“Well, you sit right there.” He pointed at a row of chairs set against the wall, then checked his watch. “Boyd’ll be along soon, maybe you can be helping him set up and sell tickets or something.” He disappeared into the men’s room.

Echoes of his cleaning activities resounded through the cavernous structure. Long ago, someone had taken pride in this building. Walls, ceilings, and rafters were once painted, the wooden floors once varnished and waxed. But that was long ago. A dusty blue banner trimmed with gold braid and covered with cobwebs stretched high across one sooty wall, saluting, in gold lettering, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The wooden floor was worn in the center where generations of dancing shoes had done damage. A makeshift stage filled one corner of the room, piled high with amplifiers, microphones, electrical cords and equipment. At the other end of the hall was a long window into a kitchen, and a counter, presumably an area for selling soft drinks. Next to the window were the doors to the two restrooms. That wall sported the only fresh paint in the place, a light green enamel.

I tapped my toes on the floor and shivered.

A truck pulled up outside, skidding in the dirt and gravel. The engine died and two doors slammed.

“Hey, Kyle? Kyle?” a strong masculine voice called from the door. I heard answering mumblings from the men’s room. Then a cowboy stepped into the room, looked around and saw me. He smiled. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said, and my body began to shiver from a different excitement.

“Kyle around?”

Before I could answer, a younger version of the same man, obviously a brother, came around the corner and into the hall, rubbing his hands and blowing into them. He stopped and looked at me with the same intensity his older brother had. Then the door to the men’s room opened and the old man came out, clanking a bucket and mop.

The cowboy approached him. “Hey, Kyle. I got a new table for inside the snack shop. Donated by the women at that sewing place. They got all fancy new cutting tables, and gave us one of their old ones. Bill’s going to help me put it in the kitchen there, then we can use the other table for tickets, instead of the old rickety card table.”

“Good. Good.” Kyle opened the door to the ladies’ room and propped it open with a wedge of wood. “You need help, she can help ya.” He nodded at me.