SONS OF THE FATHERS

Chapter 6: I Do

They walked completely around the cylinder of it, noting the high-set round windows with blue glass set to alternate with the lower, slender, tall windows with their curved tops, also blue, and a single, larger stained glass window with many colors.  "Thursday," she said, gripping his hand. "Yes," he replied, lacing his fingers through hers, "Thursday."
****************
Completing their circumnavigation of the structure, they arrived back at the entrance, which Maximus opened.  The square entryway led to a perfectly round room,  a 3^rd century Roman mosaic occupying the the bull's eye spot of its floor. Beneath each of the high round windows, a sconce light hung, casting golden light about the room.  Two low steps ran around the base of the wall, wide enough to stand comfortably on.

 

Joimus walked over to them just past the large stained glass window and sat, tucking her feet up under her, just staring around the room. Maximus stood across the room, looking at her, not the chapel, a serious expression on his face.  This was not something he had ever thought would happen in his life again, this joining of himself to a woman, this awaiting the arrival of their son together.  He felt moved, humbled, that it had come to him twice.  

 

Joimus got to her feet, walking toward him, stopping atop the Roman mosaic. "It's perfect, Maximus, just perfect."  She looked down at the mosaic.  "Even this."

The next two days were spent in much fellowship and feasting.  There were long walks, horseback rides, a couple of rough ballgames, and evening singalongs.  The final preparations for the wedding were made and a huge white tent raised for the reception.

 

Jocelyn was happy.  Having 25 Russes just delighted her no end. Although she did have to admit that the robustness of the other 24 made Teller's paleness seem even paler in comparison.  But there was Jim, just glowing with life and vitality the closer his movie came to its release date.  She smiled at him fondly.  Soon the world would come to appreciate him the way she and the cast already did.  

 

Himself came up behind her, circling his arms about her waist.  "Happy, Mum?" he whispered in her ear.  

"Very,"she replied.  Turning to face her son, she added, "I've been thinking a lot about how Maximus suffered in his movie, Russ, and I want this to be just pefect for him."  

 

"Ah, Mum," Himself murmured, "his movie sufferings were only the beginning. You should see what's happened to him in the last 3 years of epi life."  

 

"I doubt I could bear it," she answered, her eyes going all serious.  "Just tell me what happened to him since you left home with them all."

 

He stepped back, rubbing his hand across his eyes.  "And why Sid and Bunny aren't here," she added.  And so...he did.  

"Cut his own foot off?" Jocelyn said, her eyes wide.  Himself nodded. "Then died...all 3 of them?"  

 

Again he nodded, recalling all too vividly the moment he had entered the abandoned shed. "And...you...you...recreated them?"  

 

"Just Maximus and Sid, Mum, remember.  That strange woman with her keyboard recreated Joimus."  

 

"Right," she agreed.  "Then Sid was good then he tried to drop the General off Ayres then you went to Sydney and everybody's pregnant."

 

"Not everybody, Mum, just two."  

 

"Maximus must be very...relieved...there's only two," she said, shaking her head.

 

"But that's why Sid's not here," Himself continued.  

 

"I understand...I...think," Jocelyn finished.  

"Good!" he chuckled.  "Then you can explain it to ME some day."

The morning of the 7th, everyone awoke to find a tall wall of white sheeting blocking off the view of the chapel.  A large "NO PEEKING" sign was posted in front of it.  

 

"What's going on?" Pat asked.  

 

"I'm making...arrangements," Himself chortled.  

 

"You plan to have tigers leap upon them as they walk the path?" she inquired.  

 

"Something like that," he laughed.  

After lunch, everybody began to get ready for the ceremony.  All the characters dressed in neat, clean versions of their most significant wardrobe outfit.  For the first time in, well, almost forever, they appeared without rips, tears, stains from pink punch or mud or Clorox.
 

The women all wore gowns of their own choosing and even Ute had grumpily agreed to wear a dress, "but just for a couple of hours," she stated firmly, looking longingly at the jeans folded neatly on her bed.

 

Rose, dressed in soft, whispy lavender with violets woven through her dark hair, floated amongst them, adjusting straps, checking hems, retying bows, tucking flowers more securely into hairdos.  Absolutely everybody was "in" the wedding party.  All the couples gathered two by two along the sidewalk near the main house, even Jocelyn and Alex.

 

"THAT?" Jocelyn said when she caught sight of Russ.  "You are
wearing...THAT?"  

 

He laughed.  "It's what Joimus said was most "me", he replied, giving a slight bow.  

 

"Well, I must say, it is certainly "you"," she agreed, her frown
fading.  Her son stood before her in faded jeans, boots, and a new version of Big Blue.

"At least this one has elbows!" he smiled, holding his arms up to show her.  

 

"Thank heavens for small favors," she sighed affectionately, tweaking his bearded cheek.
 
"I'm so glad you're not blunt today," annsmac whispered as she slipped her arm through Terry's.  

 

He looked at her with sparkling eyes.  She was dressed in green withlilies of the valley and green and white ribbons in her blonde hair.  "Me, too," he smiled, and they took their place in the long line of couples. 

 

With all their circlets of flowers and ribbons, and the many shades of long gowns, they  looked quite like they might have escaped from some long-ago English country fair.  The day, beautiful and blue, in the mid 70's, only added to the feeling of that somehow. Laughing and chattering, the couples disappeared around either end of the line of sheeting, then were quiet.
 
Joimus stood just inside the front doorway, waiting for the music to begin as her signal to start down the path.   She scanned the lawn. Of course Maximus would be no where in sight.  He was probably already in the chapel.  She closed her eyes, picturing the waiting General.  Placing her hand on her tummy, she said softly,  "We're coming, Maximus.  Dess and I are coming."  

As though it somehow sifted down through the canopies of the trees, the strains of Pachebel's Canon began.  She smiled. Ah, it would make her walk like floating through the clouds.  She stepped out on the porch, looking at the sheeting.  Himself had told her just to walk toward it as though it were not there.  Holding up her skirt a little, she went down the steps and started along the path.  It was a bit odd as no one was anywhere in sight.  It was how Himself and Maximus had planned it.

 

The sunlight was warmly comfortable on her cheeks and she tilted her head a bit, watching a high flight of birds.  Someone was obviously keeping an eye on her progress for when she got to within about 20 feet of the sheeting, it suddenly dropped and was pulled away to the side behind the trees by unseen hands.  

She gasped, almost stumbling at the sight that opened before her. The pathway had been lined on both sides by sheaves of ripe wheat with red poppies mixed amongst  the stalks. High above the center of the pathway, an almost invisible wire had been suspended, long ribbons tied down its length.  The end of each ribbon came down to the hands of the woman whose gown matched its color.  All her castmates stood just beyond the wheat on both sides, so that the ribbons made a continuous arch of color for her to walk beneath.  

 

Oh, my! He had remembered!  One night, somewhere in the mountains of Bolivia, as they had sat near a campfire, she had told Maximus of that long-ago day when she had been part of a huge Maypole dance. She had described her full-circle light blue skirt to him and how it had swished as she turned and twirled with her long blue ribbon.  The intricate interweavings of the ribbons, the joy of dancing with her friends all in different pastel colors, was the favorite memory of her childhood.  Now each of her epifriends stepped forward with their ribbons, coming from both left and right, crossing to the opposite side, curving around a sheaf of wheat, then crossing back to their original place beside their character.   It was so...beautiful. So perfect.  

She was blinking back tears as she began to walk beneath the arch of ribbons, looking back and forth toward the faces of all her friends.  She had journeyed so far with these people, endured so much with them, experienced such things in their company that they had become like family to her.  She wanted to see each face as she passed, to acknowledge the presence of each one.  

Maximus stood just outside the opened doorways of the chapel, a bit to the right, holding something in his hand.  His eyes were locked on her form as she moved toward him.  She wore a circlet of white daisies with yellow centers, the back half of it having streamers of pale yellow ribbons that hung down her loosely waving hair, acting as her veil.  In her hands she carried a small bouquet of matching daisies, tied with a simple ribbon.  The dress Rose had designed for her, had a softly draping neckline and many different layers and lengths of pale yellow gossamer that curved and moved about her as she walked.  Attached by small gold brooches at either shoulder, another layer, caught by the slight breeze, flowed out behind her cape-like.
 

He held his breath as she came up to him, completely unaware that he was not breathing. When she stopped in front of him, reaching out her right hand and curving it over his left wrist cuff,  the sudden catch in his throat at her touch reminded him to exhale.  He was to do something. What was it?  Oh, yes!  He held out what he had in his right hand.  It was the larger, outer circle of a bouquet formed from wheat and poppies. In its center was a strangely hollow spot, an empty place that seemed to be waiting for something to fill it.  She looked at it a moment, briefly puzzled, then raised her eyes to his.  What she read there told her exactly what to do.  Taking her smaller bouquet of daisies, she placed it in the central spot.  It fit exactly.  He held the completed bouquet in his left hand, very, very lightly resting the spread palm of his right hand over its top.  

 

Not taking his eyes off hers, he said, "What you bring to me, the gift of yourself that you give to me, completes me, fills me, and makes me whole as your daisies fill my wheat, adding to it what it lacked, complementing it, finishing it, bringing it fulfillment."  

 

He handed her the bouquet and as she stared down at her daisies now wreathed by the wide border of wheat, he ran his forefinger down the curve of her cheek.  For a moment her eyes were so blurred by tears that she could hardly see the bouquet.  Finally she lifted her face to his.

 

"You encircle my life, Maximus, like a protective hedge, making me feel safe,  surrounding me with honor and grace."  She touched a daisy.  "I am a garden compassed about by love and all that lies within it belongs to you and ever shall."  

Cort slipped quietly around from the left, entering the chapel and standing with his back to the stained glass window.  Sheaves of wheat, intermingled with both poppies and daisies, had been arranged at the base of the window.  The cast came in, finding places on the low steps, with Jack just to the right of the window, splendid in full uniform. Small, matching arrangements had been attached to each of the sconces.

Joimus and Maximus entered together, her right hand resting lightly on his left forearm.  Watching them come, Cort smiled widely. How many years had it been since Herod burned his mission, since he'd been able to do anything pastoral?  Unconsciously, his left hand went up, touching his new white collar.  

 

Himself, standing with Phyllis and his parents just to the left of the window, noticed the gesture, smiling inwardly with understanding.  He let his eyes travel the circle of the room, studying each of the characters briefly.  No one knew these men like he did, how they thought, the workings of their hearts. Having them all, looking their best, standing so closely about, filled him deeply somehow, and he blinked back a quick tear.

Cort lifted his chin, also looking about the room.  "Welcome," he said, white teeth flashing in his tanned face, "welcome to Sacre Crowe."  His eyes still moving from familiar face to familiar face, he continued, "Ever since June 18, 2002 when Joimus, closely followed by a man in a rust-colored cape," he smiled at Maximus, "first boarded the Orient Express in Istanbul that windy Tuesday evening, we have been going somewhere together, adding to our numbers as we have gone.   No one knows
where our journeying may yet take us, but today...today we are here, gathered for one of the most joyous events of all our days together."  

 

Looking at Joimus he said, "It was my honor to be the first character you laid eyes upon on that train and today it is also my honor to be standing here before you now."  

 

She smiled, remembering how tired he had been, slumped, his eyes closed, as he sat in the compartment she had entered...so tired he'd failed to notice the rusty old gun he carried in an inside pocket of his tattered coat had tipped into plain view.  

Himself turned, picking up his guitar which had been propped against the wall just behind him.  Stepping down further into the circular floor, he began to sing:

"Into the heart and never out,
My soul has journeyed home.
Long have I left the wheat of Spain
For the battlefields of Rome.
Long the days,
Longer still the nights
When I in darkness lay.
But all of this,
This loneliness,
Finds in you its end today.

You have made me whole again,
Circled me with your heart.
Brought me home to where you are,
Given me an all-new start.
Long the days,
Longer still the nights,
When I in darkness lay.
But all of this,
This loneliness,
Finds in you its end today."

After Himself had taken his place again, Terry, almost shyly stepped forward. "Joimus has asked me to quote a passage of her favorite T. S. Eliot." Looking briefly back at annsmac, he cleared his throat and began:

"With the drawing of this love and the voice of this calling
We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple tree
Not known, because not looked for,
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, her, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are...one."

Terry stepped back and, taking annsmac's hand, gripping it tightly, pressed it against his chest.  Cort moved his eyes from them back to Joimus and Maximus.  

 

"The two of you have come here this day, surrounded by all your friends and fellows, by means of pledge and promise to join yourselves together as man and wife.  Please turn and face eachother as you speak what is in your hearts."  

 

Joimus handed her bouquet to Jocelyn, then Maximus took both her hands in his.  For a long, silent moment his eyes roamed her face, then stared into the depths of her eyes.  Raising one of her hands, he kissed her knuckles, then began to speak.

"Joimus, this hour of my life holds my livingness as a cup holds wine. As I stand here, holding your hands, looking into your eyes, my cup sparkles to the brim, moving me out of time with the sudden stress of joy in my heart.  When I first saw you nearly three years ago, I found myself on an unexpected journey in search of your constant presence in my life, a journey that had about it elements of an act of faith and to find faith justified always seems too good to be true.  You were at once a part of me and I knew that I must love you forever."  

 

 

 

He lifted her hand, kissing it again.  "I have folded you into my heart.  I vow now to love and to cherish, to protect and adore.  None other shall fill my mind, none other touch my heart. As you are now, here and real, I do promise by all that is sacred to me that I will keep you safe with every ounce of my strength.  In honor do I pledge to stand beside you...always. I do promise by the warmth of the sun, by the cool breezes of a spring morning, by the wild flowers that paint the hillsides that my love shall be as true as is the creation upon which we roam.  I shall be as true as the seasons, as constant as the migrating flocks, my love as honest as the scent of ripened wheat.  I will love you as spring warms the earth, as the sunset embosses the mountaintops...each day and forever. You are to me as the sweetness of water on thirsty lips, as the taste of bread, as the release of rain upon a  land that is parched. Because of you I find in myself a certain ecstasy at unspecified times and for unspecified reasons, yet somehow a justification for my being. You make me think in simple earnestness upon the ultimate meanings of my life.  I have dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour and it has filled with love.  Now, my love, we have created a child, something beyond our selves, giving our hearts the right to beat for more than our own needs. It is said that the most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother, and this I do pledge to you, that with you, hand in hand, together we may seek new flowering meadows, new shaded vales, new streams and uplands new, wherein all pain and suffering forgotten, our hearts may rest in the other's, and I may have your fair face, sweet form, before my eyes forever, free from all heartbreak, free...at last...from loss."

Joimus blew out a long breath, trying hard to control the emotions his words had stirred within her.  Eyes blinking rapidly, she looked down at her two hands enclosed within his larger ones.  

 

"Maximus," she began, her voice breaking slightly, "my Love, as my hands lie within yours I do accept your promise of love, strength, and trust."  

 

She lifted her head, locking her eyes on his.  "I vow, as the light that beams through this window, to return your love with all my heart, all my soul, all my being.  I hear your voice as warm rain,  comforting, covering my trembling with a splendid calm.  As the birds ride the winds and the great white clouds crown the heavens, I let my heart soar, grand and unbound, in my love for you.  I have walked beside you on long golden evenings with the day stretching into the warm night.  I have loved you even more as blossoms have turned to fruit.  As the harvest, gather me into the warmth of your heart and we two shall be one in every season of the year. "

She smiled up at him, then closed her eyes a moment before she could continue speaking. "Noble man, grown tall and strong like the oak, hewn from time and the earth to be

 

constant, seasoned, and bold.

 

 

 

 So shall our marriage be, ever growing, becoming full and ripe as the yellow wheat.  I rest myself against your serene strength that has weathered all the storms and not been broken by them.  You bring to my life a happiness that is beyond what I might ever have imagined. I am in awe of this happiness.  It amazes, astounds me.  I used to think that perhaps if I were to sin in a manner that seemed to me unforgivable, and yet were to find myself forgiven, and to suffer in a manner that seemed unbearable and yet find myself surviving, then I would know this sort of happiness.  But you have brought it to me freely in your hands, in your eyes, your words, your heart.  You come to me as a single note of birdsong, a wind stirring in the trees, and move me as a fuller music could never do.  You are my field which I sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.  You are my board and my fireside.  It takes the two of us and in our presence things fit together, as my hand in yours does, as bread in the pan does, as grass to its sheath does.  You are old and new to me, as cowbells at evening are, as rain-wet streets are, as the silent mountains are.  I am dissolved and come alive in the time and the space of you.  I write on air, on dusk, on snow, the words not said.  It is enough to know that I am known by you, old and new.  I have gathered violets in April and watched the silent falling of a star.  The wind has touched my hair and I have laid my ear against the earth to hear the grasses whisper.  I have walked barehead in the rain and sat with friends at supper.  I have kissed my heart good-bye at nightfall, and I have loved...but deeply.  And still to sit in the sun, to know the breadth of tenderness deep as the earth.  And bread.  And sleep.  And waking after pain. To feel the hush of snow against my lips.  And still to love...but deeply.   I have only one way, my love, and that is with you.  I offer you all the days before me, freely taking you as my husband.
 

I vow myself and all that I am to you and none other.  Maximus, as I have life, I  join that life today with yours.  Wherever you go, I will go, whatever you face, I will face.  I offer you here my hand, my heart, and soul, and trust utterly that they will be safe with you as we walk as one."

They turned, then facing Cort again, her right hand still closely tucked in Maximus' left.

"Do you have Joimus' ring?" Cort asked softly.  

 

Jack stepped forward, handing a gold band to the General.  Maximus took it, sliding it slowly up her finger as he said, "Joimus, as this ring, with no beginning and no end, encircles your finger, never forget," he looked up from the ring to her eyes, "that my love encircles your heart."

 

Then he lifted her hand, kissing the ring.  "I give you my pledge and the seal of my honor, that your trust in me is safe, and I rejoice in this day to call you my wife."

Turning his gaze to Joimus, Cort asked, "Do you have Maximus' ring?"

 

Again Jack reached into his pocket, holding forth a much larger ring.  

 

Joimus took it and as she slid it onto Maximus' finger, said, "Maximus, my love for you is never-ending,  and today I take you to myself as my husband. With all that I am or will become, I pledge my love to you and none other, promising to cherish you all the days of my life."

Cort smiled at them.  "The road has been a long and often difficult one, I know.  But today, the two of you stand here together, side by side, hand in hand, and have made your promises and pledges one to the other.  I ask that you be blessed both in your union and as the new family that you are becoming.  Speaking for all of those here assembled, I offer to you our support, our love, and our gladness in being with you on this day.  And, now, by the power invested in me, I pronounce that you are husband and wife.  Maximus, you may kiss your bride!"

He stood there silently, looking down at her, tears brimming in his eyes. Then he leaned forward, and as he had said, simply enfolded her, with his lips, his arms, even his cape swinging loose, curving around her.  He lifted her up off her feet and she slid her arms around his back, beneath his cape. As the Ode to Joy filled the room,  he began turning with her in a slow circle, then faster, his cape spinning outwards.  Tipping his head way back, his cheeks wet with tears, he laughed.

"I'm home!" he shouted happily.  Then he set her on her feet, taking the edges of his cape and pulling them closely about her, resting his chin atop her head.  Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes, sighing, "I'm home."