Myrtle, the school principal, would send one hundred sixty folding chairs. Cecil, who runs the veterans hall on the east edge of town, had twenty long tables and would deliver them himself, and did the young man have a flag? He did not. Cecil said the hall would see about that.
Opal had four hams in her chest freezer put by for Christmas, and said Christmas could wait. Vesta, a retired school cook, made the only wedding cake in the county Roone had never beaten. She asked for Friday night, two helpers, and every lemon in Pell County. Bev would bring rolls. The women from Saint Mark’s, across Cherry Street, a different church with a rivalry going back to a ballgame in 1974, said they’d heard, and they’d do the fried chicken. Hazel took the scalloped potatoes, Nell the green beans, Eula the coffee. Earl at the hardware store would string lights along the iron fence, and when Arlie told him it would be daylight, Earl said, “Then I’ll hang them anyway. She’ll want them in the pictures.”
By three I had a list of forty-four names. Nobody had asked me for a dollar.
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Lindy and I had two fights that night over napkin colors, which is what mothers and daughters fight about when they are afraid of something else. But under all of it was a quiet I had not felt in three weeks, the feeling of a heavy thing being carried by more hands than mine.
At ten that night Dolores called. “Chain’s gone around twice. Twenty-two women are taking prayer shifts, two hours each, midnight through Saturday. Weather, mostly. The forecast says rain.”
“Rain?”
“Sixty percent Saturday morning. Don’t you sit down and worry. That’s what the shifts are for.”
Friday was a blur of flour and folding chairs.
Cecil’s flatbed turned in at noon with twenty tables roped down under a tarp, and three men in veteran caps unloaded them on the grass like they were laying track. Arlie set the long serving line along the iron fence with a level from his truck. By three, Vesta and Bev had three cake layers cooling in the fellowship hall kitchen, and the smell of lemon was so strong it made my eyes sting.
I kept count. Eleven hams by dark. Fourteen pans of scalloped potatoes. Nine of green beans. Forty pieces of Saint Mark’s chicken, with forty more promised. Seventeen pies. Sixty dozen rolls. For one hundred forty guests it was more than twice enough, and I said so, and Hazel looked at me over her glasses.
“Verda, this is Pell Crossing. Whatever you think the number is, double it. Everyone will come, and they’ll all bring a cousin.”
At five, Sergeant Ben pulled up from Fort Campbell with two men from the squad and took off his hat when I came down the steps. “Ma’am, the squad took up a collection for the reception.” He held out an envelope. “It was going to go toward the party.”
I pointed at the churchyard, at forty women in aprons moving through it like they had done it all their lives. He looked a long moment. “Well, ma’am. We’ll put it toward something else.”
At nine that night, with the tables set and the stars coming out over the maples, I found Lindy and Harvey on the stone bench in the middle of the yard. They did not see me. I stayed in the dark under the fence, and I did not mean to listen, but I did.