The Dance Boots by Linda L Grover

Author:Linda L Grover [Grover, Linda L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0820335800
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2010-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Miles away, and further away by the minute, a teenage boy drove a hearse up the county road to the cemetery. In the back, inside the coffin, Louis wore my dad’s clothes, his suit and shirt and tie and socks (he didn’t really need shoes, the mortician said; that wouldn’t show). The mortician’s son sang with his favorite radio station on the ride and said to the coffin in back, “You don’t mind if I turn this up, do you?”

Louis watched us from the great distance that he had covered over the past four days of his long and arduous walk westward to the next life.

At the end of the fourth day, she was waiting on the other side of the last river, among the stars, her dark hair neatly knotted at the back of her neck, her white blouse reflecting the silver-blue of starlight. The night wind blew and lifted her dark skirt to one side; below, her small feet, which were laced severely at the ankles in ladies’ boots, like a teacher’s, stepped closer to the shore; the heels left the ground as she rose to her toes, clasping her hands as if in prayer. The sight filled his eyes as he waded into the river and swam; then as his feet touched bottom again he nearly galloped through the cold and heavy current. The rocks on the shore warmed and dried his feet those last steps.

“Maggie,” he said, his feet light as smoke. “Maggie.”

“Nishimoshe, my sweetheart,” Maggie sang in her light and silvery voice, “a long time I have waited for you to come over to where I am.”

“Wijiiwagan,” he answered, and folded his hands over hers, covering her prayers with his own.

And so Louis joined his true love, Maggie, and they joined the others who watch us from far beyond where the sun sets, the past that birthed the present that even now births the future. They pray as we pass into life, they pray us through our lives, they pray as we pass out of life; when we die, they pray our steps across the walk west. Thus blessed, we live and die in an air hung with their prayers, the breath of their words on our faces and bodies, their spirits among us, trying to see and hear and understand. Wegonen, what is it, we think. Amanj i dash, and I wonder. We ponder this all of our lives, not realizing what we already know.

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