My Old True Love (18 page)

I had never even thought of that. In my heart there bloomed a new respect for Hackley Norton.

“You’ve got my word that I’ll do the best I can,” Larkin said.

“And you’ll take care of yourself, Hack?” I blurted. “Don’t you
be taking no bullets.”

He laughed at me then and seemed more like his old self.

“Hell, Arty. Don’t you worry none about me.” He looked up at Larkin with a big grin. “Course I’ll miss you covering my back. Remember how we used to do that? Fight back to back? Weren’t nobody could whup neither one of us if the other was within hollering distance.”

Oh, how fast the years had passed us by. Of a sudden I could just see them as boys and my heart squeezed up in my chest.

But the moment went by and there he stood cocky as a little banty rooster.

“Anyhow,” he said, “I figure it won’t take me but a little while to get this whole mess straightened out and headed in the right direction.”

And Larkin said something I will never forget. “Since I ain’t going to be there fighting at your back is all the more reason to watch it closer. If you believe what the papers is saying, then both sides is winning. And me and you knows that can’t be right. Somebody’s got to lose. And it won’t be too much longer afore they ain’t no men left around here. All of them’s being sent off to Virginy.”

“Like I said, it’ll get a lot worse through here,” my brother said. He looked me right in the eye. “Take care of things, Arty.” Then at Larkin, “Mind what I asked you to do.”

And then he turned and left us standing there in the path.

We watched him go for a minute and then Larkin hollered out. “Hackley!”

He stopped and turned back to us.

“Sing me something I don’t know.”

Though in the dark shade, I saw the grin that split his face.

Hackley’s voice floated back to us on the breeze, strong at first, but
faded as he went on down the road.

A soldier traveling from the north
While the moon shined bright and clearly,
The lady knew the gentleman’s horse
Because she loved him dearly.

She took the horse by the bridle reins
And led him to the stable.
“They’s hay and oats for your horse, my love
Go feed him, you are able.”

She reached and took him by the hand,
She led him to the table.
“They’s cake and wine for you, my love
Go eat and drink your welcome.”

Hit’s she pulled off her blue silk gown
And laid it across’t the table,
He pulled off his uniform suit
And he hopped in the bed with the lady.

Larkin seemed to be straining to listen as the words became faint and fainter still, and then disappeared altogether. When all we could hear was birdsong and the loud burring of the katydids we turned back towards the cabin and Larkin said real low, “I already know that one.”

I did not answer him for I knowed he was not talking to me.

T
HAT SUMMER WAS HOT
as hell and dry as a bone. It was a constant fight to save our gardens, while the corn patches in the upper fields just withered up and died. We toted bucket after bucket of water from the streams until they dried plumb up. They was not enough water to wash clothes and everybody went nasty and dirty smelling. We couldn’t even wash the dishes, we just wiped them clean and used them again for the next meal. Oh, how I dreaded them white-hot dog days to come that rendered snakes blind and mean. Sores would get all caked up with a yellow scab and would not heal and then would come that red line streaking toward your heart. Dog days—when skunks, coons, bats, and dogs went mad, and the creeks would be standing pools of sickness.

And this year brought the most dreaded of all to us, and that was the fever.

I
SAT AT THE
table watching a wasp bumble across the cabin. It bumped against the ceiling, dove down, and bumped the ceiling again. It slapped its body several times against the walls trying to find a way out. But it found none so it turned and started
the journey back. When I rubbed my eyes it felt like they was full of grit.

Two days ago I’d had to send Abigail, Carolina, Zeke Jr., and my precious Pearl to stay with Mommie when Sylvaney got the headache. Though it was hotter than the hinges of hell, she was saying she was cold. I kept Ingabo at home too because she was warm to the touch. I sent John Wesley to get Larkin and told him to go on to Mommie’s after that. My bosoms felt like they were going to bust wide open, but they was nothing to be done about it. I couldn’t even get my mind to wrap around how Mommie was managing with Pearl. Pearl had a few teeth and had been eating some mashed-up food but was still nursing regular. She would be weaned for sure when this was all over. The steady thwack of an ax outside offered me some comfort even though I had not allowed Larkin any nearer to the house than the edge of the yard. He was bedding in the barn and allowed as how he’d slept in worse places. Just knowing he was here had at least knocked the sharp edges off this hellish fear that had been working inside of me like a bunch of worms. Lord, I was tired. I had been up all night bathing first one girl and then the other. Poor little lambs with their skin so hot I could only wonder as to how they was not being baked from the inside out. Every time my mind tried to go down that dark path of what I already knew deep in my bones, my heart would jump up and say,
No, no, it is not.

I know now that when we really know something we can never not know it. But I was not that way then. I thought that if we believed something hard enough, that we could make it so. When we are young we really believe that all it takes is grit and determination, and it is only with the living of life that we come to wisdom. Well, I say that wisdom is wasted on the old. But maybe not. Mayhap if we knew
how tough life was going to be when we was just starting out, it would prove more than we could stand. Maybe nature runs its course just as it does for a reason. That is not to say I do not ball my fists up and shake them in the face of life even now, and me an old woman. I am still a hardheaded person and will not take nothing laying down. I will stick my chin out and take it right there, thank you very much. But I have learned what I have come to believe is the most important thing and do not fight against it no more. And that is that we cannot change the way a single hair grows in another person’s head. We all have our own row to hoe and nobody can hoe it for us. It is just a heartbreaking thing when somebody we love has such a hard row. But it was right there in that little cabin that I had to learn the hardest lesson of all, which was that some of us are given short rows.

I did not know that I was fixing to get a big dose of life’s seasoning. All I knew to do was fight on, so I did.

That day was so white it hurt my eyes, and I propped my arm on the door facing and put my head in the crook of my elbow. Then such a longing went through me that it made my knees weak, and before I could stop myself I said out loud, “Granny,” and you could never know how bad I wanted to see her dear old face right then. I would have traded my soul for just ten minutes.

Right next to my head the wasp give a final slap against the ceiling and dove out into the bright sunlight. I watched it go until I could no longer see its little dark shape against the faded green of the mountain.

That night Sylvaney set straight up in the bed and cried out, “Mommie,” and the blood just come gushing out of her nose and her fever went sky high. I done everything I knowed to do trying to stop the blood, but it just kept pouring out to where we all three looked
like I had slaughtered a hog right there on the bed. Finally I grabbed the nearest thing which just happened to be the ladle Zeke had carved for me and I snapped the handle off and mashed it as hard as I could against her upper lip. I kept saying over and over, “Granny, don’t let this happen, please,” and finally the blood stopped.

I have the bowl of that ladle on my dresser and oft times I take it up. And though I cannot see it I rub my hands over it and remember what he said to me when he give it to me. “Here, Arty, it is like you, warm to the touch.” So that ladle is like just about everything else in this world that is sweet and bitter at the same time.

Toward morning I stretched out on the bed next to the girls and fell into a deep sleep. I didn’t even hear Larkin when he hollered for me from the yard at dawn. But when I opened my eyes, there he was, quietly stacking firewood in a neat pile. I was so wooly-headed that I didn’t even say nothing to him and he come to stand at the foot of the bed looking at me and the wasted forms of my girls. I saw in his eyes what I could not carry in my heart, and somehow seeing it there helped me to bear it. He come to my side of the bed and said “Amma,” and I said to him, “Git out, git out, Larkin. The girls has got the fever,” and he just shook his head. Before I could stop him he reached over me and picked Sylvaney up in his arms and carried her to the table and started washing the dried blood off her face. Though his hands was gentle as could be she started to fight him and he went to singing to her low and soothing-like.

They’ll be no night in that bright land,
No clouds to blight the sun.
Like little children we shall play
Oh, how we’ll sing and run.

I could not find my tongue to tell him nay.

It was a few days later when the rosy spots bloomed on their scrawny chests and what little doubt I might have held onto was put to rest. I bathed and sung and cried and could not eat a bite. I was running on nothing but pure will and Larkin’s strength. Poor thing. If he made one trip to the spring he made a hundred. He did not say much and I did not have to line out for him a single thing to do. He did whatever he saw needed to be done, even down to taking the blood-and shit-soaked rags out behind the barn to burn.

T
WO WEEKS BLURRED BY
as we battled against that unrelenting foe. One morning before dawn of the third week, Ingabo bled from her guts so bad that the blood went all the way through the corn-shuck mattress and pooled up under the bed. After I changed her I set down and just held her. She died there in my arms and I laid her on the table. I did not even cry. You might wonder at that, but you should not. You see, I did not have time for the dead. I went right back to bathing Sylvaney. Sometimes you have to set grief down and not carry it right then, but do not fret. It will squat right there and wait for you to pick it back up.

Sylvaney went to sleep down in the evening, and I had to get out of that house or take to screaming like a mad person, so I went out on the porch and set down. I heard Larkin come out behind me but he never said nothing.

And then the strangest thing in this world happened to me. In the blink of an eye they was two Artys setting there with Larkin. One was very stout and clear as a bell and able to think even better than usual. The other one was crazy as hell and wanted to jump up and go to running and clawing at her throat because all the pain known to
mankind had balled up and lodged itself there to where she could barely breathe around it. So I said,
You, Arty with the clear head, do this thing, because something must be done with Ingabo, for we cannot leave her long in this heat.
So I opened my mouth and to my amazement I found that this Arty could talk though it come out cracked and brickle.

“Put her in the root cellar.”

He waited for me to say something else and when I didn’t he asked me, “Do you want me to go git somebody?”

It flashed hot as fire through me that somewhere else people was going about their day-to-day and did not have to bury their little red headed girl down in a cold black hole. And them two Artys was one again.

I started shaking all over and could not stop and my mouth opened and the awfullest sound come out, and I began to keen for that little part of me and Zeke that had left from this world.

I did not even know Larkin had moved but of a sudden he was there. He done nothing more than lay his hand on my shoulder and we stayed that way until a near to full moon showed itself above Picked Shirt Mountain. Then we got up together and went back in the house. We stood for a while by the table and then with the gentlest hands ever was, he gathered my baby up and carried her out the door.

Sylvaney died the next day.

They is no way in this world to make losing a child real to folks what has never lost one. You might think you could imagine it, but friend, you cannot. I have lived a long life and I have forgot more than most folks will ever know, but I have never lost a minute of them awful days. And as you know I can lay right in there with the best of
them when it comes to talking and telling tales. But watching them two little girls leave this world and then laying them in the ground done something to me, and I was not the same ever again. From that day on when somebody asked me how many young’uns I had I always said seven living two dead because to have done anything else would have been like they’d never been here a’tall, and I could not stand that. They are your young’uns and they remain so until you are laid in the ground. The wound you tote with you, and though it never closes up, it does get to where it does not feel like you are pouring salt in it. Nature helps you in that way at least.

L
ARKIN AND
D
ADDY HOLLOWED
and charred out a coffin log big enough to hold both girls and we buried them up on the ridge next to Granny. I went half foolish when they started covering them up and Mommie had to hold me up. When I was leaning against her I could feel her flesh trembling, but each time I met her eyes they was as clear and still as a blue pool of water. I stayed until they mounded the dirt over them because I knew I had to. But to tell you the truth I just wanted to jump in the hole with them, and Mommie said to me, “Scream, Arty, scream as loud as you can, if you want to,” and I could not. It was a pitiful little crowd that gathered that day. Just me, Larkin, Mommie and Daddy, Mary, Julie, and Maggie. Larkin had to half carry me back to the house.

It says a lot for Mary and Maggie, I think. They might not have said nothing to each other, but by God them two set all their differences aside and come that day for me. Women are not like men in that way.