Dance on the Wind (16 page)

His eyes kept flicking from the foolscap to his father’s face, back and forth, eager to figure out the suddenness of his father’s turn on him. Titus quickly glanced at his mother, his face filled with appeal. But she turned away, busying herself at the washbasin over the trenchers and utensils the family had just used at dinner. His eyes climbed toward the roof, finding above him in the shadows those three faces peering down from the edge of the sleeping loft, all of them watching the tense scene below. As soon as his father began speaking, Titus’s gaze locked on Thaddeus’s face.

“I been needing your help around here last few weeks since schoolmaster started up again, Titus.”

“Yes, sir.” Uneasiness squirmed inside.

“School taking up all your time, has it?”

“Yes. I s’pose it has.”

“Learning a lot, I’d wager,” Thaddeus said, slowly crossing the cabin floor toward his son.

“Some.”

“Then you won’t mind sharing all you been learning with me and your mam. How ’bout reading to us?” Thaddeus held the paper out at the end of his arm.

He shuffle-footed on the spot, his nervousness growing. He tried begging his way out. “You and me both know you’re a better reader’n me. Just make me out to be a fool in front of everyone—you go and make me read that.”

“You was learning to read of a time, Titus. If’n you’d keep learning the way you was, why—I figured one day you’d be a better reader’n me.”

“Maybe I can be, at that.”

Thaddeus shook the paper. In the cabin’s silence it rattled noisily, like a huge elm leaf, autumn dried to a parchment’s stiffness. “Won’t be, you don’t keep learning.”

He glanced at his mother, finding that she had turned and was watching them both now. “I’ll just have to see that I do.”

“Read it, Titus.”

With reluctance he took the paper and unfolded it, surprised at first—for he had suspected it was something written in his father’s own expansive hand. Instead, this was written in a very neat and crimped penmanship. He did not recognize it.

Clearing his throat, Titus began, faltering, halting at nearly every word as he sorted out the marks and the sounds of the tongue each one took.

“Mr. Bass. I … write you … this day over … something most … t-troubling … to me … c-concerning your … eldest child, Titus.”

His eyes flew to his father’s face, then shot back to the bottom of the page, trying to conjure what the name was.

“Go on, Titus. Read it to me.”

He pleaded, “What is this?”

“You gonna read it to me, son?”

By now he could see the anger beginning to rise in his father’s eyes, the pressure throbbing up and down the thick cords in his father’s neck. Titus grew frightened.

“I … I don’t think I can—”

Thaddeus ripped the paper out of his son’s hand and snapped its folds taut. “Then I’ll damn well read it to you!”

Glancing at his mother for a moment, Titus found her staring down at her feet, twisting the scrap of muslin rag in her hands.

“Mr. Bass. I write you this day over something most troubling to me concerning your eldest child, Titus. When the new season began, I was in hopes that you would allow your son to complete his last year of schooling without interruption. I’m sorry to see that you’ve seen fit to have him stay home to work with you in the fields for the last two weeks. If you can free him up to finish his schooling with me, it would be in the best interest of you both. I pray you will agree with me. Yours ever sincerely, Henry Standisti.”

For a moment Titus moved his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

“You know me and that schoolmaster ain’t never shared nothing much in common before, Titus. But now you’ve gone and got him thinking the worst of me. Keeping you home to work the fields, is it? Bah!”

He watched his father fold the page as he returned to the fireplace. But instead of throwing it into the flames, Thaddeus set it atop the mantel again.

“Were you to lay out of school—least you could have done was to give me help in the fields. Where’d Standish get such a notion you was here helping me? You tell me that.”

In a frightened, pale voice he replied, “I t-told him.”

“What? I didn’t hear you!”

“I told him.”

“You told him I wanted you to stay away from school to help me in the fields, is it?”

He nodded, sensing his palms grow moist. “Yes.”

Laying an arm across the stone mantel, Thaddeus suddenly roared, “If you weren’t at school, Titus … and you weren’t here working in the fields—just where the devil were you?”

“Thaddeus!” his mother whimpered. “Please watch your tone.”

He wheeled on her, shaking. “I’ll mind you to keep out of this, woman. I’ve a good mind to get angry at you as well. Likely you’re to blame for allowing his fool-headedness to go on as long as it has. And now look what you’ve done, look what we’ve got for it. He’s lied to us and lied to his schoolmaster. If you’d’ve helped me cram some responsibility into him from the beginning—he wouldn’t be in the fittle he is today.”

“Tell him you’re sorry, Titus,” his mother begged.

“We’re long past the point of his apologizing, Mother,” Thaddeus growled, and whirled back on his son. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Hunting.”

“Hunting, is it?” he thundered. “And with you doing so much hunting—just what have you been doing with all the meat you’ve shot?”

“Been eating it every day,” Titus answered, staring at a knot in the floor.

“All of it?”

“Most I been drying. What I learned to do—”

“Not bringing any home to help feed your family?”

“With all we got here, I didn’t figure—”

“You ain’t helping in the fields,” Thaddeus interrupted. “And you ain’t been helping put food on this family’s table. Maybe you ought just go off and live in the woods like you’ve been wanting so bad.”

For a moment he thought his ears had deceived him. Perhaps it was a trick his father was playing with words. How wonderful the idea sounded—too wonderful to hope for!

“I can bring in some meat tomorrow, I promise.”

“If you do, it won’t be with my permission. And you won’t do it with that gun yonder in the corner.”

“You taking my gun?”

“That was your grandpap’s.”

“He give it to
me!”

“It’s going to stay right there. A damned poor example you been to your brothers, and your sister too. I counted on you—and you let me down bad: running off with your squirrel gun every day like you done.”

He felt the anger surge in him like white windblown caps frothing on the gray surface of the Ohio. “You can’t take my gun away from me—”

“I can and I have. It stays here. I won’t have you wasting your life on tomfoolery.”

“Wasting my life?” Titus roared so suddenly that it caught his father by surprise. “You telling me I’m wasting
my
life? I’d be wasting my life if I was to settle for being a farmer like you! I don’t wanna waste my life the way you done!”

He watched his words visibly slap his father in the face, as surely as any man’s blow would make him flinch in pain. The arm Thaddeus had braced against the stone mantel came down slowly, that big hand tensing into a fist. Those dark, brooding eyes, shielded behind hoods of sudden rage, fixed Titus with their fury.

“Thaddeus!”

He sensed his mother’s alarm as she took a step, stopping immediately when his father pointed at her—instantly nailing her to the spot.

“Stand right there, woman! This is between the boy and me.”

“I ain’t no boy no longer!”

Thaddeus whirled back on his son, scorn dripping from his every word. “Not no boy? Sure as hell are! A man owns up to his responsibility. Owns up to his mistakes and goes on. You ain’t no man, Titus!”

“I ain’t a boy no longer.”

“You’re my boy, and you’re gonna do as I tell you long as you’re under this roof, eating my food!”

“Don’t make you right!”

Slowly, he started moving across the cabin toward his son, his words ominously calm. “I’m your father—and that’s enough for you to show your respect for me.”

“Thaddeus—oh, dear God, don’t!”

“Just gonna teach the boy a little respect for his father, woman.”

“You can’t teach me that,” Titus argued, setting his feet for what he feared was coming his way. “You gotta earn it.”

“Then—by God—I’ll beat some respect out of you!” Thaddeus roared. “Telling your old man he’s wasting his life working the land? Just who the hell you think you are?”

He shuffled his feet, readying himself. “Don’t come any closer, Pap!”

“Tell me not to come—”

“I said don’t come any closer!” Titus snapped, beginning to bring his arms up, hands clenched. “I ain’t no boy no longer … and I ain’t gonna take no more of your whuppin’s!”

Thaddeus stopped short, drew back, then snorted, “Just what the hell you think you’re gonna do if’n I take a mind to give you the whippin’ you’re deserving right about now?”

“You ain’t gonna ever lay a hand on me again.”

His father brought both his hands up, fingers spread in claws of rage. “What in hell’s name—”

“Thaddeus!” she cried.

“Don’t ever you raise your hands to me no more,” Titus warned. “You go to lay a hand on me—I’ll lay you right out.”

That brought Thaddeus up short. “You’ll do what?”

“Don’t make me, Pap. Please don’t make me. Not in front of my mam. Not in front of her.”

“Oh, God—please don’t, Thaddeus,” his mother whimpered, twisting that piece of muslin in her hands.

“You’ll lay me out, will you?” his father asked, his voice gone thoughtful, eyes gone to slits.

Titus watched his father’s face, saw something register in those eyes as Thaddeus looked him down, then up again. It was only then that Titus realized he stood nearly as tall as his father, shy no more than an inch of his father’s height. Though Thaddeus carried more muscle upon his frame, that which came of wrestling animals and harness and pitting himself against the land, although Titus
might well be as thin as a split cedar-fence rail, he was nonetheless every bit as tough in his own sinewy way: as solid as second-growth hickory.

And in that moment of indecision he knew his father realized the same thing for the first time. That pause he had caused Thaddeus served to give Titus a glimmer of confidence that he would not have to grapple with the man, here below the wide, muling eyes of his brothers and that troublesome sister. Here before the fright-filled eyes of his mother.

“You heard me before, Titus,” Thaddeus finally said, his shoulders sagging as he retreated to the fireplace. “Your rifle stays in the corner. In the morning you go to school or stay to work with me. There’ll be no hunting till spring when planting time is done.”

“Till s-spring?” he said, swallowing it like gall.

“And you can’t see Amy for a month,” the man continued, his back to his son, placing both hands out wide on the top of the stone mantel, his head sagging between his shoulders as he stared down at the fire at his feet. There was resignation, if not outright defeat, in the way he held himself. “Maybe it’ll take a month. Maybe it’ll take all winter and into the spring … but maybe by then you’ll have some respect for your father and the work what’s fed you, the work what’s put the clothes on your back for sixteen summers.”

“I can’t hunt till spring?”

Without turning his father repeated his stricture. “Not till you learn to respect your father, Titus. Damn, but you hurt me when you said I been wasting my life being a farmer. Damn you for that.”

He looked at his mother. She shook her head in warning, put a finger to her lips.

“Go on now, Titus,” Thaddeus instructed. “I turn around, I don’t wanna see you down here. Time you went to bed. Morning’s coming soon, and you’ll either go to school, or be up afore then to help me on that new ground I want to plant come spring.”

For a moment he didn’t move, despite his father’s directive. It was so quiet, Titus could hear the stuffy-nosed
breathing of one of the children in the loft, the crackle of the hardwood in the fireplace.

“You hear me, son? Get on up there to bed like I told you.”

He wanted to bolt away, out the door and into the night with the tears of rage he refused to let fall. Instead he swallowed them down, turning again to look at his mother. She nodded her head and gestured toward the ladder. Titus started that way.

“You plan on staying away from school, that’s all right with me, Titus,” his father said, his back still to his son. “I can use the help around our farm. But if’n you ain’t up in time to help me, I ’spect you to be off to school with your brothers and sister. Go on now and get to bed.”

Titus shuddered as he crossed the few steps it took to reach the foot of the beechwood ladder that climbed to the sleeping loft. As he took hold of a rung, Titus was suddenly compelled to turn back and recross his steps, wanting to embrace his mother, to somehow reassure her that all would turn out right. She stood with that twisted scrap of muslin still snaked between her hands, her red-rimmed eyes watching him silently approach. He stood nearly a head over her as he came to a stop, gripping her shoulders. Then he bent to kiss her on the cheek and brushed his hand across the other side of her face, wrinkled with worry and work, childbearing and thirty-three winters enduring this land. Her eyes flooded, and she bit her lip as he turned from her.

Quickly he clambered up the ladder, scattering the three youngest as they scrambled back to their grass-filled ticks and their wool blankets like a covey of chicks.

It would be a frosty night, he told himself as he lay down in the darkness, watching the last of the fire’s light flicker in reflection against the roof of the cabin above him. Colder still come first light.

His father was right: he did have a choice to make.

And he knew he’d have to make it before first light.

Some of them squeaked, so he reminded himself to count the rungs on the ladder as he settled his weight on each of them one by one. Fifth one down he skipped altogether,
sliding past it, his hands and feet gripping the ladder’s uprights as he descended into the cabin’s darkness suffused only with a faint crimson glow from the coals banked in the fireplace.