Crossing the yard, Titus walked dumbly at her side while Amy shooed the younger Whistlers from their heels. As soon as they reached the edge of the woods, she finally spoke.
“Don’t let my pa bother you none. He’s just, well—I figure he’s proud a young man like yourself is courtin’ me.”
“Y-young man like myself?”
With a squeeze of his arm Amy slipped her hand down into his. “Yes. A young man with what my mama calls good prospects.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s what a girl’s supposed to look for in a fella,” she answered.
“How’s that?”
“Someone take proper care of a girl he’s married to. Provide for her and their family. The children they’ll have.”
“Whoa!” he gulped, stopping and wheeling on her. “You … an’ me? Setting up a house and having children?”
“Yes, Titus,” she replied, a small crease knitting her brow with worry.
“I … I was thinking we was friends, Amy.”
“We always been friends, Titus.” She squeezed his hand.
“Where’d all this talk of prospects come from?”
“I been thinking lately,” she replied, turning him, tugging him into motion once more. “And talking to mama: she was your age when she married pa and my age when she had me.”
“Y-you wanna get married to me?”
She stopped this time, dropping his hand and pulling the shawl about her shoulders. “You don’t wanna get married to me?”
With a wag of his head he stared dumbfounded at the ground, at his bare feet a moment, then finally looked at her to say, “I can’t say as I ever thought—”
“Never thought about it?” She turned away from him in a huff, pouting.
He brushed by her shoulder to face her once more. Amy only turned away again. “Have you thought about it, Amy?”
How his heart was pounding, looking at the way her eyes were lit with such fire here at dusk, stealing a look at the way her breasts heaved with each pouting breath there above the arms she had folded across her midriff.
“What’s it all been for, Titus?” she finally asked without looking at him at first. Then her eyes squarely found his. “We knowed each other since we was children ourselves. You growed, and I growed. And … well, the way you been coming by to pay me court and all.”
“I come by ’cause I like to be with you, Amy,” he explained lamely. “I ain’t got ’nother friend I can talk to the way I talk to you.”
“You mean you ain’t been paying me court?” she asked with a quiet squeak. “Wanting to hold my hand or my arm all the time. Telling me to kiss you so much. Looking at me the way you do with those eyes of yours. Don’t go tell Amy Whistler you ain’t been thinking about courtin’ her!”
He waved his hands before him helplessly. “All right, Amy. S’pose I been courtin’ you and just never knowed what I was doing, exactly.”
She nodded once without a word. Not making it any easier on him. How small he felt standing before her at that moment. How much he wanted to put his arms around her and press his whole body against hers, to ask if she finally felt the same stirring deep across her groin that set fire to his.
“And,” he started, “I s’pose I been wonderin’ if’n you … you was really wanting me to pay court to you.”
He didn’t know where those words came from, but there they were, spilled from his tongue.
“Not wanting you to court me, Titus Bass?” Then she giggled behind her hand. “Oh, silly—how many girls has let you kiss them on the cheek, or gone and kissed you back on your cheek?”
With a wag of his head he answered, “None. None others, Amy.”
“How many girls let you just come to call whenever it strikes your fancy to pay ’em a visit, Titus? How many girls you know hold your hand, hold your arm the way Amy Whistler does?”
“None. An’ you know that too,” he said, suddenly feeling on the spot, defensive. His heart’s hackles rose like the guard hairs on one of the family’s redbone hounds. “How was I to—”
“How was you to know I wanted you to pay me court, Titus?”
Amy leaned toward him, only their lips touching, mouth closed, but pressed hard and insistent against his mouth. He blinked all through that momentary kiss, looking at her, finding Amy’s eyes closed.
Then she drew back, opened her eyes, and asked, “Now. Don’t that tell you Amy Whistler wants Titus Bass to pay her court?”
For a moment while he struggled to breathe again, Titus touched his lips with two fingertips. Only now did he realize his flesh stirred with a lightninglike tingle clear down the inside of his thighs to weaken his knees.
“I s’pose it does at that,” he admitted when he took his fingers from his lips. “You didn’t give me no warning, though. Lemme try that again.”
When he stepped toward her, Amy brought her hand up to her mouth and giggled behind it again. “Silly. I don’t just give my kisses away.”
Suddenly he was angry. “Who else you been kissing?”
“No one, Titus. No one.”
“You better not,” he declared gruffly.
“I won’t—not if you tell me we’re courtin’ proper.”
He nodded. Decided he could grant her that. “Yeah. We’re courtin’ for sure.”
“Then I can tell folks.”
“Yeah. You can tell your pap and mam.”
“No, Titus,” she replied. “Tell friends around these parts. Folks up to Rabbit Hash and over to Belleview.”
“T-tell friends?” Now he burned with embarrassment again.
“C’mon,” she urged, taking him by the arm and leading him on down the trail that would take them to the creek where they often sat on one of the limestone boulders above the swimming hole.
“Folks in these parts?” he repeated as his feet stumbled along the dusty path.
“School, too. You can finish up your schoolin’ afore we’re married,” she instructed.
On the frontier, girls simply did not receive any education, informal or not. Such a privilege was left to the males. Instead, girls were to devote themselves to preparing for homemaking and motherhood. Like most young girls, Amy had been given a sitting of goose eggs as a start on her own dower: a goose-down tick and feather pillows. Once her birds were hatched and grown from goslings to geese, the down could be plucked once every seven weeks. Such was a skill handed down from mother to daughter, a task requiring the utmost patience as well as strength and not the least bit of courage in the face of a strong and struggling bird. A goose might well end up with torn skin, while the picker might come away with bites and bruises from the flapping wings.
For those nestled far away on the frontier, feathers were the most expensive item after gunpowder. Good goose feathers would cost a minimum of a dollar a pound. Or, in trade value, a pound of feathers was equal to a gallon of good whiskey. As the oldest in her family, Amy had long ago started on her dower. This very summer she had completed the feather-battened counterpane she intended to spread across her wedding bed—that, and two huge, fluffy goose-down pillows where she and her husband would lay their heads.
Amy continued. “Don’t you see how I want you finish school first? Then you’re ready to build us a proper place where we can set up housekeeping like my mama and papa done when I first came along.”
“Amy—”
“And my pa told me your pa’s gonna give you that new ground he’s stumpin’ this season … now that the other fields is all planted.”
As they reached the boulder there above the placid waters where years before they had dammed up a portion of the narrow creek to create a swimming hole, he asked, “Don’t you think they all rushing us a bit, Amy?”
“Who’s they?” she asked as they climbed.
