Free A Wedding on the Banks by Cathie Pelletier

had said, many times, of these bird-tree-flower cultists.
    But nobody came. Albert also expected to be getting phone calls from Macabee’s Sporting Store in Watertown. It was at Macabee’s that he had tacked a large sign firmly to the bulletin board.
    Greetings Fishermen, Sportsmen, and Newlyweds!
    The Albert Pinkham Motel
    Welcomes You Greatly.
    Beneath this sign was a black-and-white photo of Albert stroking the massive head of his aging German shepherd, Bruce, on the very steps of the motel. Beside the photo was a plethora of paper strips, Albert’s business cards, waving in the breeze of Macabee’s electric fan. Albert had taken a sheet of typing paper and had torn twelve strips, two inches long, on each side of the sheet. Then he had carefully scrawled his phone number on each—an idea he had gotten from babysitters who advertised their services at the IGA. It had worked wonderfully in the past. By March of each year, more than enough reservations had come in, roaring like lions. But the 1969 season was coming in like a lamb and goddamn dying in his front yard. He had not received a single nibble from the transient buyers of equipment and such at Macabee’s. He was perplexed. Surely at this point in the game, ten successful years into the motel business, he would not be expected to, heaven forbid, pay for an advertisement in some newspaper or magazine?
    â€œWhat next?” Albert wondered, as he dropped into his outdoor rocker and reached down to pet the tangled fur of his German shepherd. Bruce yawned in the mild sun that had splattered itself across the porch steps. Tourists could be fussy, if you let them. One woman from New Jersey had gone so far as to ask for a matchbook with “Albert Pinkham Motel” printed on it. For a souvenir!
    â€œGet yourself a candle, lady,” Albert had told her, and slammed the door of his house in her face. There she was, covered with a hundred mosquito bites, a few moose fly welts, the catlike scratches of raspberry bushes, a huge grapelike bruise where she had fallen out of a canoe, and now she was wanting a souvenir of her vacation to take back to New Jersey with her. Let her take herself back. Let her take her wounds with her. Albert could envision her at the next meeting of her bridge club, bandaged like a mummy, saying, “And the mosquitoes there are large as butterflies.” Women. It amazed him that the government had ever agreed to give these creatures the right to vote. And nowadays, during deer season, some of them were even turning up in the woods with guns, shooting the branches off trees.
    â€œTrying to impress the men,” Albert said, scratching now behind the dog’s ears. Bruce yawned again, exposing his broken canine.
    But one woman in Albert’s past had been most memorable, a Miss Violet La Forge, a customer who neither fished nor hunted. A customer who did not care a fig for white-water rapids or walks among the thickly rooted pines. She had been a dancer, performing nightly at the Watertown Hotel, shedding her clothing as easily as reptiles shed skin. There had been no customer come to the Albert Pinkham Motel as exotic as this stripper who danced the light fantastic, the vision in black leotards, with eyes like real violets. He had barely opened his business when Violet drove up in her little Volkswagen and rented a room, number 3, beneath Albert’s own bedroom window. And she had altered the outcome of his time upon the planet. How could he have known, on that red and orange and yellow autumn day, when he handed her the key to number 3, that he was handing fate the key to that door? His wife, Sarah, wanted Violet off the premises. Even when Violet had painted the bed and the walls pink, Albert held out. He cited money as the reason and, knowing him, Sarah believed it. But, oh, it was so much more delicate than money, this hold Violet had on him. It was pink as her room. Soft as the blanket on her bed. Pink