Kade Goes Dancing at the Barn Dance

This is the barn dance up ahead. They are parking on the road in the dark in the pickup Ezra borrowed from the Bishop. There is three up front and there is four in the back. They picked up Lauro and this new hippy named Fox and this girl from down at the yurts. Lauro and them are smoking grass not Kade he does not smoke that shit. Kade is drinking beers and stomping them on the truckbed, You better sit down in here says the girl they are down in the truckbed in the hay and fencetools and the twine and the trash the Bishop's truck is full of. Kade is more happy sitting on the stakes up in the wind. You're going to lose your hat Kade says Lauro. He is smiling he flicks his jay into the night. Kade gives the girl a beer she taps the can on his and they drink and he stomps the cans and they get out on the dirt. Ez cuts the engine and they hear the music it is the band from Youngville they are playing the Kolob song the girl is dancing so he swings her in a circle Jesus Kade put me down she says so he is laughing. They are walking by the parked cars to the barn at the end. This is where he moved the handlines this morning on the Christiansens' alfalfa. The handlines are straight that is how he places them. There is some in a truck in lawnchairs drinking he seen them same boys over to Cannonville he sneaks up to their bumper in the dark and bounces the truck hard and they yell Jesus and Fox says Everyone is praying tonight. Ez and his buddies pass a bottle it smells strong. In the light of the barn there are the people in their good jeans and their dresses, some are dancing. This is the barn where the Christiansen boy shot hisself he was Kade's Mom's age they was in school. Also he hung hisself. The way he done it was that he put the gambrel rope about his neck stood on the rail pulled the trigger fell and the gambrel caught him and he rolled out on the rail trolley to the middle they thought he hung hisself til they saw his sunday jacket bloody and most of his head up there in the roof he was dressed for Sunday they never did know why he done it. These are the Christmas lights and the music is loud that is how these boys play it. Those are the cigarette and jay lights here and there in the dark away from the light. Here is Ted he has a flask he hands to Kade it is strong Hi Mr May he says he says Come to dance with the pretty girls? Yes of course. He tries to get Ted to take a beer but he does not he says No thank you Kade how's your mother. She is okay she is not coming That's what I figured says Ted I'll see you round he says and sits on a tailgate with the new cowboy Tomasz who Kade gives a beer and says Hello how are you he says Pretty good thanks Kade and he taps his can on his and on Ted's flask. This is the stansion he welded the hinge on and burned his arm pretty bad. He is looking up to see if the Christiansen boy's head is still up in the roof he knows it's not but he always looks. They cleaned it up but the gambrel is there still they still hang a buck or a elk on there if the weather is cool. This is the sand they put in here for dancing and the stage that is wood from the old church basketball court the basketball lines do not line up now. He is dancing now and Crazy Billy in the band is smiling at him he has beads in his beard he is a crazy son of a gun playing them drums in his work Levi's and just a undershirt. He is looking for Kandace she said she would dance with him. He sees the girls from Youngville but he does not see Kandace. He is doing some spins and kicks and they are playing Twist and Shout the dancers made a circle around him to clap and holler they are passing this bag of wine with the little plastic spigot. This girl from Youngville comes out and does this move that he seen on TV with one hand up and head turned then the other hand up and head turned the other way the tops of her tits is shiny and bouncing so he does his horse-riding move and tips his hat at her and the dancers all yell and laugh and this guy he did saltcedar work with in the canyon hands him the bag of wine and he drinks it. Then he sees Kandace come in so he runs to her and picks her up and spins her and she is yelling something he can't hear it is too loud he just spins her til he almost falls over a chair and then she goes somewhere he don't know where so pretty soon he goes out to a old Mustang in the dark and drinks some Gatorade. It is true he can circle almost her whole waist with his hands she is that small and he is this big. He asks some cowboys do they want to armwrestle he has his elbow on the trunk of the Mustang they say no thanks nobody hardly ever will armwrestle he is that big. Now it is later and he walks back to the truck but it is gone so now he is walking home in the dark along 144 he can still hear the band back there there are eighteen lights in Kolob. Here is the Nelson boy's new pivotline twelve heads it is the biggest in Kolob. Those are some mulies going over the fence. This is the driveway and there are the heelers not barking they know him. There is his Mom's light on she is up waiting for him reading.  He lets the screendoor slap he needs to put on a new closer Hi love she says from her room How was it? It was fun Are you drinking? Yes more than you said she says nothing he goes in and kisses her she is reading she is wearing her reading glasses she is very old and pretty. Now he is upstairs he got axle grease on his good Wranglers he don't know how he remembers to turn out the light it is a long day now it is time to sleep he thinks of Kandace.

Kade and His Mom Go to the Small 'm' market

This is his mom saying Let's go to the Small 'm' market I just need this one piece of glass I don't need to go all the way up to the store. The dogs can go so he gets their ropes. This is the driveway fresh graded and all the weeds drying in the burn-pit. Here is the back way. When he was small he stopped here to watch a snake go down a gopher hole and a cat also stopped to watch under that bush and the cat went in the grass to another hole and waited and the gopher came out and the cat caught it and took it and then the snake came out they was hunting the same gopher. Here is the new foundation for the city people Fielding is building. It is right in the middle of the back way where the Larsons used to throw their bottles. This is the Larson house that has no windows just boards when he was small he played in there he could fit through a gap in the window boards. It was before the roof caved and it was still dry. It is broke now the chimney that one time had smoke and two men was sleeping in there in sleeping bags on the floor and his Mom told him stay away from that place we don't know nothing about them hippies. Here is where they go through the church fence it is down where the ditch washed out a post and they walk through to the back of the Small 'm'. This is the Mexican throwing trash in the dumpster and his Mom waves and so does he and the Mexican touches his hat and finishes his cigarette he is always in a hurry. Here is the porch and it has Kandace, and Charlie and some tourists and so he stops to see Kandace. She has a book. He stops and his Mom goes in. He puts the heelers on their ropes. They don't need ropes but that is the rule at the Small 'm'. Kandace is so pretty he likes to be her friend. Kandace was reading her legs are long and in the sun her hair is up and it is yellow. Kandace waves her way with her fingers she always waves this way. Hi Kandace he says You are pretty and the girl Kandace smiles and says You're sweet Kade. These are the tourists taking phone pictures of theirselves in front of the Small 'm' they have on black chaps and they have new Harleys lined up, the 1200s and he takes out his bandana and wipes the dust off the chrome on the gastank of one and the tourist says You don't have to do that and Kade says It is dusty this will make it pretty and Kandace puts down her book and smiles at him and pats the bench next to her so he goes over and sits down. What are you doing Kade. Going to the Small 'm' he says. My Mom is getting glass cut the brushhog throwed a rock when I did the driveway right through the kitchen window right in the sink. Kandace laughs. Her shorts are very small so the pockets poke out on her legs that are brown. He puts his hand there on her leg and she pushes it away and laughs Oh Kade you are too funny so he puts his hand in his pocket and he has dollars he forgot so he goes inside and gets a popsicle and he goes outside and gives it to Kandace but she doesn't take it. She always eats popsicles but she doesn't want this one so he eats it and gives the sticks to the dogs. The tourists start the Harleys and it is loud and the dogs get riled and Kandace covers her ears. It is hot the sky is blue the cloud has sat there downvalley all day not coming up. Are you going to the barn dance says Kandace Yes he says I will dance with you are you wearing a dress Yes she says What one he says It is blue. This is the one she wore that day at the cemetery for Old Man Nelson's funeral It is very pretty he says. Here is Charlie now coming over Hi Kade, Kandace he says. He is now standing there because Kade's Mom is coming out with the glass it has blue tape on the edges. Window broke? Yes she says From a rock. Kade he says I have some chainsaw work you can do and stacking cordwood and Kade says he will do it tomorrow today he has the Nelson boy's handlines it is going to rain later so he will see him tomorrow.  Let's go honey says Kade's Mom How's your mother Kandace? Kandace says Okay she picks up her book and stands the benchslats marked her legs pink Kade says Kandace I can see those screwheads on your legs from the bench. Oh Kade she says and his Mom says Let's go honey and he looses the dogs and they go into the willows with that piece of glass.

Gone Away Backward

And here is Lady Soleil, recently of River Hills, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Until a month ago known to her suburban friends as Linda Schlitz, mother of two insolent daughters, now estranged. Until a year ago married to Big Dave Schlitz, also of Milwaukee, who left her with debts she hadn't suspected and a mortgage payment she could not carry. Now sleeping in the back seat of her ten-year-old minivan in a trailhead parking lot off of Utah State Route 144 in the Big Yellow Pine National Forest, a place she can scarcely imagine despite watching it from her lawnchair several hours a day since she pulled into this overlook a week ago. She sits in the shade and watches. The mountain above her, green, yellow, and black, impassive like an animal, giving nothing. The palisade of red rock denying any passage west, almost denying even thought of what might lie beyond. To the south, rolling elk meadows and almost beyond sight the crossing at Kolob Town where 144 reaches into the desert like an arm, laden with the gaudy costume bangles of irrigated alfalfa fields, alien green in all the unmoved desert. And east the canyonlands, so inscrutable not even the rain can touch them, a hundred miles or more, for all she knew, of sandstone so contorted she imagined it seething at a violent boil and motionless only because her time here is so brief that her patient watching, for days, is but a shutter-click, a moment so brief that God's great cooking of the world can only be guessed at or suspected but not known. Below her seat at the edge of the overlook parking lot there is a strip of rattling grass, a pair of leaning pines, and then a precipice. She took a day to approach that edge, her toes curled to grip the gravel. She underhanded a stone over the edge and some time later the report of its impact returned to her, a sound flat and honest, followed by the lies of its echoes. The wind hissed in the pines. Cliff swallows preceded the sound of their passage. Far below a chaos of fractured boulders.

As abrupt as this edge, midlife had come upon her. Until Big Dave's disappearance she had filled her golden skin perfectly: her strong legs, her wide and muscled rump, her high and global breasts, her pleasant and pretty face, all had been in a flawless, tight wrapper of golden shiny skin. Men had always looked, in the summer, and though she was modest and unassuming in all ways, she did enjoy their approving glances and dressed to bare her legs, always shaved and moisturized. And then they stopped looking. She noticed one day. It was right about when Big Dave left, and, though she never said so aloud, she considered her sudden aging to be his fault. She felt broken and discarded, or used up. She imagined he looked at her one day when she was forty-five and saw the softening of her waist and neck, the slackening and spotting of her skin, and the sagging of her breasts and left for someone younger. She had never been beautiful, but she had come, in some ways, to rely on her ripeness and gleaming health, and then it was gone. Her smooth-cheeked cuteness had passed into a moment of handsomeness, and now she looked to herself, in the rearview mirrors, simply exhausted and slack.

But through all this loss and sadness she felt an almost continual new hope. It surprised her every day, this surge of new life in her. It got her through selling the stuff of her marriage, the furniture and the house. Her daughters' piano. Almost everything. In fact, as the house emptied her hope grew. She joined a women's group, mostly middle-aged divorcees, and hired a therapist, something she had never considered and that Big Dave would have scorned. Her new friends and new ability to confess and unburden herself brought her into contact with a world of new ideas. She began mindfulness meditation. She let her hair grow and stopped coloring it. In a giddy shopping spree she replaced her old beige, white, and navy wardrobe with new bold colors and flowing fabrics. She changed to comfortable shoes. She had her chart done, and her cards read. She covered the old ________ High School Honor Role bumper sticker with a quote exhorting lovingkindness. With the money from the sales she went on a meditation retreat and hired a diet consultant. She gained weight and thought little of it. All in a year. The transformation had felt effortless, even ecstatic, as though she were simply relaxing into a true identity that had hibernated through her long years as wife and mother. She was happy.

And then she met Sunflower at an energy-work retreat. Sunflower latched onto her immediately. Tiny, vibrant, and talkative, Sunflower took Linda in, almost as a student. She had been attending the retreat for years and had acquired a kind of seniority. She knew the ropes. They received cabin assignments and Sunflower, without asking Linda, traded her cabin number with Linda's assigned roommate, and they spent the week together. The first night they stayed up laughing and gossiping, unloading about their exes. The second night Sunflower produced a bottle of chilled rose' and they drank it from mugs and Sunflower whispered in Linda's ear and they fell back on the bed snorting in hilarity and they became lovers.

And then at the end of the week Sunflower left without a word and Linda was free. She went back to the empty house to vacuum, quit after one room, left the vacuum standing there, got into the minivan still packed from the retreat, and drove west. She followed the energy. She got on I-80 and followed it until the Rockies loomed, then south to Colorado Springs, then west again, on smaller and smaller roads she let a delicate warmth guide her to this spot, where a back spasm led her to pull over in the night and in the morning the sun rose like a great fierce eye over over the canyonlands and the purple shadows drew back and the world opened up to her alone on all the vast mountain and she sat under the pines and wept for all she had lost and all she would lose and that her daughters, too, would lose everything, and that the future would keep opening up like this, some vast inscrutable conspiracy of a universe of canyons now white, then yellow, then orange and pink and red and purple and black then pale blue and white again for all time no matter what. And the warmth in her chest roused her from the lawnchair and took her down the mountain, her minivan coughing its last miles into the green, the chugging wheel-lines, the ferment of corrals, the dusty lots, the tight hunkered houses, and into the gravel lot beside the Trading Post where the dust of her arrival drifted into a small crowd of Saturday farmers' market shoppers and the smell of coffee confirmed that she had arrived.