My Old True Love (31 page)

I knowed when Mary got a letter from Larkin because Aunt Susan told it to me. I went straight as a shot to Mary and stood around for the better part of a whole day waiting for her to offer to let me read it, but she did not. I went home and cried for an hour to Zeke. Carolina finally said, “Mommie, it is between them.” And Zeke said, “Leave your mommie alone, missy.” I tried and tried to do that, but finally I had to ask Mary if she could just tell me that he was all right and she looked up at me and I ain’t never seen such a look on
nobody’s face as the one she offered me. “He is in Charleston and is well, Arty.” I did not dare ask anything else. At least I knowed he had not gone off somewheres and lost his mind. I done the best I could to comfort myself with just the knowing of that.

J
OE
L
ARKIN WAS BORN
in March and I knowed in my heart somehow that he would be my last. There is something in a woman that goes to mourning when she births for the last time, and so it was with me. But you know it seemed like I was in a constant state of mourning that next little bit. Mommie died in May and Daddy fell dead at the milk gap that summer. That was an awful time for me as it seemed like everybody I loved was leaving me. They is something that happens to us when our mommie and daddy dies. It is like we have to step up into their shoes and they is no bigger footprints in this world. I grieved and grieved and then grieved some more. And I was watching Mary grieve, too, and she was not like me in that she had no grave to go to and mourn over. A grave does serve some purpose, you know.

L
ARKIN HAD BEEN GONE
over a year when I was out hunting the cows and come up on Mary there on the ridge between the Shop Holler and the Munsen Cove. She was just standing there all wrapped up in Larkin’s big blue coat, and I felt sorry for her when I looked in her face. I said howdy to her in my softest voice, and she looked at me with eyes as old as time itself and I was struck with how she looked to have aged ten years in the last two. I asked her what she was doing out. She sort of smiled and said, “Probably for the same reason as you.” And we stood for a while looking off back into Tennessee where you could see the snow coming in. And then in a
voice as flat as a flitter, she said these words to me that I have never forgot.

“I am so very tired, Arty. I woke up this morning and thought I heard somebody screaming, but it were just the wind hitting the side of the house. I laid there a long time trying to draw comfort from the sounds of my young’uns sleeping, but it did not work its charm on me like it usually does. I find no comfort nowhere.”

I went to stand next to her and took her cold little hand in mine. It was like ice and I chapped it between mine till she finally pulled it back. Oh, how I wanted to ask her if she’d heard from him, but I held my tongue. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I wanted to hear what she might have to say.

Then it started to snow. “We ought to get in out of the weather,” I said.

“They is nowhere I can go that it is not cold, Arty,” she said.

That hurt me as bad as anything I’d ever heard, and I’m ashamed to say that I wanted away from her and her cold little hands and her sad little face and her heart that was so badly broke. I went off and left her standing there by herself.

My heart was not just broke, it was shattered, and I could not stand no more.

L
ATE THAT SPRING
M
AGGIE
come by the house. She was a sight to see and was all decked out in a fine dress and soft leather shoes and had that big mane of glossy hair done up in coils on top of her head. She looked a vision and I told her so. Her and Silas was up there seeing about her house and she asked about Larkin and Mary. Her eyes got bigger and bigger when I told her what had happened. They stayed on for supper and it was a good visit. She wrote to me
when she got back home and said they’d gone by Mary’s on the way out the next day, and peace had been made between her and Mary. Time does have a way of fixing things up. Though you might not believe that, I will tell you that it does. What she said in her letter is this: “Me and you and Mary has many things between us, Arty, the least of which is your brother and Larkin. We are all women what has eaten us a big mess of life and I suspect they is more of it on our plates to eat before we leave this world. We need to try to help each other as we go along.”

And Maggie was exactly right. The three of us went right on eating for a long, long time.

L
ATE THAT SUMMER
A
UNT
Susan hollered me from the house and she had a grin on her face as big as a mile. There was the letter that had been two years in the coming, but for all that time it were but a short thing.

Dearest Amma,

I am coming home.

Larkin

And it was like a dam busted inside of me and I cried and cried and cried.

I did not feel honor-bound to tell Mary as she had not done so with me. And it were a good thing, as the days passed and he did not come. My heart would set up a great racing with each sound from the road, but each time they would pass me by. By the end of August it was like the letter had never come at all.

Do not get it wrong here. I harbored no hard feelings toward Mary. I loved her better than my own sister. It is just that when you
mixed her sad in with mine, it was a heavier load than I could tote. But I did feel bound to help her in any way I could, and when she sent Luke to get me to help her put up her corn, I went with nary a word.

That day was hot as Satan’s housecat and we’d been out in the field most of the day and had left the boys to keep pulling corn. Me and Mary was out behind the house shucking as hard as we could and I could hear Roxy out in front singing where we’d put her to silking and washing it. I even recall that she was singing “Little Margaret.” And then right in the middle she just quit. Now, my head come up right off, because we generally do not stop in the middle of a song, and my ears was straining for the next words. Mary was, too, and so it was that both of us was listening hard and had no trouble hearing her give a little scream. Quick as lightning me and her was up running for the house. Mary went in low through the back door and I knowed she was going for the shotgun that was always loaded and setting in the corner. I went around the house at a run and did not even stop to think of myself. My heart leapt into my throat when I come out into the clearing and saw Roxy sort of grappling around with a big man with shoulder-length black hair and I thought to myself,
Lord have mercy, what is a Indian doing here?
That is exactly what it looked like. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mary come out on the porch and bring the gun up to her shoulder. I thought for all the world that she was going to shoot them both, so I hollered, “No, no, Mary, you’ll hit her too.” And when he heard my voice the big man turned Roxy loose and I saw his face.

Oh, but it was Larkin standing there.

Then a voice called from inside the cabin. “Mommie, Luke is at his back with the rifle and I’m coming out onto the porch.” Hack Jr. come out then and stood beside his mommie. From where I was, I could see that he knowed Larkin but his eyes stayed as cold as ice.

It seemed like we was all froze in time. All except for my eyes and it seemed like they was everywhere at once. It seemed like I could see everything that was happening in a glance, and I thought that at any minute Mary would lay down the gun and everything would be as it should. But that did not happen for too long, and then I knowed something was bad wrong.

“Come over here, Roxy,” Mary said, and my heart literally quit beating.

“Mommie, it’s Daddy. Can’t you see that?”

“I see him. You come on over here anyways.”

Roxy looked at me. “Aunt Arty?” she said, and then she took a step away from her daddy and I heard the hammers on that shotgun being pulled back and it sounded loud as hell in that little clearing. I did not even think about it.

I just stepped out into that hot sun and put myself in between Mary and Larkin.

“Luke, you get on up here,” I said, and I waited until he was standing there with his daddy.

When he saw his boy Larkin said, “Ah, Luke,” and reached and gathered him up close to him. I could see Luke’s face over Larkin’s shoulder, and his eyes held no welcome for his daddy.

“Get on in the house with all of you young’uns,” I said. My voice was rough as a cob and I meant for it to be that way.

“Do not interfere with this, Arty,” Mary said to me. I felt my chin come out like a rock cliff.

“You make them young’uns go in that house, Mary, and I mean it. They are innocent lambs in this and should not have to bear it.”

This give her pause just as I’d hoped it would, and while she was arguing with them I planted myself closer to Larkin. I never took my
eyes off Mary and did not even have time to so much as speak to him before the door shut on them young’uns.

“Get out of my way, Arty.”

I felt my guts go to water, but I did not move. “No, I will not.”

We all stood there and I could feel the sweat break loose and go to running down between my shoulder blades. I could not stand it no more, and I turned my back on her and faced my biggest boy.

His black eyes was watching me like a hawk and his hair was wet with sweat. His shirt looked wet enough to where I could’ve wrung the water from it with my hands. “Oh, Larkin,” I said right low to him, “what is this about?”

From behind me Mary said, “Tell her, Larkin, as I have not.”

He flinched at her words. Finally he said to her, though he was looking me eyeball to eyeball, “You should have told her as I asked you to.”

Mary give a big sigh and I heard the shotgun thump down on the porch. When I looked back at her, she was setting on the top step with the gun beside her. “What, Larkin? What should she have told me?”

And Mary laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. “Tell her, Larkin.”

Larkin reached out a hand to me but let it drop back to his side before I had time to do anything. “Oh, God. Where will I start?”

“At the beginning, Larkin,” Mary said and her voice seemed to echo around in my head.

Of a sudden I couldn’t stand there in that sun another minute, and I said, “We’re coming to set on the porch, Mary. I feel like I’m going to fall up.”

Larkin grabbed hold of my arm and I went and set down beside Mary. He moved a little away from us but kept to the shade of the porch. And then he started to talk.

He said he’d been west to Missouri, south to Florida, and north to Boston since he’d been gone. He’d seen some pretty places and kept company with some pretty rough characters and allowed as that was all right since he was every bit as rough. He had even joined up with a minstrel show and had done a fair bit of singing from the stage. But he said he knowed now that every single step he’d made away from home that he was just making his way back.

I peeped at Mary and she was just staring out toward the barn. I couldn’t help it when I said, “I know this is bad, Mary, but surely not bad enough to kill him for. I mean I’d feel the same way I reckon if it was Zeke, but I don’t know that I’d take a shotgun after him.” I have to tell you here that when I set down, I put my hind end right square on that gun and nothing short of Gabriel blowing his horn could have got me off of it. And maybe not even that.

She give me a look. “Quit wallering the truth around, Larkin,” she said. “Tell her like you told it to me in your letter. Or I will one.”

We set there and all was quiet. Then he give a great sigh and all the hair stood up on my arms, and I almost capped my hand over his mouth to keep him from saying what he aimed to say.

“Amma,” he breathed and then he told me.

“It seems I have carried this thing for all my life, but it has only been with me since the day before I brought Hackley home throwed over that mule. Me and him had a big fuss the night before the Battle of Winding Stairs. It seems like that’s all we done there at the last was fuss and fight with each other. I did love him.” Mary made a little sound on that and he glanced quick at her, but then his eyes come right back to where they’d been holding mine. “You will probably hate me all the more for the saying of that one thing, Amma. But I did love him.

“I didn’t hardly sleep a wink the night before the fight. To tell you the truth, I just sort of dozed around dreaming all manner of foolish things. I was up long before we was called to form up. Right at daylight I went to find Hackley and try to put things right between us. But when I found him he was sound asleep and I did not wake him.

“We formed up in a double V on either side of the road as it topped the mountain. Kirk put the tallest of us in the back and the shortest out in front and us sharpshooters was right in the middle. I could see Hackley right down in front of me. Then the Rebels come around the curve below us and all hell broke loose. It didn’t take us long to turn them back and of a sudden a big wind come blowing down the hill and took the smoke off with it, and I saw Hackley getting up. He come up on his knees and sort of turned toward me. He was looking me right in the eyes and he knowed it before he hit the ground. I had shot him and he was dead and gone by the time I got to him.”

And there it was. Now you might wonder how I felt hearing him relate the death of my brother to me like that, and I will have to say that I am still in amazement to this day. They was a brief little flare of pain way down in my heart and I immediately thought how this would hurt Mommie and Daddy and then I recalled that they was beyond this. So I let that go. Then I thought on their young’uns and I knowed right off that they had all knowed it for a long time and that’s why they had acted the way they had a while ago. The only one that would not forgive him was maybe Hack Jr. and I couldn’t swear to that. I searched my own heart again and for just a minute Hack-ley’s face danced in the air right in front of me. But he’d been gone for so very long and though I was sorry, they was no way to change it. We have to go on and life is for the living.

I
LOOKED OVER AT
Mary and she was staring at Larkin. “What is it?” she said, and then she laughed. “Oh, I know what it is. You’re thinking Roxyann looks more like me than I do myself.”