My Old True Love (13 page)

“The warfare is a-ragin’ and Johnny you must fight.
I want to be with you from morning to night.
I want to be with you, that grieves my heart so.
Won’t you let me go with you?” Oh, no, my love, no.”

“Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny, I think it’s you’re unkind
When I love you much better than all other mankind.
I’ll roach back my hair and men’s clothing I’ll put on
And I’ll act as your servant as you go marching along.

“I’ll go to your general and get down upon my knees,
Five hundred bright guineas I’ll give for your release.
” “When you’re standing on the picket some cold winter day
Them red rosy cheeks, love, will all fade away.”

As for what happened next, I can only say God bless my brother Hackley, because right then he give an ear-splitting whoop and a holler and said, “Well, would you looky here if it ain’t Willis and
Columbus.” I knowed right then that we was in for some fine music, seeing as how them brothers could play banjo and fiddle like nobody’s business.

You might wonder why I did not think of Hackley having to go off to the war, but you should not. If you had known him then, you would have knowed too that the very thought of him in a war with people bossing him around would have made you laugh your head off. My brother was not the sort to give much thought to something that was not right in front of him unless it was in a jug or wearing a dress. Oh, do not get me wrong; Hackley had to come of it. Just not on this night. For him this was just one more excuse for a big frolic.

I went to dancing like a fool the minute they swung up in a tune, and if I had not been in the family way, I would have got as drunk as one too. I could not drink one drop when I was that way because it made me have the heartburn so bad. But they was lots of drinking being done. Hackley was as happy with it as I would ever see him. He always loved that mix of Sol’s liquor and playing the fiddle. And when you throwed him in with other musicianers like Lum—which is what they all called Columbus—and Willis, you could figure that one tune would follow another, and you could dance all night if your feet and legs could stand it. Between them boys they probably knowed every fiddle tune they was to know.

There are many other things I recall about that one night. It is funny how our mind works that-a-way. For that night I can remember the exact words people said or the clothes they had on and now I can’t remember something that somebody said to me just last week. Hackley’s face was red and his eyes was so bright they looked like they could burn you. And I remember him laughing and saying, “Why, iffen I’d have knowed how the whiskey flowed at these speech
makins and such I reckon I’d have took to politicking a long time ago. I might just run for sheriff.” Bless his heart. He didn’t have much time left to him and would never live to vote for a sheriff, let alone run for one.

I had to quit dancing for a bit while I made the young’uns lay down. They all went to sleep pretty quick except for Carolina. I knowed she was up and gone before my back was good and turned. That girl has always told me what she figured I wanted to hear and then done what she wanted to start with. I reckon there has to be one that we pay for our raising with, and that would be Carolina for me. I guess I was Mommie’s, although I cannot for the like of me figure out what it was my poor little Mommie was having to pay for. She was always such a good thing.

I can still see how it looked as I was coming back. Things has changed so much from what they used to be. Everybody’s wagon was now their bedroom and you could hear all sorts of things. Some things I might not ought to have heard right out in the open that way, but I must say I took my time and meandered along trying to determine who was in what wagon. By the time I got back to that little stage a right smart of time had gone by. They was a great big fire that had been built up against the cool of the spring evening, and you could see folks standing black against the orange light. The musicianers was up on the little stage that Vance had talked from and Hackley looked like some kind of haint. I just had to stand there and look at him for a minute. His hair had flopped down over his forehead and he was bowing that fiddle like he meant to saw it in two. He was lost in that music making.

Larkin was not hard to find. He was so much taller than everybody else that he stood right out. And I could tell he was talking to
Mary because her hair was all aglow from the fire. Before I got to them she’d turned away. I went to stand beside him. He slid his arm around me and give me a side-armed hug. His breath smelled pretty strong with liquor. I asked him if he was drunk and he said, “Not near enough.” And about that time here come Maggie. Me and her talked for a minute, but I could tell she was after Larkin so I just kept talking and talking and she kept raising her eyebrows and giving me these little nods in Larkin’s direction. I kept letting on like I didn’t know what she was wanting, and she got to the point where her eyes were just about rolling around in her head. So I took pity on her and said, “Oh, there’s Zeke. I need to talk to him,” and left her and Larkin standing there together. But I didn’t go far enough that I didn’t hear every word and see everything that happened.

Larkin had his eyes closed and was patting his leg in time to the music.

“Howdy, Larkin,” she said, and I wished you could have heard how her voice sounded. Our Maggie could really be something when she set her head to it.

But Larkin had learned a thing or three and said right back to her in a voice
I
had certainly never heard him use on me, “Howdy, Miss Maggie.”

“What are you grinning about?” she said as she walked right up in his face as bold as you please.

“Me to know and you to find out.”

I couldn’t help it. I eased over a little closer where I could see, and I want you to know I blushed plumb to the roots of my hair when I saw the way she was looking him up and down, letting her eyes stare at certain parts which were much easier to see now than they was when he was talking to his Amma just a minute ago. “I love how I
keep getting reminded what a pretty boy you are, Larkin Stanton.”

“You don’t have to forget it, honey. My door is always open to you and you know that.” They was not a thing in his voice that would make you think he was anything other than a man grown, and I finally got it through my thick head that they was things about Larkin that I did not know. And that they was things I did not need to know. I made to leave just as she leaned up close against him and whispered something in his ear. I was still close enough to hear what he said back to her.

“Right here in front of God and everybody?” I knew as sure as the world what they was talking about and, with a face as red as that fire, I swear to you I was trying to get my big nosy self out of their way, when all of a sudden there was Hackley standing right next to them. I wished I had just gone on about my rat killing and not heard or saw nothing because this is one time that I would have been better off not knowing. I was friends with both of them women, and I put myself right smack between the devil and the deep blue sea. I had not noticed nor had Maggie and Larkin that the music had stopped. But it had and when they turned toward the woods, there stood my brother with a great big sloppy grin on his face.

“Why, looky here. Two of my favorite folks passing the time of day,” he said. And though his words was light and teasing like, his tone was not. They was an edge to his voice that made me think,
Oh, no, Hackley is drunk and wanting to fight.
I stepped right up close then because I meant to put myself between them if I had to. One look at Maggie’s face told me she was not missing a thing and was pleased as could be about what was happening and I silently cursed her for this.

“Why, Hackley Norton, if I did not know you was a happy married man,
I might think you was flirting with me.”

My brother got right up in her face like me and Larkin was not even there and said, “Being married does not mean I died, nor has it caused me to go blind neither. And you do look mighty good, Maggie.”

I could not help it. I said his name and I know my voice had to have sounded my dismay to both of them. “Damn it, Hackley Norton, do not even think of doing such a thing.”

Him and Maggie barely glanced at me and both of them might as well have said out loud, “You shut your mouth, Arty.” Neither one of them give me or Larkin another thought, and they was no way to tell who was leading who toward the woods. It looked to me like they was racing.

Though you might think I am lying, I am not when I tell you that my very first thought was of Mary. I looked around trying to see where she was. I guess I would have wanted somebody to do the same for me, unless they was planning on telling me about it, which I already knew I would not do. For just a minute I forgot it was not just my secret to keep. But one look at Larkin’s face cured me of that. He was mad as fire, they was no doubt about that, but there was another look about him too, and as you have probably figured I am not one for the big words, but the only one that works here is
triumphant.
His eyes was plumb hot looking, and they was such an awful thing to look at that I had to turn my face from his. And he said, “Damn his soul,” and he slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. And quick-like I said, “Don’t damn nobody’s soul, Larkin.” And he said, “I’ll tell her now, Amma. You just wait and see if I don’t.” And I said, “Oh, honey, you cannot be the one that tells her this thing. She would hate you for the bearing of this.” So once again I was right in the middle of them all.

When people gets old we have at least one or two moments in our lives that we can look back on and say to ourselves,
If I had done thus and such right here, my whole life would have been different.
It might not even look like it would be no big life-changing thing, but it is. Or if we ain’t big thinkers, of which I am sometimes sorry to say I am, then we will say
I wish’t I had
or
I wish’t I’d never have,
and at the end of that you can put just about anything.
I wish’t I had looked the other way
or
I wish’t I’d never have seen his face
or
I wish’t I had been somewhere else that day.
Or
I wish’t somebody would’ve just picked up a rock and knocked my brains out right then.
Or
I wish’t I had turned right around and told Mary right then and let them all go to hell in a handbag.
Well, I wished all them things on that night. But it was a long time later when I wished it the hardest. And that is the worst kind of wishing.

Who should come up to us right then but Mary. I swear, it was like she was put on this earth to try them two boys. The bad thing was that I could not hate her for it, for she did not know. I tell you it even tugged at my heart—and it could be hard as a rock sometimes—to see her standing there holding that pie tin. She held it up to Larkin, and her eyes were great big and held the light from the fire like a looking glass.

“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.

• • •

T
HE 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.