Chapter 20. The Wedding Friday
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover
The sky was cloudless, the temperature about seventy, and the air full of the promise of spring. Since before Christmas it had been cloudy more often than not and in January there had been almost three inches of rain, with still more the first few days of February. So much winter rain was unusual and seeds that had lain dormant for years were sprouting, soon to bloom. Today, February 4, was the warmest of the young year.
In the past two days Arthur had written only a few phrases in his white notebook; he knew that his work on The Healing might stop at any time, might even have stopped already. He would certainly not write today, he thought, balancing as best he could in his chair in Aranada’s van as she turned toward Sanctuary Cove where he was to officiate at Stephen and Carol’s wedding. In the car were Arthur, Aranada and her sister Lulu, Lee, and Detroit Squint. Detroit passed a bottle of his homemade cranberry-fig wine to Arthur, who sipped from it and handed it back as Lulu passed him a bowl of Colombian. He took only one hit, not because he was sparing his lungs but because he knew that if he took two he would probably have to bob, weave, and lean on his knees throughout the wedding ceremony.
Arthur had been able to marry people legally since a friend had sent five dollars and the appropriate coupon to the Church of Life in 1971, but this was to be his first (and final) exercise of the power. Last week Bess had gone clothes-shopping with him. Tucson's thrift shops were a bargain-hunter's dream, but Arthur was no shopper and their quest had been a failure; Bess had returned by herself and bought him the white ruffled western shirt and black string tie he was wearing now. He also had on mismatched socks, his pale-blue-and-white ski cap, and the not-in-Kansas-anymore blue apron. "Are you going to wear the cap?" asked Lulu, implying by her tone that doing so was a bad idea. He took it off and threw it between his feet on top of his wedding script; his unbound hair reached several inches past his collar and he would wear the hat to hold it in place if there were wind; regardless, he'd wear it to shield his brow from the sun, but he didn't bother saying so.
He felt pleasantly nervous. Stephen and Carol had asked him to marry them the November night on which they had returned to Tucson, the night of the day Arthur had confessed his unhappiness to Lee and then gone alone to the Street Fair. He and Lee had been in bed intermittently crying and reassuring one another when a knocking at the kitchen door had interrupted them; it had been followed by more knocking, then by the sound of the door opening.
"Jeeziz Christ," Stephen had said, emphasizing and elaborating the first and third syllables. "Are you in there?" Carol had called.
“We’re here,” Arthur had answered, glad to see his friends. “Hi you two,” Lee said, pulling up the bedspread. The timing of the interruption seemed inconvenient but on the whole each welcomed it. Carol sat on the bed and Stephen gripped and leaned on the chain from which Arthur's overhead trapeze hung.
"We're getting married," Stephen said.
"Egads," said Arthur. "And better!"
"We want you to marry us," said Carol.
"That's gnormal," said Arthur, pronouncing the hard g.
Marriage was not his favorite institution and he wouldn't have chosen himself to officiate. He knew that what they wished to do was swear fealty to one another but wondered exactly what the marriage oath meant to them; he doubted he would specifically ask unless prompted to. The four friends had talked for an hour and, when Stephen and Carol had left, Lee and Arthur, both happier and more at ease than they had been, had returned to love making. In the van on the way to the wedding, Arthur thought about him and Lee and then about Stephen and Carol, with whom, indeed, he had had no in-depth conversation about meaning and marriage. He leaned back in his chair a moment but right away his field of vision began to go white and he leaned forward onto his knees. He might bob and weave through the service in spite of his moderation.
The van turned off the paved road onto dirt. Saguaro cactuses abounded, all swollen big from the recent rains; many were multiple-armed, more than 100 years old, and 25 feet high. Grass grew between the saguaro; it had grown everywhere in the Tucson Valley one hundred years ago, before the cattle had eaten it and, the over-grazed land no longer able to hold water, the five rivers that for millennia had flowed here all year round had dried up and turned to washes. Sanctuary Cove had been sacred ground long before the cattlemen arrived. There was now a chapel and outdoor altar that were faced by several up-mountain rows of building-block seats that served as pews. Behind the pews the rise got steeper and then the canyon wall rose vertically for several hundred feet. Every few minutes a bird or animal would call from the higher ground; beyond the near heights were farther higher heights. Other cultures had worshiped here, and others still some day would. The altar was a large reddish rock that rested on a low concrete pedestal on which Arthur could circumnavigate the altar and do spins. He cried out with pleasure when he saw it as he bounced up the path. Maybe he had been a good choice as marrier.
Fifteen minutes later Carol and Stephen arrived, talked briefly to other late comers in the parking lot, and started across the stone-lined bridge and up the path through the desert gardens that separated them from the altar. Arthur had foregone cross-examining them, but he had asked them a month or so ago why they were marrying; he had still hoped that today he would say something about marriage and didn't want it to be in blatant conflict with their views. Carol, speaking in front of Stephen, had promised then to deliver their vows to him a week before the wedding, so he would have time to prepare his introduction.
When they had not had the vows ready, Arthur had been relieved. He liked it that part of his function seemed to be to keep the pressure low, not prod but give room. It was a role he could perform, and the closer the nuptials had come, the more relaxed he had felt about his responsibilities. But, too, he had known the wedding had to be perfect, was no casual affair: Stephen’s mother had come to attend from Washington and Carol’s parents from Colorado; Carol had worked weeks on her dress. His own role notwithstanding, it was a real wedding and mattered. He would be disappointed when he noticed, years later, his failure to describe Carol's gown in The Healing; the writer he was wished, not for the first time, that he were more observant.
Arthur turned one hundred eighty degrees on his paved slab and looked toward Stephen, Carol, and the others who had paused on the path below the altar. They heard the buzz of his chair, looked his way, and waved. His script was on his legs and he intended to read his part, though he knew he would also have to ad lib. Stephen and Carol reached the top of the path and, accompanied by Uncle Dave (in from Alaska to play his role), came to the altar; the others who had been with them took seats on the cinder-block pews. From the mountains high above, the people below looked alien and insignificant, but the spirit of the cove hooted a welcome that floated down to them.
"Okay," said the Rev. Randall, removing his eyes from Fawn Belcher and his thoughts from the scene on the last page of Elmer Gantry where the preacher, beginning a new life with a new congregation, eyes the pretty ankles of a choir girl as he launches into his sermon, "we're here because Stephen and Carol are getting married today. Now what we're going to do is, first, Dave," and he nodded to Uncle Dave, who nodded back, nervously and seriously, sharp-eyed behind his full black beard, "is going to read a couple of excerpts from On the Road by Walt Whitman, and then any one of you who wishes can say anything you want, positive or negative"--it occurred to him that it wasn't necessary to invite negative commentary--; "then we'll get right to the vows and after Stephen and Carol are married we'll form a circle, hold hands, and Lucia will lead us in prayer and meditation.
"Dave?"
The drama unfolded. Arthur liked the smallness of Uncle Dave's voice in the vastness of the canyon. He also liked that Stephen and Carol, from Washington and Colorado respectively--Colorado, to Stephen, being "Back East"--, were using words written by an east-coast poet. When Dave finished, Arthur again faced the congregation. "Does anyone have anything they'd like to offer now?" he asked, knowing almost surely that no one did. "Positive or negative?" He’d said it again! Well, too late to unsay it now. He looked at Detroit Squint, who shook his head and looked innocent.
Arthur read the lines he had been given and Stephen and Carol spoke theirs; he admired how skillfully the memorized text each recited asserted the other's individuality even as it affirmed and celebrated the couplehood they were formalizing. As the principles exchanged rings, intricately fashioned and bearing esoteric symbols of their choosing, first Stephen, then Carol, quoted Whitman and was answered affirmatively:
"I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"
Arthur had puzzled as the date approached on the proper way to declare his friends married. He couldn't talk himself into, "You came here man and woman; now leave, husband and wife." He knew he could not say, "I pronounce you," which he felt emphasized the power of the “I,” not the marrying. He could hardly say, "By the power vested in me I now pronounce you," since the power vested in him by his mail-order certificate seemed of rather a low order.
"You're married," he said with a broad grin.
Lucia came forward. Everyone came forward. Stephen and Carol held hands facing one another as the others formed a circle around them and joined hands and bowed their heads; their silence grew and grew, filling the canyon. The hooting call again came from above. A minute passed, and almost another. Then Lucia looked up and prayed aloud. The prayer ended:
"You are two persons; we pray that there will be one life before you.
Go now to your dwelling place, to enter into the days of your togetherness."
The words were an adaptation of an Apache prayer and it was imaginable the canyon and its hooting spirit liked it. The people liked it, and continued to hold hands; then Lucia broke the circle and it was done. The reception was wild.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover