High Plains Tango (15 page)

Carlisle leaned against the Flagstone and laughed, thinking about Jack and the look he must have had on his face when a band rolled into “Stardust.”

Gally was under way, talking fast, talking to the wind as much as to Carlisle, and he let her run. “I remember how these big shutters would be swung up and how the lake looked with moonlight across it. There were moving lights in the ceiling that flickered on the floor and on the dancers, and on Saturday nights the bands played all the old songs: ‘Sunrise Serenade,’ ‘A Foggy Day,’ ‘Stella by Starlight.’ Things like that.

“The Saturday night bands had names you wouldn’t believe, names like Glenn Boyer’s Honey Dreamers. Icky, huh?” She was grinning and looked almost beautiful standing there, reeling in the memories, moving through old doorways she needed to walk through again.

“By the mid-sixties, things were changing fast. To keep going, the place booked rock ’n’ roll bands, mostly. For some reason, though, it just kind of died out, all of it. The Flagstone closed in 1966. They had a big farewell party, and lots of the musicians who played here over the years came and played one more time. People drove all the way from Florida and California just for that one night. I was only twenty-five and wasn’t from around here, but I’d spent a lot of nights in this old place by that time.

“I remember they played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the end, and we all cried, except for Jack, who was hoping they’d finish up with ‘San Antonio Rose.’ He was drunk and kept on hollering for that: ‘“SannnAnnnntonnnniooooRosie,”
one more time
.’ The musicians playing that night probably had never played ‘San Antonio Rose’ in their entire lives, but Jack kept on hollering for it even after the band left the stage.”

She stopped for a moment, thinking how she’d taken off her clothes in the truck that night when she and Jack left the Flagstone, sitting on his lap and steering the truck while his hands moved over her, the two of them wobbling back and forth along the roads of Yerkes County, headed toward a place called home.

She looked serious for a moment. “I loved him then, Carlisle, I truly did. He was a young girl’s dream, I guess.”

“I’m sure you did. From everything you’ve told me, I can see why.”

“But I came to hate him, and that’s not right.”

Gally had tears in her eyes, maybe from the wind, maybe from her memories. She was leaning back into them, hearing a big band play “Early Autumn” again, seeing the lights on the floor, feeling what it was like to be a young woman when the big sky was like the curve of a cowboy’s shoulder—no, some combination of cowboy and pirate—looking out through open windows when he turned you, looking out at moonlight over warm water lapping on the lake shore, thinking none of this will ever change.

Carlisle smiled at her. “I’ll take you dancing sometime. Would you like that?”

She walked over and put a mittened hand on his face. “I’d like that very much.” That’s all she said, and they walked slowly back to the idling truck and the warmth of its heater.

They cleaned up the supper leavings, and Carlisle made a pot of coffee. Talking for a while longer, smiling at each other across Carlisle’s jury-rigged table. He was thinking that Gally Deveraux was a damn fine woman. He fixed her a plate of turkey to take home with her, and they stood on his front porch for a minute or two, looking out across the great spaces where they lived. Gally had stopped thinking of Carlisle as a possibility, thought of him now as a man, a good man. Whatever his weaknesses were, he was strong in all the right ways, far as she could tell. There was a part of her that wanted to stay with him tonight, more out of companionship than anything else, but somehow that didn’t seem right, yet. Besides, she wasn’t ready to be turned down, and she wasn’t sure how Carlisle felt about her in that way.

She stood on her tiptoes, put her hand on his face, and kissed him softly. “Good night, Carlisle. Thanks for Thanksgiving, it was real sweet. And thanks for going over to the Flagstone with me. I feel good about having done that, remembering those better days with Jack and feeling better about him and our life together because of it. I want to go home tonight and reflect on that some more. I think I’ll just concentrate on remembering the old Jack and try to forget about that other person I lived with all these years.”

Carlisle touched her hair, bent over, and kissed her, then leaned back and said, “Good night, Gally. Drive carefully.”

She started to step off the porch but turned instead and took hold of his shirt lapel with her thumb and finger. “Carlisle McMillan, I like being around you, and I like the way you kissed me. Sometime, when I get myself sorted out a little more, I may suggest we get to know each other a bit better. I hope you won’t be offended if I do.”

“Gally, I don’t think there’s anything you could say that would offend me. Now take your turkey and run before
I
suggest what I think you’re talking about.”

She started the Bronco and rolled down the lane. Carlisle watched her make the turn onto the dark road, watched the Bronco’s taillights move off to the north past where Syawla and the Keeper were supposed to live. When she was gone he looked northwest, then looked again. He went back inside and fetched his binoculars and focused them. There was a small fire burning on the crest of Wolf Butte.

Chapter Ten

T
HE SATURDAY FOLLOWING THANKSGIVING WAS SO UNUSUALLY
warm for the season that it lulled people into thoughts of an easy winter, just before the storms regrouped and slammed them upside the head. Carlisle had something in mind for the house and went to the Little Sal, poking along its sandbars, looking for driftwood. He smelled the smoke from Susanna Benteen’s fire before he saw her.

The river narrowed there, with twenty-foot bluffs rising on either side. She was sitting beneath a rock overhang, a small fire before her, looking at the water. He almost backed off but instead stood quietly. She seemed to be concentrating on something, and he didn’t want to disturb her. And, to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be alone with her. Carlisle was comfortable around women, but there was something about this woman that unsettled him, and, of course, just as unsettling were the images he still had of her dancing across the wooden floors of his house.

In convincing her to perform her special blessing, the Indian had attributed to Carlisle more cosmic awareness than he deserved. That’s how Carlisle saw it. A fully mature consciousness, he supposed, would dwell on the goodness she and the Indian bestowed upon this place and upon him, Builder. But he had coveted her and was stalked by his recollections of her naked body as she danced, images that were reinforced and sharpened by echoes he still could hear in the shadowy, resonant corners of the house he was building. The Indian’s drum and the slap of her bare feet on raw lumber possessed infinite half-lives of their own.

Susanna Benteen, however, was not the kind of woman you telephoned and casually invited out. She seemed neither approachable nor unapproachable. That scale didn’t work in her case.

Also, he suspected she and the Indian were locked into each other in some powerful way, operating on a level of understanding that probably was beyond him. Whether she was the Indian’s woman or not, he wasn’t sure. But he liked and respected both of them and was not about to interfere, even if he had known how.

While he was thinking about moving upriver again and leaving her alone, she turned her head. For a moment she merely looked at him, then she smiled and called out, “Hello, Carlisle,” almost as if she had been expecting him.

He walked toward her. “Sorry if I bothered you, didn’t mean to.”

“You’re not bothering me. Come join me. We don’t have many nice days like this one left.”

It was the first time he had seen her wear anything but long dresses. That day she was in old, snug jeans and a beige sweater, dark green mountain parka, and well-traveled hiking boots. The auburn hair was braided, and the braid hung straight down her back, almost to her waist.

“How is the house coming along?” she asked.

“Fine, real good. I’m out here looking for a special piece of driftwood to make into a stair railing.”

“The river makes a bend about a mile upstream. A lot of wood piles up there in high water, then stays when the water recedes. Have you gone by there yet?”

“No, but I’ll take a look. Thanks.”

“Where are you from, Carlisle? I noticed your license plates are from California.”

“I grew up in Mendocino, but I lived in the Bay Area for the last fifteen years.”

“I was there once, in Mendocino.” She was watching the last leaves of autumn float by, curled and brown.

“When?”

Susanna Benteen pursed her lips and looked upward, thinking. “Six years ago. I had heard it was a nice place, so I stopped on my way down from Seattle.”

“You from Seattle?”

She turned her head and looked at him. “No, I’m from all over, I guess.”

The river gurgled where it tried to push back the bluffs. A hawk drifted far in the west, high and lonesome looking. A light breeze ruffled the water’s surface.

“You’ve traveled a lot, then?”

“Yes, a lot,” Susanna replied. “My mother died when I was four. My father was one of those itinerant scholars, an anthropologist, who roamed the world living off grants and contracts. I went with him.” She held the tip of a stick in the water and watched the small eddy it created, thinking back to her girlhood for a moment.

A rock was jabbing into Carlisle’s hip, and he shifted over a little. She tossed the stick in the water and watched the current take it downstream. “It was a strange, remarkable childhood. How did you come to live in Yerkes County, Carlisle?”

“Drifted in here, on the run from all the craziness. It seemed quiet and open, so I decided to stay and build something worthwhile for a change.”

“It looks like a fine house. The man you call Flute Player told me about your work even before I saw it.”

“Thanks. I appreciate you and him coming by to give it your blessing.”

She smiled at him. “How did you feel about the blessing? It was loosely copied from an ancient rite I once saw a shaman perform in East Africa. The statue of Vesta was my idea.”

How could he answer that? Tell her the truth about what he really felt, about the drumming and how her body looked? End run, coward’s way: “Well, it was pretty different from anything I’d seen before.”

Susanna Benteen smiled sideways at him. “Yes, I’m sure of that. But how did you
feel
about it?”

Moment of truth. His stomach was jumping. He let out a breath, staring across the river, avoiding her eyes. “Honestly, it was the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen or heard or read about. That’s as straight as I can put it.” He felt better having said it and turned to look at her.

The green eyes looked at him calmly. “It wasn’t intended to be, but I think I understand.” She blinked once. “To be honest, I had some of those same feelings midway through the ritual, though I didn’t when it started. The years traveling with my father, the time spent in old cultures, made me comfortable with nakedness, mine and others’. Sometimes I forget that and take it for granted. But I admit, I saw the way you were looking at me and saw things beyond the ritual, just as you did. Men and women can’t escape that, I guess. Some push of the genes, something from a long way back.”

Carlisle got to his feet, a little unsteady. “Sun’s going down. Be dark in a couple of hours.”

“Does darkness bother you?”

“No, but my expedition isn’t finished. The piece of driftwood  .  .  .”

“I hope you find what you’re looking for. I enjoyed our talk.”

“Thanks, so did I.” He walked back up the shore. It was full night when he stepped onto his front porch, carrying a long, pale gray piece of driftwood over his left shoulder. Susanna was still sitting by her small fire, under a bluff, near the river. She was thinking about Carlisle McMillan, about the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, about the strange old feelings that came to her almost every night and urged her toward something she was trying hard to understand.

HIS FIRST
winter out on the high plains was one of Carlisle’s best. Short prairie days of compressed light, weather alternating between stone gray afternoons and mornings of luminous, brittle cold. With the house snugged down and the woodstove cooking away, he worked on the inside, the phase of construction he always liked best. Even though he was not short-changing any part of the building, somehow the opportunities for craftsmanship were most easily seen and done on interior spaces.

After Thanksgiving, Gally pulled out to visit her daughter in Casper, leaving the ranch in the keeping of a hired man. Her daughter was pregnant with her third child and having a hard time, so Gally stayed on to help her. She sent Carlisle a Christmas card, saying she missed his company and that she would return after the baby was born, early in February.

In November, after the crops were harvested, Axel Looker had put in an all-weather road for Carlisle. He had stopped one day while Carlisle was standing by the main road, looking at the sorry condition of his lane. The rains of autumn combined with traffic had turned it into a strip of deep, muddy ruts twelve feet wide.

Axel leaned out his truck window. “Hi, neighbor. Looks like you could use a good path up to your house.”

Carlisle nodded. “I’m standing here thinking about how to get it done.”

“No problem. You order out some gravel from the Guthridge Brothers pit, and I’ll pilot my baby ’dozer down here. I can have it done in a day or two.”

Indeed, Axel did have it finished in two days. A nice little road banked just right for moisture runoff, with gravel spread evenly over the base he’d constructed. Carlisle offered payment, but Axel Looker refused.

“With the crops in, I’ve been drivin’ Earlene nuts just hangin’ around thinkin’ of things to do. That being so, she’s drivin’ me nuts ’cause I’m drivin’ her nuts. Puttin’ in your road was a family vacation of sorts. Sometime I’ll have some carpentry work you can rough up for me. Till then, don’t worry about it.”

After a heavy snow, Carlisle would hear Axel’s big Steiger tractor working in the lane, scooping snow with a front-end loader and dumping it off to the sides. When Carlisle stepped out, Axel would wave, red-faced and apparently having fun, feeling the power of his iron underneath him, taking a short and separate vacation from Earlene.

Gally returned from Casper on the fifth of February. She phoned Carlisle in late afternoon, an hour after getting home. “Hello, carpenter, how’re you doing?”

“Gally! Good to hear your voice. I’m real good, hammering and sawing as usual. How’s your daughter?”

“She’s fine now. Got the baby here in good shape, got Sharon organized and moving forward. Lord, I’m glad I don’t have three little ones to look after. She has her hands full and will for the next eighteen years or so. .  .  . Carlisle, I missed you. I picked up some things at a Custer deli on my way in, thought I might stop by if you’re up for an evening of beer and pastrami?”

“I am indeed. Come over anytime.”

“Okay. I have some reentry things to clean up here. Be about two hours or so. All right?”

“Great. See you then.”

Gally Deveraux bathed in her old clawfoot tub, lying back in warm, soapy water, hair pinned up. The countryside was somber that time of year, hunkered down and trying to outlast winter’s pounding that made the high plains seem like Siberia. From the tub, she could see the sky through her bathroom window, the color of gray mud, looking low and wet and ominous.

It felt good to be home, and she lay there for a long time thinking about her daughter, then about her own life and what she might do with it. Then about Carlisle McMillan. She put her toes on the faucet and wiggled them happily, then reached for her razor. She shaved her legs and stepped out, feeling uncommonly feminine and slightly wicked for some reason, the way she used to feel in the early days when Jack still called her Easy, the way she had felt that night riding home from the Flagstone, naked on Jack’s lap.

Carlisle was on his stepladder when he heard the Bronco come up his lane. When she knocked, he yelled, “Come in, but watch the stepladder when you open the door.”

Gally tentatively moved the door inward, felt it bump against the ladder, peered in, and squeezed through the opening. She looked up at him. “What are you doing up there in the air?”

He looked down at her and grinned. “Decided to put in a small loft. Be down in a minute, soon as I get these last few nails in the railing and countersink ’em.”

Gally went into the kitchen, took the food out of paper bags, and put it in the fridge. She looked at Carlisle’s backside. He was stretched up, hammer positioned in his right hand, nail steadied with his left. He had a baseball cap on backward with
GIANTS
lettered on the crown, brown hair hanging straight and long. His flannel shirt was untucked in the back, sleeves rolled to the elbow. She watched his right forearm position the hammer, saw the muscles in it flex. Three easy shots of the hammer and the nail was driven home, solidly, perfectly. He reached in his tool belt, took out a punch, and countersunk the nail.

He came down the ladder and walked over to her, smiling, and put his arms around her, hammer dangling from his right hand. “Hello, Gally Deveraux. Nice to see you.”

She hugged him, smelled sawdust and perspiration, felt the muscles in his back, and, without even thinking about it, tucked his shirttail in. That, she thought, is intimacy, tucking in a man’s shirttail.

She pulled back and grinned up at him. “I missed you, Carlisle.”

“Same here, Gally. It’s been quiet since you left. Dumptruck’s pretty much decided to just sleep out the winter, far as I can tell.”

“Not a bad strategy, I’d say. Animals understand how to roll with nature. We keep trying to fight it. Hungry?”

“Nope. Thirsty, though.”

“I can fix that. Along with pastrami and rye and coleslaw and other things, I picked up some St. Pauli Girl. Big splurge, homecoming celebration and all.”

Taking a six-pack of Bud from the cooler at the deli, she had seen the St. Pauli Girl and remembered that’s what Carlisle had bought for Thanksgiving. She returned the Bud to the cooler and took out the St. Pauli Girl, feeling extravagant, hoping Carlisle would be home that night.