My Old True Love

by Sheila Kay Adams

  About then Larkin come wandering up and of course Carolina set up a howling for him to pick her up. She was crazy about him and he petted her something awful.

  Mommie shaded her eyes and watched as he settled Carolina on his shoulders. “You have plumb growed up,” she said. Larkin blushed like a girl. I couldn’t help deviling him a little.

  “You better watch out, honey. Won’t be long before some of these little gals set their eyes on you and go running for their mommies’ brooms.”

  Carolina perked right up on that and hollered, “Larkin has already promised to marry me, Mama. Ain’t you, Larkin?”

  “That’s right, missy. You need to hurry and get grown ’cause I need me a good cook. You can cook now, I know. And course you can keep house and all? Sweep and scrub the floors, milk the cows, wash my clothes, see to the garden, hoe while I’m plowing, all that stuff? You can manage that, can’t you?”

  I busted out laughing. I could tell by looking at Carolina’s face that she had not thought of all that. Larkin had just lost himself a candidate for wife, and I told him so.

  Mommie held out her arms. Larkin bent down and Carolina fairly scrambled off and hit the ground running. I do not think she wanted to hear no more about marrying. But Mommie would not let it go. “She is way too young to be thinking about that stuff. And her and Larkin is too close a kin to even let her think on it.”

  And I thought, Oh, no. Here is the pursed mouth and wrinkled-up nose look. But I had got over that bothering me and could not help ruffling her feathers a little.

  “Why, in six years Carolina will be old as I was when I married her daddy. By Larkin’s age I already had Abigail and we was working on John Wesley. Not even a full year between any of my first three. We was working mighty hard.”

  I knew I had got Mommie’s goat by how red her neck got. I was sorry the minute it left my lips, but even though Larkin shot me a look, I could not wrap my tongue around the words to tell her I was sorry.

  “Arty,” she said, and I could tell she was mortified. “Set there and talk about getting babies. I swear sometimes . . . .”

  She did not say what. But I knew already. She thought I was way too much like Granny and she looked down at the very things in me that she loved in her mama. Mommie was awful bad to preach religion this and religion that. She tried to make everything you did fit in a right place or a wrong place. But that is not the way of it all the time. They is a wide swath of life that is lived right down the middle. I wished you could have seen her face the time she asked me if I had found Jesus and I told her I did not know he had got lost. Oh, but you should never say something like that to them folks what have strong beliefs. I thought Mommie’s eyes was going to pop right out on stems. I will never do that again.

  About then I saw Granny take a drink from her crock and Mommie seed her too and I thought, Oh, Lord, and I was right, because Mommie set in on her right off.

  “You ought not to drink spirits,” she said.

  And Granny said back, “The gripe in my belly’s worse. Liquor with willer bark tea is about the only thing that helps it.”

  Mommie looked right shocked at that but fussed at her, “That liquor ain’t good for your body or your soul. You ought to drink tea mixed with water. I don’t see how you hold all that liquor anyways.”

  And Granny said the funniest thing I’d ever heard, but I know exactly what she meant now because I am the same way. She said, “Hell, Nancy, I can hold my liquor a lot better than I can hold my water nowdays.”

  I laughed so hard that I had to lay down. Zeke Jr. fell asleep. I must’ve dozed a little, too, since the next thing I recall is hearing Mommie and Granny talking real low as they put food away and gathered up the dishes.

  “Why do you reckon Arty won’t listen to a word I say? I swear sometimes she acts like I ain’t got the sense God give a goose and she just baits me.”

  Of a sudden I was wide awake and listening to every word.

  “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.” Granny give that sound that meant she’d puffed out her cheeks. “Arty’s just who she is. And it ain’t just how she acts toward you. You got your ways too.”

  That was surely the truth.

  Mommie put on her best I-am-just-killed voice and said, “I have always wanted to be close to her. She is my oldest daughter.”

  And Granny actually laughed at her. “Ye take yourself way too serious, Nancy Ann. Always your way or no way. Well, in case you ain’t noticed Arty is as tough as a pine knot and she has her own way.”

  Mommie sounded so pitiful then that even I felt sorry for her. “Well, I can done see that you’re just going to take her side of it.”

  I was plumb surprised when Granny cut her off. “I have no time for this. You and Arty need to come of it because it ain’t going to be no time till it’s just you and her for it. And I don’t know what in this world Larkin will do when I am gone.”

  Of a sudden I felt selfish. All I had thought of was me, me, me, and it were Larkin what stood to lose biggest of all and he probably did not even know. I set straight up then and looked around for him. It did not take me long to find him. He was right back over there at the store where them men was still talking, no doubt that war business. And as if they had read my very thoughts I heard somebody holler out the word War.

  Granny shook her head and her next words come out on a long sigh that sounded like it had whistled right out of her soul. “All this talk about war. The men might fight it, but it is always the women that suffers it.”

  And Mommie said, “They’ll be no war. But even if they is, it won’t be nothing to us.”

  “They will be sides took, and that will mean a fight,” Granny said, and right then it hit me and Mommie at the same time because neither one of us had a word to say back to her. Zeke Jr. slept on, but my mind was flying. How old did you have to be before you did not have to go off to fight? Or how young? Would Daddy have to go? Surely he would not, as he were an old man of fifty-one. If not him, then what of my brothers David and Willy? They was both married and had a dozen young’uns between and surely they would not have to go. But Robert and Hackley would. And I almost laughed at the thought of Hackley in a war, but I did not because I felt that yes, he would have to go too. Then I felt cold all over because I thought of Larkin and Zeke. But I am not one to worry with something that I cannot wrap my mind around. They will not be a war is all I could think as I picked Zeke Jr. up off that quilt and hauled myself to my feet. They will not be a war because Arty will not allow it.

  But they was nobody there to sass me back and tell me that Arty might not be the one in charge on that day.

  6

  GRANNY WANTED THE DOOR open and the light of the hunter’s moon had come dashing itself across the floor like bright-colored water and had crawled its way up in the bed with her. If you had told me that corruption would lay waste to a body the way it had Granny’s in just three months, I would have called you a dirty liar. But it had, and laying there in that bed she looked as little as one of my least girls. Larkin was setting in the doorway with his feet on the outside step. He had his elbows propped on his knees and his hands was hanging down loose between them. I almost wished that he had gone on hunting with Hackley and them boys that had stopped by here before good and dark. He looked pitiful setting there. The moon’s light laid flat on his face, and had it been a summer moon, it would have been pretty to see. But they is something about moonlight in the fall that I did not like then and do not like now. Granny had twisted and turned and fought the covers so that I was just wore out with trying to keep her covered up. From up on the ridge above the house, a panther squalled and a hen in the chicken coop answered it with a nervous chuckle. Granny opened her eyes and looked right at me.

  “That would be the little hen Hattie give me two year ago. She’s a good layer and right pert for a hen anyways,” she said.

  Larkin got up and drug him a chair to set next to me. The slats squeaked as he leaned forward to take her skinny little
hand in his big one. He brought up the crock of white liquor we’d been keeping next to the bed. He took a sip and tilted it in her direction. “You ready for some more, Granny?”

  “Pour me some and help me set up,” her voice come all whispery.

  I sloshed a fair amount into a tin cup and Larkin helped her up. He looked at me and I saw his hurt plain as day. How anybody could be as little as her and still live was beyond us both. She slurped noisily from the cup. “Lay me back down now, honey. Hit makes me dizzy to set up long.”

  I took the cup and looked down in it a minute, then I turned it up and drunk what was left. It burned like fire going down and I was thankful for it. My belly got all warm and I felt a little light-headed and was glad for that as well.

  He eased her back onto the mattress and I pulled the quilts up and made a big do of tucking them under her chin. She’d stopped eating a week ago and I kept piling on the quilts because I couldn’t stand the thoughts of her being cold.

  “Mommie will come tomorrow,” I said to Larkin.

  “It’ll be too late tomorry, honey,” she whispered, staring out the door.

  We never said nothing and in a little bit she said it again and her voice was a little stronger.

  “I said it’ll be too late tomorry. I don’t aim to be here when the day breaks.”

  And I could tell by her tone that she meant just what she said.

  She dozed off, but Larkin kept on holding her hand. Of a sudden she roused up and her eyes flew open.

  “Josie? Oh, Josie, look. Them cats has found the nest of baby rabbits back an under the porch. Oh, no! They’ve hurt one of ’em bad. Try to catch it. We’ll nurse it back. Damn cats!” Her hands sort of twisted around on the quilt and then were still.

  Larkin leaned back hard in the chair, brought his hands up to his face, and fisted his eyes. I thought he was fixing to cry and I wanted to say to him, This dying is hard business, but I did not because his head nodded forward and his chin dipped toward his chest and I knowed he was asleep. I was tired myself but knew I could not sleep so I set there still as a rock and waited—for what, I did not know. A stretch of time went by and up on the mountain the big cat squalled again and I thought, If any sound could wake the dead it would be that, and then I felt all funny because I had even thought it. But it did wake Larkin up. We set a long while with neither of us saying a word. Then I was so glad he had not gone with them boys and left me there by myself. When Granny spoke I think it scared us both.

  “Larkin, boy? Carry me out into the moonlight. I want to see it all one more time.”

  I would have hated to have been the one that tried to stop him from taking her out. It was not going to be me, even if I did think it was too cold. He took her up quilts and all, ducked through the door and they was gone out into the bright of that October moon.

  If I close my eyes I can still see it and it was a sight to see. He stood in the middle of all that light and it changed them both into something other than what they had been inside the house. Though I had never seen no haints I allowed as how they must look just like them and though I knowed it was Granny and Larkin I could not help myself making an X over my heart.

  Granny sort of sighed and said, “Ain’t many folks gits to leave this world by the light of a blue moon. Two full hunter’s moons . . .” Her eyes glowed with the light. “Sing for me, Larkin.”

  “What do you want me to sing, Granny?”

  “Why, my favorite,” she said.

  And though his voice was soft, it was the best I would ever hear him sing “Pretty Saro.”

  When I first come to this country, in 1749,

  I saw many fair love’yers but I never saw mine.

  I viewed all around me, saw I was quite alone

  And me a poor stranger and a long ways from home.

  Fare-thee-well to old mother, fare-thee-well to father, too,

  I’m a-goin’ for to ramble this wide world all through,

  And when I get weary, I’ll sit down and cry,

  And think of my darlin Pretty Saro, my bride.

  Well hit’s not this long journey I’m a-dreading for to go.

  Nor the country I’m a-leavin’ nor the debts that I owe

  There’s only one thing that troubles my mind,

  That’s leavin’ my darlin’ Pretty Saro behind.

  Well I wish’t I was a poet, an’ could write some fine hand.

  I would write my love a letter that she might understand,

  And I’d send hit by the waters where the islands overflow.

  And I’ll think of my darlin’ wherever I go.

  Well, I strove through the mountings, I strove through the main,

  I strove to forget her but it was all in vain,

  From the banks of old Cowhee to the mount of said brow,

  Where I once’t loved her dearly, and I don’t hate her now.

  Well, I wish’t I was a turtle dove had wings and could fly.

  Right now to my love’yer’s lodgings tonight I’d draw nigh,

  And there in her lily-white arms I would lay there all night.

  And I’d watch them little windows fer the dawning of day.

  “Sounded so much like my Pappy,” Granny said, and I could not help it, I started to cry. “Hush up,” she said, and her voice sounded light as the air. “You ain’t never been one to cry and carry on any such a-way.” I straightened right up at that. Then she said, “Drop the quilts, Larkin. I want to feel the wind on my arms and legs.”

  “Granny, it’s cold out here. Keep the quilts on.” I don’t know why I was so worried about them quilts but it was all I could think about.

  The quiet got awfully big in the long time it took her to gather up to answer. “Let them fall, Arty. Hit don’t matter no more. I feel warm as I did when I was a girl.”

  And the quilts slid off and I pulled them away from his feet and stood there with them balled up in my arms. The wind come up then and lifted her hair, worried at the hem of her nightgown, and she smiled at us. “My mammy used to tell me that they was no such thing as dying. Said we really was just born twice’t. Once to this place, then again into the t’other. Said we entered both like newborn babies. And she said just like we waited for a baby to be born in this world, they’s folks waiting fer us to be born over yonder.” And her breath kept coming out and coming out, but it was only when Larkin called her name that it rose back up and her eyes opened and she stared right at me.

  “You see to everything, Arty,” she said.

  I had such a knot of tears in my throat that I could barely say to her, “Yes, I will.”

  “Ye’ll be all right, son? Tell me.”

  “I’ll be all right, Granny. I swear.”

  And I said in a strangled voice, “No, oh, no.”

  Her eyes moved from his face and got all dreamy as they found the moon. Suddenly her eyes got big and wide and she said, “Oh, they are all here now! Pappy!”

  And with them words Sarah Elizabeth Gentry Shelton was born again.

  IT WAS FULL DAYLIGHT when Mommie stepped up on the porch of the cabin and saw the open door. She come pounding across the porch, calling “Mama? Arty? Oh, God.”

  I got up from the fireplace where I was laying a fire. “She’s gone. She went last night, or I reckon it was really this morning.”

  “Oh, Lord, have mercy on her soul,” Mommie said, then she went to crying like her heart was broke. I let her cry. Sometimes that’s the best we can do for somebody, to just let them cry.

  I had already sent Larkin to Greenberry’s to tell him and Sol to start charring out the coffin and on to tell Hattie to bring her corpse herbs. While we was waiting for him to get back, I told Mommie what had happened out there in the yard.

  “She was looking up at the moon, but her eyes weren’t seeing no moon. They was looking far off. And then I got the feeling that the yard was full of people. They was swirling all around us just for a thought, petting her and easing her somehow. And then they was just gone
. Her too.”

  We just set there for a while drinking our coffee and then I said, “Well, I ain’t sure what to do next, Mommie.”

  Mommie looked at me and her eyes was as dry as dust and blue as the sky and she said, “That’s all right, honey. I know what to do. We’ll get through it together.”

  And she sounded so much like Granny I could not help it then, I started to cry.

  GRANNY HAD BURIED PAP on the high ridge that looked out on the whole valley of Sodom. Mommie had fussed that it was too hard a climb and Granny had said to her, “Why, Nancy, they’ll carry me ever step of the way one of these days. I want to be planted where I can see the whole cove and be able to watch my people light the lamps in the morning and blow ’em out at night. And bury me with my shoes on ’cause if they’s any way to come back, I’m coming. And if I can’t, then what better place than up there? They ain’t no prettier place in the world.”

  So we climbed. Up past the blackberry patch, dried up and withered from the early frost. Up past the big old chestnut trees with their limbs almost brushing the ground with nuts. On up past the cave and across the gully wash that held the tracks of a big panther. On up to the very spine of the ridge, where, for all of her talk about it being the prettiest place in the world, all I saw waiting for her was a lonesome hole in the ground. Everybody sung as they lowered her, but I could not. They was not a single word that found its way from my hurting heart.