Drop City

said, “Looks like my youngest is not to be denied either. But I don't like her hair up like that. Do you like her hair up, Pamela?”
    Pamela didn't answer. Her arm was thrust through her husband's--my _husband,__ she was thinking, my _husband's__ arm--and she was the stake in the ground, she was the chain, because there was going to be no violence on her wedding day, not today, no. “Sess,” she warned him, “Sess,” and then she moved flush into him and wrapped him up in her arms. “I want to dance, Sess,” she said. “Come on. Let's dance.”
    But then she was jostled from behind and a man she didn't recognize--fisherman's hat with an eagle feather thrust up out of the band, frayed blue dress shirt, beard, yeast breath, hair growing out of his ears--wrapped them both up in a titanic embrace and just squeezed and rocked. “Sess!” he shouted in her ear. “Pamela! Congratulations! Many happy returns! Et cetera, et cetera!”
    “Ogden,” Sess said, and she could feel him pulling back, trying to get loose, trying to get to the blood-spilling part of the ceremony. Pris let out another shout. Ogden tightened his grip, and then Pamela understood.
    “We'll take care of it,” he said in a voice that rasped like the hull of a skiff plowing over a sandbar, “me and Richard and Iron Steve. Relax. Okay? Just relax.” And then he let go and he was gone, wading through the crowd of dancers on a collision course with Pris and Joe Bosky. She saw a tall, big-headed man closing in on them from one side, and Richard Schrader, looking grim, from the other. “Son of a bitch,” Sess spat, and still she held him. “Son of a fucking bitch.”
    “Well, what--?” her mother began, her smile uncertain. “You sure do have enthusiastic friends, Sess--I thought he was going to crush the two of you--”
    Joe Bosky was oblivious, or at least he pretended to be. She couldn't help watching--couldn't take her eyes from him--as he whirled and shimmied and flung Pris around as if he were one of the teen heartthrobs on _American Bandstand,__ all style, all limbs, his eyes bugging and hips thrusting. And Pris. She was lit up--here was the kind of man she'd been looking for, his quotient of animal spirits so far above the average you couldn't begin to put a cap on them. She made two moves for his every one, the gown riding up under her arms, her hair coming down in a slow soft tumble. All in fun. All in good fun. Except that the man was Sess's enemy, here to spoil the day, and make no mistake about it.
    The tall man with the big head--Iron Steve, she presumed--caught Bosky under the arms as he rocked back from Pris's white-knuckled grip, and then Richard and Ogden Stump converged on him like tacklers on a football field. She watched his features draw down in surprise, a heartbeat's respite, Pris's empty hand and awakening face, and then he seemed to detonate. He flung himself in four directions at once, screaming like a woman, a long tailing high-pitched shriek that had nothing but fakery and hate in it, and then the four of them were rolling around in the weeds and the mud, good clothes spoiled, the crowd giving way and the band freezing out the chorus of Hank Williams's “Cold, Cold Heart.”
    In two minutes it was over, black-headed Joe Bosky trussed in arms and Iron Steve's elbow pinned to his throat, the eight-legged walk to the verge of the property and the necessary threats and imprecations hurled back and forth, the band lurching again into the defeated chorus and Sess's eyes gone cold as a killer's. “Good God, Sess,” her mother was saying, “but you've got some excitable friends. Too much to drink, I guess”--with a laugh--“or maybe Pris was too much for him to handle. My daughters are like that, you know.”
    And here came Pris, flustered, blotched, her hair a mess and the hem of her dress stiff with mud. “What was that all about?” she said, extracting a cigarette from her purse. “I was just starting to warm up there. Who was that guy, anyway--an escapee from the mental ward or something? I mean, I kind of liked him. His spirit, I mean.”
    Sess wouldn't say a word. Her sister looked to him, her mother, but he just stood there rooted to the spot, rigid as a fencepost. “It's all right,” Pamela kept telling him, “don't let it spoil the day. It's all right, it is--”
    But it wasn't. Sess wouldn't soften, wouldn't give. They danced, they drank champagne, received congratulations and gave thanks in