A Wedding on the Banks by Cathie Pelletier Page A

same tiny ghost that appears in the old-fashioned televisions of rich and poor alike, in Mattagash or faraway Portland, flickered like a Sominex tablet on the black screen. Inside that little dot was Penny Prescott, who had just found out that husband Linton was cheating on her with her sister Ingrid, who had just adopted Korean twins—all this at a time when Penny had made arrangements at the hospital for her hysterectomy. All those problems were inside that small white dot. Then the dot vanished and the screen was blank. Pike wished his problems were like that, too. Switch-off-able.
    â€œLinton Prescott don’t know the half of it,” thought Pike, and pulled on his boots. He grabbed Feathers from Goldie and pushed open the screen door. Goldie, Little Pee, and a mob of smaller mourners followed on his heels, the screen door slamming behind them.
    At Vinal’s house the door was opened slowly by a small girl’s hand. Then a tiny head covered with the dark Giffordish curls poked around the door and demanded, “What?!” Big Vinal appeared behind her.
    â€œThat’s Molly, my baby,” he said to Pike. “Can you believe how big she’s getting? She’s already wanting to drive the car.”
    â€œThere’s no stopping them once they take it in their heads to grow,” Pike said, and gave the child a token pat on the head.
    â€œTell him about Feathers,” whispered Goldie, poking Pike’s back and hushing the smaller children behind her.
    â€œWell, we got us a little problem,” said Pike. “Goldie here says she saw Little Vinal shoot her canary with his BB gun, and the whole family’s up in the air about it.”
    Vera appeared behind Vinal with her swarm of children situated on both sides. They pressed forward eagerly, all the same height and width.
    â€œLittle Vinal!” his father shouted, and a gangly boy with freckles came forward, looking like a Norman Rockwell creation until he squirted a frothy plug of spit off the porch. His left arm was wrapped in what had been a pristine bandage the day before at the Watertown hospital but was now a brown rag.
    â€œYou shoot this canary?” Vinal thrust the remains of Feathers under Little Vinal’s nose. Before the boy could shake his head no, his father gave him a sharp slap across the face. Little Vinal slumped back, and then disappeared into the mass of children around Vera. His footsteps sounded inside, angrily, on the steps leading upstairs.
    â€œI’m sorry about this, Vinal,” said Pike to Goldie’s dismay. “I guess boys’ll be boys.”
    â€œYeah,” Vinal agreed. “But he knows he’s supposed to shoot birds that ain’t store bought.” He chewed on his toothpick, which was a piece of yellow straw from Vera’s broom. Food stamps didn’t include fancy toothpicks.
    The two brothers had talked in depth about how to keep their women happy. It was far better to go along as best they could, as long as they themselves didn’t get caught up with them. All women were silly, but Gifford women would come to blows. And both Pike and Vinal were certain Goldie wouldn’t stand a chance against the burly Vera.
    â€œIt’d be just like that Cassius Clay–Sonny Liston fight,” Pike once said to Vinal as they sat in the battered Plymouth, beer bottles foaming between their legs. “We’re talking six, maybe seven seconds.”
    â€œWe want the five dollars we paid for him,” said Goldie over Pike’s shoulder.
    â€œWhat for?” asked Vera over Vinal’s. “It can’t be to say a mass. Not over at the Holy Roller church you been going to.”
    â€œYou ain’t been to a church in so long, Vera, you couldn’t tell a mass from a TV commercial,” said Goldie. “And besides,” she went on, from the safety behind Pike’s shoulders, “I read in Reader ’ s Digest that juvenile