Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [60]
I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “Remind me never to play poker with you.”
He looked at me. “Son, what is your name?”
“Doss Michaels, Your Honor.”
“You do realize that if you go through with this her father will skin you alive, draw and quarter you and then cut off your head and post it on a stick at the city gate.”
That pretty much sums it up. “Yes, sir.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“And Abbie?”
“The same, sir.”
He threw his gavel down. “Follow me.” His heels made a clicking sound on the tiled floor. We reached a door that read “Marriage Department” and he said, “Wait at that window.” Then like a sliding door in a doctor’s office, he pushed it open.
I gave him our driver’s licenses and birth certificates and he said, “Seventy dollars. And we don’t take credit card or check.”
I handed him seventy dollars cash and he filed our application for us. Five minutes later, we stood beneath the arbor, where wilting silk flowers draped around our heads. The arbor stood in the corner of a small, paneled room. A couple of benches led up to a 2×4 frame covered in ribbon and decade-old Christmas lights. The arbor was rounded like a tunnel and the lights flashed sporadically. Abbie looked around her and laughed. Judge Fletcher held a printout of the vows in one hand and looked at Abbie over the tops of his reading glasses. “You realize what this is going to do to your mother?”
Abbie looped her arm inside mine. “Judge Fletcher, with all due respect, my mother’s not getting married here.”
“I don’t have to do this, you know.” What he was really saying was that just because he was doing this didn’t mean he was admitting guilt, which of course he was. It was a weasel statement.
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and smiled.
He turned toward me. “You know, she gets this from her father.”
“Yes sir.”
“You seem like a smart kid. Don’t start thinking with your plumbing. Take her home, drop her at her parents’ house and run the other way.”
Abbie put her hands on her hips. “Like you’re one to talk—a model of discretion. Your Honor, this is one of the only guys I’ve ever met who doesn’t think with his plumbing. You might take some lessons from him.”
I whispered out of the corner of my mouth again. “Well, maybe I have been a little.”
She whispered back, smiling. “A little’s okay.”
He cleared his throat. “We are gathered here today to witness this man and this woman joined together in matrimony, which is an honorable estate and therefore not to be entered into”—he glanced at us over his glasses; it was more of a frown than a smirk—“unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently and discreetly, into which estate these two persons present come now to be joined.
“Doss Michaels and Abigail Coleman, if it is your intention to share with each other your joys and sorrows and all that the years will bring, with your promises, bind yourselves to each other as husband and wife.”
I heard him say the words joys and sorrows, but I really had no idea what he was talking about.
“Doss.”
“Yes sir.”
“Will you take Abigail Grace Eliot Coleman as your wedded wife?”
“Yes sir.”
“Not yet, son. Just hold on.” I nodded. “Will you take Abbie as your wedded wife. Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, and forsaking all others keep only unto her, as long as you both shall live?”
“I will.”
“Abbie, will you take Doss as your wedded husband? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, and forsaking all others, keep only unto