Dancing Carl Read online

  He was sort of old, but not wrinkle-old so much as worn-old or worked-old, and he stood angled over a little with a stoop that looked like it came from tired and maybe something a little more. He didn’t have a hat on and his hair was gray and tight and cut short, bushy and thick, and his face was all straight lines.

  His eyes were narrow but you could see the red in them, and there was red on his cheeks and down his straight nose and it was the kind of red that didn’t go away even when he came in. It was the kind of red that came from drinking. The kind of red Pisspot Jimmy got when he had been drinking hard.

  Carl was wearing an old leather sheepskin flight jacket maybe from the war and it was tattered and all over holes so you could see little bits of the wool lining poking out here and there. The collar was up and he moved his head from side to side a bit to warm first one ear and then the other.

  While I was looking at him that first time with Willy he took a bottle in a paper sack out of the right pocket of his flight jacket and took a drink and there was a kind of flowing movement to it all. As if he’d done it a lot. And the bottle came out and up and he took a swig and then back and down into the pocket, like a circle, just up, back and down and nobody else seemed to notice and I thought then, I thought here’s a new town drunk for Dennis to take care of but I knew even then somehow that I was wrong.

  There was something else in the drinking. Something that made it beautiful and business all at once. It wasn’t sloppy, the way Jimmy had been, and he didn’t try to hide it the way Jimmy had done, but right out in the open and the bottle was part of him, part of Carl just the way the red was part of Carl and the jacket was part of Carl.

  Then, while we watched he climbed over the boards on the side of the east rink and walked into the middle of the gravel pad and knelt down and felt the dirt.

  In a moment he stood and walked to another place and did the same, squatting and checking, and this time he stood and nodded.

  “Tomorrow. We can flood her tomorrow,” he said in a low rasp. He had whiskey throat, just like Jimmy, but there was a strong edge to it so it made you want to look at him and it was in this way that Carl became part of the rinks, part of the town, and came into our lives. It was that simple. He just jumped over the boards and walked into the middle of the gravel and told us it was time to flood the rinks and I held my breath and Willy stiffened.

  Deciding when it was time to flood was everybody’s decision, even the kids’, but it was Stan Johnson who had the final word.

  Stan was in charge of the volunteer fire department, ran the truck and took care of the hoses, and water from the hydrant was how the rinks were flooded so Stan had the final say.

  I figured there would be trouble because Stan was standing down at the end nearest Carl and he had kind of a flash temper. But Carl looked over to him and there was something that went between them, something at first tight and then more friendly and all without words the trouble passed.

  Stan nodded, and smiled, and went off to get hoses ready and some of the others went to help and they left Carl standing in the middle of the dirt of the rink and Willy let his breath out in a rush. I had been holding mine, too, and I took a deep pull.

  “Did you see that?” Willy asked. “I mean did you see that?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s like he was king or something,” he said, whispering. “Like he was king of the rinks.”

  And I nodded again but I was looking out to where Carl still stood and he took another pull at the bottle in the sack in his pocket and I thought maybe Stan did it out of pity.

  Of course that’s before I knew about the power that Carl had, the power and the way he had of making things which are normally ugly have a kind of beauty.

  That was before I understood anything or had seen Carl make things happen where nothing had happened before. That was before I understood that Carl was king of the rinks and maybe a lot more, too.

  3

  My dad is the kind of dad who makes rules and you live by them. He’s never taken a stick to me, unless you count the time when I was small and Willy and I played cavalry charge with Schaeker’s chickens down the block and some of the chickens lost. That time he made me cut a switch. But outside of that he hasn’t had to switch—but even so there’s something about his rules that makes you want to obey them.

  One of his rules is that nothing bad or depressing should be talked about at supper. He says it makes the meal go down wrong, makes the food taste bad and it’s a rule both Mom and I agree with so we do it. Of course I’d do it even if I didn’t agree with him.

  But the night after Carl had decided it was time to flood the rinks I had a problem. On the one hand I wanted to talk to Dad about Carl and the rinks and what we’d seen and on the other hand I wasn’t sure if that was something bad.

  I still figured maybe Carl was just another town drunk and that might not be the thing to talk about at supper and I took too long to think about it because my fork kind of started pushing some string beans around on my plate.

  “What’s wrong with your beans?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.”

  “Well. Eat your beans.”

  “Sure.” I took a mouthful and chewed but Dad hadn’t missed it and he paused in his eating.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  I finished chewing. That’s another rule. Don’t talk with food in your mouth. “I’m not really sure if it’s right to talk about it at supper.”

  Dad nodded. “I see. Why don’t you tell us the subject and we’ll decide.”

  I thought a minute. “It’s about Carl, that new guy down at the rinks today.”

  “What’s the matter with talking about him?”

  “He drinks some. Maybe a lot.”

  “Still, I don’t see . . . Oh. You mean he drinks as in alcoholic?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know for sure.”

  “Well, go ahead. It should be all right to talk about at supper.”

  So I told Mom and him about Carl and how it had been at the rinks and about how Carl had kind of taken the decision away from Stan Johnson and when I was done Dad smiled.

  “That’s very interesting. Stan normally does all the decision making about the rinks and Carl jumped right in, did he?”

  I nodded. “And Stan just took it. Who is this guy anyway?”

  Dad thought for a long time before answering. “First off, he’s isn’t a ‘guy,’ his name is Carl, Carl Wenstrom. He is a man who started years ago in McKinley and went away and had some troubles in his life and needs help. Still, that’s interesting about Stan. I always thought Stan was a little too aggressive—maybe I was wrong.”

  I knew we were getting close to the edge but I thought I’d try. “What kind of trouble did Carl have?”

  Dad hesitated. “He was in the war, the Second World War, not Korea. Something happened and he needs help. There were many like that who came back and needed help. That’s why they hired Carl to take care of the rinks and stay in the warming house—it’s the town’s way of taking care of him.”

  “But what kind of trouble?”

  “Eat your dinner.”

  “Yes sir.” I took a forkful of string beans because his voice had dropped and gotten that edge that meant we were into the rules area.

  But I was a little wrong about Carl and a little right. He drank, but maybe there was a reason for it, the trouble Dad was talking about. And maybe that didn’t make it all right to drink but it explained why Stan had backed off. Maybe he was just being nice to Carl.

  * * *

  One time Willy and I were sitting on the edge of the Poplar River in the fall just before school started and we got to talking, the way you do, and I wondered how we would be when we were old.

  “How old?” Willy asked.

  “Up there. Like maybe thirty or so. What will we be like?”

  “We’ll be like we are now, only older,” he said. “I was reading an article just the other day tha
t said the habits we establish now will be with us the rest of our lives.”

  “They never change?”

  “The article said they didn’t. Not unless you forced them.”

  “You mean Johnny Severson will always drink sideways out of his mouth so he can see what’s going on?”

  “Yup.”

  “You read too much.” I watched the river go by for a while. “It’s not good for you.”

  “I’m establishing a habit for later.”

  Which isn’t about Carl but shows something about Willy and how he came to know so much about ice. He reads all the time, when he isn’t skating or fishing and sometimes he reads while he’s fishing. So once when he was reading he came across information about ice and how it forms and during the fall when we first met Carl he told me down by the rinks after school.

  It was the day after I had talked to Dad at the supper table and it was just getting dark and we went by the rinks to see how the flooding was going.

  Stan Johnson’s hoses were laid and the water was running onto the gravel of the rinks, making puddles that would stiffen and freeze as we watched. It layered out and out, heading towards the boards of the sides and it was getting colder as it got closer into hard dark. I was just thinking how good a cup of hot chocolate would taste in the warmth of our kitchen when Willy rubbed his chin and nodded towards the rinks like a wise old man.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “ice is pretty incredible stuff.”

  That’s how he put it—incredible stuff. I mean we’re just cutting past twelve and he talks like that. “Just how do you mean that?”

  “Well, when you get to know it and how it’s formed it doesn’t seem like it could be made out of water.”

  “Of course it’s water. That’s ridiculous. You hit water with cold and you get ice.”

  “But it goes through stages,” he said, tipping his head so that even though he was a little shorter than me he was kind of talking down to me. “It gets stronger and weaker as it goes, harder and softer, changes crystals and even color. It changes all the time with cold.”

  I nodded. “I knew that. Everybody up here does. That’s why ice talks in the winter.” On the river, when the deep cold of midwinter comes, the hard cold of January and February, the ice cracks and moves and makes sounds that come pretty close to talking. Low music, rolling through the ice—close to the sounds the whales make. It scares you at first, especially if you’re right on the ice, but when you get used to it there’s music in it.

  “Some people believe the old stories they tell about the Indians saying the spirits talk through the ice in the winter—I read that somewhere,” I finished, so Willy wouldn’t think he was the only one who ever read a book. But he wasn’t listening to me.

  He was looking across the rinks to the warming house where the door opened and Carl came out. It was almost totally dark now and the light framed him in the doorway through the steam coming off the water running out of the hoses.

  The outside lights weren’t on because McKinley doesn’t waste money and why light the rinks when there aren’t any skaters? But there was some light from the street lights, enough to see that Carl was drunk.

  Stan was by the hydrant but Carl didn’t go over to him. Instead he went to the head of the rinks, near the gate that went onto the general skating rink, and stood with his hands jammed down in his pockets.

  “He’s checking the ice,” Willy said, almost in a whisper, although he could never have been heard over the sound of the running water. “He’s making sure it’s coming all right.”

  And maybe he was, even though there was no way Willy could have known that just from seeing Carl standing there. I just thought it was all sort of eerie and strange looking, Carl framed in the steam and the glow from the street lights.

  Then he did something neither of us expected. He turned, as if he might be heading back into the warming house, but instead he turned his back to the rinks and raised his arms out to the side, palms flat and down.

  Slowly, with his arms out that way, he made a complete circle, looking straight out to the front as he went around. Then he put his arms down and went around again, slower, and up his hands came, way out to the side and I thought they looked like two small birds lifting his arms—fluttering gently, and then down again.

  He went back into the warming house. It was completely dark now and we didn’t move for a while. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Willy’s breath making little gray puffs in the cold-dark air, puffs that moved out and rose and fell just as Carl’s hands had done.

  “What was that?” Willy said, after a longer time still. It wasn’t really a question and I didn’t have an answer anyway so I didn’t say anything.

  “It was so strange,” he said in another minute. “So strange a thing to do.”

  I nodded. “Kind of pretty though.”

  “Yeah. But strange—I wonder what it meant?”

  “Why does it have to mean something?”

  “Because.” Willy stopped, looked back at the warming house and began to walk again. We had started moving for home and since Willy lived close by my house it was the same way. “Because everything has to mean something. There is nothing that doesn’t mean something.”

  I chewed on that for a while, walking through the cold. “What about the time old Sarah Goodman took to talking backwards and the words didn’t mean anything?”

  But in Willy’s brain there was nothing without sense and he couldn’t be beaten down. “That meant that she was old and broken. She’d had a stroke—that’s what it meant.”

  “So maybe Carl is old and broken. Or crazy.” I said it fast but I knew it was wrong when I said it. Carl was neither really old nor broken, just different, and Willy didn’t bother to answer and we walked the rest of the way home in silence.

  When I went to bed I dropped to sleep right away, the way I always do when the weather starts to turn cold and the ice is forming. But after a little time I snapped awake and sat up and was looking at the wall and didn’t know why except that when I lay back down on the pillow and started down into sleep again I thought of Carl.

  Nothing more than that.

  Just thought of Carl and then down into sleep where I dreamt of the rinks—without Carl—and hockey and I won and won.

  4

  In the winter school was usually something we got through, waiting to hit the rinks. But sometimes in the fall, between when they started to flood the rinks and when we could get on the ice—which seemed to take a year—sometimes school was all we had.

  Willy is good at it, good at school. Sometimes he even knows more than the teachers because of the way he reads all the time. But I have to work at getting things. They come, but it seems to take sweat and now and then I have to work it over twice before it sticks. Especially math and science. And Willy just slicks through it so easy it would make you sick to see it.

  Still, hard or not when there isn’t any ice yet all there is comes to being in school and in a backward way school helped us to understand Carl, or if not understand him see him a little better, see him the way he was supposed to be seen, or at least that’s what Willy said, later when the dancing ended.

  It was funny, how it happened. We hadn’t really seen Carl yet but Miss Johnson who was so pretty it was hard not to stare and Willy stared anyway—Miss Johnson was in the hallway talking to Mr. Melonowski who taught social studies and coached the football team and Willy and I were in the hall coat closet where we couldn’t be seen but could hear it all.

  “We could meet somewhere,” Mr. Melonowski said to her. “We have to meet somewhere. I have to talk to you.”

  “No. I don’t think so. You’re married.” Miss Johnson’s voice didn’t sound like she meant the no very much and I poked Willy hard with my elbow and made a funny face but he signed me to shut up.

  “I don’t think we should meet,” Miss Johnson said again. “I really don’t think we should . . .”

  And they moved away and mayb
e none of it would have mattered except that later, on the way home, we started talking.

  “It comes to being in love,” Willy said. He had stopped to look down at an anthill in the sidewalk. Here it was, coming into winter, and the sun was out and an ant came out and went back down into the hole.

  “You mean in the hall.” I squatted to see the ant better but it didn’t come out again. “Melon and Miss Johnson.”

  “Yes. That comes down to being in love.”

  I thought about it. “I don’t think so. I don’t know for sure what you’d call it but I know it isn’t love.” The ant still hadn’t come up. He might not come up until spring, now, until all that winter time had gone. Earlier in the day we had been talking about love and I thought that the way I felt about Shirley Winge was love and I said it but Willy had stopped me.

  “That’s not love. We’re too young to feel love.”

  “I don’t believe that. When I look at her my knees hurt and I get a stomachache and that’s got to be awfully close to love.”

  And now Willy was talking about Melonowski and Miss Johnson and called it love. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if Melon’s knees hurt.”

  “Ahh, you don’t know anything. Let’s go to the rinks and see if the ice is ready.”

  Of course later we saw what real love was, saw how it could take a man and a woman, saw how it could take Carl. And maybe because of school we got an idea of something to compare it to when we saw it.

  But all of that came later.

  When we got to the rinks Stan Johnson was coiling up the hoses and putting them back onto the truck.

  The ice was ready.

  When Stan finished he looked up at us and smiled. “You can skate now. But she’ll be a little soft until we get hard cold.”