The Wanton Troopers by Alden Nowlan Page A

belly twisted into its familiar, quivering knot.
    â€œPlease, Judd.”
    He did not answer. Perhaps he did not hear her. His ability to detach himself was always his best, most unanswerable argument. He had cut her off as surely as if he had gone into another room and slammed the door in her face.
    In a few minutes, he fell asleep. Kevin and Mary walked on tiptoe and talked in whispers to keep from wakening him. Through the window, Kevin saw the outlines of the barn and the wagonshed softening in the purple twilight.

Twelve
    There were times, Kevin’s mother said, when a person had to dance or die. Once or twice, she had given him lessons in dancing.
    â€œCome on now, Scampi,” she cried, taking his hands in hers. “I’m going to teach you to waltz!”
    Embarrassed, he tried half-heartedly to pull away. But she would not let him go.
    â€œNow, come on, Scampi! I’ll teach you!”
    Surrendering to her, beginning to enjoy himself, he brought his feet together, then swung them apart, as she directed. They danced through the house, in and out of his parents’ bedroom, across the hall, into his room and back again to the kitchen. She did not let him stop until they were both of them giggling and breathless.
    And through it all, she hummed a wordless little tune. This was the music, she said, and he must learn to feel it in his shoulders and hips and legs. At dances, the music was provided by guitars, fiddles, and mandolins. Once she had attended a dance where a blind man had played an accordion and a mouth organ at the same time.
    â€œOh, Scampi, you’ll learn in no time at all. You really will! Someday you’ll dance just like your uncle Kaye!” She smiled. “Kaye goes out into the middle of the floor and step dances. He kicks off his boots and dances in his socks! Oh, you should see him, Scampi. All of my people — every one of them — were dancers . . .” Her voice trailed away.
    Grandmother O’Brien said that dancing was sinful. Salome, dancing before Herod the King, had demanded the head of John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Grandmother O’Brien said, had founded the Baptist Church. Ever since his death, the Baptist Church had condemned dancing.
    â€œThere ain’t no greater wickedness, boy,” she said darkly. “Men and women pressin’ belly tuh belly and hoppin’ up and down tuh devilish music! Terrible, bad, wicked things come of dancin’, boy. Why, the devil hisself sometimes shows up at dances!”
    â€œGee whiz!”
    â€œYes, the devil hisself! It’s the God’s truth, boy. Why, I remember my own mother tellin’ me about a time right here in this very settlement. There was a girl lived here, a girl name of Hutchinson, I do believe — and that girl loved dancin’. Rain or shine, she never missed a dance. Well, boy, one night there was a dance in the school house and about half-way through the evenin’ a stranger walked in. He was black as a gypsy, Mother said, and his suit was as black as coal. And that girl that loved dancin’ so much shared every dance with him! Nobody had ever seen anybody dance the way them two danced that night! They waltzed and they jigged and they clogged. They danced long after everybody else stopped dancin’ — and still that stranger wouldn’t let her stop. He made that girl dance until her feet bled and the blood ran down ontuh the floor! Well, boy, some of the men had a mind tuh stop it — and, yuh know what? — they was froze in their chairs! Yessir, they was froze in their chairs! They couldn’t wiggle a finger. And the stranger and the girl kept a-dancin’. The fiddler laid his fiddle down — and, glory! That fiddle kept a-fiddlin’ all by itself on a chair! There weren’t no human hand nowhere near that fiddle bow but it kept a-playin’. Why, Mother said she never in her life heard a fiddler play like that fiddle