Ed Gorman - Save The Last Dance For Me

But even at the young age of twenty-four things had become irretrievably complicated.

Pamela, whom I shouldn’t have loved; Mary, whom I should have; and poor sad Kylie and her strutting jerk of a husband. I really wanted to sleep with Kylie but she was married. And so I was afraid I would, against my principles; and afraid I wouldn’t, against that pure clean lust I felt for her. She was so damned good and kind and smart and sexy in her kid-sister way.

We all went inside and had some iced tea in Mrs. Goldman’s apartment-Kylie whispering that she didn’t want me to leave her alone just yet-and then around nine-thirty, the fireflies thicker in the perfume-scented night, a white kitten on the garden fence looking as if she were posing before the half moon… we went upstairs.

“So,” Kylie said, half an hour later, “what happens if I stay here tonight?”

“I’m of two minds about that.”

“I’m of three or four minds about that.”

“Well, then, it looks like we have a dilemma here, doesn’t it?”

“A conundrum.”

“Where’s Chad tonight?”

“Whereabouts unknown.”

“And you-” his-don’t feel like going through another Strindberg play with him. Strindberg being his favorite writer. So when we get into one of our arguments, he always starts doing Strindberg. And I’ve had enough Strindberg for a while.”

“You can’t ever have too much

Strindberg.”

“You like him?”

“Eh,” I said, shrugging. “In a pinch, I suppose.”

“So I’ll take the couch.”

“You’re too long for the couch.”

“I’m the same size you are.”

“You’re always telling me,” I said, “that you’re taller than I am.”

“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m an incorrigible liar?”

“I’ll take the couch. It’ll make me feel nobler.”

“I’d really feel awkward doing that to you.”

“You’d deprive me of feeling noble?”

“It’s still pretty early. Could we watch a little Tv?”

“But of course.”

We started out watching “Highway Patrol.”

Broderick Crawford never takes off his trench coat. They could have deep-sea sequences like on “Sea Hunt” with Lloyd Bridges and Brod would still be wearing his trench coat, his Aqua-Lung strapped on outside of it. Oh, and he’d be wearing his fedora, too.

I say “started out watching” because, after about one act of ole Brod barking “Ten-four, ten-four” into his two-way, we gave up and started making out.

I guess we resolved our dilemma and our conundrum.

At least sort of.

It was ninth-grade sex.

We French-kissed but when my hand drooped (of its own volition) toward her chest area (or chestal area as Judge Ronald D. K. M.

Sullivan would say), it was gently moved back up by her hand.

By the time “Highway Patrol” was wrapping up we lay lengthwise on the couch. Pressed very tightly together. She was a great kisser. Maybe the best kisser I’d ever been with. She was such a great kisser that kissing her was almost enough. But my hand kept drooping and her hand kept gently brushing it away. We did a little tenth-grade dry-humping but she wouldn’t let my hand linger on her bottom. I had one of those erections that make you crazy. One of those erections that takes you over so completely you are nothing more than a penis.

She was girl-flesh and girl-body and girl-mouth; girl-sigh, girl-gasp, girl-moan.

She was moaning, I was moaning.

She was insinuating (a Kenny Thibodeau dirty-book word) herself against me as hard and fast as I was insinuating myself against her.

I suppose in the murky past I’d wanted the beautiful Pamela Forrest this badly but it was really murky. Nobody had ever seemed as fresh and vital and fetching as Kylie did right now.

And then she was up and grabbing her purse and rushing out the door.

“I’ve got to get out of here!” she said. “I don’t want to do anything I’d regret.

Good-night, McCain! I’m sorry!”

At seven-thirty the following morning I sat in my ragtop on a shelf of shale above the cup of grassy land where the hill folk lived. My field binoculars were trained on the Muldaur trailer behind the church. At 7ccdg, Viola came out with a magazine and a roll of toilet paper in her hand and headed for the outhouse to the east.

How’d you like to face the outhouse every morning?

Summer would be bad enough-but Iowa winter when it was twenty-five below zero?

She didn’t go back to the trailer till 8ccbd.

Daughter Ella carrying, presumably, the same roll of t.p. but a different magazine, emerged from the trailer at 8ccdh and went to the outhouse. She stayed only till 9ccjc.

At 9ccbf I got the opportunity I’d been waiting for. Viola got in the rusty truck and drove away, leaving Ella behind. I drove down to the trailer and walked up to the door.

The place smelled of decades-old grime.

The yard was spiked with broken glass, empty bottles, rusty cans. A Tv turned low hummed in the front wall.

I knocked.

As I waited for a response, I turned to look at the land behind the church. I wondered how thoroughly Cliffie and his minions had searched the area of weeds and buffalo grass and the four rusty garbage cans.

I turned back to the trailer when I heard the door open but by then it was too late. The angry man had his shotgun pointed at me.

Bib overalls, T-shirt beneath, massive head, shoulders, forearms.

“C’mon,” he said.

He was the keeper of the gate. The man who’d let Kylie and me into the church that first night. The man arguing with his wife a little later on, striking her.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“You think I’m afraid to tell you? It’s Bill Oates.”

“What’s with the shotgun, Mr. Oates?”

“I want to take you somewhere.”

“I came here to see Ella.”

“Ella don’t want to see you.”

“It’d probably be better if I heard that from her myself.”

“We suffered a loss. You don’t seem to understand that. You shouldn’t be botherin’ people at a time like this. If you was pure, you wouldn’t be.”

“How do you know I’m not pure?”

“You work for that Judge, for one thing. And I’m told you’re going around with that Jew woman.”

“And that makes me impure?”

He smiled and for the first time I saw the stubby blackened teeth. “I guess we’re going to find out, ain’t we?”

You’re probably ahead of me on this one. Not even when he marched me over to the church at gunpoint did I realize what he had in mind.

Slow learner, I guess.

The church interior was shadowy. The chairs were arranged in orderly fashion. The altar was dark.

On a hot day like this all the ancient service-station odors rose up. You could almost hear the bell on the drive clanging to life and a motorist saying, “Fill ‘er up, would ya? And I guess you’d better check the oil.”

And then I heard them. And then I had my first understanding-dread, actually-of why he’d brought me here. And the real implication of his “pure” remark.

He nudged me down the aisle with the barrel of his gun.

I began to make out the dimensions of the snake cage. I tried to guess from their sudden hissing and rattling-the approach of intruders-how many of them there were.

“What the hell you going to do?”

“Just keep walkin’.”

I stopped. In an instant I weighed the threat-getting shot in the back versus having to do something with rattlesnakes. So I stopped.

He stabbed the barrel of the shotgun nearly all the way through me.

“I said to keep walkin’.”

“I’m not going near those damned snakes.”

“Watch your language. This is the house of the Lord.”