Lane Michael Stanley

 Heel Toe, Grapevine, Twist, and Hide

by Lane Michael Stanley
Originally Published in Prairie Schooner Vol. 99

When Carl dares the group to say what Oklahoma is famous for, there’s a game in his eyes. He knows I’ll fail whatever test this is—I’ve left too few times to imagine what anybody else thinks of Oklahoma. But he pulls shit like this. He’s one of those Oke City gays who’s always proving he’s more cowboy than primrose, and I’m the kind to know the fastest exit from any place. Maybe that’s why I divorced him. 

“High winds and tornadoes!” Carl finally answers his own question. “That’s why they shouldn’t build a real skyscraper downtown. Idiots.” 

Carl won’t be here, not exactly here at the Sassafras Country Western Men’s Saloon, when the tornado hits on Friday morning. The person who won’t have the good sense to be any other goddamn place is Dani, this new kid, this out of town glossy twinky kid, who I’m calling a kid but must be at least twenty-seven—Dani, who now, on this Wednesday night, finds it perfectly decent to respond to Carl by screaming at the top of his lungs, “OOOOOOOOO!!!!!KLAHOMA, WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE PLAAAAINS!”

He’s laughing from the tip of his nose ring to the ankles of his maroon jumpsuit, and it’s not that I hate the younger generation, or people from the coasts, or the extra-fruity gays. This particular person is just irking me tonight. Dani, with an i. He made sure I knew that when he introduced himself. 

Carl would say I hate all outsiders. Hate is a strong word. They just make me fucking uncomfortable and I wish they’d go somewhere else. 

Dani’s driving from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to “make it” as a “content creator” and he’s stopped for the night in the motel behind the bar. “I can’t believe there’s a GAY BAR here!! In OKLAHOMA!!!” he keeps saying. Of course there’s gays in Oklahoma! Why wouldn’t we sprout up here, like switchgrass that bends funny? If he was so sure he was going through homophobe country, he shoulda packed different. OKC is nice enough for a ginger fairy, but he’s gotta drive through hee-haw country to get to whatever mid-size city he’ll be shocked to find gays in next (yes, there’s also gays in Albuquerque, sweetie! Phoenix, Tucson, even Amarillo!).

Carl will tell you it’s bad here, the culture even redder than the dirt, and being in the city won’t save you. He says his home state of Kansas is more gay-friendly than Oklahoma, but I’m sorry, I never heard Topeka was the San Francisco of the Flyover States. My theory is it doesn’t occur to Kansans that a burly-chested HVAC guy like Carl takes it up the butt. Even in my drabbest flannel, folks can spot me for a sissy. I wouldn’t do any better in Kansas. 

Dani’s interrupting our usual Wednesdays, which is when I lead line dancing lessons at Sassafras. Usually it’s the same four old queens—me, Carl, Kip (who wears a cowboy hat and still has the “gay ear” pierced—even I know 2025 is not the year we’re piercing the gay ear anymore), and our token butch, Chelsea. Dani’s got a delicate face, like a freckled, inquisitive bird, standing apart from Carl’s flat features and bushy eyebrows, or the graying stubble I’ve got hiding a weak chin. Our group goes back and forth: dance then drink, dance then drink. My “leadership position” (aka I am the one who knows how to work the speaker) gives Dani the impression I am friendly. I swear most of what I say is repeating Dani back to Dani: “Oh, you’re not using your phone GPS? Wow. Oh, you’re actually from Alexandria, not D.C.? Fascinating.” 

Line dancing keeps me sane. Barely. A line dance is a thing of discipline. There is no improvising. There’s just rules. I’m good at rules. 

It’s “Achy Breaky Heart.” 

Right, right, left, left, right, left, right, left, quarter turn. Grapevine. Grapevine. 

Dani doesn’t believe anything we say about anything. A tornado watch rolls through, and Dani’s shocked we aren’t quaking in our boots. “Don’t panic til it upgrades to a warning,” I say, “Or you’ll never finish a night out.” But then, when Carl says we had a record-breaking 152 tornadoes last year, kiddo says, “Oh okay, so it’s no big deal. Like when it snows in D.C.” (I’m about to school him on the twister we had in ‘99, that pulled the asphalt up offa the road, but the talk moves on too fast.) Dani knows better than everyone about everything. If I say it’s a gay-friendly town—which it is! you can get southern comfort food with tofu gravy and rainbow flags from a place calling itself Cracker Barrel for hipsters!—then he’ll say, “Yeah, but it’s OKLAHOMA.” If Carl says it’s dangerous country and you gotta try to blend in with the straights, Dani’ll fight back, “I blend in everywhere in this thing!” and catwalk around. 

It’s “Boot-Scootin’ Boogie.” 

Heel toe, heel toe, kick back (and step), kick front (and step). Swivel, swivel, swivel, swivel.

Dani dances different from everyone else. Geezers like Carl (he’s 64 to my 49—he says I have to stop calling him a geezer when I hit the big 5-0 so I’m getting it in while I can) dance like they need hip replacements. Butches plunge their thumbs into denim belt loops and hold on for dear life. Dani twists his hips, fluid-like, laughing and hollering. He doesn’t need all the rules. It’s either very irritating, or very sweet. I haven’t decided.

It’s “Chattahoochee.”

Kick left, kick right. Pivot, pivot. Quarter turn, clap, and “whoo!”

Dani crashes into me, and turns it to a hug. Maybe he should learn to line dance. But he’s got one of those infections laughs so I don’t stay the most mad I’ve ever been. 

“He likes you,” Carl says, on our drive home. We turned our house into a duplex and we each live in one side of it. Carl’s about to retire, though, and he’s moving up to Stillwater. I have no idea who I’m supposed to be without Carl. This is the kind of town, or maybe the kind of life, where you keep your family your family, even if you drive each other up a goddamn wall. 

“He does not,” I say. But. People usually gravitate to Carl—and this kid was at my elbow all night. I don’t know what Carl’s point is anyway, I figure the kid’s stopping over and he’ll be well on his way in the morning. Carl’s a tease that way. Sometimes he just likes a story.  “He was trying to drive me crazy all night.” 

“Ken,” Carl says. “You never like when people like you.” Let him retire in the sticks, if he’s gonna have my number like that. 

***

The tornado won’t come til Friday morning. Well, there will be tornadoes before then, of course—it’s April in Oklahoma. There’s always a watch, or a dust devil, somewhere.

Tornado’s a local affair. One block is decimated. One block is fine. You can’t concern yourself with what’s twisting in Tulsa, or hell, even in Edmond. It doesn’t hit neighborhoods in OKC the same. Who knows why Toby Keith’s I <3 This Bar & Grill is still standing while Esmerelda’s Bail Bonds gets ripped to shreds across the street. 

Find shelter. Avoid windows. Bolt the furniture down. 

An east coaster knows how to see blizzards. Hurricanes lumbering up the whole coast. They hear 152 tornadoes, but they didn’t hear about 152 devastations. So they decide it’s normal. They decide normal means safe. And we don’t know how to tell them what lives in our bones—how to feel when the sky gets seasick. How to listen to the local news, the neighborhood news. How to know people who know people who know whether you’re in the warpath. How to know a warpath is an unpredictable thing. That just because the pricking at the back of your neck when you hear big thunder is usual, that don’t make it normal. That don’t make it safe.

When you’ve stood in your front yard and seen your grandma’s urn cracked open, next to a strip of your roof, next to that sock you kept meaning to throw out because it lost its mate and it was never that comfy anyway—when you’ve hidden in the stall of the men’s room on a road trip because Carl says he can talk the angry tailgaters down but if they see me in my small, skinny softness they’re likely to pop off—when you know how fast a sky or a jaw can bruise, bruise, deep purple bruise—maybe there isn’t normal after that. 

Heel toe, stand up straight, if it seems like they’re watching you, run.

***

Thursday night, Dani’s still at the bar. I walk in and it’s this floofy cream shirt and tight green pants and a necklace I can see across the room. The winds howl. I go to the bar, get my lager, and I’m gonna settle into a dark corner to brood and watch old cowboys two-step, since Carl goes to Geezer Yoga on Thursdays so I don’t have a dancing buddy. Then Dani flutters over. 

“These winds are wild!” he says. “Should I like, not go outside?”

“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s winds.” 

“How do you know?” he asks. If this is such a hellhole, can he get out of here?

“You just know. Start figuring out what the prickles on your neck mean. Check your damn weather app.” 

“What do you do if there’s a tornado?” he asks, I guess because I’m the closest thing in this bar to a person he knows. “Go to the basement?” 

“There’s no basements here,” I growl at him. “Red clay sucks the moisture outta everything, basements crack apart.”

“Then what?” he asks. I am not an elementary school teacher. I figure he’s gonna leave soon enough, and what tornado’s ever gonna find him out in Hollywood? 

“Why haven’t you driven west yet?”

“Maybe I like this town,” he says, and if he thinks being a little shit about my town is gonna win me over, he’s dead wrong. “The bartender’s gonna let me have the place to myself in the morning, so I can make videos. But shh, he’s doing me a favor, don’t tell.” Now he’s got a secret hand on my shoulder. A secret smile. 

“Is this your idea of flirting?” I say, thinking it’ll scare him off, but his smile only gets sweeter before he squeezes my wrist and saunters away. When he looks back toward me, his strawberry hair waves over his shoulder. 

I drink my lager. Quiet. 

If he smiles at you, sometimes, you can try a little touch of the hand—nothing you can’t explain away if he takes offense. 

Not tonight. 

***

I don’t have to go to the warehouse on Fridays. I’m deep in a mid-morning bubble bath (my one goddamn luxury) when Carl blasts into my side of the duplex.

“Have you seen?” he asks, and only then do I realize I have six missed calls and four weather alerts. 

Vanilla soap decommissioned the back of my neck.

Find shelter. Close doors. Stay away from windows. Heavy objects, move inside. 

I didn’t even notice the start of the rain.

There’s clouds. Pearly, then pistol-sheen. No funnels—yet. No sound like a train coming—yet. No shoes or planks of wood or kitties levitating a few feet offa the ground. 

Carl’s digging into the network. Gathering everybody’s witness. Do I know everyone he knows? Do I have their numbers? They won’t text him updates when he’s in Stillwater. Maybe I’ll run to him every time it rains. Will I get an alert if he’s in trouble up there? 

Check weather. WARNING!!! Check fire extinguisher. Hold emergency numbers in your hand so they can’t blow away.

Carl grabs his disaster kit, first aid and water, and runs to me in the middle of the room. “It’s going to the bar,” he says. “Kip says it’s a wall now, might touch down.”

The bar. The bar.

The kid!

Stupid fucking kid with his stupid fucking videos! Is anybody with him?

Cover your head. Avoid the windows. 

Would it have been that hard to answer him?

He’ll be fine. He’ll know how to hide. Maybe he can feel the pricking at the back of his neck. 

And still—I don’t want him to feel that pricking. Once it starts, it don’t ever go away, not even for a cloudy day. Or an OSU neckbeard who looks at you wrong. 

Maybe he left? 

Fuck. 

Here’s what you don’t do in a tornado.

You don’t run out the front door, beneath a purpling sky. 

You don’t fire up the engine of your busted-up pickup while Carl runs after you, shouting something you can’t hear, probably, “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?”

You don’t drive toward where the rain turns to hail. Bouncing off your windshield, THUD.

The earth’s top layer rises up, dust clouds, not two blocks away. 

And a mailbox, drifting, lazy, circling, skyward, two after that. 

Cover your head. Drive away from the purple, not toward it, you fucker!!!

By the time I get to the bar, I see the wall. The wall of vapor that’s about to touch down and become a full-on fucking tunnel. My body screams at me, RUN THE FUCK AWAY HE MIGHT NOT EVEN BE HERE. Hail pelts as I run to the door, bad knee be damned, it’s open (miracle), I barge through, and I know I did right because I hear a cry of relief to my right.

The kid’s instincts aren’t total shit—he’s low to the ground, tight in a ball, the roar of the sky’s tunnel-train surrounding him, but he’s under a huge window that’s gonna blow any second. He’s alone and he’s fucking terrified.

I shout and the wind sucks up the air of my voice, but he looks like he’ll do anything I say, so I grab his wrist and pull him to the center of the room. Nothing to protect us here, nothing to hide behind, this big room as flat and open as the land of Oklahoma itself, but we’re as far away from windows as can be, and I throw this kid down on the ground and I shout in his ear as loud as I can, COVER YOUR HEAD, and we fling ourselves flat on the carpet and our arms wrap round our skulls before, CRASH, a branch flings through the window, that same window, the memory of where the kid just was is gored through, and glass shatters everywhere, a sharp pain in my calf, a stabbing pain.

Dani’s shaking so bad I think he’s gonna vibrate off this plane of existence, I reach out to him and he’s grasping my arm and in a moment, I’m surrounding him, holding him, his head protected somewhere between my hip and my stomach, my head under my elbows still, and the rushing sky fills our ears as its color bleeds purple so deep a whale could swim through it, we are the bottom of an ancient ocean and the world has yet to be made. 

The roar becomes a little less loud, and a little less, and the pain in my calf starts to scream, but the boy is untouched. He is here. He is safe, and clean, and scared, and here.

Tornado’s always done in a few minutes. You can see danger coming, sometimes. You don’t know how bad it’ll be. But no matter what, even if your whole life is wrecked, it was only a few minutes. 

I take longer than that to let go of Dani. He takes longer than that to let go of me. 

My leg has a shard of glass sticking out of it. Not pretty. 

We do separate, sometime. Scoot a few feet apart. Take in the damage. Window, blown to pieces. Glass must reach the back of the room. But Dani, airy vision, trembling, unscathed. The roar is gone. It’s just us, our breath, and the pelting rain. Not sure where to sit. Not sure how to be. Other than alive. Only lightly stabbed, only my leg. Feeling how solid the earth is, when nothing spins above it. 

He can’t look, when I rip the glass from myself with a grunt. I’m bloodying up my hand now, too. Borrow some of the barkeep’s vodka, pour it on—stings. I’ve been hurt worse. I want to go home. Carl. The kid’s alright. He don’t like me pulling things from myself, he’s made a bit of noise about that, but otherwise, he’s alright. I don’t have nothing to say, in this moment. I don’t have nothing to hear. The storm has passed. The dance is over. He watches me go. The back of my neck tells me, he’s got questions. But I don’t have nothing that needs to be said.

A tornado’s a local affair. Our house is untouched, Carl’s and mine. Or soon—just mine, when he sells me his half and carries on. The junk mail has scattered—that’s it. Maybe it woulda been easier, when Carl leaves, if everything had blown apart. Start brand new. I guess I’ll start brand new either way. Less paperwork, with the house still standing. Less destruction. 

Carl’s pissed. “THE FUCK KIND OF HERO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE,” that kind of thing. “I’M SHIT AT STITCHES, LET ME TAKE YOU TO THE DOCTOR,” blah blah. He knows I hate doctors, and he’s got plenty of first aid shit so he can spare me the trip. His stitches don’t go in a straight line, but they get the job done. He likes to fight with me. These days, I’m more inclined to let him. I used to rise to it and shout on back, when we were husbands. Now I don’t take it personal. I guess it’s easier to let your ex-husband yell and carry on than it is your husband. Back then I wanted to snap him out of it. Make him be some other way. But Carl just has to yell every now and again. He’ll wear himself out if I don’t egg him on. I put on some tea and eventually he calms down and sews up my leg. He always calms down. He’s a sweet man, Carl. 

In the twilight, when the hail is done and the warning’s off and we’ve checked there are no losses bigger than a baseball bat flung who-knows-where, a few of us will go down to the bar to sweep. Board up the window. We’ll figure out who all’s a contractor or once sucked off a contractor who’s still in the closet so he doesn’t come around. It’s our place, the Sassafras Country Western Men’s Saloon, and we’ll fix it up. Like we always have. This mess won’t rank as devastation—won’t make city news. Our boot-shaped disco ball still hangs from the ceiling. Maps of Oklahoma and paintings of cowboys line the walls. The damage is a local affair. 

Before any of us can get there, Dani’s gone. Checked out of his motel room. Heading west.

I don’t see him before he leaves. But if I did, he’d be looking back at me, through that strawberry hair. Freckles and green eyes and clothes that float around him. My dream of him wouldn’t need to say nothing. He wouldn’t pledge undying gratitude, or share some life-changing perspective. He certainly wouldn’t know, now, how to survive in Oklahoma. Nobody taught him, and nobody needs to. My dream of this boy would smile, his fairy ginger smile, and he would saunter out of this place, safe and free and floating. 

And I would like it here, just a little bit more than I did before he came.