Dance on the Wind

by Johnston, Terry C.

  Then he recognized the gray seep of false dawn bleeding into the livery. Enough light to realize day would not be long in arriving now.

  As he sat there staring at the trapper’s old, greasy blankets, what little Washburn had to truly call his own, Bass wanted to believe Isaac was at that very moment snoring beside one of his lovelies. But try as he might, Titus could not convince himself that the night remained innocent.

  That he himself might not be an unwitting accomplice. Guilty for no other reason than allowing Washburn the freedom to go off with a damned fool notion playing in his head.

  A drizzle began its insistent, growing patter on the shake roof overhead as he wobbled to his feet. From a tenpenny nail he took down his blanket coat, looped the wide leather belt about his waist as he reached the back door beyond the forge. Into the rain he plunged, through the soggy paddock where Troost kept his animals, over the split-rail fence and on to Market Street.

  Little life stirred in lower St. Louis this time of day. Night all but done. Day yet to announce itself. Smudges of fire smoke clung low about the roofs like gray death’s wreaths; at his feet tumbled the scattered clutter of fog. Wild-eyed dogs eyed him, put their noses to the air, testing for scent of the man—be he friend or danger—then slunk back into the shadows, off down an alleyway, then stopped and turned to find Titus turning into the same dark shadows of that alley before those curs loped away at a greater hurry.

  Into the first of Isaac’s favorite watering holes he went, stopping just inside the doorway to rake his eyes over those crumpled over the tables, collapsed in the corners, stretched out atop crude benches, their arms and legs akimbo as only the besotted can sleep. Turning to the long bar where puddles of ale and whiskey lay unattended, he nudged the tender, asleep on a curled arm.

  “Whatta ye want?” the man growled without raising his head.

  “Looking for a friend,” Titus explained, anxious as he peered into that face swollen with fatigue and interrupted sleep. “Wears a red scarf over his head. A silver earring.”

  The head came up slowly. “No, nobody like that here.”

  “Was he? Last night.”

  The barman waved him away, his head sinking back to his arm pillow. “Early. Gone early. Some others throwed him out. You want a drink? If not—be off.”

  “No, just tell me why he was throwed—”

  “Shaddup, now. You be gone an’ let a man have his sleep.”

  “He say where he—”

  “That one’s lucky they didn’t choose to cut his throat—that Injun game of his!”

  “Where—”

  “Get out before I cut your liver out me own self!”

  As he turned, Titus saw several of the patrons stirring restlessly, but not a one awoke. The entire room settled back into a languorous stupor, the fire crumbling to coals in the stone fireplace.

  The dogs scattered from the doorway as he hurried out, turning up the back way, feeling more desperate than ever before the dank closeness of these low-roofed shanties and whores’ cribs squeezing in on that narrow, twisting passage he followed to the next of Washburn’s favored haunts along the wharf.

  It was much the same there, and at the next. In fact, Titus learned the trapper had visited every last one of those considered the worst of the river city’s watering troughs. In most grogshops he learned how Washburn had attempted his game of chance, his sleight of hand, and for it was good-naturedly thrown out on his ear. Told to be off and take his lumbering scheme some other place.

  From there Bass backtracked to the hovel where Isaac’s prostitute plied her trade. Surprise crossed her face as she pulled back the heavy Russian canvas sheeting hung for a doorway.

  “You got the wrong bed, don’t you, lover?” she said, her voice thick with interrupted sleep. She pointed. “Your bitch is three beds down.”

  “I didn’t come for her.”

  A crass smile crossed the woman’s lips as she turned aside, motioning him in, then dropped the door curtain back in place behind him. Without a word the young woman stepped over to the pallet and settled to her knees, pulling up the hem of her long nightshirt until it rested at her waist, her bony, boyish hipbones straining against her pale skin, the dark triangle a stark contrast.

  “I knew you’d have to have me one of these days, lover.”

  “No,” and he wagged his head. “You don’t understand.”

  “It don’t matter,” she cooed, hiking the nightshirt on up her body, over her shoulders, and flinging it into the corner, then rising up on her knees to sway provocatively as she fondled a breast. “I won’t ever tell your bitch you had to come have some of the sweetest lovin’ you’d get on the river.”

  “Please—I’m looking for Washburn.”

  “Isaac? Don’t you worry, now—I don’t think he’ll be back soon,” she replied, cupping her hands beneath the other small breast. “He don’t have to know neither. C’mere an’ taste these an’ tell me they ain’t ripe and juicy.”

  He licked his lips, trying to keep his eyes from straying below her neck. The way she moved, swayed, rocked her hips in slow, luring gyrations.

  “When was he here? Early, late?”

  “Middle of the night,” she said, her voice deepening. “He was getting crazy awready. C’mon, lover—you know you can’t leave me now.”

  “He tell you where he was—”

  “Shut your mouth and c’mere. You got me all worked up.”

  “You don’t know nothing more?”

  “Forget about Washburn, that crazy old man,” she snapped. “He stunk like nobody else I ever smelled.”

  Suddenly he felt very, very sorry for her. More sorry for Isaac. “That crazy ol’ man thought the world of you. It’d kill him to think of you saying these things ’bout him.”

  Hurriedly she got to her feet, padding over to Titus, looping her arms around him and saying, “What he don’t know won’t never hurt ’im.”

  Gently pushing her bony shoulders away, he was reminded of Mincemeat. So sad was the memory that he sighed.

  She tried to push his arms away and slip closer again. Rubbing her groin against his thigh. “This is all yours right now.”

  “Go to bed.”

  “That’s the whole idea, sugar boy.”

  He shoved her backward, angry, hearing her snarl like some animal as he pushed aside the canvas flap and ducked into the low hallway that led to the door which would take him back to the narrow alley.

  “I’ll kill you, you ever come back again!”

  How he hoped her shriek would quickly disappear behind him, swallowed by the coming gray in dawn’s creeping presence. Feeling all the sadder, all the more remorse for Washburn that she was without the least shred of decency and loyalty, despite how she fed herself, kept that shabby roof over her head. There was shame, and then there was downright shameful.

  Stopping outside in the rain for but a moment, he thought on his sweet quadroon, how it had been three or more nights since the last visit. Then he pried himself away, down Wharf Street and among the tortuous twists of the tree-lined pathway that led toward the docks themselves.

  On and on he searched, failing to find Washburn in any of the grogshops, even the worst of the drinking dens. Yet time and again his questions aroused the smoldering anger of those who had been bested in Isaac’s game of chance, before the trapper had been soundly pummeled with fists and tossed out. But where Washburn had gone after every beating, more drunk and belligerent with every new stop, no one had the least interest in helping Titus discover.

  Day was coming when he finally started for the grove—hoping the trapper had gone there to sleep it off. Past the last wharves where the side-wheelers tied up to off-load, where the keelboats bobbed at their moorings to take on loads for the upriver Indian trade. Not far beyond the last of the wooden pilings the river lapped against the gentle slope of the bank. Driftwood cluttered the sandy, muddy shore. Over and around what had at one time been dangerous sawyers or planters he trudged,
his moccasins soaked.

  Stopped, peered at the dark object against the muddy bank ahead. Not a snag—it bobbed half in, half out of the Mississippi … in the shape of a body.

  Titus feared. Dared not believe. Refused to allow himself to hope as he inched closer. That faded red scarf tied round the man’s head. Mud-soaked now. Washburn floated facedown in the shallow, brown water where Bass collapsed to his knees.

  Dragging Isaac into his lap, he rolled the trapper over, brushing mud from the bruised and swollen face: eyes, cheeks split, lips cracked and bleeding, whiskers crusted with river silt. Titus sensed his own tears begin to spill as he slapped the face—hoping for life, some flicker of movement.

  For the longest time Titus sat there in that cold water, cradling Washburn to hrs breast, clutched the friend beneath his chin so close he could smell the stale, sickly stench of drink about the dead man. This place, the cold unforgiving lap of the river around him, and the reek of one spree too many thick in his nostrils all brought Bass to thinking on what must have been the trapper’s last minutes. Somehow limping down here after one beating too many. Coming here rather than the livery where Titus had spurned him. Perhaps Washburn stood in this very spot for some moments before he fell, staring at the water rolling out of that land far, far to the north—cursing the river that passed him by, just as so many seasons were now behind him.

  Titus knew how that felt aiready.

  Too much whiskey and too sound a thrashing—finally to crumple here into the shallow current at the edge of the muddy bank, here to drown. Never again to move. Dead drunk again.

  And this time, dead.

  Back and forth he rocked with the body. Then as the light ballooned in the east across the river, Titus struggled from under the weight. He nearly stumbled himself in the soft, giving mud as he got to his feet, began to drag the body out of the water.

  Heaving, he brought Washburn up the bank a few yards with great exertion. Then collapsed himself beside the trapper once more. Shivering as he watched the sun continue its climb.

  A new day. A little colder.

  And now one friend less.

  24

  The Indian pony resisted him at first, not liking the nearness of that dead body. Maybe it was true what some folks said about animals sensing death more strongly than humans ever could.

  As many years as he had worked around horses and hunted the creatures of the woods, Titus had to admit he really knew damned little about the beasts whose flesh he ate, the brutes he shoed and harnessed for Hysham Troost.

  With a great struggle he at last draped Washburn’s body over his own shoulder, struggled to rise. Tied off to a tree, the pony sidestepped round the trunk, skittish and wide-eyed, nostrils taking the caliber of the dead man’s scent as it inched away until the hackamore was wrapped around the tree and the pony’s nose was snubbed right against the oak’s trunk. A final heave from Bass meant the frightened pony gave one last jostle, shivering beneath the deadweight.

  “There, now,” he whispered to the animal, stroking its muzzle. “Last time you’ll ever carry him. Easy, easy—just ease down, girl. This here’s the last ride for Isaac Washburn.”

  Bass had returned to the livery after the sun’s orange orb had peeled itself fully off the far side of the river. Troost was already in for the day, laying out the first of the harness on his workbench, readying it for a good soaping as Titus trudged past without a word.

  Perhaps it was the pain written on the young man’s face and nothing more that had compelled Troost not to utter a word. Silently he had watched Bass move by on his special purpose, taking down a long braided horsehair hackamore from one of the stable posts without slowing a step. Out in the paddock behind the barn where Troost fed boscage to his oxen, he had caught up the reluctant pony, brought it among the stables, then latched the half door. Tying the animal beside the opening to his cell, Titus had reappeared with Washburn’s old sleeping blankets, folding it over the pony’s back.

  Past Troost he had trudged, again without a word from either one of them. Near the wide double doors that fronted onto Third Street, Titus had taken down one of the mucking shovels hanging from a peg near the last stall. From the moment he had entered the livery, he had barely touched the blacksmith with his eyes. Still, through it all, he could feel Hysham’s wondering, curious stare strike him dead center between his shoulder blades as Bass finally moved out of shadow and into the sunshine splashing St. Louis on that morning. He had led the pony down to the riverbank.

  With the dripping, muddy corpse finally draped over the animal’s back, Titus headed downriver. A mile. Another. Then two more as he sought out a place far enough from settlement, from walls of wood or stone, far enough from the walls of too many people. Eventually he stopped in a small glade and tied the pony to one of the trees that ringed the meadow. Leaves rustled in the morning breeze above him as he dragged the body from the animal’s back. It reflexively backed away from Isaac Washburn, as far as the hackamore would allow it. Snorting as it sidestepped, on the far side of the tree, the pony bent its head to graze among spring’s tall grass.

  For some time Bass walked over every foot of that glade, then decided on a place before returning to the tree, where he took up that worn and rusted shovel he would now use to scratch at the thick carpet of green, marking out a rectangle wide enough, long enough, for the trapper. The rain-soaked earth gave easily beneath his labor, piling the moist, dark soil in a mound beside the deepening hole where he worked. Man against the ground, forcing the earth to open itself, give of itself, just wide enough for man’s final pillow.

  This reminded him of farming. Of Thaddeus and the others back yonder in Boone County. Slashing their shares down through the earth, forcing the soil open—demanding it give what they wanted most. Like a man prying open a reluctant woman’s legs until she at last gives herself to him, where he can plant his seed—there in her moistness so that it too would grow.

  But this was different, he convinced himself. This was returning something … someone … to the soil. No, he was not taking anything from the earth. This completion of the circle was something altogether different.

  Down, down, down into the ground he sweated, removing first his coat, and later his shirt—those taut, lean muscles and sinews aching before he tossed out the shovel and heaved himself out of that long black hole punched out of the deep emerald green of the meadow. There in the shade, among the roots of that big elm tree. He turned, inspecting his work. Deep enough for him to stand up to his armpits.

  After spreading the two blankets upon the grass and gently laying out the body, Bass carefully draped the worn and greasy wool over Washburn’s face for the last time.

  “It’s time, Isaac,” he sighed in a whisper.

  Beside the hole he laid Washburn, then descended into the grave once again. Bracing himself against the side, Bass dragged the body into his arms, slowly lowering Isaac to the bottom. He quickly scrambled out once he sensed the sun inching itself ever higher, arching its way upward across the sky, warming the air. Now he sweated even more as he stabbed that mound of fresh earth, shoveling it back atop those old blankets with the solemn thump of falling sod.

  “Damn you, Isaac—you wanted that spree of your’n more’n you wanted me to be your friend,” Titus hurled his words down at the form wrapped in the blankets. Clod by clod, the soil spilled back into the hole.

  “Went out after your whiskey, figuring it would be a better friend than I ever could make you,” he growled as he hunched into his work, stung by his sweat, blinded by his tears.

  “Not any different’n that ol’ man Glass, was you? All’s said and done—just like him you give up on folks what cared something for you. Just look at you now!” he sobbed.

  Flinging the clumps of earth into that yawning pit, shovel by shovel until he was drenched with sweat, itching at the black earth smeared in great streaks across his heaving chest, tracked with tears over his cheeks, striped in beaded ribbons on his forehead.
Wiping the stinging salt from his eyes, he blinked, then kept on hurling the last of that dark earth atop what remained of Isaac Washburn.

  Patting the last shovelful down on that long black mound, he shuddered, resting his hands across the hickory handle. Then gazed about at the sunlit meadow he had chosen. Suddenly aware of the wildflowers. Spring’s gift to the land.

  Clump after clump he speared up with the old shovel, carrying them tenderly back to the grave, there to replant each bouquet with his bare hands, scratching out each hole with his fingers until that long black mound lay ablaze with color.

  “These here orange ones are for the sunsets in them mountains—the ones you told me about, Isaac,” he said little above a whisper, his dirty, black-caked fingers touching the soft velvet of the brilliant petals.

  “And these red ones—like them hills you said the Powder River called its home. The blue’uns for the sky out yonder—the sky you told me brushes them mountains you wanted to see again so bad.”

  Titus swiped a grimy finger below each eye as tears began to spill across his cheeks.

  “And the yellow ones, Isaac. Yellow, just as bright as that grass on the prerra you said looked like a carpet of gold—where a man can find him the buffalo ground. I put them yellow ones here special.”

  For the longest time Bass sat there in the shade of the tree sheltering that spot. Watching the flowers nod beneath the breeze while sunlight and shadow chased one another across the meadow … until at last the day grew late. Twilight’s last golden kiss soon to brush the cheek of the land.

  The sweat from his efforts had long ago dried by the time he pulled on his shirt, tugging it down over the black streaks of grime from that special ground. Taking up the pony’s hackamore and laying the shovel over his shoulder, Titus trudged back across the belly of that glade. Miles to go before dark. Miles to go before he returned to what was, and was never to be again.

  At the far line of trees rustling above him, Bass stopped. Turning, he gazed back, struck that no longer did the long black grave look so much like a dark scar in that meadow of green.