Tales From Springdale
                              by Dave Laird 
                        Dancer From a Distant Land
                        Copyright 1990 by Dave Laird

Although they lay claim to some of the finest dilettantes in the county,
Springdale never has had professional go-go dancers. The town survived the
decades without topless or bottomless dancers grinding away in the taverns,
instead marking the time with the amateurish efforts of Carolyn Winkle who,
when properly primed with a suitable amount of cheap red wine, has provided
a remarkable number of hours of entertainment for free.

Yet, as a handful in town know, among the collection of Reservation Indians,
has-been loggers and former roustabout drillhands, there is a retired
professional topless dancer living and working in their midst.

Shady Lady is what she used to call herself, when she used to dance the big
clubs back east.

Although the dancers back then were treated like royalty, Deedee Morris now
tends bar at the Reservation Tavern.

"Girls who danced topless in those days didn't mess around with men, or else
they didn't dance the big clubs. The guys who hired them, or somebody that
worked for them would come to the apartment where we stayed after work, and
anyone who screwed our customers didn't dance there anymore. It was that
simple."

Furs, food, drinks...whatever the dancers wanted was given to them, on the
house. Deedee now has to pay for everything she eats or drinks.  She is
fortunately if she gets four dollars in tips per night, a far cry from those
days back in Calumet and Kankakee, Illinois when Deedee would climb down off
the stage with her g-string so full of bills it was hard to walk.

"Yeah," she reflected, wiping up a spilled beer, "No one ever had it better.
In those days there wasn't no other way a dumb Indian girl from a rez-town
like Springdale could make that kind of money."

On a busy Saturday night at the Reservation Tavern, the motley mix of
loggers, Indians and farmers that jams up to the bar, elbow to elbow, it is
sometimes difficult for her to remember the days when she never went
anywhere alone. There were always fancy cars, and she dressed up in
furs...looking like a really high-class lady, for when Deedee wasn't
dancing, she was expected to adhere to an almost puritanical standard. Those
that didn't follow the rules were put on the bus back to wherever they came
from.

Deedee finally retired  from dancing at age twenty-five, which was
considered pretty old, in those days. Of course, the big clubs, the big
promoters were beginning to get few and far between, as by then, topless
dancing had been regulated to where it evolved into sleazy bars, not the
gentlemen's bars of old. DeeDee just couldn't live that way, and so she
returned back home to Springdale.

Fortunately, she had amassed a substantial savings, during her years
dancing. She wisely put most of it into a savings account. Eight years and
two kids later, she set up a trust account for each of them to attend
college. The rest of her savings was spent on various boyfriends over the
years, or on jewelry.

"Of course," Deedee observes, "I keep the jewelry in a vault in the bank in
Spokane...you go dress up in jewelry and furs around here, and someone will
try to steal the damned jewelry right off you."

Eight long years ago, Deedee started working at the Reservation Tavern, and
that is where she met her husband, Ted Brockett. He was the kind of man who
was so homely as to be the butt of practically every joke in town, and
furthermore he didn't trust women at all, since his first wife had married
him for his money.

Although DeeDee admits that she doesn't really love Ted, she is faithful to
him, and treats him good.

"I guess I really have had it good, all these years. Somebody once asked me,
if I could do anything...anything at all before I up and died, what that
would be. I told them I had done everything, at least everything I ever
wanted to do in this life."

Shady Lady drifts back down the bar, into the haze of cigarette smoke and
ashes, the reek of the beer and the road back to today, as the Reservation
Tavern groans once, turning itself over as it slumbers restlessly.

Outside, the first snowflakes of the year began falling silently down out of
the murky night sky, as, up the street a distance, a coyote began his
nightly rounds searching for food between the taverns.