The Sixty Fifth on the Church Lawn

Elam

Vonda’s chair at the end of the head table was still empty. I had stopped looking at it. Mostly.

I was carrying the white sheet cake across the grass, holding it out in front of me in both hands, when I saw Elam.

His granddaughter had driven him and parked down by the cemetery gate. She was walking a little behind him with her hands out, ready to catch him. But he was coming on his own.

He was bald as an egg. Not one curl left of those thick black ones in the photograph.

He had on a gray suit that hung loose on him, and he was walking with a cane in his left hand, one step and then the cane, one step and then the cane, coming across the grass toward the head table.

He was carrying a black umbrella under his right arm. On a cloudless June afternoon.

The table nearest us went quiet first. Then the one behind it. It spread back across the lawn like wind across a wheat field, until it was so quiet I could hear a mower somewhere far off up the ridge.

I set the cake down on the nearest table. My hands weren’t steady enough to carry it any farther.

Mom saw him. She squeezed Dad’s hand and leaned over and whispered something to him.

Dad looked up.

He looked at that old bald man coming across the grass for a long, long time. His face didn’t change. I held my breath. I thought, Not this one. Please, Lord, let him keep this one.

Then he let go of Mom’s hand.

He put both palms flat on the table and pushed himself up to stand. Mom reached for his arm, but he was already up. He stood there in his navy suit, swaying just a little, looking at Elam.

Elam stopped ten feet away and leaned on his cane, breathing hard.

Dad opened his mouth.

“Curly,” he said. “Curly Zook. What on earth happened to your hair?”

For one second nobody moved.

Then Elam threw back his head and laughed, and rubbed his bald head with his free hand, and the whole lawn went up.

Sixty people at least, laughing all at once, the kind of laugh that comes out of you like a sneeze. The Richfield cousin had to hold onto a chair.

Nobody had called Elam Curly since the Eisenhower years. Half the people there had never heard it. But Dad had kept it, somewhere in the ink, all this time.

“It washed off,” Elam said. “In that rainstorm at your wedding. Never did come back.”

Dad came around the end of the table, slow, one hand on the cloth, and the two old men took hold of each other’s forearms the way farmers do, not quite a hug.

They stood like that for a long time. I heard Elam say, “I’m here, Clair.” And Dad said, “I know who you are.”