The Humper Game Pt. 05 Ch. 08

"And I didn't tell you this last night. But, that vision I told you about? It also said Phil and I would have troubles, which we would weather and which would leave us stronger. No details about the troubles. And I sure hope this is all it's referring to, 'cause I'm not sure I can take more strengthening."

No one said anything for several minutes. I was being kept fairly busy, and I honestly was trying to think what to say to Barbara. Finally Barbara said, "Well, I see how that relates, but I'm not sure that it helps me. Except, yes, I see that if we make a commitment, we've got to trust each other, and if we're going to trust each other we have to really do it. And I need to say that to Bert. And, well, that means that if I do commit myself, I have to really mean it, and stick with it even if I don't feel like it at some point."

I put in, "If at some point it gets hard, you need to tell him it's hard and why, but you really, really need to make clear to him that you're not looking for a way out, but wanting to fix whatever is broken. I guess that means you have to want that."

I went on, "I don't know what to tell you for your own doubts. I promise I will keep thinking. But, well. Um. If you were here instead of Ellen, and we had gotten to the point where you are with Bert, I would be asking you the same thing. But it's really no different from Ellen and me. There are plenty of women around who are attractive to me. At the moment, I gather, Ellen really doesn't see other men as even possible alternatives, and I'm not sure why. But someday she might, at some point when things in our own relationship conspire against her. Or me. I think, in the end, that the fact that for you the temptation will most likely be women is a red herring—only, you need to really decide, right away, whether Bert does make you feel the way a partner, any partner, would need to, to be likely to make things solid. What I'm hearing from you is yes, but I think those are the terms you need to consider it in. I think the same sex versus opposite sex thing isn't really the right thing to focus on. It's the way temptation might arrive, for you, but the issue is whether there's enough there that you can weather temptation. And then whether you are willing to commit yourself to deal with temptation when it comes."

I paused, but neither of them jumped in. Then I found myself adding, "Barbara, sooner or later your commitment and your feelings will be tested, hard and painfully. That's true whether you go with Bert or you find a woman partner. You need to think about it ahead of time, but you need to realize that this isn't something related to Bert, because he's a man. Make up your mind ahead of time, that when there's a conflict, you'll remember what you were saying earlier, and not tell yourself, 'He just doesn't understand me because he's not a woman.'" I thought that both of them heard this as a general comment, coming from what I had just said—but that's not what it felt like to me. For that moment, at least, it felt like a certainty. Maybe it was just being reminded of what had happened between Ellen and me. Maybe.

Barbara sat for a little bit. "I'm going to have to think about that," she eventually said. "You may be right. You're probably right. And you're definitely right about the questions you said I need to ask."

Then she got up and hugged me, with a little kiss attached. Not that much more than a peck. "Whatever I decide, that shows me I was right to come visit you. There's no way a phone call would have gotten us to all that. Thank you for everything. Present and past."

During all this, Ellen had taken to helping me. We had two tins we normally used for cookies, and some plastic containers with lids that would work, and she lined them with waxed paper, then got the cookies into them as they cooled, in layers separated by waxed paper. I had mentally upped the number I wanted to take to the dance, to six dozen, and I wanted to keep three dozen for the next day, so we were still short of containers. We had some quart-sized zip-lock bags, so we used those, too. In all, we were done with the cookies in less than two hours.

And somewhere in the process, I had the thought that for the stuffed peppers I would need rice, but that that was one thing that didn't have to be cooked on Sunday. So I got that started, and it was done not too long after the cookies were all packaged. I made an extra big batch so that we could have some for lunch. I took a little of the hamburger and a little of the sausage I'd gotten for the peppers, plus some vegetables and seasonings, and sauteed them all, serving them on the extra rice as our main lunch. We had some fruit and a cookie apiece, too. Well, they were some of the overdone ones, and I warned the girls.

Barbara said, "I see what Ellen means. When I scrounge something together, it doesn't taste this good, somehow."

I said, "Dinner is just going to be leftovers. We'll get them out of the fridge and not take time to cook, other than warming them. I really do want to be free to get to the dance early."

I told Barbara I couldn't think of anything more that might help her, that I'd let her know if something came to me. We all really had studying we wanted to do, and it seemed we had time we hadn't expected, so we turned to that. Except that ever so often someone would say something about other things, so it was plain that we all were distracted. I got a bunch done, for sure, and I thought the girls did too, but we talked as well.

For example, at one point, Barbara said to Ellen, "I'm kind of bothered by this vision you talked about. Not so much by what it said, I mean by your having a vision you think really foretells things. I don't know what to make of that, and it's kind of scary."

"Well, I told you it scared me. And it still does. I don't mean just what I already told you about, but it's still happening from time to time. Sam is going to come home to her aunt and uncle during Christmas break, and she's going to come in here one day to see a couple of people, just after Christmas. The big vision about Phil, that I can sort of see why I might need to know, but why do I need to know Sam is going to meet Amber and Kelly? And try to see Elise, who'll be gone, and Pete and Tammy too, but they're home to—to Mamma Mia?" She couldn't help smiling at the name. "Except that, just maybe, Amber may turn out to be important for Sam's future, but if so I don't know how. And an hour or two with Sam might make a huge difference for Kelly, somehow."

I told Barbara, "She said something in passing to Kelly about meeting Sam early next year, but nothing more. She never said a word about that to me. But she did say I'm going to need martial arts training, she's seen someone attacking me but not how it will come out, and she's worried enough about it to have made arrangements with Elise to introduce me to a local student group that does that. She said something to me, but when I didn't get moving on it right away she asked Elise. She'd only mentioned it to me on Tuesday, but she was bringing it up to Elise just yesterday. She really thinks it's urgent. So I guess I'm starting into that, Tuesday night." I sighed.

Ellen said, "At school, you kept up running, every day with Jenny, and then with her and Kitty, of course. But you kept saying you wanted to get back to weightlifting, and it never happened. You were busy. And you've said that about doing it here, and it's never happened either. I don't want to get up half an hour earlier, or even fifteen minutes, any more than you do. But I think you need to, and I'll come and lift with you to help motivate you. And this isn't from a vision, exactly, it's just from seeing what—."

She cut off and said, "Barbara, this isn't for publication. To anyone at all. Please. And it does relate to that first vision. Phil, you know what kind of condition Mr. Miles was in. None of us realized it from the beginning, but last year we had plenty of chance to see. He could outrun all of us but maybe—maybe!—five or six, and we saw him picking up and carrying things I think most of the biggest guys in the class couldn't manage. Sometimes two of them! Maintaining that kind of condition takes time and hard work. I really don't think it was so he could be a better gym teacher, though that made a good cover."

I said, "If you really think so, you don't have to convince me. I saw that he never, ever seemed to do anything without a definite reason, and usually several. I'm sure some of his preferences in food, say, are just that, but mostly he had reasons way beyond preference. I'd already figured that out, but I saw some of it myself, and you were there when Claire talked about her conversation with Ms. Miller."

Then I had a thought, and added, "Even his food preferences. I bet he eats some things he doesn't really care for that much, just for their nutritional value.

Ellen was quiet for probably a minute or two. "I see what you mean. I thought about what Ms. Miller said in terms of what it showed about her, but not what it said about him. He's scary, too, isn't he? I sure don't want him ever thinking he needs to do something about me, that I'm a problem or danger for him."

"If what you saw is right, you will be, in some ways. Think about it. When I first realized that he solved problems the way he played chess, I thought myself, I hope he never thinks he needs to teach me a lesson. I still hope so, and I'm glad I was able to help him with a couple of problems. He's grateful to me—but that won't stop him from using me if he thinks he needs to."

Barbara was looking back and forth between us as we talked. "I sure won't say anything about all that! I really don't think I even want to know about it myself." Then she rather contradicted herself by saying, "I guess Wagner and his buddies were one of the problems? I realized later that I was sure lucky they didn't know about me. They probably would have gone after me instead of Brown."

I told her, "I think they were expected to go after Ms. Miller, with security in place the way it was the second time with Maggie. And I think Sam is the one who bollixed that up. Mind you, I really don't know anything definite, except that Mr. Miles very definitely told Maggie that he was in large measure responsible for her getting hurt like that. They were going to discuss that, and I never heard what came of it."

We studied some more, and then I got up to start warming leftovers.

I really enjoyed having Barbara there that weekend, and very much so at dinner that night. She told us about friends she'd made that fall, men and women both. She didn't say anything at all about the women whom she had described as her girlfriends. But in high school, school policies and her own preferences had conspired to make all of her close friends girls, the first three years, and except for me that had continued the last year. She was really enjoying having some men as friends, beyond Bert, and in fact she'd found that Bert accepted her assurance that none of these friends was any threat to the two of them. The women were all straight, the men didn't attract her that way, and now that she was apparently going with Bert all of her men friends seemed to respect that.

She also said, "And Bert and I have a little game going. We kind of tease each other, in a way. If he sees some girl who's a knockout, or who's wearing something really hot, he'll point her out to me. 'Hey, you think you're sexy? Look at her.' And I do the same to him. 'Look at her. Don't you wish I was as hot as she is?' We both know we're admiring kind of the same things, but anyone listening gets a different idea.

"I think we'll have to back off on it some, over time, so that it doesn't, um, actually bring on temptations. To either or both of us. But for now, he knows I'm really saying, 'I don't care how hot she is, if I've got you,' and he's saying exactly the same to me."

We had cookies for dessert, one each. Not the overdone ones, this time. "These are really good," Barbara said, "and I know you did nothing but spoon them out and bake them. I'm going to have to remember them. But the rest was fabulous, too. Ellen, some girls have all the luck! You two have both been wonderful to me. Will you at least let me do the dishes, this time? And help, tomorrow after dinner?"

I didn't turn that offer down, though I said Sunday cleanup was kind of up in the air right then.

We got ready and went off to the dance. It was very early, almost an hour before the beginner teaching time, but there were a lot more people in evidence than there had been—until shortly before the dance itself—at the previous dance we'd been to. A lot of the people were obviously busy. I spotted Mary, over talking to some others, and went and waited until they had settled what they were discussing—which seemed to be what to say if far too many people came for the hall to hold.

I asked whether she was the one taking money, and she said, "I will be, Phil, but could you hold it for at least half an hour?" She took time to greet Barbara and thank her for coming, but she obviously was feeling a little frazzled and rushed, so we left her to her next job, whatever it was. I did say, "In maybe ten minutes, we'll probably be available if you need a hand with something." She smiled and thanked me, but I could see her mind was on what she needed to do.

We went off to the break area and handed our cookies off to the three women who were setting up there. One, whom I barely remembered from the last dance, thanked us profusely. I could see that plenty of people had brought food, but since no one knew how many might show up they were very happy to see more. We had brought plastic containers rather than the fancier tins, and they were pretty full. I'd labeled them all with Ellen's name and mine, but if things were chaotic enough that we might not get them back, and if we didn't I'd miss the plastic ones less.

We went in and found the caller. He wasn't the man who had called the last dance, but he had been there dancing, and he remembered Ellen and me. We told him we'd be glad to help whenever he started working with beginners. We introduced Barbara to him, saying she had about the same level of experience we had before the previous dance, and he said he might call on her for help, too. I privately thought there might be a lot of helpers available. But there might be an awful lot of real beginners, too.

The band was warming up and doing a sound check. I asked, and was told that they had been in for a couple of hours or more in the afternoon to practice. It seemed Scott had only played with them once or twice since Hannah was born, and only twice before that. My informant was Pete. He and Tammy were there, helping in various ways, socializing between tasks. They were better able to help than we were, just from being involved in the past and from being known to a lot more people. We watched with interest. Pete called on me to move some heavy stuff out of the way once or twice, and I saw the girls helping put decorations up. There hadn't been many decorations the last time, or I hadn't noticed them if there were.

Pete came back over to stand with us, and Tammy a bit later. We were all on call at that point, but I thought things were probably about as ready as they could be. I told Pete that I was really enjoying the music. He laughed and said, "I think they went through the things they expect to play, long ago. Lots more stopping to go over bits. Now, they're just enjoying the chance to play with Scott.

"You know how he wound up playing with them, the first time? He and Martha were in town, staying at a fancy hotel when they were on their honeymoon. They call it a resort, but it really is just a fancy hotel with a golf course. I gather he'd brought his mandolin along just to entertain the two of them, and they had taken to singing together somewhere in the hotel grounds, with his mandolin for accompaniment.

"Anyway, he'd played with Uncle Jim at some kind of dance weekend once, kind of a pickup band I think, drawn from the dancers. They had someone good leading the music, and maybe the piano player and one fiddle or something officially playing. So anyway, he saw Uncle Jim's name on a flier for a dance that weekend, and they came really early, and he asked if he could sit in. The other guys were pretty dubious, but Uncle Jim convinced them to give it a whirl during practice and see. To hear him tell it, they played two tunes, and Duane and Bill would have done most anything to convince Scott to stay and play along. He and Martha danced some, too, but he played a lot.

"That dance got them a lot of attention, media and word of mouth both. Scott had refused to take any money. So they talked to people, and convinced the group running the dance to offer a bunch of extra money to Scott if he'd come back and play with them again.

"They did a lot of publicity for that, and there was a huge crowd, some from quite a distance. And people were talking about it for years. Martha was pregnant with their little girl, not very far along yet, so they basically turned down all invitations after that. Then, oh, maybe three years later, apparently enough people from Scott and Martha's home town had been there, they arranged for the band to go there and play with Scott. And they did a lot of publicity, too, and the word of mouth was even bigger, so that was a huge success.

"The band plays a lot better with Scott, but they're also better than they were before that first time with him. I don't understand how it worked, but everyone who knew them before and after says so. So when Scott wanted a vacation out here, he found people here who knew about them, and convinced them to pay air fare for the band and put them up. He and Martha came out on their own dime—for them it's a vacation, not just a gig. But it's not only people who saw Scott and Uncle Jim on the quad, or even the newscasts—some people have showed up from three hundred miles away or so because they heard them before, sometimes just on youtube even. And they're bringing their friends."

Long about then, the caller started working with beginners, even though it was about twenty minutes early, so we all went over there. Pete and Tammy and Ellen and I got paired with people right off. There were a lot of beginners, already. Some of them, it soon was clear, had contradanced at least a little, or maybe squaredanced, and knew some figures, but they all were people who could really use the teaching. The band had stopped playing as soon as this started, heading off to the bathrooms or somewhere, but they came back to sit fairly quietly on stage for a few minutes, talking and I guess ready if the caller wanted music at some point. A couple of times he did ask for, say, sixteen bars of a reel played a little slow, so that the beginners saw how something fit with the beat.

He started over when a lot more new beginners arrived right at seven thirty. Barbara was paired with a guy, and other experienced dancers were called in—there were plenty. We all walked things through with the beginners. The ones who had arrived earlier kind of had a lot of it down, but benefited from another go, and the new beginners benefited from being surrounded by plenty of others who had seen it all at least once. The caller had, it turned out, made sure they all had done all the figures from the first two dances, and almost everything from the third. As eight o'clock arrived, he called everyone to find partners and line up for the first dance.

That hall was packed! There were lots of people standing around the edges of the room, because there wasn't room for everyone to dance, and apparently some folks were off sitting in the break rooms, too. I had seen that they had expanded the break room to two rooms out of concern that there wouldn't be space for everyone, and boy were they right!