Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend (19 page)

On January 12 they rode British Airways toward Heathrow, reading, laughing, holding hands. Then serious at times, preparing
themselves for laying all of this in front of Jimmy.

Between London and Chicago, somewhere over the Greenland ice pack, Jellie leaned her head against Michael’s shoulder. He looked
at the gray eyes, noticed something pensive in them.

“What is it, Jellie?”

“I was just thinking. People once called Dhiren ‘the Tiger of Morning.’”

She went to sleep then, resting against him. He gently fished a notebook out of his pocket and wrote, “The Tiger of Morning
lives forever.”

J
ames Lee Braden HI was a middle-grade rationalist. What could not be explained in terms of empirical evidence did not exist.
Except for God, who received immunity from rational inspection and was dealt with on Sundays at the First Presbyterian Church.
Turn of the key, click of a door lock, and Jimmy looked up from the autobiography of John Maynard Keynes he was reading. His
wife walked in with Michael Tillman behind her.

This time Jimmy didn’t cry. And he wasn’t all that surprised. Parallel events—Jellie gone, Michael pulling out a few days
later. Teeter-totters in the park, a faculty wife who had seen Jellie and Michael leaving the Ramada together, speculation
in the offices. Matters passed over originally but recalled later on when the time was right—data, incomplete and soft, but
data nonetheless. Induction and tentative conclusion: Maybe Jellie Braden and Michael Tillman were more than friends.

January evening 1982, conclusion no longer tentative. Jimmy said he understood how Jellie and Michael would be attracted to
each other. His primary concern was, in his words, “how we all carry on from here.” He seemed almost relieved, more worried
about style than substance.

Jellie was less rational and quite a lot less stylish than her husband at that moment. She’d been married to Jimmy Braden
for eleven years, that counted for something. She got herself worked up pretty good, telling Jimmy how sorry she was, how
it was not right to behave as she had. Jimmy eventually said, “Our decision to marry was probably a good one at the time,
but people change. There’s no point living with choices made by people who were different eleven years ago than they are now.”

Jellie gathered herself and her things and moved in with Michael. They painted his old apartment and gradually converted it
into something both of them could tolerate. The Shadow stayed in the living room. That was not open for debate or compromise.
Jellie did suggest a dropcloth to protect the nice oak flooring from greasy tools. Michael smiled and said it was a large
concession but agreed.

He rolled back into teaching, dog-paddling his way through the wash of sideways looks and gossip that ultimately became a
minor part of the university saga. Jellie retrieved her maiden name, finished her M.A., and was accepted in the anthropology
Ph.D. program. And Jimmy? He went away. Arthur Wilcox found him an associate deanship at a private school in the Northeast,
near Jimmy’s parents. All were pleased.

Well, not everyone. Eleanor Markham was appalled and forever would view Michael as a social misfit and home wrecker. She was
especially appalled at his travel habits and happened to be looking out the window of her Syracuse home one afternoon when
the Black Shadow rolled up her driveway. The Shadow was no longer an amusing abstraction sitting in some lunatic professor’s
living room. It was real now, and her forty-four-year-old daughter was riding behind the lunatic. Probably it was Jellie’s
leather jacket, boots, and mirrored sunglasses that got her. It’d been a long life, and she’d hoped for something better.

Michael and Jellie’s father escaped to the trout streams. Leonard Markham never said harsh words about anybody, and he mentioned
Jimmy only once in Michael’s presence. He was laying out a Royal Coachman fly after several elegant backcasts. The Coachman
landed soft as you please below a big rock where the water eddied. He puffed on his pipe, twitched the fly, and said, “Jim
Braden was afraid of water. Can you imagine that, Michael?” Michael didn’t say anything. Leonard twitched the fly again. A
brookie rolled beside it but thought better of the enterprise and left the fly alone, in the way Leonard Markham left the
subject of Jimmy Braden and never came back to it.

Jellie and Michael traveled to India once a year. In 1984 they brought Jaya back to meet her grandparents. Afterward the three
of them visited Michael’s mother, who was confined to a nursing home in Rapid City. She was old and pretty wobbly, but sentient
most of the time. Ruth Tillman took Jaya’s hand and held it for a long time, smiling. It was the best Michael could do in
the way of a grandchild, and in some strange way Ruth Tillman found it enough.

So it went. Not undiluted peace and tranquillity, but workable part of the time, most of the time. Michael Tillman was a loner,
something of a recluse, always had been, always would be. He would go away from Jellie, sometimes on the Shadow, sometimes
only in his mind. And she resented that.

“People aren’t motorcycles, Michael. You can’t just take the chain off and hang it over a chair until you get around to it.”

He grinned at her. “You’re right. You’re always right about that stuff. Women know things men don’t when it comes to the gender
interface.… Jesus, how’s that for psychobabble… gender interface. Next thing you know I’ll become a ‘gender reconciliation
facilitator.’ Saw that in a magazine the other day. There are hot new job opportunities out there I never dreamed of.”

She rolled her eyes, crossed her arms. “I don’t think you’re the least bit interested in facilitating gender reconciliation,
here or anywhere else.”

“You’re right again, mostly, wrong about here. I’m a good ol’ boy from the bad ol’ days in certain respects. Nadia Koslowski
made some inroads in taming the Y chromosome, but she left before the work was finished. You’ve continued where Nadia left
off and already discovered I’m only marginally educable in that area. I’m interested in peaceful coexistence, but I’m also
interested in my work and fishing and riding around on shadows, two-wheeled ones and otherwise. My attention shifts, I wobble
like Mercury’s orbit. I’ll try to do better, really I will. But I probably won’t improve a whole lot. And I’m not altogether
sure you really want me to change all that much. You might end up with a limp, obsequious piece of crap you don’t care for.”

“Michael, sometimes I think I should pour plastic over you and preserve you just the way you are in these moments. We could
prop you up in the Smithsonian and hang a sign around your neck that says
Homo past-hopeus,
let future and more enlightened generations stare at you. Carolyn was right when she said you’re incorrigible.”

He held up his hands in a position of surrender. “Hell, I’m guilty as charged. I’ve discovered it’s easier to plead guilty
to everything. Less argument that way. And even though I don’t share your faith in the wisdom of future generations, I kind
of like the Smithsonian idea. But make sure I’m sitting on the Shadow with a fly rod in my hand. And make sure you remember
Dhiren and how happy you were with him, and how unhappy you were with Jimmy Bra-den. You once told me Jimmy was so conciliatory
and ambivalent it damn near drove you crazy. You’re a strong woman in a lot of ways, Jellie Markham, but you like your men
a little wild and untamed. I will, however—and being completely aware of my failings and general unworthiness—extend my offer
of marriage once again, as I do almost weekly.”

She scuffed her tennis shoe on the floor and looked down it. In some ways he was right. She’d never quite sorted it out, the
tradeoffs. The men she truly cared for made her happy in some ways, unhappy in others. Still looking at her shoe, she said,
“As I’ve mentioned before, being married twice is enough. Three times seems a bit much somehow.” She cooled down and smiled
at him. “Thanks for the proposal, however. I always appreciate it when you ask. Maybe sometime I’ll surprise you and say ‘yes.’
”

“The offer remains open. How about two fingers’ worth of Jack Daniel’s, a bath, and then the kind of reconciliation we seem
to do best. Cut and paste, make peace and make love.”

“We need groceries. You always get hungry afterwards.”

He pulled on his leather jacket, grinning. “So do you. In atonement for my many sins I’ll go to the store. Got a list?”

“No, do you?”

“No. I’ll buy beer, potatoes, and whatever else I think of on the way.”

An hour later they were sitting in the small tub together, hot water deep and soapy. She put her feet on his shoulders, he
ran his hands along her thighs and told her for the thousandth time she had the greatest breasts in the universe. She looked
at him over the rim of her glass and started laughing.

“What’s the matter? Your breasts are serious business.”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about plastic and the Smithsonian again. Think I’ll do it when you’re gone and defenseless.”

“Okay by me. You can prop Arthur Wilcox up beside me, label him
Homo go-squatis, Driven Bonkers by Homo past-hopeus.
Put some blueprints in his hand.” He leaned back in the tub. “Let me change the subject. Remember that nice area in the Black
Hills called White Bear Canyon I showed you once?”

“Yes.”

“After you finish your degree, let’s move out there. I’ll quit teaching, get my retirement annuity under way, and do a little
writing. There’s a small college called Spearfish State nearby. Maybe you could get a teaching job there if it suits you.”

“It’s a possible; I’ll think about it later.” She put her legs around him and slid up on his lap, arms around his neck. “Right
now I’m getting a lot more interested in moving to the bedroom.” She leaned her head back and shook it. “UUhhh, men! You’re
all nuttier’n hell.”

Michael kissed her long and sweet, on her mouth, on both her breasts, and ran his tongue along her throat. “Not all of us
are nutty… only the ones you like.”

Jellie received her doctorate in 1987. Michael was allowed to attend the ceremony in full academic regalia, though his robe
and soft, six-pointed cap, which had lain unused for years, needed two runs at the dry cleaners before they were presentable.
When she walked across the stage and was handed her diploma, he damn near fainted with pride, knowing how much it meant to
her. Michael threw a small party for her at the apartment and had a bottle of champagne all to himself, grinning while he
sat on the Shadow and watched her gray eyes as people congratulated her. Jellie Markham had become whole, professionally,
at least.

Later that evening when the guests had stumbled back to wherever guests go when they leave, she came out of the bathroom with
her academic gown and mortarboard on. Michael was still sitting on the Shadow, barefoot in T-shirt and jeans, a bottle of
champagne balanced on the gas tank. He said,
“Dr.
Markham, I presume.”

She grinned that old salacious grin of hers, the one she put on when it was time for serious matters of the flesh, then parted
the robe and showed him she was wearing nothing beneath it. “Dr. Markham is now ready for her graduation present, if Dr. Tillman
is prepared.” He was indeed, and the evening concluded in splendid fashion with Michael straddling the Shadow and Jellie straddling
Michael, Miles on the tape deck. Jellie chewed on his ear and whispered “Vroom, vroom, ” while she moved slowly up and down
with quiet, blissful intensity on the motorcycle man.

Michael’s mother died in 1988. A realtor called eight months later and said he had a buyer for the little house in Custer.
Classes started in a week, but Michael cranked up the Shadow and headed out.

It all went smoothly, and he brought the Shadow back toward Cedar Bend, starting with the Black Hills and staying on secondary
highways for the entire distance. He ran into heavy rains a little east of the Missouri River, but he was short of time and
pushing hard, his yellow slicker flapping in the wind. Night caught him at the Iowa border.

He looked down at his old friend, patting the gas tank. The engine was bolted directly to the frame, and he could feel the
vibrations at the level of his cells. “Let’s open things up a bit, big guy, see what you’re made of here on your thirty-seventh
birthday.” The Shadow responded and ran like a black cat over the wet pavement, its headlights sweeping across woodlands on
the curves.

It happened in the hills east of Sioux City. The semi slid around a blind curve, drifting into the other lane. Michael’s visor
was a little fogged, and his night vision wasn’t what it used to be. He blinked, then squinted hard. The truck was moving
fast in the hands of a sleepy driver hammering eighty thousand pounds of vehicle and its load of tractor parts toward Omaha.
The driver came to full alert as the truck skidded, fought to control his rig, and saw the yellow slicker fluttering a hundred
feet straight ahead of where his hood ornament pointed.

Michael was blinded by the lights, truck closing and no way to lay the Shadow down and slide. He thought of Jellie and tigers.
For some reason he thought of Jellie and tigers in that instant, then took the Shadow off the road and into the trees at seventy
miles an hour. A yellow blur rocketing 30 feet into the forest… 100 feet… 200 feet… steering and braking and running the
maze in a wild flash of tigers and Jellie and the way she looked at him in those times, holding her breath, eyes wide and
her breasts and belly coming up to meet the tiger and him, Michael Tillman, and he smiled, and for a moment, just a wild and
fleeting moment that became vanishingly small, he believed he was going to make it. Until the yellow blur became a butterfly
gone.

*    *    *

In those stretches when he was conscious, Michael could hear the hum of life-support systems to which he was fastened. Sort
of a faint and steady background noise. Sometimes a certain machine kicked in and the noise would get louder, which he didn’t
like but which he couldn’t do anything about.