Mel's Arc

Chapter 26 of 36

The guests were coming. The food was set. But two days before the wedding, Mel realized she and Ted had never once spoken their vows out loud. They had planned everything but the ceremony itself. She pictured the barn full and the two of them frozen at the front, not knowing when to speak or where to stand. All that work, and the wedding could still fall apart at the altar. Mel went to find Reverend Cross. He was in the barn, walking the wooden floor, testing each board with his boot. The stout old preacher looked up and grinned into his white beard. "Strong floor," he said. "It'll hold a lot of dancing." He had shown up on foot when every local pastor turned them away, and he asked for nothing. Mel trusted him more than any man the Caldwells paid. "We've never run through it," Mel said. "The vows. Any of it. I don't know how a wedding even goes." Cross set his worn red Bible on a bench. "Then we practice. Right now. Fetch Ted." Ted came in from the yard, wiping sawdust off his hands. Mel took her place beside him. Cross showed them where to stand, how far apart, when to face each other. He spoke his part slow so they could learn the shape of it. "Now you say yours," Cross told them. Ted went first. He looked at Mel and stumbled. "I take you... Mel... I mean, I promise..." He stopped. "I don't have the words down." "Neither do I," Mel said. Her mouth had gone dry. She had faced down a Caldwell hand in the square without shaking, but standing here, promising herself to Ted out loud, her voice would not hold steady. "Good," Cross said. "Better to shake now than Saturday." He made them do it again. And again. He fed them plain words to say and had them repeat each one until it came easy. Ted found his footing first. By the fourth try, Mel spoke her promise clean, without a break. They walked the whole ceremony end to end. The entrance, the vows, the ring, the last words that would make them married. Cross clapped once when they finished. "Now you know the road. Saturday you just walk it." Mel breathed out. The fear of the empty, fumbling altar was gone. They knew where to stand and what to say. The ceremony would hold. Cross gathered his Bible and grew quiet. "One thing," he said. "A traveling man hears news on the road. The Caldwells have been asking after me. Where I sleep. How long I mean to stay." He looked at Mel. "They can't stop the words. But they can try to move the man who says them. Guard me till Saturday, and you'll be married."