The Fancy Dancer

bachelor cowboys, were lovers.
    And if they behaved this way in front of me, it meant that they knew I was Vidal’s lover.
    We sat at the big pine table and ate. I found I had fallen strangely silent. Through the kitchen picture window, we could see the horses scattered across the bench and Flint standing in his corral swishing flies. Now, of course, I knew why, of all breeds, these two young men would pick the mustang.
    I traded looks with Vidal. He knew I had finally figured things out, and he smiled.
    After lunch we sat in the living room with one more can of beer. Larry put a record on the stereo, Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. Young’s haunting falsetto filled the room, and the peace of this place sank deeper and deeper into my bones.
    The room was functional and comfortable, but planned with thought and taste. The huge fireplace was built of the same pink granite as the terrace and steps outside. The furniture was deep red leather, and there were magnificent old Navajo rugs everywhere, on the floors, hung on the walls, draped over the sofa. On one wall, a dozen Catlin prints were massed. Like the rest of the ranch, the room breathed the peace and purpose of the two individuals who had created it.
    Sitting on the couch, Larry and Will were just a little cozier—Will put his arm over Larry’s shoulder, and they leaned together. Lady jumped up on both their laps and licked both their faces.
    “How long have you two known each other?” I said.
    “We met at the Billings rodeo eight years ago,” said Will. “Larry was up in the bareback riding, and I was sitting on the arena fence, and he bucked off in front of me.”
    They both laughed uproariously, like they were sharing some secret joke.
    “We took a notion to get drank together that night,” said Larry, “and we’ve been together ever since.”
    Vidal was laughing too, as if he knew more of the story than I did. “You’ll never break up,” he said. “The bank won’t let you.”
    “Yeah,” said Will, ‘let’s hope the bank never finds out we don’t use both the bedrooms in this house.”
    “Or the insurance company,” said Larry.
    When I excused myself a while later to go to the bathroom, the beer having taken its course, I saw the two bedrooms as I went down the hallway. They both looked lived in, with both beds more or less made. I was reminded of my own lies.
    When we left, late in the afternoon, the shadows of the lonely cedars lay long across the hills. Vidal drove and I sat silent. I was still under the spell of that place and those two people, and knew it would haunt me for a long time. I would never be able to live with anyone and create a life like that.
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    Back at the rectory for supper, I told Father Vance a few tales of an afternoon’s hike through the Hellgate Canyon. I’d hiked it in high school and knew every foot of it, so I didn’t have to fictionalize.
    “By the way,” said Father Vance, “Mrs. Shoup was asking for you this afternoon.”
    “She was?” I said. My stomach felt like it was sliding over a cliff.
    “She was surprised you weren’t around. I explained you were out hiking. She has a book she wants you to look at. She thinks it’s obscene, of course, but she wants you to explain some of the music stuff in it to her.”
    I tried to pretend I was only mildly irritated.
    “If God didn’t command me to be charitable,” I said, “Fd tell her to put the book in her left ear.”
    The creepy feeling came over me that Mrs. Shoup was trying to check up on me.
    10
    One night at supper, around the end of July, Vidal said to me, “Get ready to go backpacking again.”
    “Where to this time?”
    “Oh, right over to Helena,” he said.
    “What natural wonders do we see?”
    Vidal grinned. “The first drag ball in the history of Montana.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “It’s even got a Bicentennial theme. Everybody is supposed to come as the old-time lady or gentleman of his choice. It’s going to be at the Broadwater Hotel.” “How did you find out about it?”
    “It was advertised right in the Helena paper. Of course, the ad didn’t say drag ball, but ... I suppose some straights will show up that won’t really know what is going on. Larry and Will saw the ad and told me.”
    “Are they going?”
    “Nope. They’re too busy training the horse and putting up hay.”
    I stirred my second cup of coffee moodily. “Drag,” I said. “I’m not sure that’s my kind of