In this chapter, we finally reach to the boys' surprise for the girls, which I hinted at back at the end of Chapter 21. (Yes, I've had it in mind for that long!) I appreciate my readers for sticking with this story (especially WildatHeart, kals, and GoogamooGirl), even when updates take longer than I'd planned. There's another author's note at the end, but I didn't want to put it here and spoil the surprise.
Oh, the barnyard is dizzy in a regular tizzy...
The six girls stayed huddled together in a circle, clutching each other's hands nervously, while their fathers and the other townsfolk talked over what to do next... and it felt to the girls like they went on talking for a long time. At one point, Martha's father stepped outside the barn, and when he came back, his eyes were red and a bit puffy, as if he'd been crying.
At another point, Carl raised his voice at Sarah's father, "Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Kine, but maybe I don't even want her back after this!" And Sarah, far from being offended, actually managed a weak smile and whispered to her friends, "Well, ain't that a relief! Maybe now Pa'll have to let me marry Frank."
After a while, the girls began to whisper to each other about what they'd had said to their fathers privately after they all shouted "Mine!" They realized with dismay that no two of them had told the exact same story. Martha had insisted to her father that the baby crying in the house really was hers, while Sarah had gone back on that and admitted that the baby was Millie's. But she'd also told her father that she'd... been with Frank Pontipee and might find herself in a family way any day now. Ruth recounted the lie she'd told her uncle, that the kidnapping had really been the girls' idea in the first place. Dorcas had gotten so worked up shouting at her father that she couldn't remember exactly what she'd said, and Alice had mostly just cried.
But it helped that outside the barn, the Pontipee men had their stories straight. When the townsfolk charged out of the barn and questioned them, they all gave the same answer: the plain truth. They explained that Adam had been away almost all winter at the trapping cabin and that the six younger brothers had lived in the barn, banished there by Millie, who'd known nothing at all of the kidnapping ahead of time. Even when Ruth's uncle pointed a gun at them at threatened, "You just better not be lyin' to us," their stories never changed.
It was a long night, with everyone's emotions running high and all the townsfolk confused. But after a lot more talking, and a little crying and shouting, the long and short of it was that the next day, the six young couples were married by Reverend Elcott in the Pontipee house. A hurried group shotgun wedding wasn't quite what any of the girls had imagined when they'd dreamed about becoming June brides, but they didn't complain. They stood beside the Ponitpee brothers and said, "I do" with smiles on their faces.
Instead of fine wedding gowns and veils, the girls wore their plain everyday dresses – not even their Sunday best – and didn't even have flowers to carry. There was no church service with sunshine lighting up the stained-glass windows and their families singing hymns. There were no tiered wedding cakes or bowls of punch to serve afterwards, and no bouquets to toss. But it was a beautiful June day at least, and to their surprise, the girls discovered that their group wedding did have its own music.
After Reverend Elcott pronounced them men and wives and they'd kissed, the six new couples, as well as Adam and Millie, took a few minutes for congratulations. The men all shook hands and slapped each other's backs, while the women hugged and dabbed at their eyes and said things like, "We're all married at last, can you believe it?" They almost missed it when Ben announced, "And now, gather 'round, we've got a surprise for our new wives!"
The men stood in front of the fireplace in a rehearsed sort of way, making sure that they were all visible. Ephraim pulled a harmonica from his pocket and blew a few practice notes, and Caleb strummed a rhythm on the washboard. The girls sat facing them on the sofa and bench, eager to finally see what the surprise was, and in the corner near Hannah's crib, Adam glanced at Millie.
"And what's this about?" he asked his wife. Millie just smiled, shrugged, and said, "Well, the boys have been workin' on a surprise of some sort for a weeks now. I guess this must be it." Adam said nothing more, but it added to the bewildered feeling that he'd had almost ever since returning to the farm yesterday. He had no idea of what of the goings-on here while he'd been away, and now, here was one more that his brothers had been up to without him.
"I been tryin' to get it out of 'em for weeks what this surprise is," Martha said to Dorcas, sitting beside her on the sofa.
Gideon grinned. "I think you all been tryin' to get it out of us," he said, "but we was just savin' it for the right occassion."
The men put their heads together and murmured amongst each other for a moment, clearly prepping for something, then they stood straight again. Ephraim played a key on his harmonica, and the others clapped their hands in time with Caleb's washboard. And then, they began to sing – and it turned out that the Pontipee brothers could sing just as well as they could dance.
"And now she's lookin' for a backwoods man, that's what I am..."
By the first line, the girls were smiling and tapping their feet to the beat. The boys had not only written the song themselves, but they'd clearly rehearsed it for some time, practicing it over and over on spring nights in the barn, until they had it just right. Now, it went off flawlessly, as they took turns between who sang lead and who sang backup, and never missed a beat.
"She'll see I'm not so tough, just because I'm in love with an uptown girl..."
Living in their small frontier town, the girls would've never thought of themselves as uptown girls, but they all giggled and grinned as they recognized themselves in the lyrics. The words were true – and they'd been true ever since the barn-raising last fall, when they'd jumped into the Pontipees' arms instead of their other suitors' – that each of them had known what she wanted, made up her mind, and chosen a backwoods man. The girls' fathers were still in the parlor, too, still holding their rifles, and though they'd been frowning when the boys started singing, the catchy rhythm was too hard to resist. By the end of the song, they were smiling, too.
Way back in Chapter 3, the line about Hannah messily feeding herself blueberries, was stolen straight from my nephew. He was just a baby when I wrote that chapter, and he has always loved blueberries. He recently turned 8, which is a little hard for me to believe, and this chapter was inspired by him, too. He really loved the song "Uptown Girl" when he was younger and knew all the words. This chapter was also inspired by a recent video of Billy Joel performing "Uptown Girl" at Madison Square Gardens with his first wife Christie Brinkley in the audience. On the line "I bet she never had a backstreet guy," they pointed to each other. It made me smile, and I think it's proof of this song's ability to bring people together. :)