Ronny and Lucy listened to the pastor’s words with rapt attention. Their voices hushed, serious when it came time to exchange vows, spoken with the right amount of thought and emotion. Ronny looked away from his bride just once, in order to reach back toward me for the ring.
After their kiss, a cheer rose up in the mill that was the loudest sound I’d ever heard in Little Wing, and from the little Lutheran Church off Main Street, you could hear the peals of bells tolling. Even with his bandages, Ronny joined Lucy in shaking everyone’s hand, everyone’s hand. And then the hors d’oeuvres, dinner, and finally: the party.
* * *
Most of the women had lost their heels and the men were sweaty as hockey players, with neckties knotted around their foreheads and plastic cups full of water and ice cubes. It was a dry wedding—no booze allowed—but no one seemed to care. The whole damn town was out on the dance floor it seemed, and they were giving it, leaving it all out there, letting it all hang out. Eddy on the floor doing the worm and Henry, displaying an especially prominent white man’s overbite, clapping his hands to music you damn well knew he’d never heard before. But it’s got a beat! You can move to it! And the groom: Ronny Taylor, looking like an original king of disco, with the kind of lithe body that might have given John Travolta pause. He was out there, cowboy hat on his head, hands perched snug on that belt buckle, kicking and strutting in new alligator cowboy boots and dancing with his pregnant bride, a woman who came equipped with her own set of moves. And even pregnant as she was, she moved well, showing her husband moves that promised much more than what was appropriate for public consumption.
And then the whole town was surrounding them, forming a kind of huge circle and everyone clapping, everyone cheering. Cheering for those two unlikely newlyweds, cheering with the kind of unrestraint that builds in a community buried by snow and kept mostly without sunlight from Thanksgiving to Easter. Children were there, up way past their bedtimes, out on the dance floor and moving exactly how the music told them to, moving without a care or inhibition in the world. Children, making sorties to the tables where the sheet cakes waited, melting. Running sugary fingers through thick frosting. Children, guzzling soda. Rubbing their sleepy eyes and going back for more, dancing in circles, dancing with their parents. Teenagers, sulking in the corners, checking their phones, looking up, wanting to join the action, but embarrassed to. Look: there are their parents, dancing, even grinding in ways that make the teenagers blush, moving in ways that made the teenagers say, Oh my god. Teenagers, sneaking off for cigarettes stolen from mothers’ purses, from fathers’ jacket pockets, smoking in the bathrooms or out by the train tracks. Kissing in the quiet spaces of the old mill, eyes big, eyes full of love and wonder and new ancient sensations. And the old people, sitting in chairs, watching, clapping, and in some cases, sitting almost catatonic motionless, only the smallest of smiles cracked on their wrinkled faces. Some of the old women rising to join the dance floor fun, but the old men, shaking their heads no, no, no, crossing their arms and crossing their legs, doing everything but sitting on the floor and locking arms together in solidarity. Didn’t dance back then, and I sure as hell ain’t going to start now.
And there was Kip, leaning against a wall, making a plastic cup of ice cubes sound like a half-dozen dice, a strange look on his face, a happy look. A look of accomplishment. He didn’t see me, but I saw him, saw him from where I was out dancing with our friends. I stepped away from the wild ruckus of it all and went over to him, wiping the sweat away from my face. What I needed was a roll of paper towels, a cold shower. But I was having too much fun, everyone was. Somehow, the sonuvabitch had pulled it off, had brought everyone together.
He saw me coming and stood up straight, as if I were a teacher coming to correct his posture. I saw his jaws crush an ice cube. He nodded, extended his hand, almost sternly. “Leland,” he said. I noticed he employed my full name, Leland. Not Lee, not buddy. That’s where we were at, he and I.
“Come on outside,” I said. “Let’s take a walk. I’ll buy you a beer.”
He shook his head. “No, I really ought to stay here.”
“Aw, come on,” I said. I put a hand on his shoulder, felt his body tense up. “Shit, man, let me say that I’m sorry. All right?”
He looked at me for a second without saying a word and then moved away from the dance floor. We went out into the cold together, like two men emerging from a sauna, plumes of steam rising off our heads like columns of smoke. There were others out in the winter night too, standing outside the mill, smoking cigarettes, looking at the stars, catching their breath. They nodded their heads in our direction, though I’ll say this, when they nodded, it was clear to me that they were nodding at Kip and not so much at me. What he had done was a rare thing, a good thing. The kind of thing that I suspect has been lost in America. Whole towns, whole communities getting together to celebrate, to have fun. No politics, no business, no Robert’s Rules.
Once, a long time ago, when I was first starting out, I was invited to a square dance up on Lake Superior in one of those small towns that seem to have lost their reason to persist. No downtown, no businesses, no working port or railroad tracks. And yet, at seven o’clock on a Friday night, a hundred people came out of the hills and forests and down to the old town hall, and I was the opening act for a bluegrass band and a contradance caller. There was a potluck and bowls of punch and Kool-Aid and coolers of soda and someone turned the lights down low and I played my guitar for an hour or so, played some Springsteen covers too, and they were polite and clapped, and no one’s cell phone went off and no one was distracted or talking. I was the only thing in town at that very moment.
After the set was finished, the bluegrass band took to the stage. The fiddle players rosined their bows, and the piano player lightly touched the keys, and the bass player made his big fat strings talk in a deep, low voice, and then they exploded—and the music they played was like a giant bucket of water poured over a great tree, fully leaved, the notes dividing and dispersing themselves down, gradually growing smaller and smaller, joyously running, bouncing, flowing down, down, down from leaf to leaf, as if racing one another. A one-child family suddenly multiplied a thousand, a million times over, each rivulet, each bead, each tear, a drop of sunlight and glee. And everyone started dancing, and soon the town hall was pungent with body odor, deafening with laughter, dense with the smell of wet wool and feet, and the whole town embraced me—literally embraced me—swung me into their square dances, and taught me their promenades and their steps and their claps and their calls. And I have to say, that was the first time I ever understood what America was, or could be. And the second night was the night of Ronny Taylor’s wedding, in Kip Cunningham’s lovingly restored mill.
America, I think, is about poor people playing music and poor people sharing food and poor people dancing, even when everything else in their lives is so desperate, and so dismal that it doesn’t seem that there should be any room for any music, any extra food, or any extra energy for dancing. And people can say that I’m wrong, that we’re a puritanical people, an evangelical people, a selfish people, but I don’t believe that. I don’t want to believe that.
* * *
Clearly, whoever wasn’t at the mill was at the VFW. The place was packed. Kip and I elbowed into the bar and no sooner had we got through the door than someone pressed cold glasses of tap beer into our hands and we stood close together, the door ajar, very cold air coming in, but feeling delicious all the same. Waylon Jennings on the old Wurlitzer.
“You did good tonight,” I hollered into Kip’s right ear. “That’s a hell of a party back there.”
Kip nodded his thank-you, but said nothing, sipped his beer. He had changed, I saw. Or maybe it was just my perception of him that had changed. Something was different. The Kip I’d always known, or thought I had known, would have made some self-aggrandizing speech, would have made everyone feel obliged to patronize his business, would have even passed the hat. But he had
done none of those things.
“Hey,” I screamed, “I want us to be good. You know? I want us to be…” I stopped, glanced at my wedding shoes. “I want us to be friends.”
He leaned in to my ear. “Come on,” he said, “finish that beer. Let’s get back to the party.” He slugged his back, set the tap glass down beside the frosted windowpane where the warmth of the neon lights seemed to soften the ice there. I followed him back out into the cold.
The night sky was perfect, the sound of music drifting through Main Street, car horns honking at they drifted away, out into the countryside, laughter.
“I figure that I can keep this thing afloat about another year before it sinks,” Kip said. He walked with his hands in his pockets. He looked at me, not sadly, but firmly, and I understood. “Turns out I bit off a little more than I could chew.” He blew out a cloud of steam, shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not asking for your help. This damn mill has failed before, and it’ll probably fail again.”
I walked along beside him, my sweat growing cold in the chill. The music back at the party was slowing, and I pictured couples moving in close, holding hands, women resting their heads on their partners’ shoulders. I thought of Beth, and then shook that thought away. Funny, that I’d think of Beth just then, and not Chloe.
“How much do you need?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “Christ, Lee. I’m up to my ass. Even if business picks up, I don’t think I can keep up with the payments. You understand? Renovating everything was one thing, revenue is another.” He kicked at a chunk of ice, waved his hand. “Forget I said anything. You probably got enough people looking for handouts. Let’s just have some fucking fun.” He picked up his pace, moved ahead of me, shook the hands of the Giroux brothers, out leaning against the side of the mills, smoking cigarettes. They nodded at me.
Back in the basement of the mill, everyone was slow dancing. And there were Ronny and Lucy, orbiting together, turning slow circles, her big, hard belly pressed against his very lean, narrow one. I watched them, watched Henry and Beth dancing, watched Felicia find Kip and drag him out to the floor, watched other wallflowers peeled away to join the rest of Little Wing, but no one came for me, and there was no bar there to retreat to and no fancy phone to hide my face in. Nothing but the lights of the disco ball, Louis Armstrong’s sweet growl, and the desire not to be alone.
“Hey,” a voice said, “you want to dance?”
I looked over to find a woman standing beside me. Her face was covered in freckles and I could see that she had long red hair. Her dress was pink, her shoulders very pale.
“Hi,” I said, “I’m Lee.”
“Rachel,” she said, shaking my hand. “I’m Lucy’s cousin. From Milwaukee.”
I pointed to Ronny’s Lucy. “Cousins?”
She bit her lip, nodded. “So you want to dance?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She led me out toward my friends, and we danced and for a while I wasn’t alone at all anymore and I stared at Rachel’s shoulders and sometimes the light of the disco ball sprinkled a confetti kind of light on her skin, and the only thing I wanted to do was to touch those freckles, each and every one, the rest of my life.
* * *
I slept at her motel that night, but in the morning, when I invited her back to my place for pancakes and coffee, she just smiled in a winsome sort of way, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I’m going to take a shower.”
And so I drove home, through Little Wing, where the Sunday morning streets were quiet, a few cars already in the parking lot of the Lutheran Church, and a few more parked out in front of the Coffee Cup Café.
When I got home, I called about buying two tickets to Hawaii. Then I fell asleep on the couch, holding a pillow against my chest. By the time I woke up, it was already dark again, and spring a long time coming.
H
A GIANT JAR of pickled eggs. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of eggs, suspended in an amniotic green murk as if a great reptile had laid a clutch there, in that vessel, for some later hatching that might well never come at all. Two feet tall and one foot wide at the base, it sat behind the bar, against the same wall where an expansive mirror reflected the tableau of the long, narrow room. Just outside, the hot neons blinked on and off in the window, attracting fireflies, mosquitoes, moths. Inside, the jukebox cast a milky light in its corner, and the two felt rectangles of the pool tables bathed green under their own separate cones of light, players circling round with purpose, indicating their shots with long cue sticks, stubby fingers, toothpicks. At the bar, old men shook leather cups of dice, old men playing cribbage, singing: “Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, a pair for eight, and knobs for nine.” And outside on the street, the newly exiled cigarette smokers, standing in the spring mist, nodding their heads in conversation, kissing yellow filters, blowing blue-gray smoke at the night.
A Monday night, the door flung open to Main Street. Lee and I sat at the bar, looking at each other in the mirror, behind all those bottles of liquor. We drank our beers quickly, not sure how to talk to each other anymore, not sure whose turn it was anymore. A heavy rain had come earlier in the day, and the sparse traffic on Main made a pleasant vernal noise as the wet tires passed—swwwooossssh. My planting done, I was happy for the rain.
We cracked peanuts, the shells collecting beneath our stools. Both of us sullen, our hearts heavy in our chests, both of us wanting somewhere inside to be friends again, but unsure what was even possible anymore, what we might or might not be able to forget or undo. I think it’s fair to say that we both felt, without saying so to each other, that after thirty-plus years, our childhoods had finally come to an end. That the steady easy friendships of our youth were at last coming undone. We had gone a half-hour without exchanging so much as a hundred words. We didn’t even make small talk about the weather. There was a desperation to the gulps we took. We drank to get drunk, to get loose.
* * *
“I’m going to steal that jar,” Leland said.
I peered over at him. “Oh yeah?” I popped a peanut into my mouth. “How many eggs’re even in that jar do you think?” I brushed some peanut debris out of my arm hair, considered the jar.
It had been months since I’d taken anything he said seriously. I no longer had the patience. There had been a time when I’d not only been his friend, but his fan too. Now all that seemed so long ago, so childish. It was embarrassing to think how much I’d adored Lee, the way my young son Alex adores Green Bay Packers players, the way he unabashedly wears their jerseys, hangs posters of them from his walls. All day I’d been dreading this—meeting him at the bar, having to make conversation. Earlier in the day I had stood behind a cow marked #104, attaching milking equipment to its teats, when it took a huge shit not a foot and a half from my nose. And yet—that didn’t bother me. This bothered me. You’d have thought I’d be eager to get away from my cows and crops, to have a few hours with an old friend, drinking some cold beers, but really, all I wanted to do was take my boots off, ease back in my chair, and close my eyes while blue television light washed over my face, numbing me off to sleep.
“I don’t care,” Lee said. “But I’ll tell you, I’m going to steal that jar tonight.”
“I bet there has to be a thousand eggs in that jar,” I said. “You think you can even carry that thing? You’re looking a little skinny these days.”
The eggs floated on, the pickle juice a brackish pond water.
He pointed a finger at the jar. “And you’re going to help me steal that jar.”
What he meant to say was, We’re going to do this together.
“Fuck that, man. I don’t have to help you with anything. It’s gonna take a lot more than a few beers to get me in a thieving kind of mood. And,” I went on, sticking my rigid index finger into the scant meat of his right bicep, “I figure I damn near have the right to kick your ass right out of the bar right now, as much of a friend as you’ve been to me.” I hadn’t meant to snap at Lee, but I also
frankly didn’t much care anymore. What could he do to me that hadn’t been done already?
“Well, keep drinking.”
“I am.”
Craaack! A rack of billiards balls broke. On the television: a fast break slam dunk. And outside, a ’79 Impala wheezed by without an excuse for a muffler, though the wet street seemed to do something to mellow the hoarse sound of that decrepit automobile. Lee slugged back his beer. He looked away from me, wiped some foam away from his lips.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
“I’d say so.”
“I shouldn’t have done what I did, and I’m sorry.”
“Listen, I really don’t want to talk about it. You know? Don’t really want to dwell on how you slept with my wife.”
“You weren’t married—I mean—Christ, Hank! Goddamn it. Ten years ago. What was I supposed to tell you?”
“That you were a fucking asshole? For starters. That I sure as hell couldn’t trust you. Want me to keep going?”
We each took a long swallow of beer.
“I mean, you want to fight?” he said. “Is that it? ’Cause shit, I’ll let you just beat the crap outta me, if it means we can be friends again. I don’t really care.”
“Well, that wouldn’t really be much of a fight then, would it?”
“No. I suppose not. So what do we do?”
I didn’t know what we were supposed to do, and somewhere, in my gut, I had decided months before that there was nothing to do, that we were done. Every time I got even close to something like forgiveness, I’d conjure some image of him and Beth together in bed, and it drove me crazy. I would get so livid, my only tonic was going to the four-lane bowling alley in Whitehall, where I could throw a sixteen-pound ball as hard as I could at ten pins, bent on shattering something into smithereens. I’d drive as fast I could there and back, over a hundred miles per hour and then, approaching a four-way country intersection, slam on the brakes just to feel the seat belt dig hard into my chest and lap, just to hear my Firestones scream in protest. Just to feel something other than jealousy and rage.
Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel Page 23
