Authors: Philip Gulley
E
llis Hodge sat at his kitchen table, looking over the fields toward their pond, eating his pancakes with unusual gusto.
“You gonna help me clean off around the pond, kiddo?” he asked Amanda, reaching over to tousle her hair with a callused hand.
“Can I drive the bush hog?” Amanda asked.
He leaned back in his chair and studied her. “I don’t know about that. You’re awful young. How old are you now?” He was trying his best to look serious.
“I’m sixteen, you know that. And I have my driver’s license.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. Don’t see how I could have forgotten that. We’ve nearly died at your hands a dozen times already.”
Amanda Hodge, for all her intelligence and poise, was a menace behind the wheel. In a scant six months, she’d killed a groundhog, knocked over their basketball goal, and taken out the lamppost in front of Grant’s Hardware.
“A little more practice won’t hurt, I suppose,” Ellis said. “Nice, level ground. No ditches or stumps. Insurance is paid up. Sure, you can drive the bush hog.” He grinned.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Miriam told Amanda. “You’ll be a fine driver in no time at all.”
“I just hope we don’t run out of cars first,” Ellis said with a grin.
“You stop pestering her,” Miriam warned, snapping him with a dish towel.
Pestering the women in his life was something Ellis Hodge enjoyed to no end, and over the years Miriam and Amanda had learned to give as good as they got.
Amanda had been born to Ellis’s no-good brother, Ralph, and his wife. Wretched alcoholics, they’d taken Ellis and Miriam’s life savings on the condition they leave Amanda with them, move far away, and never return. That was five years ago, and Amanda had blossomed in their absence. Letters from colleges arrived on an almost weekly basis, urging her to apply. And to Ellis’s dismay, teenage boys were starting to swarm around their doorstep like bees to honey.
It was a Saturday morning, late in May. Deena Morrison’s wedding was two weeks away. Everyone had assumed the wedding would be held at the Harmony Friends meetinghouse. Though she hadn’t asked to have it there, the trustees had carpeted and painted the building the winter before in anticipation of the big event. When she’d announced she was having an outdoor wedding at the Hodges’ farm, in the pasture beside the pond, people were put out for a while, but got over it when Deena hired the Friendly Women’s Circle to cater the reception.
The task had fallen to Ellis and Miriam to spruce up the pond. Ellis had retired to the barn the month before to build an arbor, while Amanda and Miriam had busied themselves planting ornamental grasses and a variety of flowers in clusters around the pond’s perimeter. Ellis had tilled the ground around the pond, laid on grass seed, and had a thick carpet of bluegrass to show for his efforts.
“Tell you what, honey,” Ellis said, finishing his last bite of pancakes. “Why don’t you bush-hog the pasture so folks’ll have a place to park, and I’ll use the riding mower and mow off around the pond.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone will be mowing today,” Miriam said, peering out the window. “It’s starting to rain.”
The rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance.
“There goes the day,” Ellis grumbled.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Miriam said. “We’ve been talking forever about driving up to the city to see the new state museum. Besides, it’s time we exposed Amanda to a little culture. Why don’t we go today?”
“Can I drive?” Amanda asked.
Ellis was trapped, with no hope of escape. “Uh, well…”
“Sure you can. It’ll be good practice,” Miriam said.
Miriam and Amanda cleaned up the breakfast dishes while Ellis got dressed, checked the oil, and swept the straw out of the truck. He sat in the truck waiting for them to come out, putting the time to good use by praying they would reach the city alive.
Driving the back roads, it’s three hours to the city. They passed through one small town after another, making a game of it, seeing who could spy the water tower first as they approached each town.
“They say those old water towers were welded with lead and now these kids are getting brain-damaged and that’s what’s behind all this hyperactivity,” Ellis said. Ellis was a storehouse of peculiar information, most of it inaccurate. He was fond of saying, “They say…,” then disclosing some startling revelation, though he could never remember who the “they” was.
“That’s ridiculous,” Miriam said. “If that were true, they’d be tearing them down.”
“I’m just telling you what they say.”
“Who’s this
they
you’re talking about?”
“Some professor from this college out in California,” Ellis said. He often attributed his sources to a professor two thousand miles away.
Amanda and Miriam began to chuckle.
“You laugh all you want, but don’t blame me if you end up addlepated,” Ellis cautioned. “I warned you.”
“But we’re on a well,” Amanda said. “We don’t get our water from the tower.”
“There was a time when children respected their elders and didn’t talk back,” Ellis said. “Now pay attention to your driving. You almost hit a dog back there.”
“What are you talking about?” Miriam asked. “She missed it by fifty feet. Besides, it was tied to a tree.”
They bickered back and forth good-naturedly the entire way to the city. They don’t have a radio in the truck. Ellis had read somewhere that sound waves from car speakers caused men to be sterile, so he’d taken it out and replaced it with commentary.
He carries a bird book in his glove compartment, which he uses to identify the various fowl who’ve encountered vehicles head-on and lost. On the way to the city, they pulled over for two starlings and a yellow-bellied sapsucker on its way to Canada for summer vacation.
“I wonder if birds commit suicide,” Ellis mused. “Maybe just get fed up with it all and decide to eat a bumper.”
This was the kind of topic that could occupy Ellis’s attention for hours on end.
“What’s interesting,” he said, “is that I’ve never found a dead bluebird. Not once. I guess that song is right.”
“What song is that?” Amanda asked.
“The bluebird of happiness song. You know that one, don’t you?” He sang a few bars. “Be like I, hold your head up high, till you find a bluebird of happiness.” He hummed the rest of the song, then said, “They got these medicines now for people who are depressed. Maybe if they mixed some of that up with the birdseed, we wouldn’t have so many birds killin’ themselves.”
“Maybe it wasn’t suicide,” Amanda suggested. “Maybe they were just slow.”
“Or stupid,” Miriam added.
“And squirrels,” Ellis continued. “You can’t hardly drive a mile without hitting a squirrel. It’s like they want to die. They’re just standing there in the road and along you come and they run right underneath your wheels. What have squirrels got to be depressed about?”
Miriam sighed. “They’re probably wife squirrels whose husbands drove them nuts.”
Ellis frowned.
They stopped at a diner south of the city for an early lunch. It was still raining. Amanda parked the truck, and they hopscotched their way to the restaurant door around the pools of water that had collected in the parking lot. There was an open booth near the back. It was warm and steamy inside; the windows were fogged over. A jukebox in the corner crooned a Don Williams song.
“Well, I have to say you were right, Miriam. We needed a little culture.” Ellis glanced around the diner. “This is nice. Real dishes and everything.”
They ordered three cheeseburgers. “Drag ’em through the garden,” Ellis told the waitress, who smiled as if Ellis were witty and clever, though she’d heard that expression fifty times a day for the past ten years.
Ellis noticed a man over at the jukebox, leaning against the glass and peering at the selections. Though his back was to him, the tilt of his head seemed most familiar. And when the man turned to a woman and asked, “How about Willie Nelson?” Ellis was sure. It had been five years, but when you grow up sharing a bedroom with your little brother for eighteen years, staying up late, talking back and forth in a moon-shadowed room, you’d know him anywhere.
Ralph Hodge turned from the jukebox and, seeing Ellis, stopped and stared. The brothers studied one another, not saying a word. Then Ralph smiled slightly, nodded at Ellis, and sat down next to his wife.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Miriam asked.
Ellis tore his eyes away from his brother. “Nothing, nothing at all. Just waiting for our food, that’s all.”
He leaned back in the booth and draped his arm around Amanda, protectively, instinctively.
Their cheeseburgers came; they ate quickly, Ellis urging them along. “Got to see that museum before it closes. Let’s not dawdle.”
Ralph was the first to leave. Ellis watched as he paid his bill at the counter, then opened the door for his wife, and walked out into the rain, hunched over, toward their car, a white, rust-speckled sedan. They sat in the car. Then Ralph’s wife turned in her seat and peered into the diner. Her car door opened, and she stepped out and began walking toward the diner.
Ellis watched, transfixed. She was crying, her tears mingling with the rain.
Ralph jumped from the car, caught up with her halfway across the parking lot, and guided her back to their car.
If Ellis hadn’t been paying attention, he never would have heard them.
His brother saying, “It wouldn’t be right.”
His wife crying, “But that’s our baby in there.”
Miriam glanced at Ellis, then followed his gaze out the window as Ralph and his wife climbed back in the car. “Why are you staring at those people?” she asked.
“Oh, no certain reason. Just thought I knew them, that’s all. Looked like some fella I used to know over at the feed store in Cartersburg. But it wasn’t.” He forced himself to take the last bite of his cheeseburger.
The reverse lights on Ralph’s car lit up as he backed from his space, then went dark as he rolled forward, pausing at the highway before accelerating away, his car disappearing in a swirl of mist and fog.
“You girls, ready?” he asked, standing up, pulling the wallet from his back pocket, and laying down a tip.
“Let’s go,” Amanda said. “Can I drive?”
“How about we let Ellis do the driving now that we’re in the city,” Miriam suggested.
They paid their bill, then dashed to the truck. Amanda sat between them. Ellis was in no mood to stay in the city, in the vicinity of his brother. He started the truck, then turned to Miriam. “You know, I think I might have left the iron on back home.”
“You haven’t used an iron in twenty years,” Miriam laughed. “What do you mean you left it on?”
“I unplugged it,” Amanda said. “I ironed my jeans, then I unplugged it.”
“I’m sure I smelled something hot just before we left,” Ellis insisted. “Did you unplug the coffee pot?”
Miriam thought for a moment. “Yes. It was dirty, so I washed it. I remember unplugging it then.”
“Wonder what it was I smelled?” Ellis mused. “Oh, well, it’ll probably be all right. Anyway, that’s why we have insurance. Right?” He moved the gearshift into reverse and backed up.
“Do you think we should go back and check on things?” Miriam asked, a note of concern creeping into her voice.
“Nah, we’ll be all right. It’s probably nothing.”
He edged the truck forward and pulled onto the highway.
“Maybe we ought to go home,” Miriam said.
“You think?”
“Yes, let’s. Amanda, is that okay with you, honey?”
“I guess so. Can I drive?”
Ellis rolled to stop. “Sure, honey. You drive, and I’ll keep us company.”
But he scarcely said a word the whole way home. He just stared out the side window of the truck, preoccupied.
“Don’t worry. The house will be fine,” Miriam said, patting his hand.
“Hope so.”
They turned into the driveway a little before three. Up the lane, their farmhouse stood unmolested, against a backdrop of oak trees Ellis’s grandfather had planted sixty years before.
“See, everything’s fine,” Miriam said, with a sigh of relief.
Ellis nodded his agreement, though in his heart he knew it wasn’t true.
A
ll things being equal, Sam Gardner preferred funerals over weddings. There were no mothers of the bride to appease, no hungover groomsmen to sober up or photographers to accommodate. At funerals, the guest of honor lay quietly, without a word of protest or advice, not worrying for one moment whether he’d forget the vows or she’d trip on her bridal gown.
At funerals, he didn’t have to sit in a banquet hall eating overcooked chicken with inebriated strangers. Or dance. Instead, people gathered in the church basement, in the bosom of family and friends, eating chicken and noodles, profoundly grateful for having dodged death’s bullet.
Funerals didn’t require a rehearsal the night before, which tended to be even worse than the wedding. Sam hated rehearsals most of all—the last minute changes in the ceremony, the frayed nerves, having to explain to a pregnant bride why “You’re Having My Baby” is not an appropriate wedding song.
Despite this, he’d been looking forward to Deena’s wedding ever since Dr. Pierce had proposed the autumn before. Now the week of Deena’s wedding had arrived and Harmony was frantic with activity. Ned Kivett had ordered in a rack of new dresses at the Five and Dime, which was picked clean five days before the wedding. Kathy at the Kut ’n’ Kurl was staying open late to accommodate the mob of women wanting their hair styled. On Thursday, a white three-spired tent appeared next to the Hodges’ pond, as if the circus had come to town.
“Ellis told me they had three hundred chairs,” Asa Peacock said to no one in particular at the Coffee Cup Restaurant.
“I heard they was having a swan made of ice,” Kyle Weathers said. “Bet five dollars it’ll be a puddle of water before noon.”
“Betcha it won’t,” Clevis Nagle said. They each pulled a five-dollar bill from their wallets and handed it to Vinny for safekeeping in his cash register.
“How’s Jessie coming with the cake?” Vinny Toricelli asked Asa.
“She’s startin’ on it tomorrow. I tell you, she’s been busy as a one-eyed man at a go-go girl convention.”
Sam Gardner had forgotten about the cake. Maybe weddings weren’t so bad after all.
On Friday morning, Sam wrote his Sunday sermon—a brief meditation on the joy of marriage while people still had matrimony on their minds. The drawback to preaching in a small town is that everyone knows everyone else too well. Sam spent two hours trying to think of a couple in town whose marriage was without blemish, whose union could serve as an inspiration to the congregation.
He thought of Miriam and Ellis Hodge, but then remembered that the summer before last Ellis had to move to the barn for a month. So much for the Hodges. Then Sam remembered his grandparents, who were now deceased and therefore unlikely to divorce. Sam often waxed eloquent about dead people, knowing they wouldn’t do something the next week that would necessitate a retraction.
He finished his sermon around noon, went home for lunch, then drove the back roads to Cartersburg to visit Alice Stout at the nursing home. Her room was warm and his stomach full; sitting in a rocking chair at the foot of her bed, he fell asleep. When he stirred a half hour later, Alice was still talking, so he closed his eyes for another fifteen minutes. Then he said a little prayer for Alice, thanking God for her life, such as it was, hugged her good-bye, and drove to the Hodges’ for the wedding rehearsal.
It was early and he was the first to arrive, so he helped the Hodges arrange the folding chairs into rows underneath the white tent.
“This is some affair,” Sam commented.
“It’s simply lovely,” Miriam said. Then she sighed. “Ellis and I were married at the parsonage on a Friday night after the cows were milked.”
“We’re just as married,” Ellis pointed out. “I don’t know why people go in for all this folderol.”
“I’m just saying it would have been nice to have the memory.”
Sam was beginning to regret he’d raised the subject and was quite relieved to see Deena and Dr. Dan Pierce turn into the driveway. They passed the barn and drove through the gate over the cattle guard, then down the pasture lane toward the pond, rolling to a stop beside the tent.
Miss Rudy was seated in the back, clutching Emily Post’s book on wedding etiquette. She’d read the book three times in preparation for the big day. Dr. Pierce’s best man, his only brother, sat beside her, looking rather glum. When he’d agreed to be the best man, he’d hoped Deena’s maid of honor would not only be fetching, but morally indiscriminate, someone who believed in free love and living for the moment.
Instead, he’d ended up with Miss Rudy, who’d already made him spit out his chewing gum. “You’re not a cow. You don’t have a cud to chew. This is a wedding, not a baseball game. And there’ll be no slouching either. Stand straight up, keep your hands out of your pockets, and try to look as if you have a little pride.”
They were the only attendants. Deena avoided the usual custom of having every woman she’d ever spoken to serve as a bridesmaid. So it was just the four of them—Deena, Dr. Pierce, Miss Rudy, and one unhappy brother. Sam was elated. The fewer the people, the shorter the ceremony. It was almost as good as a funeral.
Deena’s parents and her grandmother Mabel were the next to arrive. Deena’s father had grown up in Harmony and then gone to college to become a lawyer. He’d graduated, moved to the city, married, and came home only at Christmas, just long enough to eat. Most people in Harmony didn’t care for him, believing he’d risen above his station and gotten a big head. If he’d stayed home, Morrison’s Menswear would still be open, selling Red Goose shoes, bib overalls, and plaid sport coats and sponsoring a Little League team, as the good Lord intended.
When Sam stayed up after the news to watch
Green Acres,
he’d occasionally see Deena’s father on a television commercial for his law firm, agitating people to sue someone. He’d sent Deena to college to become a lawyer, was sorely grieved she’d spurned the law to open a coffee shop, and took every opportunity to remind her of his disappointment.
It had been his idea to have the ice swan, which was now residing in a wooden crate, packed in dry ice. As swans go, it had a rather short neck. It looked more like a large duck, which infuriated Deena’s father, who’d spent five hundred dollars to have it made and delivered out from the city. He was on his cell phone within five minutes of his arrival, threatening a lawsuit if a new swan with a long neck wasn’t delivered in time for the wedding.
It was obvious he had been gone too long. When people live in a small town, they learn to settle for ducks. They take their car to Logan’s garage because the rear end thumps. A week later, Nate Logan phones to tell them their car is fixed. They get in the car and the thump returns a mile down the road, but the car no longer drifts to the left, so they quit while they’re ahead.
People in the city have too many options. It’s too easy to take their business elsewhere. But Nate has the only garage in town, and people don’t want to anger him in case their car breaks down the next week and they need a tow. So they bite their tongues, pay their bills, thank Nate for his good work, then gripe about him behind his back.
The Hodges watched from the second row as Sam called the wedding party forward. Ellis leaned over and whispered in Amanda’s ear, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you elope when it comes time to get married.”
“No, thank you. I want a big wedding with an ice goose,” she whispered back.
“I thought that was a duck.”
They both snickered. Miriam glared at them.
Sam gave his customary wedding rehearsal speech. “Remember, it’s not the wedding that’s important; it’s the marriage. So let’s relax and have fun and don’t worry if anything goes wrong. If anyone makes a mistake, it’ll give you something to laugh about when you’re old and gray.”
“Better not be any mistakes, as much as I’m paying for this wedding,” Deena’s father muttered under his breath. “Five hundred bucks for a swan that looks like Daffy Duck.”
Sam prayed for the Lord to bless their marriage, then put the wedding party through their paces, showing them where to stand and what to say.
“What are we doing for music?” Sam asked Deena.
“There’ll be a string quartet. They had a bar mitzvah tonight, but they’ll be here tomorrow an hour before the wedding,” she promised.
“There goes another thousand dollars,” her father muttered.
“You know what a string quartet is?” Ellis whispered, leaning into Amanda. “A banjo, two guitars, and a mandolin.”
Amanda snorted, trying not to laugh out loud. Miriam elbowed Ellis in the ribs, hard. He grunted in pain. “Some pacifist you are,” he said.
“And you better be thankful I’m a pacifist, or you’d be dead by now,” she whispered fiercely. “Now behave yourself.”
Miriam was never one to let religion get in the way of doing what needed to be done.
Sam had made his way through the introductory remarks and was now at the vows. “Okay, Dan, you’ll go first. All you have to do is repeat after me. In the presence of the Lord, and before these friends…”
“In the presence of the Lord and before these friends,” Dr. Pierce echoed.
“I take thee, Deena, to be my wife…”
Dr. Pierce repeated the line, staring at Deena, who appeared faint with joy.
“Promising, with divine assistance, to be unto thee a loving and faithful husband, as long as we both shall live.” For someone who didn’t care for weddings, Sam was stirred by the vows and felt his chin tremble.
Dr. Pierce recited the last sentence, then leaned forward and kissed Deena on the forehead.
“Curb your hormones,” Miss Rudy scolded. “Sam hasn’t pronounced you husband and wife yet.”
The rest of the rehearsal went smoothly, and by the time they finished the sun was still two hours from setting. It was mid-June, and it didn’t fall dark until almost nine o’clock. They stood under the tent going over the details for the next day. The sky in the west was lit like fire, a swirl of red and orange.
“Red sky at night, sailors’ delight,” Ellis said, smiling at Deena. “Looks like you’ll have good weather for your big day.”
“This is all so picture-perfect,” Deena said. “We can’t thank you enough for letting us have our wedding here. It’s so beautiful.”
“I even moved the manure pile,” Ellis volunteered, gesturing south toward the barn. “Didn’t want to be downwind of it tomorrow.”
“We can’t thank you enough,” Dr. Pierce said. He turned to Deena. “We need to be moving along to the rehearsal dinner.”
Deena turned to Miriam. “He won’t tell me where it is, except that it’s outside.”
“I told you, we’re going to the Mug ’n’ Bun in Cartersburg. Root beer and hot dogs all around.” He winked at Ellis, who thought root beer and hot dogs sounded pretty good.
They heard the crunch of gravel at the same time and turned to watch as a white, rust-speckled car made its way slowly up the Hodges’ driveway, rolling to a stop at the sidewalk leading up to their house.
“I wonder who that could be?” Miriam asked.
Ellis reached over instinctively and put his arm around Amanda. “Probably a traveling salesman. I’ll go shoo him off. Amanda, honey, why don’t you and Miriam finish lining up these chairs. I’ll be right back.” He walked down the pasture lane around the barn and toward the house, stopping beside his brother, who was standing beside his car.
“Hi, Ralph.”
“Hi, Ellis.”
“What brings you this way?” Ellis asked. “I thought we had a deal.”
“Sandy and I were hoping we could see Amanda,” Ralph said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Absolutely not. That little girl is doing just fine, and I don’t want anyone or anything upsetting that. Now why don’t you get back in your car and go back to California or wherever it is you live.”
Ralph stood silently, his head bowed, drawing a dusty circle in the gravel with the toe of his boot. He looked up. “Things have changed, Ellis. We went to AA, and we’ve been sober two years now. We wanted to tell you how sorry we are for all the trouble we caused. And we was hopin’ to see our daughter.”
“She’s not your daughter anymore. You had your chance. Now please leave.”
Ellis Hodge is not, by nature, a hard man, but he steeled himself, then pointed toward the road. “I’ll have to ask you to get off my property.”
Ralph reached in his back pocket, pulled out a thick envelope, and handed it to Ellis.
“What’s that?”
“That thirty thousand dollars you gave us to leave, this here’s ten thousand of it. I’ll pay you back the rest of it just as soon as I can. We don’t want your money. We just want to be part of Amanda’s life again, that’s all.”
“You keep that money,” Ellis said, pushing it back in Ralph’s hand. “We had a deal. Now you move along and don’t come back.”
“Can we at least say hi to her?”
“No, you can’t. It’ll only upset her. Let’s just leave well enough alone, Ralph. Now you be gone.”
Sandy was seated in the front seat, peering across the pasture toward Amanda, tears coursing down her face.
“She’ll be eighteen in two years,” Ellis said. “I can’t keep you from her then. But as long as I’m responsible for her, I’ll be doing what I think’s best.” He hesitated for a moment. “Maybe when you get to wherever it is you’re going, you can send her a letter.”
Ralph opened the car door, got in behind the wheel, and turned the ignition key. The car coughed to life. He backed down the driveway, stopped at the end for a truck to pass, then turned onto the road and drove west, away from town. Ellis watched the whole while, to make sure he didn’t return, then walked back across the pasture to the white tent, where Amanda and Miriam were finishing up.
“Who was that?” Miriam asked.
“Just some fella who got turned around. He missed the turnoff to Cartersburg, but I got him on his way.”
They lowered the side flaps on the tent, then began walking toward the house.
“What’s for dinner?” Ellis asked with forced cheerfulness.
“How about we go to McDonald’s?” Amanda suggested. “We haven’t eaten there in a long time.”
“McDonald’s it is,” Ellis said, placing his arm across her shoulders.