Dance on the Wind

by Johnston, Terry C.

  He jerked up at the admonition, as if his father had pulled on a halter rope attached to a bit shoved inside his mouth. “That’s my gun. Grandpap give it to me—”

  “I know. But you’re still my son, living under my roof—and there’s chores to be done afore you go slipping off with any more of that hunting foolishness in mind. This is a farm. And this is a farming family, Titus. That comes first. You best remember that.”

  Wagging his head in disbelief, Titus groaned. “I come this close to winning myself some real money with that rifle. That ain’t no foolishness.”

  “You come in second and you’re right: that’s nothing no man can be ’shamed of, son,” Thaddeus replied sternly, his hands braced on his hips.

  “Never gonna be ’shamed of nothin’,” he said, his jaw jutting angrily.

  “But even so that you beat all the rest but one fella—it’s time you realized you was home now. Time you got back to what is really important: raising crops to feed this family.”

  “Didn’t ever tell you I couldn’t hunt and help out ’round here,” Titus snapped.

  “Well, it’s about time you was forgetting you ever tried to do both,” Thaddeus Bass snapped. “That rifle stays in the corner till your farming is done to my satisfaction.”

  Titus glanced over at Amy, seeing by the look on her face that she clearly agreed with the elder Bass. He turned back to glare at his father. “You wanna kill something in me, don’t you?” he snarled, seeing his words bring his father up short.

  Then Thaddeus Bass glowered, his lips working for a moment on just what to say, what to do with Amy right there. “Long as you’re under my roof, Titus—you’ll do as I say you’re to do. Best you remember that, and remember I raised you better’n to back-talk your elders. ’Specially in front of company.”

  “I’m sure Titus didn’t mean to back-talk you, Mr. Bass,” Amy said quietly, tugging slightly on Titus’s arm.

  Both of them, ganging up on him and his dreams.

  “I’m sure he didn’t, Amy.”

  Titus growled, “I don’t think neither one of you give a good goddamn what I really meant.”

  His father took a step toward him, taking one hand off a hip to poke a thick finger in his son’s face. “Best you learn what really means something in life, Titus. That shooting, any of your hunting—none of that don’t mean a hoot. Only thing important for a fella your age is just how good a farmer you’re gonna be.”

  Titus watched his father nod his leave-taking to Amy, turn, and move off toward the cabin in the waning light of that late-summer afternoon.

  “Your pa only wants what’s best for you, Titus,” she said gently in the softening light. “What we all want for you.”

  He turned on her. “How you know what’s best for me, Amy? How’s my pap know? You tell me that!”

  “I know what’s best for you because it’s what’s best for me too: to take care of our family. Neither of us can just go off an’ do what we want anymore. Not with a child coming to us.” Her cheeks flushed with an angry crimson. “You best realize that when you laid me down and made me with child, Titus Bass—that was good as marrying me in the eyes of God Hisself. We’re married and I’m having your baby. And that means you start acting like a man and quit running off from your responsibilities like you been doing.”

  “I think it’s time you went on home, Amy.”

  “Ain’t you gonna walk me there, Titus?”

  He looked at the cabin, the first lamp being lit behind one of the four isinglass windows. Then he gazed at Amy. His flesh stirred again, the way it always did when he looked at her in soft light. He knew he could just as well take her—grab her and throw her down into the shadows nestled back in the timber somewhere on the path to the Whistler place. He knew she would not resist. After all, hadn’t she said they were married? His anger at his father, his anger at her for agreeing with his father—it had aroused such passion in him, and he knew he would explode if he didn’t find a way to spit out all that was choking him.

  There was simply no way now to swallow it down the way he had swallowed it down every time before.

  “C’mon, let’s start me home, and maybeso we can find us a quiet place ’long the way.”

  He let her take his hand in hers and start through the trees. For a moment he looked back over his shoulder, seeing his father sitting on the porch, that old hickory-bottomed chair of his tipped back against the cabin wall, silhouetted against the waning light. A dove cooed somewhere above them in the green canopy as they were absorbed by the shadows.

  As scared as he was of what price he might have to pay, his fright was swept aside by his sudden, overpowering hunger. Stopping, whirling Amy about, he pulled her back to him, watching her eyes widen as he laid his mouth on hers fiercely. His hands came up and slipped one button after another from the holes down the front of her dress; then both hands slipped inside.

  She gasped as he fondled the soft, firm mounds, her hips rocking forward against him.

  “You’re right about one thing, Amy,” he said, his voice low and husky with lust as he cradled her to the ground. “Time I become a man.”

  5

  As his mother handed Titus a heaping platter of soda biscuits, she said, “Amy asked me have you come over after supper, Titus.”

  He stared at his beans and side meat, finding it hard to swallow that last bite. “She say what for?”

  “Just said it was real important she talked to you, son.”

  Titus finally raised his eyes, of a sudden realizing how a great silence had settled over the table. Thaddeus, as well as his brothers and sister, gazed at him—waiting to see some reaction in him. He would not give them that pleasure, turning instead to glance out the open window, measuring what remained of that day.

  “Maybe best I should go right off,” he told no one in particular as he turned back to stare at his food. “Night coming down soon.”

  “Yes,” his mother replied. “You should do that.”

  He slid the wooden trencher away and pushed himself back from the table, his short, backless bench scraping noisily across the puncheon floor. “I’ll be home straightaway I get done.”

  “Take your time,” she answered, clattering his trencher atop hers as she scooped up iron and pewter eating utensils from the plank table. “Amy’s a fine girl, Titus. Has the making of a good wife for some man. I want you to take good care of that one.”

  “Already him and Amy planning on getting married off,” his sister blurted.

  Her words seized him at the doorway, his hand hovering on the wrought-iron latch. Slowly turning, Titus glared at the girl some two years younger than he and demanded, “Where you get such a idea?”

  She glanced at her mother, then her father, both appearing surprised with the news, then cocked her chin slightly to answer, “They all talking about it at school.”

  “Who’s they?” Thaddeus inquired.

  Twisting round to face her father, the girl said, “All Amy’s brothers and sisters, Pa. Said she told ’em about her getting married off to Titus come spring—less’n it’s sooner, what I heard.”

  “Spring?” his mother asked in a gasp as she settled on the empty bench, stunned with the sudden announcement. “Why, I s’pose I had no idea, Titus, that you was thinking–”

  “Ain’t nothing to it,” Titus growled, glaring at his sister.

  Although he realized she wasn’t to blame for starting the dad-blamed story, he knew just how much she enjoyed being the one to carry home this tale, being the first to lay out the shocking news for all to marvel at.

  “Amy will make you a fine wife and a good mother to your children,” his mother repeated as she got back to her feet, swept down her apron, and once more gathered up the trenchers and utensils.

  With her matter-of-fact declaration his mouth went dry. Painfully conscious that they were all waiting for him to say something, anything, perhaps even agree with his mother, Titus looked in turn at each of them gathered th
ere at the table. Mute, and motionless as stone bookends, his young brothers continued to stare at him impassively.

  Finally his father broke the uneasy silence in that cabin.

  “Maybe this is just what you’re needing to get shet of all your foolish notions, son,” Thaddeus declared, laying both of his roughened hands flat on the table in front of him. “Finish your schooling this winter and get yourself married to Amy. You’ll be seventeen come spring. Ready to shoulder an equal load here on the farm, Titus. Not a boy no more. Time for you to leave behind all that tarnal foolheadedness about slipping off to hunt every chance you get. Time now for you to leave off all that talk about seeing what’s downriver, or over the hills yonder to where the sun sets each night.”

  He stood there numb, as if rooted to the spot. His eyes locked on his father’s seamed and tanned face, Titus asked, “What of it I turn seventeen and I still want to go off in the timber rather’n walking behind a mule like you?”

  For a moment Thaddeus pursed his lips into a thin, bloodless line, as if weighing the heft to each of the words he would use to answer his son. “With a good woman for your wife, and hard work for your hands—why, in no time you’ll forget such utter tomfoolery and become a man, Titus. In that I got no doubt.”

  He wagged his head angrily. “I ain’t so sure my own self,” he replied, jerking up the iron latch and yanking open the door. Titus dragged it closed behind him at the same moment he heard one of the benches clattering across the cabin floor, heard the last of his mother’s warning for his father to stay put.

  No one followed. He was relieved his pap did not tear open that door he had just shut. No other sound behind him but the sharp-edged words flung between his parents that quickly faded as he leaped off the low porch. Slapping the side of his leg, Titus whistled low. The old hound loped around the side of the long cabin, tongue lolling, watery eyes glistening with anticipation.

  “C’mon, boy,” he said quietly as the dog bounded at his knee. Titus scratched at its ears, patted the top of its short-haired head. “We gotta go see us what Amy wants—besides her getting me in a whole lot of hot water with them back there.”

  By the time he reached the game trail that wound through the woods toward the Whistler place, Titus grew even angrier. But this time he was mad at himself. Able at last to admit that this was not Amy’s fault, he realized he had gotten himself into hot water all on his own. Oh, sure and certain she had smelled good and felt soft and appealing, and damn well was the prettiest girl he’d ever laid eyes on in Boone County—but a fella ought not be so weak he couldn’t keep himself out of trouble with a girl.

  Tink bolted away with a sudden burst of youthful energy, bounding through the matting of red-and-white trillium undergrowth as a fat gray rabbit exploded out of the brush.

  What an exquisite mess he’d made of things. About to be a father, get himself married, and start farming for the rest of his life—when he knew well enough that he was nothing more than a boy who loved the woods and had a hankering to see what waited in that country on down the Ohio.

  The hound bayed from deep in the timber, the faint echo a mournful, plaintive call with night coming down as it was.

  Never to chance riding one of those big Pittsburgh keelboats, even a Kentucky flatboat, down the river. No more use of dreaming he would ever see St. Lou, that city Levi Gamble spoke of where a man could jump off into the unknown. Hell, anything beyond ten miles downriver was as good as unknown to him. And as bleak as things looked from where he stood, he was bound to stay ignorant of the whole rest of the world from now on, knowing nothing more than the village of Rabbit Hash here in Boone County, Kentucky.

  She sat at the edge of the plank porch as twilight squeezed itself through the clouds in the autumn sky, watching her younger brothers and sisters at play in the yard. Smoke curled up from the stone chimney. Titus sighed in looking at her, sensing that this was how things would be for the two of them soon enough. Their own place, a passel of children too. His young life over before he ever really had a chance to live it.

  As he strode into the yard, Titus gazed at the swirl of her long dress billowing up at her calves as Amy swung her legs back and forth, ankles wrapped one over the other. Upon seeing him she leaped to the ground, snugging her shawl about her shoulders.

  “Titus!”

  He sighed, drinking in the delicate fragrance of honey-suckle on the breeze. “Heard you was wanting to see me. I come right over.”

  Flicking her eyes toward the cabin, Amy stopped right in front of him. “I got … news. We’re needing to talk.”

  “News?”

  “Sort of bad news.”

  He swallowed hard, gazing into her eyes, hoping to read something there. Hell, how much worse could things get?

  Titus asked, “Can you go down to the swimming hole with me?”

  With a shake of her head Amy replied, “Better not. Mama asked me watch the other’ns for her till bedtime so she can get some work done inside. Maybeso we go over by the big elm there. You can help me watch ’em from there—and there ain’t nobody hear us talking.”

  He watched her settle at the base of the great, old gnarled trunk, curling her legs up at her side and snugging the dress down over her bare feet. She adjusted the shawl on her shoulders and smiled up at him, patting the grass beside her. For the longest time after he got comfortable on the ground, Amy didn’t say anything. They both sat in silence, looking after the Whistler brood scampering back and forth among a new litter of pups all ear and tail and tiny, exuberant yelps as the animals loped after the children zigging this way, zagging that.

  “It happened yesterday—but I waited till today to come look you up. Since it was bad news.”

  Bad news, he thought, not yet looking at her, knowing she was looking at him. Just how bad did bad news have to get? What with her having his baby in her belly, their folks already laying plans to get them married off, and his father poised to have him settle in being a farmer for the rest of his natural life?

  Something eventually tugged at him, and he turned to her, their eyes only inches apart. He slid an arm over her shoulder, wondering at the thinness of her at that moment. Both times he had skinned her out of her clothes, she had seemed so rounded and fleshy. But right now she felt frail, downright bony, beneath his grip.

  As brave as he could make it sound, Titus said, “I’m here with you now. S’pose you tell me your news.”

  In one great gush it came spilling forth. “I got my visit yesterday. Didn’t wanna come to tell you till this morning.”

  “Your visit.”

  “Remember I told you ’bout women, and them carrying their man’s baby.”

  He nodded. “When she starts missing her visits—yeah. She’s gonna have …” Then it struck him like a slap across his cheek. “B-but … you just said you got your visit?”

  “Started bleeding yesterday.”

  Anxious, scared as all get-out, afraid to be relieved just yet—he sensed his hand tightening on her shoulder. “Means you ain’t carrying my baby?”

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Instead she reached over and took hold of his free hand and pulled it into her lap, squeezing it between both of hers as she stared down at it. When she finally spoke, her voice croaked with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Titus. I know we was counting on getting our family started. After all the times we … the times we done what it takes to make a baby—I was hoping.”

  “You wasn’t gonna have a child all along?” he asked, trying to make sense of it.

  “I missed my bleeding twice’t, I did. But it come yesterday, and mama says there’s no mistake when I asked her. I ain’t with child. So that’s when I figured I oughtta come tell you—come to look you up at school.”

  He swallowed hard, sensing what was to come.

  “You wasn’t there, so I figured your pa had you stay home to give him a hand this morning. I headed over to your place from school—but your mama got worried: said you took off for school wi
th the others after breakfast.”

  Turning to her anxiously, he asked, “You tell my mam you didn’t find me at school?”

  Wagging her head, Amy said, “Nothing of the kind, Titus.” She stroked the back of his hand. “I know you’d get in a bunch of trouble if your pa finds out you been staying off from school—so I’d never say nothing about it.”

  Relieved, Titus leaned back against the tree, sorting through the jumble of it all. She wasn’t carrying his child. After all these weeks of having others make their own plans for him, he suddenly felt like a man freed from the gallows.

  She laid her head against his shoulder. “Why didn’t you go to school today?”

  He set his chin atop her head and said, “Truth is, I ain’t been going last few days.”

  “If you weren’t helping your pa, and you wasn’t in school—what you been doing?”

  “Nothing much,” he admitted.

  “We talked about this,” she said, lifting her head to look at him disapprovingly. “You needing to finish your schooling so we get married come spring.”

  “We talked,” he agreed. “Just seemed to me like it was everyone else making up their minds for me.”

  “Don’t you wanna finish your school?”

  “Don’t see no need in it.”

  “Can’t you see no need in reading and writing, in knowing your ciphers?”

  “I know me a little. Cain’t see how it’s ever gonna help me, Amy.”

  She squeezed his hand. “We get married and you work the farm—all that schooling’s gonna help a whole lot, Titus.”

  “I ain’t figuring on working a farm.”

  With a hint of a smile that told Titus she did not quite believe him, Amy said, “Just what you gonna do to support us, you don’t finish school and work on your pa’s farm?”

  “Haven’t thought that far ahead on it.”

  Wagging her head as she would at one of her errant siblings, Amy scolded, “You got to finish school. You don’t—why, I can’t marry you, Titus Bass.”