Dance on the Wind

by Johnston, Terry C.

  Times like these when he wasn’t back to the cabin for supper, his father warned he’d get none. Still his mother always wrapped up a slice of cold ham and some corn dodgers, maybe even a sliver of dried apple pie, folding it all within a big square of cheesecloth before placing her treasure just back of the woodbox that sat to the left of the door on the front porch. Again tonight he knew he would be sitting in the dark, listening to the muffled voices of his family inside the firelit cabin as he chewed on his supper and washed it down with the cool, sweet water from the well his grandpap had dug generations before.

  As much as he was certain he’d likely die early if he stayed on to become a farmer, Titus knew he’d feel like a rotted stump inside if he disappointed his father. So through the past few years he had walked this narrow line between what his pap expected of him and what he had to do just to keep from dying inside, a day at a time.

  Warm, humid starshine streamed down through the leafy branches of the trees as he felt his way barefoot along the game trail that would take him back to the field and the stump and that old mule he realized had likely grown just as hungry as he himself had become. He stopped and listened a minute, leaning his empty hand against the bark of a smooth sumac tree. A frightened chirk overhead startled him. Black squirrel. Something amiss in that warning.

  He did not stop again until he reached the edge of the meadow Thaddeus was having cleared for cultivation. Beneath the half-moon and the bright starlight he could make out the stump he had been uprooting across the open ground. But he could see no mule. Titus burst into a trot now. His throat seized with his thundering heart. Skidding to a halt on the turned and troubled ground around the stump, he found the singletree and chain harness still lashed around the wide trunk. But no mule.

  Collapsing to his knees, he quickly inspected the leather for some sign that the old girl had snapped her way out of harness. Yet nothing there suggested she had freed herself. Around on his knees he crawled, inspecting the ground for hoofprints, bootprints, anything that might tell him how she got loose. Mayhaps some of grandpap’s thieving Injuns. Or, worse yet, a white man come to steal the mule. But there was nothing untoward about that churned-up soil surrounding the stump.

  “Take care of the animals gonna take care of you.”

  The voice seemed so real it near made him jump out of his skin. Titus turned this way, then that, just to be certain. Assuring himself he was alone, he settled on his rump, back against the stump, and cradled the rifle into his shoulder. As his head sagged, he struggled with what to do about the mule, about his running off into the woods and leaving her to get stole.

  Finally he decided. If she was anywhere, she was chewing on some grass at that very moment. It made his stomach grumble in protest to think the mule was eating, and here he was worrying about her with an empty belly of his own.

  In the starlit darkness it took something less than a half hour to reach the glen where the cabin stood, its chimney lifting a gray streamer to the night breeze. The wind was off from the wrong direction, but now and then he could pick up the faintest fragrance of supper. It made his belly growl in anticipation. Behind shutters and sashes drawn against the night outside, narrow ribbons of yellow lamplight squeezed free, a wee patch of light oozing out at the bottom of the door. Across the yard stood the separate kitchen, used from spring into the fall so the cabin wouldn’t grow overly warm in those seasons of baking and cooking. Beside the kitchen stood the small smoke-house. Across the yard, the springhouse and corncrib. Beyond all of them still, the barn—taller even than the cabin with its sleeping loft.

  Heading at an angle for the structure that blotted out a piece of that starry night sky, Titus kept to the shadows. Years before, so his father and grandpap had told him many times, the men of the family were required to keep an eye open at night for Injuns. Any shadow seen stealing across the yard was likely an enemy, and subject to be shot.

  It had been years since the tribes had last made trouble. Back to the war with the Frenchies, later the revolt against the Englishers. It made his grandpap choke in anger to think that his father’s own countrymen had made life so hard on their fellow English citizens that the colonists had gone and fought to throw King George right back into the sea. But as distasteful as it was to admit, grandpap’s countrymen had turned out to be conniving, vicious lobsterbacks who had set the Injuns on the rebellious settlers. An army and all those Injun tribes come to make war against a few hundred farmers scattered over hundreds of miles of wilderness.

  Titus slipped into the barn through the narrow door and held his breath.

  His imagination soared as his eyes grew accustomed to the fragrant darkness. Recalling his grandpap’s stories of how a few brave young men had carried word of an uprising or the English army’s advance from settlement to settlement. How the farmers had reluctantly abandoned their fields and gathered families around them, hurrying to the nearby fort erected by a group of settlers for their mutual protection—each individual farmer’s outlots in the fields surrounding that communal stockade. There had been one such stockade near Belleview where the Bass clan had gone in times of emergency. Where nearly everyone in Boone County fled when the British set their Shawnee and Mingoes loose on their own white-skinned countrymen.

  Now Titus’s eyes were big enough that he could make out the low walls of each stall, to discern the backs of some of the animals, the spines of a rake or a loop of harness draped over a nail. Enough light crept through tiny openings in the wall chinks that Titus could make his way down to the last stall, past the milk cows. One curious one came up and stuck her wet nose over the gate. He stroked it as he went past, feeling her long, coarse tongue lap over the back of his hand.

  As he reached that last stall, he held his breath and hoped. It wouldn’t be right to say he prayed, simply because he never had really prayed for anything. But at this moment he hoped harder than he had ever hoped for something before. And if such hoping was another man’s prayer, so be it.

  Daring to turn his head slowly, Titus looked into the stall.

  Against the back wall stood the old mule. And on the nearby wall hung the harness.

  Turning on his heel, his knees gone to mush, the youngster sank with his back against the stall door, where he leaned the rifle, catching his breath.

  Leastwise the old mule was here. She wasn’t took. He swallowed hard, knowing who had come to fetch her. Likely come to fetch him for supper. More likely, come to see how he was doing on that dad-blamed stump.

  Titus wondered if his pap would count “dad-blamed” as cursing.

  “I don’t give a good goddamn if he does or not,” Titus whispered to the lowing animals. “His damn ol’ mule anyway—so he can take proper care of it hisself.”

  He listened as the mule moved closer, right up to the stall door. Looking up, he saw she had laid her bottom jaw atop the door and seemed to be peering down at him with one of those dark, iridescent eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lilly,” he suddenly apologized. “Nothing against you. Shouldn’t’ve left you be there all by yourself. Something might’ve happened to you. Sorry, girl.”

  Her head seemed to bob once before the mule retreated back into the stall once more.

  Sometimes, he brooded, these animals were downright spooky. Like they understood what you spoke at ’em. May haps—he feared—even able to outright read a person’s mind.

  Slowly clambering to his feet, he saw that she’d been fed. The bucket hung from a peg inside her stall where the mule could reach it, feeding herself from the grain provided her every night. His pap had done that too. Likely brushed her down good. Like Titus was supposed to each night after he worked over the stumps on the far edge of the ground they were clearing for next season’s planting. Not time enough this year—what with the good ground already turned and the seed already covered, more than a dozen good, soaking rains already.

  He put his hand in the canvas bucket and brought out a handful of the grain. Holding it beneath his no
se, he drank in the faint sweetness of oats, the fragrance of molasses. Then he extended his hand to her. She came to the stall door, curled her lips back, and lapped at the offering as he patted the solid bone between her eyes.

  When she finished, Titus swiped his damp palm across his worn britches and took up the rifle. It was time he had something to eat himself. Careful not to let the small door slam against the side of the barn as he eased it back into place, the youngster crept amongst the shadows toward the cabin. As he had done so many times before, he would eat his supper, then wait until all the lights were out before he would climb the roof and steal in through the window to find his bed in the dark.

  After setting the longrifle against the side of the porch, Titus heaved himself up without using the steps. They were creaky with age and use, and more often than not apt to make more noise than one of the rooting pigs down in the pen behind the barn. Kneeling at the side of the woodbox, he reached around to the spot where his mother always left the cheesecloth bundle for him. He felt a little farther. Still nothing. Leaning all the way over the hinged flap atop the woodbox, he put both hands to work, stuffing both arms clear under the box. Nothing. No cheesecloth bundle. No supper.

  At that moment his stomach growled so loud, he was sure they heard it inside the cabin.

  Quickly hunching over and wrapping both arms over his belly, Titus limped away from the woodbox to the edge of the porch, where he sat dangling his bare feet while he stared up at the half-moon. It had climbed to near midsky, and the breeze was coming up. Damp, rich, rife with the smell of rain by morning despite the cloudless sky overhead.

  In the starshine the edge of the hog pen stood out on the far side of the barn. Closer still, the small corral where his pap kept their wagon team. Titus had straddled the wide backs of those old, gentle horses ever since he could remember. As much excitement as it had been when he was a pup, these days he yearned to climb atop a real horse. Not one of those working draft animals. A lean, slim-haunched horse that would carry him across the fields and down the wooded trails with the speed of quicksilver. A real horse like those he saw from time to time in Belleview. And the once-a-year trip upriver to Cincinnati, only some twenty miles if a person took the overland route that dispensed with most of the meandering course of the Ohio.

  Yes, sir. A real horse like fine folks rode. He deserved that, Titus decided. Here in his seventeenth summer, on the verge of manhood, a hunter like himself deserved a fine horse. After all, times were good. The Englishers were gone, thrown out for good, and when the men got together, they cheered one another with talk of times being good now for their young country as America slowly spread her arms to the west. Four summers back Lewis and Clark had returned from the far ocean, with unbelievable tales of tall mountains and icy streams teeming with fur-bearing animals. Stories and rumors and legends of fiercely painted Indians who attempted to block their journey every step of the way.

  The only Indians Titus had seen were a few of the old ones he saw from time to time, come to Belleview or Rabbit Hash, civilized and docile Indians who no longer hunted scalps but tilled the land like white men. They came to the towns for supplies but for the most part kept to themselves when they did. Wouldn’t even look the white folks in the eye.

  “They’re a beaten people,” grandpap had told young Titus. “We whupped ’em good when we whupped the lobsterbacks.”

  At first Titus had been scared whenever he saw one of those farmer Indians. Then, he grew afraid he never would see a real, honest-to-God Injun for himself, ever.

  About as much chance of that as him ever forking his legs over a strong, graceful horse.

  He sat in the darkness until the last lamp went out. Everything was quiet down below, quiet up in the loft where his two brothers and sister slept. Waiting while the moon moved a few more degrees off to the west to be sure all were asleep, just as he always did, the youngster crept back to the door, took hold of the iron latch, and carefully raised it, easing forward on it to crack open the door just wide enough to—

  Damn!

  He tried again, thinking perhaps he hadn’t raised the iron latch high enough to clear the hasp. Titus pushed gently against the door again—

  Goddamn!

  It couldn’t be stuck. He tried harder, noisier, as iron scraped against iron.

  The door was barred from the inside. He was locked out.

  This had never happened before. Always the door was left unlocked for him when he went hunting of a night, or off to gig frogs, or maybe only to wander down the road to Amy’s place, hoping she would sit and talk with him about mostly nothing at all. But that door was never locked.

  And his mam always had supper waiting under the woodbox in that piece of cheesecloth.

  He leaned his forehead against the door, suddenly wanting to cry. So hungry he couldn’t think what to do next. So tired from fighting the mule and the stump and his pap that day that he wanted only to lie down upon his tick, pull the covers over his head, and go to sleep despite his noisy, snoring brothers.

  With a sigh Titus turned from the locked door. Mayhaps he could pull himself up onto the porch roof and make his way across the cabin roof and lower himself onto the sill where a lone window opened into the sleeping loft. Maybe his old man wasn’t as smart as he made on to be.

  After hiding the rifle behind the woodbox, Titus shinnied up the pole and clawed his way onto the roof. As quietly as he could move across the creaking timbers and shakes, the youngster crept to the cabin roof itself and hoisted himself up. Keeping to the sides where the support beams had more strength and were therefore less likely to groan and protest his weight, Titus leaned over the edge and found the window. Lying on his belly, he scooted out as far as he dared and reached for the mullioned windowpanes. Nudging. Then pushing. Straining. Neither side would budge.

  Frustrated, he tried again, and again. It acted as if it were nailed shut. It was always easy to open that window, he thought. Both sides flung open for summer breezes. Never before had it been so hard. He tried once more. Unable to budge it.

  A nail or two could do that, he thought. Wouldn’t take much to keep him from sneaking in that way.

  As he dropped barefoot to the ground at the side of the porch, he boiled with indignation. Wrenching up the rifle from its hiding place behind the woodbox, Titus seethed to have it out with his pap. But as tired as he was, it could wait until morning.

  Back across the damp shadows of the yard, he could already smell rain coming. Into the barn he crept once more and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. To his right stood the faint hump of a hayrick. After leaning the rifle against a nearby post, Titus kicked at the soft hay with his bare feet until he had a pile long enough, and some four feet deep. On it he lay down and began pulling hay over him for warmth.

  Curling an arm under his head, the youngster closed his eyes, his breathing slowing as the anger and disappointment and hunger drained from him. All he wanted now was some sleep. In the morning he would have words with his father about locking his son out of the cabin.

  Even if he had gone off without tending to the stump and the old mule, nothing was so serious that he should be locked out of his own home.

  Titus felt the warmth of the hay envelop him the way the cool of the swimming hole would wrap him on those hot summer days yet to come.

  No matter how important any thing was to his pap, nothing should be more important than family.

  Bringing the old girl home, feeding her, putting her up for the night in her stall. No two ways about it—that mule was getting better treatment from his pap than Thaddeus was giving his own son right now.

  With the hay’s heady fragrance filling his nostrils, the quiet lowing of the animals droning about him, and his dreams of riding one of those fast horses the woodsmen owned, Titus drifted off to sleep.

  He shivered once and pulled more hay over him. Growing warm once again. Not to stir for what was left him of that short night.

  “Get up, boy
. You’ve got some righting of a wrong to be at.”

  He blinked into the gray light, then rubbed at his gritty eyes, staring up sidelong at his father, who stood over his bed of hay. Thaddeus had the collar to his wool coat turned up against the morning dew, a shallow-crowned, wide-brimmed hat of wool or castor felt pulled down on his hair.

  It was cold in here, Titus thought. Damp too. Must have gone and rained.

  “I said get up!” Thaddeus Bass repeated more urgently. And this time he added his own boot toe for emphasis.

  Titus pulled back his bare foot. “I know I done wrong—”

  “Get up! Afore I pull you up by your ears!”

  The youngster stood, shedding hay as he clambered to his feet, shivering slightly, hunch-shouldered in dawn’s dampness. His breath huffed before his face in wispy vapors. Outside a mockingbird called. “Jest lemme explain, Pap.”

  “Nothing to explain, Titus. You left off work to go traipsing the woods. Left off the mule too. No telling what’d become of her I didn’t come back to see to your work at that stump.”

  The look in his father’s eyes frightened him. He could remember seeing that fire in those eyes before, yet no more in all of Titus’s sixteen years than the fingers on one of his hands. “It was getting on late in the day anyhows—”

  With a sudden shove his father pushed him down the path between the two rows of stalls in that log barn. “Grab that harness.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said with a pasty mouth, too scared not to be dutiful and obedient.

  A rain crow cawed on the beam above him. He shuddered as his bare feet moved along the cold, pounded clay of the barn floor. But he wasn’t all that sure he trembled from the morning chill. Not knowing what would come next from his father’s hand was all it took to make the youth quake. Alone Titus had faced most everything nature could throw at this gangly youth—out there in the woods and wilderness. But he had never been as frightened of anything wild as he was of his father when Thaddeus Bass grew truly angry.