My Old True Love

by Sheila Kay Adams

  “I can’t find Hack nowhere,” she said, and I thought, Thank God for small favors, and give a nervous look back over my shoulders but could not see neither one of them as they had already cleared the trees. “I made him a stack cake because he loves it better than anything in this world.” And I thought, Not better than anything, honey.

  I looked at Larkin then, because I knowed it was do-the-business-or-git-off-the-pot time. He would either tell her or not. I watched it run every which way across his face and there was that muscle bunching in his jaw.

  “Larkin,” I said. And with that one word Mary must’ve known something because she turned her little face to me.

  “What, Arty?” she said, and her voice was soft as down.

  But I was looking at him and did not even shift my eyes. And I knew by the way his shoulders slumped that he would take what I had told him a while ago as the bitter truth. He could not tell her.

  I spoke up and was amazed at how light my voice sounded but I guess it ought to have since I was so relieved. “Maybe he went to shit and the hogs eat him.”

  Mary looked at me and her eyes were just dancing and she said, “Oh, Arty, you just won’t do,” then she laughed and it was such a pretty sound that I could not help but laugh back. Larkin laughed too, but his voice held a trace of bitterness that I knew went all the way to his soul. Mary must have heard it, because she stopped laughing and looked up at him. But he did not stand for her to look at for long. He turned and went off toward where Lum and Willis was tuning up and drinking up. We watched him turn up the jug and Mary said, “Oh, he is drinking. I thought I smelled it on his breath,” and for her that was the end of it.

  But my hurt went right on. Even so I stood right there and talked to her until Hackley come waltzing up pretty as you please and took that pie pan from her and wolfed it down. The whole time he did not even look at me. I was staring at him as like to burn a hole plumb through him. When he finished his cake he made this big deal of licking his fingers real slow, staring me right in the eyes, and it was like I could read his mind: See here, Arty, think where my fingers has been. And I could not stand it. I had to leave them standing there. I did not say a single word to Mary but she called out to me, “Arty?”

  But I acted like I did not hear her and what I carried off with me was the sound of Hackley laughing.

  • • •

  THE FIRE WAS DOWN to red embers when I got up from beside my sleeping husband later. Zeke could sleep through Gabriel blowing his horn. I never could and I believe it had to do with laying half awake listening for Larkin when I was a girl and then my own coming so quick. Every woman knows that all it takes to wake us quick as lightning even in the dead of night is that one word, Mommie. And though not one of my young’uns had called to me out loud—I went round and looked—I still could not sleep. All I had to do was see Larkin’s big self setting on that little stage to know that he’d been calling to my heart. I set down with him and right then a shooting star went diving through the sky.

  “Make a wish quick, honey,” I said.

  He said, “What would I wish for, Amma? Anything I can think of that I’d want would mean the ruination of somebody’s life and probably mine, too.”

  “Ah,” was all I said, because I knew he was telling the truth.

  I put my arm through his and hugged it against my side and we set there for a while and neither one of us said a word. Then I thought of something that we could both wish for. “Let’s wish that there won’t be no war.”

  “That would be a waste of a wish, Amma.”

  He sounded so finished, like they was no doubt in his mind. I said,

  “Why, I don’t reckon this war is wrote in stone, Larkin.”

  He looked over at me and his face was part dark and part red from the fire. His eyes looked like black holes in his head. “I believe they ain’t nothing that will stop this war. Did you not hear what that Zeb Vance said?”

  I got all puffed up about that because I knew I did not have an educated mind, but I had a decent head on my shoulders. “I was listening and I heard every word. He was a fine speech-giver.”

  “He was, Amma. But everything he said was culled when Lincoln called out them troops.”

  Like a fool I said, “Why, what has that got to do with us, honey? It don’t make no matter-mind to us. We’ll just go on with our day to-day.”

  He glanced at me and said, “No. Things are way different for us now than they was just this morning. It is going to be a pure-D mess.”

  “But we ain’t got no slaves nor nothing. And ain’t none of us rich.”

  He sighed and his voice got this real patient sound to it and I must say I felt my temper flare up because it sounded like he was talking to a child. “This here is not about slaves nor being rich, Amma. It is about South Carolina.”

  Oh, and then it all come washing over me. “And we are North Carolina,” I whispered.

  “Exactly,” he said back. Then after a while, “But he did have a fine way of speaking.”

  From out of the dark beyond the fire I heard Maggie give a little bark of a laugh. And Larkin heard it, too, because his shoulders slumped a little more and he give a great big sigh. I patted him on the arm. “You done right there, Larkin.”

  “Probably. But doing right don’t always make it feel right.”

  I had to admit that was the truth.

  “I will not understand Maggie if I live to be a hundred years old. After that business between all of you back at Christmas, how could she go right back to the trough for more?”

  Though he laughed, he sounded awful sad. “Ah, she can’t help it. She loves Hack. How can I hold that against her when I love him, too?”

  I took to spluttering on that note, and he went to laughing and did not sound so sad. “You can’t stay mad at him, neither, and you know it.”

  I thought about him licking his fingers and didn’t know so much about that. My voice sounded more hateful than it ought to have.

  “Well, what about Mary?”

  “Poor little Mary.”

  “Poor little Mary?” I mocked him. “Don’t poor-little-Mary me. It ain’t as if she did not know my brother before she married him.”

  “She knowed him. But I wonder, did she really know him?”

  “She knowed what she wanted to know and that is the way of most of us. I have learned twice as much about Zeke Wallin since I married him, but if he had turned out to be a runner of women I would have killed him.” You note I did not say If it was me. “Are you all right about Maggie?”

  “Why, yes,” he said. “I liked her all right but I would be lying like a dog if I was to say I loved her. To be honest with you, this has sort of made me sick to my stomach with her. I won’t never have nothing else to do with her and that’s a fact.”

  And you know he never did have a thing to do with her in that way. The way it ended up, I wished he had. Again Arty was not in charge. But oh, how she would wish she had been.

  9

  I HAVE THOUGHT ON that spring night often over the years and it has laid ever sweet in my heart. I know now that it would be one of the last innocent times any of us was to have. In my mind I can just see me and him setting there talking with the dawn coming on all around us. We was right on the edge of a great change and, bless us, we did not know it. We might have thought we did but we did not. The change was not long in the coming either.

  IT WAS THE MIDDLE of May when Larkin come by the house way before daylight. Zeke had told me the night before that he aimed to go to Marshall with Daddy to vote and that Larkin and Hackley was going with them even though they could not vote. I allowed that I would just go too, but Zeke had said, “No, Arty, it will not be such a place for women on this day. They will be all manner of rough characters milling about and I do not want to have to worry about you.” So I was more than a little miffed that morning but got up and fixed breakfast anyway. I could not bear the thoughts of Zeke leaving home hungry but was not a bit happy about
having to do it, so I made a great racket with slamming things around. Larkin could tell I was mad and cut a wide berth around me until I set a plate for him at the table. Neither one of them said much and it was only when Zeke was going off the porch that I run to him and give him my list. He pulled me to him then and I let him. I did not want him going off thinking I was mad.

  Mary come by that day and we set out under the trees for a bit. The leaves had feathered out really pretty, and the apple tree over our head was just covered up in blooms. She asked me if Hackley had been with Larkin this morning and I said no, that it was just Larkin that had come by. She said nothing for a long time. Carolina come running up and said she’d seen the first hummingbird and I told her she could expect to see them the very same time next year, too. Granny always said you could set your calendar by the coming of the birds. Carolina ran back to the house and I looked at Mary. She’d pulled up some grass and was working it with her hands and was staring down at it.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her, though I had a good mind already what it was.

  “Did Larkin say anything to you this morning about him and Hack going hunting last night?”

  I sighed to myself. “No he didn’t, but that don’t mean nothing. They might have and Hackley went on to Mommie and Daddy’s.”

  She looked at me and just busted out crying. “You know better. Why is he doing this? Oh, Arty, I am trying the very best I know how. What am I doing wrong?”

  I put my arms around her and she just sobbed and sobbed, and I set there cussing my brother to myself. After she’d got through the biggest of the crying I said, “Mary, you knowed how he was when you married him. Surely you didn’t think to change him?”

  Her chin come up and her eyes was still bright with tears. “I thought he would want to change.”

  “Why?” I asked her.

  She turned bright red but her eyes stayed right on mine. “Well, you know why.”

  “Because you held him off till after you were married.” I knew that was what she was trying to say, so I just saved her the trouble.

  She nodded and then her face sort of crumpled up and she started crying again. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be enough for him and now my worst dreams has come true. He don’t love me.” Now she was just wailing.

  “Mary, honey, it ain’t that. Hackley loves you or he wouldn’t have married you. Some men just runs women. It’s just how they are.” Meanwhile I am fuming inside.

  “But it was me he was running this time last year.”

  Yes it was, I thought, but then he caught you and now you are all bagged up and he’s got you.

  But I did not say any of this. I just set there and let her cry it out. Then we went in the house and she helped me fix supper. She stayed on while I put the young’uns in the bed and was sitting on the porch watching the moon come up when I went out and set down on the step next to her.

  “Are you all right, honey?” I asked her.

  “Oh, Arty, I’ll be fine. I’ve decided what I’m going to do.” Her face was lit all aglow by that soft moon.

  “What?” I said fully expecting her to say she was going to leave him or kill him one.

  “I’ll tough it out till I can get pregnant. Then he’ll straighten out.”

  I felt so sorry for her. I finally had to tell her how that wouldn’tchange a thing. I told her that I knew women all up and down the cove that had done the same and all that had happened was when their old man come in drunk and raising hell and shooting things up, they would just be young’uns in the way. You cannot make a decent man out of one that is not.

  “Arty, he is your brother. How can you say he is not a decent man?”

  See what I got for telling her the truth as I saw it? I swan some folks cannot stand the truth even when it is looking them right in the eye.

  I WAS STILL SETTING there long after she’d left for home when Zeke come up the path. The moon was almost setting over across the way but I was not about to go to bed until I heard what all had happened on their trip. And I was surely glad I had stayed up, for he had a big tale to tell.

  He said they’d gone over the Sim Mountain heading for Marshall. They’d stood around waiting on Hackley at Mommie’s, and I said, “Oh, so he was there, then,” and he shot me a look and said he’d got there a little before them and took his own sweet time getting ready to go. They had finally walked on and Hack had caught up with them at the top of the mountain. I made some comment about how I reckon he was probably wore out from all the hunting he’d done the night before, and Zeke said, “Now, Arty, do you want to hear my tale or not?” so I hushed. They’d gone down into Marshall right as the sun was burning off the fog that always come in off the French Broad, and he said it looked like everybody and his brother was there. I could not imagine that there would be more than on court days but he said indeed there was. He said, “They was way more of us than they was them what was for pulling out of the Union,” and this was the very first time I’d heard my man put into real words that he counted himself for one side. So I said nothing else while he talked but only listened, and my heart grew heavier and heavier.

  Sheriff Walter Woods was already drunk and was out roaming about. I had seen him over at Shelton Laurel that day and he was drinking then, too. He had spent that whole day going about praising them what had already left the Union. He did not have a gun over there but Zeke said he had one in Marshall and it was tucked down in the waist of his britches for everybody to see. Right where the men was voting he hollered out, “Huzzah for Jeff Davis and the Confederacy,” and somebody hollered right back at him, “Hurrah for Washington and the Union.” I would not have been a bit surprised if he had told me it was Daddy that had hollered it. He had told me that we had just managed to wrassle this country away from the English, and he could not for the life of him figure why some folks now wanted to bust this country up.

  But it was not Daddy. It was Hense Shelton. The sheriff come staggering up to him and drawed his gun on Hense asking if he was the one what hollered and Hense said he was and that he reckoned this was still a country where you could say what you believed in. And the sheriff cocked back the hammer and come right on. And that was when Daddy stepped out and said for him to hold up a minute, that they was no need in this. I felt like somebody had dashed cold water on my back, but I did not say a word. Zeke said, “Now, don’t worry, it turned out all right.” The sheriff recognized who Daddy was and said, “Why, William Norton, you old cur dog,” and Daddy managed to get him walking back down the street away from the voting place. All would have maybe been saved had the sheriff not seen Virgil Capps standing there with a gun tucked down in his own britches. Why do men have to do such things is what I want to know, although I did not ask. Zeke was bad to tote his own gun around and about, even if the only thing I’ve known him to kill with it was my big pretty black snake that lived down at the barn. Men and guns is not a good mix, is what I think.

  According to what Virgil told Zeke, he had forgot he even had it, but that made no matter mind to that drunk sheriff. He jerked loose from Daddy and went over to Virgil, but Zeke said he lost interest in him when he seen who was standing right beside him, ’cause he hollered out “Charles Tweed, you black-hearted Tory” and pointed his gun at him. Zeke said he hit the ground right then because he saw the sheriff meant to shoot Charles, but Charles seed it too and he dove for the ground as well. So the bullet did not hit the one it was intended for. It hit Charles’s boy Jack. And I thought, Oh, no, poor Belvie. Jack was her baby and she thought the sun rose and set on his fifteen-year-old head. I knowed it was bad, too, because Zeke said by the time that boy went down, he was already breathing a bloody froth. The crowd got quiet then and the sheriff must’ve decided he had stepped in a big pile because Zeke said he turned and run. And Charles come up off that ground looking completely wild out of his eyes. He pulled his own gun out and took off after the sheriff. Zeke said a door slammed somewhere up the street, and then the sheriff come out on t
he upstairs porch and hollered, “Come up here, all you damned Black Republicans and take a shot about with me.” I reckon Charles did just that and one better. He busted into that house and went right up the steps after him and shot him dead right then and there. And I said to Zeke, “Oh, my God, they’ll be trouble for sure now.”

  By then the pretty light of a silvery spring dawn had found its way into the cove and Zeke’s eyes was as gray as a goose when he looked at me. “Arty, they was already more trouble than we knowed what to do with and this will make it even worser.” He said that a big fight started there in the streets after that, and he turned the other side of his face to me and I saw a big bruise already blooming on his cheekbone. When I jumped up to see to him he only laughed and said I ought to see the other feller and waved me off. He went back to his tale telling but I paid him no mind. I had my own thoughts to study on and I kept hearing what he’d said before, “This will make it even worser.”

  He was right. This was only one of many things that happened to us here in this part of the world during that damn war. They was so many bad things that took place here that we come to be called Bloody Madison. And oh, God, it were a bloody place even after the damn war. The sheriff’s family brought charges against Charles Tweed’s family and they fought it out in the courthouse years later. That always seemed funny to me since the sheriff was dead and so was Charles. He got killed up in Kentucky when he was up there fighting. As a matter of fact he went down right beside Zeke. And God forgive me, but all I can say is if a bullet had to take somebody on that day I am glad it was not Zeke.

  In case you’re interested the vote that day in Marshall went 28 for leaving out and 144 for staying in. I reckon I do not need to tell you that Daddy and Zeke was two of that 144. I reckon I do need to tell you that if us women had been able to cast a vote they would have had to rewrote that ballot. It would have had to read For, Against, and No War A’tall. Do I need to tell you where Arty would have put her X? No, I did not think so.