Two events in our stanitsa warranted a party- Weddings and Elections.

Now, ask anyone back then, there’s not much difference between the two- except there’s a white dress and many kisses at one, and fists at another.

For sure, there’s plenty feasting at both- and business deals are brokered- whether between in-law and in-law or ataman with his electors.

There’s always plenty of drink- you’d think a spring of the good stuff bubbled through someone’s farm judging by how much we served! And how much guests gulped down.

Of course, a bride can’t be shamed by her people if the wedding turns out parsimonious with its hospitality, and so, neither can decent Cossack imagine being stingy with his supporters.

Auntie Pelageya proclaimed herself an expert negotiator at both events. And was she!

Elections were set in place. Each tavern in our town became its own council, each assembly congregated, any and all Cossack men were there. Arguing who we should elect, arguing who should be given a sound kick, and arguing with each other. Old disputes suddenly resurrected, like Lazarus from the Grave, but with less joy and more fisticuffs.

Matvei’s sister made the most foolish mistake- she insisted on wedding her Piotra in the same week as the Ataman elections.

“Why should I- I mean, WE wait, for the election to be over?” Apronya, Matvei’s sister, announced in our town square. Everyone paused when she talked. She was something of an Auntie Pelageya-in-training.

(“What a fine girl is Agrippina Martinevna is!” Auntie fondly praised each time she passed the Kozhenikov homestead.)

“Really? Can’t you men do both? Are you all cars hooked up to a train on a single track?” Apronya continued, ruddy hands on her hips. Her printed calico skirt, that proud yellow thing she wore into town, swayed forcefully, as though an extension of her determination. Yes, indeed, could this be my Auntie as a young woman?

“ I-I mean, WE’ll have the finest wedding feast, all you men and your women will see what a REAL feast is! We’ll put Toluchukov and Iripin to shame with our hospitality! “ She turned on her heel of her even prouder boot, nearly tumbling over her fiancé, Timofei Markovich.

He was like a scarecrow, spindly-limb, and just as firm as one, too.

After Apronya glared and bared her teeth at her gawkish betrothed for making her falter, Timofei Markovich simply cleared his throat, smoothed that sad thin strip of fair hair he called a mustache, and said, “Yes, please, you’re all welcome to our wedding! No expense spared for the hospitality, just as my Apronya said! It’s all true. We mean no disrespect to the Ataman’s office- we in the Stanista can do both! Two feasts in one day. Please come!” Why did it sound like a frantic plea than an invitation?

Ah, poor Timofei Markovich!

 We all know who’d hold the reins on Timofei’s horse.

Auntie, Kolya, Grandfather and I were in town, picking up the month’s provisions of coffee, sugar, tobacco, (Grandfather was something ornery if his pipe laid cold and unlit for more than two days) and some bolts of calico muslin.

Auntie loaded her bolts, wrapped in paper and string, into the wagoncart. She straightened herself, eyes shining with a gleam of gleeful passion. She grinned and chuckled triumphantly, slapped her large hands on her apron. My grandfather, covered in dust and mud, hobbled over to our wagoncart- he’d just left the Tobacconist’s shop amid a dust cloud and burst of screams and threats. No doubt Grandfather knew it was election-time, too.

“To hell with you, Stepan Semeonovich! You’re a dog voting for that devil! He’s a cheat, and I stand by it! Think you can knock me about? Might be old, but this wolf still has teeth!” Beating his chest with one fist clenched, Grandfather shot another fist in air, shaking it fiercely, still clenching on his now-lit pipe.

“Don’t you dare darken my eyes with the sight of you, Stepanka!” bellowed Grandfather, his face reddened beet-red.

Kolya contented himself sucking on a piece of rock candy, while, I, in priding myself that being 12, I needed no such treats. Still, eyeing that coveted paper bag of sweets, I wonder if we got home if I could persuade Kolya to give me a piece.

Auntie smoothed her bangs, exposed from her headshawl, and tightened her apron, as though slimming her stout waist. Kolya and I thought this strange.

Grandfather thought it odd, too. He flicked the dust off his shoulderpads. (He always wore his old service jacket into town.)

“Well, what’s gotten into my little Palancheka?” He sighed, like a father given up figuring out his children.

“Daddy! Why didn’t tell me Toluchukov was running for Ataman? Goodness! Is it Karp Platonovich? Please tell me it is!” Auntie shot out excitedly, wringing her mighty hands like a nervous schoolgirl.

“Everyone knows Karp Platonovich is running for Ataman!” spat Grandfather in heated spite. “He’s a cheat, Palancheka! A cheat! I don’t care what favors he showed to you as a girl, I won’t have anyone in this family stirring in his business! Good thing you women can’t vote!”

Auntie’s thrill turned to simmering anger, as she grew stiff, and narrowed her eyes at her father. Kolya and I watched, with the mixed curiosity and indifference boys our age should have.

“Daddy! How can you say that? He never cheated us! He always paid me extra whenever I shoed his horse! He even gave me that pretty silk shawl he got from Rostov-on-Don! I still have that shawl, you know!” Auntie Pelageya launched into a rallying defense of this Karp fellow.

“Damn it all, I can’t control you, Palancheka, I’m too damn old for your schemes, but don’t get any of us involved if you go doing favors for Karp Platonovich! I’ll tell you, Iripin has my vote!”

Kolya and I were subjected to a back-and-forth haranguing between Grandfather and Auntie; they even fought who’d drove the horses home.

“Since you’re SO OLD, Daddy,” Auntie emphasized the two words with a restrained contempt that bordered on venomous, “you might as let me rein the horses home!”

“Hah! You’ll probably drive us into a ditch, you’re so impassioned about Karp all over again, like a school-age chit!” retorted Grandfather.

I could care less for this Karp, or for the elections. I just wanted that piece of rock candy Kolya kept depleting in his paper bag. I think it was Sarsaparilla.

Over supper (a spoon-banging, shouting, bowls overturning incident), I gathered that this Karp fellow cheated our neighbors, the Efanovs, out of a prized patch of land that sported some nice clover every summer. It was low-lying, like a bowl, so the water would gather, keeping that patch irrigated while the rest of the land would shrivel under July’s merciless sun.  

But in my Auntie’s youth, Karp won her heart. Simply put, Auntie shoed horses as a side business, particularly when Grandfather was away on training. Auntie earned a reputation for her shoeing-  “her shoes never fell off!” was the town’s opinion.

Well, Karp Platonovich knew this too, and he, being a richer Cossack, always rode a handsome steed- those sleek shiny ones reserved for parades.

Now Auntie could never stand against flattery. You could convince Auntie of anything the moment you flattered her. The devil could flatter her, and she’d think he wasn’t such a bad fellow afterwards.

Karp also knew this. The morning he first swaggered in, bobbing up and down in his saddle with pride on his shiny sorrel, so the story goes as my Grandfather recounted over our evening of games, sweets and smoking, (well, he smoked, the rest of us didn’t) Karp assaulted Auntie, then a sturdy towering lass of 16, with honeyed praises.

“Ah, Pelaegya Nikonevna- how is it that a woman combines such two unequal attributes of strength and beauty? The beauty of Venus and the smithing vigor of Hephaestus!” glowed Karp.

“Venus? Oh, Karp Platonovich, you honor me! I’ll take the smithing praise, for sure, Daddy taught me well, but me a Venus? Really!” Auntie gasped breathless, fanning herself from the sudden assault of flattery. She batted her eyelashes prettily.

“Wait!” Auntie growled in the present, breaking the recollection.

Grandfather scowled.

“He also said my eyes were like clear pools of spring water, too! That’s why he gave me 10 kopecks extra for my job- ‘an extra fiver for each lovely eye, dear girl!’” Auntie corrected him. She returned to book-keeping, massive back hunched over our table in the kitchen.

“Bah! See that? Women are stupid with flattery, boys! Make sure you wed a woman who’s not like that! That God gave me such a daughter who’s so smart yet so soft in the head the moment some devil compliments her!”

“Boys, don’t be stupidly blind like your grandfather- men may not be easily flattered, but they’ll cut off the nose to spite the face!” Auntie hurled back the insult.

Karp only went to Auntie for his shod horses, and when Auntie hung up her hammer, awl and leather apron, Karp gave her that fancy silk shawl as a parting gift. It was something fine, for sure! That old fancy class you’ll never see again, especially with its flower patterns, and the little beaded tassels. She kept it folded nicely and crisply in her treasured chest, and only wore it for Shrovetide, Easter and Christmas.

The day arrived for Apronya’s wedding- and the election. Matvei, like any decent younger brother, was tossed about in the whirlpool of wedding chores.

Auntie, an authority of weddings, along with a handful of other elder Kazatchki,  assisted Apronya with her dress and bombardment of what I- overhearing because I wanted to steal some cakes off the table- regarded as useless advice.

“Now, don’t cry when goes for his service, it’s happened to us all!”

“Be faithful to him- you can hold you head high in the village, dear!”

“But don’t expect him to do suit- men are wandering, you see. But forgive him anyway! God forbid your neighbor is the one leading him astray! Then you’ve got every right to go after her, that shameless hussy!”

Apronya was motherless, so Auntie and her own assembly of these older women, all gathered around the bride, so Apronya had eight mothers instead of none for her wedding day.

The wedding, as luck times things, took place as soon as old Karp and Iripin began their rounds of drink and favors in the town’s taverns.

Auntie made certain Kolya and I were pressed into our finest jackets she meticulously starched the day before, and had us polish our boy-sized caps and boots till they gleamed like glass.

It made for a miserable prelude, as we waited for the real party to begin.

Bursting out the twin church doors in mixture of what I now realized, being married all these years, of joy and painful consternation, Timofei Markovich laboriously attempted to sweep his blushing bride (not ecstasy or modest, I realized when I grew wiser years later, blushed her fleshy cheeks, but a burning outrage of embarrassment) but his scrawny arm failed him in whisking her onto his horse, proper bridal style. 

Apronya responded in turn by grabbing his jacket collar and glaring furiously at him. If eyes could drill like an awl, it was Apronya’s shining eyes at her hapless new husband.

“That bodes badly. Tsk!” sighed my Grandfather. He took great stock in omens like this, esp where fieldwork or marriage was concerned.

Auntie, of course disagreed.

“Nonsense- it just shows Apronya is like how I was- and how I still am! Firmly rooted in the ground!” She huffed and tapped her bosom proudly.

Like a fish through the reeds, I wove through the crowd outside the church and found my friend Matvei. He too, was decked in an all-too stiff and starched jacket and boots and cap polished mirror-like. His lips wriggled in uncertainty and he scuffed the toe of his boot against the gate stile.

“Huh. Are you going to miss your sister, Matka?” I asked him.

Matvei shrugged in uncertainty. “I suppose so? Apronya got married- it’s what she’s always been yammering for. At least Dad can stop complaining about it. Guess I’ll miss her…” His tired voice trailed off in that sort faux weariness a boy can burdened himself with.

“Huh. Well, at least your family put out a great table, though!” I shoved three small cakes in my chomping maw. Kolya’s cleverness prompted him in bringing a large handkerchief to carry his cache he’d swipe off the table. Wish I’d done that!

The town was divided- most men charged into the taverns for the elections, while the women all rallied at the wedding. There were some men, mostly those who heard Apronya’s father was giving “gifts” that including a rouble note, a pot of watermelon honey, and a bottle of vodka.

“The affair will put me in debt for 3 years!” moaned Apronya’s father, Martin Efimovich. He, like any bride’s father trying to save face, begrudgingly seated himself at the first spread table, tsking and growling at his misfortune at not joining the rest of his comrades at the taverns.

 Both dead set against Karp Platonovich’s run for Ataman, Martin Efimovich and my grandfather proved themselves the loudest opponents, but now Martin Efimovich found himself duty-bound in overseeing his only daughter’s wedding -leaving my grandfather as the sole “sentinel” alarming their brethren before they casted their vote.  

Yet assuredly enough, there was my grandfather, Martin Efimovich noted in approval, as Matvei and I watched his father yell from the table to my grandfather, standing on a crate outside the tavern, only a stone’s throw from Martin Efimovich’s house.

“Are you hosting your guests or bellowing at the election, Father?” hissed Apronya, bustling her way to the table, all primed to her chin with milk-white lace and imported paste pearls.

“Both! I’m allowed both! You said so yourself, my little dear dove!”

It was hard to tell if he thought his daughter as his “little dove”, so I thought as Kolya and I swiped more cakes off the silver filigree platter. 

Might as well take while the taking’s good, my childish self reasoned.

“I’m not feeble-minded like some of our neighbors!” argued her scowling father. Apronya groaned through gritted teeth, and turned on her heel, as she always did.

The older I grew, the more I look back on recollection how elections customarily consisted of drinking to the health of whoever who provided the most drink- and that, in no uncertain terms, was the winner.

However, while old Karp had plenty of coin to drop for drink, he didn’t foresee the assault on his upstanding- of which Grandfather and now Martin Efimovich joining the offense front, if you will (having torn himself from the wedding festivities), were in the heat of their “fighting”.

Grandfather had the loudest voice, while Martin Efimovich used complicated words that only the town’s intellects tossed about.