Gathering on Dance Hall Road

by Dorothy A. Bell

  Melody pressed her lips together and took her brother by the hand to lead him back to his cabin. “First thing you’re going to do, brother, is get dressed,” Melody said.

  “Melody,” Buck said from the kitchen doorway, “tell her we love her.”

  ∙•∙

  Van didn’t normally drink. Hard liquor usually brought on the sweats and nausea, but after four hours of listening to the hushed voices, the shuffling feet, low moans and sharp cries coming from the room upstairs, he found himself seriously considering a belt of strong spirits.

  Leaning against the porch rail, arms crossed, he inhaled the frosty air to quiet his nerves. He didn’t know how Ryder could stand it. If it were Melody up there writhing in pain, he’d go insane. The situation had him questioning the idea of marriage, family, and children. If all it brought with it was pain and agony, sacrifice and constant worry, then why the hell would anyone want to do it?

  A strong hand clapped him on the shoulder. “She needs to cry out, release the pain,” Buck said. “She’s focusing on the work. It’s hard, but she’s a strong, healthy young woman. She’s gonna be fine. As for Ryder, I don’t know, it’s even odds right now. They sent him out of the room. He’s sitting at the top of the stairs, head in his hands.”

  Buck leaned against the porch post opposite and gazed up to the heavens. “I wish Petra could be here. Jo and Ryder have a good marriage.” He paused, shook his head at Van. “I know, you had your doubts. I did too, at first. His work takes him away from home a lot. But Jo has her school. I’m positive any child of theirs will receive more than enough attention. Jo will have plenty of good help. Ryder’s dedicated to her. They have a strong bond.”

  “Did I ever tell you about my mother, how she became a madam?”

  “You might’ve, I don’t remember,” Van said, half listening.

  “Her mother died of the influenza, leaving my mother, and her brother in the care of their low-life son-of-a-bitchin’ father. The brother ran off at the age of twelve and boarded a ship to South America. My mother never heard from him again. She took off on her own at age thirteen and made it to California. She worked the gold fields plying her trade. Made enough money to buy her own establishment in San Francisco. She did all right for herself. I remember the ladies took good care of me. I went a little sideways for a time, but I got back on track thanks to your mother. And tonight, I’m here listening to the sounds of my second grandchild come screaming into this world. I’ll be here, God willing, to greet your children too.”

  Van straightened and shoved his hands down deep into his trouser pockets. “No. Oh no, Dad. I can’t ask Melody, or any woman, to go through what Jo is going through. No, Melody’s too small. It’d kill her. It sounds like it’s killing Jo. No. I’m never getting married. This is torture.”

  Buck laughed at him. “Women, well, most women, want children. They know the risk. It’s life, son. You’ve seen new life enter the world. Hell, I’ve seen you reach in and grab hold and pull’em out.”

  Disgusted, Van sputtered. “That’s calves, and colts.”

  “It’s the same road. Cattle, horses, humans, we all enter through the same portal.”

  “Dad, the way you talk sometimes,” Van said and turned away, “you’re too, too, pragmatic.”

  “Coarse, I think, is the word you’re looking for.”

  “Yeah, that too,” Van said and grumbled.

  Melody came out on the porch and wrapped her arms around Van’s waist. “Jo delivered a big, healthy boy a few moments ago. Idella weighed him on the kitchen scale. Eight pounds, ten ounces. Ryder’s on his knees beside her bed. He could use a shot of something stout to put the starch back in him,” she said to Buck. “And Gabe, I’m sure he’d welcome a drink as well.”

  Buck laughed and blew a kiss to the heavens. “I have just the remedy. A bottle of brandy I picked up when we were in Portland last New Year is sitting on the top shelf of the pantry. We’ll raise a toast to the new member of the clan,” he said, going inside the house.

  “Do you drink?” Melody asked Van.

  “No, but I might try it tonight. God, poor Jo. How is she, really?”

  “She’s deliriously happy, laughing, and crying. She had a relatively easy time.”

  “How can you say that? She was in agony for hours and hours.”

  “Sometimes labor can go on for days.”

  “Days? My God, Melody. Do you want children?”

  “Yes, I told you, I would love to have children. I would love to teach them, show them all the things I know.”

  “But, but the pain?”

  “Who’s to say a rose doesn’t experience pain when it gives birth to a new bud, and it opens up to a flower, and yet it blooms and blooms and blooms. And birds, laying eggs, that certainly looks painful to me, and yet they do it over and over and over.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “No, it’s not an answer. It’s a matter of acceptance, following the course of the nature of things. If you allow your fears to deny you what everyone else is willing to risk, you’ll be missing out on so much beauty, joy, and wonder. It’s a gamble. Life, new life, requires faith. I have a lot of faith. Ryder’s learning. He’ll do better next time.”

  “Next time?”

  “Yes, next time. Jo said she’d like a girl.”

  “Well, that’s just plain crazy.”

  Melody laughed at him. “You know what’s crazy?”

  “I have no idea what you think is crazy. I couldn’t guess in a million years.”

  She punched him in the arm. “I really don’t think spirits are going to revive me. I think a dip in the pond is what I need.”

  He opened the screen door for her. “Hmmm? I thought you didn’t know how to swim.”

  “Mother and Idella have been giving me lessons. I raced Twyla-Rose across the pond yesterday. I won by a body length. Birdie-Alice and Doreen said I’m good enough to swim solo if I want.”

  “Oh, yeah? As our guest, I need to see for myself. It would be irresponsible of me to allow you to go to the pool unattended.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Meet you after everyone goes to their cabins. Surely they’ll want to get some sleep. I’ll test your abilities.”

  Giggling, Melody ducked under his arm and entered the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Van waited in his room, and one by one, the guests dragged themselves off to their cabins. Buck turned down the lights in the house and banked the fires. All was quiet in Jo’s room. He looked out his bedroom window to the sky. In another couple of hours, it would start to get light. In bed, he waited half-awake, half-asleep. Something hit his window; it sounded like a rock. Another shower of stones hit the pane. He opened the window to greet the next handful of gravel. Pressing his lips together, he scrubbed the dust from his face. Melody stood below. She waved to him and scampered off in her robe and boots.

  He tugged on his boots and put on his coat over his long johns. Snatching a quilt off his bed, he quietly left his room, tiptoed down the stairs, and out of the house.

  Melody waited for him at the head of the swimming pond path. The wooden slats were slick with black ice and frozen footprints. “You should’ve worn your coat over your robe,” he said, draping the quilt around her shoulders.

  “I got my long underwear on. And I’ve got a dry pair of stockings in the pocket of my robe. C’mon, let’s get in the warm water.”

  Van soon learned Melody’s approach to swimming was very much like her approach to riding a horse, it was neck or nothing. She shucked the quilt the instant they entered the shelter and pranced down the icy board deck and dove into the water head first.

  In the dark, Van couldn’t see where she’d surfaced. She disappeared. Seconds went by, and not a ripple. Panic-stricken, he tugged off his boots and threw his coat down on the deck and dove in after her. Eyes open, expecting to see her white, long john-encased body lying on the sandy bottom of the pool, he searched until he ran out of air and couldn�
��t search anymore.

  Gasping for air, he breached the surface, and eyes wide, came face to face with the minx. She swam like an otter, circling him, splashing him. “I love the pool,” she said, laughing, kicking, floating on her back, head half submerged, water up to her ears and face to the sky. “It’s heaven. Do you come here all the time? If I lived here, I’d come here all the time,” she said and sighed and closed her eyes.

  Van, still working to catch his breath, treading water, couldn’t speak. She dropped her legs and took a stroke toward him. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “What’s the matter? You scared the hell out of me, is what’s the matter. You said you just learned how to swim and you run and dive in and disappear.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, then pressed her lips together and had the decency to look chagrined. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘oh.” He put his hand to her cheek. “I went to the bottom expecting to find you down there drowned. Damn it, Melody…”

  She tipped her head and smiled, a warm, sympathetic little smile. “I love you, Van.”

  She’d waved the angry wind right out of his sails.

  “Well, hell,” he said and growled. “I love you too. But you scare the hell out of me. I’m scared of losing you. How can I make you understand, it would kill me. I would die inside if something happened to you.”

  “No, don’t say that. You mustn’t say that,” she said. “I lost my mother because she couldn’t live without my father. And Royce and Cleantha and Ryder and Jo, I’ve heard them say the same thing. If something were to happen to me, you must promise me you will go on. Live your life to the fullest. And I will promise the same.”

  He held her very close, unable to speak for a few seconds. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I promise to live life to the fullest with or without you. And you must promise me to be careful with yourself. Take care, you are precious to me. I want to live my life with you in it.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, which was not the response he expected.

  “I’ll race you across and back,” she said, laughing at him. “Loser has to carry the winner piggyback, back to the cabins.”

  “You can’t carry me,” he said.

  She kicked water in his face and took the lead by three strokes. “I don’t plan on losing,” she said, leaving him in her wake.

  “Well, hell and damn!”

  ∙•∙

  The predawn romps down at the pool with Melody cast Van into a perpetual dreamy, inexplicably delirious, happy state of mind. He regretted the effect it had on his memory, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t shake his euphoria.

  He neglected to refill the wood bin for the cook-stove on Christmas day, setting their meal back an hour. And Buck reminded him three times he needed to sweep the snow off the boardwalk to the pool. The men, Buck, Gabe, Rafe, Telt, Ryder, Quinn and his two sons, and Royce formed a hunting/shooting party. Van joined them, of course, but he forgot his gun and his ammunition vest. His companions, even now, three days later, would not allow him to forget the moment, describing the stupid look on his face as that of a pig drunk on sour mash.

  “They’re watching us,” Melody warned him New Year’s Eve morning.

  He nodded, laying a log in the fireplace in the parlor before breakfast.

  “Mother noticed my long johns were damp. I told her I washed them. Now she wants to know why I’m washing my long johns every night. How about you?”

  Van straightened and snorted. “No one’s questioning my laundry habits. But Buck has taken to following me around and double checking my work. I poured water in two feed buckets full of feed. I made frozen grain cubes. He was not a happy man. Then, last night, all of them were in the kitchen, I heard them laughing. I thought I’d get a glass of milk before turning in, and they all stopped laughing when I entered. Damned if they didn’t clam up. I thought I heard Twyla-Rose snicker, but when I turned around, she had her head down drying dishes.”

  “We’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow,” Melody said, her head against his upper arm and her fingers seeking his hand.

  “I know.”

  She took a deep breath and held it before letting it out very slowly. “Jo is waiting for me. I came down for a pail of hot water. I’m to help her take a sitz-bath. She and Master Cameron Royce McAdam want to make a good impression upon their first time out of their room this evening.”

  Van threw his head back and swore under his breath. “Damn, I was supposed to bring in the cradle from the barn last night, get it warmed up and cleaned. Buck made the cradle for Gabe right after he brought our mother here. He made it out of a feed trough, but you’d never know it.”

  “Van? Tonight?”

  Lowering his head, he pressed his forehead to hers to look deep into her eyes. “Tonight. Same time.”

  »»•««

  In the yard in front of the porch, Van lit off another string of firecrackers. Quinn and Tru’s boys jumped and squealed with delight. Everyone showed their appreciation by cheering, begging for more. Buck jumped down off the porch and handed him a box of Roman candles. Van set them up in a tight circle and quickly lit the fuses and dashed for the shelter of the barn. They took off with a succession of loud booms, smoke filling the yard. All of them burst into a thousand shards of light filling the sky, lighting up the surrounding landscape.

  “Happy New Year!” everyone shouted in chorus.

  “Show’s over,” Buck said, herding everyone inside the house. “Rafe brought us some champagne. If you don’t want, or can’t have spirits, there’s sarsaparilla.”

  Melody hung back to help Van pick up the firecrackers and Roman candles. “They aren’t going to give us any time to be alone. They wouldn’t even let us sit next to each other at the table. I thought Mother liked you,” Melody said, brows furrowed over a frown.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. But I caught Telt, Royce, Rafe, and Quinn laughing their asses off after supper. They shut up real quick when they saw me. Dad’s actin’ cagy as hell. I swear they’re plotting something, but what?”

  “Melody, get in the house,” Royce called from the porch.

  She huffed and waved at him. “See you soon,” she said to Van, and marched, nose in the air, fists balled, passing her father without saying a word.

  Everybody was acting strangely. Jo had started to tell him something this afternoon, but Ryder interrupted her, all smiles and congeniality, setting Van’s teeth on edge. And Idella, she’d patted him on the cheek and told him he was a good man. Twyla-Rose, the imp, skipped around him twice as he entered the house with an armload of wood this morning. Nothing unusual about that, the girl was a silly widgeon. She’d waggled her fingers at him knowingly.

  Van went around the house and removed his work boots and entered the house through the kitchen door.

  “I’ve got plenty of flour, we’ll have a big cake. Van’s partial to my walnut cake,” he heard Idella say to Doreen. Van, in his stocking feet, entered the kitchen. Doreen shushed her.

  “Maple frosting,” Van said. “Walnut cake and maple frosting.” He dropped the armload of firewood he’d carried into the crib beside the cookstove.

  “Do you know what kind of cake Melody favors?” asked Idella, drying a glass.

  “Chocolate walnut with burnt sugar frosting. Ollie made it for her. It was good. I have to admit, it’d be hard to say which one I’d choose if they were side by side.”

  “Well, a little thing like Melody, I don’t suppose she eats very much at all,” said Doreen, taking her hands out of the soapy water and drying them on a tea towel.

  “Ha!” Van said, “When she’s hungry, she can put it away, let me tell you. A logger after a two-day fast would be hard pressed to keep up with her.”

  “Ah,” Doreen said and snickered. “We had a fine fireworks. Happy New Year, Idella, Van. I’m for bed.”

  “Me too,” Idella said and folded the dishtowel. “Good night, Van.”

  “Uh,
yeah, good night.” He looked around. There, he’d done it again, cleared a room. What the hell?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A low fog hovered above the frosty ground and muffled any sound, but Melody didn’t dare throw rocks at Van’s window; her parents were on the alert. Her long-johns weren’t even dry from her swim this morning. Shivering, she left the cabin by her opened window and hustled down to the pool, hoping Van waited for her.

  He loved her, she didn’t doubt it, but he hadn’t approached the subject of marriage, not directly. They were leaving the day after tomorrow. If he didn’t pop the question tonight, then she would. This had to get settled tonight. If he didn’t want her, he should speak up. Tonight was the night.

  ∙•∙

  Van made a slow lap around the pool, practicing what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. He couldn’t allow Melody to leave without extracting a promise she’d marry him in the near future. He thought a spring wedding would be nice. They could swim every day and watch the new calves, maybe take a little honeymoon over to the Snake River country and do a little salmon fishing.

  He heard her coming. She had a light-footed, quick gait. She used her arms and moved with speed and efficiency. In the shallow water up to his chest, he waited for her to shed her robe and shoes. The moon, a mere sliver, had moved to the west, and the stars twinkled as bright as diamonds against the sky of midnight blue.

  “I couldn’t throw rocks at your window tonight,” she said, moving into the water. “Honestly, I thought Daddy might actually tie me to the bedpost. He hovered around outside my room for hours. He finally fell asleep in the chair in the parlor. I climbed out my window.”

  “Get in the water, it feels really warm tonight.’

  He held out his arms to her. She slid into the water, gliding into his body. Their lips met, and he rocked her in the water, cradling her head and shoulders with his hands. “Melody. Melody…you can’t leave me.”