Page 82 of The Lonely Road

She’s in a dark teal dress, her hair down around a beaded clip at the base of her neck, silver on her wrists. She pulls me into a hug when Taya introduces us, and the warmth in it is so genuine that I want to step back and warn her. Be careful of men like me.

I don’t.

Her son finds me before I’ve finished the thought.

Cam is in a ribbon shirt—red, with yellow trim, perfectly pressed—and jeans and boots with the slight shine of a child dressed by a parent who cared. He attaches himself to my right boot and examines the lace with the focused intensity of someone solving a problem no one else has identified.

He looks up. His mother’s eyes. His father’s complete absence of social discomfort. “Are you Taya’s boyfriend?”

Fuck me. “Ah⁠—”

“She said she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“Ah—”

He considers both of my answers. “You’re okay. You can be her boyfriend.”

“Thanks, bud.”

Daniel appears from the direction of the shade structure with the slightly harassed efficiency of a man who has been given instructions about a tent pole and has mislaid them. Deep navy ribbon shirt, white trim, hair pulled back. He clocks his son on my boot and gives me the look of a man deciding whether to apologize.

“Don’t,” I say.

I take the other end of the pole he’s holding, and we work it through together. He accepts the help with the directness of a man who doesn’t need to perform gratitude.

“That was good work, Mason,” Cam informs me gravely.

“Fair warning,” Daniel says. “You’re his now.”

Then the drums begin.

Four of them, set in a row under the shade structure, each struck by a drummer with a steady, unhurried hand. The sound doesn’t sit in the air. It travels through the ground first, up through the soles of my boots, and arrives in my chest before my ears have caught up.

The Catman—the dance leader—moves along the edge of the corral and the crowd begins to shift inward. Sienna explains that he’s inviting more people to join the dance.

The dancers form.

Women on one side of the arbor, men on the other, the space between them deliberate and held. The shawls come across the shoulders. The jewelry catches the morning light. The line the women form is elegant.

And Taya is in the women’s line.

She is the only person I’m looking at.

Her weight is settled already, heel to toe, heel to toe, moving in time with the drum before the first call has gone out.

The call comes—not quite a word, not quite music, something that carries intention the way music carries melody. A woman steps forward and lifts her hand toward her chosen partner. He meets her in the middle.

They move. Forward and back. Grounded, staying close to the earth, their bodies aligned but not touching. Small, contained, and entirely itself.

The round ends. They step back. The next call begins without pause.

Taya steps forward. She flicks her shawl toward Elder Nokoni.

“She just shawled him,” Daniel says beside me.

“What does that mean?”

“She asked him to dance. When a woman shawls you, you can’t refuse.”