Epilogue
Jonah
Four months later, the whole town walked the salt line at seven in the morning and then came to my wedding.
I'd like to note, before anything else, that I was ready at six.
"Jonah."
"Mm."
"It's six in the morning."
"I'm aware."
"The wedding's at four."
"I'm aware of that too."
Roach stood in the doorway of my own kitchen in his shorts, looking at me sitting fully dressed at my own table with my boots on.
"You've been up all night."
"Some of it."
"Jonah." He sat down across from me. "She's at Delphine's. Delphine has locked the door and Delphine's got a dog now."
"I know where she is."
"Then what's the boots about?"
I thought about how to say it and then said it the short way, which is usually the only honest way I've got.
"Last time," I said, "I got there early too."
Roach didn't say anything for a second. Then he got up, put the coffee on, and sat back down, and stayed there in my kitchen in his shorts until the sun came up, and never once told me it was going to be fine, and that is the entire reason that man is my brother.
Nobody planned it. That's the part I like.
Miss Ida said one thing at the Wednesday potluck in October — "well, if she's laying it again in the spring, somebody ought to at least walk it" — and it got out of hand the way things do here, and by March there were three hundred and some people on the boundary road at dawn in coats, walking eleven miles counterclockwise, most of them with no idea why.
Wrenlee walked it in the dress.
She'd fought about it for a month. Delphine wanted her in something new, on the grounds that a woman does not wear the dress she was wearing on the worst day of her life, and Wrenlee's position was, and I'm quoting: "That's exactly why."
"It's morbid, Wren."
"It's paid for."
"That's not your reason."
"No," Wrenlee said, "but it's a good one and you can't argue with it."
Delphine argued with it for three more weeks and lost, and then hemmed it herself, badly, and cried about it.
Her mother's. Let out at the waist by Miss Ida, who took the job without being asked, which in this parish is a formal apology and everybody understood it as one.
"You're going to get it filthy."
"It got filthy last time."
"Wrenlee—"
"Jonah, this dress has been to war," she said. "Let it have a nice morning."
I walked it with her. So did Preacher, who is sixty-two and did not complain once, and Odalys, who complained continuously and in detail and would have fought anybody who suggested she stop.
Around mile six Miss Ida caught up to us. Eighty-three years old, in church shoes, having refused four separate offers of a truck.
"Miss Ida."
"Jonah Pike."
"There's a truck at the culvert."
"There's a truck at the culvert," she agreed, and kept walking.
At mile seven she said, to Wrenlee, not looking at her:
"Your mama walked me home from a dance in 1968 because a boy had been ugly to me."
"I didn't know that."
"You didn't ask." She adjusted her hat. "I'm sorry about the flowers."
"Miss Ida—"
"I put them in the dumpster in the buckets," she said. "Seven years ago. And I've thought about it every Sunday since, because it was the only unkind thing I have done in this life that I did on purpose and enjoyed, and I have had a great deal of trouble with the Lord about it."
Nobody said anything for about a hundred yards.
"I'd like to do the flowers," Miss Ida said.
"Then do the flowers," said Wrenlee.
"Fine."
"Fine."
They walked the next four miles side by side and did not exchange one further word, and that, in this parish, is a reconciliation.
At mile eleven, at the marker stone, Wrenlee stopped and everybody behind her stopped too, three hundred people concertinaing into each other on a shell road at half past nine in the morning.
She got down on one knee in her mother's dress and put her hand flat on the ground.
Nobody asked what she was doing. That's the thing I'll remember about that morning for the rest of my life — three hundred people in a town that has been talking about this family behind its hand for a hundred years, standing there in total silence in the cold, waiting on a woman with her hand in the dirt.
She got up and wiped her palm on the dress.
"It's fine," she said.
And the whole road said, more or less at once, in a mumble, like a response in a service: "Good."
Roach officiated.
I want to explain the decision-making, because there wasn't any. Preacher's cousin does the weddings in Marrow Bend and has for thirty years, and he got shingles.
"I have a certificate," Roach said.
"You have a website."
"The website issued the certificate."
"Roach."
"Jonah, I've been ordained since 2019. Do you know how long I've been waiting? I've had a speech. I've had it in a folder."
He had it in a folder.
It ran eleven minutes. It contained a metaphor about a carburetor that did not resolve. At minute six he lost his place and said, out loud, into a microphone, "hang on, this part's better," and turned two pages.
He got choked up at the vows and had to be handed a handkerchief by Bear, who had brought three because Bear has been a different man since he went to church for surveillance purposes.
"Don't," Roach said, wetly.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking the singing thing."
"I was thinking about how you've got a beautiful soul," Bear said.
The vows were the two of us and about eleven words each, because Wrenlee had said, in January, "if either of us writes a paragraph I'm getting in a truck," and it turns out that's the kind of joke you can only make when it isn't one anymore.
Mine was: "I'm going to be where I said I'd be. That's all I've got. It's the whole thing I do."
Hers was: "I'm not going anywhere, and if I do, I'll tell you where, and if I can't tell you where, I'll take you with me."
Roach said, "Is that it?"
"That's it."
"I had a whole page on doves."
"Roach."
"Fine," he said, and turned two pages, and lost the room entirely, and got it back with the carburetor.
Everybody cried. All of them. Three hundred people who had walked eleven miles at dawn cried at a carburetor metaphor from a man in a borrowed jacket, and I'd like to see anybody do better.
The reception was the Wednesday potluck moved to a Saturday and expanded past all reason.
Odalys brought the pot.
Duckie brought a dish nobody could identify either, but for the ordinary reason, which is that Duckie made it.
"What is it?"
"It's a casserole."
"Of what?"
"Of casserole, Jonah."
Teodora ate a small amount of it and later described the experience, in her own words, as "instructive."
I need to be clear that nobody knows what is in that pot. It has appeared at every gathering in this town for two years. It has never been identified. It is always finished.
"Odalys."
"Jonah."
"What's in the pot."
"You've eaten it four times."
"I'm aware. What's in it."
"You'll want to enjoy your wedding," she said, and walked away.
Preacher, at my elbow, watching her go with the expression of a man who won something: "Don't. I asked in year one. There is no version of the answer you'd enjoy."
Delphine and Cane were arguing about the cake table. Teodora had located the only other person in the parish who reads Latin — an eleven-year-old — and was interrogating him. Duckie had made the coffee and there had been a formal complaint.
Bear made a toast.
Nobody asked him to. He stood up during the salads with a beer in his hand and the room went quiet the way a room does when a very large man stands up without warning.
"I ain't good at this."
"You're doing fine, Bear."
"Duckie, I will—" He stopped. Started again. "Nine months ago I went to church for surveillance purposes."
Somebody in the back made a noise.
"Y'all can laugh. Laugh." He waited them out. "I sat next to Miss Ida and we held a book between us, one side each, and I want to tell you what I thought about, because I've had nine months and I ain't been able to shake it."
The room went properly quiet.
"I thought: this whole town's been holding one side of a book for a hundred years," Bear said, "and the Thibodeaux women been holding the other side out in a field in the dark by themselves, and don't none of us ever look over."
He raised the beer.
"To Wrenlee. Who came back. And to Jonah, who I have watched stand in one spot for seven years, and who I love, and who I'd like to see sit down."
Everybody drank. Duckie cried. Roach announced that Duckie was crying. Duckie denied it in a voice that settled the matter.
And around six, when the light went orange and the noise got to the good part, Wrenlee found me by the door.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Notice anything?"
"You've got salt on your dress."
"Everybody's got salt on everything," she said. "No. Look at the room."
I looked at the room.
Miss Ida had her hand on Wrenlee's chair. Fontaine Bissette was dancing, badly. The Landrys, the Vachons, the Sonniers. Two hundred people, some of whom had spent seven years being sure about my wife.
"Nobody's talking about it," I said.
"Nobody's talking about it."
"Fontaine asked me about the roof."
"Fontaine asked me about the roof. He's been asking everybody about the roof. I think the roof is his contribution."
"It's a good contribution."
"It's the best one anybody's made," she said. "You know what a man in this parish says when he's decided you're staying? He asks you about your roof."
"That's not the same as forgetting."
"No," she said. "It's better. Forgetting's free."
Here's the last thing, and I'd give a good deal not to have to put it down.
Around eight, Delphine came and got me by the sleeve.
"Church."
"What?"
"The church, Jonah. Now, and quiet."
She'd gone back for the flowers. Half of them were still up there and she'd taken it on herself to carry them over, which is how she came to walk into the sanctuary at eight at night with the lights off.
There was a man in the last pew.
Back left. Aisle seat.