Border Music

the author of "the bridges of madison county"

When this nameless piece a' shit tore off Linda Lobo's G-string instead of sticking money in it like he was supposed to, Texas Jack Carmine went crazy over the edge and hit him with a pool cue. Four hours later and 200 miles down the road, Jack bought coffee and sweet rolls in Chisholm for him and Linda. After that they headed up to Ely, then cut southeast down through the Superior National Forest. Not moving too fast, understand, Jack more or less letting the 1982 Chevy S-10 have its own way.

And the day itself, something like Jack Carmine: one of those mid-to late-autumn jobs uncertain about where it was headed, starting out yellow-gray at sunrise, then eventually struggling up to the middle 60s and staying there through early afternoon before the night cold settled in again. Jack's favorite driving songs, what he called his road tapes, were coming out of a little tape deck sitting on the dash. He'd won the deck in a poker game without knowing it was the wrong size for the slot in his truck. Worked out anyhow, and the music blasted out of two tinny little speakers resting on the seat back, tied down there in a loose, rattly way with leather bootlaces so they wouldn't pitch forward when he hit the brakes.

On that day in that hour of the lives of Jack Carmine and Linda Lobo, things were going about two big jumps past OK. They were heading in the general direction of Lake Superior, weather good, windows rolled down. They'd started drinking beer in late morning, Linda pulling long-neck bottles out of the cooler on which she was resting her feet. With a long-neck balanced between his legs, Jack was leaning against the door, slapping the side of the truck in time with the music. He was steering all the while with one hand and tapping the wheel on the off beats. When Jimmy Buffett came on singing Last Mango in Paris, Jack took his right hand off the wheel, turned up the volume to max and went into honking the horn and singing and slapping the truck door.

Linda started laughing and stretched out her long, long--longer than long--left leg, trying to steer the pickup with the heel of her old cowgirl boot. That didn't work, and the truck drifted over the center line toward a ditch shallow enough that it was nothing more than a little depression in the grass.

Jack laughed, too, hit the brakes and got the Chevy stopped a yard off the blacktop. He shut down the engine, stood on the running board with the tape still playing loud and screamed at the forest right over the top of Jimmy Buffett: "Hear me out there! I ate the last mango in Paris! Took the last plane out of Saigon!"

Linda spilled out the other side of the truck and started doing a little fandango across the road and into a small meadow directly opposite to where the trailer hitch pointed. Jack climbed onto the truck hood while Jimmy Buffett, who was hammering up toward the noonday sun and maybe reaching it, "took the first fast boat to China." Linda was shaking her hips, bending way back, her hair the color of wet blacktop and hanging down, nearly touching the ground. She wasn't fly-me-to-the-moon beautiful, but she was fine looking in her own special way. The kind of look that makes you think bad thoughts, or maybe good ones, depending on how you see the world. Bad or good, wet thoughts in any case.

Jack was waving a long-neck beer and trying to do a sort of Latin shuffle on the truck hood in his old lace-up boots, which was pretty funny since Jack never could dance worth a crap, though he made up in energy what he'd been shorted in grace and rhythm.

Jack's Wranglers had a small tear along the left thigh where a piece of sharp pipe had ripped through and cut his leg a little bit. His red-and-black flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows showed the leather band on his right wrist. No watch, though. Jack Carmine didn't believe in watches.

Jimmy sang, "'I had a Third World girl...."'

Jack was on the hood doing his worse-than-awful version of some kind of foreign dance.

Linda sang, "'That's why we wander,"' still dancing. She ripped off her old denim shirt and got her bra undone in less than one half of half a second, moving to the music while she did it and then swinging both items above her head, glad to be in the sun again.

Jack screamed, "'I had a Third World girl,"' watching Linda shake it real good in his direction and then watching her some more when she turned and faced the forest so all the black bears or whatever was in there could get a good look.

He noticed, among other things, how nice her back was. The sweet arch of it running down to where her rear curved out just so pleasantly, and her vertebrae etched real clean against good skin.

He jumped down from the hood with Linda moving toward him, music still pounding out of the truck cab. They started dancing right on the highway, him looking down at her chest now and then, since a man couldn't help looking down now and then if he had anything at all going for him. Sunlight was falling late-October hard but still yellow and warm, and Jack Carmine and Linda Lobo went on dancing along the road in the direction of Ely. She told him later on it was the first time she'd really been happy in a long while.

They were dancing back toward the truck when Jack looked over her shoulder and saw a car coming toward them with a top-heavy profile indicating serious law. Jack flipped the long-neck into some brush while Linda wriggled into her shirt no more than 18 seconds before the trooper pulled up beside them. She was holding her bra behind her, squiggling it back and forth like a raggedy doll. Jack took it from her and stuffed it down the front of his jeans.

What the trooper saw was this guy with long brown hair that was turning pretty gray and hanging two inches over his flannel-shirt collar. And he also saw this interesting-looking woman who was kind of flushed in the face, had nice black hair hanging halfway down her back and filled out her jeans like she'd been born in them. He could have sworn she hadn't had any shirt on when he had come around the curve less than a half mile back. And what he heard was the tape deck moving into Waylon Jennings doing Rainy Day Woman.

The trooper was looking at the front of Linda's shirt, underneath which some pretty wonderful stuff had obviously been liberated and was pushing against the denim as if it were seeking even more freedom. He switched over to looking at the front of Jack's jeans. Kind of a funny-looking hump under the zipper. The trooper had seen about everything in 14 years on the northern roads, but the high-up bulge in Jack's Wranglers was something different.

"Everything OK here?" the trooper asked.

"Everything's A-OK. A-OK and a little better' n that," Jack said, smelling the scent of conifers and watching some kind of big bird land on the highway behind the trooper's car. The bird started pulling and tearing at a piece of something dead and smashed, stopped for a moment, then looked in Jack's direction, as if Jack might be next, somewhere down the hard miles of all the highways that ever ran toward sad-eyed endings.

"Where you from?" the officer said, glancing at the truck's license plate.

Jack grinned. "Alpine, Texas. Up here layin' gas pipe. All finished now. Me and the missus, we're sort of takin' the long way back home, seeing the sights a little."

Hard to say if the trooper grinned back or sideslipped into something a lot closer to benevolent doubt. He'd heard Texans were crazy and figured he'd come across a good example of that, so maybe it was best to let the garden grow as it grew and not fuss with it. The trooper glanced at his watch. His oldest son was quarterbacking the Two Harbors football team. If he were going to make the game, it was time to get moving.

"Well, you better take it easy and drive carefully."

"Will do, Officer, will do. Turnin' south for Alpine pretty soon," Jack said.

Back in the truck, Jack and Linda moved on southeast through an afternoon with its own virtues if you knew how to appreciate them, which Jack did for certain and Linda was trying to do. About a mile farther on he rose off the seat, reached down inside his jeans and yanked out Linda's bra.

"Careful there, mister. It's the only one I've got except for the tassels stuck in my purse, and they ain't gonna take me too far in polite company."

She pulled out two more beers while Jack hung her bra over the rearview mirror and pointed at it swinging back and forth. "Speakin" of tassels, this is a whole lot better than a damn string deal from a Hibbing High graduation hat hangin' off your mirror," he said. "We'll get you some extra equipment first town we hit. And considerin' we left--where'n hell was that we pulled out from in a shower of parking lot gravel, you carryin' your duds in both hands?"

"Dillon."

"Considerin' we left Dillon, Minnesota 1 1 hours ago in a fever, we ain't doin' too bad." Linda stuck her right boot against the wing window support and tapped it to Kenny Baker fiddling his way into High Country. She took a swallow of beer and looked over at Jack Carmine. "Wonder how that guy's feeling you whacked with a pool cue."

"He's feelin' hard, I'd guess. Probably (continued on page 187)Border Music(continued from page 100) shouldn't have done it, but it's a difficult time for tryin' to be a reasonable man. Never hit anybody with your fists. They only do that in movies and certain dog-hole saloons in Texas. Breaks up your hands and you can't work. Can't work, can't eat. Can't eat, can't work. Can't work, can't buy beer. Can't buy beer, can't dance. That's the way it runs."

"I gotta pee," Linda said.

Jack slowed down and stopped along the road. "Watch out for moose. They're in rut this time of year. They see your bare bottom, there'll be a stampede of bulls down through those white birch trees with the yellow quaverin' leaves. And I ain't got no pool cue this time." He was beating the heel of his hand against the steering wheel, pretty close to keeping time with the music.

"I've had worse happen," said Linda. "On the whole, I'll take a moose in rut over men every time. Least you know what they're after for sure."

"Some truth in all that," Jack said. "Think maybe I should wander into the trees also, long as we're into bodily functions. I'll take a different route and promise not to look."

"Suit yourself. Won't bother me one way or the other." She walked up a mild slope into the birches, talking over her shoulder. "Better watch out for moose yourself. I saw an article 'while back about orangutans in Borneo or wherever, trying to get it on with both men and women."

"No kidding?" Jack said, angling off from the direction Linda was heading.

"That's what the article said," her voice coming from somewhere off in the trees. "What's your name, anyway?"

Jack was peeing on a log, trying to write the first letter of his first name.

"True name's Jack Carmine."

"I thought you said it was Erik something-or-other." She was buttoned up and walking. He could hear her boots coming through the leaves while he was finishing the crossbar on the J.

"That was last night, when I didn't know whether you might have second thoughts and decide to turn me over to whatever version of a posse the Norskies could rustle up. For some reason all I could think of was Erik the Red, so I said my name was Erik Redder." He zipped his jeans and walked back to the truck, where Linda was leaning on the door with her arms folded, looking at him through the open window.

"Who's Erik the Red?"

Jack started the truck and got it moving. "Norwegian navigator about a thousand years ago. Discovered Greenland, as I recall."

"How come you swatted that guy when he pulled off my G-string? He wasn't the first to try it."

"Just didn't seem right, that's all, him doin' that. Tell me, how come you were dancing all but naked in a place called the Rainbow Bar, anyway?"

"Beats workin' at the chicken-processing plant, which is what I was doin' before takin' up a new profession at the Rainbow. I was makin' $5.50 an hour at Northern Food Processors, working in somethin' approximating 48-degree temperatures and well on my way to carpal tunnel syndrome. The supervisor used to come down the line while I had my hands in chicken guts and run his hand over my rear when I couldn't fight back. One day he whispered in my ear, 'You ought to go down to the Rainbow when they have amateur night and show em how it's done.' Next time he put his hands on me, about two months ago, I let him have it with a load of cold chicken guts right in the face.

"After that I went down to the Rainbow, bypassin' amateur night altogether. The manager was a bag of poultry guts himself, like somethin' out of a real bad movie. ClicheA is the word, I guess--sloppy fat, cigar, big pinkie ring. Leaned back in his office chair and said, 'If you're gonna be a strobe-light honey, I gotta see what ya look like. Take off your clothes.' So I took 'em off. He said, 'Ya got great tits and legs, sweetheart, and ya ain't bad lookin', either. Turn around for me a couple times.' I did just that, and he started kind of drizzlin' and said, 'Not bad for an older gal, not bad at all.' Then he told me I was hired and the pay was 75 bucks a night for what he called 'three performances of exotic dancin' per evening, startin' at 11.' A girl's got to live, so I decided right then and there to give the gin-and-skin routine a try. He said, 'Good, we'll call you Linda--Linda what? Linda Lobo. That'll look good in newspaper advertisements."'

"Probably a dumb question here, but how'd you know what to do? Up on stage, I mean." Jack was taking the truck around a long curve past a small lake on the left, yellow leaves scattered on the smooth brown surface. Four does and a pair of yearlings drinking 50 yards down the shore lifted their heads, watching two pieces of flotsam drift past in a Chevy pickup with dented fenders.

"Like you said, dumb question. First off, the Rainbow crowd is a whole lot more concerned about quantity than quality. In case you haven't noticed, I've got a fair amount of the former, and that's what counts in the Rainbow. Beyond that, it don't take no trainin'. All women know how to shake it hard if they want to. Nature gave us that ability as a way of attracting you wonderful things called men. I just kind of pretended I was all wound up and--you know--doin' it."

"Doin' it," Jack said flatly, a little grin coming over his entire being. "As in doin' it with a man?"

"Man, another woman, moose, all the same. It don't require heavy thinkin', Texas Jack. You just pretend you're doin' it."

Merle Haggard jumped into I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am, the electric bass shaking the little speakers almost to bits.

Linda reached over and fished Jack's cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. She tamped one on the dash, lit it and settled back. "Older woman showed me how to twirl my tassels."

"I saw you do that. Pretty fast. Whatever happened to your supervisor at the plant? He ever wander down to the Rainbow to get a better look?"

"He sure did. That was him you cracked with a pool cue last night after he tried to improve his view by tearin' off my G-string."

"C'mon--that was him?"

"Yep. Floyd Rattler. Ol' Floyd the Void, as we used to call him."

"Guess I helped you lose your dancin' job. Sorry about that."

"Not too much of a loss. I always viewed it as a temporary thing till somethin' better came along. Anyway, they were thinkin' about switchin' over to a new entertainment deal, somethin' to do with dwarf tossin' or female mud wrestlin' or topless women splashin' around in creamed corn, some variation on those things, maybe all of them together at the same time."

Jack Carmine lit a cigarette and shook his head, trying to imagine what combinations could be developed from mixing half-naked women, dwarfs and creamed corn: (1) dwarf refereeing match between mud-wrestling women, (2) half-naked women tackling naked dwarf eating creamed corn, (3) dwarf in bikini.

Merle dug himself a deeper hole in the tune.

"I always liked that song," Linda said. "It's kinda sad in a way--guy lookin' through the phone books, no matter what town he's in, tryin' to find his daddy. Got Pancho and Lefty on these tapes anyplace? I like that one, too."

"So do I. Think it's comin' up pretty soon. Look in the glove compartment, see if there's a Minnesota map in there. I've got no idea where we are."

She unfolded the map and studied it. Jack looked over at Linda Lobo. Her long hair was messed and windblown, but she still looked good to him--a long way from perfect, but high cheekbones and nice lips, reminding him vaguely of how the actress Barbara Hershey looked in her salad days, back when she was doing Boxcar Bertha and other antisocial gems Jack liked. Linda was holding the cigarette in her left hand, staring at the map and tapping her boot toes.

"Lake Superior's straight ahead. Road stops there, dead-ends on 61 runnin' along the lakeshore. Goose the truck a little and we'll hit the water. Turn right at the lake and Silver Bay comes up. Left is a place called Little Marais. Where we goin', anyway?"

"Don't know. Texas eventually is where I'm headin'. Wanna go to Texas?"

"Just like that, go to Texas with you? I only learned your real name a few miles back. On the other hand, my options are somewhat narrowed down at the moment. Let's see how things run."

The rubber tires hummed toward the waves of Lake Superior, the road ending there while October was thinking about doing the same.

At the intersection with Route 61, Jack cocked a quarter between his thumb and forefinger. "Call it," he said.

"Heads, we go right." Linda took her bra off the mirror and stuffed it into her purse.

The quarter spun. He caught it and slapped it on his wrist. "Tails." He turned left with the sun running low behind them. "Hey, here come Merle and Willie with that song you wanted."

Both of them started singing along on the chorus.

•

Ten miles farther on, Little Marais showed itself, nothing much beyond a liquor store and a mom-and-pop grocery. Jack and Linda went into the grocery store. He bought a loaf of bread, had the woman tending things cut an inch from a round of sharp cheddar cheese and picked up a jar of honey on impulse.

"Did you see anything you want?" he said to Linda.

She was in the rear of the store and didn't hear him. He walked over to an aisle and peeked down it. There were a few racks of clothing against the back wall, and Linda was fussing around.

She walked toward him with four small packages in her hand.

"Find what you need?" he said.

"Yep." She grinned, dangling two plastic-wrapped brassieres in front of her while she walked. "I'm amazed they have my size. Must be some healthy women in these parts. Got a couple of sets of things for farther down, also."

Jack and Linda walked to the clothes, which were all sized for men. Linda pushed hangers around until she found a smallish Levi's jacket. Jack pulled out a black turtleneck and held it up. "This might come close to fittin' you."

She took the sweater and looked down as she held it against her. "It'll work. Think I'll wear the jacket. I'm already feelin' chilly here in the late afternoon."

"Anything else?" the proprietor asked. She glanced at the front of Linda's shirt, then at the packaged bras on the counter. About time, she thought, still not understanding the imprudent and unapologetic generation coming along behind her.

Linda picked up some toothpaste and a toothbrush, a stick of deodorant and a pair of boot socks. She stood looking at a cardboard display of razors. "You use this kind?" She pointed.

"Yes, ma'am, when I'm shavin', the inclination for which comes and goes."

"I'll borrow yours. No point in havin' two of everything." She went back for a tube of shampoo and some makeup and laid the whole works on the counter.

The woman behind the cash register rang up the sale. Jack pulled a money clip from his left jeans pocket, peeled off three 20s from the roll and paid the bill. Linda pulled on the denim jacket and they went over to the liquor store.

"Howdy," an old man said when they walked in.

"Howdy back," said Jack Carmine. "Need some beer."

"Cold stuff is over there in the cooler." The old man jerked his head.

Jack picked up three six-packs of cold Moosehead and walked to the cash register, his chin pressed down on the top six-pack to steady the load. "Pretty quiet around here," he said, grinning.

"Gets quiet after Labor Day. Personally, I like it quiet. Better class of people come through after the summer tourists are gone. Upper-shelf people come around this time of year."

"Yeah, like us," Linda said under her breath. Jack smiled. The old man punching the cash register didn't hear.

"Any place to stay around here?" Jack asked, handing over some bills.

"Best Western just up the road. Right near the Onion River. Too early for skiing, so they'll have some rooms."

Back in the truck, driving north, Jack chewed on a stick of jerky and hummed. Linda opened two beers and a bag of nuts. Night was coming fast.

"I've got a little money in a Dillon bank. I'll pay my share when I get a chance to send for it," she said, dumping peanuts down her throat and following that with a wash of Moosehead.

"Don't worry about it. I collected nearly six months' wages before stopping in Dillon. Had 'em hold my summer money so I wouldn't piss it away."

"Well, I do worry about it. So I'll pay you back when I can. Used to payin' my own way."

"OK, it's up to you."

The Cliff Dweller Motel sat on the lakeshore, balconies jutting over a slope running down to the water. The parking lot was filled with cars.

"Want me to check on the rooms?" Linda asked.

"Fine with me."

She came out of the office a minute later. "Here's the deal. The man has a pair of rooms left. One's got two double beds at $46.50 but no lake view. The other's got a queen-size bed and a lake view, but it's 54 bucks."

"Want your own room?" Jack looked at her.

"No need to spend that kind of money. You seem OK to me. We can work it out." She smiled. "I've spent a night or two in these places with people I didn't know half as well as I know you. Besides, any man who'd coldcock someone to defend a lady's honor when her clothes are being torn off probably can be trusted."

"Let's go big time, then. Take the one with the lake view." He pulled out his money clip and handed 20s to her. "Ask him about somewhere to eat."

Linda nodded and walked to the office. When she opened the door she looked back at Jack Carmine and smiled, moving her head from side to side in a quick little way, as if some hidden song were beating its way through her brain.

•

They carried their gear into the room in one trip. Jack had an old blue duffel bag, which he put on top of the cooler for the portage. Linda carried a brown paper sack filled with her essentials.

She pulled the drapery cord, showing Lake Superior 30 feet down the slope. "Hey, this is real nice, balcony and everything, just like the man promised," she said, opening the sliding glass door.

Jack went out on the balcony and leaned on the wrought-iron railing. Two-foot waves were slapping the rocky shore. Off to the left was a stand of trees holding on to the last red-and-yellow things of autumn, leaves rattling in the lake breeze. They stood there for a few minutes, not saying anything, both of them squinting into a diagonal strip of sunlight running across the water from somewhere down toward Duluth.

"Geez Louise, I need a bath," Linda said. "Where's your razor?" She went into the bathroom with a beer, her brown paper sack and Jack's razor.

In a few minutes the room started smelling good, the way it always does when you're traveling with a woman. Jack sat on a corner of the balcony rail, drinking Moosehead and swinging his feet. He rubbed his cheek, felt three days of new whiskers poking at him. A young couple dressed in perfect L.L. Bean came out on their own balcony two rooms away. The man looked over at Jack and nodded.

"Evenin'," Jack said, trying to remember the last time he'd felt young. Long time ago. Long time.

He went back into the room just as Linda walked out of the bathroom with a big towel wrapped around her body and another one wrapped around her head. Jack wondered how old she was. Early 30s, he guessed, and holding up extraordinarily well, about as well as the towel was being held up by her breasts, which was a first-class holdup. Her legs weren't as long as they looked in her jeans and boots, but they were still long and just fine or a cut better. He'd always noticed that women seem bigger when they're dressed and a lot smaller and a lot less formidable without their clothes.

She turned on a little radio by the bed and moved the dial until a country music station came in. Jack went into the bathroom, shaved and got into the shower. Linda knocked on the door.

"Come on in," he said over the noise of the water.

"Mind if I brush my teeth while you're doin' what you're doin'?"

"No problem." Steam was pouring over the top of the shower curtain, water driving into his neck, soap running down his body. Jack was starting to feel somewhat younger. Somewhat.

"What's this thing lyin' here?"

"What thing?"

"With a strap and zipper pocket."

"Shoulder holster, where I carry my serious money, except for what I already wired to my bank in Alpine. Got my pocket picked of $700 in Vegas some years ago. Got the holster right after that. Don't like checks, like cash." He barely heard the door shutting as she went out. He combed his wet hair straight back and wrapped a towel around his hips. Linda was lying on the bed, looking out through the sliding glass door, chin on her folded hands.

"What did the man say about a restaurant?"

"Says there's one here at the motel and a place or two about 40 miles up the road in Grand Marais." She said it pensively, slowly kicking her feet where they hung over the edge of the bed.

Coming up on the late middle of his life, Jack Carmine leaned against the frame of the sliding door, one ankle crossed over the other and arms folded. It all fit--wearing a towel in a room on the shore of Lake Superior, sharing the room with a woman about whom he knew nothing.

"Most people don't do things like this," she said, coming out of whatever she'd been in.

"Do what?"

"Run out the back door of a place called the Rainbow Bar in Dillon, Minnesota with someone they don't even know and get in a truck and drive all day and end up here without any clothes on in a motel room."

"That's true. Country'd probably collapse if everybody behaved like this."

She was still looking out the glass door at Lake Superior. "Sometimes you--you just got to go, just got to get out of wherever you are. Catch the last plane out, like the song says. Know what I mean?"

"Gotcha. Think about all those dumb bastards suckin' each other's exhaust fumes in the Holland Tunnel about now or ridin' some clackin' commuter train out to the suburbs. I think about that a lot and swear I'll never ever come close to doin' it. Made that decision 30 years ago. Think they're any better off with their mortgages and retirement plans and full medical coverage than we are right now? Hell no, unless we get sick or old or need a house real fast."

"Your name really Jack Carmine?"

"Yep. Want a beer?"

"Sure. I'm gettin' the bed damp with this towel. Can you handle it if I take it off?"

"Yep, if I suck up a little discipline, which I ain't got much of, but some. You'll have to put up with me glancin' your way now and then, however. Maybe every 14 seconds or so."

She rolled over and slid the towel off her body, giving him a flash of her front side. "You look pretty good in a towel yourself, Jack Carmine. How do you stay thin, drinkin' beer the way you do?"

"Hard work and good genes. Mostly the latter, I'm guessin'." He was having a little trouble getting his heartbeat squared away. Linda was lying on her stomach again, arms curled around a pillow on which she was resting her head, looking back at him. Nice smooth body all clean and perfumed, her rear looking good and breasts pressing into the bed.

"I think I better sit down, if you don't mind. I'm havin' just a bit of trouble keepin' things under control. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pushin' for anything, just talkin' truth. There's certain involuntary aspects to being a man sometimes, some parts kinda takin' on a life all their own."

"Don't worry about it. I'm reasonably familiar with the idea. Nothin' to be embarrassed about." She patted the bed beside her. "Sit here if you want, I'm not worried."

A half hour later they were both lying on their stomachs, two feet apart. Jack had tossed his towel in the general direction of the bathroom ten minutes before.

"You know," she said, "there's something real nice about lying here talkin' with a man, both of us naked and yet not trying to get crazy right off the bat. Most men couldn't do that, and I appreciate it. It's bein' intimate without gettin' intimate. You done this before?"

Jack was tapping the lip of his beer bottle against the headboard and studying what he was doing, as if there were some Zenlike quality to it. "Well, for argument's sake, let's say I have. The trick is to get by that first surge of hormones and adrenaline and quiet down. Where'd you say you're from?"

"Altoona, Iowa. Right outside of Des Moines."

She rolled over, looking up at the ceiling. Her breasts were every bit as big and nice as he remembered from when he'd watched her dancing the night before in the Rainbow and along the country road a few hours earlier on this day. She blinked her eyes twice, still staring up at the ceiling with little sparkly things embedded in it. The radio was playing one of those nondescript songs--good music for country dancing, not too memorable beyond that.

"What'd you leave behind in Dillon?"

"Nothin' much. Rent was paid up, so I'm square with the landlord. A few clothes, mostly jeans and work duds. One decent dress I bought on a wild splurge last summer--62 bucks, on sale."

"Tell you what," Jack said, grinning at her. "I'll buy you a nice dress--real nice one--and all that goes with it. If you're stickin' with me for a while, or even if you ain't, we'll find a store in Duluth or Minneapolis or somewhere down the line, get you fitted out proper."

She smiled softly at him. "You don't have to do that."

"Know I don't have to, but I want to. Wanna watch you try on clothes. Something kind of sexy about watching a woman tryin' on new clothes, so I'll get my money's worth. I think it's because women like to do it so much. Makes you feel good just watchin'."

She put a hand on the small of his back and noticed an old, mean-looking scar on his right shoulder. "Jack Carmine, you're OK. How'd you learn so much about women?"

"Keep your head up, pay attention, things come along. Just know it, that's all. Gettin' hungry?"

"Yes. Wanna try the motel restaurant or what?"

"I'm votin' for the run up to Grand Marais. Somehow motel restaurants always seem about the same. I get this feelin' there's a cook and two waitresses followin' me around the country, going to work wherever I stop. I look up from a menu I'm sure I've seen before and there's a biscuit shooter in a black-and-white uniform with a pink hankie in the pocket, and I swear I seen her in another restaurant back down the line."

Linda swung off the bed and padded toward the bathroom, grabbing her jeans and new sweater on the way. Jack liked to watch women walk away. More than that, he genuinely liked women, not only in bed but overall. Liked to watch them, talk with them, dance with them, and women picked up on it. They liked him because he liked them for all the things women are.

Linda came out of the bathroom looking good. Her jeans were a little dusty, but the new turtleneck sweater fit her near perfect, a touch on the baggy side, but close. She'd tied her long hair back with a pink ribbon from her purse.

Jack was lacing up his boots. He'd put on a clean flannel shirt, blue-and-white plaid this time, and his other pair of jeans. "Ready, dancin' lady?"

"You see one of those shoeshine cloths here?"

Jack looked in the closet, found one and tossed it to her.

She put one boot up on the luggage rack, then the other, running the cloth over them, then stood with both feet close together and looked down. "Kinda pathetic."

"Kinda just fine, I'd say." He pulled on a leather jacket that'd been down the road some. "You're looking real good in all respects."

"Thanks. It's good to hear that once in a while whether it's true or not."

"It's true tonight, and that's all that matters."

•

They went out of the room, big moon three days short of full and temperature dropping fast. Jack started singing, "Pancho was a bandit-boy," and the truck rolled north along the shore of big water, what the Indians called Gitche Gumee. Just under an hour later they came into Grand Marais.

"Man at the motel said there's a road-house," Linda said. "Harbor's Edge, Harbor somethin', can't remember."

"There it is, Harbor Light."

Jack swung into the parking lot. He opened the truck door partway, then stopped and said, "You hear what I hear? There's a band playin' in there. That's got promise, don't you think? Except they're playin' one of those new songs that strike me as a lot like what automobiles have come to be--can't tell 'em apart. Liked tail fins on cars, like the older songs better." Linda smiled at him while they walked to the front door of the Harbor Light. "While you're on the subject of old, how old are you anyway, Jack Carmine?"

"Let's see, 46 right at the moment, and--uh-oh--47 tomorrow." He pulled open the door and held it for her.

"Texas Jack turns into Birthday Jack. Why didn't you tell me?"

Jack started moving his hips and shoulders as if he were dancing. "Didn't think about it till you asked. Yep, tonight I'm doin' tangos and eatin' mangoes, grabbin' the last plane out. Goin' first-class in Grand Marais, insofar as that's possible at all."

The hostess came up to them, smiling and clutching menus to her chest. Jack grinned at her. "Best table in the house. It's my birthday tomorrow, and I'm suddenly near to out of control since I remembered it."

She smiled again and took them into the restaurant, gave them a nice table that looked out into a stand of conifers waving slowly in the night wind and laid menus in front of them.

"Something from the bar?"

Jack looked at Linda. "Scotch on the rocks," she said.

"Give her the best scotch you got."

"We have J&B."

"OK. Bring me two Mooseheads."

"Two?"

"Yes, ma'am, two. Got a last plane to catch in a little while. Need a runnin' start."

"There's no airport here," the hostess noted.

"Yes there is, only I'm the only one can see it, and the plane's leavin' shortly with the bandit-boy on board." Jack flattened out his hand and swooped it over the table.

The hostess looked at the ceiling for a moment with "another drunk" written on her face. "The waitress will bring your drinks in a moment." She walked away.

"I don't think she likes me," Jack said, grinning.

"She's just not used to highfliers, Jack. She'll come around. She'll be beggin' for your hand in marriage before the night's over. Trust me."

The waitress showed up with drinks.

"Who's playin' here tonight?" Jack asked.

"The Rusty Cadillacs. They're real good. Least, I like 'em."

He looked over at Linda. "Whaddya feel like, dancin' lady?"

She looked good. Face made up just a little, black hair all shining and gathered in the back with the pink ribbon. Last night she'd been swinging her breasts, flaming orange tassels twirling around.

"If you're worried about price, stop worryin'," he told her. "You like lobster?"

"I love lobster. Hardly ever had it in my life, though. You sure?"

He looked at the menu, talking to the waitress. "Says here you got lobster tails at market price, which is the price set by those boys up in Maine with all their holdin' ponds where they keep the lobsters so they can keep the price up, like with diamonds. Farmers been tryin' to do the same thing for years, but they're too dumb or stubborn to get organized." The waitress was nervous, pad and pencil ready. "Two big ol' lobster tails at market price is what we'll have."

"We're outta baked potatoes, but we got hash browns or fries."

"I'll have hash browns," Linda said. "Italian dressing on my salad."

"Same thing here," Jack grinned.

"Two lobster tails, hash browns and Eye-talian dressing. I'll be right back with your salads."

"Havin' fun?" Jack asked after the waitress left.

"So far, so good." Linda smiled and looked at him, tapping her knife to the Rusty Cadillacs playing somewhere in another part of the building. "This the way you do things most of the time? Drivin' around, eatin' lobster?"

"Sometimes, sometimes not. Depends how my moods and money are runnin'. Never solve anything just drivin' around in the truck. On the other hand, if that don't solve problems, not sure what does." He surveyed the big dining room with open rafters showing above them. "This strikes me as a real old building. Kinda like it. Like old things, things with a little living rubbed into'em."

Linda continued to tap her knife and looked up at the ceiling. "That sort of fits us, doesn't it?"

"Me, not you. You're not old. These deep old lines in my cheeks ain't all due to hard wind and burnin' sun."

"Well, I'm 37 and startin' to sag a little, mentally for the most part. But I'm also noticin' a little droop here and there, enough so that my career as a strobelight honey wouldn't have had long to run"--she spread her fingers, studied them--"except for my fingernails, which are doin' a lot better since I got outta the chicken plant."

"No sags or droops obvious to me, and I been lookin' pretty close for the last few hours. Besides, I like to think the gloss of age has its own charms." Jack grinned. "We goin' dancin' after the lobster, or you too tired?"

"Sure, let's go dancin'." Linda held up her drink and Jack tapped a Moosehead against it. She said, "Here's to whatever, anything better than twirlin' my tassels in the Rainbow in Dillon, front of all those gapin' mouths and droolin' chins."

"OK, we'll drink to anything better'n that, and we'll try to improve on things as we go along. But I gotta say, with some small amount of both truth and regret, you might have become the all-time world champion tassel twirler had you stuck with it."

"Well, thank you, I guess. Probably not the same as being a great violin player, but skill comes in all forms, and a lady's got to make the best of what she has." She started laughing.

"Let me in on the joke," he said.

"I was just thinkin' about how attendance at football games would go through the roof if we substituted my kinda twirlin' for baton twirlers during halftime."

"Want me to start workin' on it, take over as your bookin' agent? See it now, don't you? Fifty thousand people at ten bucks a head doin' that thing called the wave and eatin' hot dogs while they're watching Miss Linda Lobo twirlin' her tassels. I could stand out there on the field with a number 20 pool cue and act as your protector. We could retire after one performance."

The butterflied lobster tails came along, slightly curled and bright orange-red. After the waitress set two cups of melted butter over warming candles and left, Linda said, "This is real nice. Feels kinda fancy and all, more than I'm used to, at any rate." She smiled at Texas Jack Carmine through the candlelight, and Jack was happy because Linda Lobo was happy.

When they'd finished eating and the waitress had cleared the table, Jack leaned back in his chair. "Well, how'd you feel about the lobster?"

"I felt like I was watchin' Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, only I was in it this time. It was real good, Jack. I'm glad you suggested it. Uh-oh, look what's comin' your way, I bet."

The waitress was carrying a small cake with a single candle stuck in the frosting. She marched up to the table. "Happy birthday from the Harbor Light. I'm supposed to sing the song, but I don't sing too well, but I will if you want."

Jack squinted at the waitress' name tag. "Pam, everybody sings good when they warm up to it. Just gotten so most people are so cold they can't get warm, think they can't sing. Don't worry about it. I'll do the singing if you promise to hum along. Deal?" She nodded.

Jack started singing in a croaky baritone, "Happy birthday to Jack...," then stopped. "C'mon, Pam, you promised to hum along."

The waitress blushed and faltered into a low hum, standing there with her hands clenched together and pressed against her stomach. Linda smiled and sang along with Jack. When they finished, Jack dipped his fingers in the water glass and pinched out the flame. "My granddaddy always shut down birthday fire that way. 'Fight fire with water, Jack,' is what he used to say, 'and save your breath for runnin', 'cause you're gonna need it."'

Four people sitting at a nearby table applauded. Jack turned in his chair and bowed to them. "Like some cake? I'll cut it thinner'n West Texas rain, make enough for everybody." They said no, but thanks anyway. So he cut it in thirds and insisted Pam take her piece along for later on.

Jack paid the bill and they went down a hallway in the general direction of the music. At the end of the hall was a crowded bar, and beyond the bar was a door that opened into the dance-hall portion of this more or less total entertainment complex in the north woods.

Above the Rusty Cadillacs was a red, white and blue banner: Happy Anniversary Mr. & Mrs. Edward Thorvald.

Jack pushed up to the bar, got two beers, and they went into the dance hall, which was about 75 feet long and 50 wide with tables around the edge and a low stage at the far end. The band was playing Me and Bobby McGee.

"Well, take it away, Leon!" Jack was clapping along with the music. "You do the Texas two-step, Miss Linda Lobo?"

"Never done it, seen it done on TV. Who's Leon?"

"Bob Wills' steel-guitar player in the old days. Bob used to say that when it was time for an instrumental break." He gestured toward the dance floor. "Wanna give it a try?"

She cocked her head, held out her arms and grinned at him. "Teach me."

"See, there's this little kind of shuffle-skip thing you do."

Two minutes later Linda Lobo was doing the Texas two-step better than Jack had ever done it in his wildest dreams. Doesn't mean she was great; it means Jack wasn't so great. But fun was the mission, and having wisdom of a kind that's pretty much been lost overall, they didn't let technique get in the way.

When the Cadillacs finished Louisiana Saturday Night, Jack's flannel shirt was soaked, sweat running down his chest and forehead. Dancing was a lot of work for him. Linda was a little red in the face but looked cool as you please otherwise.

Around 11, the band played a country version of a fanfare. "Like to bring Mr. and Mrs. Thorvald up here so we can give 'em a proper salute," the band's guitar player said into the microphone.

"By God, isn't that somethin'?" Jack said, looking down at Linda. "Forty years, for Christ's sake. Forty years they been married. Hell, if I added up all the married years of everyone I know, in-cludin' seconds and thirds, it wouldn't total 40."

The Thorvalds were short and stout and stood with their arms around each other's backs, waving at the crowd. Linda was looking at them, looking sad in her own way. She tilted her head toward Jack, and he could see her eyes were wet. "That is somethin'," she said. "Takes a lotta carin' and patience to make it that far in one piece."

"Lotta love, too, don't you think?" Jack was smiling nice and easy.

"Lotta all those things, Jack. All those things that got away from some of us."

Jack put his arms around her, then reached up and brushed away a tear that had run down out of her left eye. She put her arms around him and stood on her tiptoes, kissing him soft and warm for a few seconds, then laid her head on his chest and watched the Thorvalds lead off the Anniversary Waltz.

"C'mon," Linda said quietly as other people moved out on the floor to join the Thorvalds. "Let's do the anniversary waltz." And they danced, as the others danced, with the Rusty Cadillacs playing the very best they could for this song and Jack dancing the very best he could for this song. He and Linda moved around the floor in waltz time with the others who had come to honor the Thorvalds and the night and all things caring and patient and loving in a world that was moving otherwise, all those things getting away from Linda Lobo and Texas Jack Carmine.

The conifers swayed outside, the big lake where the ore boats went was cold and getting rougher, and Jack danced with Linda while winter started moving south out of Canada toward Grand Marais, Minnesota.

"'Not bad for an older gal.' Then he told me I was hired and the pay was 75 bucks a night."