The Ceremony
Hallie came out of my house on the arm of her uncle, because her daddy had passed when she was small.
She walked down the gravel drive and across the plywood path Anton had laid for her grandmother.
Her dress was simple, white with long sleeves. She carried a bouquet of white roses and one sprig of cedar from the fence posts Anton had cut for the arch. She had asked for that herself.
Grandma sat in the front row on the aisle, in her blue church dress, her walker folded up behind the chair. When Hallie passed her, Grandma reached out and touched her granddaughter’s sleeve, just with two fingers.
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The pastor from Hallie’s church stood under the arch.
The groom was a tall young man who worked at the lumber yard, and he was crying before she got halfway up the aisle. He did not try to hide it.
The sun came in under the branches exactly where I had pictured it on Thursday.
It lit up the arch and the white flowers and Hallie’s veil, and for a minute everybody in those chairs was quiet in the same way.
The pastor said a prayer and read from Ruth, the part about where you go I will go.
Then they said their vows. Frieda was holding my hand on one side and Ilse was holding it on the other.
When the pastor said they could kiss, somebody in the back said “Amen,” and everybody laughed, and the fiddler went right into a waltz.
I looked across the road once, during the waltz. Roland was still standing there in front of his barn.
He had not moved. He stood there until the first dance was over, and then he walked back up to his house.
The Dance
They danced under the oaks until the sun touched the hill, and we sent everybody home in the last good daylight.
Grandma danced one slow song with Hallie’s new husband, leaning on his arm with her walker parked at the edge of the plywood. She did not dance long, but she danced.
Before she left, she found me by the cake table and took my face in both her hands the way an old woman does.
“Thank you for not letting me go to the courthouse twice,” she said.
I had not told her that was what I had been thinking. I do not know how she knew. Maybe Hallie told her. Maybe she just knew.
After everybody left, Anton and my sisters and I sat in four of the white chairs under the big oak while it was still light and did not say anything for a long time.
Wendel came back with his tractor and his trailer to help load the church chairs in the morning.