My Old True Love (29 page)

And then he’d turn for her.

F
OR THE FIRST TIME
in my life I could not reach him, though it was not for lack of trying. I done everything I knowed to do. I tried being easy with him. I rared and threatened and cussed him. I begged and cried. I even dragged Zeke into it and had him try to talk reason with him. Zeke did not want to do it and I had to beg him to. That was hard for me, as I am not a woman what begs. But Larkin would just hump up like a big log and I might as well been spinning moonbeams for all the good it done. I kept on because I could not stop. I could not stop because I loved him and it seemed like he was dying right before my eyes and by God, I would not have it. I would not.

I
T WAS COLD AS
a witch’s ninny pies that day when Hack Jr. come by the house and said Mary was at her wits’ end. Larkin had not been home for a solid week. I told him to wait and I would get Zeke to go with him to look. I watched them out of sight and then stepped to the edge of the porch to look up at the sky. It had clouded over a heavy frost that morning and the low clouds that had moved in seemed bigged with snow. I hoped they found Larkin and found him quick.

Thank the Lord, they did just that.

They had gone straight to the cave, just as I’d said for them to do. He was up there all right, and had drunk so much he’d passed out deader than a doorknob. Zeke said he was laying out in the weather on top of Buzzard Rock.

When they come carrying him in I started crying. He was so sick we loaded him on the sled and took him to Granny’s old place. They was just no telling what he had, and I could not run the chance of my least ones getting it. He looked rough as a cob and had not washed off nor shaved in way too many a day.

Poor little Mary come by and it took a bunch of fast talking on my part to get her to go back home. She so wanted to help, but I told her for all I knowed he had the fever though I knowed in my heart it was not that old foe. Do not get me wrong, Larkin’s body was as sick as any I’d ever seen and it might very well have been something what could be caught. But the worst of his sick could not have been caught by nobody else, for it was the greater sick of his soul. I knowed that I had to first wrassle his flesh from death’s jaws and then he could at least have a shot at curing himself of the other. And they was something else I knowed though I cannot really tell you how I knowed it. Mary could not help him through this because she was a part of it.

So though she did not want to go, and I hated to let her go with a lie between us, I finally scared her enough to where she went. Oh, Lord, how sorry for her I did feel as I watched her thin little person all humped up against the cold turn down the path towards home.

Then I balled up my two fists and went to fight what I did not know. But by God, that was one battle I aimed to win. I know for a fact he would have died out there on the mountain, because it come the awfulest snow ever was over the next few days.

Hell, Larkin come damn near to dying anyways.

W
HEN HE FINALLY STARTED
to come around, the first thing he said was, “Oh, God, it feels like my eyes is full of broke-up glass,” and then he tried to set up.

“Lay still, Larkin,” I said.

He was so damn weak, and I could tell by how easy-like he swallowed that his throat must be hurting something bad. I put a cold wet cloth on his forehead and he peeped at me through slitted eyes. “Who’s that?” he said, and I was surprised at how hoarse he was.

“It’s Arty,” I said, “and you’ve been sick as I’ve ever seen anybody that didn’t die. And you still might, so lay still.”

“How’d I get here?” he croaked. “God, my throat hurts.”

“When it started to snow, Mary sent Hack Jr. to get Zeke. And it’s a good thing she did, or you’d be dead, boyo.” I leaned over him with the cold rag again. “They’s a foot or more on the ground and it’s still coming down.”

I could see him trying to study about that, but he could not keep his mind on it. I watched him struggle with it, then he dosed back off and for the first time since they’d brought him in, he slept a good sleep.

I was still setting there when he woke up the next time. “Arty?”

“Right here, honey.” I pushed the hair back from his forehead and let my hand stay for a bit. “Good. The fever’s broke.”

“I’m starved to death,” he said.

I had to laugh at that. “No, honey. You
cheated
death as sure as the world. I’ll get you some broth.”

He was so hungry that I had to fuss at him a little. “Not so fast, Larkin. Take it slow.”

When I’d spooned the last drop into his mouth I waved a hand in front of my nose. “I’ll get some water and we’ll clean you up a bit. You’ve smelled like yesterday’s minners for days now.”

He turned his head and looked at me. “Days?”

“You’ve been sick for almost two weeks, Larkin. And you’re weak as cat pee.”

He stared off up at the top of the cabin while I was heating up some water. When I commenced to washing him, his face got red as a beet. “I hate you’re having to do this, Amma.”

I grinned at him and just kept on washing. “That’s the first time you’ve called me that in a long time, honey. And don’t you be bashful. This ain’t the first time I’ve scrubbed you down, and I ain’t gonna see a thing I ain’t seen a hundred times before.”

He was quiet after that and let me wash him and was back asleep before I got halfway across the room with the dirty water.

I
T TOOK TWO MORE
weeks before he could get out of bed and put on his clothes, and they just hung on him.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why, we’ll use you in the garden come spring. You can scare the crows away.”

Those clear dark eyes looked at me and finally, finally I could see
a little sparkle. “You remember how Granny would sew that thread through each kernel of corn before she planted them?”

Now that really got me tickled. “Lord yes, and them crows would kick their own heads off trying to get it out.”

Now you have no knowledge of how good that felt to set there and laugh with him.

He set down on the bench I’d pulled over next to the fire, and I set down next to him. We watched the fire for a while and the quiet between us was a good one.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Arty.”

“You don’t need to even say that, honey.” I patted his bony knee. “My memory is long, and I ain’t forgot for a minute how many times you’ve helped me.”

So much flew between me and him as we set there.

“I was a mess, weren’t I?” he said.

“You was.” I gathered up his hand but kept my eyes on the fire. “Are you better?”

He knew just what I meant. “I believe.”

“Then you need to think about going home, honey. They need you.” And then I looked at him. “But only if you’re better.”

He sighed. “I know it. I’ll go in a few days.”

“Go only if you can, honey. You was born right here in this room and they was times when I thought you was going to die here. I swear I could feel Granny right here with us. At the first I thought she’d come for you, come to get you, and I kept telling her she could not have you yet. But one night I woke up from a sound sleep and just knowed in my heart that she was here to help me. And then I knew you wouldn’t die.”

“I hope part of me did die, Amma.”

I looked at him, studied his face, and what I saw there made me smile. “They’s something cleansing about a good sick, Larkin. Just don’t do it again anytime soon.”

I squeezed his hand and we set that-a-way, just holding hands, for a long time.

Three days later, Larkin went home.

C
HRISTMAS FELL ON
S
UNDAY
that year and they was a big preaching at the church. The young’uns always got up and said some little play parts and such, and some one of us would get up and read from St. Luke about the holy birth. That year of all things they asked me to read it and I spent the better part of two weeks studying on it so I would not get up and make a fool out of myself. I figured I would be nervous as a sore-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. And I was, until I read the first verse, and the beauty of that sweet story seeped right into my bones and I was just fine.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid.

There was a big hush when I finished reading and then there was a little commotion at the back of the church, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw Larkin step out into the aisle and head toward the front of the church. I thought he was coming to say something to me, but he did not even look at me. He went right past me and hit his knees right there in front of the altar. It was when Mary began to shout that I understood what was happening.

I
HAVE NEVER SEEN
anybody commence to loving up on salvation the way Larkin did.

Larkin took to reading the Bible that very night and he sort of whispered the words to himself.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

It was hard reading sometimes, and there were things he didn’t understand. Preacher Daniel had told him to read all of Genesis, and through the cold winter days he would come by the house and me or Zeke one would try to help him. Carolina was a good hand at reading, too, and many was the night the two of them would set and read by the firelight. Now, let me say that they was a time or two when I was tempted to quarrel at him for not being at home, but he seemed so much better that it was almost like he’d been charmed, and I did not want to be the one to break whatever spell he was under.

There were times when he got plumb aggravated with it.
Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and unto them were sons born after the flood.
I agreed with him there. I mean, who was all them folks anyway, and why did they have to list every name plumb back to the beginning of time?

There were times when he pondered the words and even I was plumb struck with some of the tales.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

By spring, he’d finished Genesis. By summer he’d finished Exodus and Preacher Daniel advised him to skip to Psalms and Proverbs. He even carried his Bible into the field with him, and I saw him many a time propped up on his plow right in the middle of a row with it out reading. Why, sometimes he’d set into crying and I could not help myself, I’d cry too.
Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?
We both set there bawling like two calves
in a hailstorm for a good thirty minutes when he found the words Granny had told us all those years ago when her own Pappy refused to stop singing the old love songs.
Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands: . . . All the earth shall worship thee, and shall sing unto thee; they shall sing to thy name.

In church he took to singing solo, songs he chose from the old singing books. The one he held most dear was the one called “French Broad.”

High o’er the hills the mountains rise, their summits tow’r toward the skies,

But far above them I must dwell, or sink beneath the flames of hell.

Oh, God! Forbid that I should fall and lose my everlasting all;

But may I rise on wings of love, and soar to the blest world above.

Although I walk the mountains high, ere long my body low must lie,

And in some lonesome place must rot, and by the living be forgot.

I allowed as how as long as me and him lived, Granny would not be forgotten. And he wondered how many would remember as soon as me and him went to the grave, and it hit me that he was right. That is not hard to figure if you think about it the least little bit. Recall that he had no memory of his very own mommie and daddy. I reckon that was what he meant when he said that time, “Why, Amma, once we die we might as well have been dead a million years.”

But there for a while he seemed to move away from his thoughts of death and dying and put his mind on the living. He spent hours and hours with them two boys, and it was not long before you saw them out working together and hunting all through the cove and yes, you
could hear them singing, too. He was finally starting to get back to himself, even if I thought he was leaning a little heavy on the churchgoing.

Mary had laughed to me and said, “Do you know what that Larkin said to me yesterday?”

And I was so glad to hear her laughing again and putting on weight that I felt like my face was going to split wide open, I was grinning so hard. “What did he say, honey?”

She looked at me and her cheeks was flushed with high color and her eyes was just shining. “He called me a virtuous woman whose price was far above rubies.”

Yes sir, it sounded like our Larkin was back, and that he’d come a long way in figuring out how to deal with Mary just fine.

H
E HAD STEPPED OUT
of doors there at the house one cold winter’s day right after he’d started in on the New Testament. I just happened by the table where he had his Bible out and I saw it was open to Philippians. I saw where he’d maked a passage and leaned down to read it: . . .
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Now, that’s the part of this church business that I do not like. They talk about God as a stern and vengeful one that will break a switch and just go to wearing you out at the least little thing. And it appears to me that all these people what gets a good dose of the religion gets awful high and mighty and commences to thinking that somehow they is only one way of doing things and that would be their way. They always allow that God has showed them or told them this, that,
or the other. I am not too keen on this, as God has never told me nor showed me nothing.

It looked to me like Larkin Stanton was not being talked to much by God, neither, but from the looks of how his Bible was marked up, he was hunting for something awfully hard.