CHRISTMAS EVE 1945
Dear Hannah.”
Dear, dear Hannah.
Luke spoke the words, felt them engrave into the deepest parts of him, and halted. He remembered so vividly another night, one year ago, when he penned those words and held fast to the thought of this woman. She had saved his life then. God had filled his life with the gift of her since then.
And now, he had traded that star-studded, frozen sky for a shower of sunlight slipping through oak leaves that clung to their green, even in December. They stood together, hand in hand, heart in heart, beneath the great oak, before God and all these witnesses. Here, he would give everything he had, and ever would have, to her. In the two months that had passed since he’d gone to New York, their letters had flown across states at a dizzying speed, and engulfing length. Sketches from time to time, for old times’ sake—but the quiet man had a deep-running well of things to say, it turned out, and Hannah happily continued to be a fount of words and joy. The time had simultaneously crawled excruciatingly by and flown at alarming speed, bringing him at last back down from the skies and to this singular tree and this moment in time.
It was all he could do to keep from reaching out right then and lifting the veil that happily did a very poor job of concealing the bright blue of her eyes, the breathless smile on her face. All he could do to keep from running his hand along that cheek of hers. He was fit to burst with gratitude, and the only way for it now was out. In words.
He repeated after the preacher, with solemn honor and deepest hope. “With this ring, I thee wed, and all my worldly goods I thee endow. In sickness and in health, in poverty or in wealth, till death do us part.”
He nearly gathered her up in his arms on the spot when she began by uttering beneath her breath, “Great gumdrops . . .” and then letting the rest of the vows march out in her sweet voice, with all the conviction in the world.
Hannah and Luke Hampstead’s hearts beat as one, there upon the ground where their story was embedded and held deep in the roots, and high in the branches above. Looking on through its wide-eyed round windows was Leven House, sunlight glancing on the windowpanes like a wink as the weathervane above the turret sang out a clear, bright song.
This was the house that had given their hearts a home . . . and now, with greatest hope and hardest good-byes, it was time to take flight. But they wouldn’t leave without first doing for the house what it had done for them: giving the home . . . a heart.
Amid a whirlwind of dancing beneath and around the tree, Uncle Sarsaparilla’s Orchestra—all four members—played “Stardust” with every bit of soul they could muster, and the couple pulled Jerry into the shadow of the cottage and handed him an envelope.
Onlookers—and being that Oak Springs residents loved one another’s business as much as they loved one another, there were plenty of onlookers—would later tell how Jerry stuck a thumb under that envelope’s flap, pulled out a paper, read it, and looked at them in confusion. How you could’ve tipped him over with a feather, he seemed that shocked. How his chin trembled somethin’ awful until he took the newlyweds in his arms and squeezed them in a hug but good, and how he then demanded two things. That if he did this thing—if he indeed took up residence in Leven House, made it a home for his Arnie, a new life for them both, then they owed him two things: a good long visit every time they came across these parts or anywhere near . . . and a bag of snaffle bits, which an awestruck young airman had failed to deliver to him when he first came to town.
Luke happily did both. In the years that followed, every time they came to Oak Springs and stayed at the farmhouse, there were great pots of chili and bouquets of thistles on the old plank table; the occasional batch of burnt buttermilk biscuits, which Hannah plated up with her winking and squinting rendition of eyelash batting; Luke’s ladling of his hearty gravy, concocted over the years as a companion to those biscuits to the cheer of every mouth; and a merry band of souls gathered in the kitchen of the cottage or farmhouse.
And as the “grown-ups” among them talked long into fireside tales of travel and home, Luke would watch his own young daughter slip away into the long grasses, chasing Jerry’s grandson, who always held a sparkle in his eye and a fire in his heart for their girl. He watched from afar as their feet flew beneath those branches, fireflies dancing to light the way, and the boy would set the girl to swinging high in that sky.
His heart, and Hannah’s, were full. Light dancing from above, roots plunging life through dark, and warmth all around.