Dance on the Wind (14 page)

“I don’t know about living here—”

“No matter. We’ll make room for ourselves, wherever we are,” she said with that air of confidence exuded only by one who is nearly shed of her teens. “Just you think about finishing your education, Titus Bass. Our children gonna be counting on their father. So you think about getting this last year of school learning under your belt so you can put your mind to helping your pa with the family farming.” She extended her arm in a slow arc across the yard, cabin, barn, and outbuildings. “One day this all be yours … ours. But first you finish up your schooling.”

He looked up to find his father coming across the yard toward them, walking as if with a real purpose. That soured his milk all the worse—already Titus was in no mood to have someone yanking on his rope, Amy or his pap. Here a woman was wrapping him tighter and tighter, not to mention that his father kept him fenced in, no different than if he was that milk cow held prisoner in her tiny pen. It rankled him, the way Amy had taken to preaching at him. The same as his father did: about responsibility and family and the land, and responsibility all over again.

“How do, Amy,” Thaddeus Bass called out as he came to a halt.

“Mr. Bass. Nice to see you, sir.”

“Titus,” he said, turning to his son, “I come to tell you not to be out too late tonight. I want you back in the fields tomorrow.”

He looked at Amy quickly. “Tomorrow?”

“I want you to finish up that stump work afore you go back for any more of that school business.”

For a heartbeat he felt elation that his father was giving his permission to stay off from school. But that elation burst just like a bubble in his mother’s lye soap when he realized the substitute would be farmwork.

“That’s a lotta work,” Titus grumped.

“Not if you get after it the way I know you can. I need that field cleared so I can turn the ground afore winter. Lay it fallow to catch as much rain and snow as the sky will give us this winter. Planning on planting over there come spring—so I need to have that ground turned afore winter.”

He sighed, his head sagging between his shoulders, feeling his father’s eyes on him, waiting for an answer, judging.

“You can forget your hunting till the work’s done, Titus,” Thaddeus declared impatiently. “I put your grandpap’s rifle in the corner by the fireplace, and there it’s gonna stay till the stumps is all pulled.”

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.”

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 there 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.