High Plains Tango (32 page)

Susanna is all silver and softness, Carlisle is wearing clean-washed clothes for the occasion, tan military-style shirt and khakis. Still has on his work shoes, though.

Gabe’s playing real good, leaning back some in his chair, eyes closed. Carlisle takes Susanna in his arms, and they move across the floor, looking just fine. Susanna smiles up at him when he bends her back a little in the way of the tango.

Up in the second tier of booths, a big yellow tomcat brushes against an old man who is listening to the music and looking out open windows toward an interstate highway. The old man runs his hand slowly along the cat’s fur, but he’s not really thinking about cats or highways. He’s vaguely watching Carlisle and Susanna, looking through them and beyond them, out across the lake, past the truck lights heading toward Calgary, out across time.

Eight hundred miles southwest of old men and old dance pavilions and tangos in honor of moonlight or whatever, a van lies on one side underneath a stand of oaks. The man who owned it died a year ago in a stream of bullets fired by federal agents. It is said he kicked open the door of a cabin, waved a shotgun, and was gunned down when he threatened the agents.

As it all comes about then, a van slowly turns to rust in the Arizona mountains, a high plains twilight gives way to darkness while Carlisle McMillan bends Susanna Benteen gently backwards, and an old man is half listening to another old man play a tango. The music floats out of the ballroom window and merges with the distant sound of traffic moving up and down what is called the Avenue of the High Plains. The old man is thinking about a woman called Amlie, and a city called Paris, and about where it all went .  .  . and how fast it all went .  .  . when you weren’t looking real close.

Author’s Note

T
HOUGH THIS STORY STANDS BY ITSELF, IT IS A CONTINUATION
of two of my other books:
The Bridges of Madison County
and, especially,
A Thousand Country Roads.
Those of you who have read the previous books will be somewhat familiar with certain events and characters. For anyone who might be interested,
A Thousand Country Roads
details Carlisle McMillan’s search for his father, Robert Kincaid, who played a central role in
The Bridges of Madison County.

Acknowledgments

T
HANKS TO ALL THE FRIENDS WHO READ VERSIONS OF THIS
book and offered helpful comments. And to my editor and publisher, Shaye Areheart, for her good humor and incisive suggestions. And to Ken Watt, who owned a parrot named Benny and probably does not remember me, but I remember Ken and his Benny stories from a California evening nearly thirty years ago. Much gratitude is directed toward my agent, David Vigliano, who not only marketed the book, but also made several good suggestions about improving it.

About the Author

R
OBERT JAMES WALLER
lives quietly with his wife, Linda, and their dogs and cats on a small farm in the Texas Hill Country, where he pursues his long-standing interests in writing, photography, music, economics, and mathematics. In the Texas evenings, he wades remote Hill Country streams, fly-fishing for bass and trout.

Other Books by

Robert James Waller

Border Music

Puerto Vallarta Squeeze

The Bridges of Madison County

Old Songs in a New Caf: Selected Essays

A Thousand Country Roads

Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

Just Beyond the Firelight

One Road Is Good Enough: Essays by Robert James Waller

Copyright 2005 by Robert James Waller

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

SHAYE AREHEART BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Waller, Robert James, 1939–

High plains tango : a novel / Robert James Waller.

1. City and town life—Fiction.                  2. South Dakota—Fiction.                  3. Drifters—Fiction.                  I. Title

PS3573.A4347H54                  2005

813'.54—dc22                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 2004027288

Map copyright 2005 by Sophie Kittredge

eISBN: 978-0-307-23830-6

v3.0