My Old True Love

by Sheila Kay Adams

  After supper, Zeke had give me a look that was not lost on Carolina and had announced that he had a harness that needed mending, and when Larkin started to rise, he’d placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “No need for you to come. Carolina’s been wanting to talk to me anyhow.” They’d gone out together, leaving me and Larkin at the table.

  Larkin leaned back on the bench and looked at me. “You aiming to draw a picture of me?”

  I laughed and felt a little better. “No, I ain’t, you smart-mouthed whelp, you.”

  He smiled and it almost blossomed in his eyes, but not quite. “I don’t mean to worry you, Amma.”

  And with that he unlocked the words that had been near about choking me to death, and I let him have it. “Well now why in the world would I be worried? Just because you don’t talk to me no more? That you act like you owed me money or something? That when you do come here to the house, you latch onto Zeke like you’re in deep water and he’s the only one about that knows how to swim? No need for me to be worried about none of that.” I had to lay my hand on him then, so I brushed the hair back from his forehead and hunkered down so I could look him eyeball to eyeball. “Or that Julie left Mary’s and went to stay with their aunt over at Jewel Hill. Or that Mary won’t speak to her mommie since Julie left. Or that Rosa told me that they ain’t been no lamps lit of an evening at your place since you come home. Or that you been seen coming from Maggie’s real early in the morning.” I took my hand away, but stayed close to him in case I needed to put it back. “No need for me to worry about none of that?”

  His eyes were flat. He shook his head. “No.”

  I let out my breath in a big puff and leaned back. “Well, I won’t then.” And I come up off that bench like it was red hot. His hand shot out and grabbed my arm, but I was so mad I was about to cry and would not look at him.

  “It’s not as it might seem, Amma.”

  That flew all over me. “How do you even know how it might seem to me, mister? You ain’t bothered to ask.”

  He sighed. “I’m not a boy anymore, Amma. Can’t you see that?”

  I jerked my arm loose. “Well, now that you ain’t a boy, just don’t wind up being a stupid man, Larkin.” I went to washing them dishes with a vengeance and out come that chin of mine.

  After a while I heard him get up from the table and go out the door.

  THOUGH I HAD ROSA looking every morning for weeks after that, she never saw Larkin at Maggie’s again.

  But we all saw Larkin and Mary walking out together most every evening after supper. And as the tired green of summer gave way to the bright colors of fall, I knowed that Larkin had made his choice not to be a stupid man.

  They took to walking up on the mountain, and I would see them go by the house with Hack Jr. riding high up on Larkin’s shoulders. I could hear him laughing all the way down at the house. Larkin was a pure-D fool over that young’un, and from the very first he acted like he was his own flesh and blood. But let me say right here that this could not be. That child was the spitting image of my poor dead brother and became more like him the older he got. I swear it was just like looking at him. And you know mayhap that was the very reason why Larkin took such a shine to him. He loved Hackley, too.

  They walked up to Hackley’s grave a lot. Mary said they was standing next to the grave and Hack Jr. was setting right on it when Larkin asked her to marry him. When she said she would, he had grabbed up both of them and had danced all over the place. I felt like something cold went to crawling right up my spine when she told me that. Somehow, even though I cannot say the why, it did not seem right that he’d asked her there.

  15

  I OFFERED TO LET them marry in my house, but Mary allowed that she wanted it done in the church. So off we went. Do not think I did not feel happiness in my heart for them, for I did. The only reason I offered them my house was that they was some men what had come from the damn war that carried very hard feelings. I would mention here one Tyler Ray what had been up in Virginy with Mister Lee when he’d surrendered. Tyler’s eyes would just fill up with water at the mention of that man’s name. Some on the other side was just as bad. As I have said before, and will take this opportunity to say again, men is foolish sometimes when it comes to whether their honor might be slighted in some way. So I say to them, keep your damn honor placed somewhere that it cannot be slighted. But Tyler pulled out his pistol and shot Vernon Lewis in the hand at a poker game back in the fall just for saying that the king of spades sort of reminded him of old Marse Robert. They said the cards went every which way. ’Course in my way of figuring, Vernon Lewis ought to have been shot a long time ago for being a fool, but if we start shooting folks for being fools then we’d be shooting right up till the end of time.

  So when I got to the church and it was packed with folks, I got the all-overs, but I did not get them too bad. Larkin had summed it up right as we was leaving the house and, oh, let me say that my biggest boy was as pretty a man as I had ever seed in my life. He had shrugged his big wide shoulders and said to me, “The war is done, Amma. It is time we got on.”

  And I had said to him something I had never said, but had meant to for a long time. “I am proud of you, son,” I said. “This is a decent thing that you are doing for Hackley here on this day.”

  His voice was all choked up when he answered me. “I am not doing it for Hackley, Amma. This is all for me.”

  I had nothing to say to that and figured just as he said and so it is.

  THE MARRYING THAT DAY went off without a single hitch, and it looked as though old grudges, slights, hurts, and more honor than you could shake a stick at had at least for this day been left outside the door. But do not fret all you people. It was all sorted out and picked right back up when that night ended.

  LET ME TELL YOU right now that I had never give much thought to this word beautiful. To me people was seldom if ever beautiful. But on this day Mary was beautiful. Her hair was all down and loose and covered her shoulders for all the world like a rich wavy red shawl. There had been no need to pinch her cheeks for color, and them big brown eyes never left Larkin’s face one single time while the preacher was talking.

  Larkin stood straight and looked right back at her, and his voice was deep as a well when he said the words that bound his heart to hers.

  They was those among us that shed tears setting on them hard wooden benches that morning. Mommie capped her hands over her face and just sobbed as the preacher said, “Till death do you part.” I was bawling myself and me setting there with my lap budding yet another child. I swear to you, it seemed that every time Zeke Wallin hung his britches up on the peg on the back of the door, Arty found herself in the family way. I reached out and took Zeke’s hand in mine and held onto it the whole time. I had made good as I could that threat of not letting him out of my sight. This might explain me being four months gone again. Lord, I felt so sorry for Julie, who did not sob. It would have been better if she had but only one single tear slid down her little face when Larkin said, “I do.”

  I had seen Maggie at the back of the church when I’d come in and my eyebrows flew straight up. She grinned at me, and I could tell she was having a big time knowing that everybody in there was watching her. Bless her, at least this would lay to rest any ugly thoughts folks might be carrying about her and Larkin. I knowed it was him that had gone and asked her to come, and I also knowed that they had been nothing between them since he’d come home. I know this because she had come by the house the week before and we’d had us a big talk. All them times he’d come to her in the early misty mornings back in the summer, it had been only to sit with her on the porch. She said sometimes they’d talked together, but most times she’d just listened. “He’s got a world of horror in his heart, Arty. The things he has seen is bad enough to have killed most men.” He’d told her too of how he feared he was ruined now for any woman. She’d let him talk and when he run out of words, she’d let the silence be. They never once touched,
though she would have, had he asked. Then he’d stopped coming. She’d let that be as well.

  She’d told me then about Silas, too.

  She’d lit a fire that night so the windows would be glowing warm and welcoming in the chill of the early fall evening. He was awfully quiet as they ate supper, and Maggie said his eyes followed her everywhere she went and they were the saddest things she’d ever seen. I wanted to stop her right there and I would have a year ago, but she needed to talk to somebody and I was it. She said when he loved her that night his hands was so gentle that it jerked tears from her eyes. The fire had burned down to just red coals when he’d said the words she’d been dreading to hear fall from his lips for as long as she’d known him. “I’ve got to go home, Maggie.”

  And there they was now and she could not say nothing. When she didn’t answer, he rolled his head to look at her. “I’m taking the train out the end of this week.” And all she said was, “Well.”

  And that was it. He’d left the next morning and she’d kissed him, held him one last time and let him go. She said there’d been a little moment there on the porch when he’d have stayed if she’d asked. She had seen it in his eyes. But she had not asked him.

  I asked her then why and she said she’d known, clear as anything, that if he’d left his wife and family for her, that he’d forever have held the best part of himself back from her. And she wouldn’t have had him that way. So she’d had to turn from him as he’d climbed on his horse, set her back to him as he’d ridden off down the road. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  I have to say that a big flower of respect bloomed in my heart on that day for Maggie. She was a good and decent person for all that she was hotter than a ginger mill. But then I had knowed that for as long as I had knowed her. I had always allowed that she had just never found the right sweetheart. I told her how sad I was that she had found him only to have to let him go, and she allowed as how it had been her experience that more often than not, life is just that way.

  THAT NIGHT WE HAD such a time as it put me in the mind of the way it used to be here around home. When we left the church house we never even broke stride and went right straight to Jim Leake’s and had a great big frolic in the front room of his house. I started off trying to act my age but soon got over that. They was a little bit of time right there at the beginning when Lum and Willis took up their banjo and fiddle that it got real quiet. I knowed every single soul in that place was thinking the same as me, that the best of the lot was not here with us. With my eyes burning like fire I hollered out, “Play a good fast frolic tune for my brother, boys.” That broke things up and they commenced to playing a tune they’d learned off some boys over in Tennessee what was called “The Cumberland Gap,” which is a fine tune with good words which we all took to singing.

  Me and my wife and my wife’s pap walked all the way to the

  Cumberland Gap.

  Cumberland Gap ain’t my home and I’m gonna leave old

  Cumberland alone.

  I was singing as loud as I could and grinning at Zeke the whole time. A bunch hit the floor dancing for all they was worth, and before I could catch myself and go back to acting my age, I jumped up and was dancing every which way. When that song ended I was winded but thought I had done pretty good for an old married woman and told Zeke as much. All he could do was shake his head at me and allow how I would not do.

  Me and him danced the whole livelong night, and my young’uns had themselves a great big time. Pearl played so hard her hair was plastered to her head with sweat, and she was as ill and mean as a copperhead when I finally made her go lay down. I let the biggest ones stay up and was glad I did, because Carolina wound up being the one to sing the song that sent Larkin and Mary down the road to their married bed.

  We was all waiting for the musicianers to rest up when Rosa Wallin asked me if I would sing something. Lord, they was no way I could have denied that poor woman a song nor nothing else. She looked like death warmed over ever since Hugh had died, and I felt guilty as sin standing there beside my big pretty man knowing that she’d had to crawl out of her birthing bed to bury hers. I went to running songs through my head trying to figure which one would be the best to sing that would hurt her the least. You have to be careful with these old songs sometimes, for they can reach right in and twist up your heart if you ain’t. Carolina give me just a minute and then whispered to me, “Can I sing one, Mommie?” And I told her to go right ahead and I was thankful for the chance to figure which to sing. But I needn’t have bothered. That young’un stepped right out and sung exactly what needed to be sung. It were not too much but it were just enough.

  The heart is the fortune of all womankind.

  They’re always controlled and they’re always confined—

  Controlled by their parents until they are wives

  Then bound to their husbands for the rest of their lives.

  I am a poor girl and my fortune is sad,

  I’ve a long time been courted by the wagoner’s lad.

  He courted me truly by night and by day

  And now he is loaded and driving away.

  “Your parents don’t like me because I am poor,

  They say I’m not worthy to enter your door.

  I work for my money, my money’s my own,

  And folks that don’t like me they can leave me alone.”

  “Go stable your horses and feed them some hay,

  Come and sit down beside me for as long as you can stay.”

  “My horses ain’t hungry, they won’t eat your hay,

  So fare-thee-well, darling, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Your horse is to saddle, your wagon to grease,

  Come sit you down by me before you must leave.”

  “My horse it is saddled, my whip’s in my hand,

  So fare-thee-well, darling, I can no longer stand.”

  “I can love little or I can love long,

  I can love an old sweetheart till a new one comes ’long.

  I can hug and can kiss them and prove to them kind,

  I can turn my back on them and also my mind.”

  I’ll go to yon mountain the mountain so high,

  Where the wild birds can see me as they pass me by,

  Where the wild birds can see me and hear my sad song,

  For I am a poor girl and my lover has gone.

  When she finished it was like everybody in that room was holding their breath. And then I looked at Zeke, and the tears was just pouring down his face and he did not even try to swipe them and make like he was not crying for all the world to see. He grabbed her up in his arms, and it hit me then that this was the first time he had heard our girl sing.

  Nobody needed to tell me what a lucky woman Arty Wallin was, because she already had a pretty good idea of that herself.

  Larkin and Mary made their move to leave just then, and we all follered them out the door hollering and carrying on. I have always wondered about that sort of thing. I mean, why them men feels the need to scream out instructions is just beyond me. And some of the women is just as bad. And it was not as if Mary or Larkin either one needed instructing, if you know what I mean. But anyway, out onto the porch we went with everybody hollering the same-old same-old, and then somebody hollered that it was snowing and I crowded right up next to the front. Oh, how I loved the snow, and it were really coming down, too. The ground just barely had a little skift on it, but great big fat flakes was coming down offering us the promise of a big snow if it kept up till morning. Just then two of Edmund Chandler’s big boys come toting a big sack between them and I could not believe it when they opened the door and throwed that sack right into the middle of the room. Now I am here to tell you that sack was packed full of possums, and they come out of that sack and went every which way. I have never laughed as much in my life as we spent the rest of the night collecting possums off the beams and out from behind stuff, and everywhere else you can just imagine. Boys is something else,
ain’t they?

  While we was possum gathering, me and Maggie hung together and talked. She pulled a letter out of her sleeve and told me to read it. It was from Silas, and when I read the part that said his wife had died of a fever of some kind I looked up at her. I want you to know they was nothing in her face but sorrow. “In all my wishing I did not wish this, Arty,” she said, and I know she was telling me the truth. I looked her right in the eye and said, “Maggie, honey, they will not let me or you neither one be in charge of things even for a minute, so it does not matter what we wish.” I went back to reading and found that he aimed to come for her as soon as a decent time had passed. “What will you do, Maggie?” I said. And she said, “Why, I’ll go raise our young’uns.” And you know, that is just what she done. She turned out quite the lady down there in South Carolina.

  Me and Zeke walked out for home just as it was getting daylight, and all our young’uns was stumbling along with us looking like sleepy chickens. Zeke was carrying Pearl, and seeing the two of them together looking just like each other made my heart swell near to busting.

  As we come by Mary’s little cabin it was closed up tight without so much as a candle lighting the window. It looked so pretty in the snow and my face got all warm when I went to thinking about what was going on just on the other side of them walls. I hoped for Larkin’s sake it had been well worth the wait. My gut told me it probably had been.

  When we got home I put Pearl in the bed with Abigail and Carolina, and the boys went up in the loft. Soon they was all sound asleep and me and Zeke laid there talking about this, that, and the other. That was the best thing in the world to me. During the damn war, I had learned the hard lesson that is to take nothing for granted in this world.