The Dance Boots (15 page)

Me and Vernon followed the skinny guy inside. He stood us by the door and told us, “Wait here, stand right here, I'll go get the owner.” First, though, he lit a cigarette.

The alley had six lanes and a lunch counter with a bar at one end. It was pretty quiet in there, nobody at the counter eating, just a couple of men at the far lane changing into bowling shoes, and
the wood floor creaked as we shifted from foot to foot, waiting. Dark in there. Kind of restful, too, and generally kind of pleasant, was my impression for a second or two. Then I took in my first breath inside the door and my lungs filled with the heaviness of an inhaled large animal, impossible to expel, unthinkable to even cough. The place had a smell that sunk to my chest and stuck in my throat; it felt almost as thick as grain dust but denser, wetter. What was it, anyway? Old wet dog, cigarette butts put out in dirty plates, mothballs, sauerkraut, lye soap, sweat, tired feet. Beer and boiled egg boogit.

But no rat blood. We could get used to that. In the meantime, I just breathed waves of that heavy wetness in and out through my mouth; the taste was bad but not as powerful as the smell.

Vernon was breathing through only his mouth, too. “Dice-lookig blace, eh,” he commented. Vernon was always very easy to please.

We could see the back of this big heavy grunting guy bent over behind the lunch counter, replacing an empty beer keg. Skinny walked over and knelt next to him, helping to lift and push the full keg with his long arms, white and dry looking as cigarettes.

“Aaawwrrggghhh,” we heard the big guy groan. “Gaaa that sonovabitch is heavy … rrrggghh.” Then, “Okay, I got it I got it I got it … let go let ‘er go let ‘er go.” They stood up. The big guy had a lit cigarette in his mouth, too. We would find out that everybody at the Palace kept a cigarette going; the cloud of smoke around each person's head really helped with the smell.

Skinny said, “Montie, there's a couple of Indian boys over by the door want to set pins. Fellas, this is Mr. Mountbatten.”

The big guy looked us over. “Where you boys from?”

“Duluth,” Vernon answered.

“Where else?”

“Mozhay Point, Lost Lake.”

“Where else?”

“County boys' home, up by Duluth.”

“Harrod School.”

“That a reform school?” he asked.

No, a lot worse. “No sir, it's one of them Indian schools.”

“You ever been in trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“You boys pinsetters? You ever set pins before?”

“No sir, never done it before, but we seen it done.”

“You start today, both of youse, right now?”

“Yes sir, we can do that.”

“You got yourselves a job. Follow me.”

Mr. Mountbatten took us through a doorway at the end of the lanes and pointed at the guy working behind the rows of bowling pins. “Punk. Shake hands with the new boys.” And he told us the Palace rules: Punk was the lead; the three of us, me, him, and Vernon, covered for each other; the Palace was open every night; no smoking in the pits; no drinking ever; we had to wear a shirt whenever we left the pits. We could sleep in the storage room with Punk if we wanted to help Ingrum, the skinny guy, with cleaning and anything else he needed done. “Show ‘em how it's done, Punk; hurry up before more people come in.” He left.

“We got a customer waiting. Watch how I do this. Gotta do this quick. It starts to get busy in here right around now.” Punk took off his shirt, rolled up his pants legs to his knees (“gets hot in here”), and hopped over the partition into the next pit to stand crouched, bent forward, to look through the lined-up pins in the window at the man who was beginning his approach. When the man set the bowling ball down and it came rolling toward the pins, Punk grabbed hold of the bar hanging from the low ceiling and half-jumped, half-swung himself up to a bench nailed high into the back wall, lifting his feet and getting out of the way as the ball crashed into the pins, half of them falling right at Punk, back into
the pit, where he had been standing. Punk jumped down off the bench and picked up the ball, rolled it through an opening next to the pin window down the ball return back to the man, who picked it up and began his second approach. He crouched, watching the man throw his second ball, jumped out of the way. Nine pins down. Punk jumped down, picked them up, two or three to a hand, and set them back up. He rolled the ball back and stood crouched for the next frame. “Got it? Watch me again, then one of youse try it.”

It wasn't too bad once you learned the rhythm, though like Punk said, you had to pay attention to what was going on. It was hard on the shoulders, but harder still on the hands. After a while mine felt like claws, curved to the shape of the pins, and stiff, and they sure hurt, but that kept my mind off my shoulders, which felt like I was carrying boulders on each. Vernon picked it up quick; he always did everything like that, but he was the first one to get hit by a pin when he forgot to get his legs all the way up. Punk saw him sitting on the floor of the pit with his head on his knees, rocking back and forth, and jumped like a pogo stick across three lane pits to pick up the pins. “You gonna make it, Chief?” Vernon's face was all twisted up by the pain and his eyes were half shut with it, too, but he nodded and got up off the floor to crouch for the next frame. Punk shook his shoulder, half embraced him. “You're gonna be all right, Chief; here, keep moving, walk it off.”

We each took two lanes, and when they were both full, we didn't stop moving at all; it took everything we had, for hours and hours, even days it seemed; twice the skinny guy showed up with hot dogs, which we ate between games. We drank water from a bucket in the corner, guzzling and slurping from the metal dipper, and kept it up until all of a sudden the place was down to one lane and Punk told Vernon to sit down, he'd take that one and finish up.

The last people bowling were Ingrum and his date, this woman I'd seen through the pin window sitting at the counter smoking
and sipping coffee most of the night until the bowlers were gone and the lanes were empty. She peered down the lane into the pit window before she picked up her ball. “Punk! Punk, how are you, honey?” She had a huge smile with a lot of teeth, and an enormous bust, like two bowling balls in her shirt.

“Oh, I'm fine, Miss Winnie. We got two new boys here; like you to meet Sam and Vernon. Friends of mine.”

“Pleased to meet you, boys; any friend of Punk's is a friend of mine.”

Ingrum told us to come out and sit with him and his friend; the night was over. We felt a little shy so sat at the table back of them and watched them bowl. We could see right away that Ingrum could really bowl; he started out looking kind of funny, sort of running on his tippy-toes, but then on that last step he turned graceful and set the ball down so gently you couldn't hear a sound, his right leg lightly extended and crossed behind his left heel. Miss Winnie wasn't too bad, either, but she was kind of clumsy, not graceful at all like Imgrum, and self-conscious about her dress, which she smoothed and tugged down in front and back every time right after she let go of the ball.

“One ninety-five to one forty-two. Beat the pants off you again, didn't I, Winnie?” Ingrum's eyebrows, forehead wrinkles, and Adam's apple moved up and down suggestively. “Beat the pants right off you! Haw! Haw!”

“Naughty, naughty, Ingrum; and in front of the boys, too.” She giggled and shook a finger at him.

She was nice enough to me and Vernon, flirted a little when she asked us where we were from, how we got to the Palace, then started giving us the third degree like she was Grandma LaForce or one of those other old ladies up at the reservation, instead of this white lady big as a man, with shiny red lips and big yellow curls on top of her head and these little drawn-on crescent moon eyebrows.
Where did we live in Duluth, she wanted to know, why didn't we live on a reservation, how did we get to Minneapolis, how did we like Minneapolis, did everybody live in teepees up north. “I heard the Indians up there are wild, just wild. And drink? You boys don't drink like that, do you?” She didn't mean any harm I guess. “Say, did you get supper? Montie, did these boys get to eat? Boys, are you hungry?”

“Well, whatta you think? I'm getting them something right now, Winnie, got some hard boiled eggs left over, and fried potatoes, lot of onions. Here Punk, Chief, Shorty—come and fix yourselves a plate.”

“Mr. Mountbatten's all right,” whispered Punk, “and Ingrum, too, though he's got some funny friends. You'll see what I mean, but they won't bother you. Miss Winnie either. I say it takes all kinds: everybody's different and everybody minds their own business, know what I mean?”

We nodded; sounded fine to us. What did he mean, anyway?

Miss Winnie stood, smoothed and tugged her dress down over her front and behind again, and waited, giving Ingrum this look, tapping her toe impatiently, until he stood, too, then Punk and me and Vernon did, too. Mr. Mountbatten didn't pay any attention. She said, “Excuse me, fellas, must go powder my nose,” and walked over to the can, her backside waggling back and forth, not a bad walker for a woman of her size and shape.

“Wish I had that swing on my back porch!” Ingrum sang it in a thin tenor, a man in love.

She looked back over her shoulder, hands on her hips like Betty Grable. “Oh, you! You are a naughty boy!” she called back with a deep giggle.

Vernon raised his eyebrows at me and pointed with his mouth, so slightly nobody else would notice him noticing, toward Miss Winnie, who was opening the door marked “Gentlemen.”

Punk caught it. “He ain't allowed to use the ladies' room,” he whispered to explain.

Mr. Mountbatten was all right, like Punk said. He treated us fine: paid us every Saturday night, good as clockwork, right after the Palace closed, fed us a decent meal at the end of each day, didn't mind if we took a little time off on the weekday afternoons, so long as there was one of us there to set up. He kept back a dollar a week out of our pay, which he put in an envelope for each of us in the safe. When we needed money we'd have it, he said; it was a good habit to get into while you're young. By the end of summer we each had a pretty good-sized stack of bills in our envelopes, maybe ten, twelve dollars.

When Buster heard about how we had jobs and a place to stay he thought he wouldn't go back to school in the fall but would hitch down to Minneapolis instead. Maggie didn't want him to go but then Louis went up for a visit and told her that he could bring Buster back with him. She fixed her youngest a bedroll and packed them some food, like she did for everybody who left her house, walked them to the corner, and then went back inside the house to her room, to cry where nobody could see her. To Maggie, Buster was still Biik, her baby boy, her last one to leave and the only one she didn't have to send to boarding school.

Buster was small for his age, too small to set pins, Mr. Mountbatten said, or anyway too small to set pins for pay. He could stay with us if Punk didn't mind, and could help out a little and eat supper every night, but not for pay. Miss Winnie thought a boy that age should really be in school and not hanging out at a bowling alley every night where God knows what kind of people come and go. She offered to take him to her boarding house to live; Biik seemed to bring out her motherly side.

“You can sleep in my room; there's a nice class of people where
I live, and there's plenty of room. I'll put a little cot in there for you right next to me, and you can go to school. A boy like you should be in school, make your mother proud.”

Biik was speechless. I could hear what he was thinking, how he wasn't going to sleep on a cot in a rooming house next to some fella named Miss Winnie.

Vernon told her he'd promised Maggie not to let his little brother out of his sight.

Vernon met Dolly one night not long after we started at the Palace. She came in to bowl with her girlfriend and their dates, a couple of guys who looked like they should be in the army. This offended Vernon, who gave his lanes to Buster and put on his shirt to go get a drink of water at the counter, so that he could pass close enough to get a good look at those draft dodgers out with those two good-looking girls.

“Hey, Sitting Bull, can you bring us four beers?” one of the guys asked. Vernon kept walking. “Hey, you! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!”

“Crazy Horse! What does it take to get some service around here?”

“He ain't a waitress; he's a pin setter.” Ingrum had walked over to their lane. “You gotta go up to the counter to get your beers. And we can't serve the young ladies; they don't look twenty-one to me.”

The draft dodgers bowled badly—maybe that was what kept them out of the army, Buster said. Vernon didn't say anything, just kept avoiding those balls that the two bums were throwing as hard as they could, trying to knock out the pin boy or break his legs, and lining up the pins that were crashing wildly, erratically, but also sporadically as the draft dodgers drank their beers. He returned the balls as hard as he could to the bums but returned the girls' more gently. The taller one, the one they called Dolly, was better than the guys and had a pretty good approach, Punk thought. We looked out at her through the pin windows and could see he was right. She
took her time about it, squinting to line herself and her ball up with the pins, then taking four slow and controlled steps, hefting the ball with her right arm like she didn't use the left at all (‘Needs a little more control from that left arm, her release's a little early, but she's got it,” Punk said). She looked strong, had muscular-looking arms and legs. On one calf she had a big maroon birthmark. She rolled a fourteen-pound ball with ease. If somebody who knew what he was doing could work with her she could get to be pretty good, better than Miss Winnie, if she kept it up, was Punk's opinion.

On her ninth frame Vernon kept Dolly's ball. He put his shirt back on and carried the ball out of the pit and to her lane himself, showing her a chip that might keep it from going straight, and offered to help her find a better one. It took them a long time; Dolly told her friend and those bums to go ahead and finish without her. She came back to the pits and for the rest of the night stayed off to the side of the last lane, sipping coffee and watching Vernon work without his shirt, stretching her neck like Olive Oyl in order in order to peer through the little window to the pin pit. He walked her home, and she came back the next night, and the night after that, and most nights after that, except for the Monday nights she went to roll bandages at the
YWCA
and Wednesdays, which were Girls' League night at the Baptist church. Mr. Mountbatten told us we weren't allowed to have girls back in the pits, so Vernon watched her through the pin window. Usually she sat with Miss Winnie at the table next to the bar, where Winnie could keep an eye on Ingrum and all the ladies who she was sure were after him. The two of them smoked a blue fog around their table.