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The long 4th of July weekend was beyond gloomy, it felt threatening. The snow didn't fall in the city, but close enough over Mt. Evans that some people felt it as an omen. At the bus stop strangers talked to Dancer as they always did about the headlines showing through the windows of the newspaper vending machines: "always bad news" they'd say, "another shooting, what's happened to the young people?" the older passengers would ask, "why doesn't somebody do something?" and "why doesn't somebody listen?" said the younger passengers feeling scared but acting tough in purple or lime colored hair, a multitude of earrings and nose rings, black jackets and boots even in the summer and the ghoulish pallor that sent a signal long since confused. The look could mean anything in the nineties. Dancer caught different buses because she had the luxury of working in a bookstore that opened at 10 a.m. so she could leave early and linger over breakfast and a book in a cafe or sleep late as the mood took her. She had realized that a certain amount of freedom that way would always be essential. But she always avoided the 7:40 because she knew that Ronnie took that one, still looking for her perhaps. She had no idea what he did. There were far fewer passengers the Friday before the 4th: it was a big weekend for families to take off and go camping in the mountains or visit somewhere out of town. Dancer was going to spend the weekend in a house in Estes Park with a friend she'd met only recently but felt she'd known for years…oh yes, one found those folks, what both thought one would speak, it didn't matter which, the soul sister thing: it was definitely a woman thing and maybe a 40s thing, finding one's freedom and one's self after raising the kids, after disillusionment with the marriage, after the parents had become more like children, finding oneself all alone, the loneliness of it, the freedom of it.
Barb was a writer and belonged to a group that met once a month to exchange encouragement in that world of constant rejection. One of their members had given a poetry reading at the bookstore and Dancer had been so impressed. The poet was already nearly 80 and had kept the voice of rebellion made eloquent by the wisdom of age. Barb idolized her and the three had talked late into the night in the locked and empty bookstore after closing. They watched the seasons of Colfax transpire outside the large plate glass window, hear the shouts, the sirens, the traffic, saw the lights, the cops, the kids, the drunks and they'd talk some and think some and drink endless cups of the herbal tea Dancer brewed. Now Barb had invited her to drive up to Estes Park and stay in the house owned by another member of the group who had made the mountain retreat available to her fellow artists and Dancer was looking forward to a marathon of walking and talking, and walking in silence through beautiful vistas and probably some window shopping too.
Dancer closed early as had been discussed. Having worked here nearly a year she pretty much ran the store. Kids would come and go but she was satisfied and stayed long enough to get pay raises and final say on most matters such as opening and closing, orders, readings and window arrangements. She had added some comfortable armchairs so folks could just set a while and read and kept a pot of herbal tea going all the time. Both cops and kids from gangs had come in and found themselves confiding in her and the security system was essentially concern and goodwill from both sides of otherwise warring factions. Men, young and old, fell in love with her, not in a lustful way but in another way that felt so much more momentous. She represented some mystery and glamour to them and her interest in their lives was flattering. She felt safer on the street than she had in her ex-husband's mansion.
Barb picked her up at Colfax and Broadway and they headed west toward the mountains and the sunset to catch I-25 thence to the Boulder turnpike and on to Longmont and Estes Park. They arrived in the dark and inhaled the fresh night air and exclaimed over the millions of stars seen through the lace of the trees, "the lace of the trees."…"like lace," someone had said once, "you can never get enough of it," and Dancer tried and tried to place the remnant of some precious moment.
Saturday they walked some in the Rocky Mountain National Park and then went into town to look at the colors and textures of crafted items, pottery and weaving and a considerable amount of junk sold by shop after shop in tourist towns from Atlantic City to San Francisco. Dancer liked to mix such stuff in with valuable antiques and hand-crafted knick knacks because she loved incongruity anyway: to Dancer it was the essence of art. They wandered into a bookstore/cafe where they ordered marvelous concoctions of coffee and chocolate and cinnamon and carried them steaming and spilling on trays up a spiral staircase to a table surrounded by shelves of books and cards and fancy papers and just directly under a large skylight that let them watch the snow falling delicately above them. Knowing they would be sleeping in the house with heat and a fireplace made the unseasonable snow something to wonder over and admire.
But Ronnie and Cindy were sleeping in a summer weight tent in bags that had gotten damp in the back of the truck when the five gallon container of water had leaked. They were all set up on Chicago Creek where other families had set up with campers or trucks and started fires to roast hot dogs or marshmallows. Everyone had staked out a picnic table with a small iron grill nearby and a place to park and a place to set up a tent and everyone had set out their six packs of beer and pop and boxes of cooking pots, pans and junk food and army surplus plates and pocket knives and little bundles of pinyon to burn and little hatchets to split it with, and everyone was combing the woods looking for sticks and twigs for kindling and making small talk when they encountered one another, and, little by little, they all gave up hope and packed up and went home, or back east, or west, or on their way, as the sky grew grayer and more ominous, and the rain fell cold and turned to snow, and the far off peaks grew white that very afternoon, and soon it was just Ronnie and Cindy and some guys from Indiana whose car broke down, who'd been hitching rides into the nearby town of Idaho Springs from one family or another all day, getting parts and exchanging them and trying new things, and god knew they'd probably still be there next week, when Cindy suggested they try this again. She was so cold, she was crying and she wanted to get home to her warm bed, and Ronnie was in a foul mood, already drunk, too drunk to drive, but not wanting to admit it because he'd gotten the truck running good finally after many months, just for this camping trip, and now it was ruined, not by the snow, but by Cindy somehow. She sat in the cab and winced each time she heard a piece of fire wood thud against the side of the truck bed as he tossed them in, one by one, each with its own curse, and then the clanging of the pots and pans as he threw them in with the soggy cardboard boxes and cursed because the salt shaker had broken and the crackers were wet (what did he expect?), but Cindy only thought it, didn't say it because not long after he had started coming to her bed at night, he'd started beating her too, like she was her mother all over again.
But Cindy wasn't taking it much longer. She'd found a boy friend at school, a real boyfriend, someone her age, or close to it: he was 16 and was saving for a car. They'd never actually gone out yet because he didn't have that car, but they'd shared a joint in the school yard and he'd kissed her the last time they talked and told her she was a real cute young lady. She'd never been called a young lady by a boy; they had rougher names for girls, so she figured this was it and she was going to run away with Randy as soon as he got his car. She didn't say a word the whole drive down the mountain, but she was thinking about it, and thinking about it, she didn't think so much about her dad and she didn't cry which was better because you never could tell what crying would make him do: sometimes he'd be sorry and act real sweet but sometimes it made him even madder. She wanted to tell Randy about her dad but decided it wouldn't be a good idea. She had told an older boy once, one who seemed interested in her, and when she told, he told her she was crazy sick to be making up stuff like that about her own dad and he avoided her like he thought SHE was dangerous. So she decided not to tell anyone and had nightmares sometimes that the boy she'd told would spread it around that she was making bad thi
ngs up about her dad but he never said a word to her or about her and then he graduated and was gone, thank god for that, and she slept without that special terror on her mind, although enough other terrors as it was. One thing though, she knew her father wouldn't kill her. He'd threatened it so many times, she knew he was just yelling.
On the way down he drove so fast that he slid on some snow and almost hit another car and the other driver cursed at him and screamed and honked, and that seemed to bother him more than the near hit, and he yelled at Cindy that it was her fault and then his anger seemed spent and he calmed down and actually apologized to her and said, quietly enough, that they were both chilled to the bone and soon they'd be home and warm up. Once home, he wanted to get into bed with her and she told him no for the first time ever, and he couldn't believe it, and she said she knew it was wrong, and he asked her who'd been talking to her and she said, "no one," that she had talked to some boy at school that she thought liked her, and that he didn't even believe her because what she told him was so bad that he thought she'd have to be crazy and making it up. Her father got quiet again and later when she awoke and went to the bathroom she saw him lying on the living room floor all passed out and snoring.
Dancer and Barb talked about their kids and marriages and childhoods and how and why they had made so many wrong choices and then concluded that perhaps any choice is wrong. We only know the consequences of the choices we made and not the ones we didn't make. Life was a maze at best, a minefield sometimes, for some people, and they both admitted things could've been a lot worse. What they had mourned was a loss of connection, but think of all the people whose connections had been disastrous or fatal. Barb had a friend in New Mexico who was an attorney and represented Indian tribes, she forgot which, and they talked about maybe taking a trip down there to visit, in the fall maybe. And Scotland and Ireland seemed like interesting faraway places to dream out loud about. By midnight they'd traveled the world and Barb went upstairs to sleep and Dancer was too numb to move and simply stayed where she already reclined on the sofa in front of the dying fire, with an empty teacup dangling from her hand. She awoke cold a couple hours later and built up the fire some more and found an afghan, but then she got restless and wandered out on the balcony to watch the stars and wait for visions. She'd been awaiting a vision for years now it seemed. Tomorrow they would borrow warm clothing and snow boots from the closet and go hiking in the summer snow, the summer snow…it was perfect.
When Ronnie awoke on the living room floor it took a while for him to recall the events of the previous day: that was usual. But he did remember and he remembered that his daughter was talking to boys now and was probably planning to leave with one of them. And that made him think of Suzanne and how ashamed he was and he knew it was wrong but it was too late. He couldn't think how to undo his life except to end it and the thought made him so happy that he knew it had to be right. He went into Cindy's room and she resisted him but he told her he wouldn't touch her, just wanted to take her for a ride but she didn't want to go and before he realized it they were yelling at each other again. He could hear the preacher on TV through the window of his next door neighbor's house and that made him stop and think: he had to be quiet and he simply covered her mouth and gagged her with a scarf she used to tie back her hair. She fought with him silently, pulling at the gag but he used all his strength thinking it wouldn't matter now if he bruised her or even broke her arms. He tied her hands and pushed her ahead of him to the garage.
Dancer felt so exhilarated walking through the brisk and damp day even though it was a gray one: in the mountains there were so many shades of gray and white and a sense of magic that simply didn't happen in the city. They had awakened at dawn to take their walk because they knew the sun would melt off the evening's snow by noon and they wanted to experience this, this snow in July. Dancer talked about wanting to capture the shades of white and gray with pastels and Barb said she didn't know she was an artist and Dancer said of course she was an artist but no, she had not in fact done any drawing or painting or pastelling and they laughed as they had about everything and nothing, happy to be understood. When they ran out of things to talk about from their own lives, Dancer told Barb about the people on the bus. Barb drove everywhere but Dancer hated driving and didn't own a car and didn't even know if her license was still valid. She liked her life leisurely and an automobile automatically hastened the pace. She liked watching the people on the bus although sometimes someone scared her and then she remembered Ronnie and told Barb about him. It reminded her of the times she and her daughter would go places together and talk about the perfect strangers they saw on the street and speculate about what kinds of styles they preferred, the food they ate, the decor of their homes, their favorite music and what they did for a living. Sally and Dancer had verbalized entire screen plays and cast them on the 4 block walk to the Metro. "Clichés are OK," Dancer remembered telling her then, clichés are nothing more than common truths and commonality does not demean truth." Something like that. So they mixed and matched and were always most gratified when they had the opportunity to discover their speculations were right on the nose. (Sometimes they asked perfect strangers what they liked to eat or what they did for a living and then covered up the faux pas by claiming they were college students doing a sociology experiment: how many perfect strangers would even answer them being the subject of a study.)
"Well, I hope you are wrong about that guy anyway…what a sad and frightening story."
Dancer got depressed the minute she got in the car and couldn't even appreciate the beautiful drive back, she was so anxious about her return to the city, what she would find there. It was partly that late Sunday afternoon feeling she'd always had since school days and partly the omen of snow in July.
Ronnie threw Cindy into the cab of the truck and closed all the windows up tight. Then he started the engine and went around the garage blocking up spaces around the door and window with old rags. Then he got in with Cindy and held her in his arms and talked softly to her like her mother used to. He told her he was sorry their mother had left them but Cindy was too scared to wonder why he referred to his wife as their mother and he told her how sorry he was for the terrible things he had done, how he hadn't meant to, something had happened, the anger, the helplessness, the absolute rage and fury he felt sometimes and didn't have the words for, he tried then, that last time, to describe to his daughter, his child, his baby. He talked about times Cindy couldn't have remembered, times she was not even born yet and times before he had even met Suzanne. He talked a long time and after a while Cindy had stopped listening, had stopped even breathing and he realized then that he didn't want to die, didn't want his daughter to die, and he opened the door and dragged her out and unbound her hands and removed the gag so she could speak to him but she didn't speak or cry or breathe, and that fury took hold of him again and he shook her hopelessly, breaking her skull on the concrete slab of the garage floor before it dawned on him that he was right to be scared because he had killed his daughter and still lived and they'd find him, put him in jail for the rest of his life and make him pay and pay and pay like his old man always used to tell him they'd do.
All of a sudden it was so quiet. All Ronnie could hear was the sound of the shower next door and their damn TV that was never turned off and that damned preacher that never shut up and the sound of some bacon frying in a pan. When he heard those people speak it was always in whispers like they knew he could hear them, like maybe they were talking about him. He put Cindy's body back in the cab and drove slowly and as quietly as he could back out of his driveway and headed for the highway.
As soon as he got on he knew he had to get off: there were cops everywhere. He took the Yale exit and drove down a cul de sac looking for some park, some ditch, some place he could quickly push her body out and be gone. He thought she'd roll down the hill where he pushed her out, but he had to get out and push her more, and he was
scared someone might be spying out their window but he had to keep on with it, too late now. He rolled her down into a culvert that ran alongside a bike path that passed under the highway. Then he drove back on the highway a little more south to I-225 and then got on 225 north to Colfax and then he went looking for someone to buy his truck for salvage, because he needed cash so bad is what he told the guy, and then he walked to the Aurora Mall and caught the #15 home.
The next morning he looked for that woman on the bus, the one who listened and rarely spoke, a few words now and then. He didn't see her until the middle of the week. He followed her then to the bookstore where she worked. He waited behind the corner until she opened up and then went inside but the first thing that met his eyes was the newspaper rack and right there on the front page was a picture of Cindy where they'd found her in the culvert. He saw the woman looking at it and somehow thought she knew ... after all, she knew about his wife. That woman didn't say much but she seemed to know everything. He was out of there before she could catch her breath, down the alley fast and quiet, avoiding the street.