English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  “Gents to the center, ladies round them.

  Form a circle, balance all.

  Whirl your girls to where you found them.

  Promenade all, around the hall!"

  This concluding promenade brought Alec and Leona over toward where Ray and I were onlooking, and spying us they trooped right up. Leona in the flush of the pleasure of dancing was nearly more than the eyes could stand. I know Ray shifted a little nervously beside me, and maybe I did too.

  “Mister Jick again," she greeted me. At least it wasn’t "Hello, John Angus." "And Raymond Edmund Heaney," she bestowed on Ray, which really did set Ray to shifting around.

  So high in flight was Alec tonight, though, that nobody else had to expend much effort. A lank of his rich red hair was down across his forehead from the dancing, and the touch of muss just made him look handsomer.

  "Here’s a pair of wall guards," he observed of Ray and me while he grinned mightily. "You guys better think about getting yourselves one of these things," giving Leona a waist squeeze.

  Yeah, sure, right. As if Leonas were as plenty as blackberries. (I have wondered often. If Marcella Wlithrow had been on hand that night instead of at the Conrad hospital with her father, would Ray have nerved himself up and squired her out onto the floor?) But if you can’t carry on conversation with your own brother, who can you? So to keep mouth matters in motion, I asked: "How was it?"

  Alec peered at me and he let up on that Leona squeezing. "How was what ?"

  "Supper. The supper you won for handcuffing that poor little calf."

  "Dandy," he reported, "just dandy." And now Leona awarded him a squeeze, in confirmation.

  "What’d you have, veal ?" Ray put in, which I thought was pretty good. But Alec and Leona were so busy handling each other’s waists they didn’t catch it, and Alec said, "Naw, steaks. Dancing fuel." He looked down at his armful of Leona. "Speaking of which—"

  "TIMBERRR !"

  I was not the only one whose ears almost dropped off in surprise. That cry was a famous one at any dance such as this. It dated back to Prohibition days, and what it signaled back then, whenever somebody stuck his head in through the dance hall doorway and cut loose the call, was the availability of Mason jar moonshine for anybody who cared to step outside for a sip.

  So my surprise was double. That the cry resounded through the hall this night and that the timber crier there in the doorway, when I spun around to see, proved to be my father, with my mother on his arm.

  He wore his brown pinstripe suit coat, a white shirt, and his newest Levis. She was in her blue cornflower frock with the slight V neckline; it was pretty tame by today’s standards, but did display enough of throat and breastbone to draw second glances. Togged out that way, Varick and Lisabeth McCaskill made a prime pair, as rangers and wives often did.

  Calls and claps greeted my father’s solo.

  "You’d be the one to know about timber, Mac!"

  “Hoot mon, Scotch Heaven has come to town!"

  "Beth, tell us fair and square: has he been up in the Two practicing that?"

  Even Alec wagged his head in—admiration? consternation? both and more ?—before declaiming to Leona, “There’s dancing to be done. Let’s get at it before the rowdy element cuts loose with something more."

  Ray and I sifted over to my parents’ side of the hall. My father was joshing Fritz Hahn that if Dode could still ride a bronc like that, it was Fritz’s turn next Fourth to uphold the South Fork reputation. Greta and my mother were trading laughter over something, too. Didn’t I tell you a dance is the McCaskill version of bliss?

  “Here they are, the future of the race," my father greeted Ray and me. "Ray, how’re you summering?"

  "Real good," Ray responded, along with his parenthetical grin. "Quite a rodeo, wasn’t it."

  “Quite a one," my father agreed, with a little shake of his head which I knew had to do with the outcome of the calf-roping. But at once he was launched back into more visiting with Fritz and Ray, and I just parked myself and inventoried him and my mother. It was plain my father had timbered a couple of drinks; his left eyelid was down a little, as if listening to a nightlong joke. But no serious amount. My mother, though. My mother too looked bright as a butterfly, and as she and my father traded gab with the Hahns and other people who happened by to say good words about her Ben English speech or his timber whoop, both her and him unable to keep from glancing at the back-and-forth of the dancers more than at their conversationalists, a suspicion seeded in me. Maybe, more than maybe, my mother had a drink or two in her, too.

  "Where you guys been?" I voiced when I got the chance.

  And received what I deserved. “Places," stated my mother, then laughed.

  Well, I’d had one escape this day. Getting in and out of the Medicine Lodge without coinciding with my own parents there.

  Out on the floor, the swirl was dissolving as it does after the call and music have hit their climax, and Jerome was enlisting everybody within earshot for the next variety of allemande and dosie doe. "Now I can’t call dances to an empty floor, can I? Let’s up the ante here. Four squares this time, let’s make it. Plenty of territory, we don’t even have to push out the walls yet."

  "The man needs our help," my father suggested to my mother and the Hahns, and off they all went, to take up places in the fourth square of dancers forming up.

  The dance wove the night to a pattern all its own, as dances do. I remember the standard happenings. Supper hour was announced for midnight, both the Sedgwick House dining room and the Lunchery were going to close at one A.M. Ray and I had agreed that supper hour—or rather, an invitation to oyster stew at the Lunchery, as my parents were certain to provide—would be our personal curfew.

  Jerome at one point sang out, "Next one is ladies’ choice!" and it was interesting to see some of the selections they made, Alice Van Bebber snagging the lawyer Eli Kinder and immediately beginning to talk him dizzy, pretty Arleta Busby putting out her hand to that big pile of guff Ed Van Bebber, of all damn people. My parents too made South Fork pairings, my mother going over to Fritz Hahn, Greta Hahn coupling onto my father’s arm. Then after one particularly rousing floor session, Jerome announced that if anyone cared to pass a hat he and the musicians could manage to look the other way, and collection was taken to pay him and Nola and Jeff.

  As I say, all this was standard enough, and mingled with it were some particularities of this night. The arrival of Good Help and Florene Hebner, magically a minute or so after the hat had been passed. Florene still was a presentable-looking woman, despite a dress that had been washed to half its original color. Good Help’s notion of dressing up was to top off his overalls with a flat cap. My mother once commented, "A poor-boy cap and less under it." The departure of the grocery store family, the Helwigs, with Luther Helwig wobbling under the load of booze he had been taking on and his wife Erna beside him with the bawling baby plucked from the far end chair corral. In such a case you always have to wonder: was a strategic motherly pinch delivered to that baby? And my eventual inspiration for Ray and me to kill off the last of my fifty-cent stake with a bottle of pop apiece. "How about stepping across for something wet?" was the way I proposed it to Ray. He took on a worried look and began, "I don’t know that my folks want me going in that—" "Christ, not the Medicine Lodge," I relieved him, "I meant the Lunchery." Through it all, dance after dance after dance, my tall redheaded father and my white-throated mother in the musical swim at one end of the hall, my tall redheaded brother and Leona starring at the other end. It was in fact when Ray and I returned from our pop stop that we found a lull in the dancing and made our way over to my parents again, to be as convenient as possible for an oyster stew invite.

  "I suppose you two could eat if you had to ?" my father at once settled that issue, while my mother drew deep breaths and cast a look around the hallful.

  "Having fun?" I asked her, just to be asking something, while my father was joshing Ray about being girl-less on such a
night.

  “A ton," she confirmed.

  Just then Jerome Satterlee appeared in our midst, startling us all a little to see him up close instead of on the platform. "What, did you come down for air, Jerome?" my father kidded.

  "Now don’t give an old man a hard time," responded Jerome. "Call this next one, how about, Mac. Then we can turn ’em loose for midnight supper. Myself, I got to go see a man about a dog."

  My father was not at all a square dance caller of Jerome’s breadth. But he was known to be good at—well, I will have to call it a sort of Scotch cadence, a beat of the kind that a bagpipe and drum band puts out. Certainly you danced smoother to Jerome’s calling, but my father’s could bring out stamping and clapping and other general exuberation. I think it is not too much to say that with my eyes closed and ears stuffed, I could have stood there in the Sedgwick House and told you whether it was Jerome or my father calling the dance, just by the feel of how feet were thumping the hall floor.

  To make sure their smooth terms could stand his absence, my father looked the question at my mother, and she told him by a nod that he ought to go do the call. She even added, "Why don’t you do the Dude and Belle? This time of night, everybody can stand some perking up."

  He climbed onto the band platform. “’Lo, Nola, Jeff. This isn’t any idea of mine, understand."

  "Been saving you the best strings of this fiddle, Mac," Jeff answered. “When you’re ready."

  Nola nodded, echoed: "When you’re ready."

  "All right, then. Try to make me look like I know what I’m doing."

  My father tipped his left shoulder down, pumped a rhythm with his heel a number of times to get a feel of the platform. Then made a loud hollow clap with his hands which brought everybody’s attention, and called out over the hall: "Jerome is taking a minute to recuperate. He said he hates to turn things over to anybody with a Scotch notion of music, but saw no choice. So you’re in for it."

  “What one we gonna do, Mac, the Two Medicine two-step?" some wit yelled out.

  “No sir. I’ve got orders to send you to midnight supper in style. Time to do the Dude and Belle. And let’s really do it, six squares’ worth." My father was thinking big. Six squares of dancers in this hall would swash from wall to wall and end to end, and onlookers already were moving themselves into the doorway or alongside the band platform to grant space. "All right. You all know how it starts. Join hands and circle left."

  Even yet I am surprised that I propelled myself into doing it. I stepped away from Ray, soldiered myself in front of my mother, and said:

  "Mrs. McCaskill, I don’t talk through my nose as pretty as the guy you usually gallivant around with. But suppose I could have this dance with you anyway ?"

  Her face underwent that rinse of surprise that my father sometimes showed about her. She cast a look toward the top of my head as if just realizing my height. Then came her sidelong smile, and her

  announcement:

  "I never could resist you McCaskill galoots."

  Arm in arm, my mother and I took a place in the nearest square. People were marshalling everywhere in the hall, it looked like a major parade forming up. Another thunderclap from my father’s hands,

  Nola and Jim opened up with the music, and my father chanted us into action.

  "First gent, swing the lady so fair.

  Now the one right over there.

  Now the one with the sorrel hair.

  Now the belle of the ballroom.

  Swirl and twirl. And promenade all.

  Second gent, swing the lady first-rate."

  Besides my mother and me, our square was Bob and Arleta Busby, and the Musgreaves who ran the drugstore, and luck of luck, Pete and Marie, back from returning Toussaint to the Two Medicine and dancing hard the past hour or so to make up for time lost. All of them but me probably had done the Dude and Belle five hundred times in their lives, but it’s a basic enough dance that I knew the ropes. You begin with everybody joining hands—my mother’s firm feel at the end of one of my arms, Arleta’s small cool hand at my other extreme—and circling left, a wheel of eight of us spinning to the music. Now to my father’s call of "You’ve done the track, now circle back" the round chain of us goes into reverse, prancing back to where we started. Swing your partner, my mother’s cornflower frock a blue whirlwind around the pair of us. Now the lady on the left, which in my instance meant hooking arms with Arleta, another first in my life. Now return to partner, all couples do some sashaying right and left, and the "gent" of this round steps forth and begins swinging the ladies in turn until he’s back to his own partner. And with all gusto, swings her as the Belle of the Ballroom.

  “Third gent, swing the lady in blue."

  What I would give to have seen all this through my father’s eyes. Presiding up there on the platform, pumping rhythm with his heel and feeling it multiplied back to him by the forty-eight feet traveling the dance floor. Probably if you climbed the helmet spike of the Sedgwick House, the rhythm of those six squares of dancers would have come quivering up to you like spasms through a tuning fork. Figure within figure within figure, from my father’s outlook over us, the kaleidoscope of six simultaneous dance patterns and inside each the hinged couple of the instant and comprising those couples friends, neighbors, sons, wife with flashing throat. The lord of the dance, leading us all.

  "Fourth gent, swing the lady so sweet."

  The fourth gent was me. I stepped to the center of our square, again made the fit of arms with Arleta Busby, and swung her.

  “Now the one who looks so neat."

  Marie glided forth, solemnly winked at me, and spun about me light as a ghost.

  "Now the one with dainty feet."

  Grace Musgreave, plump as a partridge, didn’t exactly fit the prescription, but again I managed, sending her puffing out of our fast swirl.

  "Now the belle of the ballroom."

  The blue beauty, my mother. “Swirl and twirl." Didn’t we though. “Now promenade all." Around we went, all the couples, and now it was the women’s turn to court their dudes.

  "First lady, swing the gent who’s got sore toes.

  Now the one with the great big nose.

  Now the one who wears store clothes.

  Now the dude of the ballroom.

  Second lady, swing the gent in size thirteens.

  Now the one that ate the beans.

  Now the one in brand new jeans.

  Now the dude of the ballroom.

  Third lady, swing the gent with the lantern jaw.

  Now the one from Arkansas.

  Now the one that yells, ‘Ah, hah!’

  Now the dude of the ballroom."

  So it went. In succession I was the one in store clothes, the one full of beans, and the lantern-jawed one—thankful there not to be the one who yells "Ah hah!" which Pete performed for our square with a dandy of a whoop.

  "Fourth lady, swing the gent whose nose is blue."

  My mother and Bob Busby, two of the very best dancers in the whole hall.

  "Now the one that spilled the glue."

  Reese reflections dancing with each other, my mother and Pete.

  “Now the one who’s stuck on you."

  My mother and sallow Hugh Musgreave.

  “Now the dude of the ballroom."

  She came for me, eyes on mine. I was the proxy of all that had begun at another dance, at the Noon Creek schoolhouse twenty years before. My father’s voice: “Swirl him and twirl him." My moment of dudehood was an almighty whirl, as if my mother had been getting up the momentum all night.

  “All join hands and circle to the left,

  Before the fiddler starts to swear.

  Dudes and belles, you’ve done your best.

  Now promenade, to you know where."

  "Didn’t know you were a lightfoot," Ray greeted me at the edge of the throng heading through the doorway to supper hour.

  "Me neither," I responded, blowing a little. My mother was with Pete and Marie r
ight behind me; we all would have to wait for my father to make his way from the band platform. "Let’s let them catch up with us outside. I can use some air."

  Ray and I squirmed along between the crowd and the lobby wall, weaseling our way until we popped out the front entry of the Sedgwick House.

  I was about to say here that the next historic event of this Fourth of July, Gros Ventre category, was under way as the two of us emerged into the night, well ahead of my parents and the Reeses. But given that midnight had just happened I’d better call this the first occurrence of July 5.

  The person most immediately obvious of course was Leona, white and gold in the frame of light cast onto the street by the Sedgwick House’s big lobby window. And then Arlee Zane, also there on that raft of light; Arlee, ignorance shining from every pore.

  Beyond them, a bigger two with the reflected light cutting a line across their chests; face to face in the dimness above that, as if they were carrying on the nicest of private chats. Except that the beam-frame build of one and the chokecherry shirt of the other showed them to be Earl Zane and Alec and therefore they were not chatting.

  “Surprised to see you without a skim milk calf on the end of a string," Earl was offering up as Ray and I sidled over beside Leona and Arlee so as not to miss anything. Inspiring Arlee to laugh big as if Earl’s remark deserved it.

  "What, are you out here in the night looking for that cinnamon pony?" I give Alec credit for the easy way he said this, tossing it out as a joke. "He went thataway, Earl."

  Earl proved not to be in the market for humor just now, however. “I suppose you could have forked him any better?" You could all but hear the thick gears move in Earl’s head to produce the next remark. "You likely had a lot of riding practice recently."

  "Earl, you lardbrain," this drew from Leona.

  But Alec chose to cash Earl’s remark at face value. "Some of us do get paid to stay on horses instead of bailing off of them. Come on, Leona, let’s go refuel before the dancing starts again."

  Earl now had another brain movement. "Surprised you can dance at all these days, what with marriage on your mind." He leaned a little toward Alec to deliver the final part: "Tell me this, McCaskill. Has it ever climbed out the top of your pants yet?"