“Your folks. My folks.”. He shrugged and settled onto his haunches. “Anyone getting us to get married.”
She quartered away from him atop the rock, drawing her shawl around her shoulders again huffily.
He could feel the chill from her. “Amy?”
“If you don’t wanna get married to me, then why you paying me court, Titus?”
How the devil did he know the answer to any of these questions? he wondered right then and there. Ciphering and writing his letters were hard enough in school now, what with the way his mind wandered away to other things—like Amy or the cool shadows of the forest where he wanted to be walking with his rifle. But as difficult as they were, ciphering and writing his letters were nowhere near as tough as the questions she was flinging at him. He wondered if his pap had struggled this hard growing to be a man.
Was it all worth it?
“Well?” she asked him. “If you don’t wanna get married, then why you wasting your time on me? And why the devil am I wasting my time on you?”
He watched her slide down off the far side of the rock. “Amy—c’mon back up here.”
“No. I’m goin’ home.”
“Amy,” he coaxed.
“Got bread due to come off the fire,” she explained, standing still at the foot of the rock below him, yet with her back his way. “Mama be expecting me.”
“They damned well know we gone off to court, Amy.”
Lord, where did those words come from? Right out of his mouth that way, so smooth he sounded like he was sure of himself. Why, when he didn’t feel smooth and sure of himself, no ways?
“Is that what we’re doing, Titus?” she asked finally, turning partway back to face him, looking up at him still seated atop the rock. “Are you paying me court now?”
“I can’t very well spoon you with you down there and me up here.”
She gathered up her long skirt and planted her bare feet along the slope of the rock, clutching her shawl with one hand while she clambered her way back up to sit beside him. His heart was hammering like all get-out by the time she settled and swept up one of his hands. Amy held it between hers in her lap, the way she always did, gently stroking the back of his with her sure, hard fingers.
He smelled the yeast and the flour on her hair as the breeze came up, Smelled the milk and butter and a hint of vanilla. She baked bread like her people had for centuries. Folks what was Englishers from long back.
Titus’s grandpap said they was from a long line of Scottishers, but they’d give up on fighting the English years before and come to the colonies when the lobsterbacks were trying to hang all the rebellious highlanders. Grandpap had many a tale of huge, double-bladed claymorgans wielded by wiry Scots. Legends of lowland battles against the mighty English ranks while small, brave youths swirled in among the lobsterbacks’ herds, stealing the finest horseflesh to drive back north into the moors and sheltering hills amid the angry shouts and whistling gunshots.
He lifted a lock of her dusty-red hair and smelled it. And found his flesh stirring, hardening, heating up.
“You …,” he began tentatively, then swallowed and licked his lips. “Amy, you ever think back on them times we come here to swim of a summer afternoon or evenin’?”
“Yes. I do, Titus. Sometimes I wish we was children again. Do you?”
“No. No, never.” He dropped that lock of her hair and stared at the water below them. “I can’t wait till I’m on my own. Never wanna be a young’un again.”
“When you’re on your own, I’ll be there with you,” she confided softly.
He stared at her mouth as she formed the words, wanting his mouth to touch her lips the way the words just had.
She continued, “We won’t be living with our folks no more. Just each other, with children of our own.”
“I don’t … I never done nothing … with a girl….” And suddenly his cheeks grew hot with shame.
“Me neither,” Amy admitted, turning away.
He felt better when she did turn. Maybe she was as shy about it as he was. Scared to talk of it, as afraid as he was to talk of his fears. “Don’t know nothing about having children—how it happens ’tween a man and woman.”
“Atween a husband and wife, Titus.” She fixed him with her eyes. “Atween two folks what love each other and are making a life together. He works the fields, growing things. And she takes care of all else, growing their young’uns up.”
Young’uns. Hell, most times he was so bewildered, Titus figured he was still just a child himself. Not that he’d let anyone know what he thought. Not Amy and not her folks. And sure as hell he wouldn’t let his pap know. Certain it was that Titus knew he wasn’t grown-up. All he had to do was look at Cleve Whistler, look at his own pap, to know that.
Being a man meant settling down with a woman on your own land, raising up a cabin and starting a family. Leaving your bed before light each morning and working the dark, moist soil into every crack and crevice of your hands all day until you stopped for a cold midday meal of what had been left over from last night’s supper. Then you went back to turning the soil behind the oxen or an old mule, watching each fold of the earth peel away from the share blade as you were pulled along by the animals you coaxed and prodded, whipped and cajoled ahead of you up and down the fields you had cleared of rocks and stumps, fields that you walked over so many times that your bare feet must surely know them by rote.
Being a man meant you hunted only to make meat. You never took up your rifle and disappeared into the woods just to walk among the shadows, across the meadows, along the game trails. Never did a man just go to sit and listen to what the quiet told him. There to watch the deer come to drink, or gather at the salt licks, and not once raise his rifle against them. No, only a boy wasted such precious time like that. Never a man.
A man never played with the same zest and fervor that Titus felt when he stepped past the last furrow of a field at the edge of the trees and looked back, his rifle on his shoulder, then slipped on into the timber, the squirrels chirking their protests above him, the drone of flies and the startled flap of other winged things singing at his ears.
No, sir—only a boy could play as much as Titus wanted to play. A man had more important things to be about than walking in the woods with no purpose at all. Just as Amy had explained it: a man had to provide for others. When all Titus wanted to do was to be left alone to sort out why he wasn’t yet ready to be a man.
How many times had he looked at his pap—really looked at him—studying the way Thaddeus went about things, dealt with situations, reached out to folks and was regarded by his neighbors … only to realize he himself was a long way from being the same sort of growed-up man his pap was? Titus wondered if he ever would be that growed-up. Wondered if such a state just came with time, this settling in to be a farmer, raising a family and crops, raising cows from calves and butcher hogs from shoats. Maybeso being a man just came with time, on its own and natural.
Problem was, everyone around him seemed to be saying now was his time. His own folks, and the Whistlers too. Even Amy her own self—all of ’em was saying it was Titus’s time to grow up to be a man and put aside childish things. For certain he knew he was not a child no more. Not yet a man neither.
Leastwise, not a man in the way every other man he knew of was a man.
They all took responsibility on their shoulders like a yoke and stepped into harness like one of their oxen or that old mule his pap trusted to pull those stumps out of the fields. That was what made a man, he had figured. They took on responsibility for others … when here Titus was having trouble being responsible for only his own self.
Her voice shook him. “I asked: don’t you want that too, Titus?”
Startled, he looked at her face again. Wanting to tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. Some of those smooth, oily words that could come tumbling out of his mouth if he wasn’t careful. Not knowing where they came from, except that maybe his own heat, his own tingling readiness was just the place from where they sprang.
Instead, he told her the truth. What he wanted right then and there.
“I wanna go swimming with you, Amy.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Yeah. I want us to go swimming. Just like when we was young’uns ourselves.”
She shook her head, studying his face. “No. We can’t. Not now. Not ever, I fear. Not like that again.” With a sad look on her face Amy started to pull away. “I gotta get back home now. Don’t want mama to have to pull the
