Free Big Fish by Daniel Wallace

old he believed it, because it made him happy and because he was so very old.
    He had not been invited to the wedding. How this could happen is simple: no one had. It was not a wedding as much as it was a legal proceeding at the Auburn courthouse, with strangers as witnesses and a febrile old judge as minister, pronouncing in his drawl, with little bits of white spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth, that from this moment forward you are now man and wife till death do you part et cetera. And thus it was done.
    This wasn’t going to be easy to explain to Mr. Templeton, but my father wanted to give it a try. He drove up to the gate of the farm, where there was a sign that read stop blow horn and by coincidence there, too, was his new wife’s father, atop his horse, much bigger than life, suspiciously eyeing the long car, from which his daughter shyly waved. He opened the gate by slipping a piece of wood from a six-inch-wide slit carved into a fence post, and my father drove slowly, so as not to spook the horse.
    He drove on up to the house, Mr. Templeton following on horseback. My mother and father were quiet. He looked over at her and smiled.
    â€œThere’s nothing to worry about,” he said.
    â€œWho’s worried?” she said, laughing.
    Though neither of them seemed particularly reassured.
    â€œD ADDY,” SHE SAID UP at the house, “I want you to meet Edward Bloom. Edward, Seth Templeton. Now y’all shake hands.”
    They did.
    Mr. Templeton looked at his daughter.
    â€œWhy am I doing this?” he said.
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œShaking this man’s hand?”
    â€œ ’Cause he’s my husband,” she said. “We got married, Daddy.”
    He kept shaking, looking deep into Edward’s eyes. Then he laughed. It sounded like the burst from a firecracker.
    â€œMarried!” he said, and he walked inside. The newlyweds followed. He brought them a couple of Cokes from the icebox, and they sat down in the living room, where Mr. Templeton stuffed an ivory-stemmed pipe full of black tobacco and lit it, and the room was suddenly overcast with a thin layer of smoke, which hung just above their heads.
    â€œSo what’s all this about?” he said, sucking away and coughing.
    It was a question that seemed difficult to answer, so neither of them said anything. They just smiled. Edward stared at the man’s hairless, egglike head, then into his eyes.
    â€œI love your daughter, Mr. Templeton,” my father said. “And I’m going to love her and take care of her for the rest of my life.”
    My father had thought of what he was going to say for a long time, and he’d come up with these simple, yet profound, words. He thought they said everything that needed saying, and hoped Mr. Templeton would think so, too.
    â€œBloom, you say?” Mr. Templeton said, squinting. “Knew a man named Bloom once. Rode with him. 1918, 1919, I was in the cavalry. Stationed in Yellowstone. In those days there were bandits. You may not have realized that. Mexican bandits mostly. Horse thieves and just regular thieves. We chased our share of them, Bloom and me. Along with the others, of course. Rogerson, Mayberry, Stimson. Right into Mexico. Oh yes. Our share. We chased them. Right into Mexico, Mr. Bloom. Right into Mexico.”
    My father nodded, smiled, sipped on his Coke. Mr. Templeton hadn’t heard a word he said.
    â€œYou have a nice-looking horse out there,” my father said.
    â€œYou know about horses, then?” he said, and laughed again—popping, gravelly sounds. “You’ve found a man who knows something about horses, haven’t you, dear?”
    â€œI think I have, Daddy,” she said.
    â€œThat’s good,” he said, nodding. “That’s very good.”
    The day passed in just this way. Mr. Templeton told stories of his days in the cavalry, and laughed, and the conversation turned to religion and