My Old True Love (16 page)

That was some of the biggest cane I’ve ever seen. It was just full of juice and I was sticky all over with it on the day we cut. That was a good day. Mary looked after all the young’uns, and me, Larkin, Julie, Hackley, Abigail, John Wesley, and Carolina had a big time. I got to telling tales about Granny and we laughed. Daddy showed up about quitting time and we deviled him about coming right when the work was all done. He helped us carry it to the barn and as we was stacking it, he asked Hackley if he knowed how to witch the boilers like Granny used to. She used to have the biggest ’lassie boilings ever
was and to my knowledge never lost a single run to scorching, which is an amazement. Daddy used to tell it was because she cast some sort of spell. Everybody in Sodom would come toting every pot and jug they had. One year the color of every run looked like spun gold and it was just as thick. Now them was some of the best I ever put in my mouth.

They was a big crowd that showed up that year too.

That first morning I’d gotten there before the sun was up and Larkin was just hooking old Dock up to the grinder pole. I patted him on the nose and remembered how I used to ride his back turned around so I could talk to Pap while he plowed. Lord, them was the good old days. I wondered if mules had memories and if old Dock missed Granny as much as I did.

“You’ll walk twenty miles today, Dock,” I said, “even if it is just round and round in a big circle.”

“It’ll be good for him,” Larkin grinned as he give one last tug on the cinch under his belly. “He don’t do nothing all the day long but pick.”

Daddy was setting out on the chopping block with all my young’uns gathered around him. He had his pocketknife out and was cutting them off some sopping sticks and they was all standing around big-eyed, waiting. He was laughing and cutting up with them, saying how these was the best sticks in the world. Years later I took that same knife out of his pocket on the day he fell dead at the milk gap, and it was sharp as a razor. I carried it myself until Zeke Jr. got up big enough to give to because Daddy always said a pocketknife was a thing to use.

Up in the day as we were taking off the first run Carolina got stung by a yellow jacket and carried on like you would not believe. Somebody
was always getting stung, because once the bees found the fermented leavings they would get drunk as hoot owls and would sting you as quick as look at you. I reckon they would fall into that mean drunk category.

It was such a pretty day and by three o’clock it was hot. Larkin stripped off his shirt and he was sure a pretty creature standing there feeding the grinder. I was nursing Pearl, and Mary went over to get a bucket of juice and stood talking to him.

“Ain’t you afraid your back will blister?” she asked him.

And I said, “Why, he ain’t blistered in his life.”

“If I was to stand here five minutes without a shirt, I’d have water blisters as big as your hand.”

Now some women would have said that sort of sly-like, trying to get attention, but Mary said it as easy as she would have said, “I believe it might rain this evening.” One look at Larkin’s face told me that his mind was painting all kinds of pictures.

Julie hollered out wanting to know what she ought to do with the seed heads and Mary said, “Just a minute, I’ve got a sack I’m putting them in.” As she turned the neck of her dress slipped down and for just a thought her round white shoulder popped into view. She went pulling it back up.

Larkin was watching her so hard he forgot to duck as that pole came back around and it give him a pretty good knock on the head. Good enough for him. If I’d been close enough I’d have give him a knock myself. I could not help noticing that Julie made a point of being at the ready each time that bucket needed emptying the rest of that evening.

By the time the night fell, the smell was almost too much for me. It felt like the inside of my mouth had a thick, sweet coat on it, although
I had not helped sop a single boiler. I had sent Abigail on to the house with Ingabo and Sylvaney, both of which had eat so much sweetening they had took to throwing up. Another run had just come to a boil and the women was skimming off the scum when I had finally had enough and eased off with the excuse of feeding Pearl again. She was not really hungry and fell asleep pretty quick. I was dozing a little myself and was not really paying no attention when I heard Julie say to Larkin, “I just get so tired of being Andrew and Lucindy’s other girl. Not the pretty one, the other one.”

I studied about her saying that the rest of the night. I would have hated to have had to go through life that way, longing to be something I could never be. I don’t reckon I was never anything other than just Arty. I vowed right then and there to make it a point to try real hard to never show a preference with my own young’uns. And as you know, that can be hard, for some young’uns is easier to love than others for one reason or another. But I figure life is tough enough to live through as it is.

L
ATER ON THAT MONTH
Mommie and Daddy had a big frolic at their house. We carried every stick of their furniture out and piled it up in a big pile so there would be more room to dance. We danced and danced and it got hot as fire in the house. I went out to catch my breath and while I was standing there I looked back through the open door. We had danced so hard that we’d kicked up a layer of dust that was level with everybody’s knees. It looked like they was all floating on a cloud and I was full struck by it.

As was the custom when Hackley and them got tired of playing, we all set into singing the old songs. Them was such good times when we’d be ganged up and all of us would sing. I can still recall the thrill
I’d get when I would hear somebody sing something I did not know. That night Rosa Wallin sung the prettiest version I would ever hear of “The Little Farmer Boy.”

“Well met, well met, my own true love,
Well met, well met,” cried he,
“For I’ve lately returned from the saltwater sea
And it’s all for the love of thee.”

That song has got Zeke’s favorite verse of any song in it and it goes like this:

“Oh, take me back,
oh, take me back Oh, take me back,” cried she,
“For I’m too young and lovely by far
To rot in the saltwater sea.”

Seeing as how she’d traipsed off and left her little babe setting in the floor, I can only say, Whatever did she think? She got no more than what she richly deserved.

I had seen Larkin and Carolina with their two black heads together right before we started singing but had no idea of the surprise they was cooking up for me. My mouth hung open like a gate when she stood up right in front of everybody and allowed that she wanted to sing. When she shut her eyes and started, I could not believe the sweet sound that come from her mouth. My girl sung “My Dearest Dear” just like it was meant to be sung and even throwed in a verse she would have had to learn from Hackley since I had never heard nobody but him sing it.

Oh my old mother’s hard to leave, my father’s on my mind,

But for your sake I’ll go with you and leave them all behind.

But for your sake I’ll go with you, I’ll bid them fare-thee-well

For fear I’ll ne’er see you no more while here on earth we dwell.

Folks made such a do about her singing that her and Larkin sung a back-and-forth and it were one of the sweetest things in this world. Larkin started it out.

I’ll give to you a paper of pins and that’s the way our love begins

If you will marry me, me, me, if you will marry me.

I won’t accept your paper of pins if that’s the way our love begins

And I’ll not marry you, you, you, and I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a dress of red skipped all ’round with a golden thread

If you will marry me, me, me, if you will marry me.

I won’t accept your dress of red skipped ’round with a golden thread

And I’ll not marry you, you, you, and I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a dress of green and you’ll be dressed fit as a queen

If you will marry me, me, me, if you will marry me.

I won’t accept your dress of green for I don’t care to dress fit like a queen

And I’ll not marry you, you, you, and I’ll not marry you.

I’ll give to you a key to my desk and you can have money at your request

If you will marry me, me, me, if you will marry me.

If you’ll give to me a key to your desk and I can have money at my request

Then I shall marry you, you, you, then I shall marry you.

Oh, I’ll take back the key to my desk and you can’t have money at your request

And I’ll not marry you, you, you, no I won’t marry you.

They about tore the house down over that one and I could not help it, I started to bawl like a baby. I cried because I was proud of her and because I would have give anything in this world if her daddy had been there to hear it. The saddest part was I did not know if he would
ever
get to hear her and that was almost more than my heart could stand.

When I went outside later I realized it was the night of the hunter’s moon. My mind flew back to this time last year. I was not the only one remembering. Larkin was out in that strange light standing with his arms out in front of him and I knew in his heart he was holding Granny as she’d breathed her last.

God bless her sweet soul. I hope they’re having a frolic wherever she is.

B
EYOND THE MOUNTAINS, THE
beast of war was literally roaring. We was starting to hear it too. We read in the paper how Tennessee had barely scraped up enough votes to secede. But right over the line in the eastern part, the vote had been two-to-one to stay in the Union. When the Confederacy moved troops over there, they really stirred up a hornets’ nest. I can understand it, because most of them saw that as nothing more or less than that they was being invaded. And that pot that had been just sort of simmering boiled
plumb over.

Mommie got a letter from her cousin Davina over in Greeneville that said her husband Ross had fell in with a gang that had meant to burn all the railroads that the Rebels controlled. It didn’t work out but the Confederates come through anyways and arrested a bunch of men. They tried them and hung every one of them. Davina wrote and these are her words: “They’s mor sojers than you can shak a stik at. We aim to mov frum here Nance. We air cumin home.” And it was not long before an absolute flood of people come pouring over the border into Madison County. Among them that crossed over was one John Kirk and one David Fry. John Kirk was the brother of the as yet unheard of George Washington Kirk, and David Fry was the ringleader of them would-be bridge burners. None of them was famous when they first come but, oh, they would be soon enough. It was not long at all till word was going around that they was recruiting for the Union army.

Finally the letters started to roll into Sodom, and in January Daisy got one from Big John. He had hooked up with some like-minded men from over in Mitchell and Yancey Counties, and they had made their way north to Kentucky. He was with the Union army up in the Cumberland Gap. “I’ll not mak it hom in tim to plow,” he wrote. “Tell Larkin I said to hep you.”

Do you know what a happy woman I was when my Zeke’s letter come through? I had not knowed where he was or if he’d been killed or nothing for the longest seven months that had ever rolled over my head. I had tried and tried to go along, but Lord, it had been an ever present pure-D torment not knowing where he was or if he’d made it through, but praise be, make it he had. Him and Hugh was also in the Cumberland Gap and he mentioned nothing about no fighting up
there, though he did send me twenty dollars. He only talked about how pretty it was and that if he stood just in the right spot, he believed he could see plumb to North Carolina. He was homesick and I could tell it. I was Zeke-sick and he closed his letter out with this and these are his own words: “May God bless and keep you my dear wife and if we never meet any mur on urth Arty let us so live that we may meet abuv.”

I cried the whole time I was writing him back but I did not let on to him. I did say to him that we now had a precious Pearl.

Andrew, Andy, and Shadrack were in and out of Sodom so much you’d have thought they was swinging doors set up down at the forks of the road. They called themselves the Madison Rangers, a Confederate company raised up by Lawrence Allen who was the clerk of court over in Marshall. Now reckon who comes up with the names for these outfits and why did all of them sound so high and fancy?

And you could not have blowed Hackley off his fence with a keg of dynamite.

L
ORD HAVE MERCY,
I thought that winter was just going to go on forever. It was cold and snowy right up through the middle of April. When it finally thawed out enough to plow, us women had to go it alone. There was just not enough of Larkin, Fee, and Hackley to go around, although I will say Hackley tried to be
everywhere
at once, if you know what I mean. I had never plowed in my life and to tell you the truth had thought myself to be above it, but by Ned and God I did come of it. But that was not the worst of it. I had to drag the ground with the spiked harrow to bust up the big clods and then come the scrubbing with the big log. Every night it seemed like something else pained me to the point of distraction. Except for my arms.

For that first three weeks or so they
always
felt like they was being jerked out of their sockets. After that though they quit hurting, and I swear I was strong as most men. Though I had never been soft-bodied like a lot of women, now I was lean and did not have one bit of fat on me. I want you to know it was with the most satisfaction and no small amount of pride I carried in my heart as I walked through them fields and seen the first shoots of corn and wheat coming up.

When it first started to rain I was so thankful, but after a week my heart went heavy as a rock. Day after day it poured and my spirits sunk even more as I watched the water run and run and keep running. I swear the fields seemed to just melt right before my eyes. It looked like a river of mud coming down the road out from the house and all my seedlings looked like merry little green boats as they went bobbing by.