From Sea to Shining Sea by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Page B

harness. People from distant Albemarle had kept coming in through the morning, many of them having been up before daylight to ride the last twenty or thirty miles from wherever they had slept along the roads. She had not thought so many of them would come, but they were there, in the pews behind her; she could smell horse and dust on them, and some reeked already of corn whiskey, which, she knew, they sometimes would start the day with if they had no fires for tea or coffee. She was profoundly touched that so many had come, so many of these rough and earthy people out of her family’s distant past. It appealed to something in her to think of their muddy buckskins and homespuns intermingled with the satins and velvets and watered silks of the Caroline gentry. Some of the guests from Albemarle could remember when Annie the bride had been born, or professed they could, and probably believed it, but the real reason they were here was their old friendship for John Clark. Many of John Clark’s friends had been his friends for thirty or forty years, and to his wife that was another proof that he was as good a man as she knew he was.
    She kept looking at him as Reverend Dick’s fluty voice led on through the ceremony. She looked at John’s broad back in its black wool frock, and the black ribbon that bound the queue of his gray-flecked hair behind his collar, as he stood beside his—their—daughter.
    “Do you, Ann, take this man Owen to be your lawful wedded husband, to love …”
    That strong back of John’s, and her own fruitful loins, had made their world, in the quarter of a century since she and John had said these same vows. Now for a moment, as she heard Annie’s beloved voice quaver, “I do,” her own body remembered what it had felt like to be a bride’s body: elastic, resilient, vibrant with hopeful desires. And then the feelings of her age returned: of flesh stretched and collapsed, of twinges of pain deep in her organs, of bruised nipples and milk-heavy dugs, of back and legsperpetually weary. Annie, that wan virgin in lace standing up there now with her head bowed toward big Owen’s shoulder, that Annie would one day house in her body all such familiar infirmities, would be tough inside instead of tender.
    Ann Rogers Clark sighed aloud, but no one heard the sigh because the people were suddenly all astir; it was over, and cloth was swishing and shoes were scuffing, voices were talking and sobbing and laughing, and she came out of her reverie and the first thing she saw was husband John turning to look at her, his eyes all shimmery, too, and his face engorged with the strain of not weeping aloud, and she was sure that he likewise had been thinking about themselves, about the flow of time.
    And the second thing she saw was Annie’s face, which was intent upon the ruddy, self-conscious face of Owen Gwathmey, her husband from this moment on. Billy’s hand was tugging, and he was asking something about “awful wedded husband,” but people were closing in now, cooing congratulations to her, and Jonathan’s voice was trying to joke by her ear, “… get used to it, Ma, y’ve got nine more weddings to go.”
    While in the back of the church a huge uproar was building, with men’s voices roaring and whooping, and the sounds of bodies thumping and doorjambs quaking as half the Albemarle men tried to squeeze through the door at once and get to their horses. She could hear Mr. Lawrence’s voice bellowing, “RACE FOR TH’ JUG! YEEEAH-HAH!”
    “RACE FOR TH’ JUG!” other voices howled, and the commotion moved outside to the hitchrails under the oaks. Horses were whinnying and quirts swishing and voices yodeling and then hooves were thundering off down the road toward the Chesterfield Tavern, where there awaited a jug of hard spirits previously bought and set aside in preparation for this traditional wedding-day race. The tavern was a league nearer the church than was the Clark house, and thus had been