The Six Who Walked Ahead of Me

“That’s just because you’re ours.” Then Milo. Then Ona. Then Clayton, who looked at his quarter like it was a gold coin.

Then Abby. Then he got down, slow, on his bad knees in the grass, in his good overalls, so he could look Lily in the eye. He put the quarter in her small hand and closed it.

“That’s from me and my dad,” he said. “You keep it.”

Lily looked at him very seriously and put it in her boot. Dad laughed so hard he had to hold onto Milo to get back up.

I had to turn around and look at the barn for a minute. I had done my makeup myself and I did not have time to do it twice.

At three o’clock the fiddle started into a hymn. It was “Be Thou My Vision,” which was my mother’s favorite before she passed, and the reason I had asked for it.

Everybody stood up. And down at the far end of the grass aisle, under Dad’s fence-board arch, I could see Luke in his gray vest and his good boots, standing next to his brother and Pastor Karen.

I could also see, in the second row on the right, Marcia Granger in a pale blue dress, turned in her chair to look back toward the barn, waiting for the bride.

Kayla and Milo, the two oldest, went first. They walked the grass aisle side by side, slow and straight, and waited at the arch. Lily went next. That was her idea. She said the smallest should lead the little ones so everybody could see her.

Then Abby, then Ona, then Clayton. I came last, behind all six, by myself.

Dad had offered to walk me and I had asked him to sit in the front row instead, so he could see the kids come in.

I watched it happen from behind, which I think is the best seat I have ever had for anything.

Lily stepped out onto the grass in her brown boots and her white dress with her three small sunflowers, and the whole yard went quiet.

Then a sound went through the chairs. Not a gasp. A softening. A hundred and forty people saying “oh” at the same time without saying it out loud.

Then Abby came, and Ona, and Clayton, and every head in that yard turned. People who knew us leaned to the people who didn’t and whispered.

I saw old Mrs. Lindquist from church put her hand over her mouth. I saw Darrell, my boss, sitting in the back in a sport coat, take his cap off and hold it in his lap.

Ona walked with her sunflower held up in front of her like a candle. Clayton walked with his like a flag. Milo had carried his the same way ahead of them.

Kayla had gone first, straight and slow, not looking at anybody, carrying one sunflower in both hands.

And every one of them had to walk right past the second row on the right.

I watched Marcia’s face as they came. I was not trying to. I could not help it. She had turned around in her seat expecting to see me, and instead she saw a fifteen-year-old in cowboy boots, and then another child, and then a four-year-old, and then three more, and she could not turn back around without everybody seeing her do it.