Stars Always Shine (22 page)

Salvador’s eyes lit his face, and before opening the box, he thanked Mitch and Place for the thoughtful birthday they had arranged. He reminded the couple about how they helped him become a legal resident—of sorts—how well they worked as a crew, and how he had never had such caring friends. He redirected his encomium to specific examples and explained how each was effective in promoting friendship and a sense of belonging. “Somos parejos,” he declared, but continued in this direction for only a short way. Place cut him off abruptly as he urged Salvador to open his gift.

Salvador apologized and unwrapped his gift. His rough, thick, dirt-dark fingers pulled at the blazing wrapping paper as if he were peeling a banana; he was delicate in his approach, and Place felt sorry for him, for his ignorance, for who he was.

The belt buckle gleamed against the darkness of Salvador’s hands, and the hand-tooled leather belt uncoiled slowly as he examined the swirls and angled cuts of the oak leaf and acorn design with the buck stitching that ran from one end to the other, separated in the middle by his name in big block letters. The buckle shined like a silver platter, and Place joked to Salvador that he could always use the buckle as a dinner plato in case of emergency. But it was the scene on the buckle that captured Salvador’s attention as he studied the etched lines. A lone figure leaned against a post-and-rail pasture fence, looking satisfied and secure with his arms folded. The long-eared head of a burro peered over his shoulder and a round cat sat at his feet.

Mitch invited Salvador to stand up and put on his new belt. His face grew warm as he moved shyly, threading the belt through the loops of his jeans with fumbling fingers. He glanced around the room to see if any of the other patrons was watching him, and he was amazed, almost disappointed, that nobody overtly observed him, but rather paid close attention to their own lives at that point in time. The belt buckle served as a glittering announcement that attracted the eye toward the blazing colors of the long-sleeved shirt, the distinct crease in traditional blue jeans with the rectangular leather tag sewn into a rear pocket that only those who had worked with livestock could proudly wear, and the low-heeled, round-toed boot canopied by the style and cut of the jeans.

The clothes offered a causal explanation of who the wearer was. They indicated a culture—a culture of work and of earning, and Salvador knew as he tugged at his pants and looked down at his new belt and then his boots, that he had entered into this other culture. He had earned membership, and in the swirls of smaller and varied groups that form a larger society, Salvador’s new clothes gave him a sense of place. The clothes indicated that the wearer possessed a certain type of practical knowledge when working in fields and corrals, and that knowledge was acquired through doing, and from doing came learning. Production and self-worth followed, and a person could feel competent and complete.

Salvador did not show his surprise when he asked where they were headed as Mitch drove west on a country road and Place answered with, “Una cantina.” He wanted to ask why, but decided to let patience eventually bring the answer to him. Salvador sat with his shoulders wedged between the door of the pickup and Place, who sat in the middle.

Mitch drove into the dusky parking lot of the Boot Hill Bar. The lot was full as tired workmen stopped off to unwind and talk and avoid other things before going home. Before they exited the truck, Mitch placed a hand on her husband’s thigh and offered her unsolicited counsel. Place didn’t like the idea of possibly having to ignore something somebody said, especially in a popular place like the Boot Hill Bar where fraternal men with hats that revealed more than they hid, swaggered, swore, and stroked women with silver-tongued words. Mitch further urged him to simply “study these types. You’ll notice interesting things psychologically and culturally. Really, it’ll be fun, Place.”

As they walked toward the entrance of the bar, Place turned to tell Salvador, as if warning him, that the Boot Hill Bar was “una cantina de cowboys.”

Salvador simply shrugged his shoulders, deciding once he discovered their destination that he would not mention to Mitch or Place that he knew all about the Boot Hill Bar and its friendly female patrons who skillfully knew how to separate working men from their money in exchange for the comfort of some company. He allowed destiny to guide his birthday celebration as it had guided the other events in his life.

Music galloped at them as they entered the bar. Loud talking competed with the volume of guitars, fiddles, steel guitars, and boxed voices that offered two songs for a quarter. Place and Salvador hesitated, stared at dust-worked cowboys as they stared back, and stood awkwardly for a few moments at the entrance of the bar as if waiting for a challenge of acceptance or exclusion.

When Place refocused his attention, he realized that Mitch was no longer standing next to him. In the farthest corner of the bar, across the shiny dance room floor, Mitch dipped her head as a shorter, stringier woman talked closely into her ear.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Futtrell,” Place said as Mitch completed the introduction between dance instructor and student.

“Mucho gusto,” Salvador respectfully offered as he shook Rita Futtrell’s soft, small hand and bowed his head slightly to offer a further hint of humbleness.

Mitch explained the plan to Place, who would then surprise Salvador with the news that they would learn the Texas two-step tonight.

“I’ll have you cuttin’ a rug before the evening is over,” Rita Futtrell guaranteed. Then she yelled across the dance room floor to deliver a commanding order: “John, turn that jukebox off now, please.”

Mitch smiled to herself as the bartender quickly pulled the plug on the jukebox, and a booming, boasting voice suddenly spiraled down from a high-pitched announcement to a lowly dying silence. Place was impressed, and he nodded his head in approval.

A lanky, coltish, young-faced cowboy with a wide-brimmed hat that made him look perpendicularly rail-like, smiled broadly as he approached Rita Futtrell with his petition.

“Now, Miss Futtrell, that don’t seem too fair that I put two quarters in that box and I expect to hear some songs and enjoy a drink or two after a hard day and now you’re turning it off.”

“You’ll have to listen to your songs later, Junior. I got paying customers who want to learn how to dance and I don’t want that music interfering with mine,” Rita explained with growing annoyance, her lips thin and tight revealing what Place considered as an okie-like overbite. “Now don’t test me, boy. Tell John to give you a drink compliments of me and enjoy your buddies without the music.”

Junior’s face lit into an accepting and sincere smile as he slowly backed away from Rita Futtrell. “Can you at least put the pliers to your music, Miss Futtrell, so we can hear it over there?”

Rita said nothing as she turned and popped a cassette into her player and cranked the volume up enough for the music to escape the boundaries of the dance floor. Junior two-stepped across the floor without spilling a drop from his full glass of beer, which he held away from himself as if he danced with an imaginary partner.

“I
own
this place,” Rita offered as Mitch, Place, and Salvador stood waiting and impressed. “When you’re the owner you get to do things your way. Now, let’s dance.”

Rita Futtrell was more than just a dance teacher. She competed actively in dance contests and continued to be a student of movement and music and partners. She also read books and attended seminars and workshops. As a teacher, she enjoyed watching the growth and transition in those who came to her for instruction in moving with the music. Rita shifted from her introduction and began to talk about timing, knowing your partner, and feeling the tempo of the song to determine its “musicality and what you need to do to make sure you have a good sense of the rhythms of the songs.”

“I’ll start you off with a basic two-step,” Rita said.

Place wasn’t quite sure how to explain the more technical aspects of dancing to Salvador, so he told him in Spanish to simply do whatever he and Mitch were instructed to do.

Rita’s fingers punched the recorder’s buttons to advance the tape and then rewind as she searched for the right song. She instructed Place and Salvador to watch as she took the preliminary two-step steps. Taking long, sliding, slow steps, Rita Futtrell danced away from the corner of the unwinding music and started to follow the dance floor perimeter in a counterclockwise direction. “The rhythm is two-quarter time: step together, step together, step touch, step touch, step together, step together, step touch, step touch,” Rita called rhythmically as she demonstrated with comments dispensed over her shoulder, increasing the distance between herself and her watching students. When she completed a circle and ended up back at the corner table where Mitch, Place, and Salvador were beginning to feel secure, she said, “Now the men will try it, but in a straight line. And by the way, when you do really dance and there are other people on the floor like there will be later tonight when the band starts up, you go in a counterclockwise direction.”

Rita walked out to the dance floor and Place was momentarily mesmerized by her rapid short steps that caused her hips to switch rhythmically. “Just two-step out to me,” She called to Place and Salvador. “But listen to the music to get your count. You need to know when to get on with your timing.”

Place bobbed his head awkwardly and started hesitant lunges as he searched for the right instance to jump in. He remembered when he was younger, his older brothers and sisters would pile on a playground merry-go-round with the older boys turning it faster and faster and daring others to jump on the spinning ride. That took timing too, if one wanted to be spun to a drunken dizziness. Salvador watched Place and the bobbing became infectious.

“Take a step or two before the music ends,” Rita warned and smiled at Mitch, who waited for her instructions.

Place committed himself to a step as he jumped forward. His timing was off, and Rita could see that immediately. “Stop and start over again,” she instructed.

Salvador had followed Place’s lead, and he stuttered forward with the music going north and his feet taking him south. “Tell Salvador to stop too,” Rita said and walked to her cassette player to start the song over. “Come here,” she said as she positioned Salvador and Place on either side of her and held onto the hand of each. Bending her knees slightly and dipping her head and shoulders with the music, she let her body communicate the movements to Salvador and Place’s bodies. At the precise musical moment, Rita stepped forward and pulled her two dance partners alongside her. Place and Salvador stumbled in tow like unschooled puppies who hadn’t yet learned to walk on a leash. Halfway across the floor, Rita stopped and turned the two men around. Again they waited to catch the music at the right point. Rita moved forward and merged with the music. She continued to hold firmly to Salvador’s and Place’s hands, jerking back quickly to slow them down or squeezing their hands to bring them back up to the tempo.

Now it was Mitch’s turn. Place was relieved and Salvador wiped his beading brow with the sleeve of his new shirt.

Facing them, Rita started backwards to show Mitch the pattern that her steps should take. Back and backwards toward the middle of the dance floor, Rita shuffled, her arms held in front of her as if an invisible partner led her through the music. She held her head at a slight upward angle, and her mouth was straight and serious. As she backed two steps and a shuffle at a time, Rita closed her eyes and went to the place where her dancing took her.

Repeatedly, Mitch, Place, and Salvador’s feet stammered and sputtered as they tried to coordinate and acclimate their bodies to both motion and music. Repeatedly, three rigid and partnerless figures made solo sojourns as their tentative steps advanced them toward the middle of the dance floor and back. Repeatedly, Mitch, Place, and Salvador fell out of time with the music as the doldrums of their own rhythm left them bobbing and waiting to catch the next current of music. Repeatedly, like a confident coxswain, Rita urged on her stalled dancers by chanting: “step together, step together, step touch, step touch, step together, step together, step touch, step touch.”

Rita watched carefully and patiently, studying form, function, and fluidity, and occasionally offering individualized instruction to her pupils. “Salvador, stand straighter. Tell him to stand straighter, Place. And you, Place, stop looking over at the crowd at the bar. They aren’t watching you, anyway. Concentrate on your steps. Mitch, stop looking at your feet. You need to be able to make those moves without looking down.” Rita allowed for a few more jagged passes and then decided to couple up Mitch and Place while she served as Salvador’s partner.

Rita was emphatic in her lecture, pointing out the true difficulty it takes to achieve competent partner dancing. She focused on Place first, informing him of his responsibility in leading his partner. Positioning herself opposite Place and assuming the male lead position, Rita showed him how to guide his partner through inconspicuous, silent cues. She held her right hand firmly on Place’s left shoulder blade as she led him backwards down the middle of the dance floor. She applied enough pressure with the cupped palm of her hand to signal to Place that they would shift to reverse. As their motion changed from backward to forward for Place, Rita talked him through the change of direction, explaining to him that his partner should always be held snugly in the rudder of his hand. Mitch and Salvador watched as the couple approached them. Halfway back to their starting point, Rita warned Place about their next move, two steps in place as the lead partner lifted her left hand high to twirl Place under her arm. It was a reach for Rita, but her sinewy and elastic body stretched long and lean as she guided Place through his spin and continued back toward the waiting students. In harmony, Mitch and Salvador breathed out appreciative oohs to show how impressed they were.

“Now, Mitch and Place, you partner up and I’ll take Salvador,” Rita instructed. She walked over to the small corner table and changed cassettes. “We’ll go with the line of dance, because when you dance with the big kids you need to know the right direction so you don’t get in anybody’s way.” She made a sweeping counterclockwise motion to remind her pupils of the pattern and direction of the dance floor. Rita waited for Place to translate to Salvador and when Place simply looked at him, pointed, and said, “Go that way,” Rita proceeded to her next lesson. “As soon as this song ends, get ready to start with the next song. It’s a two-step too. Now if you don’t feel you started with the music, just count and listen for the rhythm to come around to where you can jump in.”