The Six Who Walked Ahead of Me

By the time I got home the sun was coming up over the bean field across the road, and it was going to be one of those September days you only get a few of in Minnesota.

Clear, no wind, warm enough for short sleeves by noon, with that gold light that comes in low across the stubble.

The church ladies came at ten to set the chairs. Our pastor, a soft-spoken woman named Pastor Karen who had baptized half the kids in our county, came at eleven to walk the aisle with me.

Seven rows of white folding chairs on each side of the grass, facing the red barn, with a plain wooden arch Dad had built out of old fence boards.

We were to be married at three o’clock. At one thirty the kids were upstairs in my house getting dressed, and I could hear them from the kitchen, Milo yelling that Clayton had his left boot, Abby crying because her braid was crooked, Kayla’s voice under all of it, calm, sorting them out one at a time.

At two I went up and helped with the last of it. I tied Clayton’s collar button. I redid Abby’s braid.

I put a little clip of baby’s breath in Lily’s hair, and she looked at herself in the mirror for a long time and said, “I look like a bride too.”

I said, “You look like a flower girl.” She said, “That’s the same.”

Then we went down to the garden together, all seven of us in our boots, and the kids cut their own sunflowers.

Each one picked from their own row. Milo picked the tallest one he had and it was nearly as tall as he was, so he had to cut it down to carry. Lily picked three small ones and held them like a bouquet.

Kayla picked one and stood looking at it. “These are going to look stupid next to the real flowers,” she said.

“There aren’t any real flowers,” I said. “These are the flowers.”

She looked at me, and then she smiled. It was the first time all summer I had seen her smile with her whole face.

At about two forty-five, while the guests were finding their seats and the fiddle player from church was tuning up, Dad came around the side of the barn to find us.

He had on his good bib overalls, the new ones, with a white shirt underneath and his old suit jacket over the top. I had given up arguing with him about that years ago.

He did not say anything at first. He just walked down the line of them, one by one, and stopped in front of each child, and reached into the bib pocket of his overalls.

My grandpa used to do this. When Dad was a boy, every Sunday after church, his father would give each of the children a quarter from his overalls pocket.

Not for anything. Not as a reward. Just because they were his. Dad had told me about it a hundred times.

I had not known he was going to do it that day.

He put a quarter in Kayla’s hand first, and folded her fingers over it. “That’s for nothing,” he said.