The scissor horseman snips a wedding

“Charlene, your dad’s making everyone empty their bags.”

“Why?”

“I dunno, but he just pocketed Amelia’s cuticle nipper.”

“Not this again! My wedding will not be a repeat of the third grade Easter bonnet parade!”

I throw a coat over my gown and march into the foyer.

Sure enough, dad has commandeered the gifts table and declared an impromptu security checkpoint. He’s making Aunt Flora remove her ostentatious and potentially deadly silver wattle earrings. New arrivals mill in a haphazard queue, rummaging their paraphernalia for contraband.

“Dad,” I say, letting the word rumble in my throat. I give him the Paddington stare. I plant my palm on my hip and jut out an elbow.

He glares back. He tries to land a fist on his hip, misses, and settles for tucking his thumb into his cumberbund.  “Charls.”

“I thought we agreed we weren’t going to do this today.”

“I bet you anything, he’ll be here. Bad idea having the wedding on a farm, horses everywhere. And sharp objects around for him to grab? Asking for trouble. I even saw someone strutting about with fabric scissors. I put a stop to that. Fabric scissors. Unbelievable.”

“OK. Walk with me.” I snap my fingers. Bridesmaids descend on the scene, vacate the roadblock, and hustle the lingering guests into the open arms of canapés.

Dad and I start a loop of the venue. “So… this is about the ribbon cutting?”

The ribbon cutting is family lore. Dad tells the story better than I do, lots of flourishes like the ribbon tumbling to the ground in slow motion, and his scissors chomping the air like a breathless fish.

Here’s the Reader’s Digest abridged version.

Back when dad was in his early twenties, he won a prestigious lottery to cut the ribbon at a bridge opening. You know, the bridge that’s usually third in listicles of iconic Australian bridges, right after Sydney Harbour and Richmond. That one.

Fancying himself an entrepreneur, on the basis of this minor celebrity status dad pre-sold product endorsements to hook his business up with new computers and grab some mod cons for the family home.

Come the day of the ceremony, fate intervened, as it often does, in the form of a weirdo right-wing nationalist on a horse. 

There dad was, in front of the biggest crowd you’ve ever seen, scissors ready, and this guy in military uniform on a horse rides up and slashes the ribbon with a sabre. Some protest to do with the Governor-General’s authority to prorogue parliament or such.

It happens in this country more often than you think.

They fined the dude, but that didn’t help dad. Since technically dad hadn’t opened the bridge, the endorsement deals were void, and he had to give back all the new stuff. Mum still opines about the fridge with an ice dispenser in the door that so briefly touched her life, honoured in perpetuity by the preservation of its empty square on the kitchen linoleum.

“You don’t get it, Charls. That’s where my life went wonky. That bloody ribbon cutting!”

“Oh, that’s nice, not happy with your sweet wife and beautiful daughter?”

“I could have been the next Alan Bond! Fame and fortune taken away in an instant! Anyway, it’s not just what happened on the bridge. That man’s been mucking with me for decades. Remember when I went for the job with Wesfarmers?”

“Yeah, the one you didn’t get?”

“Well, I would have gotten it, if not for my tie!”

“What was wrong with your tie?”

“I was standing at the pedestrian lights across from their building, ready for my interview, dapper as anything, and this man on a horse clops up next to me.” 

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s true! It was him! The man in uniform! He leant over and slashed my tie! Right there on the street! Then he rode off! Made me look like a disorganised slob!”

“Baloney.”

“And then there was the big Paris trip your mum and I planned - he’s the reason we missed the plane!”

“Sure it wasn’t because of a few too many the night before?”

“No, the bastard cut my tires! Right in front of me! Counter-clockwise, one after the other! Didn’t even offer us a lift on the horse!”

“Pretty sure he couldn’t have done that with a cuticle nipper, dad, so maybe you can ease off on the handbag Columbo gig.”

“You’ve met him too!”

“Oh, I have, have I?”

“Well… uh, I wouldn’t expect you to remember him…”

“Try me.”

“Well, it was just after your mum gave birth to you. In the delivery room.”

“OK.”

“The doctor was getting ready to cut the umbilical cord…”

“And a man on a horse charges into the delivery room and snips it? Then scoots off?”

“I swear that’s what happened, as I live and breathe. He brought his own scissors.”

“How did the horse get into the hospital? Delivery to the roof by helicopter?”

“I don’t know how he got in, I just know what I saw!”

I decide the pressure of giving his daughter away has cooked dad’s noggin, and the best thing I can do is get the official part of the day over. Prove there’s nothing to worry about. Anyway, the whipped chocolate ganache in the cake will go runny if we don’t eat it today. Control what you can, and in this case it’s the fluffiness of the wedding cake.

I remand dad into the perfumed but firm custody of the bridesmaids, an inescapable panopticon of charming smiles and interlocked arms. He’s not happy, but he’ll deal.

Ceremony starts.

Dad walks me down the aisle. He frowns at Aunt Flora’s earrings like they’re shrapnel bombs about to pop.

Priest does his thing, blah blah.

My guy does his vows. I tear up a bit. Nailed it hon.

I say my part.

More blah from priest.

The deed is done. Success - no horse-bourne intruders or projectile chakram decapitations. Suck it, imaginary family nemesis.

Dad drops the scowl.

We all shift to the reception hall for dinner.

The beurre blanc sauce on the salmon doesn’t have enough vinegar, but I won’t let that mar a successful day.

Dad gives a lovely speech. A cute anecdote about the Easter bonnet parade, including an overdue confession that he was the one who took the box cutter. No mention of the famous ribbon cutting incident and its fate-changing impact on a young battler. That took willpower.

Love you too dad.

Time to cut the cake.

I reach for the knife.

And I hear the clack clack clack of horse hooves on timber floor.

He’s old, scraggy tufts of hair playing catch with liver spots. His boots look like they’ve been pried off a dead man. The yellow buttons on his jacket are a leper’s fingernails. The sheathed sword at his side swings back and forth like a razor pendulum. His horse wobbles, like its bones have already been melted for glue. His eyes are faded court transcripts, bleary, all-knowing, and indifferent.

Everyone’s too spooked to move or speak or take a photo.

To his credit, dad isn’t scared. He brandishes a pair of mysteriously acquired fabric scissors in defence, and gives me a smug look to say “I told you so”. Thanks for that, dad. Appreciate you.

Doesn’t make the man on the horse less scary. He stinks of drowned library books, lizards scuffed on highways, and rancid clock oil. He’s fate, here to cut the thread of my life.

He walks the horse up to the wedding cake and pulls out his sabre.

Three precise slices, like a samurai chopping wings off butterflies.

He turns and trots away, dissolving into the outback gloom, his sword held aloft.

Pierced on the tip of the sword is a perfectly shaped triangle of wedding cake.

The swirls of chocolate ganache on the cake look just like a ribbon fluttering in the air.