My Old True Love (12 page)

“I reckon she would be having it hard! Her and them two little babies.” Patsy was red-faced and mad. “Tell you one thing, if it was me he’d done that-a-way he’d better never come back around me again. He’d better just keep going!”

There was that saying I mentioned before,
If it was me.

Mary patted Patsy’s arm. “I swan. And nobody has seen him since?”

“A man like that ain’t worth the powder it would take to kill him.” Patsy said.

Hackley popped up where he’d been stretched out on a pallet of quilts laid out on the wagon bed. “Sound like you girls has done got poor old Clemmons tried by jury and hung.”

“You better watch it, Hackley Norton, you rogue,” Gracie said.

“You keep running that mouth and I’ll have to come over there and straighten you out.”

Butter would not have melted in her mouth and I thought to myself,
You had your chance a long time ago, honey, and you didn’t do it then.

“Ah, Miss Gracie. How you make my head spin with all them pretty words.” Hackley swept his old flop hat off and laid it over his heart.

And I said, “I’ll loan you my gun if you want it, Mary, just don’t aim for his head. Shooting him in the head wouldn’t even addle him, let alone kill him.”

Mary stood and shook out her skirt as she studied him. “I don’t know if I want to waste a perfectly good bullet.”

“Oh, God!” Gracie whooped. “I’ll bet you folks would give money to hire it done. I’ll go to collecting it right now!” She went off looking back over her shoulder at Hackley and went twisting right up to these two men what was propped up on another wagon.

I looked back at Hackley, and them lazy eyes that never missed a trick was watching Gracie. He had his thumbs hooked in the waist of his britches, and for the first time in my life I wanted to see him as a man and not my own brother.

He was not much taller than me but his shoulders was wide for a man his size and for all that he was blond, he had what Granny called a good high color. His eyes were the prettiest shade of blue I have ever seen. Standing there beside that wagon, I believe I come awfully close to seeing what it was that turned the head of most every woman. Some of it was just in how he held himself sort of slouchy-like. But they was a coiled-up something in him, something that was not tame, and when he fixed them eyes on you, it felt like he was just going to spring on you and eat you up.

And then with a little smile he picked up his fiddle and bow and started to play.

I’ve played cards in England, I’ve gambled in Spain,
I’m going back to Rhode Island, gonna play my last game.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know ye from old.
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

I’ll tune up my fiddle and rosin up my bow
And I’ll make myself welcome wherever I go.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know ye from old,
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

I’m gonna drink, I’m gonna gamble, my money’s my own,
And them that don’t like me can leave me alone.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know ye from old
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck,
I’d dive to the bottom and I’d never come up.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know ye from old.
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

But the ocean ain’t whiskey and I ain’t no duck,
So I’ll play them “Drunken Hiccups” and trust to my luck.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know ye from old
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

Rye whiskey and pretty women have been my downfall,
They beat me and they bang me but I love them ’fore all.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know you from old.
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry.
If I git to feelin much better gonna sprout wings and fly.
Jack a diamonds, Jack a diamonds, I know you from old.
You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold.

As he gave a long stroke of the bow to end the tune, I thought to myself,
Now, Arty, what woman would not trade her soul for all of that?

Hackley nodded to the crowd that was clapping and hollering, bowed to Gracie, placed his fiddle on the quilt, and said “I know you folks didn’t just come to hear me and looks like the speech making is fixing to start.”

Larkin took me by the elbow and we made our way through the crowd that had gathered around a little stage of a thing that they’d built up for the speakers. I wanted to get as close to the front as I could because I wanted to see this Zeb Vance person. Zeke talked about him like he was God’s gift, and his name had been all over the papers for months. Daddy said he had given twelve speeches in fourteen days begging for us to stay in the Union. He was only six years older than me, which would’ve made him thirty-one. My eyes was scanning the crowd looking for somebody who looked to fit that bill and I must say I was surprised when Larkin poked me in the ribs and nodded at this tall man standing across from us. He looked like he was carrying the weight of the world and was wore out from it. Looking back, I reckon he was carrying it. Much later he said that he knowed that all his speech making was doing little to change people’s minds, and that nothing he could say would stop what he called the rush to secede. But he done it anyway. And if what he said to us was any proof, he done everything he could.

I pulled on Larkin’s arm and said, “Who is that standing with him?”

“That’s Nick Woodfin, one of the biggest slaveholders in Buncombe County. He’s come to give us the other side of things,” Larkin said.

Oh, I had read about him in the papers. He had wrote this big long piece about how the South was guaranteed the right to pull out of the Union by the Constitution. Him and Vance had argued back and forth about all this down in Raleigh and finally Woodfin had hollered out, “You know the Constitution of the United States, don’t you, Mr. Vance?” And Vance had fired right back, “Yes, Mr. Woodfin, I know of the Constitution. Right now I feel like I helped write the damn thing. Whether we have the right is not the issue,” he said. “If we’re making our political bed, then I want to be certain we can sleep in it.” Now that is my kind of man that can talk about sleeping in the bed you have made.

I looked hard at this Woodfin, because to my knowledge I had never seen nobody what owned slaves. He had on a white linen suit and looked like what I had always thought somebody like him would look, which is to say all proper and sort of citified.

“I like Vance the best,” I whispered to Larkin.

“How do you know, Amma? You ain’t heard them talk yet.” He whispered back.

“I just do,” I said. And I did. I could see what Zeke saw in Vance. He looked like he could walk right in the store over home and not draw attention to himself. He had big rough-looking hands and Woodfin’s hands looked smooth as a woman’s. I made fists of my own and hid them in my skirt because his hands did not look like mine.

Go it, Vance,
I thought just as he stepped up on the stage. The crowd quieted right down, and he took a deep breath and sort of bowed to us and then he started to talk. I had never heard the likes
of that in all my life and do not much expect to hear it again before I die.

• • •

“
MY FRIENDS.”
H
E TURNED
to the local big shots. “Honored servants of these good folks.” He nodded at Woodfin. “My esteemed colleague. I’ve not come to inform you that these are serious times. You already know that. Our sister state has left the Union, practicing a right given her by the great men that founded this beloved country in which we live. This country that many of our ancestors went to Kings Mountain and fought for during the Revolutionary War. Some of them didn’t come back. They died for a purpose. Has it been so long ago that we’ve forgotten?” He looked out at us with his dark brows all bunched up above his eyes and give a little shake of his head. “I say no, we have not forgotten. Think of them, my friends. Those mountain men that stood and fought with such tenacity against the English. They could look off in the distance and see the mountains.” He give a big sweep of his arm that could have took in the whole world.

“Now we are faced with a grim and somber decision. Will we tear asunder that which we have struggled to form? We might. But must we rush forward with ruinous and indecent haste? Mr. Woodfin will no doubt tell you that we must act now. To hesitate would cause the states that have cast their lot in with that of South Carolina to think badly of us, to think us a rider of the fence. I have heard this argument time and time again.” Vance looked at Woodfin for a long time, and I can tell you that I would not have wanted him to fix me with that kind of gaze. When he looked back at us his eyes was shiny bright. “I am convinced that this is a decision that must be made by
the people. Good, God-fearing, everyday people like you. This decision
cannot, should not
be made for you by politicians! The leaders in the disunion move are scorning every suggestion of compromise and rushing forward with such speed that it appears that they are absolute fools. Yet don’t you be deceived. They are rushing the people into a revolution without giving them time to think. They fear lest the people shall think!”

“Damn them what wants to bust up this country, Zeb!” one man hollered.

And they was a bunch of men that hollered
amen
to that. But they was just as many that stood there with their arms crossed and did not say one single solitary word. It was hearing that big silence that caused the first little ripple of fear to run through me. Zeke had come to stand next to me and I reached out and linked my arm through his. He was as stiff as a board and I knew that he was afraid, too. That was the first of many times that I would know he was afraid, but it did not make me love him any less. It made me love him more.

Vance raised his hands patting the air.

“I understand your anger. But, again, I remind you of the need to proceed through these perilous times with caution. We can’t afford to rush in the other direction either. The people must think, and when they are given the time they will begin to think and hear the matter properly discussed.” He pointed a long finger at us. “Then and only then will we be able to consider long and soberly before we tear down this noble fabric and invite carnage, civil war, financial ruin, and anarchy. I beg you to think, think, my friends. I implore you to think! Neighbors, we have everything to gain and nothing on earth to lose by delay, but by too hasty action we may take a fatal step that we never can retrace. We may lose a heritage that we can never recover,
though we seek it earnestly and with tears.” He brought up his hand and pointed a finger straight up at the sky.

I was so caught up in listening to him talk that I did not even see that white-suited Woodfin had climbed on the stage with him until he was close enough to lay his hand on Vance’s arm. I even know what he said to him though his voice was low and gruff. He said, “I am so sorry, Zeb.” I believe he meant it, too, because you could see it in his eyes. But when he faced us the sorry was gone and his eyes was hot as fire.

“My fine friends and neighbors, I have just received word that South Carolina has fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln has called for seventy-five thousand volunteers.”

And that big crowd that had been so quiet just went to blowing up all around me. Everybody was hollering and cussing, but I was standing there numb as a stump. Vance stood right where he’d been and looked right foolish because he still had his finger pointing and I watched him bring it down to shake the hand Woodfin was offering him. I heard years later that Vance said he raised his hand that day a unionist and brought it down a secessionist. He really did just that. Hell, if you had said them words to me on that day I would have looked at you as dumb as a cow. I would not have knowed what either one of them meant. But, oh, you can believe I know what they both mean now.

Woodfin stepped down off the stage and men literally swarmed around and about him and he was quick swallowed up and gone. I done something then that I look back on today and shake my head about. Of a sudden I had to talk to that Zeb Vance and I had to do it eyeball to eyeball. I pulled my arm loose from Zeke, jerked my skirt up, and rushed that stage, catching him just before he stepped down.

I climbed right up there with him too. “Wait, wait,” I said. “What does this mean for me?”

Now, I have knowed some what I would call men in my time, but when this one looked down at me, I knowed I was looking at a great man. He had looked tired before, but Lord, now he looked absolutely killed. His voice sounded as sad as any sad I have ever heard.

“This means there will be war.”

“But not for us,” I said. “The war won’t come here.”

Oh, how cold his next words left me, even though he was trying to be so kind. “It is here already, madam.” And then he said, “I must apologize and excuse myself. There’s much I need to do.” He was telling the truth about that and he had no way of knowing when he said it how true it would turn out to be. His own troubles was just around the corner—in nineteen days he would be made Confederate captain and would form up his own company and would go marching off to fight. They called themselves the Rough and Ready Guards. He did not know as he stood right there talking to me, Arty Wallin, in Shelton Laurel on that pretty day in April, that he would finish out them long and bloody years far off from his home.

I did not know that I was looking in the face of the man that would be elected governor in a little more than a year. But I would remember him the rest of my life, because in that little minute he opened up a world of worry for me. He handed it to me in a box without a lid and it come swirling up right in my face. Of a sudden I knew in my heart that the war was here as sure as I was a foot high because all around me hollering and cussing was men what was foolish enough to fight in it. Oh, God, and what would Zeke do? He was a good man, a decent man, but a man nonetheless. And good and decent men had a bigger dose of honor than them what was not so good or decent.
I thought I would fall up when I knew that yes, he would go. And Larkin? Oh, what would happen to the first child I had not carried in my body but snugged up tight against my heart? I looked at him standing right there, and though he was big as a skinned mule and living on his own and already bedded a woman, he was still a boy. A million memories crowded into my mind and went to racing back and forth. The time he’d had the whooping cough and couldn’t breathe and I’d sucked the thick snot out of him with my own mouth. The squeals he’d make when he was learning to crawl. How his little face would get all dreamy when he was listening to them old love songs. And in with all them feelings come the words to an old song I hadn’t thought of in years.