Free Pamela Morsi by Sweetwood Bride Page A

sweating profusely and tiring badly. Pomper would not beat him tonight. He was going to win this competition. He was going to win the right, once and for all, to claim himself finest jigger on the mountain.
    “Look at him,” a young voice whispered. “He’s twitching.”
    It was strange how he could hear the small voice over the whine of the fiddle and the noise of the crowd.
    He ignored it. He kept dancing.
    Pomper was slowing, slowing so that he could hardly keep the rhythm, and all his fancy steps were gone.
    He jigged on. He held his upper body straight and rigid while his feet flew against the packed dirt beneath him.
    Shuffle, slap, heel, stomp. Shuffle, slap, heel, stomp. Stomp, kick. Stomp, kick.
    He glanced over as Pomper stopped abruptly, dropping to his knees in exhaustion, trying to catch his breath.
    He had won it. He had truly won it. The knowledge swept through him like a new burst of energy and he twirled and stomped with renewed enthusiasm. He was the one. The finest jigger on the mountain.
    “Don’t touch him,” a voice warned breathily.
    There was no one close enough to touch him.
    He jigged on, allowing his gaze to search through the faces in the crowd. They were there. They were all cheering for him.
    There was Myrtle with her strawberry blonde curls, and luscious little Garda June. He spied Dora Dickson, Pompeas dark-eyed sister. And, of course, there was Sary. His sassy Sary. Her smile shining like a new copper penny.
    He should get that girl alone some time and kiss her. Lord knows, he’d always wanted to kiss her. Maybe tonight. Tonight, with the taste of victory on his lips. Maybe tonight he would kiss her.
    With high step and full jig he danced over in her direction. She was smiling at him. His sassy Sary was smiling at him, and it was a smile a man could never forget.
    The ground exploded in front of him. Pain ripped through him like fire and he was falling, falling, falling.
    “Sary!” he screamed as he hit the ground with a thud.
    He was dead.
    No, no—he wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes. He was alive. Thank God he was alive. He was alive, and he had to find Sary.
    He raised himself slightly on one elbow. The pain shot through him, searing him like fire. He grimaced, but he was grateful. He was alive. Thank God, he was alive.
    Just a few feet away from him a bloody, severed limb lay in the dew-soaked grass, steam still rising from its torn opening as the body warmth inside escaped into the cool air of a Virginia spring morning.
    He felt the bile rise to his throat and thought he might vomit. He thought of the leg’s owner. Poor bastard, poor unlucky bastard. He hoped the man was dead. Better dead than to live life as a cripple.
    It was then that he recognized the boot.
    “No!”
    As Jeptha screamed the word, he sat bolt upright. His cry was echoed by the swarm of children around him surrounding his bed who gazed at him wide-eyed and cowered away.
    “What are you doing?” he asked through labored breathing. His heart was pounding, and he was covered with sweat.
    “We weren’t doing nothing,” the boy, Rans, insisted defensively.
    “Your bed was squeaking, and it woke us all up,” one of the twins explained.
    “We didn’t mean to bother you,” the other one assured him. “We thought you might be sick or something.”
    He had had another one of his nightmares. Another of the frightful visions that had plagued his sleep for twenty years. He had seen it all again, lived it all again. The ground exploding, the scream, the pain, the severedleg wearing his boot. Was once not enough to live through such a moment? In his restless sleep, Jeptha had lived through it now perhaps a thousand times.
    “We all have bad dreams from time to time,” the older girl, Clara, said.
    “You was twitching,” the spoiled little brat girl told him accusingly. “Twitching like you was running or … or …”
    Dancing. Jeptha thought the word but did not utter it. He’d imagined himself dancing