Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

by Robert James Waller

  Jimmy had counted on the momentum of blood and wealth to carry him along. He’d never ridden in steerage, which made him inert when assertiveness was required—if there’s no need to climb, then there’s no reason to learn how to climb. That was Jimmy’s way, and Michael understood it.

  But it wasn’t Michael’s way. And, at that moment, he felt something deep and sad for Jimmy Braden. Inside of Jimmy, someplace, there had to be the old push from our times forty thousand years back, out on the grasslands, when the choice was either to fight for what was yours or have it taken by the malevolence around you. Civilization has its benefits, but it had robbed Jimmy and others like him of the basic instincts.

  When things stabilized and Michael was reasonably sure the husband of Jellie Braden could make it through the night, he got him into his Buick and on the road. Jimmy said just talking about getting back to his work made him feel better, that at least he still had his work and maybe they could talk some more tomorrow.

  He also blurted out a curious statement, saying he believed how he felt was mostly a matter of pride. Some of the old ways from the grasslands evidently were still there, but he couldn’t take the next step. Before Jimmy’s car turned the corner, Michael was looking in the Yellow Pages for airline telephone numbers.

  Eight

  If you want to get to India fast, you deal with Air India. It’s the national airline and a good one. Every night at eight-thirty flight 102 lifts off from Kennedy and makes a two-hour stop in London the next day. Afterward it heads nonstop for either Delhi or Bombay, alternating between the two cities, depending on the day.

  There are other options, some of them convoluted. Aeroflot can get you to Delhi, but you have to put up with a long layover in Moscow. Before it collapsed, Pan Am went to Delhi twice a week from New York via Frankfurt. Those were the major eastern routes, except for British Air, which Michael had never ridden out to India. The western routes can get even more circuitous—several different airlines and overnight layovers in Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur or Singapore.

  After checking his atlas to make sure he knew where Pondicherry was located, Michael called Air India. It was booked solid for the next fourteen nights, with two seats available on December 11 and one on December 13, then solid again until after Christmas. Given the number of expatriates and former citizens out in the world, India has relatively sparse international air service, but the Indians all go home around Christmastime, and things get very tight from Thanksgiving forward.

  He rummaged his bookshelves until he found a world airline guide three years out of date. British Airways showed a nonstop from Chicago to London and then a later flight straight out to Madras on the east coast. Pondicherry was about 150 kilometers south of Madras, on the Bay of Bengal. Michael wasn’t worried about that leg; if he could make Madras, he could make Pondicherry. All he really was concerned about was getting to the Indian subcontinent. India has the best rail service in the world, in terms of number of trains going here and there. If not a train, then a bus. If not a bus, then a car and driver. If none of the above, he’d walk. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Jellie Braden somewhere in the swirling crowds of India. If she wasn’t in Pondicherry, he’d be in tough shape. She’d be almost impossible to track down if she decided just to lose herself out there. But, by God, he was going to try.

  He called the British Airways 800 number. Yes, said the quite lovely, very British, very female voice at the reservations desk, that flight was still operating, but there were no openings for the next three weeks. Did Mr. Tillman want to be put on a waiting list? Yes. He called Air India again and also had them put him on a waiting list, with the date open. Anytime, he told them. Anytime.

  Things to do. His mother first. He called her, and they talked for a long while. He’d never missed spending Christmas with her in the last twenty years but told her he had to go to India right away and didn’t know when he’d be back.

  Her ears were failing her, but she heard something in the way he spoke, urgency, intensity. “Michael, don’t tell me you’ve finally found a special lady for yourself? I’ve never heard your voice sound quite like it does now. Is that it?”

  “Mom, the answer is maybe. That’s all I can say. It’s just real important I do this thing—go to India—but I hate to miss Christmas with you, if it comes to that.”

  “Michael, thank you for caring and for asking. I’m glad we’ve gotten to be with each other as much as we have over the years. Go to India and find this lady, whoever she is. Then bring her home so I can meet her. I still haven’t given up hope on having grandchildren, you know.”

  “Mom, I promise I’ll come out to Custer as soon as I’m back, though I’m not sure when that will be.”

  “Fly on, Michael. If this is your moment, take it. Stop talking to me and get to India.”

  The departmental secretary was a first-rate person who knew the systems and ways to get around them. Michael always gave her a bottle of wine at Christmas and sent her flowers at the end of the academic year. She agreed to fill out his final grade sheets and forge his signature on them. She didn’t even ask why. He asked her not to say anything, and she said, “Don’t worry, you and I understand each other. Wherever you’re going in such a hurry and whatever you’re going to do when you get there, I’d like to be a fly on the wall.” She finished her words with a strange little knowing smile.

  Jimmy Braden had come back on Monday night. On Tuesday Michael announced to his classes they were shutting down that day. Since he wouldn’t be giving a final examination, he told them everyone got one-half a grade higher than what the scores in his grade book currently showed. To hell with it, once in a while you’re entitled to be flaky. Hats flew in the air, and a young woman’s voice came from far back in the classroom: “We love you, Professor Tillman. Merry Christmas.” He gave one of the MBA students who lived upstairs in his building a hundred bucks to make sure Malachi and Casserole were well cared for.

  Travel light. Real light. He’d booked a flight to New York, but no reservations beyond, and he might get hung up anywhere on his way to India. New York, Moscow or London, Cairo or Athens. Anywhere. It might take him a week or more to get to India. Jimmy Braden could sit in Cedar Bend and pray and mope all he wanted. Jimmy had already told his story to at least five other people, so he was getting lots of sympathy.

  But Michael was going to India to find Jellie, and he was going now. There was a reason she pulled out, and he had a pretty strong feeling it had something to do with him. Maybe not, but that’s how he guessed it. People get lost in India. That’s why a lot of them go there. He had to find Jellie before she just drifted off and, for whatever reason, retreated to a mountain commune or ashram in the boondocks where he’d never find her.

  Old L.L. Bean knapsack. Three shirts, only one of them clean. Wear the clean one, blue denim. Jeans, one pair on the body and another pair in the bag, and some khakis. Wear bush jacket en route. Navy blue cotton sweater. Shoes? Wear the old field boots, take sandals, too. He could buy clothes in India if he needed them; the khurtas and some pajamalike bottoms underneath worked just fine for him. Other essentials, including a good map of the India subcontinent he’d purchased on his last visit, showing railroad and domestic air routes. Small flashlight, old cotton hat with the wide brim.

  Damn, no malaria pills. Take the risk. No, have physician call the drugstore, pick them up on the way to the airport, even though he should have started taking them a week ago. Working hard, throwing clothes around the bedroom, folding shirts, rolling up the jeans and khakis with underwear and socks inside the roll, Malachi and Casserole watching. Jam the old pair of sandals in the top, cinch it up. The knapsack bulged. He hefted it—not too bad. Anything else? Small canteen. It can be a long time between drinkable water supplies in India.

  The taxi came at eight A.M. on Thursday morning, sixty hours after Jimmy had sat at Michael’s kitchen table, bawling his guts out. It was bizarre all right. Jimmy Braden was lurching around Bingley Hall tel
ling people, in so many words, about how poorly Jellie had treated him, running off that way. And Michael was on his way to find her, but Jimmy didn’t know that. A stop at the pharmacist’s, another at the bank. Three thousand in American Express Cheques, $100 units. Five hundred in cash.

  At the local airport, waiting for the commuter jet to Chicago, Michael remembered a detail he hadn’t taken care of and called the departmental secretary. After he cleaned up the detail, she said, “Michael, a cable for you just came in, hand-delivered.”

  He thought for a moment. This was dicey if it was from Jellie, which he had a feeling it might be. “Betty, read it to me, and I’m swearing you to secrecy ever after concerning the contents. Deal?”

  “If I told everything I knew about what happens around here, Bingley Hall would implode in the world’s largest cloud of dust. Besides, I have some vague sense of what’s going on. I’ve seen your face change in the last few months. I saw you on your motorcycle out near Heron Lake early one morning not long ago, and I also saw who was riding behind you. But I’ve never said anything, and I won’t. Now, I put that together with the weeping going on in Jimmy Braden’s office—all over the building, for that matter—and it doesn’t require a mathematical genius like you to make it add up.”

  “Betty, Betty, Betty… you may end up being one of the great loves of my life. Read me the cable.”

  “Okay, I’m opening the envelope. It says thirteen hundred hours. Let’s see, that’s…”

  “That’s one in the afternoon, Betty. What’s the date?”

  “It’s today’s date. How can that be?”

  “Time difference. It was sent about one-thirty A.M. this morning, our time. What’s it say?”

  “It says, ‘M, Please try to understand. There are feelings so strong within me I need space and time to work them out. I’ll be in touch sometime, I promise I will. J.’”

  The hell with space and time, that’s what Michael Tillman thought. Sometimes you let circumstances go their own direction, in the way Jimmy was doing, but sometimes you have to get in the middle of situations and manage them. He had a feeling Jellie was pretty confused, and he wasn’t going to let her just wander off in a fog. If he screwed up her life by going to India to look for her, she’d have to live with it, and so would he. But he wasn’t about to sit on his duff in Cedar Bend and hope for better days.

  “Betty, where did the cable come from, what city?”

  “Madras. Did I pronounce it right?”

  “No, but that’s okay. Everybody in the States gets it wrong. Betty, run the cable through your shredder, please.”

  “I will. Don’t worry. And, Michael?…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll be back here cheering for you. Go find her.”

  “Thanks, Betty. Do you prefer necklaces or bracelets?”

  “You know that’s not necessary. But I’d like a bracelet sometime from some exotic place, if you insist.”

  “Done. Good-bye, and thanks again. My plane is boarding.”

  “ ’Bye, Michael. Good luck.”

  * * *

  At O’Hare he called Air India and had British Airways check to see if anything had opened up. Nothing. “What if I go down to the gate and see if there’s a no-show?” he asked the woman running the British Airways counter.

  “You can try.” She looked at his ticket. “Your flight for New York leaves before ours departs for London. If you wait for us, you’ll miss your New York flight.”

  “I’ll chance it. I’m feeling lucky, somehow.”

  She shrugged and typed his name into the computer as a standby. “We’re in the new United terminal, at the far end. Good luck.”

  He bought cigarettes and coffee, then went to the United terminal. An hour and fifteen minutes until British Airways 42 would leave for London. The passengers were lined up, long line winding back and along the terminal wall. Baggage… he never could understand why people carry so much. Huge suitcases tied with ropes. Christmas presents, bedrolls, tired kids with winter colds and runny noses tugging on their parents’ hands, crying.

  The line moved slowly. Twenty-five minutes before departure. Then twenty. Only two people left to check in. “Michael Tillman, Mr. Michael Tillman, please come to the British Airways podium.”

  He was there in four seconds.

  “Mr. Tillman, we have a seat for you on the London flight departing in approximately fifteen minutes. However, we are not able to confirm a seat for you on flight 34 to Madras. Do you still want to go with us tonight?”

  “Yes. I’ll pay for the ticket with my Amex card.”

  Six hours later he was looking at Ireland down below in first light, and he thought of Jellie standing along a stone wall somewhere down there, having a Polaroid picture taken, which eventually hung on a wall in Iowa. Except the picture was now in the pocket of his bush jacket. If you’re going to be a tracer of lost persons, a photo might be useful. He’d thought of that at the last moment and brought the photo with him.

  Heathrow was chaotic, as usual. Michael passed up the transit lounge and went out into the main terminal, where he could look in the eyes of ticket agents. No problem. As the agent told him, people often book more than one flight under different names, and several cancellations had come in during the night.

  “Do you wish to book a return flight from India, Mr. Tillman?”

  He told her to put him down for January 12, a few days before the spring semester started. Indian officials strongly prefer you have a return ticket before a visa is issued. That’s a precaution flowing partly from the old hippie days when Western kids went seeking truth and enlightenment and ended up being dope-smoking, social welfare problems for the Indian government.

  Michael pulled out his Amex card, got the ticket, and located the tube into London. He told an official he needed a visa to India and was steered in the right direction. Three hours later he was back at Heathrow, through security, and sitting in the transit lounge. Five hours before his flight to Madras.

  Time always moved pretty fast for Michael in big airports. He liked to watch people come and go, read a little, nap a little. After going into the restroom and washing his face, he bought a copy of the London Times, settled down on a chair, and put his feet on the knapsack. But he couldn’t concentrate on the paper and fished the picture of Jellie out of his pocket. He sat there looking at it while the public address system summoned people to planes leaving for distant places. And somewhere out in those great spaces was a woman named Jellie Braden. She was out there, somewhere … somewhere.

  Nine

  In spite of his smart-lip comment to Jellie one time, Michael Tillman was not jaded. Maybe a little cynical, probably more than he had a right to be, but not jaded. Never had been. That’s an advantage coming down from the kind of childhood he spent. You grow up not expecting too much, so when good things happen in your life you’re amazed they happened at all. Long-haul travel was that way for Michael. When the pilot came on the intercom and said they were passing over Baghdad, he looked down from his window seat and saw a brown city in the desert forty thousand feet below.

  He’d done that before on his first trip to India, thinking, Baghdad—I never thought I’d be flying over Baghdad. And he reached back like a mule skinner with a whip, pulling the memories forward, seeing himself working on the Shadow in his father’s gas station thirty years before. Working on it and looking out at the highway and knowing the Vincent Black Shadow could take him down that road if he learned all there was to know about valves and turning wheels and highways running eastward.

  When the plane was two hours out of Madras, Michael took his shaving kit out of the knapsack and went to one of the tiny restrooms. This kind of travel leaves a film on the body and mind, and he’d developed the custom of shaving and cleaning up before landing. Somehow that also cleaned up the mind a little.

  The cabin was still dark, most people sleeping or trying to, a few reading lamps on. The flight attendants were talking quietly with
one another in the midplane kitchen. He stuck his head in and asked for a cup of tea. They fixed him up, and he went back to his seat, steaming cup in hand, in good shape overall but with the special, taut feeling in his stomach he always got when approaching a distant place, particularly India.

  He lifted the window shade and looked out. India coming up below, like a woman sprawled in the sun. Daylight, rugged brown hills, green splotches of jungle. The cabin lights came on, breakfast was announced. He didn’t feel like eating much but puttered around with fruit and toast, knowing it might be a while before he ate again.

  The plane came down over the jumbled spread of Madras, port city on the Bay of Bengal. Estimated population over four million. India treats such numbers casually, however, since the cities have a constant flow in and out, mostly in, of a wandering people. India is on the move, that’s the dominant impression Michael always had. Look anywhere in the countryside or in the cities, and there are people walking, riding bicycles, hanging off roaring buses or leaning out of train windows. Moving… moving… India.

  He walked in from the plane past men holding military rifles. Long line at the desk for those with foreign passports. Michael settled himself. You don’t hurry India. India has its own style, its own pace, and high-strung Westerners who demand all tasks be carried out with speed and crisp efficiency don’t do very well there. Warm and humid, and Michael was glad to be traveling light. The brown face above a dark green uniform looked at his passport, checked the ninety-day visa, and pounded the stamp.

  Customs was no problem since Michael wasn’t carrying anything of value except cash and traveler’s checks. But he was bringing in more than $1,000 U.S., and a form was required. India loved forms, though Michael had always been skeptical about where these forms eventually found a home. It was hard to believe that a currency official somewhere actually paid attention to the millions of handwritten documents gushing from the pens of travelers: “Hmmm, I see that Michael Tillman from Cedar Bend, USA, brought thirty-five hundred dollars with him on 2 December. We’ll need to keep track of him in this country with nearly one billion people and a telephone system that, at best, wobbles along.”