Dance Real Slow (6 page)

On the other side of the market is the smaller of Tarent's two pharmacies. Ryder's is narrow, with an inlaid tile floor and a long, polished oak-and-brass soda fountain. Supplies are still shelved high and steep, with two thin roller-mounted ladders to reach them. At the far east corner of town, just as you enter, is Metro Drug: a cavernous, modern discount store glowing blue with fluorescent light.

Across the street from Ryder's is a smoke shop that in addition to stocking a large variety of cigarettes and cigars, both domestic and foreign, sells newspapers, magazines, and a selection of board games. Most afternoons, there is a young Native American boy, about sixteen, who plays all comers at a chess set near the front window. When there is no one else around, he plays against himself.

There are two traffic-light intersections three blocks apart in the downtown spread of Tarent. Just beyond the second light, moving west, is an unpaved side street called Basco Road, where our law office is perched up a short, stiff staircase, on the walkway level. A lonely swatch of low, hard grass sits out front, hinged by an L-shaped flower bed growing morning-glories, chrysanthemums, and roses, which usually are picked early, for someone's sweetheart. Near the end of the building is a small patch of parsley that Mary cultivates for salads and cooking. The glass door at the front has Blyth & Blyth Law Offices stenciled above-center in white paint, with Richard's name below, then Harper's, and finally my own, painted on later in a slightly glossier white. Off to the right, if you are facing the building from the street,
is a black-top parking lot with eight spaces marked out by narrow bars of yellow. Although the lot is never full, some of the spaces are reserved for the offices above ours, if Richard is able to rent them. In the farthest slot on the left, Rob Ives has parked his wife's Dodge. He is propped up on the trunk, his boot heels hooked to the fender, toes hanging over the edge. He is snipping callouses from his palms, using a fingernail clipper attached to a key chain.

Indeed, the front end of the car looks as if it has been driven through a cinderblock wall. The grille is badly twisted, caved deeply at the center, leaving its sides jutting out above the shattered headlights. Forming a rigid right-angled peak even with the tires, the hood has been smashed almost off its hinges, creeping up through the lower tier of windshield and onto the dashboard. On the right, an entire section of automobile has been removed above the wheel well, baring a steel-gray skeleton brushed lightly with the dander of rust. The same section on the opposite side is pressed tightly together, rippling softly like an accordion. Vertically bisecting the glassless windshield, a broom handle has been tied at both ends with burlap rope—one side to the driver's visor, the other to a wiper. Taped to the broomstick is the same thick transparent plastic that covers the outside of Gooland's, here guarding only the left side.

“I can't believe it drives,” I say, walking toward Rob Ives.

“Sure. Not much wrong with the insides—as much
as she tried. Gets a little breezy, though,” he says, briefly turning back to face the car.

Rob works for a Lawrence-based distributing company, delivering a wide range of products, from livestock feed to sour mash whiskey. Ever since the afternoon Joyce rammed into Gooland's, Rob has been driving the Dodge, and Joyce, his Camaro. He agreed to meet me here after dropping off his delivery truck, so that I could survey the damage.

“Don't know what you're looking for,” he says, closing the nail clipper and dropping it, along with the keys, into his pocket.

“Nothing, really. I just wanted to see how badly it was damaged.”

Rob nods and slides down off the trunk, pulling the cuffs of his trousers back over the tops of his boots. I move around the car, jotting the damage on a legal pad, pausing every few steps to take pictures with a Polaroid camera, collecting the snapshots beneath a clip at the top of my pad. Bending my knees, I crouch beside the missing section of car, craning my head underneath to get a better look. From the corner of my eye, I can see Rob smiling. We are not familiar, but I am sure he knows I have absolutely no idea what I am supposed to be looking for. Finally, I stand.

“Look all right?” he says.

“I suppose.”

“Toldya, there ain't nothing much wrong with the innards. Nothing that wasn't messed up already.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, no big deal. Sometimes has trouble turning over, so you gotta let it set awhile. That's 'cause it floods real easy. The steering also pulls a little to the left, mostly when you're stopping.”

“Is that the brakes?”

“The drums wear a little unevenly. We have 'em sanded down every six months or so.”

I open a folder in front of me, leafing through the tune-up records. “I don't see anything here that shows you get the drums sanded.”

“Wouldn't be there. Joyce's brother usually does it, in Nebraska. We visit 'em a couple times a year and he always messes with her car. He's got his own tire-and-wheel place in Lincoln. Does it in an afternoon.”

“When was the last time he looked at the car?”

“Oh, I guess it must have been May.” Rob stops, scratching at his eyebrows with his forefinger. “No. We took my car up in May. Don't usually take the Camaro 'cause I don't want to put the miles on it. But this time we did, on account of I needed a new set of tires. Mark, that's Joyce's brother, he sells 'em to me at cost. So it must have been last December, for the holidays.”

“You wouldn't happen to know his phone number up there?”

Rob shakes his head.

“Got it at home, though.”

“Could you call me with it, when you get a chance?”

“Sure.” Rob shrugs. “But what do you wanna talk to him for?”

“I just want to check the brakes through him—that nothing could have gone wrong.”

Rob covers his mouth with his right hand, brushing down several times, stopping before the end of his chin. He lets out a hard breath through his nose, causing his nostrils to flare. “Wasn't anything with the brakes, Mr. Nash. She just damn drove through the wall. Comin' for me.”

“Why was that?”

“I know you know why,” he answers, looking straight, not blinking.

“Because you were seeing one of the waitresses.” I glance down at my legal pad for the name. “Carol?”

He does not respond for several minutes, standing rigid, hands quiet at his sides. “It's a queer thing. It wasn't like I was ever intending on seeing someone on the sly, you know? Me and Joyce was happy—geez! We still are, sort of. I love Joyce as much now as when we first got married. It ain't about that. It ain't about not loving her.”

Rob takes several steps toward me and stops. I want to tell him that he does not have to go on, he can keep this to himself. But I don't.

“I used to think that Joyce was all there was for me, that we belonged together. I still kinda do. But … well.” He looks to the sky, spreading out his fingers and running them back through his straggly brown hair. “I feel the same way with Carol. Like maybe there's not one or even two women out there that I'd be happy spending the rest of my life with. That maybe I could be just as content with someone else.”

A soft ticking noise rises from the distance, like the
settling of an engine or a baseball card stuck in the spokes of a bicycle. But after several minutes it stops.

“You lose some of your desire for things, for people. There was a period of my life when I wanted only Joyce. But now I'm not so sure. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not about one perfect match. A person could have five, maybe five hundred, perfect matches. I just happened to run across two in my lifetime. Two at the same time.”

Our living room smells horrible. Calvin is lying spread-eagled on his back staring up at the ceiling, the man-o-war floating beside his head. I lean close and sniff first Calvin and then the jar.

“The man-o-war reeks,” I say, tapping Calvin's chest.

“Huh?”

“Your man-o-war is rotting. We've gotta get rid of it.”

Calvin rolls onto his side and pulls the jar near to him, squeezing it between his stomach and thighs.

“Cal, can't you smell that?”

Mrs. Grafton walks in from the back porch, placing Calvin's gunnysack on a straight-back chair beside the doorway.

“I know, isn't it just awful?” she says, smoothing out the front of her sundress. “It's been like that all day. He wouldn't let me put it outside.”

“We're throwing it away.”

Calvin whines, kicking his legs against the floor,
which in his profiled state makes him look as if he is running.

Mrs. Grafton stoops down and strokes his cheek with her hand. “Come now, honey. Let's show your father what a big man you are.”

He tucks his head against his shoulder and settles into a fetal position, folded like an omelet around the mason jar.

Mrs. Grafton steps back, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “This is so unlike him,” she says.

“Oh, I wouldn't say that. He's got a pouty side, too. Don't you, Cal?” I ask, prodding at his ribs with the toe of my shoe.

He moans and then starts to cry, muffled at first and then louder, breaking into short gasps as he tries to catch his breath. The back of his green T-shirt wavers with each sob, holding thin shivers of light below the crease of his spine.

“This is quite distressing,” Mrs. Grafton says, following me into the kitchen. I tell her it isn't, really. That in Calvin's four years of life I have spoiled him. He is far too accustomed to getting his way; he needs to learn things will not always work out for him. Even as I'm speaking this sentence, though, I realize how false and flat my words sound. Calvin, more so than most four-year-olds, more so than many adults, is aware of the fact that life is not always straight with us. For he has lost a mother. And at times is alone in a world he does not understand.

Mrs. Grafton collects her belongings, cradling them
near her breast as she steps onto the back porch. Moonie lies beneath a wicker rocker, remaining motionless even as the screen door slaps closed.

“Thank you,” I say, unbuttoning the top of my shirt and loosening the knot on my tie.

“Oh, it's a pleasure. He's usually so good,” she says, swallowing the hard consonant sound at the end. She turns and walks the seventy or so yards to her house. When she is nearly halfway, Moonie stretches and then taps quietly, effortlessly, down the steps and into the wake of Mrs. Grafton's path.

When I return, the living room is empty and I call out to Calvin, but he does not answer. I hear the pattering of his stocking feet on the floorboards above. I find him at the foot of my bed, huddled over the mason jar, which has been opened, leaving salty splashes beading on the dark brown floor. He is holding a blue bottle, its cap a marble at his side.

“What are you doing?” I ask. The air is terrific, sharp, but not only with the smell of the man-o-war. Calvin has poured cologne into the mason jar, spilling a salad-plate-sized ring onto the front of his shirt.

“See,” he starts, standing. “It doesn't stink bad anymore. See. Smell.”

I take the nearly empty bottle from him, screwing the top back on and buffing it dry with his shirt.

“And you think that's gonna do it?”

“Yeah,” he says, his face shiny warm with excitement. “That's it. That's doin' it.”

“Think so, huh?”

He nods and then steps back as I refasten the lid to the mason jar.

“Yeah. That's doin' it,” he repeats, sincere as a sunrise.

The light begins as tight rows of glowing white coins, slowly dispersing into grainy wedges that meld together before they reach the perfect rectangle of green, making it impossible to tell where one beam starts and the next finishes, unless you follow the nearly seamless trails back up to their origin. The green is fierce, without variation, so hard it creates wavering bars of black against your eyes if you stare too long. Huddled to one side is a grandstand, wide and steep, of silvery cast iron and stiff planks of red-painted wood. There is a similar, smaller version of the grandstand at the opposite end, for fans of visiting teams. Calvin and I sit at the top, near the home team, so he can see, our lower backs pressed against a creaky rail for support. We are eating hot dogs wrapped in wax paper, and potato chips, which I have spread out on napkins between us. A jumbo-sized Pepsi sits at my side, away from Calvin, to avoid mishaps.

Tarent High's players are in helmets of muted gray with a thin red line down the middle and the red silhouette of a Trojan on both sides. Their jerseys are crimson, with black-and-white stripes on the sleeves and white numbers sewn to the front and back and on the shoulders. White three-quarter-length pants have a single crimson stripe down the sides. Most are wearing black cleats, but a few have on white, and Calvin points
to them while kicking his own white sneakers out in front, at a right angle. From what I am told, Tarent has never been particularly good in football, with last year's team going 5-4, the third best record in school history. However, this season they are without their top six players from a year ago, all of whom graduated. So there is not a great deal of interest for this game, with Lawrence's North Bedor. Mostly parents of players, girlfriends, teachers, and a handful of students with nothing better to do on a Friday night. Calvin and I have several sections to ourselves and sometimes, in between bites of hot dog, he climbs down a few rows and sits, chewing, punching at his thighs to the rhythm of the marching band's bass drum.

North Bedor, in white and green, is both physically larger than Tarent and greater in number. The Grizzlies, as they are called, force Tarent into a turnover on the third play of the game—stripping the ball from a Trojan running back and carrying it down to the 14-yard line. Two plays later North Bedor's quarterback sails a perfect spiral to his tight end in the left corner of the end zone. The opposite grandstand shakes with green and white. High-kicking cheerleaders wave flimsy pom-poms of shredded crepe paper, fastened to the end of cigarette-thin sticks. One cheerleader back-flips her way to the edge of the playing field, where she stands and pauses, chest out, straightening the pleats in her skirt, before skipping back to the sideline.