Forty Chairs Under the Cottonwood

“Your name is on our planning sheet as a contact, sir,” she said. “But the agreement is with the person who signed it. We don’t bill anyone who didn’t sign.”

I thanked her. I did not tell her anything else, because it was not her business, and it was not mine to make it her business.

I hung up and went out to check the stock tank.

So the bill was never mine. I knew that, and I think Lisa knew it too.

She was not trying to cheat me. She was trying to make a thing happen by pushing hard enough that everybody gave in.

That is what Bonnie always did. Bonnie pushed until a thing went her way, and in seventy-nine years I don’t believe she had lost many times.

Lisa learned it from her mother the same way Emily learned to put her hands flat on a table.

I could have written the check. I want to say that plainly, because people will wonder.

Between the co-op pension and the cattle account, I had it, more or less. It would have hurt, but I could have done it.

But Emily had said no three times. If I paid for that club, I would be the fourth person to tell my girl that what she wanted did not count.

I was not going to be that man to my own daughter.

So I did what I said I would do. I paid for exactly what she had asked for, and not one thing more.

I booked the DJ, a young fellow from Flandreau named Kyle who plays the dances at the Legion.

I bought four cases of house red and white at the liquor store in Brookings. Josh brought a big cooler from the shop for the beer.

I rented a rain tent and forty white folding chairs from the rental place in Dell Rapids.

The woman at the counter asked if I wanted a few extras, just in case. I told her no. Forty was the number my daughter gave me.

Then I went to work on the pasture. I moved the cows across the creek to the back pasture and ran a hot wire so they would not come visiting during the vows.

I mowed the front grass three times in August so it would come in thick.

I trimmed the dead limbs off the cottonwood with the pole saw.

That was the closest I had come to climbing since I retired, and my right shoulder told me about it for a week.

Josh came out on Saturdays to help. We built a low platform of plywood and two-by-sixes under the tree, for the pastor and the two of them to stand on, so nobody’s heels would sink in if it rained.

He never said a word against Lisa or the club. Once, while we were painting the platform white, he said, “Em’s mom isn’t a bad person.” I said, “No, she isn’t.” That was the whole conversation, and it was enough.

In August, Bonnie called me. She had not called me in fifteen years.

Her voice was thinner than I remembered, and she had to stop once to catch her breath. She has had trouble with her lungs since her seventies.