Free Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones

fairness to old classmates.
    The thought made her cry out loud. Immediately the others looked at her. Billy with that slow up-lidded querying expression of his.
    Henry with his clear unblinking sight. ‘Louise?’
    She smiled, shook her head. Said it was nothing.
    She opened the palms of her hands to release the thoughts.
    â€˜See? All gone.’
    Boredom. What to do? What to do? How to fill the hours? She wishes someone would find them. She wishes it would pass. It’s Saturday and she wants to go to the cemetery. Is it even Saturday? It feels like it might be. She can’t be sure. She’s lost all track of time.
    They live as prisoners experience life. Without a sustaining present. Without even a future to grasp hold of. So they talk about the past. Billy tells stories. Henry tries to. He never seems sure whether or not he is embarked on a story. He will begin talking, then look at each of their faces unsure in which direction to direct the flow of information. He speaks of events, incidents from the farm. Or of things with a scientific bent. How bees carry honey under their wings and the miraculous creation of the honeycomb. Henry can look at a piece of honeycomb and tell exactly where, and from which flower, the bees have been gathering. But more often it’s the piano tuner they turn to. He speaks of a place that sets their dreaming selves loose. Of crazy bars where the white people copy the black people, and dance with all their innermost selves and feelings, where one dancer follows another, and one dance follows another, hour after hour, until the night peels back to dawn.
    One night the piano tuner unfolds himself from his place by the fire. He shakes the sand off his trousers and snaps his fingers for Louise to get up and join him. So that they can see for themselves what he’s been talking about, he will show them a few steps of the tango.
    Before the fire-lit faces of Billy Pohl and Henry Graham she feels the piano tuner’s hand arrive at the small of her back. The hand gives a little shove and resettles. It presses and guides; Schmidt hums; it is the same music she heard him play in her front room. She laughs—but that is more for Billy Pohl and Henry Graham’s sakes, to make them relax. The piano tuner’s eyes are still, concentrated— now they move off. They prospect in one direction, then shift their weight there. They do not hurry. She likes that. The way he moves her with exaggerated slowness. And because it is dark she is able to close her eyes and float in his arms, and smile at the flow of instruction to Billy Pohl and Henry Graham. ‘You see? Yes? Yes?’ For a second they hold the position—hold it, hold it. ‘You see, yes?’ until the shiny faces by the fire nod back.
    Billy Pohl has a turn. Then Henry Graham. Billy holds her too tightly. He doesn’t want to so much guide her as possess her, clamp her on to himself and run off with her. With Henry it is like she might crumble into a thousand pieces.
    â€˜Henry,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t feel your hand.’
    She can hear his tremulous breath though.
    â€˜Go on, Henry, don’t be shy.’
    But her back is a hot coal and Henry can’t keep his hand there for long.
    The piano tuner sings. He sang in Spanish. Words that none of them can understand. It is the only tango song Paul Schmidt knows in its entirety so he sings it repeatedly until they get to know the words and at a certain bend in the song are able to join in.
    When she dances with Henry the piano tuner fits the song around Henry’s uncertainty. He slows it down. He even stops it to instruct Henry on some point.With Billy the song tends to speed up; it is a race to the finish and that is Billy’s fault. He tries to fit in more turns than necessary. Sometimes Louise thinks she catches a glimpse of the finish tape in Billy’s eyes.
    The sand on the floor of the cave is quick to cut up. After