Chapter Twenty-One
The Chapel in the North Pasture; The Long Yard at the Foot of the Kitchen Garden
The chapel in the north pasture had stood closed for three years. The white moss rose at the south wall had been unpruned across three winters. The bell in the small square belfry had hung silent across the same.
On the morning of the nineteenth of October in the year of the Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, the bell rang for forty minutes before the service.
The pews held twenty if they were friendly.
They were friendly.
Ben walked his daughter up the pine aisle at ten.
Alice carried a small posy of the last moss-roses tied with three sprigs of late mountain sage in cream linen ribbon.
George stood at the lectern with his hat in both hands and the back of his ears going a shade redder with every step Alice took along the aisle.
The vows were simple.
The circuit preacher had come up from Helena the night before and was staying at Inga’s.
He kept to the small black book his own father had used.
Alice answered with the bright yes she had been holding ready since the Sunday at the corral of the cuff and the shirt.
George answered with the half-broken yes Alice had been waiting twelve months to hear him make.
***
The trestle tables had been set under the cottonwoods at the foot of the garden two days earlier.
The Ladies’ Aid had ridden out at noon with covered dishes.
Mr. Pratt and his brother and the boy who was now Ben’s deputy had set their stands at the porch step.
The first slow waltz of the afternoon had begun.
Wade came across the yard at twenty past four.
He set his hat aside on a stump by the porch and unbuttoned the top button of his good coat in the slant of the late sun.
He stopped at the corner of the trestle table where Zoe stood with a half-full glass of lemonade and a small plate of seed cake she had been carrying for the better part of fifteen minutes without ever quite getting around to eating.
“May I, Zoe?” he asked, holding his hand out to her over the corner of the table, palm up.
It was the same hand he had set on the pine at the kitchen on the night of Bonnie’s letter.
She set the glass down on the linen and the plate beside it. She placed her gloved hand into his.
In the center of the yard, they took the waltz at the pace Mr. Pratt had set.
Wade set his other hand at the small of her back over the dove-grey wool of her dress.
The late October sun had begun to slant down through the cottonwoods in narrow gold ribbons. The smell of mountain sage from the herb bed and the warm crust of Inga’s apple cake and the cold edge of evening coming down off the Bridgers came up between them in the warm yard.
“Zoe—”
She lifted her face the inch the dance let her.
Mr. Pratt was on the slow-turning passage his brother liked best. Wade had stopped the step entirely. She drew a breath in against the front of his good coat and let it out unevenly.
“Bock!”
The small triumphant voice came up at their elbows.
Wade, for the count of half a second, kept his eyes on hers and his hand at the small of her back and the next word at the front of his mouth.
“Bock,” the voice insisted, louder.
He looked down.
Sadie was at his elbow.
Henrietta was held out in front of her in both arms—cream linen ribbon askew, ceremonial dignity rumpled, beady black eyes fixed on Wade in the manner of a hen kept past the limit of her patience.
“Uncle,” Sadie announced, her chin lifted firm at the level of his coat button, “Henrietta has been waiting on the afternoon petting. She has been patient. She is starting to take the wait personally. I require you to attend to her now.”
Mr. Pratt played on.
Wade drew a careful breath in.
His eyes went down to the hen, up to Zoe, and back to the hen.
“Your timing is uncommon, sweet girl,” he answered, the dry edge gone uneven.
“So I have been told.”
A small, helpless laugh broke at the back of Zoe’s throat. Her hand came up to her mouth too late to catch the first sound of it.
Wade, with one hand still at the small of her back, the other obliged by family duty to come down and rest briefly on the head of an affronted hen in a cream linen ribbon, looked at his niece in the late October light of his father’s yard, and the laugh that came up at the back of his own throat was the second laugh of his thirty-fourth year.
Henrietta was petted.
She accepted it with the affronted dignity of a hen kept past her patience and prepared to forgive, on this one occasion only.
Sadie carried her back across the yard at a processional pace.
Mr. Pratt began the slow-turning passage for the third time in honor of his brother.
***
The fiddle band closed the last set at twenty past nine.
Ben had carried Sadie up the stairs an hour earlier with Henrietta tucked under one arm and the apple cake plate in his free hand.
George and Alice had ridden out across the creek with the lamps lit on the wagon.
The Ladies’ Aid had taken the covered dishes home along the long yard one at a time. The trestle linen had been folded.
Zoe stood at the south window of the small bedroom upstairs.
She had set the lamp on the dresser. Her bonnet was off. Her hair was down. The dove-grey dress had been hung at the back of the dresser door for the night.
Wade was on the porch step below.
She could hear him pull the screen door shut at last, and his boot on the third board, and the small, low whistle he gave the dogs at the corner of the porch.
The dogs did not answer.
Job had answered him at the corner of the porch on every other night for five weeks.
Zoe’s hand at the window sash went still.
A second whistle came up off the porch. A long beat passed.
Down across the south pasture by the bend in the creek, one of the bays at the corral let out a hard, short whicker that had no place in the still cold of an October night. The lead cow’s bell down along the creek path chimed once, sharp, and stopped at the second strike.
A grey shape moved at the fourth post from the corner of the south fence under the cottonwoods.
Wade’s boot stopped.
Zoe’s hand at the window pressed flat against the cold glass.