My Old True Love (10 page)

M
AGGIE HAD TO GROW
up quick. Bless her heart, she was a good little thing and had nothing in her to fight against her mommie’s workings. She was well trained by the time she was six year old. She could cook a full meal, milk the cow, churn butter, keep the house clean, and, most important, Lord, she could change diapers with the best of them. Vergie rocked on, and about the only time she left her chair was to give birth and add yet another burden to Maggie’s scrawny shoulders. Maggie started hipping young’uns even earlier than me. She had one on each hip when I was hipping Larkin. And where I had the choice with Larkin, Maggie did not.

But Maggie slowly began to put the puzzle pieces that was her little mommie together. She couldn’t help but notice how them headaches hit hardest just as Wade’s wagon was rounding the curve on its way out of sight. Or when one of the young’uns fell sick and needed tending. Or when it was clothes-washing day that we always called blue Monday. Or at hog-killing time. Or when the heifer calved.

Yes, sir, I can tell you that under the knife of Vergie’s complete and total selfishness Maggie’s good nature was peeled away and her raw heart got hard as a rock. She had one of the sweetest voices as a child, but as she aged her tongue got sharp as a straight razor. She got used to giving orders and made them young’uns mind like ringing a bell.

When she was thirteen she married a boy from off Shelton Laurel. Now that was a show. When she told Wade and Vergie she aimed to
marry you’d have thought she’d come in and allowed as how she was going to chop off all their heads with an ax. The young’uns cried and Wade carried on for days. But Vergie went to bed with the worst headache of her life. Or so she said.

And I said to her, “Do not let your mommie keep you from marrying Dedrick. She’ll come of it.”

I do think that if Wade had not told her that her mommie was going to have another baby she would have stayed home. But, boy, that fixed the deal for Maggie. She told her daddy that she would not stay there and raise any more of their young’uns. “I aim to mommie my own,” she said. But that was to never be. Maggie proved barren and carried no children in her body. But being the woman she was, she carried several of the heart.

Eight months later, Dedrick stepped on a rusty nail and died of the lockjaw. Three days after putting her man in the ground, here come her daddy carrying the rocking chair up the path with Vergie slowly picking her way behind him, the children strung out behind her, with Laurie Bett carrying baby Kelvin bringing up the rear. She moved in front of the chair before Vergie could settle into it. Vergie had decided she needed to be with her at this awful time, but Maggie didn’t put up with that for a minute. She put them all back out into the road. Things were not going back to the way they were.

Maggie had been on her own ever since. And she did like the men, but to my knowledge, she had never messed with another woman’s husband. So by my way of figuring they was not nothing wrong with that.

B
UT THERE SET
L
ARKIN
, so what did I think now? Hackley was not married to nobody and neither was Maggie. She was three
year older than me, so therefore older than him, but so what to that as well. I looked at Larkin studying about all this. It was not right that they had run him off from his own place. I told him so and told him I would tell Maggie and Hackley that. He turned real red in the face then and said, “No, don’t do that. They didn’t make me leave. It don’t matter to them one way or the other.” And I was just struck dumb at that. All sorts of things went to flying about in my head and I finally just out and said plime blank, “Did they do it in front of you?” And you might be thinking, now, what kind of wicked woman is that Arty anyhow? Well, I was and still am a curious woman, and though it might have killed the cat, it did not kill me. And then it all come rushing out from his mouth, and though it made me feel funny I listened hard anyway.

H
ACKLEY HAD BROUGHT SOME
liquor to the house and all three of them had been drinking. Larkin not as much, or at least that is what he said, although you can take that with a grain of salt. He could lay right in there with the best of them. For all of Hackley’s bragging and swaggering he could never hold his liquor and wound up passing out. Larkin and Maggie messed around with the fiddle for a while. He had always wanted to play since he was little and he said Maggie was actually getting to where she could play a few tunes. Maggie finally said she had to go outdoors. While she was gone he said he banked the fire and got in the bed. The next thing he knowed it was morning and there was Maggie straddling Hackley on the pallet in front of the fire. He said she was naked as the day she was born, and though he wanted to look away he could not. I knowed how he must’ve felt. I wanted to tell him to hush but could not. And he said that Maggie knew he was watching too and I said, “How do you
know?” And he said, “Because the whole time she was riding him she was looking me right in the eye.”

I did not know what to say about that. You can believe I studied about it a lot over the next few days. I thought about talking to Zeke about it, but I already knew he’d just say
Goodness
or
They law
or something like that. Or he might have surprised me and been real interested in that little tale. I was not real sure how I would have liked him being in such a big way to know about that so I just didn’t mention it. And I caught myself wondering what Granny would have said. But then I already knew.
Bullshit.

I
SAW
M
AGGIE AT
the store the day that the big cat had been at my chickens. She’d killed two, leaving feathers and blood all over the snow off the end of the porch. She eat one and carried the other off to her kittens I reckon. Zeke said the cat would have to be hunted down and killed, but I said, “She does not have to be killed, she is just hungry and trying to see to her young’uns just like us. We just need to put the chickens up where she can’t get to them.” His eyes got all darkish blue like they do sometimes when he looked at me. “I love you, Arty,” he said. I said to him, “Why, I love you, too.” Men are funny creatures, and I will never figure them out if I live to be a hundred, and ain’t that a grand thing? They is some things that needs to remain a mystery in this world and the love between a man and a woman is one of them things.

So I had gone to the store to get some nails and there was Maggie buying some cheese. I sidled right up to her and was hoping she was in the mood for talking, but she did not say much while she was running Cassie’s big old tomcat off of the cheese wheel and cutting herself a wedge. We just talked about this and that, and I could not get
her to talk about the this or that of which I most wanted to hear. I felt like I was going to start hopping from one foot to the other if I didn’t ask her. Finally I just blurted out, “Well, have you seen Hackley or Larkin lately?” And she come right back at me with, “Well, damn, Arty, why don’t you just come right out and ask me?” And though I felt awfully sheepish I looked her eyeball to eyeball and said, “Well, I reckon I just did.”

We walked home together and she talked and talked. Mostly about Hackley, and I could tell that Maggie had done give her heart away. She denied it to me, though. I told her I hoped she had not because my brother was a lover boy with all the women, but he would wind up marrying just the one—and that would be Mary Chandler because she was the only one that was not letting him have what all the other women did. Maggie turned red as blood when I said that, and I could tell it sort of made her mad. But they is one thing about me, and that is that I will call a spade a spade. She denied all about Larkin and that kind of made me mad. She said, “I don’t know nothing about Larkin Stanton, Arty.” And I told her I believed that he might be a little bit sweet on her, and she said, “I would not hurt that boy for nothing in this world.” And though I wanted to believe her, I thought to myself that Maggie just might bear watching where it concerned Larkin. She got right fiesty when I mentioned Mary again. She said, “Well, the virgin Mary might need to set up and take notice of Miss Maggie.” And I looked at her standing there with her head up and her shoulders throwed back and her blue eyes just flashing, and I have to say she was a good-looking woman. But she would not take Hackley from Mary. I knew that as good as I knew my own name. I felt sorry for her but I did not have the heart to tell her what I knew.

• • •

I
T WAS GETTING UP
towards four o’clock that evening when Larkin come by the house bringing me a mess of deer meat that him and Hackley had killed that morning. As I was washing it, he said they had been in the woods all day. I did not tell him that I had talked to Maggie. I just let him talk and to be honest with you, I only about half listened. They is only so much interest I can keep up for a boy talking about hunting deer all day long. But of a sudden he had all my attention because I heard him say this: “So I told him to marry, then.” And I said, “What?” He looked at me with his eyes as dark as the sky on a new moon and said, “I told him to go ahead and marry Mary.” And though I knew he was hurt and I was trying to pet him a little, my mind went to wondering what if Mary was to find out about all this business about Maggie. Wouldn’t that change a tune or two?

But at that time I was not remembering that my brother was nobody’s fool.

B
IG
J
OHN AND
D
AISY
Stanton had their big frolic right at Christmastime. I was having a big time that night and I must admit to drinking of Sol’s liquor. I was even flirting a little with some of the men just to get Zeke’s attention. Me and him both knew I would never do anything other than some harmless flirting, but he liked to know that other men still noticed me and, oh, they did. So I didn’t even know that Larkin was on the place until I saw him standing in front of the door looking mad as hell with little Julie Chandler looking up at him all serious.

That night when we was going home, Zeke told me that Hackley had told most everybody there that Maggie had been walking out with Larkin. I allowed as how nobody had told me that and Zeke
laughed and said, “Honey, they would not have dared to tell you.” No wonder Larkin looked so mad and I can’t believe that he didn’t slap the hell out of Hackley for the lying dog that he was. Poor Larkin. Getting all the talking about but getting none of the goody.

I remember he danced a lot with Julie that night. Maggie come but barely spoke to me and kept herself right in the middle of a big crowd of men laughing too loud with her eyes way too bright. And Hack-ley never laid that fiddle down a single time. He come by and give me a big kiss on the cheek and told me I was the prettiest girl there, and even though I knew he was full of himself and told him as much, it still pleased me. He was on fire with that fiddle and played some of the best music I’d ever heard him play.

If they was any doubt before as to who he loved and aimed to marry they would not be after. My pretty little brother broke a hundred hearts that night.

They’d just finished a Virginia reel when Hackley went to playing “The True Lover’s Farewell,” and while he was playing, he went across that floor and stood right in front of Mary. Her face was red as a beet and Hackley was looking her right in the eye. And she looked right back at him too. Rosa Wallin come up to me then and said, “That Hackley could charm the birds right out of the trees, Arty,” and I said, “It is not him that is doing the charming.” And it was not. Mary Chandler was the charmer, if you want to know the truth. He stood there and sung every word right to her.

A-rovin’ on one winter’s night
And a-drinkin’ good old wine,
A-thinkin’ about that pretty little girl
That broke this heart of mine.

Oh, she is like some pink-a rose
That blooms in the month of June.
She’s like a musical instrument
Just late-lie put in tune.

Oh, fare you well, my own true love,
So fare you well for a while.
I’m going away but I’m coming back
If I go ten thousand miles.

And it’s who will shoe your pretty little feet?
Oh, who will glove your hand?
Oh, who will kiss them red rosy lips
When I’m in some foreign land?

The crow is black, my love,
It will surely turn to white
If ever I forsaken you,
Bright day will turn to night.

Bright day will turn to night, my love,
And the elements will move
If ever I forsaken you,
The seas shall rage and burn.

So fare you well, my old true love,
So fare you well for a while.
If I go I will come again
If I should go ten thousand miles.

Every girl in that room give up hope right then. But even with the giving up, they was still wishing he was singing to them. Oh, Lord, I
wished I’d not even looked at Larkin’s face. He was staring at Mary like he was just going to die, and I thought to myself,
Don’t show everybody here where your affections lay.
And Julie was staring just the same way at Larkin. But it was Maggie’s look that caused that cold finger to lay itself at the bottom of my spine. They was a longing in her, too, but there was way more pure old mad. They was the eyes of a woman what has been scorned, and I thought,
Oh, Hack-ley, what a mess you have made for somebody to get to clean up,
because that is just the way my brother was.

T
HEY WAS NOTHING
I could do about any of what was going on, so I did not worry about it. I just kept dancing and dancing. Sometime after everybody had come back in from hollering and shooting in the Christmas day I realized that Maggie and Larkin were both gone, and Julie was setting off by herself looking like a dying calf in a hailstorm. Somebody hollered out that it had started to snow and since I purely love to watch it snow I went back out on the porch. It was plumb hot in the cabin and the cold air on the porch felt good. I was just standing there taking in some of that sweet air when I heard Maggie’s voice from out in the yard. “Talk was worse than we thought,” she said. I weren’t a bit surprised when Larkin answered her, “Does Mary know?” and my heart squeezed at the foolish hope I could hear in his voice. What little bit was there was dashed I am sure by her reply. “She knows but is acting like she don’t. She’d have to quit him if she let on like she knew. So, the virgin Mary won’t say nothing.” I knew right then that Maggie was exactly right. Mary did know but would never say it. And then she said, “You want to walk an old widder woman home?” And there was a world full of promise in them words. I wanted to holler out and remind her what she
had said to me about not hurting him, but I did not. About then Julie opened the door and called out, “Are you out here, Larkin? They’re starting up the next dance.” She didn’t see me standing there at the end of the porch ’cause the light didn’t reach that far. But I could see her face and I want you to know that she might not have been the looker that her sister was, but she was not bad looking either. They was not a sound from the yard and she stood there just a minute then closed the door.