Nickel Mountain

1

Callie Wells stood in what was normally the sewing room, just off the parlor. Both doors were closed behind her. She was wearing the old Welsh wedding gown, but she seemed hardly to know it, standing with her hands folded, looking out the window. The room, the weather, the round blue mountains in the distance all seemed to defer to her stillness. The house around her hummed like a hive, but Callie scarcely noticed that either.

It seemed to her the first chance she’d had to be alone in weeks. Every time she turned around there was something to be fitted for, some decision to make — where to put Uncle Russel and Aunt Kate (who were coming from Cleveland after all), what to do if the rings didn’t come from the place up in Utica in time for the wedding, how to get Aunt Anna to the rehearsal since she flatly refused to ride in Uncle Gordon’s truck. But it couldn’t be weeks, or anyway it couldn’t be more than two, because it was just two weeks and three days ago now that they’d decided.

Her father had come into the kitchen blinking like an owl, holding up his flannel pajama bottoms with one hand, scowling, cross enough to eat roofing nails, and Henry had said formally, holding her hand, “Mr. Wells, I’d like your permission to marry your daughter.” Callie had glanced up at him sideways and had seen again, as if it were a new discovery, how much she truly admired him, comical as he might seem to some, and she’d felt awe that he should be going through all this for her. He was painfully embarrassed, and scared as well, though he was older than her father. He was feeling, no doubt, as ridiculous as he looked — a great fat creature in steel-rimmed glasses, his ears pressed flat to his head as though he’d spent his whole life in a tight-fitting cap.

Her father said, “At two A.M. in the morning? You crazy?”

“I’m serious, Frank,” Henry said. All the house and the surrounding night seemed to echo his earnestness. He’s serious.

She’d broken in quickly, holding Henry’s hand more tightly, “Daddy, I’m going to have a child.”

His face went white, then red. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him, angry enough to murder Henry (but Henry could break her father in half as easily as Prince snapped hambones between his teeth). Her father began swearing but she broke in again, “Not by Henry, Daddy. By somebody else.” He just stared at her then, and then at Henry. Then he pulled out the chair from the kitchen table and sat down. His stubbly cheeks were hollow and there were shadows between his ribs. He chewed his lip and wrung his hands, tears washing down his nose and whiskers. After a minute he called her mother, and she came in at once — she’d been standing just behind the door — her plump white hands catching the bathrobe together.

She said, “Mother, we’re going to be married.”

Her mother’s face squeezed into a grimace and she started crying with a great whoop, splashing up her hands and running to her, falling on her, hugging her tightly and sobbing. “Oh, Callie! My poor baby! We’ve failed you!” Immediately Callie was crying too, sobbing her heart out. It must have been two minutes they cried like that. Then it came to her that Henry was there, and that they didn’t understand at all.

“Mother,” she said, “I love Henry. I’m happy.”

“Child. My child!” her mother said, and a new burst of sobbing overwhelmed her.

She felt a strange sensation: as if the floor were moving, shifting gently, carrying her somewhere, as in the old story, and telling her something. She accepted her mother’s tight embrace but felt unresponsive, separated in a way that in a moment there would be no repairing. Her mother felt it too, or realized that Callie was not crying now, that something had changed.

“Mother,” she said again, “I love him.”

After a moment her mother drew back to look at her, trying to read her face like a word left by Indians. She said, “Love, Callie! You’re only seventeen years old.”

Callie said nothing.

Her mother was baffled; grieved and frightened, but more than that, filled with an emotion too deep for separation into grief and fear: as though Callie had gone down to a small boat at night, and her mother stood on a towering ship that was drawing away and could never turn back. Without words, Callie knew — with a sinking feeling — that her mother could never know for sure — anymore than she could know of her mother — that she was happy. For the first time now, her eyes still baffled, Callie’s mother turned to look at Henry. She stared as if she’d never really noticed, in all her years, that he was grotesque. He endured the look in patience like an elephant’s, an enormous hulk of misery, his hands folded behind his back, huge belly thrown forward, his head slightly tipped and drawn back a little. (Could she see that, inside that suit like a mortician’s, he was a gentle man, and a good man besides?)

Her father said, “This calls for a drink!”

Everything called for a drink, to her father. Her mother said, “I’ll put some coffee on.”

“Hell,” her father said, “it don’t call for coffee. Damn coffee, that’s what I say. Is that what you say, Henry?”

Henry smiled, showing his overbite. “Mmm,” he said, noncommittal.

“Don’t curse, Frank,” her mother said.

“Right,” her father said. “Fuck cursing!” He got out the Jim Beam and two of the painted glasses from the gas station and some ice. He was so nervous he could hardly get the cubes from the metal tray. He waved Henry to a chair and opened the bottle.

Her mother went over to the stove. When she’d turned on the butane under the pot she looked around, horrified, weeping again. “I forgot to say congratulations!” She came back to Callie and hugged her as tightly as before, and now once more both of them were sobbing, but happily this time, Callie anyway, her mother still undecided.

“Congratulations, you two!” her father said, exactly like someone on television. He stood up and reached over to shake Henry’s hand, his other hand clutching the pajama bottoms.

They’d sat up all night after that, talking, her father and Henry drinking whiskey, she telling her mother how happy she was, and looking fondly at Henry (growing more and more erect and dignified as the drinking wore on, smiling more and more foolishly, his speech increasingly labored and solemn — her father’s, too). She had wanted to shout, Oh Mother, look at him, look at him! And every glinting glass and dish in the cupboards understood. But how could her parents understand it? What was important was unspeakable, both on her side and on her mother’s. And so instead they had talked about plans, and she had wondered, Is that what everybody does, in every marriage. She and Henry had meant to be married by a justice of the peace, but her mother insisted on a wedding in church. You only get married once, she said; a church wedding was a sacred thing; the relatives would be hurt. Aunt Anna would be the organist, because it wouldn’t do for her own mother to be organist at her own daughter’s wedding. Callie would wear white. “Mother, I’m pregnant,” Callie said, “I’m already beginning to show.” “People expect it,” her mother said. She’d given in to everything. It didn’t matter. In fact, she was secretly glad she’d be married in church. She’d said, “Henry, what do you think?” “Ver-y good,” he said, nodding, judgmental. “A ver-y Solomon cajun.” When dawn came and the robins started singing, Henry and her father were fast asleep, her father lying on his arms on the table, Henry sitting erect and placid, mouth open, like a sleeping child.

From that day to this she’d been running every minute. When they’d told Aunt Anna it was to be in two weeks, she’d looked instantly at Callie’s belly, her old eyes as sharp as when she threaded a needle, and she’d said, “Well, well, well, well.” Callie’s mother had cried as though the sin were her own. (Sin was the only word for it in Aunt Anna’s house, pictures of Jesus on every wall, sequin and purple velvet signs reading Jesus Saves and I Am the Way.) Then, to Callie’s astonishment, Aunt Anna’s wrinkled-up leathery face broke into a witchly grin.

But all the preparations were over, finally — the rushed-out wedding invitations, the fittings, the telephone calls, the far-into-the-night planning of housing arrangements for relatives and transportation to the church. All the relatives were assembled, mostly from her mother’s side, more Joneses and Thomases and Griffiths than she’d seen in one place in all her life. It was like an Eisteddfodd or a Gymanfa Ganu. Her father said you couldn’t spit without knocking down fourteen Welshmen. (Great-uncle Hugh had liked that. He’d slapped his knee and rolled it over and over on his tongue, getting it wronger every time he said it. Her father would be quoting it for the next fifty years, the way he’d been quoting for the last twenty-five, “Fool Ahpril, Bill Jones! Fly-horse on door-barn! Fool Ahpril!)

And so at last she could be alone. In half an hour Uncle John would drive her to the church, and there would be the last-minute bustle, the anxious fuss, the fear that every minute detail might not go perfectly, according to proper ritual. She thought: We should have gone to a JP and told them afterward.

In the old Welsh wedding gown she felt unnatural — false. It would be different if you were pretty, she thought. She’d been shocked when she’d seen herself in the mirror the first time, trying it on. The gown was scratchy and tighter than she’d expected. It was yellowed by time, yet, in spite of that, mysteriously pure, she thought; serene. But at the lace cuffs her wrists were bony, and her hands were like a man’s. With the veil lifted up her face showed angular and grim: She looked neither innocent nor gentle and wise, merely callow. She had said, “It doesn’t fit.”

“Don’t be silly, Callie,” her mother had said. “We just need to alter it a little, that’s all.”

She’d said frantically, “I mean, it isn’t right for me.”

Aunt Anna said, “Breathe in.”

When they had it pinned up, her mother stepped back to study her, and she smiled, teary, blind to how terrible Callie looked. And now her own tears came gushing. “Mother,” she said, “my feet are too big.”

“One wedding I played at, the girl tripped and broke her wrist,” Aunt Anna said.

“Mother, listen to me,” Callie said. “Look at me once.”

“Hush,” her mother said. “Callie, you look lovely.”

She had clenched her teeth. But she had given in, to the gown as to the rest. Soon it would be over.

It was a beautiful day. She stood as still as the glass of the window, with her hands folded, the veil drawn over her face. Across the road lay golden stubble where Mr. Cook’s wheat had been, a few weeks ago. Off to her right the land dropped sharply, falling away toward Mr. Soames’ diner and the lower valley, at the end of the valley gray-blue mountains rounding up into blue-white sky. It was pleasantly warm, a light breeze moving the leaves of the maples on the lawn. She watched the bakery truck slow down at the mailbox and turn in. A beautiful day for a wedding, she thought. She meant it to be a happy thought, but she couldn’t tell whether she was happy or not. Children were singing, around the corner of the house, out of sight.

Karen is her first name,

First name, first name,

Karen is her first name,

Among the little white daisies.

The song made her remember something. She had whispered to her friend that her boyfriend’s name was David Parks — knowing perfectly well the rules of the game, that all of them would now find out that Callie Wells liked David Parks — but when her friend turned and told the others, and when the whole ring of children began to sing it, their voices gleeful and merciless, she felt sick with shame and believed she would never dare look at him again. The memory brought a sudden, fierce nostalgia, a hunger to be once again and forever the child she could now see with fond detachment, loving and pitying her, laughing at her sorrow as once her mother must have laughed. For some reason the memory triggered another, one that was intimately related with the first, but she couldn’t think how:

Poor Howard’s dead and gone,

Left me here to sing his song. …

Panic filled her chest. It’s a mistake, she thought. I don’t love him. He was ugly.

2

All around the room — everywhere but in front of the closed doors and the window where Callie stood — the wedding presents were laid out for show on borrowed card tables covered with linen cloths. With the sunlight streaming in (burning in the great, red, antique bowl from Cousin-Aunt Mary, gleaming on all the silver plate, the silver candlesticks, the cut-glass napkin holders, lacework, china salt and pepper shakers, glass and china bowls, mugs, painted vases, popcorn poppers, TV trays, steak knives, wooden salad forks), the presents seemed too beautiful to be real. Like the gown, they had, to Callie’s mind, a serenity and elegance she could not match. They overwhelmed her — the hours that had gone into the crocheted antimacassars from Aunt Mae, the expense of the candlesticks from Uncle Earle, who had bought them, she knew, without an instant’s hesitation or so much as a fleeting thought of the expense: In all her life she would never crochet as Aunt Mae could, not if she worked at it week in, week out, and she’d never be as rich as Uncle Earle, or as calmly, beamingly confident of all she did. Why had they done it all? Over and over that question had come to her; not a question, really, an exclamation of despair, because she knew the answer, no answer at all: They had sent the presents — hardly knowing her, hardly even knowing her parents any more — because it was her wedding. She thought: Because brides are beautiful, and marriage is holy. Again and again she had watched them come down the aisle, transfigured, radiating beauty like Christ on the mountain, lifted out of mere humanness into their perfect eternal instant, the flowers they carried mere feeble decoration, the needless gilding of a lily too beautiful for Nature; and again and again she had seen them later, making their first formal visits as wives, the lines of their faces softened, their eyes grown shrewish or merry. How she had envied them, she the poor virgin, novice, barred from their mystery! She knew well enough what it was, though not in words. She knew it was not the marriage bed, was only feebly symbolized by the bed. They went up the aisle white forms, insubstantial as air, poised in the instant of total freedom like the freedom of angels, between child and adult, between daughter and wife, and they came down transformed to reality, married: in one split second, in a way, grown-up. It was that that the relatives lifted up their offerings to: the common holy ground in all their lives. But that common beauty would not be for her. Her marrying Henry Soames was almost vicious, an act of pure selfishness: she was pregnant, and he — obese and weak, flaccid in his vast, sentimental compassion — he had merely been available.

I’ll run away, she thought, standing motionless, knowing she would not run away. Tears filled her eyes. I’ll run away somewhere — to New York City, yes — and I’ll write to Henry later and explain. It’s the only honest thing to do. She closed her eyes, hurriedly composing.

Dear, Good Henry:

Forgive me for leaving you and causing you so much embarrassment and expense. Please ask all my friends and relatives to forgive me too. I hope I have not hurt anyone, and I know how disappointed. …

Dear Mr. Soames:

Miss Calliope Wells has asked me to tell you (since she is unwell. …

Because of the presents she couldn’t run away. And because Uncle Russel and Aunt Kate had come from Ohio, and Aunt Anna had altered the dress and was going to play the church organ, which she loved doing more than anything (and had once done beautifully, so people said), and Robert Wilkes had come all the way from the Eastman School of Music to sing “Because.” She slipped her hands up inside the veil and covered her face. In fifteen minutes Uncle John would be here.

She remembered sitting in the grass as a child, watching Uncle John at work. He was a carpenter, and the tools were like extensions of himself: He was one with the plane that glided down the pineboard, lifting a long, light curl of white; one with the quick, steady saw, the hammer that sent nails in cleanly at two blows, the wooden rule, the chalk, the brace and bit. When she tried, the nails would bend over cruelly, and Uncle John would smile. She’d fly into a temper, and he would laugh as though he and the old claw hammer knew a secret, and then he’d say kindly, “Be calm. Be patient.” She thought: Uncle John. He was old now, retired. His hands were twisted with arthritis. It was Uncle John who had brought her Prince when she was eleven. He was still just a puppy. He didn’t look at all like a police dog then. Furry as a bear that had not yet been licked.

She thought, fiercely, Of course I’m going to marry him. But Willard Freund was her own age, handsome and graceful: She saw him again in his white suitcoat at the senior dance, smiling at her with his head lowered a little, shy. Somewhere, surely, there was a man who was young and handsome and good as well, someone who would love her as completely as Henry did, and would make her heart race the way Willard did, by nothing but a smile. If she only waited. … The thought made her want to laugh bitterly, or, better yet, die. She would hate the child inside her. How could she help it?

But the maples on the lawn in front said, Be calm. In their heavy shade where the tables were, it would be cool. Always when there were family reunions, funerals, weddings, they would set up the tables there, as they had today, and cover them with bright colored cloths, and all the older women and some of the girls would work in the kitchen, and the men would play softball on the level space at the foot of the steeply sloping back yard, tromping down the clover, using burlap bags full of straw for bases. When Prince was young he would bark and chase them as they ran, or he’d steal the ball. (Uncle John had taught him to sit and stay.) Some of the women would play softball too, the girls and some of the younger wives. Uncle Grant was always the pitcher for both sides (smoking his pipe, wearing calf-manure-colored loafers and white slacks and a light blue cardigan sweater with leather buttons); Uncle Harris would be at third base, his suitcoat off, the striped suspenders tight-looking, and when nothing came his way he would stand there grinning, just like Bill, his jaw thrown forward as if crossly, stiff hair curling out from in front of his ears as her grandfather’s had done. Each time, some of the younger wives who’d played softball last time would not play this time but would sit on the porch with the older women, watching the children in the grass below and talking, laughing or complaining. When she’d hit her first homer, Uncle Grant had pretended to be indignant at her having connected with his pitch, and her handsome cousin Duncan had smiled as though he were proud that she was his cousin. Duncan was always the best of the players. If he missed a catch it was because he wanted to give you the run, or because one of the smaller children had grabbed hold of his legs. They made him bat one-handed, to be fair, but that was a joke; he would pop out a fly — so gentle that it seemed to float down to you on dove’s wings — to whichever of the younger kids hadn’t caught one yet, and if you missed the catch he would be out at the first base he came to that wasn’t being covered by a grown-up. They called him “the loser,” because every time he came to bat he would get himself put out, one way or another, and when he was at field he’d put nobody out except — he pretended — by accident. They razzed him and hooted at him and loved him: Useless as he was if you wanted to win, he was always the first one chosen. He was beautiful and good — he didn’t even smoke — and juggling three bats, gently and precisely popping up flies, standing on one hand, coins dropping from his trousers — and grinning, always grinning — he seemed to shine like an angel … or a bride. (When he’d brought the present by last night, he’d smiled again exactly as he’d smiled all those years ago when she’d hit that first homer, as though he was proud to be related to her. “Do I get to kiss the bride now?” he’d said, “—in case I come down with a cold sore?” She’d given him her cheek, blushing, and he’d kissed her lips and said, “Missed!” She’d pretended to slap him.) She thought of Henry Soames trying to play softball.

But, after all, her cousin Bill was no ballplayer, and she loved him as much as Duncan. They would sit in the room that had once been her grandfather’s study — this up at Pear Hill, the old family place — playing chess. He’d sit with his horn-rimmed glasses in one hand and would talk about books she would really like, he was sure. (She would promise herself faithfully to get them from the city library in Slater, but always she would forget the titles.) Bill was going to be a lawyer and maybe go into politics, like Uncle Earle. He was only twenty-two, but already he was a member of the steering committee for some organization that had something to do with Indians. He and Duncan were like brothers, and always it had been sad to her that she was younger. Even grown up they were as splendid as ever, “professionals,” her father said — the two prides of the family. (Her father, the family failure, in a way — he’d left off farming to work in a factory — was even prouder of Duncan and Bill than the rest of the family.) Bill had given her a subscription to the Columbia Record Club. When Cousin Mary Lou had said, “Who’s the cheap one?” fingering it, Callie had bristled with anger. Bill gave away money to every charity there was and probably some that had gone out of business fifty years ago, and one time he’d given Callie a book worth fourteen dollars, pictures of famous places. He gave presents because they seemed to him right, just like Uncle Earle. He would have given her the same present whether it cost him fifteen cents or a thousand dollars, practically. “That just shows how little you know,” Callie had snapped. Cousin Mary Lou had been hurt. And immediately Callie had seen that Mary Lou was right, everyone who didn’t know him well would think the same thing Mary Lou had thought: so that even the wedding presents weren’t hers, it turned out, but everybody else’s; she decided to put his present out of sight.

“You don’t really like me,” Mary Lou said, tears in her eyes.

“Don’t be stupid,” Callie said. “If I didn’t like you would I choose you for maid of honor?”

“Your mother made you do it,” she said. One of the tears rolled down her fat cheek toward the fold between her chins.

“Oh, really, Mary Lou!” She took her hand, feeling guilty (it was true, Mary Lou had been her mother’s idea), and she said, “Mary Lou, I feel closer to you than to anybody else in the world.” She was amazed, hearing herself say it; but Mary Lou believed it. If she didn’t like Mary Lou, she ought to. Mary Lou had hardly eaten a bite since the morning Callie had asked her to be maid of honor, dieting ferociously to look pretty for it. She hadn’t lost weight; she’d gotten circles under her eyes.

Mary Lou wiped her eyes and blew her nose and said, “I really was proud that you chose me, Callie. I always loved you more than anything, and I didn’t think you knew I was alive. Do you remember the time the Griffith boys threw stones at me and you came and caught my hand and we ran home?”

Callie gave her hand a gentle squeeze. She didn’t remember.

Mary Lou said, “I was four-and-a-half and you were six.” Suddenly she was weeping rivers. “Oh, Callie, I do love you.”

“Dear Mary Lou,” Callie said softly, standing thousands of miles away, shaky at the revelation. How had she not realized? And how was it that her mother had known? How was it possible that one could be so incredibly, selfishly blind? And so that night, busy as they were, they had talked for hours, or rather Mary Lou had talked, Callie listening intently — in secret feeling trapped and bored — as if the two of them had just got engaged, or as if she was catching up on the life of a friend after years of separation.

A long, low truck carrying a big orange machine that looked vaguely military passed on the highway in front of the house. It was time now, but still no sign of Uncle John. She heard her mother shouting into Aunt Mae’s good ear, in the front parlor, and then she heard Cousin Rachel calling in the children from outdoors.

She smiled to keep from crying. It was supposed to be the groom that ran out at the last minute, not the bride. (She saw herself slipping quietly out the cellar door — she could reach the cellar from the pantry without anyone’s seeing her — and she saw herself lowering the cellar door again gently behind her, then going down swiftly toward the haylot and the woods beyond, carefully holding up the train and raising the skirts of the wedding dress.) Henry Soames would not run out, of course. He would be there in the church coat-room now, sweating in his tight collar, pulling nervously at his upper lip, wiping his forehead again and again, nodding and smiling whenever anyone spoke to him, no matter what it was they said. Aunt Anna was perhaps at the organ already, playing the favorite old hymns very softly, dragging her feet a little on the pedals, playing slowly, slowly, scowling at the page with her mouth bit shut as though she had pins in it. The ushers would be taking people in, the friends of the groom on one side, the friends of the bride on the other. Robert Wilkes would be fitting himself to a choir robe. The Griffith boys and John Jones and Ben Williams — maybe even Cousin Bill and Cousin Dune — would be behind the church tying tin cans and shoes onto Henry’s car, and putting signs on it, or worse. Again Callie smiled. Henry loved that car, beat up and old-fashioned as it was. He loved it as much as Uncle Grant loved his cream-colored hardtop. When they came out of the church and all the people were throwing rice and confetti and she was getting ready to throw her bouquet, there would be the car, poor Henry’s pride, at the foot of the walk, pushed around from where he’d parked it so that it would be the first thing he saw when he came out. It would be fixed shamefully, all its square antique dignity mocked by streamers and vulgar signs (they wrote on one car, “Hot Springs by sunset”), and Henry would gape, having known all along it was going to happen, for all George’s caution, but still not prepared, deeply shocked, feeling as though a whole part of his life had been torn from him and trampled. He’d stand frozen, staring in disbelief and sorrow. And then what? she thought. And then he will smile.

The bakery truck was still outside, and around the corner, out of sight, the man was saying, “Lady, I don’t care who signs it, I don’t care if a two-days-old baby signs it, but when I check in all the slips are supposed to be signed.” Aunt Joan’s voice said, “Don’t you sign it, Priscilla. Never sign for merchandise till you’ve checked it.” The man said, “So check it. I’m stopping you?” Aunt Joan said, “There might be nothing inside, only rocks. He might be a thief that came here to steal the jewels.”

When Uncle John’s green Buick appeared (all at once, as if out of thin air, nosing tortuously into the driveway), she felt dizzy. The same instant there came a soft knock on the door and a child’s voice — Linda’s — calling her name. “Callie,” she said, “your mom says to tell you it’s time.”

3

When she opened the door, her mother and the bridesmaids and all the aunts who hadn’t left for the church were standing with their faces turned toward her, beaming. Prince got up slowly, with an old-dog sigh, and came over to stand at her feet. Uncle John was standing at the front door, watching too. When he saw her he took off his hat. No one moved or spoke for an instant (except the children, as indifferent to what was happening as Callie was unaware of their indifference) and Callie was overwhelmed by her sense of their mutual helplessness: They had done everything they could, had swarmed to her side as they might in a time of tragedy, some of them hardly knowing her, from Cobleskill and Rochester and Cleveland, Ohio, and even, one of them, California, bearing gifts that would make her house beautiful and give it its solid anchor in tradition, and they would join her celebration of the ancient forms — the ride to the church with her mother’s oldest brother, the lighting of the symbolic candles, the pure white runner now walked on, stained, her father’s words, signifying to all the world (she understood now for the first time, in alarm) that she had lost forever what she’d never realized she had. There would come the magical exchange of rings, the lifting of the veil, the kiss, and then Aunt Anna would play that organ maniacally, tromping the pedals, not caring how many of the notes she missed, for Callie (poor Callie whom we all knew well) had died before her time and had been lifted to Glory — and the rice would rain down (Uncle Gordon ducking, trying to snap pictures, shielding the expensive camera he’d bought for taking pictures of the flowers in his garden and the prize turkeys he raised for the Fair) — rice and confetti raining down like seeds out of heaven, numberless as stars or the sands of the seashore, shining like the coins that dropped from Duncan’s pockets — and then the symbolic biting of the cake, the emptying of the fragile glass (Uncle Gordon taking more pictures, frenetic, even George Loomis the eternal bachelor smiling, joyful, quoting scraps of what he said was Latin verse): They would join her in all this, yet could no more help her, support her, defend her than if they were standing on the stern of a ship drawing steadily away from her, and she (in the fine old beaded and embroidered white gown, the veil falling softly from the circlet on her forehead), she, Callie, on a small boat solemn as a catafalque of silver, failing away toward night.

I will love him, she thought. I don’t know whether I love him or not, but I will.

It was suspicious, now that she thought of it, that they’d left her there alone for half-an-hour, knowing where she was, surely having things to say to her but not saying them, waiting, gathered at the door: Not even one of the children had violated the room. Not even Prince. But now they were all of them talking at once, saying, “Callie, you’re beautiful, beautiful, an’t-it?” Saying, “Hurry, hurry! Just fifteen minutes,” and “Children, out to the cars! Quick about it!” And now Uncle John was beside her, giving her his arm.

Neither of them spoke on the way to the church. She sat very still, hands folded in her lap, looking out at brilliant yellow wheat stubble on hills pitched or slanting away into tree-filled glens where spring water ran and brightly dappled guernsey cows could go to drink or lie down in the heavy shade. They came to the maples and beeches of the slope, the nearer mountains bright with twenty shades of green (in a month it would all be gold and red), the higher mountains in the distance clean blue. They passed the little store — Llewellyn’s American Eagle Market — with its sharply pitched roof and long wooden porch where in her grade school days she’d played jacks or sat with her lunchpail eating sandwiches and black bean salad, sometimes going in to buy an Orange Crush with a dime she’d earned picking up sticks from the yard or with a handful of pennies that had spilled out of one of the thrashing men’s overalls. They passed the cottage-like house where David Parks lived once, the house crudely snow-fenced, set back from the road, shaded by pine trees and jutting out from the mountain’s bank like a granite boulder, and she remembered sitting in the swing in her yellow dress the day of his birthday party, shyly watching his older sister Mary holding hands with her boyfriend from Slater. Uncle John slowed down, pointing up into the woods with his bent first finger, and she saw a deer. She smiled. It was a lucky omen. And then the church steeple came in sight, and then the whole church, white and old-fashioned, the paint peeling, the shingled roof newly patched with yellow-red cedar, and all around the church and all along the highway more cars than she could remember having seen in one place in all her life. (They’d be hustling Henry away from the window, because he mustn’t see her until the moment all of them saw her at the end of the aisle. George Loomis would be there beside him, looking him over, telling him he looked like Good King Jesus (for the Preacher’s benefit), and keeping one eye on where the car was hidden, actually believing he’d be able to protect it.) Everywhere she looked there were birds — orioles, robins, blue jays, waxwings, nuthatches, sparrows — bright as the red and yellow roses climbing the bank at the foot of the church lawn. The sky was bright blue, the bluest sky in the world, with just one white cloud, so precisely outlined it looked like a picture in a child’s book of fairy tales.

Uncle John nosed the car up the drive and right to the steps. There were dozens of people there, mostly friends and relations who bowed and waved when they saw her, a few conspicuously strange to her, queerly stiff and peculiar, friends or relatives of Henry’s. Uncle John said, “Here we are, Callie.” He smiled, and the smile summoned memories, so many in an instant that she couldn’t single one out, no more than she could have separated the rays of the sun: as if all her past happiness were poured together into one silver cup and the cup was overflowing. She said, “Uncle John,” all the meaning of her life flowing into a name, and he reached for her hand, formally. “Gras fyddo gyd â chiwi” he said. Grace be with you. Mary Lou and Susan Cooper came running to the car, Dorothy Carrico a little behind them, shining like all summer in their bridesmaids’ dresses, and Mary Lou reached through the window to hug her. She said, “Quick, quick!” then backed away while someone — one of the Griffith boys (how tall he’d grown!) — opened the car door and helped her out.

Inside, downstairs in the third grade Sunday school room, fiery with memories and sunlight from the casement windows, she stood patiently while they fussed with the dress and admired the bouquet, every few minutes shushing Tommy and Linda, who were to carry the cushions with the rings. She answered them all when they spoke to her, politely admired their dresses, but she felt as though she were not there. She felt weightless, mysteriously separate from the cream-colored walls and the dark oak doors, the windows with sunlight streaming in, the faded wine-colored plush chairs in front, the wooden folding chairs all around, the pictures of Jesus and Lazarus, Jesus and the children, Jesus praying. Beams creaked over her head and she could hear feet shuffling, voices talking, a rush of indistinguishable sounds, the music of the organ playing hymns, a steady murmur of sound that seemed to come from all directions like the sound of a waterfall heard from up close, but not loud, gentle, almost comforting, saying. … The feeling of weightlessness grew on her. She gave her mother her cheek to kiss and heard her whisper strange syllables, saw her wiping her eyes (all far away, far, far away, the kiss, the whispered words); she saw Linda and Tommy being led to the stairs, Mary Lou and Susan and Dorothy Carrico tripping away, blowing kisses to her; she felt Cousin-Aunt Tisiphone taking her hand. The hum around her began to die out. Then silence, complete and terrible as a silence in a busy dream. She heard the organ, suddenly loud as thunder in her ears, and her mind sang wildly, hurled back to childhood:

Here comes the bride,

All fat and wide!

And then she was standing at the rear of the church, her father beside her, taking her arm, and Dorothy Carrico was walking toward the candles and flowers and the blazing music and the bright reds and blues of the round church window; and now, without feeling, as weightless as the cloud passing over the mountain (out the window to her right, beyond the maples), she, Callie, was walking slowly, her father hopping twice on one foot to get in step. She thought, oblivious to the roar of the organ:

Soames is her second name,

Second name, second name. …

Henry Soames was watching her, dignified and comically beautiful, as all her own family was beautiful, and she walked slowly, having all eternity to taste the strange new sensation of freedom, knowing that she too was beautiful now, yes, more beautiful than the wedding gown, lighter, purer, immutable as the gown was not, as even the ceremony was not. Their faces surrounded her, looking up, shining as if reflecting the secret radiance thinly veiled, her total and untouchable, virginal freedom. In a moment, she would feel her weight again, her mere humanness, the child inside, but not yet. The church window said, All will be well. The white of the cloth on the pulpit said, Go slow. She watched Henry, more solemn and splendid even than her Uncle Earle when he won the election for Mayor, more beautiful than Duncan, looking up, tossing a child in his arms, or Bill with his hand poised over the chessboard, or Aunt Anna paring apples with speckled, swift fingers. Then suddenly the room was real again, full of organ music, the lead mullions of the stained glass window as solid as earth, the rich colors deep and heavy as stone, even the professional simper of the Preacher solidly real, as heavy and solid as iron chains and as heavy as the golden burning bodies and faces of the people around her — the people she knew and those she didn’t. Only she herself was weightless, and in a moment she too would be real again. Go slow, said the room. Be patient, said the trees. She could feel weight coming, a murderous solidity, hunting her.