The Ten Heifers I Thanked by Name

The Lodge on the Water

The night of the rehearsal the lake was flat as glass and the string lights came on over the deck as the sun went down behind the far shore.

Marcie had done it up. I will give her that. The prime rib I paid for was carving-station tender, the room glowed, and a hundred and fifty people stood around in their good clothes with drinks in their hands, most of them her side, Kansas City people I did not know.

Our side was there too. My brother and his wife drove up from Yates Center. Delmar and Ina came. A table of neighbors who had helped me brand for thirty years sat together near the back looking like cattle in church, uncomfortable and loyal.

Katie found me by the windows. She had her mother’s good looks and none of her hardness, and she took both my hands.

“Wendell,” she said, low, “I heard about the heifers. Dale told me. You did not have to do all that.”

“A man likes to do for his kids,” I said.

Her eyes went bright and she looked for a second like she wanted to apologize for her mother and did not have the words, so I squeezed her hands and said, “You are marrying a good one. He is the best thing we ever made.”

Dale came up in his new sport coat looking like he had been poured into it, my boy, thirty years old and still ducking his head when he is proud.

“Dad,” he said. “You doing okay? I know tonight is a lot of fuss.”

“I am fine,” I said. “Go on and be with your girl.”

Marcie worked the room like she had hired a photographer, which she had. She was telling her Kansas City friends something and laughing, and twice I saw her wave a hand at our table of branding neighbors the way you wave at a draft from a bad window.

Hope came and stood beside me and put her arm through mine.

“I have got the card,” I told her. I had a little index card in my shirt pocket, the names written out in pencil in my own hand.

“Lord help us,” Hope said, but she was smiling, and she did not take her arm back.

When the plates were cleared, Katie’s father, who is a decent and quiet man Marcie keeps in a drawer, stood up and welcomed everyone and then said, “I think the father of the groom wanted to say a few words.”

Marcie’s head came around fast.

I stood up. I buttoned my coat. I pulled the little card out of my shirt pocket and unfolded it, and the room went quiet and polite and waited to be bored.