My Old True Love (22 page)

I cooked a little extra after that, and every evening Larkin would take it up on the mountain to my brother. And now Larkin had yet another burden to tote around on shoulders that was already plumb loaded down. It is a thousand wonders that that child did not go stark raving mad. But you know, maybe he did a little bit. And truth be told, I reckon it all probably drove Hackley mad, too. He was never one to be by himself and always wanted to be putting on a big show and having him a big time. He was lonesome up there and worried the hell out of Larkin wanting this, that, and the other. Poor old both of them, and me too, while I’m about it. I knowed it and could not tell a soul and I worried about Hack. In the bottom of my heart I knowed he would not stay hid for long. Everything Hackley wanted was just a stone’s throw down the mountain. He said if the wind was blowing just right he could smell the smoke from his own chimney. But at least he was in out of the weather, and I sent all manner of stuff up there to make it more homey for him.

We had so much on our minds that we never give one thought as to what Mary might be thinking about Larkin disappearing for long periods of time. We was too caught up in trying to hide it from her to imagine where her mind might take her. She never so much as wondered that we was hiding Hackley. She just knowed that Larkin was gone a lot more than he used to be, and her mind went right where any woman’s would. She decided all on her own that Larkin had him a sweetheart, and who do you think she imagined it to be? Why, of
course she thought it was Maggie.

She told me years later that she would lay there in her bed pretending to be asleep with all sorts of things going through her head. She said if Julie had not been laying right there beside her, they was no telling what she might of done and sometimes she just had to make herself keep from getting up and crossing that floor and laying down on the floor next to him. And one of the reasons she did not do this was because she thought he would have turned from her.

Now that was something that would never have happened. As bad as I hate to admit it, Larkin would have shucked Hackley’s corn so quick it would’ve make your head spin, if only he’d knowed it could have been his for the shucking.

O
NE EVENING IN
M
ARCH
me and the young’uns went over to Mary’s and she fixed supper for all us. Larkin and Julie was both good hands at riddling and my Carolina was right in there with them. It felt good to be out of the house and I was laughing and carrying on too. It took me awhile to notice that Mary was looking at Larkin more often than not. Her eyes would sort of light on him and then go sliding off somewheres else. Then I caught her studying his hands with her whole heart in her face for all to see, and I thought to myself,
Oh, no.
For a woman that goes to studying a man’s hands is thinking where she’d like for him to put them, and that is the gospel truth if it was ever told.

Right before we eat Mary got real snappish with Julie, which is no wonderment when you understand that there was a real easiness that had sprung up between her and Larkin. Mary straightened from the hearth where she’d just swung the great iron pot back over the fire, and I could tell by her tone that she was aggravated.

“Git the plates out, Julie. Larkin, strain the milk. I’m tired to the bone of having to do everything.”

They was a look flew between Julie and Larkin that let me know this was no new thing. Julie hitched a little shrug and went to the sideboard for plates.

Larkin said in a real easy voice, “I strained the milk, Mary, and already carried it to the spring house ’cept for the crock over yonder that I left out for buttermilk.”

Mary bent over the stewpot then, and I could tell she was already sorry for being so hateful. “Reckon I’m just tired of cold weather. Tired of eating the same thing night and day. I’m so sick of cornbread I could just spit!” She bunched up a handful of apron to lift the Dutch oven and carried it to the table.

Larkin smiled and his black eyes just danced over her. “This here is some of the best cornbread in the country.”

She glanced at him, then shot a look at me, and her eyes was plumb naked.

That was a long supper. I set there the whole time watching her watch him and Julie watching them and it was just a mess, I’m telling you. I was wore to a frazzle when we left.

I reckon things would’ve still been all right if Lucindy hadn’t sent for Julie a few weeks later. Andy was home with the bad dysentery and Julie had to go help take care of him. Mary come by the house and told me that Larkin was going to stay on. I made ready to tell her what I thought about that, but before I could get a single word out she said, “Now, don’t start, Arty Wallin. I have already had it out with Julie and I ain’t in no mood to get into it with you, too.” I just looked at her. This was the first time Mary had straightened that little back at me, but I was not about to let that slow me down. “Well, you’re
going to have to hear me out anyways,” I said. And she said right back, “I will tell you what I told Julie, then, and save you the breath.” So I just held onto my tongue and heard
her
out.

She said they was out on the porch right before Julie left and they’d sort of got into it when Mary told Julie that Larkin was going to stay. Julie had grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t do nothing foolish, sister,” she said, “as you will live to regret it.” As I say, they was no flies on that girl. Mary looked me right in the eyes then. “I have already done it in my heart a thousand times, Arty,” she said. “In your heart is not the same as in the flesh, Mary,” I said. She turned beet red but raised that chin at me. “He will stay,” she said, and I answered her right back, “Then God help you, for you will need it.”

And right then I figured God might not watch them two near close enough, so I appointed myself the guardian of them both and that was a very tiresome job.

N
OT LONG AFTER THAT
Hackley finally begged Larkin into bringing him his fiddle. I figure Larkin thought that would keep Hackley on that mountain, as he was in a constant state of threatening to come down. It did seem to pacify Hack for a while.

S
O THAT IS HOW
we passed the rest of the cold weather, and then came the greening up of spring. And the sap began to rise, if you know what I mean, and I was in and out of Mary’s house or sending my young’uns by just every little whipstitch. I went at different times so they never knew when I was coming.

Mary come by the house one afternoon with her eyes big and round and a flush on her cheeks, and I thought I had not done my job well enough. But I put that thought to rest when she said, “Arty, let
me tell you that I think I heard Hackley’s fiddle when I was out in the yard today.” My heart was in my mouth. I knowed exactly what had happened but could not say a word to her; I had promised Larkin I would not, and I was one to keep my promises. “Now, it could have been anybody, Mary,” I said in as normal a voice as I could muster. She looked at me like I had gone lame in the head. “Why, it were the tune ‘Elzig’s Farewell,’ Arty. Do you not think I would know his hands?” And I said to myself,
I reckon you would, honey.
But what I said to her was “Well, then, you should not be out traipsing around in the woods. You should tell Larkin.”

And she hied out of there allowing she would do just that.

I studied and studied about all that until well after dark. I knowed there would be no sleep for me, as I had managed to work myself up into a state. I was resolved now that she should know that it was Hackley she’d heard and be damned the consequences. After Pearl went to sleep, I told Abigail I was going to Mary’s and lit out.

And so it was that I caught them.

I was not thinking of anything like that romance business when I went across the porch and pushed on through the door. I reckon in normal times I would have howdied the house, but, like I said, I was not thinking. So I can only imagine what went through their minds when they finally come to know I was standing there in the room with them. I will not embarrass you with the details. But suffice to say I saw way more than a body should see concerning the private actions between a man and woman. You could have cut the air with a dull knife when we was all standing there looking at each other. Finally Larkin said, “Amma, we was just talking about Mary thinking she’d heard Hackley playing the fiddle today.” And I said, “Larkin, what you was doing was not talking,” and he shut his mouth. Then
Mary’s chin come up and mine come out and before she could say a word that would cause hard feelings between us, I said, “Get your coat, Mary. We’re going up on the mountain and you’ll be there all night.”

I did not even look at Larkin. He’d had all the say about this I was going to let him have.

N
OW WE HAD SOME
big troubles, because Mary was not the only one that had heard Hackley playing his damned fiddle, and they was folks there that was not lovers of our people. We hid him in the root cellar under the house that Larkin had dug out months ago. But after the Home Guard set fire to Granny Nance Franklin’s house and it burned down on top of her three boys, we moved him out from under there. She was another one that lost every last one of her boys in that damn war, but that did not stop her from leading a Yankee charge against some Rebs one time. She was so wadded up in it that she screamed out, “Raise your fire, boys, you’re hitting them in the heels.”

We spent the better part of a rainy day cutting our way back into a laurel hell on the backside of Picked Shirt Mountain. That’s where Hackley got to live now, and though he commenced to whining and taking on, I told him he could just dry it up. This was the best we could do right now and he might as well hurry and come of it. There would be no more foolishness now that Arty Wallin was in charge. I took the damn fiddle home with me.

But I had the awfulest feeling that seeds had been sowed and I knowed we always got to reap what we sowed, even if the harvest proved bitter.

I
T WAS THE FIRST
of June when I caught Mary hanging onto the porch railing waiting for the dizziness to leave her. I had suspected it and now I knew. “How long have you been breeding, honey,” I said, and she said she was three weeks past her bleeding time. She must’ve thought she seen something in my face that was not there, because she said then, “It is nobody else’s but your brother’s child, Arty.” I looked at her with my kindest face on. “I would never have thought anything else,” I said, “and I would dare anybody to say different.” “Have you told him?” I asked. “No, I have not yet, but I will as soon as he gets back to the house,” she said, and then she leaned over and throwed up. I helped her back in the house and she stretched out on the bed.

It hit me as I was going home that she had meant Larkin.

W
ELL,
L
ARKIN ALREADY KNEW
. He’d seen me too many times not to recognize the early shine that came from the inside-out of a breeding woman. He told me later that he’d watched with a jealous heart her holding her secret close. She went about fairly skipping through those early weeks. He’d seen her lay her hand on her belly and the look that took hold of her when she did it. He’d been short and hateful with her and then immediately sorry. He couldn’t stand the thought that he might have hurt her. But it was him that was hurt when he realized that his words hadn’t even reached her at all. She’d never even noticed them, just as she never seemed to notice him any more.

I
T WAS WHEN HE’D
taken the June apples I’d poked up for Hackley that they got into it.

It had rained for a solid week, and Hack was grumpy and mean
as a copperhead. Larkin had stuck around trying to cheer him up, and the talk got around to where it always wound up. Hackley wanted to see Mary as he had not seen her since she’d sneaked up there to tell him she was in the family way. Larkin said he was trying to be patient and had reminded him that he could not bring her up there again and that he could not come off the mountain since the Home Guard
was all over the place now. That was when Hackley shot him this little look. “What was that look about?” Larkin said. “What look?” Hackley said, and Larkin said he knowed the answer before he asked. “Have you been off the mountain?” “Once’t or twice’t,” he said and then, “Well, I didn’t get caught.” Larkin said he flew mad as hell and could barely talk. “Jesus, Hackley. Where did you go? Did anybody see you?” And Hackley could not keep the bragging from his voice: “A week ago I really made the rounds. I stopped in and saw Corrie. Then on to Dovie’s. I was back here long before any rooster in Sodom crowed. Had me a time. The way they both carried on over me, you could sure tell they was glad to see me.” If that was not enough, he really capped the stack with what he said to Larkin next, and he looked for all the world like a little sulled-up boy when he was saying it. “Didn’t have near as much luck last night when I went to Maggie’s. Somebody was already there.”

“You went to Maggie’s?”

“Yeah. I was really wanting to see her. Couldn’t believe it when I saw the horse.”

Larkin said he hit him the first time before he could catch himself. He said the second time was well planned though, and he knocked Hackley ass over apple cart down the bank.

When I went up later to see about him, Hackley was laughing
about it and said when Larkin hit him, he thought the stars had come out and went to dancing all about in his head. I told him if he ever come off that mountain again, I would turn him in to the Home Guard myself. He studied me for a long time and then said “Oh, you would not do that, sister girly” and I said “Do not try me, brother boyo, for I will do as I say.” He studied me a little while longer and then said, “I need you to find out where Kirk is, as I aim to join up with him as soon as Larkin turns eighteen.” I left there having promised him I would find Kirk if I had to run him to ground myself for he was right. Larkin had to go somewhere and better with the Union than slinking around trying to dodge the Home Guard.

N
OW THERE WAS
a character just made for this fine big war they was having. I had seen him once and had heard all about George Washington Kirk from Mommie’s cousin Davina. Me and him was about the same age, too. He had a long and lanky frame and had a big mustache that drooped over a broad mouth with red lips. He was a good-looking sort of man and might have been called a handsome man, were it not for his eyes.