flesh-and-blood reality of the small figure in this small room. Knowing for two years that this could happen was no help in making it visceral knowledge.
He was a dad. This had not sunk in when they signed the papers or when Jack Tyler climbed down from the truck, or even when he and Lace put him to bed with a story and a prayer. Now, in the early hours of their wedding day, it was striking home.
There were so many game changers hitting at the same time. No trickle, no steady stream, just a gusher. He could be overwhelmed and zone through his wedding and the actuality of the boy who would one day be their legal son, or he could breathe deep and take it all in.
He probably shouldn’t have opted for the pup. But it was act fast or lose her, and she was exactly what Lace wanted, what they both wanted, what Jack Tyler would surely be thrilled to have as a buddy. What was done was done; the eight-month-old Golden was in her crate at the clinic and no looking back.
He got out of bed and cranked open the window to the oncoming scent of rain. The wind was definitely up. Clouds raced across the moon, light was quickly gone.
He closed the window and stood by the small bed for what seemed a long time.
It’s said that a low-pressure system is a good influence on sleep. Leaves curl up, dogs lie splayed on porches, people do less tossing and turning and tend to snooze, if permitted such feckless behavior, up to two hours longer than average.
From a profound slumber, he was suddenly awake.
He turned on his side, facing his sleeping wife. The mattress seemed to shudder again—something like the coin-operated ‘massage mattress’ offered long ago in a Jackson hotel.
Wind.
A turn-of-the-last-century wood-shingled farmhouse could seem pretty cozy in rain or snow, but fragile as paper in a harrying wind that banged the occasional shutter. He heard the keening sound so beloved of the horror movie, then a muffled boom he identified as if by clairvoyance—he sat up. A tree had gone down.
He eased out of bed and dressed by the light of his cell phone and pulled on his work boots.
In a rain so warm it felt tropical, they took what inventory they could with flashlights and lanterns.
One tree down.
One barn shed roof partially demolished by the fallen tree.
Forty-two dinner plates and as many glasses smashed in their crates.
A few heavy limbs from the pin oaks gouged into the rear lawn.
Power off.
On the other hand:
Dogs safe, cats safe, chickens and guineas safe.
Dooley had already been out to the field. Cattle safe.
House safe, clinic safe, vehicles unharmed, not to mention the benediction of rain for the fields, and the creek running bold. As for the tent, it had not been blown to Kentucky. It stood trim, with but a wet leaf or two plastered to the canvas.
A few epithets, considerable headshaking. ‘That bourbon ain’t completely workin’,’ said Harley.
He and Dooley and Sammy and Willie and Harley would dry off, turn back into their beds, and meet for the cleanup at seven.
Power back on. Rain gone. Five-fifteen a.m., and he was sleepwalking around the kitchen.
‘Plenty of pepper,’ Avis had said of the tenderloin prep. ‘Rub it in. Cracked, not ground. And rosemary. No way can you leave out th’ rosemary.’ On and on, Avis had gone, like a parakeet in full throttle—the wine pairing, the pink center, the blast-furnace oven to begin . . .
If they’d had just one more day to get ready . . .
‘Buck up,’ he sermonized himself. ‘Look how many days we’ve just had. Forty-two, give or take! Always after something more, us humans. Always after something more.’
She went a few minutes before seven to the room off the porch. Dooley was up and dressed and drinking coffee in the kitchen. Jack Tyler was sleeping, he said.
But Jack Tyler was awake and agitated.
‘Roo is gone!’ he wailed.
‘Look under your blanket
,’ she said, stooping over the bed.
‘No, Roo is gone!’
The sobbing, the utter despair.
‘But look! Here’s Roo on the floor. Right here. He must have fallen out of bed last night.’
She handed him the unstuffed toy and sat beside him and held him and wiped his eyes with the tail of her shirt. ‘Time to wash your face and get dressed.’
He didn’t wash his face at his granny’s. ‘Why?’ he wailed.
‘Because this is the day!’
‘What day?’
‘When you walk down the aisle behind Aunt Beth, carrying the pillow with the rings. Like we did yesterday evening.’ They had put together a mini walk-through so he wouldn’t be plunged without knowing into the big walk-through followed closely by the real thing. They had tried to keep it light and fun, but it been too much for him.
‘I don’t want to,’ said Jack Tyler. He had dropped the ring pillow in the grass and gone stiff all over and couldn’t move. Everything around him felt lost and big. He hadn’t known whether to pick up the pillow and keep going or run and hide forever. The mom had hugged him and said it was okay and he was flooded with shame for not doing it right.
She felt his wild alarm. The terrible timing of it . . . but no, it wasn’t terrible timing, it was God’s timing and it was perfect, God knew everything there was to know about four-year-old boys. She needed to remember this every step of the way, one step at a time.
‘You don’t have to do it. It’s okay.’ She tousled his hair, dark as mahogany with a glimmer of red in the morning light.
How could he say this? ‘I want to walk with you.’
‘I’ll be walking with Granpa Hoppy.’ We cannot have everything in this life, she thought, not even when we are four. ‘So I know it’s hard to carry a pillow with rings on it and carry Roo, also. Could Granny O hold Roo?’
‘No,’ he said.
She breathed out, breathed in. A bird sang outside the open window.
‘I have a great idea,’ he said, solemn as rain.
An idea! Yes!
‘You can carry Roo. And I can walk with you an’ carry th’ pillow.’