“I’ll show you how to dance,” one of them said. “Come on.”
This was Alden Haines, a man of forty-three who was only recently divorced and who farmed a couple of irrigated circles of corn east of town. He was not a bad man really, but he was still angry at the time about the divorce: his wife had been the one to initiate the legal proceedings. More to the point, he was a shareholder in the Farmers’ Co-op Elevator. “See if you can keep up with this,” he said.
He took her out onto the dance floor. Pushing roughly through the other couples, he began immediately to swing her about the floor in circles and abrupt spins. Jessie kept up with him, moving him back and forth or circling at the end of his outstretched arm. Watching her, she seemed almost feverish with intensity, as if she were resolved to test some private limits. When the dance ended, she and Haines were both sweating. The band played a slower song next and Haines pulled her close to himself, clenching his hands behind her back while she held tightly to his neck. He rocked her backward across the floor in time to the slow music. Neither of them talked. When the song ended, someone else cut in, and so it began again, with the same intensity, with the same feverish resolve. It went on in that way until the end of the set.
Then the band broke for ten minutes and the local men bought her drinks again at the bar. While they stood around her, not speaking to her very much but merely talking and joking among themselves while still paying close attention to the level of liquor in her glass, the rest of the people in the Legion that night were also ordering fresh drinks. The two or three barmaids were kept busy carrying trays of glasses and bottles out to them in the booths. Across the room somebody started throwing ice cubes at one of the barmaids to get her attention. “Stop that,” she called. “I see you—I’ll be there in a minute.”
Then the ten-minute break was over. The band resumed their places at the far end of the room and began to play. And Alden Haines led Jessie out onto the floor again. It was a fast song, the band’s rendition of “That’ll Be the Day.” He swung her violently out at the end of his arm—and that was the end of it. Almost before it had begun, it was finished, completed. I suppose it was the ice cubes on the floor. Or perhaps during the break someone had spilled beer or liquor in the dance area. No one was certain what it was. But in any case, her foot slipped on something wet and she went down. She tried to catch herself when she fell but she couldn’t; she fell forward, hard, and didn’t get up immediately. Afterward she lay there in her red dress while the people around her stopped dancing. She turned onto her side, pulling her legs upward against herself. Haines leaned over her.
“You all right?” he said. “Can you get up?”
He lifted under her arm, helping her to stand. She was very pale. She was sweating again now, her face shining like wet chalk in the dim light. In the center of the dance floor she stood unsteadily on her feet while Alden Haines held her arm and people watched. “I think I need to go to the rest room,” she said.
“You want me to walk you upstairs?”
“No. I want to be alone.”