The Wedding Machine

by Beth Webb Hart

  Some days she’d like to leave him at the hospital for the nurses and doctors to deal with for a few weeks. Isn’t it terrible to think like that? She knows it’s not right, but good grief, she can’t help herself.

  Tomorrow she’d like to hand him over to the nurse and then make like she’s going to the waiting room to snip recipes from her cooking magazines, and the next thing you know she’d be halfway down I-26 to her cousin’s house in Roanoke, Virginia. Or maybe she could go to one of those weight loss spas in Arizona or drive to the airport and catch a plane to New York City, where she’d make her way to Rockefeller Center and stand outside the Today show studio, holding up a sign that reads, “Get well soon, LeMar!” before stepping back into the folds of the crowd.

  Just as she pictures the look on LeMar’s face while he reads the Today show sign on the screen in front of his hospital bed, Katie Rae and Marshall come around the mouth of the Ashepoo River and toward the dock. The wind pulls back her daughter’s thin dark hair so that it dances behind her like the streamers in a wind sock. Her intended’s arm rests on her back as she turns the boat around and eases up to the marsh bank.

  When Marshall scurries to the bow of the boat to grab the line, Kitty B. reaches out her hand, and he throws it to her. She tugs them toward the edge of the dock and ties the line tight as the dogs bark in delight.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Katie Rae says, looking toward the porch.

  Kitty B. looks back to see the rocking chair empty in the shadows of the autumn dusk.

  “Who knows?” she says, reaching out to help them out of the bobbing boat. “Maybe he’s run away.” Maybe he beat me to it.

  “No ma’am,” says Marshall pointing up toward the house, where LeMar teeters on the threshold with four of her mama’s old crystal flutes and a bottle of champagne.

  He nods his head in an invitation, and they walk across the yard toward him as Honey and Otis sniff each other and Rhetta bolts past them toward the porch, yipping at a high pitch as if she understands that the time has come to celebrate.

  Katie Rae follows suit and Marshall even breaks into a little jog on the way toward the sloping porch.

  Looks like we’re going to have a wedding. Kitty B. hopes to high heaven that Katie Rae doesn’t have her heart set on having it out here. This is a beautiful spot, but it would cost them a fortune to get the place in shape. The house needs a paint job something awful, and their yard is nothing more than holes of black dirt where the dogs dig and sniff and do their business.

  Now Otis and Honey chase each other around Kitty B.’s legs as if to round her up as LeMar embraces his baby girl and his future son-in-law in the center of the sloping porch. Kitty B. hears the cork pop, and she watches as it ricochets off the porch roof and lands in the browning azalea bushes by the steps.

  “Hurry up, Mama!” Katie Rae calls. “It’s time for a toast.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Cecil LeMar Blalock

  request the honour of your presence

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Katherine Rae

  to

  Doctor Roscoe Marshall Bennington, Junior

  on friday, the thirtieth of December

  two thousand and five

  at six o’clock

  christ on the coast cathedral

  charleston, south carolina

  and afterwards the reception

  at the home of the bride

  TWELVE

  Ray

  A barbeque in Jasper County does not mean hamburgers and chicken breasts on a fancy gas grill. Yankees call anything you cook outside “barbeque.” The word barbeque in Ray’s neck of the woods is a noun, not a verb, and it means a whole hog tied to a spit with chicken wire and rope and roasted in an outdoor oven, usually in someone’s backyard or some parking lot. And the fixin’s that must accompany it are baked beans, collard greens, white rolls, cole slaw, and rice topped with a sweet gravy made from the drippings and other unmentionables that the pack calls hash. Jasper folks sort of take the “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach with the hash. We don’t want to know what’s in it, Ray thinks, but it sure tastes good.

  Cousin Willy hosts a barbeque in honor of Ray’s birthday every few years in their backyard, and it’s always the same thing: a fifty-pound hog he buys from Marvin’s Meats that he cooks slowly on the charcoal pit by the dock. He’s been rotating the beast every hour since sunrise, and Ray has never seen him so excited.

  “Whatcha got up your sleeve?” she asked him as he and Justin shooed her out of the shed this morning.

  “You’ll find out,” he says, trying to conceal a grin. “Now go on and get ready for your shopping spree.”

  He’s even consulted with the gals on this party, and they’ve brought over red and white checked tablecloths for the tables he hauled over from his office. Hilda is out there right now putting out Miss C. and the cutest little old-fashioned ceramic piggy banks on the tables which R.L. has stuffed with sweet little arrangements of bright orange zinnias and black-eyed Susans and forget-me-nots. This is the one party that Ray stays out of, but she is thankful that the gals guide Cousin Willy with the decor, invitations, and the guest list.

  “I’ve only got one request,” she said to him a few weeks ago when he started making the birthday plans.

  “Name it,” he said as he scribbled down the menu on a legal pad.

  “Just don’t invite that Texas transplant, and I’ll be happy as a clam.”

  Cousin Willy scanned the guest list and found Vangie Dreggs’s name and address.

  “Kitty B. put her on here,” he said, and he squinted with concern.

  Ray’s stomach tightened, and she could feel the heat rising up and around her neck.

  “That’s because Kitty B. doesn’t see what I see.”

  “And what’s that?” he said. “You know Vangie’s gotten real involved with the civic life around here and the ACE Basin preservation, and it might just hurt her feelings, Ray.”

  “You mean you are letting her buy her way in too?” Ray picked up an old copy of the church bulletin in the mail pile and fanned her face. “I’ve told you before, the woman is bad news, and I’ve been around her enough now to know. She’s bringing strange ideas into the church and she’s selling old family properties to people from way off. Before long we’ll be surrounded by strangers and dark houses that serve as second homes that the owners will use once or twice a year. What kind of civic life will that yield, Cousin?”

  “C’mon now, Ray,” he said, his eyes turning soft on her. “It does a place good to freshen up the gene pool from time to time. You can’t deny that can you, sweet?”

  As she started to throw the bulletin at him, she saw Vangie Dreggs’s name at the top of the page of announcements. The Lone Star had joined the flower guild and the altar guild, and Capers had appointed her as the new head of the evangelism committee too. Under her committee title she had written a bold and capitalized blurb that said, “HEALING PRAYER REVIVAL DAY—JANUARY 5TH. MARK YOUR CALENDARS!”

  Oh brother. Ray threw the whole thing at Willy. It fell apart in midair and landed at his feet.

  “I’m not talking about gene pools,” she said. “I’m talking about my fifty-fifth birthday, and I do not want that woman spoiling the evening with her booming voice and her fake eyeballs and her less than appropriate talk of real estate and healing prayer, all right?”

  Willy picked up the bulletin and read the blurb, then chuckled. “It’s your party,” he said. Then he stood up and put his arm around her, which would have been nice had she not been so durn hot.

  “Thank you,” she said smiling at him as she thought, If this doesn’t send her a message then nothing will.

  Cousin Willy pulled Ray close to his thick chest and said, “I want you to enjoy yourself.”

  That is the truth. He does want me to enjoy myself, Ray thinks. Today the marquee in front of the Jasper Motor Lodge reads, “Happy Birthday, Ray,” and so does the digital sign at the National Bank of So
uth Carolina, and she knows it’s all his doing.

  And so is the fact that their son, William, came into town from Atlanta with Carson, his chic and urbane wife. They drive up around lunchtime in this sporty little convertible BMW with the top down. During their driveway conversation, Ray looks at her reflection in the mirrored sunglasses covering her son and daughter-in-law’s eyes—a short round version of herself like the one she stares at in the wavy mirror at the county fair.

  “I see myself in your glasses, Will,” Justin says as he rides up on his bicycle with a roll of wrapping paper in a Family Dollar bag.

  “Oh, yeah,” William says. He pulls off his glasses and lets them drop around his neck on the nylon strap that holds them together in the back.

  Carson rubs her painted lips together. They are so glossy that Ray expects to see her reflection in them too. Then Carson pulls off her sunglasses and snaps them into a bright red case with Armani written across the top of it.

  Carson is from a wealthy Atlanta family, and she and William are both lawyers at the same labor law firm. Truth be told, Ray has always resented her a little for wooing William away from his home. Of course Jasper could never compete with Hotlanta, but Ray kind of thought William would eventually settle back down here and get interested in state politics. He’s shown zero interest in that since Carson entered the picture.

  “I’m traveling all the time, Daddy,” he says to Cousin Willy as Ray gets them a Co-Cola and serves up some pickled shrimp that Willy and Justin caught in their sweet spot the other day. The sweet spot is some bend in a creek off the Edisto River, but those two will never divulge the exact location, not even to Ray.

  Carson puts her hand on the back of Ray’s tall and handsome son as he puffs up his chest and continues, “Just last week I was in San Francisco and Seattle, and then another associate and I stopped by Las Vegas for two nights on our way home. Our wives flew out to meet us, and I won twelve hundred bucks over the weekend. Can you believe it?”

  “Sounds like you’re livin’ mighty high on the hog, Son,” Willy says.

  “It’s not too bad.” William punches his dad on the shoulder before silencing the beep coming from his cell phone. His eyes narrow as he studies the number, then slips the phone into the back pocket of his corduroy pants.

  “You get work calls on a Saturday?” Ray asks.

  Carson chuckles and nods. “Yeah,” she says. “We do.”

  Now I tell you one thing, Ray thinks, I never would have said “yeah” to my mother-in-law. Mama didn’t teach me all I needed to know about etiquette, but I certainly knew enough to include my “ma’am” and “sir” with my “yes” and “no,” and I answered my elders that way until they met the grave. Carson is from a nice family and ought to know better.

  Just then they all hear a large thwomp from the edge of RoundO Creek, and Tuxedo runs onto the dock and barks at the swirling water.

  “Get back here, boy!” Willy hollers harshly down at him.

  “Look at the size of that thing,” William says, pointing to the water, where two bulbous eyes and a large, square snout surface.

  “Uh!” Carson says, grabbing William by the arm. “What is that?”

  As the pointed knobs of the back and the tail surface, she shrieks and covers her mouth.

  “It’s just a gator, honey,” he says patting her.

  Justin and Willy laugh as Tuxedo runs up onto the back deck and growls.

  “An alligator?” she says.

  “Heck, yeah,” Justin says. “You mean you haven’t ever seen one?”

  He looks into her dark green eyes as if she were quite a mystery.

  “Um, no,” she says. She shakes her head in what seems to be a cross between disgust and disbelief.

  “They don’t have those in Buckhead, Justin,” Cousin Willy says, “except in the handbag section of the department stores.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Carson says.

  “Oh, they come in and out of here from time to time,” Willy says. “There’s an overpopulation of them right now, and they’re looking for food.”

  “He probably smells the hog,” Ray says.

  “Yep,” Willy says. “He wants an invite to Ray’s party, but he’s not going to get one.”

  “What are you going to do about him?” Carson says.

  “Eh, we’ll give him a few days to get out of here.” He flashes a smile. “If he doesn’t, then we’ll go in after him.”

  “Tell William about last week’s hunt,” Justin says as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

  “Yeah,” William says. “You said you had a story for me.”

  “Well.” Willy glances back at Ray, and she nods because she thinks Carson can handle the wildlife story.

  “I shot a beautiful buck last week from twelve,” Willy says.

  “What’s twelve?” Carson asks. She’s not taking her eye off the gator, who remains motionless in the center between their dock and the salt marsh on the other side of the creek.

  A blue heron lands for a moment on the edge of the water, but it quickly takes flight when the gator turns ever so slightly in its direction.

  “That’s one of the deer stands on Dr. Prescott’s hunting property,” William says, as he puts his wide hands around the back of her neck and gives her a little massage.

  “It’s the one built in a tree overlooking a tidal creek that feeds into the Edisto River.”

  “That’s right,” Willy says, and Ray can tell he’s proud that William remembers, even though he hasn’t been hunting with his daddy in close to three years now.

  “Anyhow it was the start of the rut season, and I spotted a nice-sized doe walking out at dusk, and she was followed by a beautiful buck with a nice-sized rack.”

  Willy spreads out his arms wide to indicate the size.

  “A ten point,” Justin adds. “At least 150 pounds.”

  “Man,” William says. “So is the rack at the taxidermist?”

  “Ooh,” Carson says, squinting her carefully plucked eyebrows.

  “Nope,” Justin knocks William on the elbow. “Listen.”

  “Okay, so I had a nice clean shot at his broad side, and I hit him smack in the shoulder, as far as I could tell.”

  Carson puts her face into William’s chest, but Willy is too excited to stop now.

  “Anyhow, the doe took off into the woods, and the buck had enough in him to dart across the creek to the other side of the bank, where he collapsed on an oyster bank.”

  “So what did you do?” William asks.

  “Well, I put on my waders and took one step into the creek to retrieve her when a gator—must of been about a nine-footer—skulked up onto the bank and grabbed the buck’s hind legs and dragged him down into the water.”

  “No way!” William says, his eyes lighting up.

  Carson covers up her ears and frowns.

  “Yep,” Justin nods right behind Willy.

  “It was unbelievable,” Willy says. “Darnedest thing I’d ever seen.”

  “I’m sure glad he didn’t cross that river,” Ray says. “If that gator was big enough to take that deer, who knows what he could have done to your father?”

  “Eh.” Willy waves Ray away. He’s taken care of a few nuisance alligators in his time, and he doesn’t seem to fear them.

  “We could go wrestle that one down right now, Uncle,” Justin says, rubbing his hands together, “before he gets Aunt Ray’s hog.”

  Willy makes a side-angled glance at William and winks.

  “Want to, Son?”

  “What?” Carson uncovers her ears. “You mean go into the creek and get that huge reptile?”

  “Sure,” Cousin Willy says.

  Carson pinches William’s back and says to her father-in-law, “Are you insane?”

  “Carson,” William says, as he tugs on a strand of her smooth, golden hair. “Daddy’s been catching alligators most of his life.”

  She whispers something in his ear; then William shakes his head.
“Better not, Daddy.”

  “I agree,” Ray says, patting Carson on her back. “I want y’all in one piece for my party, and that gator wouldn’t think of rankling a yard full of people for a bite of barbeque.”

  “C’mon, Uncle,” Justin says. “I’m ready to get my rope and go.”

  “The girls are right,” Willy says. “We’ll get him next week if he doesn’t move on.”

  Then Willy turns to his son and his nephew. “Let’s check the pig,” he says, and they follow him out to the charcoal pit, where he lifts the lid and turns the hog over so it’s upside down.

  “Good grief,” Carson says, looking at the spectacle. “This is too much for me, Mrs. Montgomery. Let’s go shopping for your birthday.”

  “Okay, darlin’,” Ray says, a little perplexed by the woman’s fear and a little concerned about her hold over William.

  Hunting used to be her son’s out-and-out passion. He used to drive for hours from college to hunt down here, but ever since they sent him off to that expensive law school in Atlanta, he doesn’t do that anymore. Ray has always been thankful that Justin has Cousin Willy for his father figure, but now she’s glad that Cousin Willy has Justin. She can’t imagine Justin ever leaving town, and they’ll likely have a good time together fishing and hunting for years to come.

  An hour later Ray and Carson are at a new store on King Street where Annie’s Boutique used to be. A stylish but bohemian-looking lady Ray’s age practically coerces her into trying on a brown and orange cotton pants outfit with small splotches of turquoise tie-dye designs all around it and a large necklace made up of rectangular turquoise stones. Ray feels a little strange in it, but she takes Carson’s lead since she’s the gift giver.

  “C’mon, Mrs. Montgomery,” she says. “Don’t you want something that doesn’t scream ‘Talbots’ for a change?”

  What’s wrong with Talbots? Ray wonders.

  She turns back to the three-way mirror. She suspects that she looks a little like a gypsy past her prime, but she hopes that there is some style to this getup that she can’t quite discern. Some message that says “a young and vibrant fifty-five.” That’s the problem when you’re my age—when you try something trendy, it’s hard to gauge if you look absurd or admiringly fresh.