But no one would dance with her at first. She came down the stairs that first Saturday night early in May and walked over to the bar, lifted herself onto a barstool, ordered a vodka Collins, and waited. And nothing happened. Maybe it got a little quieter for a moment, but not very much, so she couldn’t be certain that she’d even been noticed. She looked lovely too: she had made herself up and had put on a deep blue dress which was loose enough that her stomach showed only a little, as if she was merely in the first months of pregnancy; she was wearing nylons and heels; her brown hair was pulled away from her face in such a way that her eyes appeared to be even larger and darker than they were ordinarily. Sitting there, she waited; no one talked to her; nothing happened; finally she ordered another drink. On either side of her, men on barstools were talking to one another, so she swung around to look at the couples in the nearby booths. They were laughing loudly and rising regularly from the booths to dance. Maybe they looked at her; maybe they didn’t—she didn’t know. So that first night she sat there at the bar, waiting, for almost two hours. Then she went home.
The second time, that second Saturday—this would have been about the middle of May now—she drank a small glass of straight vodka at home in the kitchen before she went out. Also, she was dressed differently this time. There was more blue makeup over her eyes and she was wearing a dark red dress with a low neckline which showed a good deal of her full breasts, a dress which made no pretense of disguising her pregnancy; it was stretched tight across her stomach and hips. Preparing to go out, she combed her hair close against her cheeks, partially obscuring her face, and then she entered the Legion again, walked down the steps into that noise and intense Saturday night revelry a second time. And as before, she mounted a barstool, ordered a drink, and then she turned around, with that short red dress hiked two inches above the knees of her crossed legs, with a look of expectation, of invitation almost, held permanently on her beautiful face.
Well, it was pathetic in its lack of subtlely. But subtlety and pathos are not qualities which are much appreciated at the Legion on Saturday nights, so she only had to sit there for an hour this second time before Vince Higgims, Jr., asked to her to dance. Vince was one of Holt County’s permanent bachelors, a lank, black-haired man, a man considered by many of us to be well-educated in the ways of strong drink and ladies in tight dresses. “Come on, girl,” Vince said. “They’re playing my song.”
They were playing Lefty Frizzell’s “I Love You in a Thousand Ways,” with its promise of change, the end of blue days—a song with a slow enough tempo to allow Vince, Jr., to work his customary magic. He led Jessie out onto the crowded floor and pulled her close against his belt buckle; then he began to pump her arm, to walk her backward in that rocking two-step while she held that permanent look of invitation on her face and he went on smiling past her hair in obvious satisfaction. They danced several dances that way, including a fast one or two so that Vince could demonstrate his skill at the jitterbug—he twirled her around and performed intricate movements with his hands—then they cooled off again with a slow song.
And that’s how it began: innocently enough, I suppose, because unlike some of the others in town, at least Vince Higgims meant Jessie Burdette no harm. I doubt that Vince even had hopes of any postdance payoff. It was merely that he was drunk and that he liked to dance. The same cannot be said about the others, however. These other men were still remembering the grain elevator.