Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #6

Osage Wedding The groom-to-be is named Wolfgang. I call him Wolf. It suits him. With his wary blue eyes, wild black hair and big white teeth imbedded in a cruel smile, I can almost hear him say, “The better to eat you with, my dear.” My brother is powerfully built: broad shoulders, arms and legs braided with muscle. Some might say Wolf is matinee idol handsome, but not me.

“What are you looking at, Dumpling?” he asks.

Wolf leans against the barn sporting a fresh haircut. A stripe of pale skin winds around his neck and ears, spilling across his tanned forehead. He resembles a treacherous Romeo, and with love’s light wings he’s about to escape this farm.

“Nothing much,” I say.

Wolf has called me Dumpling since I was a toddler. He said my face looked like Mama’s home-made spaetzle. Even when I was little he was a thorn in my side. Every morning for sixteen years I have looked in the mirror and saw why my nickname stuck. My real name is Estella Schultz. I study Shakespeare in my high school English class; the tragedies suit me.

“You’re thinking,” says Wolf, “how much you’ll miss me.”

I am feeding the pigs on our parcel of land, ten miles outside of Ponca City, Oklahoma. Our land is flat, hot as a skillet in summer and none too sweet. A pale blue sky dusted with cirrus clouds stretches out to the horizon of prairie grass. All color has been blanched away by a furious sun.

“I’m just thinking,” I say, “that thank the Lord tomorrow is your wedding day and I’ll be rid of you once and for all.”

“Ah, Dumpling, you’re breaking my heart.”

“Can’t break what you don’t have.”

“Estella!” Ma calls from the back door of the house. “Estella, come help with supper!”

“You’re wrong, Dumpling,” Wolf says heading into the house wearing his killer smile.

“My heart is pumping like a gusher.”

I bet. Tomorrow my brother, Wolfgang Schultz, will be married to an Osage princess.

I will witness the union of the Sky People and our family, German immigrant farmers. Only