“No,” he said. “Never.”
But they walked arm in arm to the door and shoved it open.
Inside, the bar was so dark and full of people she had to hold on to Harold to keep from losing him. He was trying to say something to her, but the band was so loud she couldn’t catch the words. Somehow, he found a small table in the back and they sat down. He leaned close to her ear.
“Money,” he said. “You got any money?”
“Shit,” she said. “In the car.” He didn’t hear her. “In the car.” She yelled over the noise. He rose to go, but she pushed him down. “I’ll go.”
She stood up and started making her way through the crowd, twisting around arms and shoulders. Somebody gave her a shove, and for a minute she was too dizzy to walk. But the music, the excitement in the bar, kept her going—the night seemed full of possibility. She walked along the edge of the dance floor, feeling tall and easy on her feet.
Outside, the snow fell thick, and the car was covered with white. When she opened the door, a thick sheet of snow fell whole from the driver’s window. She found her wallet in the glove compartment and shoved it deep in her pocket.
She hadn’t realized that now she’d have to go back in the bar by herself. It was so cool outside, the music from the dance floor muffled by the snow. But the quiet made her head spin. She pushed open the door and stepped into the crowd. Nobody stopped her. She headed back toward the edge of the dance floor, the only clear path through the room. The band was playing a fast two-step, the dancers reeling in a circle around the floor. An older woman, her gold hair teased up in a swirl, stumbled. She reached out and grabbed on to Cynthia’s arm. Her partner swept her up into the music again, but she turned and gave Cynthia a wink. The kind of wink she’d give a young cowboy. Cynthia could just barely keep from laughing.
She couldn’t wait to get back to the table to tell Harold. She felt like some kind of warrior, returning to camp with great news. Harold sat tapping his foot to the music, lost in some thought of his own. She slid into a seat close beside him.
“Some lady winked at me.” She leaned in close to his ear.
“Why?” Harold said.
“I’m so cute,” Cynthia said, her eyes wide. She pressed her lips together hard, and let out a snort, almost a loud nicker. It sounded so funny that tears stung her eyes.
Harold reached up and sank the brim of her hat down over her eyes.
“Police up your act. Give me the money,” he said.
Cynthia pried the hat brim up and saw the waitress making her way toward them, her tray balanced high over the crowd.
She had a ten-dollar bill in her wallet. She managed to get it out and hand it to Harold. Then she bent down, as if she were looking for something on the floor.
“Bud,” Harold said. “Two.”
The waitress hesitated long enough for Cynthia to stiffen, but then she said, “Two Buds,” and moved away.
Cynthia unbent to sit up in her chair. Harold flattened the bill on the table and weighted it down with an ashtray. “You pay when you get it,” he said. He looked around the room and leaned back hard enough to make his chair creak. “So far, so good,” he said.
“Not so good,” Cynthia said.
Harold frowned.
“I have to pee,” she said.
“No sweat.” Harold jerked his thumb toward the door. “Just go outside. In the snow.”
“Don’t make me laugh.” Cynthia tightened her jaw and rocked in her chair.
“Then hold it,” Harold said. “Until the beer comes.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“Shit.” She gritted the word out through her teeth, fighting not to laugh. “I got to go. Now.”
“Wait till the beer comes. Once we got it, you can go to the women’s. You go now, it’s the men’s.”
“It’s the men’s,” she said and stood up carefully.
Harold picked up the ten and moved in front of her, blocking a path through the crowd. She kept her head down, her eyes on the heels of Harold’s wet boots.
He shoved open the door marked “Bucks,” and she followed him in. The room was dark, and a pool of water had spread like melting ice across the floor. The wet floor was black with boot marks and littered with pieces of sodden toilet paper. She saw two booths, and against the wall, a broad plaid back at the urinal. Harold stepped up and shoved on the door of a booth. It was empty.
Cynthia sat in the booth, the flesh-pink partition scrawled with graffiti, the straps of her coveralls tied in front of her to keep them off the dirty floor. She wanted to get out. The smell of urine and rotting wood was making her ill. But she heard the door swing open and the sound of men’s voices. Somebody pushed hard on the wooden door of the booth and she started with fear.
She worked up her nerve and stood up. She stuffed her skirt lower down in the legs of the coveralls, buckled the straps, and pulled the hat down low. She pushed out through the door, head down, but she couldn’t resist looking up before she reached the door.
Roddy leaned against the wall beside the door. She met his eye for just a second, long enough to catch him take in what he saw, and she felt the wildness rise in her again—the knife-edge of a secret. She winked.
Outside, she couldn’t imagine what he thought. She had him. A high hit-and-run energy moved her through the crowd. She couldn’t wait to tell Harold.
But Roddy came behind her. She felt a touch on her shoulder and turned so fast, they collided. She threw her arms around Roddy’s neck, her hat tipping off onto the floor, and collapsed against him. She laughed so hard she could barely stand, but Roddy held her up.
“Hey, I don’t usually dance with boys,” he said.
“I do,” she said.
He gripped her under the armpits and looked at her. She focused on the corners of his mouth while he tried to decide between surprise and laughter.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s dance.” She was so glad to see him.
“You’re drunk.” He said it as if he couldn’t believe it. “You’re drunk.”
She leaned forward and kissed him, letting her whole weight, almost her whole being, subside into his arms.
20
At the bar, Lenna shifted on her stool. As soon as Roddy had moved away to go to the men’s room, a friend of his—she thought he’d said his name was Chip, or Chuck—had leaned in close to her. He had one arm braced on the bar, his face in front of hers.
“I don’t say this to too many ladies,” he said, “but you’re very pretty.”
His voice wavered a little and drifted off too much at the end of the sentence. He leaned closer, and Lenna craned her neck away. He was sweating, his glasses sliding down his nose. When he pushed the frames back up, his eyes seemed very large, pale blue, but in the light reflected from behind the bar the thick lenses seemed greasy—not as if they were dirty, but as if they were out of focus, even for him.
“That’s a nice thing to say,” she said. She tried to be polite, but she clutched her purse against her chest. His thigh pressed against her leg. It was getting hard to breathe, and she was a little drunk herself.
“Excuse me,” she said, and tried to duck out from under his arm, but the arm didn’t give. She tried to remember his name, as if that would help. But she’d met so many people in the bar that the names all ran together, and she was embarrassed. She searched the crowd pressed up to the bar for Roddy. The man leaned close to say something else.
“I’m with someone,” she said.
The drunk blinked. “Oh, oh,” he said. He released her from the trap, his hands coming up in front of him, palms out. “No offense,” he said. “No offense.” His eyes seemed lost for a moment, looking out over the crowd.
Lenna twisted off the stool and moved away, not looking back. She wanted to get outside, get some air. She started toward the rest room, looking for Roddy. It was time to go home. The mood in the tavern had grown sour. She noticed for the first time how the mus
ic had gotten heavier, more frenzied, and the dancers on the floor seemed out of control, couples colliding, backing accidentally into each other. And the air smelled like stale beer and someone being sick.
She hadn’t wanted the night to be over so soon, but she remembered how it went. At first liquor made her happy, made it easier to talk to people, smile at strangers. She and Roddy had danced every dance for an hour. She almost turned back to the bar to order another drink, then thought no. She was too tired to get that kind of feeling back.
She moved on around the edge of the dance floor. Near the rest rooms, she spotted Roddy, or thought she did. His back was turned slightly, and he was kissing a girl. Lenna could see her arms draped around his neck, and white-blond hair.
She took a few steps closer and stopped. The kiss went on, and there was something intimate about it, some way Roddy’s head was tipped, the girl’s long arm around his neck. Lenna moved forward, as if drawn to a car wreck, though she didn’t want to see it. When the girl stood back, Lenna saw she was young. She couldn’t be much older than Kenny. Lenna felt a hot blush move up her neck, pulsing in her cheeks. She wanted to get her coat and leave. If she’d had her car, she would have been in it now, and on her way home. But she stepped up close enough to hear and stood behind a thin man in a black satin shirt.
She saw Harold the saddle maker shoulder a path through the crowd, stoop beside the girl, and hand her a hat. He took hold of her forearm.
“No problem,” he said to Roddy. “I got her.”
“Quit,” the girl said. She shook off his hand and straightened her shoulders. “I’m okay,” she said.
Lenna could feel some kind of real trouble. The people at surrounding tables had stopped talking and were staring. The girl raised a hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Tend your own business.” Then she smiled at Roddy. “We got a table,” she said. “Come on.” She started to walk, stopped, and steadied herself. This time she let Harold take her arm. “I think I better go sit down,” she said.
Lenna pushed around the black shirt and stood beside Roddy, moving close, but not touching, the way a child sometimes tries to stand near a larger person. Lenna thought the girl was leaving, but she turned and saw her standing with Roddy. She shook loose from Harold and came back.
The girl just stood still, not speaking, and stared at Lenna. The pressure in the room seemed to drop, like the air before a storm. Lenna heard the music pounding in her ears, but the tables around them grew quiet. She could feel people staring. She glanced up at Roddy.
“Lenna Swanson—Cynthia Dustin,” he said, introducing them. “Everybody knows Harold.” Harold nodded at Lenna. “Come on,” he said to Cynthia, “let’s get you some coffee.”
Cynthia didn’t move. She kept staring at Lenna.
Two can play this game, Lenna thought. She kept her gaze steady on Cynthia, thoughts moving fast in her mind. Who was she? What was going on here? Then she remembered the way Roddy had kissed the girl. Her heart pounded once, pulsed in her throat, and she knew—something was going on here. She dropped her eyes.
The girl didn’t move or speak. Roddy shifted his weight, and Harold looked away.
“Let’s get some coffee,” Roddy said again to Cynthia, who turned to stare at him.
“You said you were going to somebody’s house for dinner,” she said.
Lenna looked down and saw the girl’s hands were trembling.
“Well,” Roddy answered, “that’s true.”
The girl turned slowly and stared at Lenna until she felt forced to meet her look.
“Was he at your house?”
Lenna wanted to lie, to somehow get them out of this, but she couldn’t. She nodded yes.
“Did you know about me?” the girl said.
Lenna couldn’t answer. Everything in her told her to say no, to tell the girl the truth, that she was innocent. She didn’t know anything about Roddy’s life away from her. But she knew she was not innocent. She felt sick with shame, over being in the bar at all, over finding herself in some country song. Sick for being so stupid. Roddy had made a fool of her.
“No,” she said.
The girl turned on her heel, knocking down an empty chair, and walked steadily toward the door. Harold went back for his jacket, and Lenna saw him lift an abandoned whiskey bottle off an empty table without slowing down and follow her out.
Most of the tables were empty now. Some couples were still dancing, but the majority had gone home. The people who’d been staring went back to their drinks. Lenna looked up at Roddy. He brushed his hair back with his fingers, and sweat glistened at his temple. A slow grin started at the corner of his mouth. Her hand flew out to slap him, hard, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his body—the way a fighter moves in close to ward off blows.
21
Cynthia started the motor and revved the engine. She shoved the gear lever into reverse and jerked the brake release. The car shot backward, fishtailed in the snow, and spun around. She stomped on the brake, and the car slid sideways. When it came to a stop, Harold threw open the door, jumped in, and let the door slam on its own. Cynthia stepped lightly on the gas and felt the tires grab. She turned onto the highway.
Her hands shook, and she had trouble holding the wheel steady. She felt cold, the muscles in her neck and chest clenched tight, her teeth chattering so loudly she knew Howard could hear. Without gloves, her hands were dead white.
Harold passed her his bottle of whiskey, and she tipped it to her mouth, the cold glass clinking on her teeth. When he reached over and took the bottle back, she pressed on the gas and watched the speedometer needle quiver and swing up to sixty.
It had stopped snowing and the moon cast a cold blue light above the clouds. The road ahead was packed with snow, glistening damp in the headlights where tires had worn smooth tracks. Harold switched on the heater.
She tried to see again what happened in the bar, but it came to her in odd, short pictures. She couldn’t remember what the woman looked like. She couldn’t call up Roddy’s face.
The dashboard glowed green in the darkness. She was going seventy. She glanced over at Harold. He slumped in his seat, the bottle between his legs, leaning his head back.
Then she heard the tires hit a drift, the sound like hitting a dog on the road. The wheel jumped in her hand, and the snow took the car. She stomped on the gas to push the big car through the drift and slithered sideways onto the other side. She pulled over on the side of the road. From one side to the other of the highway long fingers of snow tapered across the road, one following another on into the darkness.
Cynthia climbed out of the car. The wind had blown the road in earlier. Now, it only lifted veils of snow from the tops of the drifts, as they rolled into the distance, wave after wave. It was as if there had never been a road at all.
She walked out in the field on a thin crust. At any time, the ground could give way to deep snow. But she went on walking. The wind had drifted smooth white hills and ridges across the field in some places and blown it nearly bare in others. Only the tips of sagebrush, plastered with snow on one side, were visible up ahead. Suddenly, her knees weakened and she sat down. She didn’t hear Harold come up behind her. She felt him kneel beside her, his presence near her almost like a source of heat.
“You can’t sit out here,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
The sky was enormous and black, the stars burning white. The dipper loomed huge on the horizon, as if it were suspended in an endless, flat, black space. As if at any moment, it could slip and fall behind the white edge of the earth.
“Cynthia?” Harold’s voice was rough in the darkness. “Can’t stay here.”
She could feel how she herself could fall, like the dipper of stars, off the world and into the vast space beyond the field.
“We have to go,” Harold said.
“What?” She couldn’t think what they could do. She didn’t care. The car wasn’t going anywhere.
“Migh
t be I can back the car,” Harold said.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Please,” Harold said. When she looked up, he shoved his huge hands under her arms, lifting her whole body at once, and held her against him as if she were a doll. He began to walk her back in the direction of the car. She realized, wading through the drifts, how cold it was.
They sat in the car and ran the heater until their faces stopped stinging and their toes and fingers throbbed with pain. She couldn’t turn the car around, and reverse would only get them stuck much worse. If they ran out of gas, they would die. She looked at Harold.
“We’ll just sit tight,” he said.
A gleam of gold caught and refracted in the windshield glass. Far up the road, they saw the plow, then heard it. Its yellow emergency light spun around, lighting the drifts in brief, sporadic bursts, and the huge iron blade sent waves of glistening snow up over the banks and off the road.
Almost an hour later, Cynthia pulled up in front of Harold’s shack.
“What time is it?” she asked him.
Harold folded back his jacket sleeve and tried to read his watch. He held his arm up to the window, where the light off the snow seemed like twilight.
“Oh-two-hundred,” he said. “Two A.M.”
“It’s Christmas morning,” she said.
“Merry Christmas.”
She looked over at him. He watched her as if she might bite him. Then he laughed. He’d been waiting until it seemed safe to laugh. “Shit,” he said, “she sure didn’t want to tangle with you.”
Cynthia wanted to laugh, but, sober now, she was ashamed of what she’d done.
“You in trouble?” he said.
“I hope not.”
He glanced at his small, dark house. “Good luck with Earl,” he said. “Earl’s okay.” He opened the door and climbed out.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
He slammed the door and she watched him jog through the snow to his house.
Love and Country Page 15