Callan Wink - Dog Run Moon

“I will be fasting, meditating. Other things I can’t reveal to you. It’s a whole weeklong process. The dance is just part of it. Anyway, it’s not a goddamn tango competition or something. Everyone dances their own way. Some of the guys who really feel it stick bone skewers through the skin on their chests and lean back against ropes and dance until they rip out. Stella says that if I try to get macho and do that she’ll divorce me. So, are you going to come?”

“Jesus. Okay. Sure.”

“Great. Really great. And, just so you know, this kid is going to grow up calling you Uncle Rand. You ready for that? I mean, if something happens to me, I like to think of you stepping in and taking care of business.”

“I don’t really know anything about kids.”

“I don’t either. That’s irrelevant. This is about you taking care of my family if I kick it for some reason. This isn’t something you argue about. You just say, ‘Right, sure thing, Sam, you can count on me.’ I’ve already talked to Stella about it. She thinks it’s a great idea. You’re the godfather, man. She said she’s always thought you were pretty good-looking and would do a decent job as fill-in husband.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. I’m making a will, just in case. I’m going to include a special letter to you. In this letter will be several pointers, suggestions, an instruction manual, basically, that should be useful to you as you undertake the care and fulfillment of my wife. I mean, you’re an F-150 driving man. She’s a Ferrari. You could get hurt, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Christ. Are you serious?”

Rand could hear him slapping his desk. “Hell, no. I’m not serious. About Stella, anyway. If I die you better keep your grubby hands off her. But about the kid, I’m dead serious.” He stopped laughing. “If you ever have a pregnant wife, you’ll understand. You have to promise me you’ll take care of them as best as you can. I know if you say you will, you will, not to get lame here but that’s the kind of guy you are. You’re the only one I can trust with this.”

“All right. Fine. If you die, I’ll take care of business.”

“There, that’s what I’m talking about. Okay, then, I’ll see you at the dance. Wish me luck.”

—

The afternoon of the ceremony was a hot one, approaching one hundred degrees on the sun-baked field. Grasshoppers clattered away in droves as Rand walked through the dead grass. There were wildfires burning in the western mountains, the air hazy with smoke.

A single cottonwood tree rose in the middle of the empty meadow, and its branches had been adorned. String, strips of colored cloth, feathers, twisting and flapping. Around the tree, the dancers shuffled, their bare feet stirring small clouds of red dust. There was drumming, shrill piping, and chanting. People milled around, and Rand had a hard time discerning who were participants and who were spectators, if such a distinction existed. He tried to pick Sam out of the crowd. He stood near his truck feeling conspicuous, out of place, unwanted. He had made up his mind to leave when he spotted Stella making her way toward him.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

“Nonsense.” She grabbed his wrist, and he was relieved, as if being attached to her might lend his existence there some credence. She led him through the throngs of people to a place near the edge of the dance circle. Up close, he spotted Sam immediately, dancing slowly, his pale torso streaked where the sweat had run rivulets through the dust.

Standing next to Stella, he watched her as she watched Sam dance. She was wearing a light-blue sundress and had one hand on her just-beginning-to-swell belly, looking serene and beautiful despite the heat. He was going to be a godfather.

She caught him staring at her, and she smiled and reached out to squeeze his arm.

—

The dancers — twenty or thirty of them, mostly men — rotated slowly, around the decorated cottonwood tree. The sun beat down, the wildfire smoke turning it an angry red as it neared the horizon line. Rand had no idea how long this thing lasted. Was there a halftime? Was there a finish line? Already several of the older dancers had collapsed or stumbled off. Sam kept going, the circular shuffle, eyes squinting out at some point far above their heads. Then, Rand spotted Nolan. The fallen basketball star was dancing too. His bare feet slapped the dirt, and his calf muscles were like knotted brown rope, his head thrown back, eyes closed against the sun. Most of the other dancers looked as if they were just trying to survive, slow foot stomping, plodding. Nolan, though, was dancing like he wanted to die — quick jerky movements, chest ballooning and caving. It was a hard thing to watch, a man giving birth to something that might kill him.

At a certain point, the sun sank, and still the dance continued. Bonfires were lit on the edges of the circle. The drums had taken up residence in Rand’s chest. They were the echo that threatened to overtake his heart. Stella had drifted off. Sam had fallen out of the dance, and she had gone to take care of him. But Nolan still carried on, if anything, his movements had increased their desperate tempo.

Then Nolan danced his way to the center of the circle and took hold of a long rope that had been dangling from the center tree. He resumed his place in the circle and his grandfather emerged from the crowd. He came to Nolan and helped him do something with the rope. Rand couldn’t see what. Nolan’s back was to him. And then the old man retreated, and Nolan was dancing again. The firelight cast its glow, and Rand could see the purple streaks of blood on Nolan’s torso. He was leaning back against the rope, his skin stretched taut at the points where the bone skewers ran through his chest.

As Nolan danced past him — close enough that Rand could have reached out to touch him — he searched Nolan’s face for any sign of pain. He found just ecstatic blankness.

By now, many of the other dancers had filtered off. Two other men were attached to the center tree in the same manner as Nolan. Rand didn’t want to be there any longer but he couldn’t leave. He was so close, he could smell the sweat of the dancers, see the way their muscles trembled on the verge of collapse.

What was a basketball championship in the face of this? How could anything compare? This was absolution. This man had poured his whole life out on the ground to make room for vodka, and then, in one moment, he’d gotten everything back. Possibly fleeting, but no less real.

What do I have? Rand thought. What is available to me? Rand was aware that he was now the only stationary person in the crowd. Painted figures were moving on all sides of him. There was the clicking of beads and bone and jangling bells and shrill whistling, and he knew that dancing himself, or leaving, were the only two easy options. He tried, did one slow, heavy, foot-stomping revolution, and then he stopped, feeling ridiculous. He was an impostor. Maybe someone else could have done it, danced it away, but not him. In the end he just stood, stock-still, looking straight ahead so that the circle of dancers were forced to part around him, their eyes flashing as they went by.

Someone was pointing at him from across the fire, and then there was a hand on his shoulder. They were going to drag him out, he thought, and that was fair. That was their right. But he would make them do just that, drag him. He wasn’t going to move an inch on his own. The hand was on his back now, patting it, trying to get his attention. He turned. It was Stella’s grandfather, bare chested, his braids swinging like silver ropes over his shoulders.

The old man was dancing, a strange flapping motion, elbows out, rising on his toes, doing something with his hands. Dancing, but not quite. There was a post up, a pump fake, a pivot, and finally, the fade-away jump shot, his wrist crooked in perfect follow-through form, a wide, toothless smile on his face.