The Wedding Under the Live Oaks

The Grandmother

Hallie brought her grandmother out at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. I had asked her to. I wanted the grandmother to see it before it was finished, so it would feel like hers too.

Her name was not something she wanted made a fuss about. She told me to call her Grandma like everybody else, and so I did.

She came out of Hallie’s car slowly, gripping the door frame, and Hallie set the walker in front of her.

Grandma looked across the pasture at the chairs and the oaks and the arch, and she did not say anything for a long time.

Anton had thought of the walker before I had. On Friday morning he laid a path of plywood sheets from the gravel drive to the front row, so the little wheels would roll instead of sinking in the grass.

He had screwed them together at the seams so nothing would tip.

Grandma rolled along it slowly. Hallie walked beside her with one hand on her back. I walked on the other side.

When she got to the front row, she sat down in one of the white chairs and looked up at the oak for a long time.

The light was doing what it does in October, coming low and gold through the leaves.

“I got married in the county courthouse in 1958,” she said. “My husband wore his Army uniform because it was the only suit he had. I wore a blue dress I’d made from a pattern. We had a cake from the bakery and that was all.”

“Hallie told me,” I said.

She reached over and took my hand. Her hand was cool and very light, like holding a bird.

“Honey,” she said, “if I’d had a place like this, under trees like these, I’d have wanted to marry here too.”

I could not answer her. I held her hand and looked at the oak and let her be the one who did the talking.

“Don’t you go thinking this is second best,” she said. “I’ve been to a lot of barns. This is better than a barn.”

Hallie was standing behind her with her hand over her mouth. Frieda had gone back to the tables and was pretending to straighten something that was already straight.

What Roland Saw on Friday

All day Friday, Roland’s truck sat in front of his house across the road. A few times I saw him come out onto his porch and stand there with his coffee, looking our way.

He could see everything. The chairs going into rows. Wendel’s tractor. The church trailer. The arch going up. My sisters walking the pasture with a bucket.

Around four o’clock Anton walked across the road. I watched him go. He walked up to his brother’s porch and stood at the bottom of the steps.

I found out later what he said. He did not ask for the deposits. He did not ask for the barn. He asked for one thing.

“Our chairs are in there,” he said. “The white ones Margo bought. Let me get them for tomorrow. I’ll have them back by Monday.”

Roland looked at him for a long time and said no. He said the chairs were part of the barn.

He said if Anton wanted to take things out of the barn, he could go see somebody about it.

Anton said, “All right,” and walked back across the road. He did not tell me about it until Saturday night. He said he did not want me carrying it into the wedding.

Saturday Morning

Saturday came up clear and cool. It was sixty-one degrees at seven in the morning, with a light wind out of the north, and the forecast said seventy-eight and sunny for the afternoon.

The restrooms came on a flatbed at eight. Two of them, the nicer kind with a sink, at one hundred eighty-five dollars apiece for the weekend.

Frieda paid for one. Ilse paid for the other before I could stop her.

The caterer came at ten. It was a husband and wife from Stonewall who had done barbecue at a dozen of our barn weddings, brisket and sausage and potato salad and pinto beans.

They set up under the second-biggest oak.

When the wife saw where they were, she put her hands on her hips and looked up into the branches.

“Margo,” she said, “I’ve done two hundred weddings, and I’ve never served under anything this pretty.”

Anton’s power box was on the big oak by eleven, mounted on a post, not on the tree.

He would never put a screw in one of those oaks. He tested every outlet twice with his meter and then a third time with a lamp.

The band came at one. Three men and a woman fiddler, all of them past sixty, who played old country and Texas waltzes.

They set up on a sheet of plywood Anton had laid at the east edge of the trees.