The Song Two Hundred Guests Finished

On the lawn

By one in the morning the yard was empty. My mother had gone to bed. Whit was out by the road loading the borrowed chairs into his truck with Abner.

The string lights were still on, because I had not had the heart to unplug them.

Paula came walking back up the drive from where she had parked. She had taken her shoes off and was carrying them.

Her gray curls were mussed from the wind. She looked smaller than I had ever seen her.

I was sitting on the grass in my gown in the middle of the lawn, right where we had danced.

She stood over me for a minute. Then, slowly, holding onto her knee, she sat down beside me.

We did not say anything for a while. The crickets were loud.

You could smell the bean dust in the air from somebody harvesting late a mile over, and the last of the fire smoke.

“Willard used to sing that song to me,” Paula said finally.

I turned and looked at her.

“In the truck,” she said. “Every morning, when he drove me to the school before he went to the field. Thirty years. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. He’d sing it off key on purpose to make me laugh.”

She was looking straight ahead at the dark field.

“I was his girl,” she said. “That’s what he called me. Not Paula. Girl. ‘Morning, girl.’ Even in front of the kids. Even in front of the preacher. It embarrassed me half to death for the first ten years.”

She laughed a little, and it broke in the middle.

“When he died, Whit and his sister wanted a hymn at the funeral. I said yes to the hymn. But I asked the funeral home to play that song when they closed the casket. Just me. I asked for it. Nobody else knew why.”

“Oh, Paula,” I said.

“I haven’t heard it since,” she said. “Six years. I walked out of the Walmart in Shelbyville once and left a full cart in the aisle because it came on over the speakers. I turn the radio off in the car if there’s even a chance.”

“That’s why you wanted the list,” I said.

“That’s why I wanted the list.” She pressed her hands flat on her knees.

“I couldn’t tell you why. I couldn’t tell anybody. If I said it out loud, I was afraid I’d fall apart at my son’s wedding. So I just crossed things off and wrote a stupid note.”