“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
“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
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
