9

Lewis called just before sundown. We spoke briefly. His father was doing all right, the funeral would be the next afternoon, he would stay a day or two longer with his father and uncles, and then come home.

I told him that his plans sounded perfect, and that I was fine—happy, in fact, was a word that I used. He told me he loved me, blew me a kiss, and then we hung up.

I turned from the phone to resume what I had been engaged in prior to Lewis’s call, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I knew it had been pleasurable and entertaining and engrossing—I had been learn­ing something—but it had fled my mind. Surely it couldn’t have been entirely in my mind, yet there was no sign of any activity in the house that would have kept me so engaged. It was a puzzle, and I felt faintly resentful that Lewis had interrupted me. I sat for a moment in the growing dusk, watching shadows deep­en, watching the final orange glow recede from the sky.

I reached over and clicked on the lamp. Its harsh light rasped the room and hurt my eyes. I turned it out again and went to dress for the dance.

My face appeared to have altered a bit, I noticed as I applied a light coat of eye shadow. I examined my features individually, then stepped back to gauge the entire picture. There was a gauntness that hadn’t been there before. My cheekbones stood out a touch more prominently, and so did my brow. I was pleased with the effect. My baby fat was finally dissolving. I trimmed my hair, cutting it shorter around my face, watching the white, yellow, and golden clippings fan out into the sink, then I ran a brush through my new style and dabbed lightly at my lips with a pink lipstick.

A flyer about the Friday night teen dances had been posted in the bus station, and I’d looked forward to the occasion for weeks. I swirled the hair trimmings down the drain with a gush of water.

I found my plaid coat in the hall closet and put it on, then modeled it for myself in the mirror on the door. It was stained. There was a great brown stain on the collar, it spread down the front left-­hand side. I took the coat off again, went into the bathroom, and looked at it in the light.

Dried blood.

The boy’s peaceful face flickered in and out of my memory; I was pleased to have given him such rest, even at the expense of the beautiful coat Lewis had given me. I rolled it up and put it in a paper bag. The trash was picked up on Mondays.

Back in the closet, I found a denim jacket with a sheepskin lining that was soft and warm and only a little too large. It would do just fine. From the linen closet I fetched an old, frayed, brown bath towel, then shrugged off the jacket and swirled the towel over my shoulders like a cape. I put the jacket back on. Now I was ready.

I stepped out into the brisk cold and shivered with anticipation.

I got a ride immediately. When I arrived at the VFW hall, I was early; there was no one about, so I scouted the neighboring area.

The hall was a large wooden building on the outskirts of town. The nearest house was hundreds of yards away. Dirt parking areas surrounded the building on three sides. In the back was a weeded lot with a few trees, and as I stomped through it, I kicked up empty beer bottles and paper trash as well as used condoms. I understood how far the chaperoning went at weekend teen dances: not be­yond the glare of the lights. I imagined this area would be as populated as inside the hall by closing time.

I stuffed my hands into the high jacket pockets and pulled in the sleeves to keep out the draft as well as I could, and walked around and around the build­ing, trying to keep my legs and feet warm.

Presently an older man arrived in a red pickup truck with a broken spotlight on the roof. He was heavyset, and walked with a hitch. He unlocked all the doors, propped them wide open, then turned on all the lights. I followed him inside for some warmth. It wasn’t much warmer inside.

The man heard my footstep on the doorsill and took three steps to turn around and fix me with a watery stare.

“I’m early, I guess,” I said.

“Well, you sit right there.” He pointed at a row of chairs set against the wall, then checked his watch. “Boyd’ll be along soon, maybe you can be helping him set up and sell tickets or something.” He disappeared into the men’s room.

Echoes of his cleaning activities resounded through the cavernous structure. Long ago, someone had taken pride in this building. Walls, ceilings, and rafters were once painted, the wooden floors once varnished and waxed. But that was long ago. A dusty blue banner trimmed with gold braid and covered with cobwebs stretched high across one sooty wall, saluting, in gold lettering, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The wooden floor was worn in the center where generations of dancing shoes had done damage. A makeshift stage filled one corner of the room, piled high with amplifiers, microphones, electrical cords and equipment. At the other end of the hall was a long window into a kitchen, and a counter, presumably an area for selling soft drinks. Next to the window were the doors to the two restrooms. That wall sported the only fresh paint in the place, a light green enamel.

I tapped my toes on the floor and shivered.

A truck pulled up outside, skidding in the dirt and gravel. The engine died and two doors slammed.

“Hey, Kyle? Kyle?” a strong masculine voice called from the door. I heard answering mumblings from the men’s room. Then a cowboy stepped into the room, looked around and saw me. He smiled. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said, and my body began to shiver from a different excitement.

“Kyle around?”

Before I could answer, a younger version of the same man, obviously a brother, came around the corner and into the hall, rubbing his hands and blowing into them. He stopped and looked at me with the same intensity his older brother had. Then the door to the men’s room opened and the old man came out, clanking a bucket and mop.

The cowboy approached him. “Hey, Kyle. I got a new table for inside the snack shop. Donated by the women at that sewing place. They got all fancy new cutting tables, and gave us one of their old ones. Bill’s going to help me put it in the kitchen there, then we can use the other table for tickets, instead of the old rickety card table.”

“Good. Good.” Kyle opened the door to the ladies’ room and propped it open with a wedge of wood. “You need help, she can help ya.” He nodded at me.

I smiled up at him. He was larger than life; a more vibrant, healthier man I’ve yet to meet. His tan Stetson showed off his sunburned face to best advan­tage. He wore a brown corduroy jacket over a blue-­plaid shirt with jeans and plain-­toed boots. He was big, with wide shoulders, and he had deep-­set green eyes, a large, open, honest face, and a scent like the forest in the spring. He smiled back at me, and I felt the ignition.

“You a friend of Kyle’s?”

I shook my head. “I’m just early.”

“New in town?”

I nodded. My breath was caught in my throat.

“I’m Boyd Turner. This is my brother Bill.” Bill smiled, then blew on his hands again.

“Angelina Watson.”

“Want to help?”

I shrugged, feeling a blush rise in my cheeks.

“You can sell tickets. There’s always too much work for Bill and me. Kyle helps out with the cleaning and stuff, but”—he checked his watch—“the band will arrive soon, and—” A van pulled into the park­ing lot. We smiled at each other. His teeth were clean and white. “See? Help us out for a half hour? Work off your admission fee?”

He was pleading with me in a flirtatious way. He was irresistible, with his boyish charm and his won­derful eyes. I took my hands out of my pockets and stood up, ready to be directed.

In no time, activity was everywhere. The band began to set up, and as they did, volunteers arrived to work in the snack shop. Boyd recognized them, and I stamped their hands and let them pass for free. All others were to pay one dollar for a bit of black ink on their hands that said, “For Deposit Only—Wiley’s Feed and Livestock.”

Early arrivals began to trickle in, mostly young boys who had spent the better portion of the day deciding what to wear and preparing for this evening of meeting young girls. They paid their entrance fee, then grouped together around the doors to the rest­rooms. When the groups got large enough, they would all leave to go sit in cars, trade lies and plot strate­gies, be fortified by a beer and a smoke, and be ad­mitted again, later, showing the stamped back of their hands.

My job was to be of service, and it brought up interesting feelings. I felt proud every time Boyd came by to pick up the receipts, when he gave me that special smile of gratitude. I felt debased when the young girls—my age, older, younger—came by and threw their dollar bills at me, or wouldn’t show me their stamped hands upon reentry.

The band tuned up and played to a standing­-room-­only crowd. No one sat in the metal folding chairs along the walls. They stood around in their tight Western clothes, in groups of girls, groups of boys, and couples. No one danced. Everyone just shouldered through the crowd, milling about, and then, as if by signal, all of a sudden everyone was dancing. The dance floor expanded to the walls. What an odd ritual.

When the band took its first break, the hall emptied. Everyone went outside to smoke and steam off the sweat they’d garnered from dancing in close quarters. Many were becoming quite drunk and a few made lewd comments to me as they passed. Boyd brought me a cup of hot chocolate and sat on the table, looking at me.

“Bill will take over from you now. There won’t be many more people coming. A few, but not many. He’ll handle it.”

I sipped and nodded, watching the young people divide into more and more couples, saw the flirtatious looks, heard the laughter, saw many disappear around the corner, and I knew where they had gone. I shivered and crossed my arms. Boyd was still staring at me.

“Where are you from?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Been here long?”

I shook my head.

“Here with family?”

“No,” I said. “I’m on my own. Right now I’m house-­sitting for a friend who’s in California.” I knew this surprised him, so I gave him my finest, most practiced defiant look, to quell the question before he asked it. He thought I was too young.

“So did you drive here?”

“Hitchhiked.”

“I’ll drive you home, then, after. Okay?”

I took a long time in answering. I wanted to be with him, oh, God, I wanted to be with him, but thoughts of Lewis flickered through my mind. There was no commitment here, I reminded myself—it was just a ride home. And if something better, more interesting, came along, well . . . I was not bound to him for the night, although I couldn’t imagine any­thing more interesting than this incredible man. Was it wise to take a ride with an unknown? Oh, Angelina, I thought. You’ve gotten so careful in your three months of domesticity. I knew I was fully capable of handling myself.

My answer may have wavered in my mind, but my eyes never strayed from his face. I saw when shyness began to creep in. He thought I might turn him down. “Okay,” I said.

His relief was evident. He smiled again, an inti­mate smile, a knowing smile. “So, go. Dance. Enjoy. And when we close up, I’ll meet you here.”

I stood up, and as I did so, he, sitting on the table, took his hands out of his pockets as if to touch me: my waist or my shoulders or my face. But he dropped them into his lap and swung his feet back and forth, then stood up and settled into the folding chair I’d been sitting in.

I went to the ladies’ room. Green-­painted wood covered with writing in lipstick, pen, and carvings had absorbed the smell of thousands of girls, gallons of disinfectant. The little room with two sinks, two mirrors, and two toilet stalls was stuffed with girls putting on makeup, adjusting their clothes, and combing their hair. I stood in the corner and watched them for a while, as they chatted on about the boys and their boyfriends. Then a pretty dark-­haired girl with dark-­red lipstick and too much rouge on her cheeks noticed me in the mirror, and she turned to me across the crowd and said, “Hi.”

I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets and said, “Hello.”

“You a friend of Boyd’s?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. “Sort of.”

“You’re new.”

I nodded.

“I’m Catherine.”

“I’m Angelina.”

“Well, Angelina, if you’re a friend of Boyd’s, I’m a friend of yours.” She turned to her friends and they all laughed, then she looked me up and down again, and returned to her creams and colors and speaking of nonsense. I watched her in the mirror for a moment longer, watched her take glances toward me without meeting my look, and I remembered that feeling, that feeling of being different, being outside the joke, outside the crowd, and I hated it. I pushed my way out, and ran directly into a drunken lad whose hands quickly felt my entire torso, inside my jacket. I shoved him from me, disgusted with the whole place, and walked outside. I wished for my space at the table again, but Bill was standing there, exchanging money and fellowship with some of his friends.

The cold air refreshed me after the steamy con­fines of the crowded hall. The stench of sweat, mixed with perfume, after-­shaving lotions, underarm deodo­rant, beer and cigarette breath, was too potent for me. I took some deep breaths of fresh air and walked aimlessly around some of the cars in the parking lot. Most of the vehicles were uninhabited; a few had fogged windows, others had cigarettes glowing in the darkness as their occupants talked. I wandered among them, fists stuffed tight into my pockets. I wondered what they talked about, what it felt like to be closed up tight in someone’s dad’s car, with good friends and lots to talk about on a Friday night.

I heard the music start up again, the sounds of car doors slamming as the call was answered, but I listened to a different sound, responded to another summons, and found myself moving irresistibly to­ward the well-­used vacant lot in the rear of the building. I heard a rustling in the weeds, and my heart began to pound.

I approached in the shadow of a tall bush, steadi­ly, calling on an inborn sense of stealth, although there was probably no need. Whoever was in the vacant lot knew they were only yards away from a formidable crowd. They had, by choice, given up any right to privacy.

I wiped the corners of my mouth.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw two shapes, two people, sitting on the ground, facing each other. As I came closer, I could hear them talking, and my sense of atmosphere picked up red vibrations of anger in their interchange. I moved ever closer, the cold forgotten, as my curiosity became overwhelming. Their voices rose to meet me.

“I trusted you,” she said softly.

“You still can,” he said.

“Not when you’re out doing—whatever you were doing—with her.”

“It was nothing, Julie. I told you. She needed some help, and I helped her.”

“I bet.” Her voice was full of scorn, of disdain.

“You know, I thought I had made you a woman, but you’re still a child.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath, then the girl slowly got to her feet. The boy rose, too, and they stood face-­to-­face for a moment before she lashed out and slapped him hard across the face. It was so loud I was sure everyone heard it, even inside the hall. I was shocked.

She turned on her heel and stomped back to the hall. I adjusted quickly, hoping my reaction did not send out recognizable vibrations. I needn’t have wor­ried. Though she passed within brushing distance of me, her own emotions were far too loud to allow anything else near. She left without a backward glance.

His hand went to his face. I could almost see the red handprint and hear the buzzing in his ear. His face hurt, his pride hurt, his love hurt. I longed to go to him, yet I hesitated. I didn’t know this person, I didn’t understand the situation, what possible benefit could my presence have? I remained where I was, barely breathing, considering. Considering.

And then that voice came, that voice that I knew as well as I knew my own name, that same voice that spoke to my soul, that spoke to me with the ethereal music that supplied the foundations of my life—that voice spoke right into my ear as She had before; a clear voice, a sweet voice, rich and sensuous, and I closed my eyes and saw moist red lips as they spoke to me. “Your gift, Angelina,” She said. “Give the boy your gift.”

I remembered the happiness and peace; I remem­bered the calm and joy. Then I remembered the flood of emotions the night before, and the night in the Ozarks, and I realized that I did have a gift, I did have a mission, and my freedom came to mean a new thing to me.

In that moment, standing in the bushes, feeling new emotions, new feelings, I came to believe that I had been chosen. I had been chosen to own and use the music, that eternal, ethereal music. Why else would something—someone?—take charge of my life as it (She?) had? Why else would my rewards be the loving sense of peace and protection? Why else would I be obsessed with the thought of the bus station, if not to fulfill destiny by going there to pass along peace? I did ease suffering, I did bestow peace. Why else would I be here, instinctively standing in the bushes? I knew what must be done.

My freedom from responsibility was no mistake. My freedom from family tethers, from material as­sets, from even the basic desires to have these things, had not been a plan gone awry. All these things were for a purpose. I had been chosen. I was special. I was to be one of the background people, accomplishing great things with little or no public recognition or acclaim. My kind of assistance would not be recog­nized in a good light, anyway. They wouldn’t understand. Great things were afoot and I was a minor cog in a mighty wheel. Guided by Her voice.

I felt free, wonderful, and one with Nature.

Surety flooded my soul. I heard lovely strains of the music. I glimpsed through the door of eternity, and I knew that if only I could sit down and contem­plate it for a moment, I would understand the elusive concept.

Later. At the moment, I had something impor­tant to accomplish.

I stepped from the bushes just as the young man sank back down to the ground, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.

KYLE CARMICHAEL: “Sure I remember her. She was hanging around the hall when I got there. Never seen Boyd so taken with a woman before. They flock around him, women do, big, strong, good-­hearted boy like that. Flock around him, they do, he could have his pick, but he never seemed to date any of ’em seriously, not more than once or twice.

“Boyd’s daddy and me were old friends—fought the war together. Never had sons myself, only daugh­ters that my wife raised, so I kinda always felt that Boyd an’ Bill were mine, too. The four of us went hunting probably every weekend. It was just a thing for the guys to do, to get together, teach the young ones about life.

“Heh. If Boyd’d taken to girls the way he’d taken to hunting, he’d probably be in a lot of trouble. That boy would not quit. Sundown didn’t even stop him. He bought books and guns and loaded his own. One time he tracked a deer all weekend. Got him, too. Kind of obsessed, it seemed to me, but it didn’t worry his daddy any, and I’m not the kind to interfere.

“Always a gentleman, though, Boyd was. And his brother, too. Good sportsmen. Three of us kind of tired of hunting after a while; at first we stopped the shoot­ing, then we stopped taking the guns, and then we stopped going altogether, but not Boyd. He kept going. Alone, even.

“Yep. Did my heart good when I saw him and that little bit of a blonde look at each other like that. ‘Kyle,’ I said to myself, ‘Boyd’s got something here that’s a lot better than tracks in mountain snow. He’s got a woman to chase now.’ Heh. Nothing like a woman to change a boy’s head.”