The Wedding Song at the Legion Hall

Thank you for the memories

I stood up. My chair scraped on the floor, and a few heads turned.

I walked across the dance floor to where Pam was standing with the microphone. I did not hurry. I had on shoes I could not hurry in anyway.

She saw me coming and her smile got a little thinner. She held the microphone a little tighter.

I did not take it from her. I just leaned in close enough that it would pick me up.

“Thank you, Pam,” I said. “Thank you for the memories.”

That was all I said to her. I did not say it sharp. I said it the way I say thank you to the ladies who bring bars to a funeral lunch.

Then I turned to Tyler. “Honey, could you pause that for me?”

He hit something on his laptop so fast he almost knocked it over, and the picture on the screen stopped. Young Dave and a girl in puffed sleeves, frozen at the altar, ten feet tall, a little blurry.

“And could you play our song? ‘I Cross My Heart.’ George Strait.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tyler said. His voice cracked.

I walked back to the head table. Dave was still staring at the screen. I put my hand out to him, palm up, the way you do for a child crossing a street.

“Come dance with me,” I said.

For a second I did not think he was going to move. Then he looked at my hand, and then at me, and something came back into his face. He stood up, took my hand, and let me lead him out into the middle of the floor.

The first notes came over the speakers. I put my hand flat on his chest, on his good sport coat, the one he wears to funerals and confirmations. I could feel his heart going hard under it.

He closed his eyes.

Behind us the video stayed paused on the screen. Pam stood off to the side with the microphone still in her hand, not moving. Ninety people at round tables under the string lights watched us dance.

Nobody else came out on the floor. They let us have it.