The Sixty Fifth on the Church Lawn

The second Saturday in June

The day came up sunny. Not a cloud from the ridge to the river. By nine in the morning it was warm enough that the cows on the next farm were lying down in the shade.

Reuben came down the hill at seven-thirty with the tables lashed on his flatbed. My husband and his brother and two men from the fire company had them unloaded and set up under the maples by ten.

They set them in long rows, end to end, the way you set tables for a threshing dinner.

Lottie’s grandson and I spread the white cloths. The church women brought the food down in roasters and laundry baskets. Chicken and filling.

Ham loaf. Chow-chow and pickled eggs and three kinds of potato salad. Shoofly pie, which Mom had insisted on making herself, all six of them.

I made the cake. A plain white sheet cake from Mom’s own recipe card, the one with the butter stain on the corner, with white frosting and nothing written on it.

Mom said she didn’t want her age on a cake for the whole county to read.

By one-thirty I was home again putting on my yellow sundress. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, Vonda’s not coming. And then I thought, That’s all right. This isn’t about Vonda.

I didn’t believe it all the way. But I said it.

My husband brought Mom and Dad down from the farm at a quarter to two. Dad got out of the truck in his navy suit and looked at the white church and the maples and all the tables, and he stood very still.

“We got married here,” he said.

“We did,” Mom said, and put her hand in his.

Faces

By two o’clock there were more than a hundred people on that lawn. Some came in church clothes and some came straight from the hayfield with their sleeves rolled. Nobody cared which.

We sat Dad and Mom at the head table, in the middle, under the biggest maple. Mom held her small bouquet of white roses in her lap.

Dad held her other hand on top of the tablecloth, and he didn’t let go of it.

Then people started coming up to them, one and two at a time.

I had been afraid of this part most of all. I had stood by and watched Vonda’s face at Christmas. I knew what it would look like if he didn’t know someone.

But the old ones he knew.

The Richfield cousin came up first, the one who wouldn’t stay home. Dad looked at her and said, “You still owe me a quarter for that root beer, you know.” She laughed so hard she had to sit down.

The bridesmaid from Thompsontown came up on her daughter’s arm. Dad said her maiden name before she could say a word, and then told the daughter her mother had the best jump shot in the county in 1955. The daughter had never heard that in her life.

The McAlisterville cousin came. He stood in front of the table with his cap in both hands, looking about as nervous as a man can look. Dad looked at him a long minute, and then he said, “You still running that Allis Chalmers?”

“Sold it in ’88, Clair,” the cousin said, and his voice cracked right in the middle.

“Well, that was a mistake,” Dad said, and everybody nearby laughed, and the old man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and laughed too.

Not everyone was so easy. The pastor he didn’t know. Some of the younger cousins he didn’t know.

My own son, who drove up from Harrisburg, he called “young fella,” and my son just shook his hand and said, “Happy anniversary, sir,” and that was all right too.

But the faces from 1961, from the hymn sings and the barn raisings and the milk checks and the cattle sales, those he knew. It was like the old ones were written in ink and the new ones in pencil.

Every few minutes he patted Mom’s hand and leaned over and said something to her. Once I was close enough to hear it. He said, “Arlene, look how many came.”

I went around the side of the church where nobody could see me and stood with my forehead against the white siding for a minute. Then I went to get the cake.