Firehouse Dance

by David Salner

“It’s gonna slay you,” Rodney said of it, his eyes gleaming.

Gerald hadn’t told his mother he was going to the firehouse dance and felt guilty as a result. He’d never lied to her, and afterwards he was amazed she didn’t say a word about the smoke in his boatneck sweater. Surely she’d smelled it, because the whole firehouse was in a cloud.

The huge building stood out on the lower end of Main Street, just before the river. The doors were propped open, so they could hear the music a block away as they walked toward it from Rodney’s house. A knot of boys lounged outside, smoking. On entering, Gerald briefly noted that there were no fire engines here. Mobile equipment was stored in a building next door.

Smoke hovered over the cement floor, which was crowded with girls, a few boys mixed in. He recognized some as seniors, some as recent graduates or dropouts. Around the dancers an audience had formed, smoking, chatting, watching the action. Then the d-jay put on an oldie, “Hard-Headed Woman”, the signal for everyone to clear out and let Cheryl and Darlene take over. Gerald knew them, but only dimly. They had a bad reputation, which seemed not to matter here. They began with a fluid jitterbug, the twirling punctuated by forceful, rhythmic steps, strutting and finger snaps. And it made sense to Gerald, this proud place for the two girls, since their prowess was obvious from the first steps. With the next song, “Dance with Me Henry”—another oldie—their lindy-hopping fun was replaced by movements that were more vehement, more rhythmic, conveying something deeper, something harsher, pistons of muscle driving heels in a stamp, torsos pulsating, shoulders swiveling, gestures evoking both hunger and rage, twin volcanoes of anger and desire. Emotions everyone shared, every last one of us, Gerald would have thought, if he wasn’t just so transported, so carried beyond thought by their whirling movements.

Rodney poked him with an elbow, eyes conveying a “see what I mean” gleam. But Gerald was too swept up in the mood to return his friend’s look as he watched the two girls in their t-shirts—they’d tossed blouses aside—crossing their arms, shimmying around each other, feet tapping rhythmically on the cement as they danced out, expanding their circle while the crowd fell back. They rotated around the floor, hips swaying, legs vibrating in a motion that rippled through skin-tight jeans.

Then “Hand Jive” came on, which everyone could join while still transfixed on the two stars in the middle, who were moving their hands in perfect synchronization, scowling, glaring from the very depths of their teenage lives, the passion they treasured, the waste of it they foresaw. The air seemed to surge around Cheryl and Darlene, a liquid they patted and kneaded and shaped with lithe gestures that alternated from the very delicate to the clearly obscene. A cheer went up as the sweating girls leaped in the air then began to shimmy again in a freeform of flesh and sweat-plastered t-shirts. Their foreheads were beaded with sweat as they scanned the crowd with a look of I know and you know and we don’t give a fuck on gum-chewing faces, scowls conveying anger along with seduction, as if saying, I dare you, I dare you—I dare you to dance with me, talk to me, ask me out, beg, praise, or blame me, interfere with this moment that’s mine in a wide world of billions of people—mine, only mine, these few precious seconds, this now.

The firehouse was exploding around them in a cloud of sweat and smoke and teenage yearning. Then the d-jay put on Chubby Checker and the two girls gestured for everyone, come on, come on, come on and join us, we’re sharing this moment with you—and the smoky hall was a mass of twisting young bodies.

Gerald remembered this firehouse dance as a fog of smoke and sweat, a rain of liquid and fire, and the whole scene seethed in his mind long after, a revelation that took place on a Saturday night in a brick building in a mill town that no longer exists.

About the author

David Salner's most recent poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). His debut novel is A Place to Hide. He worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, and now librarian. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and Sundial. Innisfree Poetry Journal 33 featured a retrospective of twenty-five poems drawn from his four books. He lives in Millsboro, Delaware with his wife, Barbara Greenway.

About the illustration

The illustration is "Fans of Rock n roll singer Bill Haley dance to his music as he performs with his band The Comets on stage at Hammersmith", photographic print, February 6, 1957. Photographer unknown.