4

The weekend of the Corn and Sausage Days dawned storybook perfect, which is how almost every disastrous day begins. The heat of summer had broken, and Saturday morning was crisp and clear. By noon it was sixty degrees, a new Sausage Queen had been crowned, and the women of the Circle had served 532 dinners, a new record, with another fifty people in line, stretching out the meetinghouse doors and down the front steps. Shaken by the departure of Deena Morrison and the Iversons to the Unitarians, Sam was working the crowd, greeting people, inviting them to return the next day for worship and leftover noodles.

By two thirty, everyone had been fed, and the kitchen cleanup was well under way. Sam was in his office putting the finishing touches on his sermon when the church telephone rang. It was Pastor Matt from the Unitarian church, waylaid by the flu, vomiting on the hour and half hour.

“I have a wedding to do at three thirty, and I’m in no shape to do it. Can you cover for me, Sam? I’ll owe you one.”

Sam glanced at his watch, and feeling charitable said, “Happy to help. Who’s the happy couple.”

“Chris Marshall and Kelly Johnson. Nice folks. You’ll like ’em. First marriage for both of them.”

“Hmm,” Sam said. “Don’t know them. Where are they from?”

“Cartersburg,” Matt said. “They were one of our first couples here. They’ve been dating about four years, but living together for a year or so. Does that bother you?”

“Well, the way I see it, if the church thinks it’s a sin for an unmarried couple to live together, why should I object when they want to get married,” Sam said. “Seems to me they’re trying to set matters right.” Sam paused. “The only thing is, I’ve never done a Unitarian wedding. Can I use the Quaker vows?”

“Unitarians often write their own vows,” Matt said. “I’ve sat down with the couple and gone through the service. You just need to stand up front, listen to the vows, and say a prayer of blessing at the end.”

“I can do that,” Sam said.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” Matt added. “No attendants. The couple, Chris and Kelly, will come down the aisle together, there’ll be a few readings, then the couple will give their vows.”

“Piece of cake,” Sam said.

Matt thanked Sam profusely, then Sam hurried home, showered, changed into his suit, and was at the Unitarian church with five minutes to spare.

The church was full, the pews crowded, a smattering of latecomers clustered in the back, searching for an empty seat. Deena Morrison and Judy Iverson were there, looking treasonous. Bob Miles from the Herald was standing in the doorway. He glanced up as Sam entered the narthex.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Bob said.

“Matt’s sick,” Sam explained. “He phoned to see if I could help out.”

“Awful nice of you,” Bob said. “And brave, too. Not just any pastor would do this.”

“Oh, most of us would. We pitch in and help each other out,” Sam said modestly. “We wouldn’t want to leave a couple in the lurch.”

Sam wondered why performing a wedding required bravery. He’d never known a pastor to be injured at a wedding, after all.

The pianist began, Sam slipped discreetly along the side of the sanctuary, taking his place at the front, facing the congregation.

The couple appeared at the back of the church, stepping forward slowly to the tune of the wedding march.

They stopped before Sam, smiling.

A young man came forward and read from the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians about noisy gongs and clanging cymbals and the power of love. Then a man with a ponytail read from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet, about there being spaces in your togetherness and moving seas between the shores of your souls and not eating from the same loaf of bread. Sam didn’t understand much of it, but he smiled anyway and nodded his head in all the right places.

The man with the ponytail sat down, and Sam turned to face the couple, Chris and Kelly, taking them both in for the first time. Chris was finely featured, with shoulder-length blond hair, and was dressed in a simple, lovely gown. Kelly had short, spiky hair, neatly gelled, and was attired in black pants and a tailored jacket. Not a suit, actually, Sam thought, more like a pantsuit. And pearls. Which is when it occurred to Sam he was inadvertently performing his first same-gender wedding.

He paused, wishing more parents gave their children names like Ralph, Betty, Elmer, and Hazel. Good, old-fashioned, straightforward names. Whatever happened to those names? Now people named their children Drew, Pat, Jordan, Riley, Shawn, and Morgan. What kind of names were those? Names that confused people and got ministers in trouble, Sam thought. Chris and Kelly? How was he to know which gender they were? For Pete’s sake!

This was Sam’s ninety-second wedding, which meant he had mastered the pause. He stopped for a moment as if he were considering the solemnity of the occasion, desperately thinking how best to proceed. Chris and Kelly looked at him expectantly, then at one another, their faces radiating happiness. On top of his chest of drawers, there was a picture of him and Barbara on their wedding day, smiling. Sam called it his I-can’t-believe-you’ve-agreed-to-marry-me smile. It was that same exact smile.

Bob Miles was making his way toward the front of the church, snapping pictures as he drew nearer to the couple. Sam could just imagine the headline. Quaker Pastor Sam Gardner Performs Town’s First Gay Marriage! He wished Matt would hurry up and get better so he could kill him.

Sam leaned toward Chris and Kelly and said, “Can we go somewhere a bit more private? We need to talk.”

He turned to the congregation. “We’ll be right back. Don’t leave.”

He guided them to a small room, where they sat down. He said, “I wasn’t aware this was a same-gender wedding. They’re not legal in our state, you know.”

“We know,” Chris said. “We went to the county clerk’s office to get a license, but she wouldn’t issue us one. We’ve decided not to wait for the state to validate our relationship.”

“But I’m not supposed to do them,” Sam said. “The superintendent of our yearly meeting told me specifically, ‘Sam, don’t marry gay people.’ ”

The year before, Sam had accidentally married a man secretly married to two other women. The newspaper in the city had learned of it and written an article on bigamy. They had scrounged up a copy of the marriage license with Sam’s signature on it and published it in the paper. The next day, the Quaker superintendent had talked with Sam about whom he could and couldn’t marry. He’d reminded him several times not to marry gay couples, people who were already married, or minors.

“I thought Quakers believed in equality,” Kelly said. “Why won’t you marry gays and lesbians?”

“The Quakers in these parts are more conservative,” Sam said. “I would get in a lot of trouble if I married you. My superintendent told me, very specifically, that I couldn’t marry gay people. I’d probably lose my job.”

“Even if it weren’t a Quaker wedding?” Kelly asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re in a Unitarian church, in front of a Unitarian congregation,” Kelly explained. “We’ve written our own vows. And since we don’t have a marriage license, you don’t have to sign anything. All you’re doing is listening to us make our vows, then offering a prayer. Surely your superintendent can’t forbid you from praying.”

Sam thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said.

“Then what’s the harm?” Chris asked.

“I guess when you look at it that way, there’d be no harm in my saying a prayer. I’m sure the Quakers won’t mind that.”

Even though Sam was a seasoned pastor, his naïveté could be breathtaking.

They returned to the sanctuary, where Sam thanked everyone for their patience. Chris and Kelly recited their vows from memory, while Sam looked on, then caught himself just in time before pronouncing them husband and wife. He launched into prayer, thanking God for letting them live in a free country and for the food that nourished their bodies. He had never been good at extemporaneous prayer and usually wound up thanking God for various things, none of them relevant to the event at hand.

Everyone present applauded, Bob Miles snapped a few more pictures, Chris and Kelly walked down the aisle hand in hand, then everyone went down to the basement and snacked on peanuts and mints and drank punch made from ice cream and 7-Up.

Sam was standing near the punch bowl when Bob Miles approached him. “Like I said, it sure was nice of you to do this. Not many pastors around here would conduct a lesbian marriage. They’d be afraid of getting fired.”

“It’s not like I married them,” Sam pointed out. “I didn’t sign a license or anything. Just said a prayer. I don’t see how I can get in trouble for that.”

Deena Morrison poured herself a glass of punch, then made her way over to Sam. She was in tears. “That’s the loveliest wedding I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy for them. And I’m proud of you, Sam. This will upset a lot of people, but you did it anyway.”

“Oh, I don’t think people will be all that upset,” said Sam. “I really didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t diminish your bravery, Sam. What you did was beautiful and courageous and I’m proud of you,” Deena said. “It makes me want to come back to meeting.”

“We sure have missed you,” Sam said. “It would be wonderful if you returned.”

“The Unitarians are nice, but it just isn’t the same.”

Sam was elated to learn of her unhappiness.

He stayed another half hour, then walked home, pleased as punch. What a day it had been! A new Sausage Queen, record noodle sales, a lovely wedding skillfully conducted to keep him out of trouble, and Deena Morrison on the verge of returning to Harmony Friends Meeting. Climbing the steps to his front porch, he danced a little jig, confident things were finally turning his way.