Things didn’t let up a bit for Jeff and Eunice once graduation was over with. They had only five days between the graduation and the wedding, and they could have used more time, but they managed to do what needed to be done, which included virtually everything they needed to do to move into the little house in Wychbold.

Although they had spent a few nights together in the past eight months, the total wasn’t very many. Now that they were out of college they would have been just as happy to start spending them together the day they graduated, but considering their parents, relatives, and acquaintances in both Wychbold and Amherst, that kind of thing just wasn’t done. They had to spend their nights apart in that short period, but that may have been just as well; they still had a lot to do.

The following Saturday was the big day. After a rainy period during the week, this day came out about as nice as their graduation day. The old brick Amherst First Methodist Church with its high white steeple was not large, and it was filled close to capacity with various friends and relatives from the area, including a few college classmates able to make the trip. To Jeff, it seemed like the last hour before the wedding was endless, but finally things got under way with all the formality a proper wedding called for.

When things started happening, they seemed to happen quickly though; somehow to Jeff it seemed like the ceremony came off at a dead run. But he was aware of Eric, his best friend, standing by one side as he turned to Eunice in front of the gray-haired old minister. The part he really remembered, though, were the vows:

“I, Jeffrey, take you, Eunice, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, and thereto I pledge you my faith.” The words were simple, but the promise was big. It seemed to him that Eunice was more than worth it.

Her vow to him was similar, but unexpectedly she slipped the word “obey” into her statement, a sentiment that was falling out of favor in wedding vows of the time. Jeff felt she meant every word of it; Eunice was an old-fashioned girl in a way, but it was a way that he liked. He had little doubt she meant what she said, and he knew he’d have to do his best to honor her.

It wasn’t long before the minister got to the part they’d been waiting for, the part where he said, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” Jeff did so with enthusiasm, although he realized he had to be a bit restrained about it. It didn’t last long enough, as far as he was concerned; then there was the walk back down the aisle, the greeting of the guests and well-wishers, and the short walk to the Methodist Fellowship Hall for the reception.

The reception was about as structured as the wedding had been, with all the usual formalities. There was a big pile of wedding gifts, which they didn’t even try to open; the plan was that sometime while they were on their honeymoon their parents would haul them to the house. It looked like they were going to have a lot of work opening everything, and of course sending thank-you notes and cards. There were a number of envelopes included, and the cash involved was almost certain to be useful in their next phase of setting up housekeeping.

The sun was getting low in the western sky before the happy couple could make their departure from the festivities in Eric’s Triumph. Eunice’s father had, as promised, gone through it thoroughly, and in the last couple of days Eric and Donna had spent some time washing and waxing the car till it shined like it was new. Of course, it had been decorated with paper flowers and a “Just Married” sign, but since it was Eric’s car and he’d been the one to do most of the decorating, he wasn’t going to allow anything that would mess it up too badly. Eunice did take the precaution of taking off her veil before they got going, but soon they were on their way up the familiar road to Wychbold and the house they could now call their home. Though they’d ridden in the Triumph from time to time, sometimes together, it still seemed strange to be heading up the road in it – but then, a lot of things seemed strange at that moment.

Jeff and Eunice had known for months that it was going to be late by the time they got out of the reception, so the plan from the beginning was to just go to their new home after the wedding, and then depart on their actual honeymoon in the morning. It was a relief to pull into the short driveway. Jeff shut the car off and helped Eunice get out; together they put the tonneau cover on to keep the expected dew off the seats. They had little with them that they needed; it had all been set up beforehand, just one of the items on their list of things they’d accomplished in the last few days.

And, tradition being tradition, Jeff carried Eunice in through the front door, then set her down. “So,” he said “do you feel married?”

“I feel very married,” she smiled. “I thought things went very well, but I’ll be the first to say that I’m glad they’re over with. There’s a part of me that wishes we’d done it six months ago, but I have to say that doing it this way was probably just as well.”

“Yeah, I think I agree,” he said. “At least now we can spend the night alone together and not have to cover up the fact.”

“There is that,” she said. “Jeff, I’m curious. Does it bother you any that I’m not a virgin on our wedding night?”

“Not really,” he smiled, sensing that she wasn’t really bothered by it. “After all, we just got things a little out of order. Beyond that, I don’t think it matters.”

“I don’t think it matters to me, either,” she said. “I’ll tell you what, though. In a way, I’m glad we went ahead and did it months ago. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to go through a day like we had today, knowing that I was going to have to face that too, and being nervous about what it’s going to be like. This was hard enough as it was.”

“Are you telling me you want to give it a pass for tonight?” he grinned. “It has been a few weeks, after all, and I’m more than ready.”

“No, I don’t want to give it a pass. I’m even more ready than you are, if such a thing is possible. But like I said, at least I don’t have to worry about what it’s going to be like. Now if you can help me get out of this wedding dress, maybe we can finally do it and not have to feel guilty about it.”

They took their time about getting ready – not any more than necessary, but enough – and soon were giving their new bed a workout. The double bed seemed to have loads of room after the nights they’d spent together in the three-quarter bed in the apartment, and they made use of it in one of the sweetest sessions they’d ever had. They didn’t let it go on too long, though; it had been a long day, and they faced some big, though interesting days to come.

Amazingly enough, they awoke at about their regular time the next morning, although their morning activities together weren’t exactly the same things they did when they’d been living separately. It took them a while to get up, use the bathroom and get dressed a lot more casually than they’d been the night before. “What would you say to not even bothering to try to make breakfast here,” he suggested as they were getting dressed. “We could stop at some restaurant along the way.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” she said. “If we made something here the dishes would have to be washed, or they’d have to wait for us to get back in two weeks or so. I’m not even sure we could get them clean after letting them set that long.”

“You’re probably right,” he agreed. “Let’s get on the road.”

It didn’t take them long to get packed – most of it had been done in the previous days, and there were only a few minor items that had to be added. They weren’t taking much with them, since there wasn’t much room in the Triumph anyway, especially with having to take the side curtains with them. In order to make a little more room, Eric had arranged with Eunice’s father to have the roll bar taken out; it could be bolted back in at some point in the future if he ever decided to race the car again. Since they weren’t taking much, it was only the work of a few minutes to get their luggage for two weeks into the roadster, and soon they were on their way.

“You know,” she said as he pulled the TR-2 out onto the street, “it seems absolutely incredible to me that Eric would allow us to take this car on our honeymoon. After all, we’re going to be gone two weeks. That’s two weeks he could be out with it climbing or sailing or whatever it is he’s going to be doing this summer.”

“Well, he has the Nash if he needs it,” Jeff shrugged. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he decides to go somewhere and takes half the summer. After all, he’s said right along he didn’t plan on racing this car any more, or at least not soon. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him pass us while he’s on his way to the Shawangunks to do some climbing, or something like that.”

“I’ll bet Donna wouldn’t be very thrilled with him if he did that.”

“Probably not,” he laughed. “Especially if he twisted her arm to go with him.”

“That’s not going to happen. I expect her folks would throw a fit if she did, no matter that she’s twenty-one now or what. Has he said anything about what he’s planning on doing this summer? Or whenever?”

“Not really,” Jeff shrugged. “He was making some sounds about getting a job, or maybe taking off and doing something, but if he made up his mind about what he’s going to do, I don’t know about it. I suspect Donna may have some influence on what he does. About all I know is that he didn’t plan on anything serious until our wedding was over with. He said once that there was going to be enough happening right about now that there was no point in complicating things.”

“I guess I can understand that. There was enough for all of us to do these past couple of weeks, and the wedding was only part of it. But now that the wedding is over with and we’re out of school, he has to make up his mind about what he’s going to do.”

“Probably so, but what it is, I don’t know. He’s always been pretty vague about what he planned to do after he got out of college. Well, now the time has come. Like I said, he hasn’t told me much about it, but he might have talked to Donna about it. Has she said anything to you along those lines?”

“Not really,” Eunice sighed. “In fact, she seemed pretty mystified about it. I know what she’d like him to do, but knowing him, he’s not going to be anxious for that. But, I’ll tell you what, you could see it written all over her yesterday.”

“Yeah, even I could see those longing glances,” he laughed. “Her tongue was pretty close to hanging out all afternoon. If she even thought he would have said yes, she’d have shoved us right out of the way to get to the minister.”

“You’re probably right,” she laughed with him. “I guess that means she hasn’t gotten him where she wants him yet. I wonder if she ever will.”

“It’s going to be interesting to see what’s going to happen about that,” he told his wife. “Somehow, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it.”

The whole honeymoon was quite an experience for the newlywed Jeff and Eunice. The basic plan was mostly what Eric had suggested back at Christmas, which was to stop off at Niagara Falls and then go where the wind blew them. However, they actually had gone to a little more planning than that, much of it based on Eric’s experiences the previous summer, with a few new ideas thrown in.

Eric had complained that the Ohio Turnpike was boring, especially in the roadster, so rather than taking the toll road, Jeff and Eunice drove directly to Detroit, across the Ambassador Bridge into Canada, and then up Highway 3 to get to the Falls, their first day out. Like good newlyweds, they got a room there and did some of the tourist things like ride on the Maid of the Mist, but one day and two nights there was enough, and soon they were on their way in the TR-2 again.

They really only had two “got-to” items on their list after that – go to the Bay of Fundy in Canada and see the huge rise and fall of the tides there they’d read about, and see the Shawangunks where Eric had spent so much time climbing the summer before. Neither of them had any desire to try any climbing, but they’d been enthralled by a lot of his stories of them.

All that was fine, but they got to see a lot of other things along the way, like the flight of Erie Canal locks at Lockport, New York, the Adirondacks, and Lake Champlain. On their way through New England they stopped at Mount Washington and took a ride on the cog railway to the top, about the limit of their interest in mountain climbing. Emerging on the Maine coast, they got a chance to eat their first lobster – they liked it – and visit Acadia National Park.

From there, they crossed into Canada again, drove through New Brunswick and found a motel with a good view of the Bay of Fundy. They wound up staying there for three nights – some rainy weather blew in, and riding in the Triumph was no fun in the rain, and its electrical system wasn’t very happy with the wet, either. They did manage to see the huge tides, but the time in the motel room was highly welcome for more traditional newlywed activities.

That was the farthest they got from home; from there on it was back trail for them, and they were more than halfway through their two weeks, anyway. But they did manage to visit Concord and Lexington, to stand on “that rude bridge that arched the flood,” and visit Walden Pond. Then it was time to get moving again; their time was getting even tighter. They did make a brief stop at the Shawangunks, but saw no sign of the Nash, which was something of a relief even though they still had no idea what Eric – or maybe Eric and Donna – could be up to.

From there on, it was mostly a case of getting home, although they took their time at it, traveling some winding roads through New York, Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio to enjoy driving on roads the little roadster made fun.

A special wedding present they’d gotten before the actual wedding was a Leica M-2, an excellent 35 millimeter camera. Jeff shot up several rolls of Kodachrome slide film along the way. A couple of times when he and Eunice were alone in some pretty place they got frisky. Just strictly for fun, he loaded the camera with some black and white film, and took some nude photos of her. Some of the shots involved the Triumph. He planned on borrowing his father’s darkroom sometime to develop and print those special shots.

By the last day they were ready for the trip to be over with, so they just got on the Ohio Turnpike to get on home to Wychbold. The turnpikes were dull in comparison to the twisty roads they’d come to enjoy, and both of them agreed that Eric offering to let them use the Triumph had been a stroke of genius. “It’s too bad we have to give it back,” Eunice said at one point. “It’d be fun to take another trip like this sometime. I’ll bet the Blue Ridge Parkway would be a lot of fun in a car like this.”

“Maybe we’ll have to keep our eyes open for another roadster like this,” Jeff suggested. “It wouldn’t be something to drive every day, but you’re right: it would be a lot of fun to do a trip like this again.”

Finally they drove back into the driveway of their house – it still seemed a little strange to think of it that way. The Nash was sitting beside the house, but no one was around. “That’s a little strange,” Jeff said. “I figured we’d have to go find Eric at the folk’s house to get the Nash.”

“I wonder if he ever figured out what he’s going to be doing this summer,” Eunice smiled. “Oh, well, I guess we’ll probably find out pretty soon. Your folks will probably know.”

After two weeks of practice it didn’t take them long to get the Triumph unloaded and their things hauled inside. It was clear that a lot of laundry would need to be done, even with making a couple of stops at coin laundries along the way, so Eunice got started separating things out and planning a laundry run – a washer and dryer was something their house lacked.

It was some time before Eunice noticed the note in an envelope sitting on the kitchen table. “What’s this?” she said, and picked it up. “It’s from Eric!”

Jeff came over to see. She handed him the envelope, he opened it, then read it out loud to Eunice:

Jeff and Eunice:

This is a very hard letter to write, but for a number of reasons I feel I should do what I’m going to do.

First off, I’m selling you the Triumph. The title is in this envelope, and it’s all signed off. I bought it from Eunice’s dad for seven hundred, and that’s a fine price for me. You don’t have to pay me right now, since I trust you. At some point in the next two or three years I’ll probably need that seven hundred, and you can get it to me then, but I won’t need it for a while. If you decide you don’t want it, sell it for what you can and I’ll take that instead.

“That’s strange,” Eunice commented. “I wonder what brought this on?”

“There’s more,” Jeff said, and went on reading.

You might remember when I went to Swartz Creek a while ago to talk to my brother. There was a notice at his place from the county draft board. I won’t go into all the ins and outs, and I probably could have avoided it, but I decided it wasn’t worth fighting it. I did manage to get them to hold off until after your wedding, but I decided to not say anything about it because I didn’t want Donna to get upset at the news and ruin things for you. By the time you read this, I’ll have reported for duty.

“Drafted?” Jeff frowned. “That’s strange. As a college student he supposedly was exempt. Granted, when he graduated he should have lost his exemption, but that usually takes a while to process.”

“Oh, dear,” Eunice shook her head. “I’ll bet Donna wasn’t very happy about that.”

“Sounds like he wasn’t expecting her to be, either.”

Actually, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all for the best. Don’t get me wrong. I like Donna, but it has become clear that I’m not the man she needs in her life. She deserves to have someone permanent and stable in her life, and I’m pretty sure I’m not that someone. You know me well enough that I’m not ready to settle down yet, and my guess is that I won’t be very soon. So this gives me a good excuse to break it off with her. As you might guess, she wasn’t very happy about it when I told her after the wedding. I tried to tell her I was sorry, but that it’s probably the best that could happen for us in the long run.

I am of very mixed feelings about having to go in the military. Both of you know about how my dad died in New Guinea when I was six. That has screwed up my life beyond all comprehension, mostly because my mother couldn’t handle Dad’s death and left me stuck with my alcoholic brother. Among other things, that means I don’t want to have someone depending on me or expecting me to be there when I can’t be, and that’s true whether I’m in the Army, or out climbing, or whatever it is I happen to do. I can’t imagine having a wife and a child and not being able to come back to them like they deserve, so I’m not going to risk having someone else’s life screwed up the way mine was. You know me – I don’t like to make promises I can’t keep, and there’s no way I can make that promise, at least not now.

I told you I broke it off with Donna, and that she wasn’t very happy about it, even when I told her what I just told you. She says she’s willing to take the risk, but that doesn’t matter; I’m not. I know better, after all. I learned it the hard way.

I could probably get home on leave now and then but I don’t plan to. I think the best thing I can do is to stay away, especially from Donna, and hope that in two years or so she can find someone who can be the husband she deserves. I doubt I can be the one, anyway.

I’ll try to write to you now and then to keep you up to date, but it probably would be best if you don’t tell Donna very much, since I don’t want her getting her hopes up. I love Donna in a special way, and I love her enough that I don’t want to louse up her life by having me in it. It’s getting harder and harder to keep some distance with you and Eunice getting married. She sees it, she wants it badly, and I’m not ready to be the guy she wants me to be.

You two have a good marriage and a good life. I’ll probably be seeing you again sometime, but I don’t know when that will be. Be good to each other, since both of you deserve it.

-- Eric

“Well, I guess that settles the question of what Eric is doing this summer,” Jeff shook his head.

“And for the next two years, too,” Eunice replied sadly. “Poor Donna.”

“Yeah, no fooling. Actually, that answers a number of questions about the way Eric has been acting. He’s known about this for a while, but he’s kept his mouth shut to keep from messing up our wedding.”

“That makes sense,” she replied. “Jeff, does this mean that you could get drafted?”

“Technically, I suppose it does,” he replied. “I’ll be eligible for a few years yet, but from what I understand the chances of my getting called are pretty limited. I guess they get enough volunteers from this county that they don’t have to draft very many people. Besides, now that we’re married I’m just about draft-proof, unless a real big war breaks out or something.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I think so too. Getting drafted would louse things up for us, and for my working for the company. But like I said, I don’t think it’s going to happen now.”

“I hope not. But Jeff, what are we going to do about Donna?”

“I don’t know that there’s much we can do, other than maybe trying to get her to look for someone else. We may still be friends with her, Eunice, but now that we’re married, we’ve got other things we have to think about too.”

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