The Wedding Under the Live Oaks

Parking

The only place to park was the county road.

Our side has a deep bar ditch that a car will roll into if it gets too close.

Roland’s side is flat and wide, with a long grassy shoulder that runs along his fence for a quarter mile.

I thought about it for a long time Friday night.

I thought about asking the guests to park in our pasture, but the ground behind the house is soft and there is a wet spot that has swallowed more than one truck.

So I put it in the text I sent to Hallie’s family and the guest list. Park on the north shoulder along the fence. Walk across at the cattle guard. Wear flat shoes if you can.

I did not write that the north shoulder was Roland’s fence line. I did not have to. It was a county road with a county easement, and anyone could park there. It was the only safe place.

Four O’Clock

The first truck pulled onto the shoulder along Roland’s fence at about ten minutes to three.

It was an older couple from Hallie’s church. They got out slowly, the man in a pressed western shirt and the woman holding a casserole dish wrapped in a towel, as though nobody had told her the meal was catered.

They walked along the fence, past the front of the red barn, and crossed at the cattle guard.

Then more came. Pickups, mostly, and some sedans, and one big passenger van from a nursing home in town with three of Grandma’s friends inside.

They parked in a long row along Roland’s fence, nose to tail. By three thirty the line went past his front gate and down to the bend. I counted forty-one vehicles from the rise, standing there in my sage green dress and cardigan with the last white chair just set in its row.

Every guest who walked to the oaks walked past the front of Roland’s barn first. There was no other way to come.

They walked along the gravel shoulder, past the big red doors, past the brass padlock shining in the sun.

At about a quarter to four, Roland came out of his house.

He walked down to the barn slowly, and he stood in front of his own locked doors with his hands in his pockets.

He was wearing the same work shirt he had worn Thursday. I could see him plain from where I stood by the arch.

Nobody said anything to him. That was what I remember. This was a small town, and half those people had known Roland Schaal since he was a boy.

Several of them had danced in that barn at their own children’s weddings.

They did not stop. They did not scold him. A few of the older men nodded to him the way you nod to anybody you pass on the road. One of the women from Ilse’s feed store said, “Afternoon, Roland,” and kept walking.

That was all. They walked past him to the oaks, one after another, all one hundred forty of them, carrying their gifts and their folding fans and their grandbabies on their hips.

I did not go over there. I did not wave. I did not want him to think I wanted him to see. I only wanted Hallie to have her wedding.

At four o’clock by Anton’s watch, the fiddler started to play.