Odis Crump stared at her across the senior center parking lot.
"You were what?"
"You heard me."
"The Pavilion? At Myrtle Beach?"
"Summer of 1972," Bernice said. "Wilbur and I won the junior shag contest. I was eighteen. He was twenty. We beat forty couples." She lifted her chin. "Then we got married and had children and he sold tractors and I stopped talking about it. Not a soul in this town knows."
"Then why'd you let me step on you for two months?"
"Because you needed to learn the basic," Bernice said. "And I needed to get mad at somebody."
Odis looked at her for a very long time.
Then, for the first time in Bernice's memory, Odis Crump smiled. It was small and rusty and a little crooked, like a gate opening that had not opened in years.
"Two o'clock," he said.
He came at two o'clock exactly, in a clean shirt and his suspenders.
Bernice had taken the dust cover off Wilbur's record player that morning. It had taken her an hour to do it. She had stood in the living room with her hand on the cover for a long time before she could lift it.
She had pushed back the kitchen table. The linoleum floor was clean and bare.
"First thing," she said. "Take off those boots. You can't shag in work boots. You need to slide."
Odis looked at his boots. Then he took them off and stood in her kitchen in his sock feet.
She put on a record. An old one. A slow, sweet beach song from 1965 about a summer night by the ocean.
"Now," Bernice said. "Forget everything Kelsey told you."
They danced every afternoon for five weeks.
In her kitchen, on the bare linoleum, in their sock feet, to Wilbur's old records. Monday through Saturday. Two hours a day.
She taught him the basic again, the right way, smooth instead of stiff, with his knees soft. She taught him the belly roll and the sugar foot and the boogie walk. She taught him how to lead without pushing, which took two weeks, because Odis had never led anything in his life without pushing.
And she taught him the turn. The one in Leigh Ann's song.
It took him nine days. He fell into the refrigerator twice.
But on the tenth day, he did it. The whole turn, smooth, with Bernice spinning out under his arm and coming back in to him on the beat, as if they had been doing it for fifty years.
They stood in the middle of her kitchen, out of breath.
"Well," Odis said.
"Well," Bernice said.
Neither of them said anything else. Neither of them let go.
Somewhere in those five weeks, without either of them saying so, the dancing stopped being only about the wedding.
He started coming at one-thirty instead of two. He brought her peaches from his freezer, the last of Hazel's summer canning. She made him coffee and pound cake. They sat on her screened porch afterward and looked at Wilbur's garden, and one Saturday, without asking, Odis went out and pulled every weed in it.
He told her about Hazel. How she laughed. How she had danced alone in their kitchen for fifty-three years while he sat at the table reading the paper, and how he had never once gotten up.
"Not once," he said. "She'd hold out her hand. And I'd say, Hazel, I'll look like a fool."
"You would have," Bernice said.
"I know it." He looked at his hands. "I'd give anything to have looked like a fool with her one time."
Bernice told him about Wilbur. How he sang off-key in the choir and loud in the shower. How he had danced with her in this kitchen every Saturday night for fifty-one years, even after his knees went bad, even when it hurt.
"I haven't danced since May," she said. "Not until you."
Odis did not say anything. He just reached over, on the porch swing, and put his big rough peach farmer's hand over hers.
The wedding was on April the eleventh, in a big white barn outside town, with strings of lights and two hundred people.
Bernice was not invited. She had not expected to be. She did not know the family.
She was home on Magnolia Street that evening, sitting on her screened porch with a glass of iced tea, when her telephone rang at nine-fifteen.
It was a young woman's voice. Bright and breathless, with a party going on behind her.
"Mrs. Wofford? This is Leigh Ann Crump. Well, Leigh Ann Pressley now." She laughed. "Granddaddy gave me your number."
"Is he all right?"
"Mrs. Wofford," Leigh Ann said, "he danced with me. The grandmother dance. In front of the whole room." She was laughing and crying at the same time. "He did a belly roll. He did the turn. People were standing on chairs. My daddy cried. I've never seen my granddaddy dance in my whole life, Mrs. Wofford. Not once. He said you taught him."
Bernice could not speak.
"And there's a car on its way to your house," Leigh Ann said. "Granddaddy sent it. He says he's not dancing the last song with anybody but you."
Bernice put on her good blue dress in seven minutes. She had not worn it since the funeral.
When she walked into the barn at ten o'clock, the band was playing something fast, and the floor was full of young people, and Odis Crump was standing by the edge of the dance floor in a dark suit, with his suspenders showing under the jacket, and his old felt hat in his hand.
He saw her in the doorway.
He walked across the barn to her, slowly, stooped, the way he walked everywhere. People stepped aside to let him pass. Some of them were staring.
He stopped in front of her and held out his hand.
The band, as if it had been arranged, which it had, slid into a slow, sweet beach song from 1965 about a summer night by the ocean.
"Bernice," Odis said. His rusty voice was not quite steady. "Hazel held out her hand to me for fifty-three years. I never once took it." He swallowed. "I don't plan to make that mistake twice."
Bernice looked at his hand.
She thought about Wilbur, in the kitchen, every Saturday night, on bad knees.
Then she took Odis's hand, and he led her out onto the floor, smooth, without pushing, with his knees soft, and they danced.