“Mavis has,” I said.
“Has she now?”
“Yes. Considerable.”
“And what does she think about it?”
“She’s in favor of it.”
“But you ain’t said nothing about yourself yet. Most times I believe it takes two to get married.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said.
“Well, now,” he said, looking at me. “Well, now. She’s in favor and you say you don’t mind. I guess that’ll have to do, won’t it?”
He kept looking at me. He had the usual white forehead and burnt cheeks and neck that all farmers have, but I could see where Mavis got her eyes. Finally he bent down over his knees and began to untie the laces in his town shoes.
“I don’t like these tie-up shoes,” he said. “Always make my feet hurt. The missus says that’s so I’ll keep awake in church. Most times she’s right too.”
He didn’t take his shoes off — I was still company as yet — but merely loosened the laces good, then he sat up straight again and in his own time blew his nose thoroughly, one nostril then the other, loud, and put the handkerchief back in his hip pocket.
“I don’t know whether you know it, Sanders,” he said, “but I was well acquainted with your father. I used to see him at farm sales. He was a good man, your father was. I don’t know your mother.”
“No,” I said. “She doesn’t go to farm sales.”
“I suppose not,” he said. “Well, now. About this marriage business — it sounds like Mavis has her mind all made up.”
I nodded.
“She’s like that. So I don’t see where it would do me much good to object even if I wanted to. Can you?”
“No.”
“I thought as much. Well, it’s nice having girls in the house. I believe I’ll miss that.”
That was all he said. We talked about wheat prices and farm futures afterwards. Then the women came into the parlor with us, and after a while Mavis and I excused ourselves and went outside to walk along the windbreak planted westerly towards a slight hill.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?” I said.
“What’d he say?”
“Weren’t you listening from the kitchen?”
“Yes, but I want you to tell me.”
“Well. He said I was a damn fool to want to marry any daughter of his. You’re too hardhearted, he said. Then he asked me if I had any intentions to speak of.”
“He did not.”
“Sure he did. ‘What are your intentions?’ he said. Go and ask him.”
“All right then, what did you say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say a word. I told him I didn’t have any intentions. Other than throwing you down in bed every chance I get.”
“You’ve already done that.”
“I plan to do it again. Right now.”
“Don’t be silly. They can still see us from the house.”
“Hell,” I said. “We’re as good as married already, aren’t we?”
“No,” she said. “But we will be. Now stop that and tell me what he said.”
THE ONLY interesting particular I recall now about the wedding was the thing that happened just afterwards. The wedding was over; we had promised our mutual I do’s; Mavis and I were coming down the church steps to get inside my paint-smeared car and away from all the thrown rice. People were gathered in two rows along the steps and sidewalk — her folks; my mother and her last husband, Wilbur Cox; Edith and Lyman Goodnough; a crowd of others, friends. We had just about reached the safety of my car when Vince Higgims, Junior, one of my drinking partners from the Holt Tavern, grabbed Mavis up in his arms and started to run with her. She still had that white dress on and that collection of stiff petticoats, all of which swooped up so high in his arms that you could see her garters and clear to Denver if you wanted to. Vince Jr. was about smothered. I believe his idea was to kidnap her, spirit her away so that I would have to come look for her. Which might have been funny, only Vince didn’t know Mavis enough. In no time Mavis worked one arm free and jammed Vince so hard in the Adam’s apple with her elbow that he dropped down cold like he’d been shot with both barrels. Her white dress and stockinged legs were all over him, the two of them sprawled out on the church curb, so that after they were eventually untangled somebody had to take old Vince over to Doc Schmidt to determine how much damage he had suffered to his throat. It turned out he was lucky; he just had to stay off solids for a week. Vince said it was enough to scare him off weddings altogether.
When I was sure he was going to at least be able to drink again, Mavis and I got in the car and drove off for the honeymoon. We went across the Continental Divide to Glenwood Springs on the Western Slope and stayed a few days in the great old Hotel Colorado, where Teddy Roosevelt had once spent some time, and we swam with the tourists and arthritic patients in the block-long hot pool that smelled of sulphur. Later we drove up the valley to Aspen and spent an afternoon and an evening amongst the wealthy summer crowd. Then we came home again to this house. Mavis was still working as a nurse at the hospital, but when she wasn’t changing bedpans or taking blood pressures she was remaking our house to please her, and I went back to farming and ranching, cultivating corn, baling hay, and cutting calves. It was nice coming in for supper and finding her still there every evening waiting for me. She looked good and cool and fresh after I’d been outside in the sun away from her all day. After supper we often had the Goodnoughs over to play Rook or went to their place, and about twice a month the four of us went to the Legion dances on Saturday night. Mavis and Edith got to be good friends. She could tell you some things about Edith that I can’t.
Then it was August 1967, and Mavis wasn’t working at the hospital anymore because she was eight months pregnant. Her stomach was swollen and hard, blue veined, tight. I could feel with my hand how the little beggar kicked and swam, did his half gainers and watery flips, like he was showing off for us inside his warm sac, like he believed he was nothing so much as a green frog cavorting for all the world in a horse tank. But I was a little concerned about it too. I knew at thirty-three that it was somewhat late for Mavis to be carrying her first baby, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She refused to let me worry. She had helped any number of babies get born at the hospital, and now she had all the confidence and all the equipment she needed to bear this one. I could stop worrying. So I did and we were both pleased about the prospect of having a little boy in the house. It would be a boy, we knew that. We were looking forward to it.
BUT AUGUST is also traditional Holt County Fair time, and 1967 was no different. It’s considered a big deal around here; everyone and his horse attends, able or not, one hoof in the grave or not. It gives us the opportunity — and the excuse too, I suppose — to visit with folks we haven’t seen for a year.
In the week before the fair is to begin the Lions Club rakes up the accumulated twelve months of trash at the fairgrounds; they burn the trash and the blown-in tumbleweeds behind the buildings, then they loiter in groups, eating Rocky Mountain oysters and potato salad and drinking beer from kegs. Meanwhile the 4-H kids in the county have begun to fit their steers for the judging by clipping the heads and ears of the animals and by ratting the tails into balls; the kids’ mothers and aunts and grandmothers choose their best bread-and-butter pickles for display; somebody begins to work up the racetrack with a disk for the horse races, and somebody else helps the stock contractor unload his bulls and bucking horses at the chutes across the arena from the grandstand. On the afternoon before it is all to begin the carnival people finally pull into town in their battered trucks. They’re usually a bad crew of greasy characters, appearing dog tired, looking as bored with it all as if they have seen it all, and maybe they have. Sweating and cursing, they establish the booths and rides in the fresh-mowed cheat weeds. So then it’s time. Opening day begins with a parade.