High Plains Tango

by Robert James Waller

  “No, what made things real interesting was the way Kathy Gregorian got herself with child, as they say. It had to do with Susanna Benteen. See, Arlo and Kathy had been married for over three years with no sign of babies in their future. They were both healthy young folks and were always hanging on to each other at the Fourth of July picnic and such. One supposes, then, they were getting it on at home regularly, doing their best, but no cigar.

  “Not being able to have children is a common heartache and not to be made light of, under any circumstance. But in a town full of men thinking of themselves as real stud horses, which, of course, they weren’t—just ask the women—the inability to manufacture offspring was the local equivalent of being a hairless eunuch. So Arlo was taking a real beating over at Leroy’s about all this. ‘Any little ones in your future, Arlo? Need some help?’ That’s what they’d holler along the bar at him.

  “Kathy dragged Arlo three hundred miles down to the big municipal hospital, a journey he’d just as soon had remained a secret. And it probably would have if he hadn’t bumped into Leroy down there, who was getting his checkup so he could get his liver medicine prescription renewed. Leroy, with the keen insight gained from years of following his chosen profession, which was serving drinks to drunks, guessed why Arlo was hanging around the fertility clinic waiting room. Upon his return, he informed all his regular drinkers and pool sharks about the encounter, along with his personal supposition that Arlo had been advised to wear loose undershorts and was being required to whack off into a test tube.

  “That just made things worse for Arlo, and he was getting desperate, thinning down from working all day at the Farmers Co-op and dealing with a low sperm count at night, wearing his shortcoming like barnacles. By then, Kathy was leaning toward artificial insemination, but Arlo wouldn’t hear of it.

  “‘Jesus-on-the-dashboard, I’ve got troubles enough,’ Arlo told her. ‘You do that and the shitheads’ll be asking if the Boar Power truck full of refrigerated hog jism came through or what.’

  “Kathy, crying and carrying on and close to falling apart, was leaning on her best friend, Leona Williams, for support. Leona suggested a talk with the new woman named Susanna, who seemed to know about all kinds of things. That seemed pretty radical to Kathy, at first, but women have this useful streak in them of doing what it takes to get things done. A streak, I might add, that is entirely missing from the genes of most men, who get themselves all tied up in pride and posturing courtesy of testosterone and whatever else it is that prevents us from being fully housebroken.

  “So Kathy went to visit Susanna. Susanna said the problem might be solvable. Unfortunately, Arlo needed to be involved in the process. That worried Kathy, but not Susanna.

  “When Kathy told Arlo about this new strategy involving Susanna, Arlo got in his green GMC pickup with the world’s largest engine and drove around town for a half hour, alternately considering divorce and suicide. Then he started thinking about alimony, test tubes, the shitheads, Boar Power, and self-abuse, pretty much in that order. Those prospects kind of opened him up a little to new ideas, and he agreed to at least talk with Susanna.

  “Came the following evening, Susanna knocked on the Gregorians’ door. Kathy, in high heels and the dress she’d bought the previous year for the Volunteer Firemen’s Benefit Dance, escorted her in and got her seated on the brocade sofa, which had been a wedding present from Arlo’s folks. Arlo was real nervous, given all the rumors about Susanna. None of the rumors had ever been substantiated, of course, but truth didn’t count for squat in Salamander, never had, never would. So Arlo kind of churned around, not knowing what to say or do, and finally offered her a Grain Belt, which she politely refused.

  “There were a few minutes of stiff conversation during which Kathy tried to make small talk and Susanna merely sat and smiled pleasantly. Arlo crouched on a footstool by the Magnavox home entertainment center on which he was making lifetime payments and trying all the while not to look too directly at their guest.

  “Of course, he’d never spoken a word to Susanna after she’d drifted into Salamander and set up shop in the old Nelson place south of the elevator, right on the edge of town. Up close, however, the witch seemed pretty nice, he decided. Kind of harmless.

  “Nonetheless, she made him uneasy. Aside from the mantle of darkness conferred upon her by the citizens of a state that brags about having the fourteenth-highest SAT scores in the U.S., she made him nervous simply because she was easily the best-looking woman in Salamander. In fact, Susanna was and is one of the best-looking women you’re likely to find anywhere.

  “On that score, the ongoing Salamander beauty contest, a minority of the boys held out for Alma Hickman, who ran a beauty shop called the Swirl’n Curl from the basement of her home. But that was more a matter of patriotism than good judgment, and anybody who’d been around at all, or even looked at magazines other than Farm Implement Digest, knew that any comparison between Susanna and Alma Hickman was a crock of you-know-what.

  “In addition to the hint of a luxurious body moving around underneath her long, flowing dresses and shawls, a real pretty face, and her auburn hair hanging down in a shining braid, Susanna had something Alma would never have: class. There wasn’t one of the boys who didn’t privately dream about what it would be like to crawl under the covers with Ms. Susanna Benteen, while they rolled their toothpicks from one side of their mouths to the other and watched her when she came downtown to pick up her mail. But she paid no attention to any of them and, in her own way, made it clear they had a better chance at the Virgin Mary than her.

  “They all agreed it was hard to say just how old Susanna was. The ordinary cues about age didn’t seem to apply to her. Somewhere between late twenties and mid-thirties was about as close as any of them could come to guessing her age, with the heavy money resting on the middle of that range. After she was in Salamander a month or two, an Oriental fellow stopped by to visit her. Sort of a gaunt rooster, also of indeterminate age. Speculation was they were setting up a narcotics enterprise out here far from organized law. Bobby Eakins, operating without mercy or evidence, as usual, called her companion the dope slope, not to his face, of course. The Oriental stayed a few weeks, then pulled out.

  “Folks claimed Susanna bought most of her supplies from natural food stores on the West Coast and that UPS was her supply wagon. Her garden took care of the rest. A few of the old people started to visit her for herbal medicines when the clinic couldn’t make any headway on their complaints, and some of them swore she helped. Talk was that some of the younger women had also been drifting by her place to discuss things beyond the scope of conversation at Leroy’s. Some of ’em brought home other suspicious cargo like incense and jewelry and such. Other than that, she had little to do with the town.

  “This matter involving Arlo and Kathy Gregorian would probably still be a secret if Arlo hadn’t gotten drunk a few months after Susanna did her thing and told Bobby Eakins about what had transpired. Bobby sucked on a Royal Crown at Mert’s one hot Saturday and related his version of the story to several of us, including Orly Hammond hanging around waiting for Mert to get back from Livermore with a part for his Chevy. Bobby swore the facts were just as Arlo had presented them to him while under the influence.

  “Arlo later found out that Bobby had mesmerized us with all the particulars and said he’d burn Bobby’s single-wide to the ground if he opened his mouth about it again. So Orly and me and a few others were the only ones knowing the total story back then, at least as much as Bobby knew. The rest of the town just put together its own version, which turned out to be a lot racier than anything approaching the truth.”

  “Need another Wild Turkey?” I asked the old man.

  He waggled his jaw and nodded, big grin on his face. I was starting to feel some affection for the old guy. He seemed to talk straight, adding a little color to his descriptions as he went along. I walked over to the bar, got another shot of the amber truth from Sleepy, and set it in f
ront of the old man. He took a sip, wiped his mouth with a soiled shirt cuff, and looked at me.

  “Let’s see, where was I? Oh yeah, the Gregorians’ living room. When things had settled down a little that night, Susanna talked to Kathy and Arlo. Arlo said she’d talked real quiet, sort of motherly. The first thing she told them was that she wasn’t a witch of any sort and did not adhere to any satanic beliefs. In fact, Susanna insisted she avoided all organized religions, including Christianity, the Rosicrucians, and professional football. That latter point about religion made Kathy and Arlo a little unsteady for only the smokiest of reasons, since neither of them had been in any church since their wedding day. Though, as Arlo liked to say, he came from a long line of rebels himself, including his grandmother, who stopped going to Mass when they turned the altar around some years back and started inviting in folksingers to entertain.

  “Susanna kind of lost Arlo when she talked about the healing power of nature and the significance of moon phases and a lot of other mumbo-jumbo, as Arlo called it. He tuned in again when she got to diet, telling them they were eating way too much red meat and other animal products. She claimed it was bad karma and that the animals consumed had ways of coming back at you with their own brand of revenge.

  “Those of us alert to the details of a complex and shifting universe noted that Susanna always carried woven bags instead of an ordinary leather purse. She had one of these bags with her at the Gregorians’ and began taking small packages and bottles full of herbs and spices and oils from it, one at a time, all the while explaining how they should be used. Kathy paid close attention, for which Arlo later was grateful, since the instructions were moving by him pretty fast.

  “Then she started talking about women and men, and Arlo could make a little more sense of that. She used a lot of words, such as kindness and understanding, and generally admonished them to work on making their conjugal ventures more warm and intimate. Both Arlo and Kathy got clenched up red in the face when Susanna discussed eroticism, focusing particularly on the needs of women.

  “Arlo said he wanted to bolt for the kitchen and drink a quart of Grain Belt or lye water or whatever he could get his hands on, but she just kept staring at him in a firm, even way with her big green eyes. He felt as if he were nailed to his stool near the Magnavox. She stayed for nearly two hours, talking real soft all the time.

  “In addition to the herbs and oils and such, she gave them a small book on something called the Tao and a set of dietary instructions written in fancy script. Oh yes, she also provided them with certain dates that seemed most fruitful—that seems to be the right word—in terms of conception. Until the first of those dates, which didn’t begin for over two weeks, they were to refrain from any bedroom folderol, absolutely. Some kind of warehousing or whatever on Arlo’s part.

  “Just as Susanna was standing by the door and ready to leave, she looked at Arlo and said, ‘Arlo, I don’t mean what I’m about to say to sound harsh or presumptuous or any of that, and it’s awfully hard to express it in any kind of subtle way. But the fact is that the culture out here makes it difficult for a man to get in touch with himself, to understand what it means to be a man and not just a large boy. But you can do it if you want to, and, having done it, I think you’ll feel better about a lot of things. And, Kathy, you can help him by not complaining about the amount of money he brings home and how he could do better for himself than working at the co-op. Arlo has his own self-worth, and you must do your part in helping him to discover it.’

  “After she’d left, Arlo told Kathy that the witch’s last comment was entirely uncalled for. He knew who he was, yessir, and who was she to imply that he didn’t? Didn’t he own a GMC with a serious power plant under the hood? Didn’t he work at the co-op? Hadn’t he scored the winning touchdown for the Salamander Tigers against the Leadville Miners in the 1974 playoffs?

  “At the time, the news seemed all bad to Arlo. Not only was the local football team one and six for the season, not only did Susanna’s instructions include both abstinence and absolutely no television for either him or Kathy, but in addition he was now asked to become an herbivore for several weeks.

  “‘Hell, Bobby,’ he’d say, ‘I’m not eating, I’m grazing. Here I am working for the co-op, and what am I doing? Supporting the stupid vegetable farmers out in the San Joaquin, that’s what. If word ever got around about this fag diet I’m on, I’d not only lose my job, people’d think I was a prevert or something.’

  “According to Arlo, Susanna’s prescribed diet was stringent: no red meat, no meat of any kind, plenty of vegetables and fruits and rice and whole-grain concoctions. Arlo lusted for his breakfast sausage, which was not part of the scheme, and his supper food sort of lay there and snapped at him. But Kathy kept reminding him of the alternatives and said, besides, she felt better eating this way.

  “Arlo did admit that his acid indigestion had disappeared and that he no longer got sleepy in the evenings after supper. Since he was allowed only one beer per day and couldn’t eat those little beef jerky sticks, he stopped hanging around Leroy’s. He conjured up excuses as to why he missed the Legion’s annual fall steak fry and, in general, spent more time with Kathy.

  “Based on Susanna’s austere instructions, they were barred from watching Dallas or anything else, for that matter, and there wasn’t anything else to do in the evenings. So they started taking walks together or driving the GMC over to the Little Salamander River to look at the sunsets.

  “The lack of boom-boom, which was Bobby Eakins’s term when he was telling all this, was the worst part. Arlo wanted his candy now and said he was developing a painful constriction in the groin area. It wasn’t easy holding him at bay for nearly three weeks, but Kathy’s ace card was always the test tube or the possibility that some other man’s genes might flow through their child if it came to artificial insemination. That latter thought was particularly daunting to Arlo. As he said to Bobby, ‘Christ-in-a-sidecar, Bobby, we might get an Einstein or an idiot, and I don’t know which’d be worse.’

  “Kathy posted sayings on the fridge from the Tao book Susanna had given them and discussed the meaning of them with Arlo, just as Susanna had suggested. That was kind of hard for Arlo, since his brain had been rotting away ever since seventh grade when he discovered football, girls, and internal combustion engines, not necessarily in that exact sequence. Over breakfast, instead of catching the hog markets and sports results on the morning news, he was asked to consider little gems such as

  . . . the True Person

  arrives without traveling,

  perceives without looking,

  and acts without striving.

  And

  Blunt the sharpness,

  Untie the knot,

  Soften the glare,

  Settle with the dust.

  “During the day, driving the liquid fertilizer truck along country roads, Arlo found himself wondering what it meant to act without striving. That was a tough one all right, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Kept turning it over and over. Even asked Bobby Eakins what he thought it meant, which was a mistake, of course.

  “Bobby’s instant interpretation was, ‘Shit, Arlo, that’s simple. It means the woman’s on top and the man’s on the bottom.’ After which Bobby laughed and said he’d done just that last Saturday night over in Livermore at the drive-in movie, and if Arlo would start drinking Grain Belt again, all things would become transparent. ‘Clear as a foggy glass of Salamander water after it’s been run through six goddamn million filters,’ were his exact words.

  “But it worked. Somehow it worked. Within six months, Kathy was wearing maternity dresses. Word circulated that Susanna visited the Gregorians in October and performed some ritual where they’d all got buck naked and danced around an upside-down cross laid on the rug in front of the Magnavox. The Watkins Products man heard this during his stops in Salamander, spreading the news to Livermore and beyond. Since a number of the boys said they’d plead nolo contendere t
o a charge of low sperm count or just about anything else if it meant seeing the witch in her altogether, an epidemic of insufficient sperm became a real possibility in Salamander for a while.

  “Kathy delivered a fine baby girl right on time. She had been thinking of suggesting to Arlo they name the baby Susanna, but Arlo was replacing shingles on the roof when the idea came to her, so she kept quiet. Eventually, they decided on Myrna, which was Arlo’s paternal grandmother’s name. The christening at St. Timothy’s Catholic Church in Livermore was well attended, and when they got to the part about casting out Beelzebub, quite a few of the faithful looked at each other in knowing ways. Some claimed they saw the priest put an extra dollop of baptism oil on little Myrna’s forehead and swore he said some additional words in Latin that they’d never heard before. The outcome of this sequence of events, along with little Myrna, was that Susanna’s place in regional history was chiseled into permanence, even though she could have done nicely without it.

  “As for this witch stuff, I always thought that was a little harsh. So, being a latter-day sensitive and understanding male with an elevated consciousness, I preferred ‘medicine woman’ as a general term of description for her. ’Course, I never believed in any of that witch stuff. Still, I have to admit that after the incident with the Gregorians, I kind of wobbled a bit and admitted to myself that maybe Susanna knew something the rest of us didn’t.”

  The old man paused at this point to speak gently with a gray-haired fellow who stopped by our booth, asking for a sip of the Wild Turkey. Pulling two wrinkled dollar bills from his pocket, the old man hollered at Sleepy to give Frank a couple of draws. Frank mumbled his thanks and staggered over to the bar.

  “Frank and I used to work together out at the quarry. He was a good, hard worker in those days. Started the serious boozing about twenty years ago when his daughter married an Iranian from Omaha and his wife took off with a sergeant from down at the air force base. He usually does his drinking over at Leroy’s in Salamander.”