ATDTDA (9): Of scowls and acoustics, 266-267

[Paul Nightingale]

Martial law and Oleander Prudge, the former mentioned in passing, the latter
receiving rather more attention. The opening paragraph records the passing
of time; and martial law is the context for Oleander's career. Just as
martial law is formal social control, so is "her tendency to lecture her
clients on points of personal grooming" an attempt at informal social
control.

Away from town, the wedding eventually takes place "over on the other side
of the mountains in a prairie church whose steeple was visible for miles".
Oleander wears a "perpetual scowl"; censorious, she dares prospective
customers to take a chance (before "coming away bewildered, shaking their
heads"). The church, however, is rather more welcoming.  In close-up it is
likened to a face "haggard from the assaults of more winters than anybody
still living in the area remembered the full count of"; the acoustics within
are excellent, passing musicians "elevated into more grace than the
acoustics of his way would have granted him so far". Further down the page,
the preacher is "not so much reciting the well-known words as singing them,
in a harmonic-minor drone this congenial soundbox smoothed into a dark
psalm".

In the third paragraph "[t]he officiating presence" has a "face indistinct
as is shadowed beneath a hood. Yet he too is welcoming: "When the deed was
done, as his wife was bringing out a glass bowlful of wedding punch and some
cups, the preacher produced an accordion and, as if unable not to, played
them a thunderous country waltz ." (266-267).

One might speculate that the choice of venue has been based on a desire to
get away from town; and the contrast between first paragraph and those
following is apparent, between Oleander's hectoring tone and the preacher's
sing-song. At the end of the first paragraph, Oleander's success is marked
by the location of "her own room, a corner room at that, with a lengthy view
down the valley" (266). Cut to: "Lake and Deuce were married over on the
other side of the mountains .", ie hidden from Oleander's gaze.

Yet Oleander provides a service for which she is rewarded; and her critique
of miners' "personal grooming" might not be such a bad thing. Meanwhile, the
non-believer might say the church's acoustics owe more to the wood it is
built of than to the grace of God. And why "dark psalm"?