29. Jacob
— ? —
Jacob
I sat in the booth last night for two hours.
She didn’t come. I didn’t think she would, not yet, not with everything still unsettled between us, not with Zeke’s name in her mouth when she talked about the benefit. But I sat there anyway, because that’s what I said I’d do, because showing up is the only thing I know how to do right now.
Sue brought me a second coffee around seven-thirty without being asked, and it was hot, and she didn’t say anything about it, and neither did I. Two weeks ago she wouldn’t have poured me water if I was on fire.
Tonight the whole town is in the church parking lot behind Sue’s.
I get there early, before the crowd, because I want to see the setup before everything starts. Want to have a corner picked out before I have to watch her walk in on another man’s arm.
The lot is bigger than I remembered, or maybe it just looks bigger with all the tables set up end to end down the middle of it, paper tablecloths weighted down with mason jars full of cash and checks.
Each jar has a family’s name written on it in marker.
Families that lost roofs and fences and barns, that are still living with tarps and temporary fixes and the kindness of neighbors.
The band is setting up on a makeshift stage at the far end, three guys from the county over who play at every wedding and funeral and town event within fifty miles.
They’re running cables and checking microphones and arguing about the set list in that easy way musicians have, and the music is the only thing that matters to them.
Grills are smoking near the fence, the smell of barbecue drifting across the lot.
Coolers full of beer and soda are lined up by the drinks table, and somebody’s strung white Christmas lights from the fence posts even though it’s June and nowhere near Christmas.
The lights make the whole place look softer, warmer.
That’s what this is, I guess. A town helping its own.
I find my corner by the fence, near the gate where I can see everyone coming in.
It’s the same corner as the church hall, in every way that counts.
Back to a wall, a way out, nobody who has to walk past me.
I’ve picked this corner in every room in this county for thirteen years and I’m only now noticing that I always pick it.
I lean against the post with a drink in my hand that I’m not going to drink.
The sun is going down behind the feed store, and the first families are starting to arrive.
Kids running ahead of their parents, already spotting friends, already shrieking about whatever kids shriek about.
Old couples walking slow, arm in arm, nodding at neighbors.
Teenagers in clumps, too cool to look excited but here anyway, because there’s nowhere else to be on a Saturday night in a town this small.
I watch them come in and I wait.
Sue arrives with a carload of food and starts running the serving table, and every man in the lot is a private and she’s the general.
Mrs. Bellinger takes up position at a table near the stage, surrounded by women from the church who lean in to hear whatever she’s saying.
Mr. Bellinger finds Hollis and a few other ranchers by the beer coolers, and they stand there with bottles in their hands, talking about weather or cattle or whatever it is men talk about when they don’t want to talk about anything real.
Zeke comes in around six-thirty, alone, and my stomach clenches. But he just goes to the drinks table and gets a beer and starts talking to someone I don’t recognize, laughing at whatever they said, easy and relaxed in a way I’ve never been in my life.
Hollis finds me at the fence around a quarter to seven and stands next to me without saying anything and drinks half a beer.
Then he says, “She coming?” and I say, “With Zeke,” and he says, “Huh,” and finishes the beer and sets the bottle on the post next to my glass and walks off to find his wife.
That’s the most he’s going to give me and it’s more than I’ve got a right to.
I watch the gate. I watch the gate. I watch the gate.
She comes in at seven, on Zeke’s arm.
Blue dress. The same blue as her eyes, the same blue as the trim on the house on Elm Street, the same blue I’ve been seeing in my dreams for two weeks.
Her hair is pinned up off her neck, a few pieces coming loose already, catching the light from the Christmas lights strung across the lot.
She’s wearing the small gold hoops I gave her that first Christmas, and they catch the light when she moves her head.
She looks like the thing every one of these people came here for, and it hurts to breathe.
Zeke says whatever he says and she laughs, her head tipping back, the loose pieces swinging, and I have to put the glass down on the fence post before I break it in my hand.
She hasn’t looked at me. She’s working the crowd the way she works every room, moving from table to table, hugging Sue, kissing Mrs. Bellinger’s cheek, letting the postmistress hold both her hands and tell her what matters to her.
Sunshine. Drawing everyone toward her the way she’s always done, without trying, without even knowing she’s doing it.
And I’m in my corner, where I’ve always been. Watching.
I didn’t plan this. I want that on the record. I was going to stand here and drink nothing and watch her go home with Zeke, and I was going to be in the booth next Friday, and the one after that, and every Friday until she was ready or until she told me to stop. That was the plan.
I’ve been in this corner for two years. I was in a corner the night she walked up to me with two glasses of champagne in her, and I was in one at every potluck and parade since, and she came and got me out of it every single time, and I let her, and I never once walked to her.
Not one time in two years has she looked up and seen me coming.
Then Zeke says another thing and she laughs again, and I’m walking.
I don’t remember deciding to move. One second I’m at the fence and the next I’m crossing the parking lot, weaving between tables and stepping around kids chasing each other with sparklers they shouldn’t have. My boots crunch on the gravel. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
People are stepping out of my way. Not because I’m pushing through, I’m not, but because they see me coming and they know where I’m going and they want to see what happens when I get there.
Conversations are going quiet as I pass.
Heads are turning. I can feel the weight of their attention, the whole town watching Jacob Walker walk across a parking lot toward his wife.
The band stops playing. I didn’t notice when.
Zeke sees me first. His hand is on her elbow, light and easy, a friend’s hand. He looks at Ellie, not at me, and she nods, small, barely a movement, and he steps back. Not far. Just far enough.
“Walker.”
“Zeke.” I stop in front of them, close enough to touch her, not touching. “I need to talk to my wife.”
“One minute,” he says, and he stays where he can reach us, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes steady on mine. I don’t blame him. If I were him, I wouldn’t trust me either.
“Jacob.” Ellie’s voice is careful. Controlled. The voice she uses when she’s not sure what’s about to happen but she wants to be ready for it. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.” The words come out rougher than I mean them to. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I was going to stand over there and watch. And then you laughed, and I-”
The tables nearest us have gone silent. People are turning to look. I can feel their eyes on us, the whole town waiting to see what happens next.
Let them. Every one of these people watched the chair stay empty. Every one of them served me cold coffee for it. If I’m going to say this, I’m going to say it where they can hear me, because they earned that too.
“I was wrong,” I say, and I say it loud enough for the next table to hear, and the one past that. “About everything. About what mattered. About you.”
“Jacob.”
“These people watched me fail you.” I gesture at the lot, the crowd, all of it.
“They watched me miss your birthday. They watched you sit in that diner for two hours waiting for a man who never came. They’ve been freezing me out for weeks and they were right to do it.
” I hold her eyes. “They deserve to hear me say it.”
Silence. The whole lot, silent, except for the hiss of the grills and the distant sound of a car on the highway.
“I was so scared of loving you that I pushed you out of your own marriage. I had the best thing in this county and I put it on a shelf and went to work because work was easier than feeling things.” My voice cracks and I keep going, because stopping isn’t an option, because I’ve come this far and I’m not turning back now.
“You are too good for me. Everybody here knows it. They told me the day I put a ring on you and they were right.”
I reach for her hands. My shoulder pulls where the colt caught me four days ago, the bruise still livid under my shirt, and I see her eyes flick to the way I favor the movement, see her register what it means. But she lets me take her hands anyway, and that’s enough. That’s everything.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking you to forget any of it.
I’m asking you to let me prove I can be different.
Not with words. Every day. In front of all of them.
” I take a breath. “I love you, Ellie Walker. Since a wedding two years ago and a woman with two glasses of champagne in her telling me I looked like I was at a funeral. I’m never going to stop, and I’m not going to be quiet about it anymore. ”
The parking lot holds its breath.
Zeke moves first. He looks at her, and he nods once, and he steps back into the crowd and doesn’t come out again.
I know what he said to her on that porch.
She told me in the doorway of Elm Street, flat, the way you tell a man what he needs to know when he doesn’t get a vote, and I sat with it for two days.
A man who’d say that out loud and then step back for me has done a harder thing tonight than I have.
I’ll owe him for it, and I’ll never be able to say so, and he’ll never ask me to.
Ellie looks at me for a long moment. Her hands are still in mine, warm and steady, and her eyes are bright with tears she’s not letting fall.
Behind her I can see Sue with a serving spoon in her hand, not moving.
Mrs. Bellinger with her hand over her mouth.
Hollis with his hat off, which I’ve seen him do in church and at two funerals and nowhere else.
Then she closes the distance and kisses me.
The lot erupts. Cheering, whistling, Sue shouting from the food table, somebody’s dog barking at all the noise.
The band starts up again with a song that might be about love or might be about beer, I can’t tell and I don’t care.
There’s only her, in my arms, her hands fisted in my shirt, and she doesn’t intend to let go.
“Take me home,” she says against my mouth.
“Which one?”
She pulls back and looks at me, and she smiles.
“Mine.”