Dance on the Wind

by Johnston, Terry C.

  Times were that he wondered if she awoke in the deep of night with such strange, frightening, and deliciously evil dreams stirring her as they stirred him.

  “I’m done,” she said as her skirts rustled up behind him. Amy settled beside Titus at the front of the porch. “Go on, now, you all,” she ordered the four away. “Git!”

  He watched the quartet of siblings turn and shamble off, each of them turning their head to look back over their shoulder at the intriguing pair when Amy slipped two hands around one of Titus’s.

  “You wanna walk?” he asked, hopeful.

  She glanced back at the door. “I can’t be gone long. Got things rising, other’ns baking. Mama needs help, and I can’t leave my work for her to do.”

  “We got time,” he pleaded.

  Then she smiled at him in that crook-toothed way of hers and squeezed his hand. “Yes. We do got time, don’t we?”

  He rose, missing her touch already as he pulled his hand away from hers.

  “Lemme just tell mama I’ll be back straightaway.”

  He watched the swirl of that long dress drop again over her ankles, brushing the tops of her bare feet as Amy slipped inside. The murmur of voices came to him from somewhere within. Then Cleve Whistler came to the door with a length of peeled hickory in one hand, pulling the chewed stump of a cob pipe from his bushy face.

  “Evenin’, Titus,” the man said, tossing the hickory strip atop a pile with others he would use to weave a strong chair bottom.

  He nodded properly, as one did when one was courting a man’s daughter. “Evenin’, Mr. Whistler.”

  The farmer came to the edge of the porch and braced a shoulder against a post there beneath the overhang. “And a fine evenin’ it is.” He breathed deep. “I remember I was your age.” And he pointed back at the doorway with the battered stem of his pipe. “I first come to spoon Amy’s mama when I was your age.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whistler’s brow furrowed. “You’re serious about courting my daughter, ain’t you, Titus?”

  His head bobbed in time with his Adam’s apple, just like a string toy he would carve for the younger children from time to time, the kind he could get to dance up and down a piece of hemp twine, clogging atop a white-oak shake.

  “S’pose I am, Mr. Whistler.”

  He smiled at the youth. “That’s good, Titus. Because Amy is the sort of girl could have any suitor she wanted. Lots of boys would love to come callin’. But she’s set her eyes on you, so it seems.”

  “I … I see,” he stammered, concerned what that might portend.

  Leaning forward, Cleve Whistler confided in a lower voice, “I just want what’s best for my eldest, you understand. I know your papa and his family—good people. So I figure you’ll make Amy a fine husband, father to lots of her young’uns.”

  Titus swallowed again, blinked. Husband? Young’uns? Why, he’d just come to take him a walk with Amy, to touch her hand, to feel her kiss his cheeks, maybe even talk her into pressing her lips against his one time—to hold her body ever so close to his when they did touch in such a forbidden, bewildering way. Maybe tonight even to talk about his fears and this mystery of the fire in his belly if he felt safe enough with her … but here Mr. Whistler was talking about—

  “—sure your papa will shave off a piece of that new ground he’s clearing down by the creek and turn it over to you one of these days real soon.”

  “N-new ground,” Titus repeated with an uncomfortable stammer.

  Cleve Whistler pointed off into the coming dusk, wisps of fog gathering in the low place a hundred yards off on the path to the creek. “Such would make a good place for you and Amy to raise yourself a cabin, where you could start raising yourself a family.”

  A family?

  How’d things get all so discombobulated so quick? How was Whistler talking about Titus taking a wife and having themselves children, with a cabin all to themselves, when he hadn’t even kissed Amy for certain and for sure right on the mouth the way he had heard tell a man was to kiss a woman to announce he wanted her for his very own gal?

  “You’ll make a fine farmer, I’m sartin,” Whistler observed. “Your papa is as fine a man as they come—so you come from good stock. Not that I didn’t fret over you a time or two, Titus. Fret over giving Amy up to you. She bein’ my firstborn and all. But her time’s come.”

  “Her t-time,” he echoed, his cheeks burning in embarrassment as Amy came out through the door.

  She had taken off her apron and pulled a knitted shawl over her shoulders.

  “Amy made that. Did you know, Titus?” Whistler asked, pointing at the shawl with the stem of his pipe as she stopped beside her father.

  “It’s … it’s … yes. Real purty,” he replied, looking into Amy’s eyes, at the fullness of her lips.

  “I think it’s purty too,” Whistler replied as he put an arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “She’s the kind of woman gonna make a fine man proud one day soon.”

  Titus watched Amy kiss her father on his cheek and wondered if she really did know any other way to kiss a man but on his cheek. Had she ever thought of his mouth, and how it must taste, how it must feel—the way Titus so many times had dreamed on the feel of her mouth, and how it might taste to his tongue?

  “Now, don’t you two be late, you hear?” Whistler said with a wave of his pipe, smiling at them.

  Slipping her arm inside Titus’s, Amy said, “We won’t, Pa. Promised mama I’d be back to take the bread off the fire.”

  Cleve Whistler inhaled deeply as Amy turned her beau from the porch. “Fine evenin’ for courtin’. A fine, fine evenin’.”

  Crossing the yard, Titus walked dumbly at her side while Amy shooed the younger Whistlers from their heels. As soon as they reached the edge of the woods, she finally spoke.

  “Don’t let my pa bother you none. He’s just, well—I figure he’s proud a young man like yourself is courtin’ me.”

  “Y-young man like myself?”

  With a squeeze of his arm Amy slipped her hand down into his. “Yes. A young man with what my mama calls good prospects.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s what a girl’s supposed to look for in a fella,” she answered.

  “How’s that?”

  “Someone take proper care of a girl he’s married to. Provide for her and their family. The children they’ll have.”

  “Whoa!” he gulped, stopping and wheeling on her. “You … an’ me? Setting up a house and having children?”

  “Yes, Titus,” she replied, a small crease knitting her brow with worry.

  “I … I was thinking we was friends, Amy.”

  “We always been friends, Titus.” She squeezed his hand.

  “Where’d all this talk of prospects come from?”

  “I been thinking lately,” she replied, turning him, tugging him into motion once more. “And talking to mama: she was your age when she married pa and my age when she had me.”

  “Y-you wanna get married to me?”

  She stopped this time, dropping his hand and pulling the shawl about her shoulders. “You don’t wanna get married to me?”

  With a wag of his head he stared dumbfounded at the ground, at his bare feet a moment, then finally looked at her to say, “I can’t say as I ever thought—”

  “Never thought about it?” She turned away from him in a huff, pouting.

  He brushed by her shoulder to face her once more. Amy only turned away again. “Have you thought about it, Amy?”

  How his heart was pounding, looking at the way her eyes were lit with such fire here at dusk, stealing a look at the way her breasts heaved with each pouting breath there above the arms she had folded across her midriff.

  “What’s it all been for, Titus?” she finally asked without looking at him at first. Then her eyes squarely found his. “We knowed each other since we was children ourselves. You growed, and I growed. And … well, the way you been coming by to pay me co
urt and all.”

  “I come by ’cause I like to be with you, Amy,” he explained lamely. “I ain’t got ’nother friend I can talk to the way I talk to you.”

  “You mean you ain’t been paying me court?” she asked with a quiet squeak. “Wanting to hold my hand or my arm all the time. Telling me to kiss you so much. Looking at me the way you do with those eyes of yours. Don’t go tell Amy Whistler you ain’t been thinking about courtin’ her!”

  He waved his hands before him helplessly. “All right, Amy. S’pose I been courtin’ you and just never knowed what I was doing, exactly.”

  She nodded once without a word. Not making it any easier on him. How small he felt standing before her at that moment. How much he wanted to put his arms around her and press his whole body against hers, to ask if she finally felt the same stirring deep across her groin that set fire to his.

  “And,” he started, “I s’pose I been wonderin’ if’n you … you was really wanting me to pay court to you.”

  He didn’t know where those words came from, but there they were, spilled from his tongue.

  “Not wanting you to court me, Titus Bass?” Then she giggled behind her hand. “Oh, silly—how many girls has let you kiss them on the cheek, or gone and kissed you back on your cheek?”

  With a wag of his head he answered, “None. None others, Amy.”

  “How many girls let you just come to call whenever it strikes your fancy to pay ’em a visit, Titus? How many girls you know hold your hand, hold your arm the way Amy Whistler does?”

  “None. An’ you know that too,” he said, suddenly feeling on the spot, defensive. His heart’s hackles rose like the guard hairs on one of the family’s redbone hounds. “How was I to—”

  “How was you to know I wanted you to pay me court, Titus?”

  Amy leaned toward him, only their lips touching, mouth closed, but pressed hard and insistent against his mouth. He blinked all through that momentary kiss, looking at her, finding Amy’s eyes closed.

  Then she drew back, opened her eyes, and asked, “Now. Don’t that tell you Amy Whistler wants Titus Bass to pay her court?”

  For a moment while he struggled to breathe again, Titus touched his lips with two fingertips. Only now did he realize his flesh stirred with a lightninglike tingle clear down the inside of his thighs to weaken his knees.

  “I s’pose it does at that,” he admitted when he took his fingers from his lips. “You didn’t give me no warning, though. Lemme try that again.”

  When he stepped toward her, Amy brought her hand up to her mouth and giggled behind it again. “Silly. I don’t just give my kisses away.”

  Suddenly he was angry. “Who else you been kissing?”

  “No one, Titus. No one.”

  “You better not,” he declared gruffly.

  “I won’t—not if you tell me we’re courtin’ proper.”

  He nodded. Decided he could grant her that. “Yeah. We’re courtin’ for sure.”

  “Then I can tell folks.”

  “Yeah. You can tell your pap and mam.”

  “No, Titus,” she replied. “Tell friends around these parts. Folks up to Rabbit Hash and over to Belleview.”

  “T-tell friends?” Now he burned with embarrassment again.

  “C’mon,” she urged, taking him by the arm and leading him on down the trail that would take them to the creek where they often sat on one of the limestone boulders above the swimming hole.

  “Folks in these parts?” he repeated as his feet stumbled along the dusty path.

  “School, too. You can finish up your schoolin’ afore we’re married,” she instructed.

  On the frontier, girls simply did not receive any education, informal or not. Such a privilege was left to the males. Instead, girls were to devote themselves to preparing for homemaking and motherhood. Like most young girls, Amy had been given a sitting of goose eggs as a start on her own dower: a goose-down tick and feather pillows. Once her birds were hatched and grown from goslings to geese, the down could be plucked once every seven weeks. Such was a skill handed down from mother to daughter, a task requiring the utmost patience as well as strength and not the least bit of courage in the face of a strong and struggling bird. A goose might well end up with torn skin, while the picker might come away with bites and bruises from the flapping wings.

  For those nestled far away on the frontier, feathers were the most expensive item after gunpowder. Good goose feathers would cost a minimum of a dollar a pound. Or, in trade value, a pound of feathers was equal to a gallon of good whiskey. As the oldest in her family, Amy had long ago started on her dower. This very summer she had completed the feather-battened counterpane she intended to spread across her wedding bed—that, and two huge, fluffy goose-down pillows where she and her husband would lay their heads.

  Amy continued. “Don’t you see how I want you finish school first? Then you’re ready to build us a proper place where we can set up housekeeping like my mama and papa done when I first came along.”

  “Amy—”

  “And my pa told me your pa’s gonna give you that new ground he’s stumpin’ this season … now that the other fields is all planted.”

  As they reached the boulder there above the placid waters where years before they had dammed up a portion of the narrow creek to create a swimming hole, he asked, “Don’t you think they all rushing us a bit, Amy?”

  “Who’s they?” she asked as they climbed.

  “Your folks. My folks.”. He shrugged and settled onto his haunches. “Anyone getting us to get married.”

  She quartered away from him atop the rock, drawing her shawl around her shoulders again huffily.

  He could feel the chill from her. “Amy?”

  “If you don’t wanna get married to me, then why you paying me court, Titus?”

  How the devil did he know the answer to any of these questions? he wondered right then and there. Ciphering and writing his letters were hard enough in school now, what with the way his mind wandered away to other things—like Amy or the cool shadows of the forest where he wanted to be walking with his rifle. But as difficult as they were, ciphering and writing his letters were nowhere near as tough as the questions she was flinging at him. He wondered if his pap had struggled this hard growing to be a man.

  Was it all worth it?

  “Well?” she asked him. “If you don’t wanna get married, then why you wasting your time on me? And why the devil am I wasting my time on you?”

  He watched her slide down off the far side of the rock. “Amy—c’mon back up here.”

  “No. I’m goin’ home.”

  “Amy,” he coaxed.

  “Got bread due to come off the fire,” she explained, standing still at the foot of the rock below him, yet with her back his way. “Mama be expecting me.”

  “They damned well know we gone off to court, Amy.”

  Lord, where did those words come from? Right out of his mouth that way, so smooth he sounded like he was sure of himself. Why, when he didn’t feel smooth and sure of himself, no ways?

  “Is that what we’re doing, Titus?” she asked finally, turning partway back to face him, looking up at him still seated atop the rock. “Are you paying me court now?”

  “I can’t very well spoon you with you down there and me up here.”

  She gathered up her long skirt and planted her bare feet along the slope of the rock, clutching her shawl with one hand while she clambered her way back up to sit beside him. His heart was hammering like all get-out by the time she settled and swept up one of his hands. Amy held it between hers in her lap, the way she always did, gently stroking the back of his with her sure, hard fingers.

  He smelled the yeast and the flour on her hair as the breeze came up, Smelled the milk and butter and a hint of vanilla. She baked bread like her people had for centuries. Folks what was Englishers from long back.

  Titus’s grandpap said they was from a long line of Scottishers, but they’d give up on fight
ing the English years before and come to the colonies when the lobsterbacks were trying to hang all the rebellious highlanders. Grandpap had many a tale of huge, double-bladed claymorgans wielded by wiry Scots. Legends of lowland battles against the mighty English ranks while small, brave youths swirled in among the lobsterbacks’ herds, stealing the finest horseflesh to drive back north into the moors and sheltering hills amid the angry shouts and whistling gunshots.

  He lifted a lock of her dusty-red hair and smelled it. And found his flesh stirring, hardening, heating up.

  “You …,” he began tentatively, then swallowed and licked his lips. “Amy, you ever think back on them times we come here to swim of a summer afternoon or evenin’?”

  “Yes. I do, Titus. Sometimes I wish we was children again. Do you?”

  “No. No, never.” He dropped that lock of her hair and stared at the water below them. “I can’t wait till I’m on my own. Never wanna be a young’un again.”

  “When you’re on your own, I’ll be there with you,” she confided softly.

  He stared at her mouth as she formed the words, wanting his mouth to touch her lips the way the words just had.

  She continued, “We won’t be living with our folks no more. Just each other, with children of our own.”

  “I don’t … I never done nothing … with a girl….” And suddenly his cheeks grew hot with shame.

  “Me neither,” Amy admitted, turning away.

  He felt better when she did turn. Maybe she was as shy about it as he was. Scared to talk of it, as afraid as he was to talk of his fears. “Don’t know nothing about having children—how it happens ’tween a man and woman.”

  “Atween a husband and wife, Titus.” She fixed him with her eyes. “Atween two folks what love each other and are making a life together. He works the fields, growing things. And she takes care of all else, growing their young’uns up.”

  Young’uns. Hell, most times he was so bewildered, Titus figured he was still just a child himself. Not that he’d let anyone know what he thought. Not Amy and not her folks. And sure as hell he wouldn’t let his pap know. Certain it was that Titus knew he wasn’t grown-up. All he had to do was look at Cleve Whistler, look at his own pap, to know that.