Not many of the kids would have made the cut on Dancing with the Stars, but they were young and enthusiastic and obviously having a ball. It made me happy to see them. Later, if Donny B. didn’t have the good sense to lower the lights a bit, I’d do it myself. Sadie was nervous at first, ready for trouble, but these kids had just come to have fun. There were no invading hordes from Henderson or any other school. She saw that and began to loosen up a little.

After about forty minutes of nonstop music (and four red velvet cupcakes), I leaned toward Sadie and said, “Time for Warden Amberson to do his first circuit of the building and make sure no one in the exercise yard is engaging in inappropriate behavior.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“I want you to keep an eye on the punch bowl. If any young man approaches it with a bottle of anything, even cough syrup, I want you to threaten him with electrocution or castration, whichever you think might be more effective.”

She leaned back against the wall and laughed until tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes.

“Get out of here, George, you’re awful. ”

I went. I was glad I’d made her laugh, but even after three years, it was easy to forget how much more effect sexually tinged jokes have in the Land of Ago.

I caught a couple making out in one of the more shadowy nooks on the east side of the gym

—he prospecting inside her sweater, she apparently trying to suck his lips off. When I tapped the young prospector on the shoulder, they leaped apart. “Save it for The Bluffs after the dance,” I said.

“For now, go on back to the gym. Walk slow. Cool off. Get some punch.” They went, she buttoning her sweater, he walking slightly bent over in that well-known male adolescent gait known as the Blue-Balls Scuttle.

Two dozen red fireflies winked from behind the metal shop. I waved and a couple of the kids in the smoking area waved back. I poked my head around the east corner of the woodshop and saw something I didn’t like. Mike Coslaw, Jim LaDue, and Vince Knowles were huddled there, passing something back and forth. I grabbed it and heaved it over the chain-link fence before they even knew I was there.

Jim looked momentarily startled, then gave me his lazy football-hero smile. “Hello to you too, Mr. A.”

“Spare me, Jim. I’m not some girl you’re trying to charm out of her panties, and I’m most assuredly not your coach.”

He looked shocked and a little scared, but I saw no offended sense of entitlement in his face.

I think that if this had been one of the big Dallas schools, there might have been. Vince had backed away a step. Mike stood his ground, but looked downcast and embarrassed. No, it was more than embarrassment. It was outright shame.

“A bottle at a record-hop,” I said. “It’s not that I expect you to stick to all the rules, but why would you be so stupid when it comes to violating them? Jimmy, you get caught drinking and kicked off the football team, what happens to your ’Bama scholarship?”

“Prob’ly get red-shirted, I guess,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Right, and sit out a year. Actually have to make grades. Same with you, Mike. And you’d get kicked out of the Drama Club. Do you want that?”

“Nosir.” Hardly more than a whisper.

“Do you, Vince?”

“No, huh-uh, Mr. A. Absolutely nitzy. Are we still gonna do the jury one? Because if we are

—”

“Don’t you know enough to shut up when a teacher’s scolding you?”

“Yessir, Mr. A.”

“You boys don’t get a pass from me next time, but this is your lucky night. What you get tonight is a valuable piece of advice: Do not fuck up your futures. Not over a pint of Five Star at a school dance you won’t even remember a year from now. Do you understand that?”

“Yessir,” Mike said. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” Vince said. “Absolutely.” And crossed himself, grinning. Some of them are just built that way. And maybe the world needs a cadre of smartasses to liven things up, who knows?

“Jim?”

“Yessir,” he said. “Please don’t tell my daddy.”

“No, this is between us.” I looked them over. “You boys will find plenty of places to drink next year at college. But not at our school. You hear me?” This time they all said yessir.

“Now go back inside. Drink some punch and rinse the smell of whiskey off your breath.” They went. I gave them time, then followed at a distance, head down, hands stuffed deep in pockets, thinking hard. Not at our school, I had said. Ours.

Come and teach, Mimi had said. That’s what you were meant to do.

2011 had never seemed more distant than it did then. Hell, Jake Epping had never seemed so distant. A growling tenor sax was blowing in a party-lit gym deep in the heart of Texas. A sweet breeze carried it across the night. A drummer was laying down an insidious off-your-seat-and-on-your-feet shuffle.

I think that’s when I decided I was never going back.

6

The growling sax and hoochie-coochie drummer were backing a group called The Diamonds. The song was “The Stroll.” The kids weren’t doing that dance, though. Not quite.

The Stroll was the first step Christy and I learned when we started going to Thursday-night dance classes. It’s a two-by-two dance, a kind of icebreaker where each couple jives down an aisle of clapping guys and girls. What I saw when I came back into the gym was different. Here the boys and the girls came together, turned in each other’s arms as if waltzing, then separated again, ending up across from where they had begun. When they were apart, their feet went back on their heels and their hips swayed forward, a move that was both charming and sexy.

As I watched from beside the snack table, Mike, Jim, and Vince joined the guys’ side. Vince didn’t have much—to say he danced like a white boy would be an insult to white boys everywhere

—but Jim and Mike moved like the athletes they were, which is to say with unconscious grace.

Pretty soon most of the girls on the other side were watching them.

“I was starting to worry about you!” Sadie shouted over the music. “Is everything all right out there?”

“Fine!” I shouted back. “What’s that dance?”

“The Madison! They’ve been doing it on Bandstand all month! Want me to teach you?”

“Lady,” I said, taking her by the arm, “I’m going to teach you.” The kids saw us coming and made room, clapping and shouting “Way to go, Mr. A!” and

“Show him how you work, Miz Dunhill!” Sadie laughed and tightened the elastic holding her ponytail. Color mounted high in her cheeks, making her more than pretty. She got back on her heels, clapping her hands and shaking her shoulders with the other girls, then came forward into my arms, her eyes turned up to mine. I was glad I was tall enough for her to do that. We turned like a wind-up bride and groom on a wedding cake, then came apart. I dipped low and spun on my toes with my hands held out like Al Jolson singing “Mammy.” This brought more applause and some pre-Beatles shrieks from the girls. I wasn’t showing off (okay, maybe a little); mostly I was just happy to be dancing. It had been too long.