I cleared my throat, and squeezed Thais’ hand.
“Thais likes to give me all the credit,” I began, nervously, “but I have a feeling she probably didn’t tell anyone here that she has saved me and cared for me more than I ever could for her. It was Thais who freed me from Lexington City…and from myself. It was Thais who broke me out of a prison in Paducah and got me to safety. It was Thais who cared for me when I was sick, and broken, and tired, and on my deathbed”—I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles again—“She says she wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for me, but the truth is, she saved me over and over. And even though I don’t feel worthy of her, I’ll tell you all the same thing I told her: I’m selfish, and I’m going to marry her anyway.”
Shouts. Cheers. Whistles. Laughter.
A voice rose above the crowd then. “Reverend Raymond is here!”
A short, stumpy Black man with broad shoulders, came strutting through the crowd with the kind of confident swagger that suggested he was not only a man of God, but a man of candid hilarity. A ragged-edged bible was wedged underneath one arm, a glass of what I assumed was whiskey, in the other hand, its amber-colored contents sloshing over the rim as he walked.
“Where have you been, Reverend?” Edith asked as the man stepped forward. “We were starting to think you weren’t coming.” She pursed her lips on one side, and looked at him sidelong in a scolding manner.
Reverend Raymond strutted right up to Edith, set his glass of whiskey on the tree stump Thais had used as a platform, and then tried to straighten his sloppy suit jacket with the free hand, tugging on the faded lapel.
“Hey, ain’t nobody told me yesterday anythang ‘bout no weddin’ ceremonies,” he said with a deep, southern accent. “Ya’ll know I need a day’s notice. I got thangs to do, just like everybody else. Ooh-wee look at you!” He smiled so wide at Thais I could see the pink of his gums. “How old are ya, girl? Lookin’ like you ain’t old enough to be gettin’ married”—he shook his finger at me—“and don’t be lyin’, either one of yahs, ‘cause I’ll know it if you lie.” He laughed, his beer-belly jiggling over the top of his belt.
“She’s old enough,” Edith spoke up for Thais. “When did you get all legal, anyway, Ray? Ain’t no laws anymore. Anybody can marry anybody these days. Long as they’re both willing.”
“Oh, they can can they?” Reverend Raymond came back. “Then I can marry your Ona, then?”
Edith snarled. “She ain’t willing.”
Reverend Raymond’s hand fell on his belly and he threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Now quit badgerin’ me, woman, so I can do my job. Ossie! I thank God every night she chose you over me when we were kids!”
Edith gave Raymond the evil-eye, mixed with a playful smile.
“I thank God every night, too!” Ossie called out.
Edith and Ossie exchanged loving glances.
Reverend Raymond turned back to Thais. “You are the ones gettin’ married, ain’t yah?”
“Yes, sir,” Thais said, and she curtsied. “And I’m nineteen, if you really want to know.”
Reverend Raymond winked, and he glanced at me with a mysterious smile. “I was jus’ jokin’ with yas,” he said. “You look like a fine couple. Both of yas look young as all get-out. Nineteen is believable”—he pointed at me—“Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“I’m about that,” I answered vaguely. What does it matter?
I felt Thais’ elbow nudging my side.
“Twenty-four, sir,” I changed my answer, and then glanced at Thais. Yes ma’am, my expression told her.
Thais blushed and smiled and squeezed my hand.
“Then let’s get on wit’it,” Reverend Raymond said, and his bible dropped from underneath his arm into his open hand with the smoothness of a magician. “Now, before I start”—he raised his voice high over the crowd—“I wanna know now, ‘stead of befo’ the kiss, if anybody here is gonna object to this union, ‘cause I ain’t about to waste my breath going through everythang—”
“Nobody’s gonna object,” Edith cut him off.
Reverend Raymond grumbled, then he opened his bible.
“We’re gathered here today…”
THAIS
Atticus and I stood arm-in-arm, facing the reverend—I didn’t even have a bouquet. It was all happening so quickly; there wasn’t time to rehearse or to do the traditional things people used to do before weddings, but neither of us cared about any of that. There would not have even been an official wedding dress if Ona hadn’t stepped in and offered hers when she heard the news an hour after Atticus had asked me to be his wife.
“Oh nonsense!” Ona had said earlier in the evening. “You aren’t getting married in that”—she wrinkled her nose at my casual attire—“I have just the dress for you to wear.” And Ona took me into her tent and she showed me the dress she was going to wear to marry the man she loved.
“I won’t take no for an answer,” Ona had said, holding the dress up against my body.
And I would never have said no. Especially after Ona told me what had happened to the man she loved, and why she never got to wear the dress herself. It was an honor to wear it.
“…these two people come together now to be joined…” Reverend Raymond went on.
ATTICUS & (THAIS)
I settled with the jeans Thais had given me after I had a bath, and a plain gray T-shirt.
“I don’t really have anything nice for you to wear that’d fit—my pants’d be floodin’ your ankles,” Ossie had told me.
“That’s all right,” I had said, standing outside Ossie’s and Edith’s tent after Thais had been whisked away by an excited Ona. “I think what I’m wearing will be just fine; Thais doesn’t care about stuff like that.” I sighed then, and glanced at the woods, my face shadowed by regret. “I don’t care much, either,” I had said, “but I wish I could give her a nice ring at least; I mean I know she wouldn’t care about that, either, but I do care.”
Ossie and Edith looked at one another, and something private passed between them.
Then Edith held out her hand and slid her wedding ring from her finger.
“I don’t need this anymore,” she told me, and placed the ring into the palm of my hand. “Ossie and I have been married forty years; we have each other, and that’s all we need.”
I looked at the ring in my hand, a small white diamond sparkling amid an intricate golden band. I looked up at her, and shook my head, started to give it back, but she wouldn’t let me.
“You’re right,” she said. “That girl needs a ring. And I have one to give. What’s a wedding without the rings?”
“I uh…thank you.” I wanted to say so much more, but I didn’t know how to put it all into words; not like Thais could put things into words.
Ossie took his ring off then and gave it to me.
“And after you’ve been married forty years,” he said, “then maybe you can pass them on to somebody else, too. Or keep them if you’d like.”