My Old True Love (27 page)

She’d told me then about Silas, too.

She’d lit a fire that night so the windows would be glowing warm and welcoming in the chill of the early fall evening. He was awfully quiet as they ate supper, and Maggie said his eyes followed her everywhere she went and they were the saddest things she’d ever seen. I wanted to stop her right there and I would have a year ago, but she needed to talk to somebody and I was it. She said when he loved her that night his hands was so gentle that it jerked tears from her eyes. The fire had burned down to just red coals when he’d said the words she’d been dreading to hear fall from his lips for as long as she’d known him. “I’ve got to go home, Maggie.”

And there they was now and she could not say nothing. When she didn’t answer, he rolled his head to look at her. “I’m taking the train out the end of this week.” And all she said was, “Well.”

And that was it. He’d left the next morning and she’d kissed him, held him one last time and let him go. She said there’d been a little moment there on the porch when he’d have stayed if she’d asked. She had seen it in his eyes. But she had not asked him.

I asked her then why and she said she’d known, clear as anything, that if he’d left his wife and family for her, that he’d forever have held the best part of himself back from her. And she wouldn’t have had him that way. So she’d had to turn from him as he’d climbed on his horse, set her back to him as he’d ridden off down the road. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

I have to say that a big flower of respect bloomed in my heart on that day for Maggie. She was a good and decent person for all that she was hotter than a ginger mill. But then I had knowed that for as long as I had knowed her. I had always allowed that she had just never found the right sweetheart. I told her how sad I was that she
had found him only to have to let him go, and she allowed as how it had been her experience that more often than not, life is just that way.

T
HAT NIGHT WE HAD
such a time as it put me in the mind of the way it used to be here around home. When we left the church house we never even broke stride and went right straight to Jim Leake’s and had a great big frolic in the front room of his house. I started off trying to act my age but soon got over that. They was a little bit of time right there at the beginning when Lum and Willis took up their banjo and fiddle that it got real quiet. I knowed every single soul in that place was thinking the same as me, that the best of the lot was not here with us. With my eyes burning like fire I hollered out, “Play a good fast frolic tune for my brother, boys.” That broke things up and they commenced to playing a tune they’d learned off some boys over in Tennessee what was called “The Cumberland Gap,” which is a fine tune with good words which we all took to singing.

Me and my wife and my wife’s pap walked all the way to the

Cumberland Gap.

Cumberland Gap ain’t my home and I’m gonna leave old

Cumberland alone.

I was singing as loud as I could and grinning at Zeke the whole time. A bunch hit the floor dancing for all they was worth, and before I could catch myself and go back to acting my age, I jumped up and was dancing every which way. When that song ended I was winded but thought I had done pretty good for an old married woman and told Zeke as much. All he could do was shake his head at me and allow how I would not do.

Me and him danced the whole livelong night, and my young’uns had themselves a great big time. Pearl played so hard her hair was plastered to her head with sweat, and she was as ill and mean as a copperhead when I finally made her go lay down. I let the biggest ones stay up and was glad I did, because Carolina wound up being the one to sing the song that sent Larkin and Mary down the road to their married bed.

We was all waiting for the musicianers to rest up when Rosa Wallin asked me if I would sing something. Lord, they was no way I could have denied that poor woman a song nor nothing else. She looked like death warmed over ever since Hugh had died, and I felt guilty as sin standing there beside my big pretty man knowing that she’d had to crawl out of her birthing bed to bury hers. I went to running songs through my head trying to figure which one would be the best to sing that would hurt her the least. You have to be careful with these old songs sometimes, for they can reach right in and twist up your heart if you ain’t. Carolina give me just a minute and then whispered to me, “Can I sing one, Mommie?” And I told her to go right ahead and I was thankful for the chance to figure which to sing. But I needn’t have bothered. That young’un stepped right out and sung exactly what needed to be sung. It were not too much but it were just enough.

The heart is the fortune of all womankind.

They’re always controlled and they’re always confined—

Controlled by their parents until they are wives

Then bound to their husbands for the rest of their lives.

I am a poor girl and my fortune is sad,

I’ve a long time been courted by the wagoner’s lad.

He courted me truly by night and by day

And now he is loaded and driving away.

“Your parents don’t like me because I am poor,

They say I’m not worthy to enter your door.

I work for my money, my money’s my own,

And folks that don’t like me they can leave me alone.”

“Go stable your horses and feed them some hay,

Come and sit down beside me for as long as you can stay.”

“My horses ain’t hungry, they won’t eat your hay,

So fare-thee-well, darling, I’ll be on my way.”

“Your horse is to saddle, your wagon to grease,

Come sit you down by me before you must leave.”

“My horse it is saddled, my whip’s in my hand,

So fare-thee-well, darling, I can no longer stand.”

“I can love little or I can love long,

I can love an old sweetheart till a new one comes ’long.

I can hug and can kiss them and prove to them kind,

I can turn my back on them and also my mind.”

I’ll go to yon mountain the mountain so high,

Where the wild birds can see me as they pass me by,

Where the wild birds can see me and hear my sad song,

For I am a poor girl and my lover has gone.

When she finished it was like everybody in that room was holding their breath. And then I looked at Zeke, and the tears was just pouring down his face and he did not even try to swipe them and
make like he was not crying for all the world to see. He grabbed her up in his arms, and it hit me then that this was the first time he had heard our girl sing.

Nobody needed to tell me what a lucky woman Arty Wallin was, because she already had a pretty good idea of that herself.

Larkin and Mary made their move to leave just then, and we all follered them out the door hollering and carrying on. I have always wondered about that sort of thing. I mean, why them men feels the need to scream out instructions is just beyond me. And some of the women is just as bad. And it was not as if Mary or Larkin either one needed instructing, if you know what I mean. But anyway, out onto the porch we went with everybody hollering the same-old same-old, and then somebody hollered that it was snowing and I crowded right up next to the front. Oh, how I loved the snow, and it were really coming down, too. The ground just barely had a little skift on it, but great big fat flakes was coming down offering us the promise of a big snow if it kept up till morning. Just then two of Edmund Chandler’s big boys come toting a big sack between them and I could not believe it when they opened the door and throwed that sack right into the middle of the room. Now I am here to tell you that sack was packed full of possums, and they come out of that sack and went every which way. I have never laughed as much in my life as we spent the rest of the night collecting possums off the beams and out from behind stuff, and everywhere else you can just imagine. Boys is something else, ain’t they?

While we was possum gathering, me and Maggie hung together and talked. She pulled a letter out of her sleeve and told me to read it. It was from Silas, and when I read the part that said his wife had
died of a fever of some kind I looked up at her. I want you to know they was nothing in her face but sorrow. “In all my wishing I did not wish this, Arty,” she said, and I know she was telling me the truth. I looked her right in the eye and said, “Maggie, honey, they will not let me or you neither one be in charge of things even for a minute, so it does not matter what we wish.” I went back to reading and found that he aimed to come for her as soon as a decent time had passed. “What will you do, Maggie?” I said. And she said, “Why, I’ll go raise our young’uns.” And you know, that is just what she done. She turned out quite the lady down there in South Carolina.

Me and Zeke walked out for home just as it was getting daylight, and all our young’uns was stumbling along with us looking like sleepy chickens. Zeke was carrying Pearl, and seeing the two of them together looking just like each other made my heart swell near to busting.

As we come by Mary’s little cabin it was closed up tight without so much as a candle lighting the window. It looked so pretty in the snow and my face got all warm when I went to thinking about what was going on just on the other side of them walls. I hoped for Larkin’s sake it had been well worth the wait. My gut told me it probably had been.

When we got home I put Pearl in the bed with Abigail and Carolina, and the boys went up in the loft. Soon they was all sound asleep and me and Zeke laid there talking about this, that, and the other. That was the best thing in the world to me. During the damn war, I had learned the hard lesson that is to take nothing for granted in this world.

I got right playful then and asked Zeke what he thought Larkin and Mary were doing right now, and he looked at me like I was a
crazy woman. “Why, what do you think they’re doing, Arty?” And I could not help it, I just busted out laughing.

But I did not laugh too long, as just about then was when he showed me just what they might be doing. And all I have to say about that is, Lordy, I hope they was.

T
HERE AT THE FIRST,
they was no two that was any happier than Larkin and Mary, and that’s a fact. I can still see in my mind’s eye how he looked when he come by the house and told me that they was pretty certain Mary was in the family way. I mean that man was plumb tickled to death. But when I said, “Well, now, son, you’ll be a daddy,” he looked at me all funny and said quick as a snake, “I’m already a daddy, Amma.” I knowed exactly what he meant by that and knowed too just how he felt. So I held my tongue and did not say what everybody had said to me when I was carrying my own. I knowed he loved Hack Jr. like he would his own and nobody could ever tell him any different. In my way of figuring Larkin was my firstborn. I was always ready to fight anybody that allowed he was not.

As them months come and went, Mary hardly had to lift a hand to do a single thing. Larkin was like a winding blade and would fuss and carry on if she even so much as done work in her garden. She was pretty sick, though. I went by there right after my April was born and she was out on the porch throwing up. I done my best to tell her that some women was sick the whole time they was breeding, and
that she was not to worry. I reckon most women cannot be like Arty and pop them out with little or no effort. April was born in about an hour, and I guess that is just as well since I aimed to call her April and if she’d waited one more hour she’d have come in May, so I was in sort of a hurry. And when I saw April’s little red head, I was pleased as could be. She was the picture of her sister Ingabo and that was somehow fitting.

That summer was such a good time for all of us, I reckon. Me and Zeke got along really good, even though they was some getting used to each other again. It took me awhile to settle back into him being around all the time. I was used to doing everything for myself and had got right bullheaded. I was not as agreeable about things as I once was. Bless Zeke for having the patience of Job and letting me keep on being the person I had become. That is hard for some men, you understand. They was lots of women what had trouble with their men that first year. I think if Zeke had been like most, we would not have stayed together. Arty had done come around the fence during that damn war, and they was no way on earth she could have gone back to yes-siring all the livelong day and night.

M
E AND
M
ARY WAS
setting on the porch one evening late in the summer watching the lightning bugs come up all around us. They is nothing on God’s green earth to beat that. I feel sorry for folks that has never had the chance to set on the porch and watch that little miracle happen. A warm breeze was blowing and the young’uns was out catching bugs and putting them in a jar. Is that not a wonderful thing to spend your time doing?

Mary had gone all soft-eyed watching me nurse April and allowed that she could hardly wait for her own to be out in the world with
us. I laughed and said she’d better be for enjoying the rest while she could. Then Larkin started to sing down at the barn, and we just set there and listened. Lord, what a voice that man had, and it jerked the chillbumps out on me big as goose eggs. “What’s that song?” Mary asked me and I said “ ‘Pretty Fair Miss,’ honey,” and I shushed the young’uns just to hear it better.

Said a pretty fair miss all in her garden and a handsome young soldier come a-riding by,

Said, “Could I impose on a fair young maiden and ask her for my bride to be?”

Said, “Handsome young soldier standing by the gateway, a man of honor you may be.

How could you impose on a fair young maiden who never intends your bride to be?”

Said, “I’ve got a true love-yer that gone to the army and he’s been gone for seven years long.

And if he stays gone seven years longer, no man on earth could marry me.”

“Prayhaps your love-yer drownded in the ocean, prayhaps he’s on some battlefield slain,

Prayhaps he’s taken another girl and married, his face you’ll never see again.”