“We can’t,” she says. “How can we?”

“Never mind about that,” I say. “I want us to be man and wife and build a life together. I want for you to know that I’ll never give up on being with you. I want to marry you, Sarah. Will you have me?”

She looks at me like I’ve gone daft in the head, but then she says, “Yes, I will,” so it doesn’t matter how she’s looking at me.

“Wait here,” I say. I run to the trees and fetch a fallen branch. I lay it down in front of her. “Almost like a broom, wouldn’t you say?”

I’ve surprised her again and she laughs, taking my meaning. “You want to do it now?”

“No better time,” I say.

Her face lights up and she scurries off around the field picking wildflowers and bunching them into a bouquet. When she comes back to where I’m standing, I bend down and pick a blue cornflower and put it in her hair behind her ear. From my pocket, I pull out the strip of cloth from her dress that she used when we met to wrap my hand.

“I know the broom is your tradition,” I say, “but we have traditions too.”

I take her hand and twine her fingers between mine. Then I wrap the strip of cloth around our clasped hands, and with our free hands we clumsily tie it together.

“We don’t have anyone to speak over us so I suppose we should speak for ourselves.” I press our hands tighter together under the cloth and say, “I promise.” I pause, thinking. There isn’t that much I can promise her. I’m a simple man with not much to offer except myself, so I settle on that. “I promise that I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine.”

She lays her free hand on our joined ones. “I promise that my heart is always yours, no matter what.”

We grin at each other and, counting to three, we jump over that branch broom. There’s not a state in America that would say we’re a legally married couple, but I know, and Sarah knows, and God almighty knows that she’s my wife.

We lay down in the middle of the field by the broom and we take our time because its Sunday and we have until the morning, and because it’s our wedding day and I want to savor every second with her. I strip off her clothes and she peels off mine, and in among the butterflies on a bed of flowers we lay as man and wife. Overhead, the sun shines straight down on us, warming us with God’s blessings.

Chapter 51

Sarah

When I come back from the woods, it’s near on morning. In the cabin, Bessie and her sons, Samson and Clover, sit round the table Ben made, on the chairs he carved, looking like they been up all night. On the bed Ben built sits Clover’s wife, Callie May, with her four children curled up asleep behind her. Since Ben died, Bessie’s told and retold the story of how he wouldn’t marry her until he finished carving that bed, saying he wouldn’t bring his bride to a pallet on the floor.