Come Rain or Come Shine (11 page)

Wonders never ceasing.

A new list going up by the back door . . .

He would take Cleaning Out the Hen Boxes, as the contents would be good for the grass, and opt for Weed-eating the Pet Cemetery on the twelfth, all the while working with Lace on their homemade wedding program.

He had thought things would slow to a simmer, but no. Six days before
the
day, and the pot was still boiling.

‘I'm running to town,' he told Cynthia on Monday.

‘What for?'

He couldn't find a reason in his rattled brain. ‘To, you know, just get
out
of here.'

‘I'll ride with you,' she said.

They were all coming down with the highly contagious Bride Hysteria.

‘I could have done it,' said Dooley, looking at hundreds of tiny lights strung in their two old maples and the boxwood. ‘You should have let me do it.'

‘I loved being up there.' She had peered into the window of the bedroom that would soon be theirs, and along the road to the Hershells' place, and seen Truman trotting across the yard as if on a very important mission.

‘Great job,' he said. ‘You're amazing.'

‘Tonight after dinner, let's turn them on, okay? A rehearsal. Just us.'

‘Deal,' he said.

Sweep, sweep, sweep.

Her hands had developed calluses over the last weeks. Since she was going to be a farmwife, which she wanted with all her heart to be, she would need calluses.

She loved to sweep, it was an act of redemption. All the dead bugs, grass clippings, dog hair, you name it, off the porch and into the forgiving grass

Dooley's palms, once ‘book soft,' as he termed it, were also wearing in to rough work. When they held hands, she liked sharing this simple talisman.

Cynthia saw Lace moving toward the fence carrying a bucket, with Truman at her heels like a pup.

The window above their Mitford kitchen sink looked out to the hedge and the old rectory, which was never a bad view. Here she was served the shifting combination of sunlight and shadow over meadows animated by grazing cows. She had always liked the cow's noble acceptance of circumstance. A cow seemed to be saying, That's cool, I'm fine with that, whatever.

Lace appeared to be calling to someone. She moved to the right of the sink to see who it could be.

Choo-Choo.

At a gallop.

Good Lord, he looked ferocious chasing across the field at high speed. She knew a bull probably couldn't hurdle a fence, yet she was tempted to raise the window and yell, ‘Stand back!'

And there he was; he'd covered the distance and reached the fence and Lace was stroking his enormous leathery nose.

Then Lace dipped her hand into the bucket and came forth with what must be the irresistible sweet feed, because a fourteen-hundred-pound Red Angus bull was eating out of her hand.

She was working with Father Tim on the wedding program, trying to make all the pieces come together and fit all the people into the right spots. As for Dooley's wedding gift, she was taking anything she could get: Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes. The occasional hour. She could not stop and fix every minor disappointment; she had to keep moving and stay open to what she was getting right now, at this moment.

Thank you, thank you, thank you
.

He would love it, she was loving it. It would be the best wedding gift she could possibly give him. Not cuff links, not new work boots, not an oiled jacket from Orvis or even seat covers for his truck. Just this. Just this one true river flowing directly from her heart . . .

Harley was silent for a time. Whatever was stuck in his throat, it was like swallerin' down a golf ball.

‘It's just two little lines on a piece of paper,' she said. ‘Think of Sacagawea and what an amazing thing she did, and how you loved learning about Lewis and Clark and were so
great with conquering arithmetic. Remember how happy it made you to jump over a wall of fear to learn new things.'

He wanted to bawl like a baby, but drew himself up like a man. He had never stood up in front of people and read anything out loud. If he didn't love this young'un . . .

‘I'll do it,' he said.

She gave him a kiss on the forehead and a big smile and handed him a piece of paper with two lines typed on it.

He waited till she was out of the room before looking at it.

‘Make their life together a sign . . .'

‘Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .'

They counted down together as Harley waited to flip the switch at the light pole in the yard.

‘. . . four, three, two . . . lights!'

‘Wow,' said Dooley. The skin prickled on the back of his neck. ‘Wow.'

‘Good night, Harley,' she said.

‘Same t' you 'uns.'

They sat on the top step of the front porch. A small breeze stirred, the lights glimmered. There was nothing to say for a while. She prayed, silent.

‘Would you like to do our secret vows tonight? Like now?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘Yes.'

They held hands, each silvered in light from the shining trees and half-moon.

‘I will never leave you,' she said. She had been left by both parents, not physically—but mentally, emotionally, they had vanished before her eyes.

He was thoughtful about what she said, and grateful for the vow she had chosen. He took a deep breath and waited before giving his, though he'd thought it over carefully for days.

‘I will never harm you.'

A chorus of crickets, the sound of a nightjar . . .

‘I'll love you even when I don't like you.' She knew there would be such times; they had survived more than a few.

‘And I'll love you even when I don't like you,' he said, for it was worth repeating.

‘One more,' she said, looking at him in the light of the trees. ‘I will love you always.'

If there was anything they hadn't confessed over the years, anything that troubled them about the other, they couldn't name it. He had a couple of buddies who hardly knew the women they were marrying. There was a time when he envied this—when he felt that he and Lace knew each other too well, where was the mystery? But he had passed through that phase and found that time made his love less tenuous, more certain. He had lived the last years of school in the cocoon of that kind of love. No longer did a brisk wind instill fear of a gale.

He figured that thirteen years of knowing each other could be divided into three categories. Three years of juvenile antagonism, followed by four years of fire and ice—a roller coaster that had flipped them both out. Then the last
few years of falling into a new way of loving, a new way of doing things—yoked together, generally plowing the same furrow in the same field for the same reasons.

Just recently he had glanced at her and for a fleeting moment had the sense that he was seeing himself. Not the physical aspect of himself, but some inner aspect—who was who and which was which?

‘I will love you always back,' he said.

He put his arm around her and they looked out to the haze of a half-moon, to dark summer trees where fireflies danced.