Getting ready
Bridget prepared for that wedding like she was going to war.
She watched hours of videos about wedding photography. She made lists. She drove out to Eldon’s daddy’s homeplace with Fritz twice, at the same time of day the wedding would be, to see where the light fell under the pecans.
She borrowed a second camera from her photography teacher at the high school, a real Nikon with a long lens, so she could shoot the vows from the back. But she kept the Olympus around her neck too.
“That one’s mine,” she said, when Fritz asked her why she needed two. “It goes everywhere.”
She made a list of every shot Katie wanted. The dress. The rings. Katie with her mother. Katie with her grandmother. Katie with Andrew under the biggest pecan tree.
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There was one name that was not on the list anywhere. I noticed it, and I did not say anything.
The wedding
The second Saturday in June was hot and bright, ninety-one degrees by noon, with a little breeze coming across the hayfield from the west. There was not a cloud in the sky.
They had set up white folding chairs from the church in rows under the pecans. There was a borrowed arbor with honeysuckle wired to it, and a hay wagon covered in quilts for the cake.
Bridget was there at nine in the morning. She worked for eight hours in that heat without sitting down once. She had sweat running down her back and her red hair tied up in a knot, and she did not complain one time.
She shot Katie getting her hair done on the porch of the old house. She shot Mama pinning the corsage on Colleen’s dress with her shaking fingers. She shot Andrew’s daddy straightening his son’s tie and then turning away to wipe his eyes.
She shot the vows from the back row with the borrowed Nikon. She shot the first kiss from the side, with the sun coming through the leaves behind them.
And through all of it, Eldon stayed out of every frame.
He stood at the edge of the crowd. He walked Katie down the aisle with his eyes on the ground, and the second she reached the arbor, he slipped into the front row and kept his head down.
When the family lined up for the big group picture under the pecans, Eldon said he needed to check on the ice. He walked off toward the trucks. Colleen called after him and he did not turn around.
Bridget shot the picture without him. She did not say anything. She just moved everybody in to fill the space.