Dance on the Wind (7 page)

He sensed something behind him. When he turned, the four of them were there again. Each one of the children stared up at him from those expressionless faces that regarded
Titus as if he were of no real particular interest, yet the only thing of any interest at all for that particular moment in their world nonetheless.

“I’m ready.”

He whirled about, finding her on the porch above him. Behind Amy stood Mrs. Whistler framed by the open doorway, tucking a wisp of her hair behind an oversize ear. From the cabin came the strong lure of salat greens simmering in a pepper-pot soup over a fire. Daughter tossed mother her apron, then pulled at the loose end of a ribbon that had held her own hair back from her face.

“Here, Mama,” she said, laying the ribbon in her mother’s palm, then planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek.

No different from the kisses she gives me, he thought.

But when Amy turned back to Titus, she wiggled her head, shaking out her hair, combing her fingers through the long, wavy tresses that caught the sunset with a hint of coppery shimmer. Oh, how he loved her for the way she tossed that mane from side to side. He was positive she had to know what a trembling pan of mush it made of his insides to watch her do something so seductive as flip that hair around, suddenly loosened from its ribbon.

“You young’uns have fun now,” Mrs. Whistler cheered them, waving to them both as Amy leaped barefoot from the porch to his side.

Swallowing hard, Titus waved back and nodded lamely, not taking his eyes off Amy—for the moment he could dwell on nothing more than seeing her get loose of her clothing. He wondered how a woman looked skinned. Shet of her garments—almost like skinning an animal to get down past all the layers of concealment.

He thought he wouldn’t be able to take another breath when she slid her hand into his and tugged him away, stumbling and ungainly as a newborn calf at her side.

“You been looking forward to tonight, Titus?” she finally asked when they had pierced the shadows beneath the timber at the far side of the yard.

He glanced back at the Whistler cabin, her brothers playing mumblety-peg in the yard and her sisters fluttering around that rope swing, not sure what to feel now that he
found himself truly alone with her and on their way to the swimming hole. Anticipating to the point that he found it hard to speak.

“M-more’n anything … ever,” he stumbled getting the words out.

Amy didn’t say anything more on that walk through the woods until they reached the creek and turned south, using the game trail that ran close to the bank, a path likely every bit as familiar to their bare feet as it was to the four-legged creatures who shared this hardwood forest. An owl flapped low over their heads as they reached the pool, hooting once in the shrinking light that seemed to compress the world in around them. As far as he was concerned, there really was nothing beyond the ring of trees and tangle of brush that covered either bank, immediately surrounding them with a sense of privacy, intimacy. Despite the coming twilight, the yellow of tansy and whitish-blue of periwinkle were still evident among the fragrant wild clover.

For several minutes they stood at the side of the boulder, staring at the black water stretching to the far bank, not uttering a word. Then Amy finally turned and spoke.

“You still wanna swim with me way we done when we was children?”

“I ain’t really thought of nothing else for days, Amy,” he confessed. “Working that field for my pa, yanking stumps outta the ground—everything I done it made, no matter: I ain’t thought of nothing else.”

Slipping her hand from his, she stepped away to the side of the boulder. “I’ll shinny out of my clothes over here. You stay there and … I’ll meet you in the water.”

“Aw-awright,” he answered, of a sudden dry-mouthed.

He felt that left hand she had been holding grow cool in a gentle nudge of breeze rattling the heavy green leaves on nearby beech and cedar trees. Cool enough to make him aware for the first time that the dampness had been there in his palm all along. He looked down at it, then swiped both palms down the front of his britches. When Titus glanced back up, she was gone behind the boulder.

For an instant he thought of following her, just closely
enough to watch her disrobe—a little miffed that she robbed him of experiencing her shinny out of her clothes. Then he quickly realized he would see all of her soon enough. And that set him to tearing at the bone buttons on his square-shouldered, pullover shirt, ripping it from his shoulders and flinging it onto a bush close by. He fought with the wooden buttons at the wide flap of his drop-front britches, then tugged them down his legs and crow-hopped out of them a foot at a time.

The water was cold when he stepped off the grassy bank and into the shimmering pond, cracking the surface of the placid waters that flowed peacefully toward the Ohio River less than two miles off to the northwest. He gasped audibly as the water met his privates, but on he sank as his feet felt their way across the bottom. Within heartbeats his skin grew accustomed to the feel of the pool, and he sank to his chin, arms treading slowly as he moved away from the bank, then turned back to the boulder that stood overlooking the grassy bank.

He stopped, stunned into utter motionlessness.

Amy slipped through the starlight, more silhouette than shape. Just enough starshine and nibbled moon for him to see the milky whiteness of her skin as she emerged from the shadows of overhanging branches, and no sooner had he gasped again than she was swallowed by that shiny black surface of the water, which reflected the night sky the way a tortoise’s shell shimmered like polished ebony. With his belt knife he had carved his mother a pair of hair combs from just such a shell for her last birthday.

Remembering that, he watched Amy sink slowly to her chin, her long hair trailing out behind her on the surface of the water as she slowly rippled her way toward him.

When she was a good six feet from Titus, Amy turned aside and stretched out her body, her legs bobbing to the surface, her feet kicking playfully at the water. Her white body merging with a distinct line against the black surface of the disturbed water, Amy rolled over and swam off toward the far side of the creek.

He watched her feet splash at the water, the curve at the back of her legs where the ankles ran up to meet her
calves. There at the crook of the knees she moved up and down ever so slightly as she kicked in a great arc while turning back. And he stared transfixed at the tight mounds of her rump exposed above the water’s plane like a rounded hillock draped with the first snow of the winter in this silvery light. Against that black, glimmering slide of the roiling surface she plied back toward him.

Her legs ceased kicking, her arms no longer crawled through the water as she came close. A little breathless, Amy spoke.

“I forgot how good this feels. Been some time since’t I come down here. So busy helping mama with the chores, with all the rest of the babies.”

He only nodded, and swallowed hard. Unable to speak as she drew up to arm’s length.

She whispered. “I’m glad I come, Titus.”

“Me too.” His eyes sought to divine a vision through that black water. How he wanted to see bare what he had never seen before.

Inching closer, now well within his reach, Amy stopped and bobbed slightly as she settled her feet to the creek bottom. As her shoulders emerged, the tops of her young breasts broke the surface of the water. He felt himself stir, twitch, strengthen like nothing before in all those nights alone beneath his blankets.

“This … this is important to me,” she whispered, as if it were a secret that could not be shared even with the creekbank. “Important to us.”

“Us,” he repeated. Then reached out a hand, hoping to touch.

She felt it brush the underside of one breast, then seized it in one of her own, inching his down along her ribs to rest at the soft curve of her pelvis. Amy shuddered.

“There,” she said. “When you touched me … there.”

“I want to.”

For a moment she didn’t say anything, only stared back into his eyes. Then admitted, “It made me … not like you was tickling me. Just a … a nice tingle.”

“I want to, Amy.”

“Yes,” she replied. “I want you to.”

As she said it, Amy moved Titus’s hand up her ribs to place it on her breast. He gasped at the soft, slippery feel to it cupped in his hand. She closed her eyes halfway, and he sensed the shudder shoot through her.

Beneath the surface Amy sought out his left hand, pulled it to her, placed it on the other breast as she eased a step closer to him.

“That’s—oh! You’re making me shiver like I was cold,” she confided. “But it ain’t really like I’m cold. Shivering ’cause you’re making me warm there to touch me.”

Her palms brushed across the flat hardness of his skinny chest at the same time he felt a hardening of some of the skin at the middle of her breasts. She had to be made the way he was, Titus decided. Not all that different: with nipples just like him and the hogs and even the bitch hound that slept under the porch, out of the snow and out of the sun. But as he gently raised her breasts out of the water, he saw these were not at all the same nipples. Amy’s were something deliciously different.

And in looking at them, he felt all the more stirring as he rose beneath the surface of that tranquil pond.

Or perhaps it was the way her eyes half closed once more when she tilted her chin back and slowly slid her hands down below the water, just barely brushing the skin of his chest until she reached his belly and held there as Titus rubbed his hands across her hardened nipples.

With a groan emanating from the back of her throat, Amy’s hands inched on down—suddenly reaching his engorged flesh.

“Oh,” she said, opening her eyes and bringing them down to look squarely at him.

How they glistened in the starlight there as the moon rose.

“What’s this?” she asked.

When she ran a single, roughened finger down the length of it, his flesh quivered. “My. Did you feel what it did when I touched it?”

“F-feels good, Amy,” he begged.

Hurried, with one hand he traced a path from a breast down to her belly, and stopped as he felt the mat of curly
hair. Made different from him, constructed perhaps like half of those coupling critters he had watched in rapt amazement over the past few years. He sought to go lower, finding that the hair ended and her privates parted in two soft folds of skin. Just like the cows he had observed. Of a sudden he realized it was there he was to put himself, to slip within as the males of other species mounted their females.

Her breathing had become ragged, short and raspy. Inching his finger farther down, he gently moved the skin apart. Amy gasped deeply. And clamped her hand around him, hard.

He felt his flesh jerk as if it were about to leap free of him, even free of her lock on him, a sudden constriction seizing his lower belly.

Titus had to bury himself in her. Now.

Clumsily he dragged her hips toward him, working his groin upward as he pulled her thighs apart. With her arms Amy tread water, her widening eyes locked on his, their faces marked with strained intensity. Time and again he thrust himself at her, his hands grappling violently at the small of her back, yanking her down on him, seizing hold of her buttocks as he thrust against the water’s buoyancy, which made her rise from him.

“N-not like this,” she ordered as she kicked her legs off his hips. Pointing, she added, “The bank. Up there.”

In despair he watched as she turned away, laying out on the surface of the water, kicking her legs and stroking with her arms, the long hair playing out behind her. Titus was within reach of her as they arrived at the grassy bank and stepped out of the pond, both of them trembling with the summer’s breeze as it kissed their wet skin.

With a sudden sense of how he was to mesh his body with hers, Titus was on top of Amy even as she settled quickly to the grass and rolled over from her hip. Barely lying back before he was atop her thighs. Legs that spread beneath the press of his weight.

Looking down at her, his long hair dripping into her face, Titus suddenly closed his eyes, dipped his head, and laid his mouth fully on hers. She sucked at his lips hungrily, thrusting her hips upward at the same moment. He
sensed that same tightening across his lower belly and drew back, confused at this all-compelling need to concentrate not on her mouth, but to get himself between her legs.

As he rose on his hands, he looked down at the soft, rounded mounds of her breasts, the skin pale against the darker pink of her nipples. Then attempted to thrust himself farther against her.

“Not, not like …,” she said huskily.

And in the next moment Amy had seized his hard flesh and was guiding it against a softer spot, lower between her smooth thighs. Making the end of him brush the folds of flesh as the sky seemed to light up all around him with shooting stars, the earth quaked beneath him, as if to swallow them up.

He felt that first explosion—no doubt of that—yet it was the second and all those that rocked him afterward that seized Titus with such force he knew he would likely never see again. Everything had turned black except for the shooting stars. Again and again his hips flung forward against her, his hot flesh still enclosed in her hand, trying desperately to bury his rigid penis in her without success as he spent himself in great waves against the inside of her thigh.

She sighed as he trembled to a halt, and laid his head in the curve where her neck met a shoulder.

“We’ll have lots of babies,” she whispered, clutching his head to her chin, the other hand still gripping his softening flesh. “I’ll give you lots of children, Titus. I’ll raise them, and you raise the crops. Man and woman supposed to be like that.”

He shuddered again, this time from fear. Of a sudden afraid at what he had just done. This talk of babies and joining Amy on the land. Knowing he was not the sort who could sink the rest of his life into the ground with her.

Afraid he would never be man enough to stay.