Dance on the Wind (15 page)

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 with 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.”

For some time he gazed into her eyes, looked at the fullness of her lips, wanting to lie with her again the way
they had times before. So much did he want that. Almost enough to change his mind and tell her everything that she wanted to hear. Maybe he was stupid, after all, just like his pap and some other grown-ups made him feel most nearly all the time.

“I thought some on this, Amy,” he began. “I figure I can support a wife wherever I go.”

“Wherever you go?” she asked with a shriek. “W-what’s that mean?”

“Means I’m figuring I won’t stay around Boone County for long.”

Shaking her head emphatically, Amy replied, “No. I ain’t going nowhere else, Titus Bass. This is where I was born, where I’m going to birth my own children and raise them up. Here’s where I’m staying till I die. Ain’t you gonna stay on this land with me?”

A great gray owl flapped over their heads as Mrs. Whistler stepped onto the porch and sang out for the younger children to come in for the night. Then she called, “Amy?”

“I’m over here, Mama.”

“You two don’t be long,” the woman said, hustling little ones through the cabin door. “Night’s getting cold, and Titus has his school in the morning.”

Once her brothers and sisters were shuffled inside the cabin, Amy turned to him, beginning to push away so she could get to her feet. “You got school in the morning. I best be going in too.”

He sensed a sudden chill around her, more than the autumn twilight lent a frost to the air. “If I take a mind to do something else, ain’t going to school tomorrow.”

“What else can be more important than your schooling?”

“Hunting. Watching the boats down on the river. Wondering where all them folks is going. What they’ll be doing down the Ohio to Louisville and on yonder. There’s places futher still. Lot futher.”

She stomped a foot in the cold grass. “All that talk from Levi Gamble got your head filled with having yourself adventures, don’t it?”

“Maybeso it does.”

Pulling herself away from him, Amy whirled about, crossing her arms. “Then maybe you better figure out what it is you want more: me or some old adventure downriver.”

Looking up at her, Titus asked, “Why you make me have to choose?”

“Can’t have both,” she answered coyly, smoothing the bodice of her dress beneath the firm mounds of her breasts. “You want me, you’re gonna finish your schooling and get yourself a way to support a family. My pa and yours see to their families by working the land. Such as they do is good and honorable work, Titus. Work any man be proud of.”

“If’n he was cut out to be a farmer.”

“You was cut out to be a farmer,” she snapped. “You was born to a farming family. It’s what all your kin done since they come into this country years and years ago.”

“Don’t matter what they done afore me—”

“It’s what you’re expected to do,” she interrupted.

As he stood beside her, Titus felt enough resolve to declare, “I ain’t cut out to work the land.”

Her words took on more frost. “You’re making a great mistake: you don’t want to marry and settle down with me.”

“You’re telling me I gotta pay too big a price, Amy. I can’t be a farmer. Don’t see no sense in schooling neither.”

“You’ll never amount to much, then, you go off on your own now,” she said haughtily. “Never be as good a man as your pa—make the mark on life that he’s making, Titus.”

When he reached for her hand, Amy pulled away from him. Instead, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and said, “There’s more for a man to learn than reading and writing letters, working numbers, Amy. What I want to learn is waiting for me out there.”

“Oh, damn that Levi Gamble!” she grumbled. “Damn that devil for making you—”

“Don’t blame Levi,” he protested. “I knowed I wasn’t no farmer long afore I run onto Levi at the Longhunters Fair.”

“He went and filled your head with such poppy-cock—”

“I told you,” he interrupted her with a snap. “I decided long ago I was one day gonna be leaving all this life behind.”

“Leaving?”

“There’s a bigger world out there than what is right here in Boone County. I aim to see me a share of it afore my dying day, Amy.”

Her eyes narrowed as she asked, “And if that means losing me?”

“Sounds of things, you’ll be better off without me.”

She turned on her heel again, staying in that same spot. He could see her shoulder shudder in the mercuric light of the autumn moon rising out of the east. He even thought he heard a muffled sob from her. Titus reached out to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged him off.

“I aim to learn more out there than what I can learn in school, Amy.”

“All you’ll ever need to know is right here—living your life with me, Titus.”

“I’ll learn more out there than I could ever learn following the rump end of a god-blamed mule.”

Her face tightened as she turned from him again. “Sounds like you made up your mind, all for certain.”

For a few moments he looked at her back, that dark spill of her hair tumbling nearly to her waist. He wanted to touch her, knowing she had only to hear the words she needed to hear and they would lie flesh to flesh. As much as he wanted to reach across that few inches remaining between them at that moment—it might just as well have been a chasm. Something kept him from retreating, from giving in to what his body begged for.

“This ain’t easy,” he confessed. “Not just you I’m leaving behind. Thinking about my mam and pap too.”

“You think hard on them. Think about me tonight—how we been together. Then you come tell me for sure you’re going.”

“I don’t have nothing to decide, Amy. I’m going. Only thing left to figure out is when.”

She twisted round on him, her red eyes brimming, fury
written on her face tracked with its first tears. “I’ll make some man a damn fine wife, Titus Bass. That’s for certain. Just as certain is the fact you’re never gonna make a husband for no woman.”

“Likely I never will, Amy,” he admitted, watching the look of surprise come to her face.

“That’s right,” he continued. “Seems what a woman wants is more’n I think I’ll ever be likely to give. If being a husband to you means staying here to work behind a mule, being a farmer like your pa and mine—then, no: I’ll never be husband to no woman. If it means I gotta feel yoked in like an ox to what my pap ’spects of me, no—I won’t ever be settling down with a woman and making a family for myself.”

He said the last few words to her back as she dashed across the dusty yard while night came down around him.

“I want you to do some reading for me,” Thaddeus Bass said to his firstborn son as he rose from the table.

“Reading?” Titus asked, confusion raising alarm within him. Why would his father want him to read…? “Can’t it wait?”

“Wait? Wait for what, son?”

Titus shrugged. “I was looking to sit outside till it got cold after sundown, then I’d come in.”

He watched his father go to the stone mantel and take from it a piece of foolscap twice folded.

Shaking the paper out before him, Thaddeus said, “You ain’t going much of anywhere for a long time, Titus.”