It is a strange thing, to see something you have imagined over and over again finally acted out in front of you. It is almost like a kind of death, a loss of something, that the thing is not as you had thought it would be. I myself had laid out a path of pine needles, brown and dry in the July heat, from the end of the copse of trees to the stump of the altar. I watched Caroline shuffle down it, almost tripping over the hem of her too-long dress, to the little boy we’d chosen for her groom, who was looking not at Caroline or at the spectators who laughed and called out encouragement, but above him, at a cardinal in a branch of a tree.

When the child minister called out, “You may kiss the bride,” the crowd began to laugh and jeer, but Caroline stepped forward, grasped her boy groom’s head in her hands, and brought his face to hers in a cruel smack, which everyone cheered.

The Graces were to sing in the church, we had decided. But after the wedding was done, Louisa came to me. “We’ll sing here, under the trees, where God and everyone else can hear us.”

So Louisa and Experience stood side by side in front of a crowd of three hundred colored people. They did not look at each other, but before they began, Experience grabbed Louisa’s hand and held it, and did not let go until the songs were over.

The sound they made, with just their two voices marrying in the air, filled the whole clearing.

My Lord,

what a morning

My Lord,

what a morning

Oh, my Lord,

what a morning

When

the

stars

be gin

to

fall

You’ll hear the trumpet sound

To wake the nations underground

Looking to my God’s right hand

When the stars

be gin

to

fall

You’ll hear the sinner moan

To wake the nations underground

Looking to my God’s right hand

When the stars

be gin

to

fall

You’ll hear the Christian shout

To wake the nations underground

Looking to my God’s right hand

When the stars

be gin

to

fall

You read in the Bible about the voice of God shaking leaves and commanding bushes to burst into flame, about trumpets making walls fall, about the songs that can sweep waves across the planet’s face, but it is quite a different thing to stand in the heat of July, the smell of damp lace and pine sap and other people’s bodies all around you, and know those words to be true.

By the time they got to “What Ya Gonna Do When Ya Lamp Burn Down,” the crowd joined in—men, women, and children, singing and slapping hands and the bark of the trees—Experience and Louisa in the middle, still hand in hand, their voices rising above it all. I think it is the closest I have ever come in my life to seeing true love, and for a moment my sadness and anger were gone. I only felt the warmth of something fulfilled, and I closed my eyes to make it stop, because it felt too much.