Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend Read online

  And it came eventually, August has a way of doing that. The summer had passed in kind of a quiet haze. One of those periodic budget crises took hold of the university, the provost’s office went into a frenzy, and Clarice had to delay her vacation until autumn. For some reason Michael didn’t feel like going up to Lake Superior and instead took the Shadow on a long run into the pretty back roads of the Smokies, enjoying the steady hum between his legs of a machine he’d rebuilt twenty times since his father had given it to him.

  He jogged through the streets of Cedar Bend at first light before the heat settled in, staying in shape, beating back the years, though it was getting harder to do. Slowly he could feel his legs going, and on rainy days the old knee injury flashed little twinges of pain as a reminder of his boyhood follies. Sometimes he went by the Bradens’ two-story brick. Quite often he did that. Running, then stopping for a moment, looking at the front steps where he and Jellie had stood the previous Thanksgiving, remembering the subtle, unspoken signals they’d both sent that night without being sure the other was receiving them.

  In June he wrote a piece on the role of tax incentives in attacking large-scale social problems. The Atlantic surprised him by taking it, sending a check for $1,200. He knocked out a heavy-duty, academic version of the article for the Journal of Social Issues, and that one had wings, too, with the following spring projected as the publication date. Michael knew his department head would dismiss the first as catering to popular taste and the second as not having sufficient stature in the field of economics, though it was an okay journal in its own niche. But he didn’t much care anymore what members of the administration thought about his work, so none of that bothered him.

  By mid-August he was wired tight. East of him a 747 would be loading at Heathrow one of these days, Jellie settling onto her seat with a book, Jimmy Braden running around the cabin looking for a pillow and blanket. She’d once said Jimmy was a master at sleeping on airplanes but absolutely panicked and couldn’t sleep at all without his pillow and blanket. So rounding up his bedroom gear was always his first chore after boarding. Michael could picture Jellie in her demure, wire-rimmed reading glasses, glancing at a book, then out the window as the big plane lifted off and brought her back toward Cedar Bend.

  Classes started in less than a week, and Michael was in his office fussing around, hoping he might see Jimmy Braden, which would be his signal Jellie had returned. The phone rang.

  “Hello, Michael, how are you?” Her voice was warm, soft, the diction clear and crisp as always, except when she was sitting in Beano’s talking to a man about secret things she felt and thought he might also feel.

  “Jellie—are you back or what?” He noticed his voice shook just a little, and he didn’t like it. American males have their standards, after all.

  “Yes, we got in late last night. Jimmy’s still sleeping, but I’m all fouled up timewise, so I’ve been up since four o’clock wandering around. Did you get the picture I sent?”

  “I did indeed. Thank you. You looked well and happy.” He didn’t say anything about hanging it on his wall. This was an intricate dance along the halls of ambiguity, and Michael was feeling his way, not wanting to open up things too rapidly.

  “Yes, I am feeling well. I ran into one of my old friends from India on the tube in London. She got me back into yoga, and it does wonders for my body and my mind.”

  Oh, Jellie, Jellie, he was thinking, don’t say anything about your body. Give a poor man space to breathe, space to be less wicked than you already have made him in his impure thoughts.

  “Michael, any chance we might meet some-where? I’d like to talk, but I don’t want to come to your office since I suspect Jimmy will be up at the university as soon as he comes to.”

  “Sure, anyplace. You name it.”

  “How about the bar at the Ramada out by the shopping center?”

  “Fine. When?”

  “What time is it now?”

  He looked at his watch. “Twenty to eleven.”

  Silence on the other end for a few seconds. “Would eleven push you too hard? I’d like to be gone when Jimmy wakes up so I don’t have to think up some reason for going out.”

  “No, that’s fine. I have the Shadow tied down outside the building. Eleven, then?”

  “Yes… Michael?”

  “I’m here.” Too cool, being way too cool.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Me too, Jellie. See you in twenty minutes.”

  It was only a ten-minute ride out to the Ramada, so he went down to the mailboxes, collected a pile of book advertisements and a very pleasant invitation from The Atlantic editor to send some more pieces. That got him thinking for a moment: maybe he could hack it as a free-lance writer. Not enough in that to keep him going, probably, but he could take early retirement, annuitize his retirement fund, and maybe pick up ten or fifteen grand a year just by fiddling around with his word processor.

  There was also a letter from the University of California Department of Economics inviting all of its Ph.D. alumni to a reception at the winter meetings in Las Vegas. The usual, Michael got it every year. But he never went, even though he was grateful for the degree and sent them money when they asked for it.

  He pulled the Shadow out into traffic getting heavier as the students returned for the fall semester and rolled down Thirty-second Street, bumping into Route 81 about ten blocks farther on. The highway ran a winding route through one of the nicer sections of Cedar Bend, and he leaned the Shadow into the curves, noticing a slight valve tick needing attention.

  Jellie was already seated when he got there. It was dark in the lounge, and he couldn’t see her at first, partly because she was back in one of the corner booths off to his right.

  “Michael, over here.”

  Jellie. After all these months, there she was and calling out to him. Black hair gathered high, big-hooped silver earrings, light yellow summer dress with sandals. Walking toward her, feeling clumsy, estranged from her. She held out her hand, Michael took it and slid in beside her. She kissed him on the cheek, then, butterfly-quick, leaned back and looked at him. He was gone again, over the hill just seeing her, hands sweating and heart valves ticking like the Black Shadow.

  “You’re all suntanned, Michael. You look great, just wonderful, and no preschool haircut yet.”

  “Nah, I’ve been putting it off. I hate going to barbers, something to do with loss of manhood, maybe. More likely because, when I was about four years old, the only barber in Custer threatened to cut off my ears if I didn’t sit still while he was working on me.”

  She laughed. “Really? Did that really happen?”

  “Yes, it did. My childhood was one long charge through the brambles of anxiety after that. You look wonderful, too, Jellie. I’ve thought about you a lot.”

  She looked down, then up at Michael, then down again. The bartender came around the bar and over to where they sat, lighted a small candle on the table-top, and asked what she could get for them. Jellie ordered a club soda with lime. Michael asked for a St. Pauli Girl, which the bartender didn’t have, so he settled on a Miller’s.

  While they waited for their drinks, Jellie asked him about his spring and summer. He told her about the two articles, and her eyes widened when he mentioned The Atlantic. “Hey, that’s the big time. Congratulations.”

  The bartender came back. Jellie insisted on paying the check, so he let her.

  Michael held up his beer, and she touched her glass to his. “What shall we drink to, Michael?”

  “How about survival. If not that, retirement.”

  “Michael, you’re just the same.” Her chastisement was gentle. “How about we drink to a nice summer day and your success in writing.”

  “And to your safe return,” he said.

  “How’s the Shadow running?”

  “Good, overall. It’s a perpetual battle, but good. I took it down into Tennessee this summer, but didn’t stay long. The Smokies ar
e a nightmare; they’re thinking of limiting the number of tourists that can visit there. Then I rode it out to Custer and stayed a week with my mother.”

  “How is she?”

  “Old, and getting more fragile every day. I’m afraid we’re not more than two years away from a nursing home or something along those lines.”

  Jellie didn’t say anything for a while. He drank his beer, she drank her club soda and lime. He took out his cigarettes and offered her one. She refused. “I’ve stopped smoking. Something about yoga that leads to that, not sure what it is.”

  He nodded and flipped open the Zippo, lit his, and leaned back against the padded booth. She slid over farther so she could turn and look straight at him.

  Michael was tired of the dancing. “Where are we, Jellie, the two of us? It’s been a long nine months for me.” After he said it he wished he’d moved into this a little slower. Typical male fashion—no fore-play.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. He’d forgotten just how gray her eyes were until she kept them on his for at least ten seconds.

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking, Michael.” Those were bad-news words, he could tell. Something in the words themselves, something in the way she said them. What they felt for each other didn’t require thinking. It required acting, not thinking. The happiness from seeing her again started draining down and out of him.

  She paused, then went on. “I had the words all ready to say, but it’s much harder than I thought it would be. I’d convinced myself the way I felt about you was a kind of girlish infatuation with a different sort of man than I’d ever encountered before, or at least not for a long time. But with you here looking at me with those good brown eyes, your hair drifting over your shirt collar and all, it’s more difficult… a lot more difficult.”

  “Say it, Jellie. I already know what’s coming.”

  “I suppose you do, and I’m going to say what I have to say before I get to the point I can’t say it. We’ve got to cut this clean before real trouble starts.” He was prepared for it, but that didn’t stop the harpoon from entering his chest and going out the other side. “Jimmy asked me several times in the days before we left for England if there was anything wrong with me. He said I was acting a little strange. It was you, Michael—no, us. I was thinking about us, fantasizing about things I don’t even want to mention.”

  “That’s all right, Jellie, I’ve had the same kind of images in my mind since the day I first saw you. Mine would just blow you away if I started talking about them.”

  “Women have those thoughts, too. Let me go on. In ways you’ll never know, and I don’t want to talk about, I owe Jimmy a lot. Look, we both know Jimmy. He’s a little goofy in certain ways, but he’s very kind to me.

  “Jimmy was crushed when the best schools wouldn’t accept him for his doctorate. His grades were good, but only because he worked so hard. God, his parents just hammered and hammered at him about the whole idea of success. But Jimmy does not have a truly fine intellect. He knows that and has come to terms with it, though it bothers him because of the world in which he’s chosen to earn a living, a world where he’s constantly reminded of his limitations just by being around people like you, Michael.”

  “Oh, hell, Jellie…” He started to do a foot shuffle into something resembling modesty, a little dance called the South Dakota backstep. But she’d have none of it and interrupted him.

  “Michael Tillman, don’t play the country boy with me, please. It’s not becoming, and I know better. You scare Jimmy. He knows he’s not in your league. He could write all his life and never get an article accepted by the journals in which you’ve published. I don’t mean to imply you don’t work hard, I know you do, in spite of the casual way you seem to operate. And Jimmy likes you. He likes you a lot, and he’s appreciative of the good ideas you give him. If he ever makes full professor, you’ll be responsible for it in good part.”

  “Jimmy’s all right, Jellie. He’s a lot different than me, but I respect him for the way he keeps his head down and the numbers crunching. I couldn’t do that.”

  He lit another Merit and took a drink of his beer. This was turning into something a little unpleasant, and he didn’t want that to happen with Jellie. She was floating off, getting loyalty and Jimmy’s shortcomings and her own emotions all tangled up. Chewing on him in small ways as a means of protecting herself from her own feelings.

  “Jellie, let me try and say what I think you’re telling me. You feel good things for Jimmy, among them at least a kind of love, I’m sure. You’re a loving person. And you feel a gratefulness toward him for something I don’t know about and won’t ask about. Though I have a feeling India works into it somehow—I figure you’d tell me if you wanted me to know, even though it wouldn’t affect how I feel about you no matter what it is. And you want to make sure our feelings for each other don’t go any further than just that—feelings. Have I got it right?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes.

  He had momentum and kept rolling. “Here’s the bottom line, Jellie Markham Braden: I’m in love with you, truly and powerfully in love. I guess I knew it when you walked in the dean’s kitchen a year ago in your blue suit and black boots, knew it when we sat on the back steps that day. Christ, teeter-totters in the park. Do you have any idea of how much I’ve wanted you, all of you, everything that makes you up, tangible and otherwise? The whole works, that’s what I want. As much as I can get in the years I have left, and I’m no youngster anymore. Do you understand that, Jellie, how deeply I feel?”

  “Michael… don’t.” She reached in her purse, took out a handkerchief, and put it against her eyes for a moment. The bartender was not insensitive; she had a feel for what was going on and turned up the television to cover their conversation. Michael nodded at her in thanks, and she gave him a little wave.

  He put his hand on Jellie’s neck, the first time he’d ever touched her in that way. Her skin felt exactly as he’d known it would, and the sensation ran up his arm, went down somewhere inside of him, and made a low, sad sound for all the times he’d never feel it again. “It’s okay, Jellie. We’ll make it work. We’ll put some bandages on the cuts and promise not to look under them ever again. I’m not sure I can stay in the same town with you, but I’ll try. Really, I’ll try, Jellie. Maybe we can eventually work it out so we can have coffee at Beano’s now and then. Maybe it’ll spiral down and we can do that.”

  She stuffed her hanky back in her purse and reached out for his left hand, holding it tight in both of hers. “You’re right, Michael, in everything you said. Damnit, I know why people get frustrated with you sometimes and are secretly afraid of you. Your mind is like a rifle bullet when you decide to let it run full tilt, and that’s scary. Carolyn, the dean’s wife, said that about you the first day I met you. She said, ‘Michael Tillman frightens the hell out of Arthur, and Arthur retaliates in mean little ways.’ The dean was going to turn you down for full professor on those grounds alone, even though you’d done twice as much work as it took to qualify. Carolyn told him, ‘Arthur, you pull that piece of crap on Michael and you’ll see me waving from the first train out of Cedar Bend.’ “

  Now they had Carolyn and Arthur into it. Jellie kept wandering away from the subject, but he understood why. There was a door closing behind them, and she wanted to keep it open all the while she was pulling it shut.

  “Jellie, let’s let it rest where it is. You know where to find me. Come by if you feel you can. Hell, I just like to be around you, to look at you, to smell your perfume when I get close, which I haven’t done nearly enough.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s something about being in each other’s presence that’s just too strong for me— for both of us. I came off the plane clear-headed and ready to tell you exactly how I felt and what I was going to do, now here I am turning into mud pie. I’ve got to get my life organized again. I’m going to take another class this fall, so I’ll be on campus three days a week. If I feel okay about it, I’ll s
top by to see you. If I don’t, and I probably won’t, it’s not because I’m not thinking about you. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I understand, Jellie. I don’t like it, but I understand. And I’ll be thinking about you, too. That’s all I ever seem to do anymore.”

  As they left the Ramada bar, Jellie pulled a small package from her purse and handed it to him. “I forgot to give you this.”

  He tore open the wrapping. Inside was a belt made of English bridle leather with Orville hand-tooled on the back.

  Michael took the Shadow out of town and let it go all the way to Des Moines, where he turned around and came back into Cedar Bend through one of those soft August twilights. Going home past the campus, he could hear the marching band practicing, getting ready for the first football game. They were playing some old song from some old movie. Michael Till-man couldn’t remember the name of either the song or the movie, because he was thinking about Jellie Braden and wondering how he was going to get through the years ahead without her.

  The lights in Bingley Hall flickered on, and the race to December got under way. Jimmy Braden came by Michael’s office for new ideas, and the football team was doing well. On those Saturdays when the team was playing at home, the streets were packed with Cadillacs and Lincolns, driven by overweight men who wrote out large checks to the athletic department and whose daughters were in the best sororities.