by Dean Hughes
Jay still felt embarrassed dancing with a boy, but he liked the idea of showing up at the dance and not looking stupid. Ken kept telling him, “You’re catching on. You’re hearing the rhythm now, aren’t you?” And he thought he was.
Ken took the bus out to camp on Wednesday night. That meant he didn’t come into town to help the boys, and Thursday night was Mutual, so they wouldn’t be playing. Jay was kind of glad about that. He didn’t want his mom upset again. He did tell Ken, “I’m sorry about my mother.”
Ken was pulling on some wire, trying to fix an old fence. He grunted as he said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m used to all that kind of stuff. When a war’s on, people like to hate someone. And this time around, that turns out to be me.”
Jay stepped in and helped hold the wire while Ken drove a staple in the post. “What about Indians?” he asked. “Why do people hate them?”
Ken stepped back from the fence post and looked at him. “I can’t answer that one, Jay. It’s like everyone has to figure out someone not to like.”
Jay couldn’t understand that.
“Think about yourself. The first few days out here, you tried as hard as you could not to like me.”
Jay didn’t know that Ken had known that.
That night Jay walked over to the church by himself, but as soon as he stepped into the recreation hall, he saw Gordy with Eldred and Lew, standing about as far away from the dance band as they could get. Some of the band members were tuning up, and the drummer was still setting up his drums. A lot of kids were standing around in groups of four or five, girls together close to the band and boys mostly at the back of the hall. The weather had cooled off a little the last couple of days, but it was plenty hot inside the hall, even with all the windows open.
“Hey, Chief,” Gordy said as Jay walked toward the boys, “what about the game? Are we on for next Saturday?”
“Yeah. Ken went out to the camp, and the boys out there want to play us. He said we can catch the bus in front of Van’s Dance Hall and ride out there—so our parents won’t have to drive us.”
“My mother threw a conniption fit about me going out there, so I’ll just take off that morning and not tell her where I’m going. She don’t keep track of me anyways. The only way Dad’ll get mad is if I don’t get all my chores done.”
“Do you think enough guys will go?” Eldred asked.
“Just so we get nine. That’s all I care about. If Renny and Buddy don’t go, we’ll be better off without ’em.” Gordy turned toward Jay. “Are you going to dance, Chief?”
“I guess. We have to, don’t we?”
But Lew said, “What if we all say no? If they throw us out, we can go play ball.”
“My mom and grandma said I have to dance,” Jay said. And it was true. He had complained about going, but they had both told him he needed to learn to dance. Grandpa had joked about how a boy had to get himself “civilized” sooner or later, even if he’d rather be shooting rabbits or catching snakes.
“Maybe I’ll just tromp real hard on all the girls’ feet, and they’ll tell me I’m too dangerous to dance,” Gordy said.
“What are you talking about?” Lew said. “You said you wanted to come.”
“No, I didn’t. I just said I wanted to get my arms around Elaine. I don’t want to dance with any of the rest of these girls.” He looked at Eldred and laughed, then jabbed him a blow on the shoulder. “Should we do that, just tromp all over ’em on purpose?”
Eldred laughed, but he didn’t say he would do it.
“Are you with me, Chief? Should we bust up some feet and get ourselves kicked out?”
“I won’t have to do it on purpose. When my mom tried to teach me, I stepped all over her.”
“You did it, though? You tried dancing?”
“My mom made me.”
“Yeah. My mom too. But she’s so round I told her we were doing the ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ and she was the barrel. She about kicked my pants.” Gordy was laughing again, had never really stopped, and now some of the other guys their age were showing up. A guy on a horn, with a mute stuck in the end, was making weird sounds, and another guy was playing low notes, working up to high notes, on his clarinet.
Then Mitchell Roundy started yelling for everyone to quiet down and listen to him. He was dressed up in a white shirt and tie, with the sleeves rolled up, and his hair was slicked back.
“Everyone listen for a minute,” he was calling out, and gradually the kids were getting quiet.
“Ol’ Mitch went on a mission to New Zealand,” Gordy said. “He can’t talk to you three minutes in a Sunday school class without telling you one of his stories about it—like he was the only guy who ever went on one.”
“Listen up now,” Brother Roundy said. “We’re going to start out with an opening prayer, and I’ve asked Sister Virginia Jones to say that. Right after she does, I want you older youth to move to the back part of the hall. When we start the music, you can choose up partners and dance. But you younger ones—all the Scouts and the Beehive girls—I want you to come up here to the front. We’re going to assign you partners, and Sister LuRene Jenson, who’s a professional dancer—”
“Don’t tell them that,” Sister Jenson called out. “I’m no professional. I just know—”
“Well, she might as well be a professional. She’s taught dancing for many years, and she attended the BYU, where she took dancing classes from those teachers up there. She knows every kind of dance there is, and she can—”
“Stop bragging on me, Mitch. You’re making my face turn red.”
“Let’s just leave, right now,” Gordy said. “I can’t listen to her screechy voice all night. She sounds like a magpie.”
But Gordy didn’t go anywhere, and Brother Roundy was saying, “Well, you’ll see. She knows what she’s doing. Ginny, would you step up here by me and say an opening prayer?”
Ginny Jones was about sixteen or so, and she seemed pretty shy about the whole thing, but she stepped up by Brother Roundy, folded her arms in front of her, and said about the shortest prayer Jay had ever heard. But she did say something about everyone learning to dance “real well,” and Gordy laughed about that.
Brother Roundy started in yelling almost as soon as everyone said, “Amen,” and it still took him a good ten minutes to get all the younger kids up front and lined up in two lines, girls on one side and boys on the other. Jay didn’t know how this whole thing was going to work, but Gordy seemed to. However much Gordy had talked about leaving, now he started counting girls in the other line and said, “Trade me places, Chief.”
But it was too late. Brother Roundy saw what was happening and told Gordy, “Just stay in line where you are, Brother Linebaugh. You can choose your own partner later on.” And then he had the two lines step closer together and there Jay was, standing in front of Elaine Gleed. She was thirteen, the same as Jay would soon be, but she seemed about two years older. To him she looked more like a woman than a girl. She had curly brown hair and eyes that looked bigger than fifty-cent pieces, blue as a lake. She was smiling for some reason, and that made her dimples sink in. He took one good look at her and then he was too embarrassed to look again.
“Okay, kids,” Sister Jenson said. “I want you to take your partner, the one in front of you, by the hand.” Her voice really did screech. It sounded like a dry wagon wheel. “I want everyone to spread out so you have a little room.” The next thing he knew, Elaine was pulling him, walking backward, her hand gripping tight on his. She seemed to think she was in charge.
He took another glance at her. “Do you know how to dance?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Not much,” he said.
“I’ll show you,” she said. “I’ve danced lots of times.”
He nodded. At least she hadn’t told Brother Roundy she didn’t want to dance with an Indian.
By then Sister Jenson was shouting instructions. The louder she yelled, the screechier her voice got. “We won’t ask the band to
play just yet. For now, we’re going to practice the basic fox-trot step.” He was relieved to hear that, and relieved when he heard her counting off one-two-together, the same as Ken had done. He knew he could manage that. When he started doing the step, he heard Elaine whisper, “Very good, Jay. Very good.”
He hadn’t thought that Elaine knew his name. He liked hearing her say it.
“All right. It’s time for you boys to take hold of your partners.” A mumble of complaint went up from all the dancers, but he wasn’t paying much attention to any of that. Without looking into Elaine’s face, he placed his right hand on her waist, the way Sister Jenson was telling the boys to do. Elaine was wearing a light blue summer dress, and the material was so thin it was like he was touching her skin. Elaine took hold of his hand before Sister Jenson even told them to, and he took another quick look at her. She was still smiling. “Don’t be so scared,” she said. “I’m not going to bite you.”
He felt the tips of his ears get hot.
“All right now, still without the music—one-two-together, one-two-together.”
The step was pretty much automatic for him now, but he knew his legs were stiff. All week Ken had been saying, “You’re stiff as a scarecrow. Bend your knees a little. Move with the flow of the music.” But he had never managed that.
“Very good,” Elaine said again, “but you can get a little closer to me. It’s hard to dance when you’re reaching so far.” She put a little pressure on his shoulder, and he felt himself hold back, but then she tugged harder and there he was, his nose only about four inches from hers. But now it was more obvious that he was shorter than she was, and he realized how much he hated that.
Sister Jenson was running from one couple to another, correcting, demonstrating, pushing boys closer, and all the while, never losing count. “One-two-together.”
He was counting in his head, too, and he was keeping the step going, but Elaine said, “Let’s turn a little. See, like this.” Turns seemed to work better with her than they had with Ken, maybe because he had kept so much farther away from Ken.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Sister Jenson screeched. “This couple is doing very well. Elaine, you should be the one teaching, the way you’ve got your partner dancing.”
He felt himself tighten up at the thought that others might be looking at him.
But Sister Jenson called out, “All right. You’re getting the idea. Let’s start the music. Boys, listen for the beat. I’ll count in the beginning to help you, but remember, it’s a matter of hearing the rhythm of the music, not just counting off numbers in your head. And lead your partners. Boys are supposed to lead.”
He’d let go of Elaine and stepped back, but she leaned toward him and said, “I think I’ve been leading too much. You make the turns this time.”
“Okay,” he said without looking at her. He put his hand back on her waist, felt the warmth through the cloth.
And then she said, “I’m sure glad I got put with you, Jay. Most of these boys can’t dance at all.”
He felt something strange in his head—like maybe his vision was starting to cloud up. He took a long look at Elaine—maybe two or three seconds—and she nodded to him, still smiling. It was all more than he could believe.
The band began to play a slow tune, “I’ll Be Seeing You.” He didn’t know all the words, only those first ones, but he liked that song, and he was holding her soft hand. She had moved even closer, as though their cheeks could touch by accident with the slightest wrong move, and he was turning on purpose—not a lot, not doing spins or anything, but not just holding straight all the time either. He thought maybe he was bending his knees a little too. He could smell something sweet and flowery coming from Elaine’s hair, or maybe her neck.
Sister Jenson didn’t let the band play very long—maybe a minute. Suddenly she stopped counting, and she must have waved or something to stop the music. “All right. Not too bad for the first time. But you boys, you dance like tin soldiers, all stiff. I want you to watch Elaine and . . . what’s your partner’s name?”
From somewhere in the room he heard Gordy yell, “It’s Chief!”
But Elaine said, “Jay.”
“All right. I want you two to demonstrate. Boys, watch Jay. He’s got this down already. He looks like he’s been dancing for years.”
The band started to play again. He took hold of Elaine but stood for a moment, not sure when to start. He thought he missed the beat when he first stepped, but after a few seconds, he—or maybe Elaine—found the rhythm, and he continued his steps. He even started his turns, not feeling as smooth as before, but doing all right. And he kept getting better. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,” Elaine was singing with the music. He wondered whether she was singing to him, or just singing, but everyone had moved back to watch, and he hardly knew it. He was just dancing.
Then the music stopped again. “Aren’t they wonderful? What a beautiful couple they are. You give them a few years and they could be dancing in the movies.”
He wanted to leave now. He was almost sure that he would mess this up. He just wanted to escape, without having to say a single word to his friends. But the music started and he was dancing again. “Dancing in the movies,” Elaine said. She laughed. “Can you believe she said that? We’re not that good.”
He tried to laugh. But he didn’t want to talk when he was dancing. He hadn’t stepped on her foot yet, and he was afraid he would if he didn’t keep his concentration.
“Where did you move here from, Jay?” Elaine asked him.
“Salt Lake.”
“And you’re Patriarch Reid’s grandson, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You probably did some dancing up in Salt Lake.”
“No. This is my first time.”
“But someone showed you the steps, didn’t they? You knew them already.”
He thought he’d lost the beat for a second, and he didn’t answer, but after a moment he caught the rhythm again, and then he said, “My mom.”
“She’s a pretty woman. And your dad’s in the war, isn’t he?”
He nodded. And then he took a bit of a chance. “We think he’s a prisoner of war.”
“Really? That must be awful.”
“He’ll be okay.”
He was watching her face more all the time now. She seemed ready to ask him another question when the music stopped. And then Sister Jenson asked everyone to change partners. For a while after that, maybe twenty minutes or so, she made them change again after every number, but he never did ask a girl; they all came to him. And every one of them told him he was the best dancer of all the boys.
And then Elaine came back. She took his hand and said, “I get you again, Jay. If I keep dancing with these other boys, every bone in my feet will be broken.” She laughed close to him, her breath on his ear. And then they danced again, and he danced the best he had yet. “Dancing in the Dark” was the number, and she sang it, her voice small and pretty.
When the number ended, Brother Roundy started shouting again. “All right, kids. We’re going to open this up for everyone now. But let’s keep it going. You younger boys, don’t make wallflowers out of these girls. Keep dancing, and keep choosing different partners so that everyone gets a chance.”
But Elaine was still holding his hand. He would have walked away, but she didn’t let go, and the music started. Now the band was playing a fast tune, “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” Jay turned toward her, and then words came out of his mouth that he would never have thought he could say: “I know how to jitterbug a little bit.”
“Hey, my sister’s been teaching me.”
She grabbed both his hands, and they worked their way into the rhythm, left, right, rock back. He waited a while, but then he spun her under his arm. He didn’t know too many of those kinds of turns, but he tried the ones he did know, and then he started over. By then the younger kids, who were still mostly at the front of the hall, had made a circle. They
were clapping—or at least the girls were—and calling out, “Go after it!” and things like that.
At some point Jay had done everything he knew to do—five or six times—and he just wanted the music to end, but it went on much longer, and then Elaine spun into him, her back to his chest, touching him. It was a turn he’d never tried before. Whoops went up from the boys this time, and then Elaine spun back away from him. He took a good look at her, her face flushed, her hair swinging, her dimples showing. He had had no idea that he could ever feel this good.
Still, he was glad when the music ended. He knew he had pushed things as far as he could. “Thanks,” he said to Elaine, and he turned and walked away, just to get out of the center of the circle.
Gordy hurried to him. “Hey, Chief, I can’t believe it. How did you learn all that?”
Jay kept walking. He thought maybe he was heading for the doors, maybe even going home. He knew sweat was running down his face, and he at least wanted to get outside for a few minutes. But Gordy had hold of his arm and was spinning him around, and some of the other guys were gathering around him.
“Elaine’s got it bad for you, Chief. She was smiling at you like you were Frank Sinatra. You got it made with her now—and all the other girls. I heard June Holbrook saying how cute you are.”
Jay couldn’t do this. He started walking again. “It’s hot in here,” he said.
But Gordy jumped around in front of him, stopped him. “How’d you learn to dance like that? Up in Salt Lake or—”
“He had a good teacher,” someone said, a guy with a big voice.
Jay turned and saw a guy he’d seen around town, one of the high school boys. He knew what was coming, was almost sure. He thought about running for the door.
“Any of you boys could dance like that if you had your own personal teacher. A Jap teacher, at that.”
Gordy spun around. “What are you talking about, Lester?”
“Tell ’em, kid. Tell ’em who you dance with out at your grandpa’s farm.” Lester was built like a long fence post. He was old enough to shave, with a shadow over his cheeks, but lots of pimples mixed in.