Joe could see where Jackson got his energy and talent. People make more sense when you've met their parents. Jackson and Kate would have problems, Joe thought. Who doesn't? But they were a good match and off to a fine start. What more could a parent ask?
He staked out a position by the keg and had a sociable time. He kept expecting to see Ingrid, but she didn't appear. Finally, a couple of hours after dark, he hitched a ride into town and went to bed. He slept restlessly and dreamed that a group of beautiful young people were enjoying themselves on a lawn. He was watching through thick glass; he couldn't hear them.
12
Joe slept late at the Friday Harbor Inn. He walked down the hill and ate pancakes in the midst of an argument about a town construction project. Money. Politics. It was comfortably familiar. He went back to bed and didn't wake up until noon.
His new clothes had survived nicely, folded at the bottom of the Filson bag. The shirt was in its original box. He removed the pins, dressed, and tied his tie several times before he got it right. He took a bus to the county park. The bus sped through shady woods, up and down hills, and past horses grazing in uneven fields. It stopped at a resort by a narrow harbor choked with pleasure boats. Three women boarded. As the bus left the harbor, they told the driver about a tourist who had died of a heart attack pedaling his bicycle up that very hill an hour earlier. "He was in his fifties," one said.
"Too soon," another said cheerfully.
"Grover and Henry are playing golf, but they're walking," said the third.
The driver stopped at the turnoff to the park. Joe skipped out gratefully. The grim reaper was sure to stay with the interested audience. There was a parking lot and a grassy area by the water. Jackson and several friends were carrying folding tables and chairs up a rocky path. Joe took two chairs and followed them to a clearing on a bluff above the water. Chairs were arranged in the traditional bride and groom groups, a center aisle leading towards the edge of the bluff. Rows of champagne glasses covered most of a table set up beside the chairs. Coolers waited auspiciously on the ground behind the tables.
"You guys have thought of everything," Joe said to Jackson.
"Kate could run NATO," he said.