Dancing Carl

by Gary Paulsen

  On the hockey side it was always like war, and when you were playing you didn’t notice much. But for some strange reason we all knew the day Helen came. We all noticed.

  Four days after Willy and I had broken Carl we went back to the rinks. We went without knowing what to expect but Carl was still there only different. He just sat on the bunk, sat with his bottle but he didn’t help the little kids with their skates and he didn’t come out and study the rinks or dance or say anything.

  He just sat.

  But in the winter you skated and so Willy and I came back to the rinks and we put on our skates and went on the hockey rink but my heart wasn’t in it. I took four or five good body shots that left me with a bloody nose and a swollen ear and I still couldn’t get into the game and twice I saw Willy go down with solid checks and all I could think of was Carl. Finally we moved away from the play to the side of the boards next to the grownup rink and there was Helen.

  She was skating to the music on the other side, or just skating around, and the reason I noticed her was because she made me think of those old paintings you see of people skating. The way the people at the rink normally skated they just looked regular, like they’d come off the street and put skates on and started going around.

  But Helen looked different. She was an older woman with gray hair, but she was trim looking and had on small white skates and wore a wool or tweed skating suit with a fur collar. The suit was a little frayed at the edges but something about her, something about the way she held her head, made that not matter. Her skirt was kind of long, too, longer than other skirts but that didn’t matter either. She had her hands stuck in a fur muff that matched her collar and on her head was one of those square little hats like they wear in Russia and it was of the same fur.

  She looked like she’d just stepped out of one of those paintings you see on calendars or matchboxes and Willy and I stared at her while she skated around the rink.

  Even her skating made you think of a painting. She skated straight up and down, really controlled, with short strokes of her blades that kept her moving but without bending.

  “Who is she?” Willy asked. By now most of the skaters had stopped to look at her, most of the hockey players, and nobody knew her name.

  Finally Eunice Moen, who was skating on the other side and had a crush on Willy but who Willy didn’t like, skated over to the boards and nodded. “You watching Helen?” she asked.

  “Is that her name?” I saw her take a turn and keep moving without seeming to move her skates. “Where did she come from?”

  “Somebody said she just moved into town. I heard them call her Helen but I don’t know her last name. Helen something.” Eunice looked at Willy and smiled and Willy tried not to see her.

  “She’s sure something,” he said, and I nodded and then I looked over at the door of the warming house which was opening, and Carl stepped out.

  I poked Willy. “Look.”

  Carl was a little bent but he straightened and walked down to the rink and stood by the gate. He must have seen Helen in the warming house when she put on her skates, but he stood now and watched her as if seeing her for the first time. Two, three circuits of the rink she made while he watched and I knew then that he was coming out of it, coming out of our breaking him, and I smiled and thought that if it meant nothing it was still nice that just seeing this Helen was worth it to bring him out.

  But there was more there, more than I saw. Helen continued to skate around the rink but Carl changed as he watched her. He didn’t just straighten, he stood taller, and his body seemed to fill and his neck got tighter and his eyes were sharp as he watched and it was just like watching somebody being born.

  On the fourth lap, as she went by, skating all up and down and proper, Carl’s hand went up. It was a short movement, a small round movement; his fingers made a tight little circle but Willy saw it and so did I and Willy smiled.

  At the other end of the rink Helen stopped and leaned over to tighten her skate a little and while she was bent over away from the gate Carl came onto the ice.

  He moved from the gate towards her, just a few steps, then he stopped and turned away. One short step back, his back arched, and now the whole rink was watching, everybody but Helen, who was still facing away and now he turned back.

  Slowly his arms came up and he turned around, let his arms swoop down and up, then stopped, his hands out to his sides and his eyes locked onto Helen as she stood, finished tightening her skates, and turned to see the rink all stopped, watching Carl, watching her.

  She saw Carl standing, his arms out, a small smile on his mouth, little puffs of steam coming from his mouth and nose.

  She didn’t see what we saw.

  We saw Carl, who had been hurt but who now was coming back as king of the rinks, with his power back, with his dance back, with his eyes back. We saw Carl.

  She saw an old drunk who was acting weird and she turned away from him, turned away from Carl and skated to the left in the circle to the music that was still playing and it broke something, broke maybe a spell and everybody went back to skating and I felt sad for Carl.

  For him to come out of where he had been when we broke him, for him to change and come out and have it thrown in his face was awful and maybe I hated Helen for that a little.

  But I was wrong again. About Carl. About Helen.

  Carl was just starting.

  14

  “People think the only way to get anything done is by talking,” Willy said to me once after the winter with Carl at the rinks was all over. “They have conferences and talk and talk—how wrong can you be?”

  Willy always thought along those lines. It was part of trying to see inside of things. If somebody said there was a way to do a thing, Willy would just naturally sit down and try to find a different way. It wasn’t hole-picking, it was more that he wanted to make sure there wasn’t a better way to do something.

  “Take Carl,” he said, leaning back on the side of the Poplar River during the hot time of the afternoon when the fish didn’t bite anyway. “Carl never said a word to Helen and look how that turned out.”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “But that was Carl. And most people aren’t like Carl.”

  And for a change Willy agreed with me.

  “That’s for sure,” he said. “That’s for darn sure. There’s never been anything like Carl. Man, when he set his sights on Helen that was something to see—I almost forgot about hockey.”

  I heard one of the grownups say that Carl was courting Helen the old way, and maybe that’s right. But I can’t believe there were that many Carls running around in the old days. I think Carl was courting Helen in his own way, with his power.

  And it was something to see.

  Usually at the rinks Carl just stacked the records into the machine any old way. You might get a waltz next to a polka and a schottische next to some kind of military march but all that changed when Helen came down to the rinks.

  And she did come back. The next night she came to skate and I was in the warming house when she arrived and she sat in the corner and put her skates down in little controlled movements that made tight small lines in my mind.

  So straight she sat, in the corner, straight up and back and Carl got up off his bunk and came over to her and bowed. A short jerk of his head forward and down.

  She looked up and then down, ignored him, but he kneeled in front of her anyway.

  I turned for Willy but he had gone outside onto the rink and I was alone except for some high-school kids.

  Carl’s hands went down and they picked up Helen’s white skates with white laces and the red pom-poms and he loosened the laces. Then he slipped off her fur-lined boots and pulled the skates on and the hard red hands tightened the laces, not too tight, not too loose—just snug.

  She said nothing. He said nothing. Helen took it like maybe it was supposed to happen, that Carl was supposed to help her with her skates, and she tried not to look down at him but I saw her sl
ip a couple of times and glance down while he was bent over pulling on the lace.

  When her laces were tight he stood, uncoiled up and away from her and made all the curved lines straight and looked down and gave that same tight bow again. Just a movement of the chin, and went back to his bunk and sat on the edge with his back straight, the fur collar of his flight jacket up, his legs together. Just sat, straight and right.

  She stood and went out to skate and as soon as she cleared the door he leaned down under the bunk and did something with the records. For a second I couldn’t make it out, then I saw that he was changing the records on the turntable. He took off the ones that were set up and put on a special stack and I thought right then that I had to get outside and get Willy to watch.

  This was going to be something.

  But before I went I saw Carl do a strange thing. He stood alone by his bunk and shrugged his shoulders down, almost like an exercise but not quite, either. It was more a getting ready kind of thing, like I’d seen a bullfighter doing in a movie before going out to face the bull. Getting his mind ready.

  I went out to the hockey rink and skated onto the ice and got Willy just as the door to the warming house opened and Carl came out.

  “Oh,” Willy said, low and quiet. “He’s . . . he’s different, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. Other kids still played hockey but some of them had stopped and they were watching and on the other side a lot of the grownups had stopped to watch. Some of the little kids kept skating.

  The music changed. The new records he had put on started to cycle through and the first one came on loud and strong, the sound ripping through the elms, coming out of the speakers with great booms and sharp edges.

  It was a march. I had heard it once when the school band had done it but they messed it up the way they do and this time it sounded sort of the same because of the speakers.

  Carl stopped just inside the gate on the ice, stopped hard and strong and stood with his back straight and waited, waited until the people had stopped skating and Helen had turned from the right corner and saw him.

  Then he made rigid movements, hard movements, forward and around, back and forth across the end of the rink and I couldn’t figure it at first and I let my mind go easy and then I knew.

  “He’s young,” Willy said, getting it at the same time. “He’s young again. And in the army.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I feel, too.”

  He moved with the strong movements until I thought he was done, thought he was going to leave, but no. He stopped then, with his back to Helen who was at the other end of the rink, watching him now. She was watching him openly, standing with her hands in the muff, her skates straight ahead.

  The record changed and Carl turned and now it was a waltz and now he went around and down with those smooth movements that made me think of oil, made me think of smooth cream; he whirled around on the ice and let his arms go up and down like wings and it was as soft and beautiful as the first part had been hard.

  He seemed to flow with the music, back and forth across the end of the rink and I let my mind follow the lines and I could see him showing something soft and beautiful and I thought of quiet places and whispers and happiness.

  Other people at the rink were smiling and had light in their faces and Helen even had a small smile on her face, even and straight like the rest of her, but there, right across, a smile.

  But still it wasn’t about Carl, the dance. Still it was about something outside of him and he moved around and back and forth telling us, telling Helen about something beautiful that I couldn’t make out until Willy nudged me.

  “It’s how he feels,” he said. “About Helen. For Helen. It’s about his feelings.”

  I nodded. “That, yes. But something else, too. Something about how he wants things to be, maybe. Something about how he wants his feelings to be.”

  And more. More in the cold blue of the white light coming down from the shining bulbs, in the scratchy sounds of the speakers and the chill of the rink and the steam from our breathing there was more. More in the music, more in the dance.

  Carl danced back and forth across the end of the rink, twirling and looping, but never actually moving towards Helen, just back and forth, and she stood on her skates and watched, her eyes calm, not saying anything or doing anything.

  There was not a way to know what she was thinking. Not then, not so soon, but she watched and studied the dancing carefully and when he was finally done, down on the ice and back up to stand and the music was done and gone, she didn’t turn away immediately.

  She waited a moment, another moment, studying him as he moved and she knew that the dance was for her, was aimed at her, but when it was done she finally turned away and skated to the left, turned her shoulder away and I turned to Willy.

  “That tears it. She isn’t going to let him in. There’s no telling what he’ll do now. That’s all he needed.”

  But if I thought Carl would be upset or fall apart I was wrong. He watched her skate away and rather than cave in his shoulders went back and his chin came out and he turned and went back into the warming house with strong steps.

  And later, when she’d finished skating for the evening and came into the warming house both Willy and I were sitting there. Carl helped her off with her skates and she sat as straight and fine as any queen, all in the frayed wool tweed just straight and fine and Carl helped her off with her skates and on with her boots as if nothing had happened.

  Watching him kneel that way I thought of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table and the way the knights would kneel in front of the queen.

  On the way home, walking in the dark with our skates over our sticks bouncing against our backs, Willy sighed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “That was so fine. Just so fine, the way he danced for her and she didn’t care diddly about it.”

  “We don’t know that. She just didn’t show it. Maybe she’s one of those who don’t show things.”

  “There’s no way to know, is there?”

  And there wasn’t anything to say to that so we just kept walking through the night until I got home and I fell asleep happy and didn’t know or care why except that it had something to do with the way Carl had danced for Helen.

  15

  There came then such a strange time even some of the people who went through it, even some of the grownups, weren’t sure if it really happened or if it was all a dream.

  I’m not sure myself, and Willy just smiles when we talk about it so there’s no telling what he thinks about it all.

  Later, in the summer, I happened to be down at the old folks’ home in the park by the river and I heard an older lady talking to one of the nurses. I was there to visit my grandma and she was still in treatment. And this lady said to the nurse that she’d heard somebody at the rinks had “. . . took to dance and had the joy put on him so that it like to run over on everybody.”

  And maybe that’s how it was, maybe Carl had the joy put on him and it ran over on us. But even so there came such a strange time that some of the people still whisper when they talk about it.

  It started the very next night.

  Helen came to skate and we were in the warming house because when Helen came we weren’t about to be anywhere else. Not everybody, of course, just Willy and me and some of the other kids. The grownups were still kind of standoffish about it all.

  Helen came in and Carl helped her with her skates, all over and down and gentle-firm, and then she went out on the rink, only I saw a small smile as she tiptoed through the door on her saw edges.

  A short smile.

  And when she was gone Carl took a long pull on the bottle and we went outside and when he came out we could tell he was drunk, really drunk. His eyes were misted over and there was a looseness to his arms and legs.

  But it lifted off him like a blanket when he got on the ice. He came onto the rink with his arms out, then he bent them up at the elbo
ws and it was not pretty and pretty at the same time, the way a falling bird can be both ugly and beautiful.

  Up and over his head and he did a dance to the music he’d set up, some crashing sounds of hard music that seemed to tear at the speakers.

  Hard movements, sad movements, jagged lines that spun hard and around in fast and jerky circles that made everybody stop skating and stare, an ugly dance, a sad dance.

  And Helen stopped and stared at him as well.

  When he was done he went back into the warming house without looking back and I almost cried because I thought that was it, that was all of him and he was broken again and over and done.

  That night Mom had to ask me something three times and Dad heard her repeat herself. I was sitting at the dining table and he was in his chair by the floor lamp and he put his paper down.

  “Your mother asked you something.”

  It was another rule. You were supposed to listen. I tried to remember what she had said but couldn’t and sat up. “I’m sorry. Something is bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, really. It’s just something that’s making me kind of sad and I was thinking about it and wasn’t listening.”

  “What was it?” Mom asked.

  I tried to think of a way to put it. “You know how Carl has taken over the rinks?”

  Dad smiled. “The town talks about it all the time. What’s so sad about that?”

  “Not that. But he’s dancing for this woman . . .”

  “Helen. Yes. They talk about that, too. I’ve been meaning to come down and see it.”

  “But she doesn’t care about him. She looks away from him. She’s away from him more and more. And that’s sad.”

  And Mom said something nice about how it was all just talk anyway and I smiled and thanked her but she didn’t know because she hadn’t seen it, had only heard about it. And the same for Dad. They couldn’t know and I wanted it to be all right for Carl because of the incident with the B-17 model and it was going bad.