Dance on the Wind (71 page)

“But no matter,” Titus commented. “You preach to ’em all, like God wants you to.”

“As God
commands
me to,” he answered. “Yes. Those sheep in my flock seem to suck the life energy right out of me anymore—never was it like this back east when I spoke in tongues, preaching for hours in tongues of the ancient and dead languages. But now these poor pioneering folk draw energy from me and my faith—sucking enough from this man of God that they can go from me back to their fields and their cabins to pit themselves against the harsh land for another month until I come round again.”

“And so you ride on to another place?”

“Yes, I do that. I go on, at first I am weak and limp as this frostbitten grass—my power sapped by the wayward sheep. Yet, I trust in God. On I ride to my next flock, gathering my strength all the while, renewing my vigor in the Lord—for God will provide.”

Titus gazed at the fire, the corn husks and chicken bones heaped beside the coals.

“Never should you doubt it, young man. The Almighty will provide.”

“And He will provide for you, my son,” the old preacher repeated the next morning after they had arisen, saddled, and were preparing to separate.

“I don’t know that I ever asked nothing of the Lord. Never been much of a one to pray.”

With that hard-boned and angular face of his, the stranger replied, “You yourself told me last night that for a long time you’ve been praying to get to St. Louie.”

“Maybe you misunderstood me. I ain’t never
prayed
to get to St. Louie—”

“But you’ve hoped, and dreamed, and done all that you could to get there.”

“And I am getting there on my own.”

A smile wrinkled the lined face. “You’re getting there because God is answering your prayer.”

Titus felt uneasy of a sudden, on unfamiliar ground. Frightened that he might just be in the presence of something far, far bigger than himself. “I don’t know nothing about that, sir…. What is your name anyway?”

Removing his old felt hat from his head and dipping in a little bow, he answered, “Garrity Tremble is the name.” He slapped the hat on his head and presented a hand to Titus. “Who have I had the honor of meeting and sharing so much conversation with?”

“Titus Bass.”

He tugged the hat down on his brow, saying, “Well, Titus Bass. I will be looking forward to seeing you again in St. Louis in something on the order of a month. Perhaps we can talk again about prayer at that time, for I must be on my way now. There are the faithful and the faithless who beckon me into the wilderness.” He swung into that old saddle atop that fine, blooded horse. “Many times have I prayed God to remove this burdensome yoke from my shoulders … but He will not. I certainly hope that what you pray for, Titus Bass—will not become a yoke locked about your shoulders.”

In bewildered silence he watched Tremble turn the big animal away and move off into the cold, frosty stillness of the forest. Before he climbed atop the old plowhorse, Titus cautiously placed a hand upon one shoulder, as if to feel for any invisible weight there. Then touched the other shoulder in the same way. Still not satisfied, he shook his shoulders as if to rock loose anything perchance resting there. And decided it was all a little ghosty and superstitious of him to believe any preacher knew what he was talking about.

To think of it! Him, praying! Why, Titus knew he’d never prayed a prayer one in his entire life—leastways ever since he’d stopped going to church hand in hand with his mam.

Folks must just get crazy with their praying and all that talk of God and such, he decided as he urged the plodding horse into a walk. Any man who gave up everything for a woman, then gave her up and counted on God
to provide everything for him from then on out had to be a fool. If not a fool, then perhaps downright touched.

A man had to provide for himself.

Just as he always had, Titus figured.

Anything else was nothing more than superstition.

He found work in St. Louis his first day.

Reporting to the crowded docks the following dawn, Titus stayed all morning long at the shoulder of the man who had hired him. There he quickly learned what was expected of him in his new position. Instead of toting the loads on and off the boats at the great riverside wharf, Bass was hired as a tallyman. To count the casks and kegs, bales and boxes, oak barrels and hemp coils coming off from boats struggling north against the current up to St. Louis, to count as well all the cargo going onto boats bound for points south.

“You can count?” the man had asked.

“Yes, sir. I can count,” he had answered, a bit confused by that sort of question when he had shown up to ask for stevedore work, ready to tell of his experience in Owensboro.

“Can you write your numbers?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been some time, but I figure I can—”

“Good. Come with me and see if you can catch on to what I’m doing before the dinner hour.”

By noon the job was his. Struggling to control the great and unruly sheets of foolscap he had to write upon, standing at the tall but tiny desk he was instructed to place at the bottom of the cleated gangplank that stretched from the dock to a boat’s gunnel. There he was given the wharfmaster’s authority to make sure nothing came off, nor went on, without his first making a count of it in the proper column, in the proper box, afterward to make a final tally for his boss of what was now lashed on board for shipping, or what had just arrived for storage in one of the many stone warehouses that lined the great and bustling wharf.

By the following spring he’d had himself enough of that mind-twisting work and went off in search of something else, seeking something better to do one rainy afternoon
when his labors with ink and quill at the dock were cut short as the skies opened up. By late afternoon, soaked and chilled to the marrow, Bass despaired of finding proper work for someone with such an adventuresome spirit as he. But then his keen nose caught wind of that particular scent of fiery charcoal and ironwork slaked in oil carried on the sodden air. He followed his nose, turning when necessary, until he found the livery hulking at the end of Second Street. One of the great doors was flung open, the man within standing over his hissing fire, shirtless and sweating on such a cold spring day—heaving up and down on a great bellows that shot tremendous blasts of air into that glowing bed of coals. His long graying hair he had tied back with a leather whang, worn in a queue popular at the time.

Standing there at the open doorway, drinking it all in—Bass knew why his nose had led him there. Why he was meant to work in this place.

He promised himself that he would never again despair of finding proper work for a man to do. Let others tally their counts or even carry cargo from one place to the next. But this—yes, this was proper work for a man. Fire and iron. Water and muscle. With them and his own unbounded will—Titus knew he could make anything.

There hung from nails driven into every post, and hammered along most every board that served as the livery’s wall, great hanks of thick leather. Some of it crafted into bridles, bits, harnesses of all description. And laying atop most of those nails were thin black strips of iron banding. Stacked back beyond the bellows and the fire lay wide sheets of iron in all shapes and thicknesses.

He breathed deep again, taking in the fiery fragrance of this place. It so reminded him of that short time with Able Guthrie. How the settler had taught him the use of hammer and anvil and fire, to bring a piece of metal to a red heat before repairing a plowshare or making new bands to secure around a maul they had just carved out of a huge chunk of hickory.

“Something I can help you with?”

His eyes came back to the big, lantern-jawed blacksmith. “You’re busy. I come back later.”

“I’m always busy,” the older man replied sternly, but without a hint of rancor. Then he sighed. “More work than I can do sometimes. What is it you need done?” He eyed the youngster up, then down again. “If it’s that rifle of yours, that will take some time. That’s close work. Not like this. And my eyes ain’t all they used to—”

“My rifle? No, sir. I don’t need no work done on it. Don’t need nothing worked on.”

The thick, heavy brows knitted. Titus watched some of the great diamonds of sweat run together in the deep crevices of that brow and become drops that tumbled into the man’s eyes. They must have stung, for he blinked and yanked a great red bandanna from his waistband, swiping it down the whole of his face.

Turning away, he said, “Then I’ve got work to do, young’un.”

With his back to Titus, his great right arm swinging up, then down with that sixteen-pound hammer clanging upon the anvil, Bass watched the man’s shoulders and arms ripple as he smashed a glowing semicircle of iron band between the immutable force of that hammer and anvil. Sparks sprayed in great gusts like June fireflies with each hammer strike. Muscle swelled and bulged with every arc of the arm, sinew strained and rocked with each blow to the unmoving anvil.

Bass swallowed, forcing himself to ask. Daring to speak. To wrench the words free—words that he knew he had to say, or he would forever be sorry they went unspoken.

“You’re awful busy—”

“I just said that,” he snapped without anger, not taking his eyes off his work. “Now, if you don’t need nothing, I’d be pleased if you were on your way. Go find another place to get warm.”

“I come ’cause you … you ’pear to need me.”

The hammer came down, this time with a dull clink, then lay still on the horseshoe he was forming for that animal tied to the nearby stall. Turning only his head, the blacksmith peered at the youngster again for a long moment. And finally turned his whole body.

“I hear you right?” he asked. “I need
you?”

“Yes, sir. You’re busier’n … busier’n any man deserves to be. So I figure you need my help.”

The man snorted, but he didn’t come right out and laugh. Not just yet. Instead, he turned back around, gripped the tongs, and stuffed the horseshoe back among the glowing cinders. Still pumping the great bellows with his left arm, the blacksmith turned back to speak.

“You ever do any of this?”

“Some. A little.”

“Shoe a horse?”

“No, sir.”

“Lots of horseshoeing in St. Lou, mind you.”

“You can teach me.”

“Maybe. If you can learn.”

“I can learn. I can learn anything.”

“Where you from?”

“Kentucky, sir.”

“Good country, that,” he said with careful appraisal of the young man once again, then regarded the muddy clay floor beneath his own boots. “Yessirree. I remember that as real good country.” When he looked up at Bass again, the man resumed pumping the bellows. “Why you come here from such good country?”

“To see this country.”

“Maybe even what’s out there?” he asked, his head bobbing off in the general direction of the west.

“Likely, sir. But when I say I’ll work for you, that means I’ll work. I give my word—”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one, last birthday.”

“And you can learn what I teach you?”

“That’s how I learn’t most ever’thing I know.”

The older man chuckled. “If you’re lucky, young’un. That’s how we all learn, if we’re lucky. Well, now. Come over here and let’s see you make a shoe for this here ornery horse.”

“M-make a shoe?”

“You said you can learn, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did—”

“Put your stuff there by the door and get over here. If you can’t learn what I teach you right now, your truck will
be right there by the door, so you can pick it up when I throw you out my place. But, on the other hand, if you can do like you say—learn what I can teach you—then you’ll have you a job, and a place to stay, right here. So that truck and rifle of your’n can stay under this roof. Here, pull on this bellows like you was wanting to squeeze the bejesus out of it.”

Bass took over the bellows handle. That first pull surprised him. It was harder than he had imagined it would be. He locked a second hand around the handle.

“No, mister.” The blacksmith swung an open hand at the second wrist Titus put to work at the bellows, knocking it off the handle. “You get to use just one.”

“Don’t know if I’m strong ’nough—”

“Then you get your ass right on outta here and don’t come back asking for nary work you can’t do.”

He gritted and strained, rocking the shoulder up and down, refusing to give in. He felt the pull all the way into his belly muscles. Felt the fortitude not to give in all the way to his toes.

“That’s it, son! You might just have some hair in you after all,” the man said. “Now, why you think I want you to do that with just one of them skinny arms of your’n?”

“D-dunno,” he rasped with effort, fighting on against the bellows.

“’Cause with the other’n you’re gonna pick up those tongs and take that fired piece of horseshoe outta the coals and plop it down on the anvil.”

He did as he was told, releasing the bellows when finally told to, and picked up the heavy hammer. Step by step, strike by strike, he hammered that glowing red arc of iron around the snout of the anvil, shaping, pounding, sweating even after he shucked out of his heavy, wet wool coat that steamed and stank hanging there on a nail near the fire. He didn’t know who smelled worse—the older man whose great chest beaded and ran with perspiration, or him working off what little bit of tallow he had on his scrawny bones.

“There, now, you begun to get the shape,” the blacksmith explained. “But the fine work’s yet to come. Bring
that shoe over here and let’s see what we gotta do to make ’er fit this here mare.”

Back and forth between the fire and anvil and the horse he sweated, refining the shape just as the blacksmith instructed. Until at last the time arrived to fasten on the fitted shoe.

From the pocket on his leather apron the man took a small iron nail. “Here. Start at the top of the shoe.”

When Bass began tapping the nail through the hole he had just drilled through the softened iron, the blacksmith asked, “Say, now—you ain’t a Mason, are you?”

“No, sir. I don’t reckon I am,” Titus answered, tapping on the nail. He put his hand out for a second nail. “But, then—I don’t rightly know what a Mason is.”