Stars Always Shine (23 page)

Holding Mitch close to him, Place watched Salvador’s back as he held Rita, and the four of them waited through the brief silence of the cassette and the muffled laughing and talking at the bar. The admonishing lyrics carried along by the confident, cantering tempo of “Jealous Heart” caught Mitch, Place, and Salvador off guard. Rita jerked Salvador toward her in an effort to catch up to the music. Salvador two-stepped onward as Mitch and Place jerked and jolted in their movements, trying to jump in anywhere in the music and not really listening as closely as they needed to.

“Stop!” Rita shouted from across the dance floor as her novice partner concentrated on keeping his steps to the paces of the music. When they had completed a circle, Rita stopped to help Mitch and Place get started. “Listen and count to the music,” she said as she moved her body in place to the continuing song. Rita pointed to the cassette player and counted and clapped her hands in cadence to demonstrate to Mitch and Place the timing of the music.

“There!” Rita pointed out quickly. “And there! That’s where you would come in. Do you hear that? It’s important to recognize when you should start. And you don’t necessarily need to begin when the song does. It takes couples a few bars to get on the floor anyway. And don’t rush things. If you miss the start of the song, just wait.” Rita rewound the cassette to play the same song again, explaining to the trio that it might help to first get familiar with dancing to the same tune for a while.

Salvador, intuiting the universal language and inflection of music, and slightly familiar with the Boot Hill Bar’s dance floor and selected patrons, went with the tempo as the song started. Rita held him with a firm submission that allowed her to be led around the dance floor while still feeling Salvador’s body and subtle cues signaling directions, moves, and adjustments with his arms and hands. Carefully, intrinsically, intricately their bodies seemed to flow just as a skilled fiddler makes the bow skip and sway and in those motions makes music. So too, Salvador and Rita made music as together they accompanied notes and rhythms, absorbing them into the instruments that were their own bodies and displaying a coupled and kinesthetic interpretation through the patterns of two steps and a shuffle.

Mitch and Place waited. They didn’t want to be influenced by Salvador and Rita’s departure. As the rhythm came around, Place released the pressure of his cupped hand on Mitch’s back and stepping toward her signaled that they too would embark on a circular journey counterclockwise. Place was cautious, and he concentrated hard on the movements in the music. Mitch stepped backwards while she studied her boots, often misstepping, stalling, and starting again.

“That’s it, just start again,” Rita urged while still dancing and studying the couple at the same time. “And Mitch, quit looking at your feet! It’s your brain that’s going to tell them where to go, not your eyes.”

Mitch blushed as she looked at Place, whose serious expression showed that he was focused on the music.

After intermittent tips and suggestions and many “Jealous Hearts,” Rita talked over the continuing cassette as she offered a closing lecture and further advice before ending the dance lesson. She was more philosophical in her approach now as she explained to her beginning dancers that partner dancing required a sense of intuition and communication. Yes, there were those slight, even somehow subconscious gestures that initiated an implied language of interaction, but to dance with a partner and know that language required a lot of time together at first. “You need to communicate with the language of your body when you’re dancing. Help each other with the vocabulary of your movements,” Rita concluded as she moved on to another point.

Mitch smiled to herself as she thought about her younger years of dressage training. Those movements too, between horse and rider were somehow communicated, and one led while the other responded. In competition when both horse and rider were interacting as only two living souls do when they spend enough time to recognize the patterns and rhythms of each other’s organic and sensuous language and life, the dance could be enchanting to watch and experience. Mitch’s skin twitched with excitement, and bashful goosebumps populated her arms, shoulders, and back, and she remembered that exquisite, perfect dance with a throw-away mare she had saved, succored, and trained. The day before her refined mare was to enter its first competition, Mitch rode her bareback over the hills behind her girlhood home and to the softly swirling stream where she baptized the horse Galatea in a formal and solemn ceremony. After the baptism, Mitch walked back to her home with her newly christened creation alongside her, and talking to her horse as if talking to a close friend.

Rita closed her lesson by talking about the postures in dancing, especially in a place like hers. Partner dancing, according to Rita, did many things. Partner dancing defined boundaries; it told others who belonged to whom, and it further established the unspoken norms of cowboy etiquette. Partners mostly dance only with each other, Rita philosophized, and if somebody else wants to dance with either one of them, they have to ask the other partner if they may. “So, Mitch,” Rita pointed out, “if somebody wants to dance with your man, that somebody should ask you and not Place. And the same goes for you too, Place.” Rita directed her colloquium toward Salvador and explained how his was a different situation. Salvador was more in unsettled territory when it came to partner dancing. He would have to find a partner and in a place like the Boot Hill Bar, that “partner” could be solicited by many suitors. “You just have to stay alert and polite,” Rita offered to Salvador, who acknowledged her with a nodding head and knowing smile.

To conclude her presentation, Rita talked about attitude in dancing. It was important, for the woman especially, to dance with aloof and confident conviction. To achieve that, Rita asserted, the woman had to be a stoic dancer. She had to hold her head up with a straight line marking her mouth, not a curving smile or a toothy grin that gave away the true pleasure of dancing. The lady’s left hand should be positioned softly on her man’s right shoulder with fingers extended gracefully and touching, not splayed like a chicken’s foot or clutching out of torrid desperation. Rita demonstrated, as she held her own head slightly upward, arm raised, and her hand gracefully extended like a ballerina, the seriousness of partner dancing. She explained, to Mitch more than to Place and Salvador, that as a dancing pair made the counterclockwise circle around the dance floor, those who were not dancing would be observing. It was to those observers that many messages were conveyed through the uplifted head, the straight statement of a mouth, and attitude of which Rita spoke. “When you’re dancing with Place, Mitch,” Rita started, “you need to show that that’s your man. And that look should show that the two of you have been through a lot, good and bad, and that as you are on any night you’re partner dancing, the two of you will stay together through more thick and thin if you need to. That says a lot for a couple, and people will understand that if they have even as much sense as a mule. Folks, at least around here, know not to sit in somebody else’s saddle.” Rita concluded her instruction and invited her students who were now guests to stay and practice what they had just learned.

The band set up their instruments on the little stage that jutted out from a dark wall like a pouting lip from a moody face. Mitch, Place, and Salvador claimed one of the many tables that lined the perimeter of the dance floor. A guitarist plunked at strings to test their sound and strength. Another man lovingly positioned his steel guitar toward the edge of the stage and off to one side. More couples arrived as dance time approached. Fewer men stood at the bar as those who dropped in for an after-work social left to prepare for another day of labor. On the replugged jukebox, a classic country song droned on as the words of a lonely singer floated out and away. Place watched as a solitary couple slow danced in their own corner to the singer’s mournful lyrics. The male partner held his mate close and talked to her throughout their slow swaying. There was a low-glowing tightness that seemed to mark the couple with implicit confusion. Place watched them closely. He noticed the partly opened mouth of the young woman and thought about her slight smile, a sensuous, anticipatory smile that was repressed by ambivalent expectation.

The fiddler drew on his bow and tested the strings. He riffled through a few chords quickly and then practiced a sequence of exercises to limber up his fingers. “Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three. Hi y’all!” The lead guitarist’s voice bassed out over the sound system. The drummer swept his drumsticks through a series of pattering movements. He shifted individual drums to the stand of space at the back of the small stage that allowed him and his talents to be more visually effective. A joking cocktail waitress delivered three ginger ales to Mitch, Place, and Salvador and told them she knew that they would be trouble tonight. The band members stood with their instruments ready, exchanged glances and nods, and began to play a properly respectful country song. The steel guitar moaned lonely sounds as the attentive musician tickled thick yet delicate sentimental notes from it that evaporated like frustrated sighs. Salvador sat quietly and watched the musicians comb and tease music from their instruments. Mitch watched as Rita, her body outlined by the silhouetted distance of low lights, welcomed arriving couples and proudly invited them to take a table. Place listened with sad admiration and silently craved a beer, more for the moment of the music than for the urge to be taken to a spot where he could forget.

Rita approached her students’ table trailed by a younger woman who resembled her in many ways. She introduced her daughter to Mitch, Place, and Salvador and suggested that Salvador would have somebody safe to dance with. As the band prepared to begin their first set after playing an easy warm-up song, Rita’s daughter walked over to the lead singer and whispered something to him. With quick, short steps that added a rhythmic attractiveness to the way she moved, Rita’s younger image approached her new acquaintances and announced that the band would play some numbers they could two-step to. Without hesitating, she reached for Salvador’s hand and invited him toward the dance floor. Feeling a little awkward, Mitch and Place followed cautiously.

Salvador and Rita’s daughter caught the flow of music and smoothly floated into the line of dance as other couples bobbed and stepped along like vessels parading on a calm bay. Mitch and Place waited for couples to pass by them before they floated into the moving circle. Place was meticulous in making sure he held Mitch the way Rita had taught. As they waited for their timing before they would begin moving onward, a couple avoided sideswiping the waiting pair and two-stepped by them. Place and Mitch bobbed a little as they anticipated the moment they would shove off, and the moment finally came. They were in motion and their steps seemed to fit with the music. Place smiled widely and Mitch did too, her left hand anchoring into Place’s shoulder. Together, they felt as if they were riding a bicycle for the first time. They shuffled by the band, and the lead singer nodded approvingly to Place. They sailed past tables of couples who were sitting this number out or simply watching the other dancers. They completed a full loop with pride and self-centered appreciation of their own partnered display, and they forgot about anybody else who might be dancing.

Place did not notice the pair in front of him until Mitch was backstepping into a larger man’s backside. Both couples jerked to a stop, apologized, and the other twosome was on their way again. Place and Mitch stood motionless as they tried to make sense of their clumsy ways. Woodenly, they stepped off to the side to let others dance by. Place tried to align himself to Mitch’s body, and when they both stepped forward they caromed off each other. In a stiff and ungainly way they pushed into the flow of dance traffic. Mitch took rapid steps backwards—certainly more than two steps and with hardly a shuffle. Place took little rapid running steps to catch up to her, but he kept yanking Mitch to a stop as he tried to remain faithful to the dance pattern. Their movements were rigid and gauche and the music left them bumping, bouncing, and ricocheting to a rhythm that for them was now completely uncalibrated. Mitch and Place were relieved when the song ended and they were able to limp back to the safe harbor of their table. Across the floor, Salvador offered an awkward bow to his partner and thanked her for the dance.

“I can’t believe I’m sweating this much,” Place remarked as he pulled out a chair for Mitch to sit. “That’s a lot of work.”

“It is, especially when you’re learning,” Mitch agreed as she dabbed at the sweat on her forehead with a cocktail napkin.

Salvador, pleased with his ability to assimilate to the music and feeling confident because he liked the way his new clothes fit, smiled widely, almost foolishly, and with a radiating face said, “Es muy fun, huh?”

Place watched as the evening wore on. Drinks did not go wasted, but allowed others to put aside the things that might otherwise keep them from dancing in the first place. The line of dance did not seem to flow as smoothly as it had in the beginning. More raucous movements dominated the once synchronized dance floor. Bigger men, and by now more outgoing and gregarious men, hunched over shorter partners and improvised their dance steps. This interested Place. He assumed that all of the people in the Boot Hill Bar would naturally know how to dance to their music. He had thought it was a cultural inheritance, innate, or an archetype of motion and movement passed down through the cells, blood, and bones of the people he now studied. But the Boot Hill Bar showed Place something else. Even though he was a novice dancer and had only the Texas two-step in his repertoire of dancing, Place began to understand that he could fit into many cultures. Existence wasn’t as narrow as he had previously felt it was. People didn’t own their behavior, beliefs, or patterns of living simply by being born into them. A place like the Boot Hill Bar would welcome men like him and Salvador with few, if any, prerequisites. Comfortably, they could sit at the bar, have a drink, and discuss their day on the ranch and days to come. Place grew comfortable and his thinking expanded along with his psyche, knowing that the boundaries of his world had no specific locations, no determined areas or defined spaces. As an anthropologist gains entrée into an unknown world of knowing people, Place and Salvador, and even Mitch, were within and without. It was up to them, their effort, their interests.