All for a Song (5 page)

Dorothy Lynn sat next to him. “Nice feet, but I don’t think they’d hold up for the walk home.”

“I don’t mind telling you that my own mother would have been mortified at the thought that I was about to eat lunch barefoot.”

“Why, Reverend Logan,” she said, feigning shock, “do you intend to eat with your feet?”

“Well, I’m hungry enough.”

With that, they dug in, each with a cup of Ma’s ham and beans—no less flavorful for having cooled—and biscuits. There was a jar of cold tea, which they passed back and forth between them in an intimate gesture.

She grew drowsy and comfortable and warm with her belly full of Ma’s familiar cooking and her ears full of Brent’s deep voice. After a time, his words slowed, then stopped altogether. She propped herself up on one elbow and watched him—from a respectable foot away—lying flat on his back, arms beneath his head. His chest, so broad it seemed set to bust his buttons, rose and fell with sleep, and his face was a mask of contentment as the first faint snore passed through parted lips.

This was not a man to covet anything—right at home and content wherever his lot. Her parlor, her kitchen, her church, her lot, her life.

Slowly, she rose to her feet and moved to where she’d set her guitar on one of the tall, smooth rocks. Just as she’d done a hundred times before, she settled the curved body against her thigh and bent low over the neck. Eyes closed, something like a prayer came through, but nothing in words she’d ever recall. Her fingers found the strings and danced across them, aimlessly at first, until they found the tune that had been whispering and waiting all morning. It ran from beginning to end, finding life and breath where she strummed and pressed, and when Dorothy Lynn reached the point where she knew it had defined itself, she added her own voice. Then she opened her eyes, and though she looked out at the solid screen of blue-green needles, she saw the folded bit of paper on which she’d managed to scratch a few words. And she sang.

There is a clearing in the forest

Fine as any palace parlor.

Walls papered with the pine trees,

Lush green grass carpets the floor.

Here is my portion, here’s my cup.

Here the good Lord fills me up

To overflowin’. . . .

She strummed some more, both to see if those words had found a home and to wait for the next phrasing to form itself.

“Beautiful.” Brent’s voice cut through the music, but she did not stop. She did, however, look up to see him still reclining, hands behind his head and a huge smile on his face.

“It’s not finished. Sometimes words won’t come.”

“Did you mean what you said?”

Still she played. “About what?”

“About here being where the Lord fills you up.”

She stopped and held the strings silent against the wood. “This place. It’s like I can’t think anywhere but here. And the Lord speaks to me so clearly, makes me want to speak right back to him.”

“Like King David.”

She smiled and softly strummed again. “Is this my lyre?”

“I reckon,” he said, mimicking her accent again.

“I don’t think nobody will be singing my songs a thousand years from now.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause so far only one other soul has ever even heard one. Or part of one. Pa always said it ain’t fittin’.”

He sat up, drew his knees to him, and locked his arms around them. “I could listen to you sing every day.”

“No, you can’t.” She played a flourishing chord, silenced it, and made a teasing face. “Because this here is
my
fairy ring, and you can only come here when I invite you.”

“I don’t mean here.” Something in his voice drew her close, though the guitar kept her anchored to her rock. “I mean in our—” He stopped himself. “I mean in the home I’ll build with you. And in our church, when you’re my wife and it’s truly for me to say.”

Never had she imagined such a promise, but it compelled her to ask for another.

“Anything,” he said, the sincerity in his eyes leaving no room for doubt.

“You have to let me get away sometimes. To myself, up here alone.”

“On one condition.”

She waited, silent.

“If you go off, you’ll always come back.”

“I might run late sometimes.”

He stood and walked toward her, took the guitar from her arms, and brought her to stand. With her bare feet on the smooth stone, she stood nose-to-nose with him, and all of God’s creation disappeared from view. Nothing but his eyes, clear and blue like bits of sky. She touched her hands to his broad shoulders, then held them to his face. His skin was smooth and warm, not unlike the rock beneath her, and when she kissed him, his lips brushed hers soft as a breeze.

This, she knew, would be enough.

Later, in the quiet of the night, Dorothy Lynn sat next to Brent again, folded into the crook of his arm, her feet tucked up beneath her as he coaxed a gentle motion out of the ancient, creaking front porch swing.

“No turning back.” She felt his words rumbling through his chest. “The banns have been read, so to speak.”

“What do you mean, ‘banns’?”

“It’s an old marriage tradition. It’s never been practiced in this country, but in England, a couple has to announce their intention to get married at least a month before the wedding. That gives people enough time to declare an impediment. To raise an objection, if they have any.”

“We had a weddin’ here once, and when Pa asked if there was anyone gathered who knew why the two shouldn’t get married, a woman stood up in the back of the church and declared that the groom had been in her bed just the week before.”

He pulled away and looked down at her. “You’re making that up.”

Dorothy Lynn crossed her heart. “And I’m thinkin’ that you might be the only person in town who doesn’t know the story, or who I’m talkin’ about.”

“Tell me.”

“Never. You face them every week, knowin’ them as the fine Christian couple they are. It would be sinful for me to tarnish their reputation in your eyes. Don’t you tempt me into gossip.”

“You’re already knee-deep in gossip.”

“It ain’t gossip without a name. It’s just a parable.”

“And just what is the spiritual truth to be gleaned from this ‘parable’?”

“What would you say it is?”

He’d stopped the motion of the swing but started it up again. “That depends on which woman is now part of that fine Christian couple. If he married the bride at the altar, the truth of the story is that the person we are willing to commit our lives to takes precedence over any lustful temptation.”

“And if he chose the other?”

“Then I suppose we need to see that, in some cases, the heart can follow the body, and it can be a graver mistake to pledge to love and honor somebody you simply don’t love at all. It makes the whole marriage a lie.”

“So you’re sayin’ both are true, equally?”

“I suppose. So, who did he choose, this busy groom?”

Dorothy Lynn rose up to her knees beside him, turned, and took his face in her hands. “It’s not fair to say he
chose
, exactly. But I tell you, he married the woman he loved.”

Then she kissed him, willing to let her lips rest on the surface of his but putting forth no protest when his arms drew her close. She did not pull away until Ma’s voice, carrying clear from the
kitchen, asked the world at large if someone could lift down the good baking dish from the top shelf.

“A hint?”

“Hurry back,” Dorothy Lynn said, peeling herself away.

When he came back, she’d restored her pulse and her hair and her dress to an unmussed state.

“So, tell me,” Dorothy Lynn said, stretching herself so there’d be no room for him on the swing, lest they fall into coveting the activities good Christian morals disallowed, “what kind of objections do them people in England expect to hear?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“The banns.”

“Ah.” He humored her and walked to the edge of the porch, as if ready to deliver a history lesson to the critters waiting out in the dark. “All kinds of things. It could be that either the bride or groom is already legally married to somebody else in another village, or that one is not a true believer of the faith. Or maybe they’re cousins, more closely related than the law allows.”

“Well, I don’t think we’ll be havin’ any of them problems.” She slouched in the swing until her toe reached the porch, then set herself swinging. “You’re a preacher and I’m a preacher’s daughter. And I know for a fact our family don’t have any relations north of St. Louis. So unless you got a wife hidin’ out in Illinois waitin’ for you . . .”

He turned and leaned against the railing. “The Lord brought me here. To this church and to you.”

“And you plan to stay? Here? Forever?”

“As long as the church will have me.”

She pondered this but dared not ask what would happen if she ever wanted a glimpse of life outside the twisted paths of Heron’s Nest. To live for a time away from the scrutiny of friends
and neighbors and family—all of whom had been witness to every day she’d lived since her first. As long as the church would have him, so would it have her.

“So nobody can object?” She surprised herself at speaking aloud.

“Only me. Or you.”

“Then you can start on for home, Brent Logan. I think we’re safe.”

“Before I go,” he said, not looking like he had any intention to do so, “shall we plan on a June wedding?”

She laughed out loud. Perhaps the congregation wouldn’t keep him around forever after all. “June is next week, sir.”

“I’m aware.”

“Can you imagine the waggin’ tongues if we get married a week after announcin’ an engagement?” She moved away from the square of light coming from inside the house.

“People know we’ve been seeing each other for months.”

“That don’t help matters. If you’re goin’ to be leadin’ this flock, you best learn how they think.”

“July, then?”

“That’s not much better. Ma will want to make a fuss, and that hardly gives any time at all to get a dress made.”

“August?”

“Too hot. And Darlene will be too close to her time, so she might not be able to come.”

A change came over his spirit, like he was succumbing to a slow-spreading wound. “Perhaps, then, I’ll leave it to you to set the date.”

Dorothy Lynn glanced inside and saw her mother making a pretense of working on some sort of needlework. A tea towel, most likely. She’d been doing a lot of that since Brent Logan began his
earnest pursuit. If she concentrated, she could imagine the tip of Pa’s shoe as he was stretched out in his chair reading
The Saturday Evening Post
. It had been his special respite every Sunday night. How many Sunday nights had the two of them spent in just this way? Ma with some quiet, necessary chore and Pa immersed in the rare nonbiblical text? The children had always known that Sunday nights were quiet nights. Having grown up, Dorothy Lynn realized that her parents didn’t even use this time to talk to each other.

Surely, though, there’d been a time when they sat on a porch swing, chatting into the night. She tried to imagine her pa, making one excuse after another not to leave Ma standing in the doorway, or Ma, breathless after a kiss.

Her own breath, by now, was slow. Steady.

“October,” she said, hopping off the swing and making her way toward him.

“October?”

“First Saturday. Or, better yet, the fourteenth, my birthday. Darlene’s baby will be here, and I might even hear from my brother by then. Plus, it’s so lovely here in the fall.”

He started to take her in his arms but, in a move that looked for all the world like fear, drew away instead. “You think that will give you enough time?”

“To plan a wedding?”

“To reconcile whatever it is that makes you want to postpone our wedding for four months.”

“Oh, Brent.” She wedged herself into his embrace, pressed against him until she felt his heart. “The world turns slow here, but time goes fast. Blink and it’ll be tomorrow.”

“I don’t want tomorrow. I want October.”

“Then, my darling, blink twice.”