by Jerry
“Sure, sure,” said Dan’l impatiently. “But tonight’s the Dance. Can’t we save all this ’til later? Becka, help me get out of this blasted—”
There was a flurry of activity, and I had just snapped the Old at Dan’l’s nape when the door opened again, cautiously, and a face peered in.
Good Heavens! A young, puzzled face! I drifted quickly over between us all and the door. The sight of John, half out, would have been a traumatic shock to any stranger!
“‘Could I help you?” I asked, knowing what the youngster was seeing. A closely crowded room of ancient men and women who had been milling about and were now frozen like a stopped film, and—and—
The young eyes winced away from the room and came back to my face.
“We saw the dance sign out front and heard the music—”
“Oh,” I said. “It’s our Old Folks Reunion. You’re perfectly welcome to stay, if you like, even if you don’t look very eligible—”
There were two faces peering now, but the first one smiled uncertainly and said, “I guess it is a little out of our c lass. It was just the lights—and—and it sounded like a good time. Have fun.” And they were gone. The sound of their feet was audible on the old wooden porch. And, just before I closed the door, we all heard—”… poor old things!”
When they were safely gone, laughter filled the room and activity began again. “Yeah, poor old us!” cried Van. ‘ Let’s get with it, guys! Time’s awasting!”
Dan’l, as usual, was deep in an argument, half in and half out of his Olds, and, as usual, I was lingering. It was rather as if I were out in a storm, soaked to the skin, hungry and cold, yet still pausing a bit in all the discomfort just to glory in the knowledge that all I had to do was open the door and step into warmth, dryness, and sustenance and all good things.
“—tried a regional approach way back before the First World War. No go. This is the only place.” Ditmar paused. ‘Trying to have the Dance there was like trying to have a private one at home. Won’t work. Just won’t work.” “Shame,” said Dan’l. “Osgood’s ninety-seven now, and those young doctors of his won’t let him make the trip all the way from the coast. Picked a sure way of killing him. Wonder what they’re saving him for? Bet he doesn’t last out the year. After all, having a few hours free of—”
The door swung open again, and we all looked to see. I gasped and blinked, not daring to believe. Surely not! But it was! It was!
“Artemiza!” I cried, and launched myself across the room to grab the plumply rounded shoulders of my long-time friend—my best friend since the seventh grade—my—“Oh, Miza! You’re one? You’re one? And we never even suspected! I’ve missed you so! Why didn’t you write?” I hugged her breathless and pushed her back to look at her.
“Becka.” She was uneasy, her hand brushing back her heavy gray-streaked hair. “Is it true? Can we really—”
“We can, really,” I said, pulling her to the center of the room. “Folks, this is Miza—Artemiza Coronado Hildalgo, my friend since time began, seems like. Who brought you?” I craned my neck to look past her. The bunch looked and smiled greetings and went back to their own absorbing activities.
“Nobody,” she said uneasily, her hands pinching along her small leather bag. “Tia Berta, my Aunt Bertha, she died last winter.” Her anxious childhood was back to steal her English. “She tole me. She come once, but it scare her. She tole me, I’m the only one she knows in the family can come. So I’m tired of hurting and being slow, and lonely. Tavio’s gone. All the kids marry, so I come.” Her anxious eyes dropped to her bag. “Tia Berta tole me you here. If you here—”
“Oh Miza! I can’t get over it! Come on!” I drew her over to the door that went into the dance hall, helping her off with her coat as we went.
“Move back all of you—or get gone into the hall. This is Miza’s first time.” I looked down at her. “Would you like it cold turkey, or to see someone go first?”
“Someone go first,” she whispered shyly, dropping her coat and bag on a chair. “I don’ even know—”
“I’ll go—” Chewey Escobaido wheeled his chair in a swift circle, dangerous to any number of elderly shins. “I’ll go first for Artemiza.”
There was general laughter and someone called out, “Chewey’s always willing to oblige a lady!”
Chewey shrugged his wide shoulders and grimaced. “So I like the ladies? Why not? Something better is around?”
“It’s like this,” he said to Miza, bending his head forward. “Right back here—” He groped and grasped. “If you can’t reach it”—he peered under his lifted elbow—“then someone who loves you, and belongs with us, does it for you.” We all watched as if we hadn’t seen it happen countless times before.
That place, right where the spine goes into the skull—the brief manipulations—the sigh of relieved pressure—the brisk movement of his fingers. And he grabbed the bottom of his scalp and pulled his Old up over his head and down from his face, his vigorous black hair springing up before his face cleared. Then he peeled the limp garment from his shoulders and down over both arms. Dorrie and I, since we were handy and could bend a little easier than some, dropped down to ease the Old down from his withered legs. A couple of* men lifted him up enough to let the Old go by. Then his own young, vigorous arms stripped his feet clear, and he was out of his chair in one lithe, wonderful movement, standing, shaking his Old down smoothly like a—a footed sleeper for a child—remember the Dr. Dentons? He hung it across his chair to slump limply like the others. Then he turned to the narrow strip of mirror next to the door and smoothed back both sides of his hair with flat palms.
Miza had grabbed me early on and nearly followed me to the floor as I knelt. Miza stood now, eyes wide and half terrified, looking at the magnificent fellow that was Chewey in all his glory, dressed in what could almost be called his traje de luz. He has become much more imaginative in his old age!
“Oh Becka!” she gasped. “Oh, Becka! Would God like it?”
“God taught us how, Tontita!” I said, hugging her. “How else would we ever have found out?” Laughter broke the silence and people began to shed their own Olds, anxious to join the laughter and music in the other room.
“I’ll wait for you,” said Chewey, his feet already tapping.
“No, no thanks,” said Miza. “I—I—” Her bashfulness was clutching her as it used to do in school.
“You know, the first time can be shy-making,” I said. “You go on and get warmed up for Chapanecas—or is that the one you outgrew in kindergarten? Dan’l—” But he had wiggled out by himself. His Old was hanging neatly on the coat hook by Chewey’s chair, and he was gone. Probably the first thing he’d done when he got through the door was to run and slide the full length of the hall as he usually did, just to feel the lovely, unhampered motion in his body again.
“Now, Miza—” I guided her fingers to the back of her neck and moved them through the sequence. I felt her wince as the last movement loosened her Old. “And now, you do the rest,” I said. “Up and over like pulling off a cap—”
Up and over indeed! The blue-black flood of her hair spilled out across her shoulders and down—oh lovely!—as it had back when we attended school together. Even then, long before it was fashionable, she had worn her hair swinging free, almost to her waist. Then her face emerged—just like—just like!
Now she could feel the release and freedom and needed no urging to free her shoulders and arms and, in one glorious movement, strip her hips and legs free.
“Oh Becka! Oh, Becka!” She lifted her arms and whirled, barely touching the floor in her excitement. Then she folded her arms quickly across her chest and huddled protectively, her eyes wide at me. “Have I got anything on?” she whispered. “I feel naked!”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Laying all those years aside. And of course you have something on—anything you want—any dress—”
“My—my graduation dress!” she said, with hardly a pause. And,
straightening, she grabbed the sides of the long, full skirt and whirled, her eyes seeking the mirror.
“Wup, wup!” I said. “Watch out for your poor crumpled Old. You have to put it back on, you know. Don’t wrinkle it any more than it is! Hang it over there by Dan’l’s. There’s room for both of us.”
She lifted her Old and flipped it competently as if it were a towel, and turned to hang it up neatly. She looked back at me. “Why did it be my graduation dress?”
“It can be whatever you want,” I said. “I’ve found that mine is nearly always the dress associated with whatever memory is strongest in my thinking the week be lore the Dance. Your tia told you enough that you were thinking of youth and happiness and excitement and dancing, so you’d just about have to think of graduation and your first long dress.”
“My first—” She was like a flame in the room. Her dress was red with multiple ruffles around the bottom. What a scandal it had been at our high school graduation! We had all worn long dresses—formals, we called them—but they were supposed to be pastel colored. To this day there are those who remember with resentment how Miza spoiled our graduation promenade. Truth to tell, she almost didn’t get to graduate with us because of it.
“What do we do—in there?” she asked.
“Dance,” I said. “Move. Any way you like. Maybe tonight you’d rather just dance by yourself. Sort of celebrate being free. You know, the ‘holiday for the body.’ Or square dance or—or—” I stopped, caught by a thought. “You know, we’ve never belly danced yet! You don’t—” I grinned at her.
“I don’t!” she agreed. “You come too.” Her smooth young hand reached for mine.
“I’ll come too,” I said. “Won’t take me half a second.” My hands reached toward the back of my neck.
Miza whirled back. “What if I don’t put that—that Old back on?” she asked. “What if—?”
“You have to,” I said, sobering. “You couldn’t leave here if you didn’t.”
“And if I stay—” her eyes flashed.
“We aren’t sure,” I said. “Maybe like being flayed alive when the time was gone. Time’s different at the Dance. There’s so much more of it. And when the time comes, we obey.” I twisted my hands together, reverting to my Miza days. “We’ve never tried staying. We—we give our thanks to God for our holiday and take back our Olds without rebellion.” I crinkled my eyes at her. “Want to make history? You try not taking up your Old again—”
“Not me!” She smiled back. “Ni modo! How long—I mean how many times—”
“Until you feel old. Stacy felt old tonight.” I sobered again. “When you feel old, the release spot is gone. We don’t know which comes first, the going or the feeling—
“But you’re wasting time. Scoot!”
She was a scarlet flash through the door.
My hands reached—the door swung open and Dan’l and Chuck came back through. I could believe almost that time had really turned back and we all had all of life before us. Dan’l young, vigorous—Chuck—
“Chuck—” Something caught me. “What’s wrong?”
He looked at me, his smooth young face drawn and unhappy.
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.” He turned and sorted through the swinging Olds, looking for his own. “I can’t let Stacy stay at home, being old while I—I—It just wouldn’t be—”
He turned, his limp Old clutched in his two hands. L you love, you just can’t.”
‘True,” I said, my eyes blurring a little. “You can’t.”
We helped him back into his Old. Just before he flipped his face out of sight, he paused and said, “Have a good evening.”
He left, slowly and heavily, feeling, I knew, the same feeling we all do after the Dance is over, as though we had just climbed out of a swimming pool. But his furrowed face was smoothed of worry and indecision. Dan’l and I clutched hands and watched him go. Then Dan’l squeezed my old bones together with his strong young hand.
“Come on, Gramma!” he said. “You should have seen Chewey when Miza swished by! But at the rate she was going, he’ll never catch her tonight!”
“Isn’t it wonderful that she came,” I said. “Just think.”
“Come on!” Dan’l tugged.
“Okay, okay!” I said. “I’m practically there!”
I flipped my Old up over my head and down, feeling my hair spilling bright and free. Already my soul was on tiptoe inside me, waiting for that magical moment when I would emerge like a butterfly. 1 paused, bent over the young foaming of my skirts.
“Dan’l,” I said. “If it feels so wonderful to peel our Olds off, imagine!—just imagine how marvelous it will feel when the hand of God peels our bodies off our spirits! Just imagine!”
“I have,” said Dan’l, smiling, with a glance toward his own limp, gnarled Old, “Believe me, I have.
“And for a person who rejoices to be free of her Old, you’re taking an awfully long time!” Quickly kneeling, Dan’l stripped my feet free, shook out my Old, threw it more or less accurately at the last free hook, and, grabbing my hand, yanked me to the door.
My hair,” I protested. “And I don’t even know what dress I have on tonight!”
“You’re decent,” he said. And, as I stumbled through the door, laughing, I was snatched into his strong, loving arms, and we whirled away to the music.
A CAPELLA BLUES
Steven Popkes
The dim remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters, with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre in folklore.
—Sir Harry Johnston, 19th century, on Neanderthals
Singer sat outside the cave watching the stars. It was cold; patches of snow spliced the sky and ground together with strands of glowing blue. The autumn silence was total and perfect. He inhaled and sang, an enormous basso profundo in cadence with the whirling above and the stasis below.
Throg staggered out of the cave cursing at him. “Squat, slopeshouldered, mousebrained—Monkeyface! Must you sing in the middle of the night?”
Singer stopped singing and signed to Throg: “My name is Sings-by-night.”
“I know that, cave painter.” Throg muttered a few moments, then said, “Sing on the other side of the hill, and point your voice away from the cave. I must sleep.”
Singer rose and looked up at Throg. Where he was short, squat, and powerful, Throg was tall and narrow and looked sickly. Throg’s forehead lacked the graceful, flat curve of Singer’s people. “As you wish, chieftain,” he signed, adding the crooked finger flourish signifying sarcasm. Throg did not notice it.
Throg pinched a louse from behind his ear, cracked it with his teeth and ate it. “This painting had better be good,” he called after Singer.
Singer tied his hair back with a strip of rawhide, then carefully frayed the mulberry and holly twigs into brushes. He cleaned the blowing tubes of dried pigments. Then, he sat back and watched the blank wall by the light of the oil lamp.
Throg wanted a buffalo, like the ones Singer had painted on the walls of the Hawk Clan’s cave. As if he could paint those buffalo again! Here, he thought, I could take the old sand bull motif and twist it—that bulge of rock could be the head, making it actually enter the room.
He had already made some preliminary clay models by the time Throg’s clan awoke, just before the sun rose. The wall where Singer worked was far back in the cave so that the sunlight only reached it in a warm glow. He watched the increasing light wistfully. What he could do with new-men pigments and real light! But they always wanted their paintings far from the cave entrance.
Enjoying the shadows from the glow, he extinguished the lamp and sat in the dimness.
Throg found him sand-painting some distance from the cave.
He approached Singer cautiously. Singer could smell his anger and fear. Probably towards him, he mused, then smiled and chuckled. Annoying Throg could become one of his major pleasures.
Throg looked at the sand painting dubiously. “I wanted a buffalo on my cave wall, not on the ground outside. It will get washed away.”
Singer sighed and tried to explain. “This is not the painting itself, only a test of color and light.”
Throg shook his head. “It should have a man in it among all those animals.”
“It needs none.”
Throg shrugged and squatted next to him, destroying a corner of the painting. Singer repaired it. “When will the painting be done?”
“By spring, if I have help making the pigments. Otherwise, by summer.”
Throg nodded and stood. “I’ll send you one of the women to help.”
“No!”
Throg looked at him in surprise. The word had been spoken.
Singer signed hesitantly. “Your women distract me, being always available and in season.”
“What do you mean?”
Singer forced himself to relax. The thought of having to work with one of Throg’s women had startled him. The women of his own people came into season only a few times a year. The rest of the time they were good companions and friends. These new women were always ready. Many of his tribesmen had lost themselves in a riot of sex, leaving behind abandoned women and a stream of half-breed children. Whole clans were lost sometimes in this manner.
“Consider it a taboo of my people’s gods,” Singer finally signed. Throg would believe anything if it had gods in it.
Throg looked at him desperately. “I can’t send a man to help you. Not a hunter!”
“As you will. Summer, then.”
Throg scowled and returned to the cave.
The next day Throg was waiting for Singer when he returned to the cave from his morning bath. With him was a small boy, broader and stronger than the other children and with a sloping forehead.
Singer stopped as he recognized the features of a half-breed child. Automatically, he made the seventh sign of pity and sorrow to him. The child, of course, did not understand. He stopped and bowed slightly in the child’s direction. “What do you want?” he signed to Throg.