The first notes of the song came out of the speakers just after nine o’clock, and Uncle Woody took my hand in the middle of the lawn like he had practiced it all week. He had, in his garage.
Two hundred people were standing in a loose ring around us on my mother’s grass outside Greensburg, Indiana.
The string lights were swaying a little in the breeze off the bean field, and somebody’s baby was fussing near the coolers.
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I had been married for three hours. My veil was off and folded on a chair.
My feet hurt, my face hurt from smiling, and I had never been so happy and so sad at the same time.
Then I heard my mother-in-law’s voice behind the DJ table, sharp and clear, the way she talked to the produce boy at the Kroger when the tomatoes were soft.
“Unplug it,” Paula said.
Alonzo, the DJ, was twenty-two years old. It was maybe his fourth wedding.
He looked at her, and then he looked at me, and his hand hovered over his laptop like it was hot.
Paula did not wait for him. She bent down, took hold of the cord where it ran into the extension reel, and pulled it out.
The speakers went dead in the middle of the first chorus.
The string lights stayed on. I had wired those on a separate run from the barn that morning, so the yard stayed lit and gold while the music just stopped, like somebody had shut a door on it.
Two hundred people stood in that quiet. I could hear the crickets out past the fence line. I could hear the tent stakes creaking. I could hear my own heart.
Uncle Woody still had my hand. He did not let go.
He just stood there with me, a big man in a borrowed navy suit, and I felt his thumb press once against my knuckles, the way my dad used to do.
That song was the last thing my dad and I ever planned together.