High Plains Tango

by Robert James Waller

  “No, Gally, not dumb . . . smart. Real smart.”

  “It’s only a few hours from here, so we can see each other on weekends sometimes. Think so?”

  “No question about it. I’ll go down there, you come up here, we’ll meet halfway. It’ll work.”

  Gally came around the table and sat on Carlisle’s lap, touching his hair, looking at him. “You know, I wouldn’t be thinking about going back to school if it hadn’t been for you. You changed your life. I saw that and figured I could change mine. You inspired me. I feel like a new person, Carlisle, and you’re responsible for it.”

  She cocked her head. “What’s that? Sounds like a road grader or something.”

  “That’d be Axel Looker on his Steiger tractor. All-around good neighbor, champion driver of big iron, and ace scooper of snow from my lane.” Carlisle opened the door and waved to Axel, but Axel had finished scooping and piling the miniblizzard on either side of the lane and was bouncing up Wolf Butte Road toward Earlene.

  “Well, I can tell you this, Carlisle McMillan, what went on here last night won’t be our secret very long. When Axel hits Danny’s, there’ll be some snickering at the corner table about my Bronco being parked outside your house with five inches of new snow on it. By the way, I have to get going. I told Thelma I’d be in to work at Danny’s today. Four-wheel drive’ll get me there. In fact, four-wheel drive probably would have gotten me home last night when we first noticed the snow.” She was smiling a crooked smile.

  “Maybe. On the other hand, I think it was a wise move to stay overnight.”

  “So do I. Got a broom, carpenter? I need to sweep off my vehicle.”

  “I’ll do it while you pull on your boots.”

  Dumptruck on the porch, smelling the air, shaking snow off his paw, licking it. Bronco swept clean, Gally smiling.

  “Stop into Danny’s sometime, Carlisle. I’ll sneak you a little something extra when Thelma isn’t looking.”

  “Right in Danny’s? On the counter, against the fridge? Where?”

  “After last night, anywhere you want, carpenter.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you soon. Take you up on it.”

  The sun was blinding, reflecting off the new snow. She put her arms around him, and he hugged her back.

  Her Bronco hit Wolf Butte Road, fishtailed a little despite the four-wheel drive, and turned toward Salamander. Carlisle went back inside, Dumptruck following him. He strapped on his tool belt, feeling better than he had in a long time, fifteen years or more. After a sip of coffee, he climbed the stepladder, while Dumptruck with his tail over his back and in one of his wild moods ran up the loft stairs and looked through the balusters at Carlisle, blinking, purring.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE OLD MAN, THOUGH TWO DECADES OLDER THAN ME, HAD more stamina than I did when it came to serious drinking. Around eleven and with Sleepy standing behind the bar and giving no sign of ever closing, I said, “Well, I sure appreciate all the information, but I don’t want to wear you out. Maybe we could pick up here in a day or two.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “Don’t often get a chance to drink good stuff, and besides, a codger my age could be dead by tomorrow.”

  I slipped a new tape into the recorder.

  “When Carlisle McMillan looked up at my window his second night in town and waved to me, I kind of jumped before waving back. I shouldn’t have been too surprised, however, since I’d got a close-up look at him in Danny’s that morning and decided right then and there that he was probably a fella who didn’t miss too much. Something about his eyes, old-looking for a guy his age, like he’d seen a lot of things and knew a lot more than he let on.

  “So that winter, twenty-some hours after a medium-size Dakota howler had quieted down, I was sitting in Danny’s reading the restaurant copy of the High Plains Inquirer, which has pretensions at being our state newspaper. Salamander’s crack street department, consisting of one Merle Bagby, had gotten things plowed out, enabling the morning coffee crowd to reassemble after a day’s recess due to inclement weather.

  “Gally was getting things ready for the noon dinner folks while the morning coffee crowd talked about the storm. When she stepped into the kitchen for a few minutes, Axel Looker hunched over and proceeded to tell everyone at his table and the next that when he’d scooped out Carlisle’s lane the previous day, Gally’s Bronco had been sitting there with an accurate measurement of the total snowfall lying on it.

  “It was quite a burden on their logical skills, but the boys managed to deduce that she must have been there when the snow began. Ipso facto, as my ol’ geometry instructor from Salamander High was fond of saying, Gally had arrived at Carlisle’s sometime before the snow and stayed over.

  “That alone was enough to place Carlisle and Gally at about position eight on the ten-point Salamander scale of degeneracy, the standard way of judging such events in a location where the main pleasure of the flesh is eating. By the time the ladies’ church groups had processed this information, another point for dalliance had been tacked on. That much accomplished, speculation then turned toward the quality and quantity of the experience.

  “Beyond that, watchers at Danny’s counter remembered noticing what they believed to be extra mashed potatoes on Carlisle’s plate when Gally served his meat loaf and hot turkey sandwiches. That clinched it for sure, and the bell at the top of the ten-point scale resounded with a clang that bounced off Mert’s station and ricocheted along Main Street for some days.

  “Local students of behavior claimed to see a change in Gally’s whole demeanor and said that she was even more friendly than usual. The evidence was, in short, overwhelming, and the conclusion was reached and unanimously agreed upon that Carlisle and Gally were now lovers, though Bobby Eakins would probably have said it differently. But then it’s necessary to spread newspapers for Bobby Eakins when he can’t be let outside. The matter of Gally and Carlisle settled, Salamander turned its attention once again to lesser issues, such as death and politics.

  “I did notice, however, that quite often on Saturday nights, after she’d closed up Danny’s at six, which was the Saturday closing hour, Gally would load a picnic hamper and big thermos into her Bronco. Then I’d watch her drive west out of town, doubting she was going on a solo picnic by the Little Sal and believing instead she was headed toward Carlisle’s.”

  The old man nodded hello to a pair of cowboys who had come into Sleepy’s. They were followed by Harv Guthridge, quarry owner and lover of women whose pelts were hung when he was finished with them. Harv waved to the old man, and the old man simply responded with an unenthusiastic, “Harv.”

  He looked at me, then over at Harv. “Never figured out exactly how, but Harv screwed me out of my workmen’s comp after I got hurt digging stone for him . . . the sonuvabitch.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, it took Carlisle McMillan a little over a year to get his place finished, working all day, every day, though here and there he took a small piece of outside work just to tide him over. Between getting my junk mail at the post office and listening to the conversation at Danny’s, I was able to stay pretty much even with his progress. Being a geezer with a bad leg and not much going for you has its advantages. For some reason people talk right in front of you, like you’re not there, saying anything, figuring you for a decrepit old bird that has no one to gossip with anyway. That’s a mistake. Old men like me don’t give a hoot’n-hollerin’ shit what people say or think. Want truth? Look to old men and little kids.

  “The number of people bothering Carlisle and asking if they could look around while he was finishing his house was such that he finally ran a small announcement in the Salamander Sentinel in late summer. Said that he’d hold an open house on the following Saturday and Sunday between noon and six for all those who wanted to tour the place. Gally asked if I wanted to see what Carlisle had done and offered me a ride. Since I hadn’t been out of town for over two years, I took her up on it, partly to see the house, pa
rtly just to look at the countryside.

  “It was well worth the trip. Gally acted as general hostess with Marcie English, who lived down the road a ways, helping her out. They served coffee and cookies, with punch for the kiddies, who ran down to the creek to watch the minnows. According to Gally’s count, two hundred and fifty-seven people of various ages, stripes, and religious preferences came to tour and gawk, while a few turkey buzzards wheeled around looking at the older folks. Carlisle, being of increasing sensitivity, even installed temporary wheelchair ramps and other conveniences so we folks with certain physical limits could get up into the house.

  “Kathy and Arlo Gregorian came, and everybody remarked how fast little Myrna was growing. Leroy came, so did Orly and Mrs. Hammond. Huey and Fran Sverson came, Beanie Wickers did not. The Injun and Susanna Benteen drifted by late on the second day when the visitors were about gone and helped with the cleanup.

  “Bobby Eakins said, ‘Shit, ya seen one house, ya seen ’em all, and I’m not going.’ But he did, and he was real quiet and respectful when he walked around. Word about Carlisle’s undertaking had spread to Falls City forty miles southeast, bringing some people in from that great distance. The Better Homes and Garden Realty folks over there had gotten wind of the project and sent their local representative, Cecil Macklin, to check things out and see if Carlisle might be interested in selling, now that he’d finished the place. Cecil asked Carlisle if he was building something called a ‘spec home’ and said he had an unidentified buyer who might be interested in the property. Carlisle grinned, said no and thanks anyway, while he walked away, shaking his head.

  “Under the influence of Carlisle’s hands, the decrepit Williston property had been transformed into the best damn place I ever seen. It had all the look and feel of a fine piece of cabinetry, except this was an entire house and grounds. I was ’specially interested in the hardwood flooring he’d just recently installed inside. It’d come from the gym floor at old Salamander High. And I stood there remembering the underhand shot I’d sunk that took down the Livermore Chiefs in the finals of the county tournament, January of ’34.

  “Next best to the flooring, I liked the little atrium thing he’d put along the south side, which you could enter either from the main house or through an outside door. Well, it wasn’t so little, since it ran just about the length of the house and stuck out some ten feet. Had a brick floor in it, redwood siding like the rest of the house, and for the roof a kind of sloping latticework arrangement of eighteen-inch, wood-framed pieces of glass. Carlisle had calculated snow loads, runoff, and all the rest, so by using smaller pieces of framed glass at the proper angle, he’d avoided the problem that all the boys at Danny’s had said would ruin it.

  “With the help of both Susanna and Gally, who by that time had become somewhat friends, Carlisle had stocked the atrium with hanging greenery of all kinds, plus plants and flowers in pots and tubs. There also was a miniature garden that produced more vegetables than five people could eat. Said he’d found that idea in a book lent to him by Susanna that dealt with a concept called gardening by the square foot. Scattered around in amongst all these plants were little benches where you could sit and enjoy all the growing things. I was sitting behind a rubber plant when I happened to see Alma Hickman stick a big red tomato in her purse, after first glancing around to see if anybody was looking. I was, but she didn’t notice me.

  “Now, you got to appreciate that most of the new places around here, of which there are few, are mostly double-wides from the discount trailer place in Falls City or prefabbed jobs from the Great West company in that same location. People live with so much natural space around ’em that they apparently want their homes chopped up into little tiny rooms and hauled in one-half at a time on the back of trucks. That’s one theory. More likely, it’s so’s they can say they’ve got a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, and so forth. Kind of seems like that puts ’em in a higher class of citizen, far as I can tell from listening to the radio ads for those things.

  “Understandable, then, the fact Carlisle had only two rooms in his place, one of which was a bathroom-utility room with a redwood shower, the other of which was everything else, kind of unsettled them. The place was, in a single word, spare. In another single word, it was open. He’d copied the Shakers in some respects, and a fair amount of his furniture, of which there wasn’t much and all of which he’d built himself, hung from the walls when it wasn’t in use.

  “He’d fixed up a nice loft you reached by a fancy twirling staircase, the rail of it being a long, curving piece of driftwood he’d found by the Little Sal. Even though the house was essentially one big room, it didn’t feel that way, since he’d set plants and bookcases in certain ways as to sort of section off the place.

  “The women oohed and said nice things about his kitchen, ’specially the ash cabinets he’d made from scratch. His silverware and dishes and other stuff more or less formed a stew, since he’d picked up things at rummage sales and at the Goodwill in Falls City. But he had a good eye for it.

  “The entire place had a sort of a polished gold amber color to it, helped along by all the redwood he’d recycled. All of it shining, all of it nice and warm. Made you want to sit down and read a book or pick the five-string banjo hanging on the wall. For some folks, however, there was one negative aspect. That was the little statue of a naked female with a wild hairdo that was sitting on the mantel. The statue upset the churchwomen some, and they were buzzing about it on the way back to their cars. The younger women, however, felt different and tended to ask Carlisle more questions about the house after they’d seen the statue, smiling at him all the while they asked.

  “Out the back door was a deck with a wooden hot tub large enough for several people. The binoculars boys swore they’d seen both Gally and Susanna in the tub at the same time, with Carlisle nowhere around, though they couldn’t be sure, since the angle of view from the road was a little awkward. Some even claimed that Marcie English had been in there one time with Susanna and Gally.

  “Leading off from the deck was a raised wood walkway, about six inches aboveground and resting on genuine forty-three-inch footings, no less. The walkway led to a ten-by-fifteen workshop matching the house in its color and details, even up to its shake roof. That little building contained fold-down workbenches, cupboards, and hooks for all Carlisle’s tools. And Carlisle McMillan had a lot of tools.

  “Something else interesting was Carlisle’s bat houses. The image most of us have regarding bats is our mothers waving brooms around the living room on a summer evening while family members were covering up their hair and screaming about rabies and Dracula. But Carlisle knew bats eat insects, and one way to keep your yard somewhat free of them was to have bats as neighbors. With that in mind, he’d installed houses for them on the southeast side of his oaks, about fifteen feet up. Said it might take a while for the bats to move in, but they would, they would.

  “Over the main doorway was a symbol, neatly carved into the wood. Most people were reluctant to ask what it meant, probably afraid they might find out, I’m guessing. Underneath the symbol on the doorway were some words: For Cody. Carlisle said he’d prefer not to talk about what that meant, and everybody respected his feelings, though Cecil Macklin, being the extra sharp Realtor he was, made the observation that such customizing lowered the resale value of the house considerably.

  “All in all, it was quite a weekend. Some people came both days, bringing a picnic lunch with ’em the second time around. The county conservation people had helped Carlisle design a small dam, backing the creek up into a nice one-acre pond, and folks sat there by the water talking to people they hadn’t seen for years, since they’d been spending all their time watching television instead of visiting, like we used to do.

  “I went both days, too, naturally, riding with Thelma Englestrom the second day. Mostly I sat by the pond, feeling the grass, looking at the water. With no personal transportation I was pretty well locked in
to Salamander, and it felt good sitting there in sunlight and just watching some smallish hawks making their rounds near a patch of trees across the road from Carlisle’s place. Couldn’t identify ’em for sure, but remembered seeing those kind of birds a long time ago, but not lately.

  “Carlisle seemed to enjoy it all, explaining, pointing out, answering questions. Some of us noted he’d touch Gally in little ways now and then. Bobby Eakins claimed he’d been watching once when Carlisle walked by and ran his hand over her bottom when he thought nobody was looking. Bobby said he had put a move on Gally once or twice, even though he favored what he called ‘less experienced women,’ but all she’d ever done in response was pour hot coffee on his hand, claiming afterwards it was an accident.

  “Now, the folks from Falls City are a different crowd. That’s the county seat, and along with having a community college, they’ve been successful at attracting some industry, not to mention doctors and other professional people. After hearing about Carlisle’s work, the Falls City Observer sent over a reporter to observe, along with a photographer to photograph. They did a real complimentary article on the house and Carlisle, calling him one of the great craftsmen of the high plains.

  “After that, Carlisle had all the work he could handle in Falls City and surrounding areas. People said you had to put up with his slow, methodical way of working, but that the result was worth it. Since he chose to work only about four weeks out of six, you had to wait till he was ready. They also remarked that you dasn’t tell him exactly what you wanted or, worse, show him a picture from House Beautiful. What you did was try and say what role the new spaces would play in your life. Then, in the words of a Falls City physician’s wife, ‘Stand back, leave him alone, and he’ll give you perfection.’