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There was another unseasonable snow storm on Labor Day weekend that gave rise to a new crop of Colorado weather jokes, how it always snowed on holidays. Everyone figured they could count on a lovely Indian Summer right up to Halloween. Dancer gloried in the reds and yellows that highlighted the still half-green trees in her neighborhood and forgot about Ronnie as she hadn't seen him the entire month of August. She and Barb laughed about maybe catching another white weekend in Estes Park but then Dancer would get depressed all of a sudden remembering what happened the 4th of July. They decided to wait and go closer to the end of the month when the Aspens would be in their full glory. Maybe they'd even splurge and go to Durango and ride the Durango-Silverton railroad. Dancer still worked at the bookstore and fantasized about moving to the mountains. She'd met a man who ran a school for the arts in Telluride and needed a couple to house-sit for him while he traveled. Maybe a couple of women? But he talked about bears and splitting wood like only men could do that. It was worth another friendly argument.
She didn't think much about the murdered girl until the papers began carrying more news. First there were no suspects and then they arrested a young black kid who the police claimed was a Crip or a Blood…that alone being evidence enough in the eyes of many of the passengers on Dancer's bus. And he'd given the girl pot. Dancer was appalled at the ease with which folks would leap from a shared joint to a brutal murder. No wonder kids felt threatened. She'd never gone to the police because she didn't think they'd listen to her kind of psychic speculation, but if they planned to put a kid on trial on the strength of this kind of evidence, she decided she'd better at least get her suspicions off her chest. But it snowed and she went straight home to get warm and sleep.
Dancer couldn't figure if Ronnie just appeared after every snow storm or had read her mind, but when she closed up the bookstore the next afternoon, a little early, he was there. She began to walk briskly away from him but he knew that she had seen him and yelled after her:
"Please stop. Please let me talk to you."
She turned and faced him and asked simply, "Why?"
"Because you're kind I can tell and you'll understand."
"Understand what?"
"I don't know. You seem kind. You seem to know everything. Let me get close to you. Let me hold you. I can't live anymore without some contact. I need that closeness."
All the while he moved closer to her and Dancer instinctively switched to the role of commander, afraid to let him call the shots, but aware she couldn't safely leave yet. One way or another, this subtle stalking game had to end.
"Do you want to hold my hand? Come here and I'll hold your hand."
He approached her and she held out her two hands and enveloped his in her two hands, keeping herself outside of him, letting him be the one to be encircled, held or trapped, as it might turn out.
"Talk to me," she said. "Tell me what's bothering you."
And Ronnie confessed.
It was so simple and it dawned on Dancer that the truth is easy enough and everyone has a piece of it inside but it's the connecting that's hard. Dancer now knew beyond any doubts or speculations that the boy charged did not kill that little girl because this man told her he did it and he had no reason to lie and she had no reason to disbelieve him. But would the police believe her? Would the prosecutor believe her? Would the man be willing and able to tell them? Would he stay alive long enough to tell another soul? Would he turn on her if she even suggested it? Or would he disappear again leaving only a fear behind? She stood quietly holding his hand while he stared at her, waiting to be told what he wanted to hear, and Dancer tried to listen for some voice that would tell her what he would be able to hear. A breeze began to blow the red and yellow leaves around them making a glow in the dusky light and she remembered Frank whirling her around in the New Orleans sunset and the bits and pieces of music from the music box shop and all those different melodies and the accidental harmonies that struck like sudden miracles and were gone in a flash of barely remembered ecstasy. She was so suddenly tired as she stood there with Ronnie at the bus stop.
"Do you remember the most wonderful moment of your life?" Dancer asked the man who had raped and killed his daughter, and he told her about his first kiss.
He was eleven years old growing up in a small town about a half hour from Demopolis, Alabama. His folks were poor and he and his brothers always had to work, legal or not, and he had a job delivering groceries. The woman had been poor like his folks but when she was just a girl, not much older than he was at their encounter, an old man with some money had bought her and given her momma $3,000 and taken her to live in a big old hundred year old house with him. He was way past 40 at the time. There were rumors about her and the old man kept her locked up in the house and people said she was lonely and laughed about it. That day after he delivered the groceries he slid on the porch steps and put his hand on the rickety old rail to steady himself. He was too big for his age and clumsy. He got a big splinter in the heel of his palm and she called him inside and removed the sliver and put some alcohol on it and then she kissed him gently like a mother and that made him angry because his own mother never kissed him so why should this stranger? But then she began to stroke him and aroused him and he was scared but thrilled and he did everything she told him and when it was over she held him in her arms and rocked him and it felt so good and safe to be held like that. She couldn't have been more than 16 herself but to him she was as old and wise as the hills and as warm as August.
Ronnie rocked himself back and forth while he told Dancer the story of his most wonderful memory and she knew he wanted her to hold him and rock him but she'd known even before his confession that a man this needful was dangerous and she soothed him with her voice instead. When he left as her bus approached he told her he felt better and knew what to do and wouldn't bother her again.
The next day was bright and sunny and hot…"that's Colorado weather for you: one day it's snowing and the next it's near 90 degrees." The weather replaced the murder as a topic of conversation for the #15 passengers. Dancer never even opened the bookstore that day. There was a note stuck in the door. She read it and went directly to the police, walking the half-mile to the Cherokee Street Station rather than awaiting the next bus.
Detective Smythe reviewed the file with the prosecutor, and the fact that the coroner found it was carbon monoxide and not the blow to the head that killed Cindy convinced them that Dancer was telling the truth. There was no way she could've known about the carbon monoxide.
They told her they would go to the site mentioned in the suicide note and if they found Ronnie Kenderhate's body that would be sufficient to confirm her story and they would drop the charges against the Brown boy. They told her to go home and she gave them her number again and asked them to call. In fact they did not call her but she heard the story on the 10 p.m. news and the announcement that Randy Brown was being released, no longer a suspect. All of a sudden neighbors of the Kenderhate family were coming forward telling about the violent fights, the disappearance of Cindy's mother, almost a year before the murder, and all the bits and pieces of truth were being put together to form a big chunk of the puzzle (not that there wasn't more; there would always be more).
Dancer shivered and shook with relief and got chills and wrapped herself in a quilt that stung and pricked her skin with a multitude of memories and cried until she was dry heaving. But she slept like a baby until well after noon the next day and kept down her food and planned to go back to work the next day.
It was warm and she wanted to catch some sunlight before another night overtook her so she walked, shuffling the noisy autumn leaves ahead of her in piles all the way to the Cathedral on Colfax and Pennsylvania, and by then it was dusk again with a chill in the air and the 6:30 Mass was about to begin.
Dancer walked in quietly and sat near the back to watch the worshippers. She saw the old woman
with the pear shaped man who looked younger, her face filled out and actually handsome…teeth; she'd gotten herself a mouthful of teeth. And the vintage lady was there in a pink 50's style prom dress that came all the way to the floor. She carried her skirt daintily and with true queenly dignity when she walked to the front to take communion. The tall thin hump-backed man with the monastic tonsure was there as always, along with the bikers, cowboys, tourists and transients. It seemed there were more folks than usual and they all seemed happier than she'd remembered.
After the mass was over, the worshippers walked out into the dark night and scattered in all directions. Only one old woman crossed the street to the bus stop.
"Nice night" she said. Dancer fell asleep for a few blocks listening to a tape of medieval music. "Look at that," cried the old woman, pointing at the 7 Eleven on York Street. Under a streetlight a tall boy was solemnly dancing to the music he played on a huge cassette player and Dancer figured it was rap music but it was odd how his movements seemed to fit the primitive medieval songs that only she could hear. The old woman was smiling and clapping,
"Good, ain't he?" They turned their heads together to watch as their red light turned green and the bus moved on.
"That what they call break dancing?"
"I guess so."
"Sure looks like a body could break something doin' it."
"Yes."
The boy suddenly stopped, straightened up and sauntered off.
"Guess his music run out" said the old woman.”
"Guess so," said Dancer, wondering where he was going.
"Next stop Colorado Boulevard," the driver hollered out as Dancer nodded off to sleep but she woke just in time for her stop and walked home still humming the medieval chant and dreaming of dancers slow and solemn.
Lillian and Alexander