Gathering on Dance Hall Road

by Dorothy A. Bell

  He grinned at her and chuckled. “I’ve never held a conversation of any length with any female other than my sister or my brother or my mother and father, so I think we’re even on that score. It has been a rare day. A day I will never forget.”

  She took him by the hand and dragged him out toward the cook fires. “Come on. I’m starved. I could eat a whole cow.”

  “How about a whole smoked salmon? I think there’s an elk haunch. And some flatbread and something green that smells like boiled socks.”

  “Perfect. Close your eyes and try the green slime on your salmon, it’s really good, kind of sweet and a little sour, it just looks and smells awful.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  To the west and south, a brief flash of heat lightning lit up the sky. Melody and Ollie made short work of their fire while the women gathered the children, shooing them toward shelter. Thunder rumbled a warning, and the first drops of rain began to fall. Ollie raised her voice to be heard over the sound of the wind whistling through the prairie grass. “We had a good trade. How about you?”

  “I found what I needed.” A sharp razor of lightning zipped across the evening sky, and the thunder snapped and crackled. “I’m for my wagon,” Melody said, and rushed for shelter.

  “Right you are,” shouted Ollie, holding her newly acquired rug over her head.

  Head bowed against the wind to dodge the rain-laced hail, Melody spied Van laid out beneath her wagon, bundled up in his bedroll. “Van? Get in the wagon,” she said, bending down to send her voice.

  “I’m good right here,” he said, his voice muffled by his cover.

  She shook her head. “You are not fine. I think we’re in for a gusher and there’s hail in it. My wagon is in good shape. It can stand against a hailstorm.” A gust of wind hit her in the face and stung her eyes. “I’m not going to argue with you. Get in the wagon. Hurry up. Don’t be an idiot.”

  She heard a thunk and cringed, suspecting he’d cracked his head on the wagon underpinnings. He entered her wagon, muttering and swearing to himself, his shoulders wet and white pellets of hail lining the rim of his hat. Hunched over to keep from bumping his head on the low ceiling of her wagon, he said, “There’s no room for me in here.”

  Melody shoved a basket of her clothes beneath her bed. “There’s room if I get all this out of the way. I even have an extra blanket and pillow.” She plopped down on her bed and pulled the covers back to get at her extra bedding.

  A flash of lightning brought her to her feet. She shoved Van out of the way. “The horses? I should check the horses.”

  His hands on her shoulders, he held her back. “The boys and I did that. There’s a shed behind the school. They have feed and water.” He moved her aside and started to go back outside. “I can’t even stand up, let alone lay down in here.”

  A flash of lightning followed by a crack of thunder stopped him.

  Melody grabbed his arm and dug in her fingers. “Don’t, please. Don’t go. I…I don’t like thunderstorms.”

  He heaved a heavy sigh and closed his eyes, shoulders slumped. “I don’t either.”

  “I’m not going to sleep,” Melody said, wrapping her arms across her bosom, teeth chattering.

  A gust of wind rocked the wagon, and a shower of hail bombarded the wagon canvas. Melody flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around his middle. She held her breath, savoring the feel of his hand rubbing her back. He shifted and took a breath, reminding her she had plastered herself to his body. Self-conscious, nervous, she drew back and patted his chest. “I should light the lamp.”

  “No, wouldn’t do any good.” He moved sideways and sat down on her bed and stuffed a pillow behind his back. “Wouldn’t stay lit, not with all this wind. Come on, get under the covers. You’re cold. Neither of us is going to sleep. Might as well get comfortable.”

  The situation hit home. Van, Mr. Beautiful, wanted her to sit beside him on her bed, in the dark. That’s what she’d expected him to do. The storm raging outside, the rain coming down in buckets, left her with very few options should Mr. Beautiful decide to take advantage. But would he take advantage? She doubted it. She wasn’t the type of female who inspired men to take advantage. The realization she found depressing and maddening.

  “Who lives in the shack?” he asked her, disrupting her thoughts. She sighed and flopped down beside him and spread the blankets over them both.

  “Her name is Minola. My sister, I told you, she used to bring us to visit her. No one calls her by any other name than the Old One. I assume it’s forbidden to speak her name. No one ever said so, but that’s what I assume. No one visits her or speaks to her. They turn their face away from her if she goes outside and someone sees her. But my sister visits her. My brothers and I visit her whenever we’re close by. My sister brings her clothes and food. Many people on the mission bring her food, I know they do. I’ve seen the baskets left on her doorstep. I had some food I wanted to give her. And some herbs I know she uses for her aches and pains.”

  Van put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close to his side. She moved her legs to the side and leaned against him. The wind had settled down, but the rain continued to pound.

  “She’s a relative, then?”

  “I don’t ask,” Melody said with her hand to her cool lips. She chewed on her lower lip, deliberating how much she should reveal. “Minola doesn’t speak, not really. I asked my sister why, and she told my brothers and me they pulled her teeth out and cut her tongue because they caught her teaching the children the old language.”

  “Who? Who did that?”

  “The missionaries,” Melody said. “My sister didn’t actually say the missionaries did it, but that’s the impression we were left with.”

  “Your hands are cold,” he said, taking her hands in his to warm them. “You believe the missionaries would do that?”

  “I don’t know, it’s impolite to ask. All I know is, I’m welcome in her shack, and she listens to me.”

  “Why did you want to see her today?”

  “I wanted to ask her about the dress, the dress I wore last night.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “It was my mother’s wedding dress. Minola made it for her. It’s good I can wear it now.” That was in part the truth. The truth was, her childhood ended yesterday when she’d donned her mother’s dress. Or maybe the night she’d fallen in love with a beautiful, tall man and a pair of blue eyes.

  “When I was five or six, my sister took my brothers and me down the road and showed us the farm where my birth parents lived. It’s gone derelict. The barn roof caved in. All the windows in the house have been shot out, used for target practice, I s’pose.

  “I have a memory of a loud blast, red everywhere, on the dirt floor of the barn, the straw bales, a woman screaming, my brother shouting and my sister rushing us inside the house.

  “The next thing I remember, I’m sitting on a pretty lady’s lap, and she’s singing to me. The lady is my adopted mother. My sister said I didn’t speak for over a year. My adopted mother brought me back to life. This will be the third time I’ve been down the road to River Glenn since my sister brought us to live in Laura Creek. I’m told my father used to bring his horses to the festival in the Glenn. He’s remembered among the local farmers and ranchers around here. The last time I was down this road I was twelve. I haven’t seen Minola since then.”

  “Sounds like the storm is letting up,” he said, his lips close to her ear.

  “Hmm, good. It’s getting cold now.” She shivered, but not from the cold. His lips, his breath next to her ear, sent a delicious shock wave through her body.

  “Hmm.” His lips pressed against the nape of her neck vibrated and sent a slithering sensation of heat to the center of her womanhood. Instinctively, she tipped her head to the side, inviting more kisses.

  He laid her back, and the hand on her knee began a slow journey up the inside of her split skirt.

  “I know what you’re doin
g,” she said.

  “Good,” he said his lips moving against her cheek.

  “But,” she said, wiggling out from beneath him, “I think I have on too many clothes for this to proceed.”

  He laughed and sank back. “What? You’re very practical,” he said, and she heard him chuckle.

  Standing, she removed her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse. “Well, yes. We can hardly achieve copulation with our clothes on.”

  ∙•∙

  Her frank explanation had the effect of a bucket of cold water on his libido. Dumfounded, he sat there with his mouth open, watching her disrobe. She tossed her jacket on the floor. Fingers trembling, she made short work of unbuttoning her blouse. She sat down on the bed to remove her moccasin boots and stood up to step out of her skirt.

  “There,” she said, clad in her chemise, pantaloons, and stockings. “Now,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and climbing on his lap, “this is better, isn’t it.”

  He slid her off his lap. “Get under the covers. It’s too cold to go around with no clothes on. Go to sleep.” He tossed his pillow on the floor. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  Huffing, on his hands and knees, he searched the floor of the wagon for his soggy bedroll. “Nothing.”

  She hit him twice on the back of the head with her pillow and flung one of her blankets over his head. She huffed, snorted, kicked her covers, and went silent and very still.

  Sitting on the floor, Van removed his boots. He punched the pillow and put it under his head and pulled the cover up to his chin.

  He laid in the dark with his arm beneath his head trying to figure out what made Melody McAdam tick. She was an innocent, but provocative as hell. Girls, good girls, did not take off their clothes to accommodate and accelerate the process of seduction. And, damn it, “copulation.” But he was convinced she had no idea what was involved in seduction or copulation, other than what she’d witnessed horses, cows, and dogs doing. The idea she would do—that—do what the animals did with him, in that manner, without…without…finesse, without tenderness and affection, well, it sickened, baffled, and boggled the mind.

  She sniffed and mewed. He knew that sound, he had a sister. She was trying not to weep aloud. “Kit?” She sniffed, and the covers rustled. “Kit, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” she said in a watery, weepy voice. “I’m an ugly, stupid girl. I know. I’m unnatural…I think. I don’t do anything like the other girls do. I hate pink and frills and lace and petticoats and curls. I think girls are silly and boys are dense. I know you’re not a boy. You’re a man. And I know I’m a woman, but I sure as hell don’t feel like one. And as you just found out, I don’t act like one.”

  It surprised him how close her voice was to his head. He thought she must be leaning over the edge of her bed. He rolled onto his side to speak up to her and put his hand on a moist cheek. “You are unnatural in that you know nothing about subtlety. Your straightforward, direct approach to seduction scared me.”

  She put her hand on the hand he had on her cheek and asked, “How? How did I scare you?”

  The question caused him to choke. He had to clear his throat before he could answer. “I don’t know…it’s just that you were ready…you were going to…I don’t know…well hell, you know…and you kicked the pins out from under me, that’s what you did.”

  “Because I was ready to copulate? Isn’t that the goal? Kissing and fondling? Isn’t copulating the goal?”

  He sat up, grabbed his pillow, and taking his blanket with him, he shoved her legs aside to sit down next to her. “Stop saying that word,” he told her, tucking the blanket in around them both.

  “Copulate? What’s wrong with that word? It’s not a dirty word. I know a lot of dirty words, swear words. Mick and Jim taught me a long list of dirty words I could use.”

  He stretched out behind her, encouraging her to lie with her back to his front. He folded one arm over her hip, adjusted his pillow and slid his other arm beneath her head. She curved her bottom into his hip and snuggled, her body conforming perfectly to his. “How? How did I scare you?” she asked.

  Damn, she wasn’t going to let this go. “You, you were ready to…to…”

  “Yes, I was ready to copulate with you.”

  “Stop that, don’t say that word ever again.”

  “Why? It’s what it is isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s more…or it should be. Animals copulate.”

  “I’m an animal. You’re an animal.”

  “Yes, yes, all right, I give you that, but I want more than to just…copulate with you. I want to…I want us…to join, be one—combine.”

  She went silent. “Oh,” she said and rolled over on her other side to face him. “I can do that…I think. I’ve never tried, you see. I’ve watched the horses and the dogs, and they mount, and they’re done.”

  He growled. She’d sucked all rational thought out of his brain. Damn. Nothing was simple with this woman. He’d never had a more ridiculous and uncomfortable conversation. The situation was impossible. Her body, small and delicate, so close, he could feel the heat of her. Her hair smelled of rain and grass, and she didn’t have any clothes on. Well, she had clothes on, but the cloth was soft and gossamer thin. Shoot!

  “You don’t want me,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  Now she’d pissed him off. He pushed her back and gave her a good, long hard kiss on the mouth, his hand going between her legs. Taken by surprise, she mewed and then began to try to push him away. He allowed her to come up for air. “Damn it, Kit, yes, you idiot, I want to. I want you. But not now,” he said, and went back to his position, punched his pillow to lay on his side.

  She didn’t move. “So, when?” she asked, sounding a bit breathless.

  “I don’t know when.” Clenching his jaw tightly shut, he closed his eyes and said a little prayer, begging for forbearance.

  “Well, you don’t have to get mad,” she said and resumed her position with her back to him, all snuggled in nice and close. He put his arm beneath her head and the other one over her hip, his hand on her abdomen. She folded her arm over his and laid her hand on his wrist. “It’s just that I’d like to be ready, you know. I could use a bath, and I should wash my hair.” She yawned like a drowsy child. “The rain is kind’a nice. It smells nice too. Are you sleepy? I’m getting sleepy.”

  He pulled her in a little closer to his body. “I’m tired too. The rain settled the dust, makes the grass smell sweet. Are you comfortable?”

  “Hmmm, very. And you?”

  “Might need to move my arm,” he said, adjusting the arm beneath her head.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Melody opened her eyes. The interior of the wagon held a faint light. Outside, the rooks fussed in the cottonwoods. She lay there, savoring the feel of his arm lying on her hip and his hand warm and tender within her own. He moved, and she felt his lips on her neck. “Will you stay with us if I promise not to enslave you with my womanly wiles?” she asked, half hoping he was still asleep and couldn’t hear her plea.

  He groaned and tried to move the arm from under her pillow. “Too late. You got me. I can’t move my arm.”

  “I didn’t mean to. Enslave you, that is,” she said and rolled over onto her side to face him.

  He freed his arm. “Which makes it all the more difficult to reject you,” he said and touched his finger to her cheek.

  “Are you rejecting me?”

  “No,” he said and closed his eyes. “But let’s not kid ourselves. It won’t be me rejecting you; it’ll be you abandoning me.”

  She shook her head. “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if and when I might ask you to…to commit to a…a permanent arrangement, it is you who will no doubt back away. You want to stay with the Millers and do shows. I want, need, to go home.”

  She had nothing to say to that. She couldn�
��t deny it. “We have a few days, a week maybe together. I want you to stay. I’ve never had anyone, a boyfriend. I mean man friend, a suiter. We’ve talked about it now. We know where we’re headed, and what to expect. I’m willing to take the chance and enjoy the present with no regrets when it’s over.”

  He snorted. “You say that now,” he said and drew the cover up around his ears.

  “We should get up,” she said. “It’s starting to get light.”

  Van threw back the blanket. “Hell. I need to get out of here before Ollie catches us.”

  “It’s a mite late for that,” said Ollie from beyond the flap on the wagon. “I didn’t see your bedroll. Had me a mite worried, but Jerry said your horse was still here. Good, you got out’a the storm. Should’a known. We’re hitched up. Come get yer coffee and cakes so we can be on our way. I see folks goin’ down the road. Gonna be a lot of travelers today.”

  Melody put a finger to her lips. “Oh, dear,” she said and pressed her lips together.

  “Yeah.” Massaging his arm to encourage blood flow, Van struggled to sit up. “We need to do as she says. Gonna have a rough start, I reckon.”

  “The boys probably know where you spent the night,” Melody said and rolled over. She came to her feet in her chemise and pantaloons. Her chemise had crawled up exposing her abdomen, and her pantaloons had bunched, twisted sideways. Van stopped her from putting her underclothes right and tugged her between his legs to kiss her tummy.

  “And Jerry,” she said, her eyes closed, savoring the feel of his lips on her skin.

  He put his forehead to her stomach, heaved a weighty sigh and pushed her back. Sitting on the edge of the cot, he scrubbed his head with his knuckles. “Yup.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, tugging her pantaloons back in position, and smoothing down her chemise.