Mel's Arc

Chapter 29 of 36

Cross was safe at Ted's house, but Saturday brought a new problem. The wedding was at the barn, past the dance ground on Mel's land. Cross had to get there. Between the house and the barn ran the main road, and the Caldwell hands rode it every morning. One glimpse of the traveling preacher, and they would know where to strike. Mel found Ted saddling the brown horse before dawn. "We can't walk him down the road," she said. "They'll see the collar. They'll take him." Ted tightened the cinch. "Back way's too rough for an old man on foot. And your barn sits open. No cover for a mile." Mel looked at the road, gray in the early light. A wagon rolled toward the valley, wheels creaking. She knew that wagon. It carried linens to the old hotel with the false front and the shaded windows, every Saturday, same hour. The driver had eaten at her wedding table in the church square. He had stood with her. "The linen wagon," Mel said. "It runs the road every Saturday. Nobody stops it. Nobody looks twice." Ted followed her eyes. "You want to hide a preacher under bedsheets." "I want him invisible." Mel was already moving. She caught the driver at the fence line. He reined up when he saw her. She asked him plain, the way Cross had taught her to ask for the potluck. Not begging. Just naming the need. The driver looked back at the piled sheets. "Caldwells cut my brother's credit for less," he said. Then he spat in the dust. "My brother's a coward. Climb him in." They brought Cross out the back door, still buttoning his coat, red Bible under his arm. Ted helped him up into the wagon bed. The driver heaped folded linens over him until only a small gap remained for air. Cross's voice came muffled from the pile. "I've traveled stranger ways to a pulpit," he said. "Drive on." Mel and Ted rode ahead on the brown horse, slow, like any couple headed to town. Behind them the wagon creaked along the main road. A Caldwell hand passed going the other way. He nodded at the driver. He did not slow. The linens rode on, and the man beneath them said nothing. At the barn, the driver turned off the road and pulled the wagon behind the tin wall. Ted lifted the sheets away. Cross sat up, hair mussed, and swung down onto his own feet. He stood on the wooden floor where Mel would say her vows in three hours. "You have your preacher," the driver said, and climbed back to his seat. Mel breathed out. Every piece of the wedding stood inside these walls now. The dress, the food, the guests, the man to marry them. The Caldwells had watched the wrong road. Then she looked at Cross's coat, gray with wagon dust, and at the bare barn behind him. The guests would arrive in three hours to nothing set out. No benches placed. No cloth hung. She had won the preacher and lost the morning.