Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

by Robert James Waller

  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.

  He was pretty well beat up. The doctors laid it out straight and hard: cracked pelvis, two broken arms, compound fracture of one leg, internal injuries. He thought he was dying, so did the doctors, and he tried to come to grips with that fact, hanging on until Jellie could get there, hanging on to see her again. He concentrated on Jellie’s face, formed it up cool and clean in his mind, got her to smile for him, and he was still around in the morning.

  Outside his room at the desk guarding the intensive care unit, he vaguely heard a panicked voice. “Where’s Michael Tillman, please, I’m his wife.” His wife—he’d never thought of Jellie that way.

  She bent over him: “Oh, Michael… Michael. I came as fast as I could. Michael, get better, and I’ll take care of you forever. Don’t worry, it’ll all be fine.”

  “Jellie, touch my face.” His throat was wrapped around a tube, and he couldn’t talk above a whisper, a hoarse one, but she heard him and stroked his cheek. He felt tears, big tears, coming out of both eyes, his eyes. It wasn’t self-pity… well, maybe it was. He didn’t know, didn’t matter. He was feeling the touch of her hand on his face, thinking about how much he loved her and that they’d never make their old, sweet laughing love again, and that he’d never take her out to Heron Lake on the back of the Shadow again, and that they’d never sit on the veranda of the Lake Palace Hotel again, looking for tigers he knew were out there because he saw one once on a foggy morning when the world was beginning to turn his way.

  Jellie was crying but trying to hide it from him. He floated in and out of consciousness for days, but finally the old body decided to give him another chance. He blinked open his eyes on a rainy Tuesday. She was sitting near his bed and looked up at him, smiling. “Welcome back, Michael.”

  In a few weeks Michael was on his feet, with Jellie’s help, looking like a clumsy snowman, in his casts. He was not a patient patient; his mind called for action while his body wanted rest. After the casts were off, Jellie would come home from the university, where she was working as a temporary instructor, and find him attempting push-ups or sitting bent over his desk chair, trying to make the muscles in his arms learn to type again.

  “For God’s sake, Michael, I’m doing all I can do to get you better, and you’re not helping. I have classes and shopping and you, and that’s a full load. You have to cooperate a little, take things slow as the doctor said. And don’t look at me in that little boy cranky way of yours; I’m too busy for nonsense.”

  “I feel inadequate, that’s all. Sloppy, too, lying around here drawing disability pay.”

  “Think of it as if you were practicing the jump-shot, Michael. Invest now, get the benefits later.”

  “Too logical, nurse Jellie, too logical.”

  “You’re the logician, Michael, except when it comes to yourself.”

  “That puts me in the great mainstream, right? Only time I’ve ever been there, and I don’t like the feel of it.”

  “Well, you can like it or not like it. I’m going to the library. I have six hours of preparation to do for the survey course.”

  She put on her coat and stomped out. Two hours later she called him from a pay phone in the library. “You okay?”

  “Yep. The little boy is no longer cranky and will attempt to remain as such. Sorry for the hassle. Christ, I did this to myself, and now I’m externalizing the results of my own stupidity on to you.”

  “Michael, I love you, really I do. But it’s not easy sometimes. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yep again. Do you really have six hours of class preparation?”

  “No. I was just escaping from the Walnut Street rehab ward for a while. I think I’ll come home and fix us something to eat.”

  “Wrong. I’ll rustle up some soup or its equivalent, have it bubbling when you get here.”

  Eventually, Michael’s ability to type came back, ideas started to form, and the computer screen glowed blue in the evenings. After three months he could walk outside by himself and started jogging slowly a few weeks afterward. There was laughter again, and there was loving.

  But living with Michael’s intensity was not easy. Jellie had known it before the accident, and that intensity came back even stronger as he recovered. It was constant, unrelenting, a never-ending push toward frontiers of the mind and spirit, frontiers he redefined as he approached them, causing them to recede so the chase could go on. Michael chased frontiers and Jellie helped him chase the things he lost because his mind was always somewhere else, never paying attention to where he put car keys or checks or his latest draft of an article.

  “Michael, you don’t ‘look’ well. You riffle around through a stack of something or shove things here and there on top of the refrigerator and think you’ve really searched. After that, you yell, ‘Jellie, have you seen…?’”

  “I use the lost horse method for finding things.” He was eating an apple and had just finished complaining that he couldn’t find last month’s paycheck, which he was taking to the bank as soon as he located his car keys and found his gloves.

  “What’s the lost horse method?”

  He was holding the apple between his teeth and scrounging around on top of the refrigerator, talking through the apple at the same time. He sounded as if he had a severe speech defect. “If you lose a horse, go where you saw him last and start there.”

  “What if you took the horse somewhere, to start with, and forgot where he was before you took him somewhere else? Your system wouldn’t work, would it?”

  “All my methods are flawed.” He grinned, flipping the half-eaten apple over his shoulder from behind his back and catching it with his other hand. “Help me find the goddamn check, Jellie, so I can then look for my goddamned keys after which I’ll search for my goddamned gloves. Please, Jellie. You’re looking at a disabled searcher. All men have the disability; it’s another one of those many flaws in the Y chromosome.”

  Jellie continued working as a temporary instructor at the university and enjoyed the teaching. Michael became more and more unhappy with the constraints of an academic bureaucracy that operated, as he saw it, for its own benefit, for its own survival and nothing else. Jellie could ignore that, and took delight instead in her students and her own research. This was new territory for her; Michael was more than two decades into it.

  In 1990, after talking it over, they moved to White Bear Canyon. Jellie had misgivings about the move, about surrendering her own professional life to follow the drift of Michael’s ways. But he had been unhappy at the university, and there was the possibility of a teaching position for her at Spearfish State. Life in the canyon was quiet and pleasant, but Jellie was restless. Though Michael worked alone and enjoyed it, Jellie needed an organization, a place where she could teach and do conventional research in her field.

  A year later Jellie went to India alone. The birth of Jaya’s second child was a complicated delivery, and she needed help afterward. Jellie stayed on longer than she’d intended. Two months, three months. India starting pulling on her again, Elsa Markham’s genes turning her in directions that pointed a long way from White Bear Canyon and the problems of living close with a difficult man. A French architect from Auroville invited her out to dinner. He was handsome, worldly. She went with him once to the Alliance Française but declined the next time he asked. It didn’t seem fair to Michael. The architect continued to call her. He sent flowers, left notes tacked to her door.

  Michael knew nothing about the Frenchman, but he was worried. He called and asked, “When are you coming back?” His voice was pensive.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a flat, noncommittal way.

  “There’s a job for you at Spearfish State beginning next fall. They called two days ago.”

  “I don’t know right now. That’s all I can say.”<
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  Spearfish State versus the excitement of a cosmopolitan life in Pondicherry. Dinners at the Alliance Française, a handsome Frenchman who was smooth and attentive, who seemed to understand and appreciate the feelings of women. She went out with him again. He wanted to take her to Paris and show her around. It was simple, uncomplicated, living this way. No problems. And she was near Jaya and the grandchildren, which enabled her to do penance for the mother she never had been. The university in Pondicherry offered her a part-time job, and she almost went to bed with the Frenchman on a night when the sweet smell of jasmine rode on slow winds from the Bay of Bengal, but she pulled back at the last minute. She was falling into something different, another life that seemed far off now. The next time she wouldn’t pull back.

  Michael called again. His voice was cooler than she remembered. He’d lived alone before, he could do it again, she knew that. He’d come to India after her once; he wouldn’t do it a second time. When they said good-bye, his voice changed, got a little soft and sad.

  “I miss you, Jellie/JahLAY.”

  And she cried then for reasons she didn’t understand.

  In the white sun of an India morning, the seawall at Pondicherry curved into the distance and looked like something from Mediterranean lands. Come evening, the locals strolled there while the streets and buildings of the city breathed out the heat of the day just past. After talking with Michael, Jellie walked to the seawall and sat there for a long time. A slice of yellow moon hung thirty degrees up, off in the general direction of Burma.

  Back home she went to a mirror and looked at herself. Fifty-one. The Frenchman said she looked no more than forty. Men still turned to watch her when she passed, and that was good, she supposed. She brushed her long black hair, straightened her scarf, and returned to the mirror. She whispered, “Jellie Markham… Jellie… the song is almost finished. Just what the hell are you doing here when the only man you truly care for is half a world away?”