Through Darkest America-Extended Version Read Free Page B

himself with eating.
    His mother was plenty sore about something. They were both mad, really—they just showed it in different ways. Nobody had said much of anything to anybody since the walk by the river. Howie had watched them from a window—Papa red-faced and chewing his lip, making a lot of noise when he finally climbed the stairs. And his mother walking real quiet, but with her back straight and her eyes right ahead. Even Carolee , who didn't ever know anything, could tell there was something wrong and managed to keep her mouth shut.
    The fiddlers came out of the big tent where the food was fixed and struck up a tune. A few couples sprang up from the tables to dance and everyone picked up the music with their hands. Howie wanted to, but his mother acted like there wasn't any music at all, so he pretended not to hear it, either. He looked morosely at the last bite of meat on his plate. Everything had tasted real good at first; he wasn't hungry, now. He didn't even like the fair anymore. What good was it, if everyone was too mad to even talk to each other?
    "Howie . ."
    He felt his mother's small hand, cool over his own. "Howie," she smiled, "it'd be a gentlemanly thing to ask a lady to dance."
    Howie straightened. "Me?" He felt the color rise to his face.
    "Yes, you!" she laughed. She swept her long wings of hair into a single dark strand and looped it with a short ribbon behind her neck. Howie tried to glue himself to the bench, but she pulled him to his feet.
    "I don't even know how! " he protested. His father leaned back and laughed, and Carolee shrieked and spilled punch down her skirt.
    She swept him in wide, graceful arcs through the maze of tables. And because she was a striking beauty, and "looked hardly older than her son," they said, the people clapped and formed a circle about them. And the fiddlers moved in so close the bows were nearly singing in Howie's ears.
    For the first few moments Howie prayed he'd turn to stone. But his mother's face was whirling about him, flushed with joy, and boyish awkwardness changed in a blink to young man's pride. And then it wasn't his mother who was guiding them through the steps with the small pressure of her fingers, but Howie himself, her hand squeezed tightly in his, a strong arm sweeping the slender waist where he wanted it to go.
    The claps and shouts were for the both of them when he brought her through a final turn, and the fiddlers sawed them to a finish.
    " Whooooie , Howie!" She laid a hand on her breast and took a deep breath. "You're going to make quite a man." Then she shook her head and kissed his cheek. "No, that's wrong. You're quite a man now!"
    "He dances better'n I ever did." His father gave him a mock frown.
    "Milo, that's not even sayin ' anything at all!"
    Everyone laughed. Papa thanked Howie solemnly, shook his hand, and announced that at any further time when dancing was called for, Howie would take over such duties. Later, when the fiddlers did a tune that was some slower, he caught Papa and his mother looking at each other in a certain way, and knew everything was all right again.
    Howie and his family stood atop their table to watch the parade, as did most of the people who'd eaten at The Gardens. Howie held his mother's hand, because she didn't like high places. Carolee was in her usual spot, legs wrapped about Papa's broad neck, screaming she couldn't see anything, when she was really higher than anyone.
    You could hear them long before they turned the corner at the Courthouse—with drums that sounded like big hearts beating and made the pit of your stomach go tight. The tops of the flags appeared then and brought cheers from the crowd. Howie stood on his toes and yelled until he was hoarse. First the flag of Old America, red and white stripes and white stars on a blue field. Then the White Mountain flag of Tennessee—that brought more hurrahs than anything. Though there were plenty of people from Arkansas Territory in the crowd, too, and their