My Old True Love (4 page)

Maybe it has something to do with what’s important to us, and what happens when you get old ain’t too important. Granny said it was because them early memories was stored in the uncluttered mind of a child. I reckon that’s one of the prettiest ways to explain it that I’ve ever heard.

C
AROLINA WAS ALREADY A
month old when the first deep snow of the season fell. It had stayed warm right up till then. Then it was as though winter had just been biding her time, saving it up. It snowed just about every day till way up in March. Most folks just hunkered down, waiting for it to be over. But weather never slowed Hackley and Larkin down even a little bit. They was always together and always out going and doing just like boys probably always have and always will. Some mornings just at daylight I’d look out and there they’d be heading down the main trace. I’d know they was heading for Big Laurel Creek. They had traps sunk in the deepest pools and went to check them at least every other day.

Oh, how I envied them two boys their carefree ways. It had only been four years since I’d gone traipsing along with them. It was
me
that learned them how to set their traps deep so only the biggest muskrats would go for the bait,
me
that Larkin come crying to wondering if the trap hurt when it closed on them,
me
that learned them to swim in the deep water of the Seward Hole,
me
that used to go with them to the creek in the still of a winter’s snow. And it was
me
that was standing there with a great yearning in that cold little cabin my husband had built with loving hands,
me
that was now held back by the strong yet flimsy chain of flesh that was my own creation.

T
HEY WAS NO EASY
way to get to the creek where it twisted and snaked its way around the foot of the mountain and was bordered on one side by a sheer rock cliff called Jumped-Up. It got named that ’cause it really did look like it had jumped up out of the water right on to the side of that mountain and it kept a stubborn grip for a hundred feet or more before it finally give way to the laurel hell that went the rest of the way to the top.

In the wintertime the clouds seemed living things that would lower their big faces right to the top of the mountain like they aimed to kiss it. As you went down the path to the only ford, they’d boil all about you, coiling around and sending out little ragged bits like arms and fingers, reaching and touching. Little towhees would come spiraling up off the limbs of the jack pines and dive right over what looked like the edge of the world. About halfway down you’d come out of a switchback and step right out of the clouds but they’d be right above your head, the bottom all bruised-looking with fat flakes of snow falling straight down. And as far as you could see, which was awfully far, was the world made soft by snow. “Granny’s beat-up egg whites,” Larkin would always say. God, I loved him and the things he’d say sometimes. And we’d all three just sing.

Hackley’s voice was always certain, wrapping sure and confident around each note, moving along easy, up and down. Oh, but Larkin’s was a wonderment, pure and clear, hitting them high notes and holding them, holding them.

Little Marg’ret a-setting in her high hall chair
Combing back her long yeller hair
Saw Sweet William and his new maid bride
Riding up the road so near.

She threw down her ivory comb,
Threw back her long yeller hair,
Said, “I’ll go down and bid him farewell
And never more go there.”

It was late in the night,
They were fast asleep.
Little Marg’ret appeared all dressed in white
Standing at their bed feet.

“How do ye like your snow-white pillow?
How do ye like your sheets?
How do ye like that pretty fair maid
That lays in your arms asleep?”

“Very well do I like my snow white pillow,
Well do I like my sheet,
Much better do I like that pretty fair maid
That stands at my bed feet.”

He called his serving man to go
Saddle the dappled roan
And he went to her father’s house that night
And knocked on the door alone.

“Is Little Marg’ret in her room?
Or is she in the hall?”
“Little Marg’ret’s in her cold black coffin
With her face turned toward the wall.”

“Unfold, unfold those snow-white robes,
Be they ever so fine,
For I want to kiss them cold, corpsey lips,
For I know they’ll never kiss mine.”

Three times he kissed her cold, cold chin,
Twice’t he kissed her cheek.
Once’t he kissed her cold, corpsey lips
And fell in her arms asleep.

Larkin never even strained on the high notes that had me screeching at the top of my lungs. It’s a good thing he didn’t have to study awfully much about the tune because he just lost himself in them stories. When he was little he’d put his own self
right there,
living it, breathing life into it. Listening to him sing never failed to jerk goose-bumps up on my arms. Even Hackley, who went along not noticing much, would sometimes stare at him and say something like, “Damn boy.”

But they was no beating Hackley when it come to a tune. He went whistling one all the time and once’t he could whistle it good he could play it on the fiddle. Oh, how he could make them strings pull at your insides. “Your very guts,” Granny said. When he took a hold of a bow, that fiddle might as well get ready because it was going to
weep
. Don’t git me wrong, many was the time I watched all the girls go hungry-eyed when he’d commence to singing. But they went plumb foolish when he played. And Hackley loved the girls, any shape and any size. So he played a lot.

But even then, with Mary fixing to turn eleven and him just thirteen, Hackley told Larkin that day he wanted her for his own and aimed to marry her one day.

Larkin said they’d built a lean-to right next to the creek out of pine boughs and had a big fire going. Hackley was stretched out with his feet almost in the flames and Larkin was setting out in the weather.

“I can hear the snow falling all around me,” he said. And Hack-ley had answered with the same thing I often said: “You say the damnedest things.”

But if you think about it, you
can
hear snow falling all crackly-like.

They stayed around down there most of that day, playing in the snow, laying by the fire, eating what they’d brung with them. “I purely love this time of the year,” Hackley said. And Larkin asked him, “Do you really aim to marry Mary?” Hard to think that even as boys she was always there between them, but oh, yes, she was. And when Larkin asked him if he’d thought whether Mary wanted to marry him, Hackley had shrugged and said, “Why, I reckon she does. I mean, I ain’t thought about it much. Just figured when it come time, she would.”

And Larkin said even then he wanted his mind off of that, so he’d asked Hackley to sing something he didn’t know, and that was the day he learned “The Cruel Mother.”

They was a lady who lived in York, all alone and lone-y,

She fell in love with her father’s clerk, all down by the green
wood-side-y.

They hadn’t been courting but a year and a day, all alone and lone-y,

Until her heart he did betray, all down by the green wood-side-y.

As she was a walking across the bridge, all alone and lone-y,

She saw her belly were growing big, all down by the green
wood-side-y.

She turned her back against the oak, all alone and lone-y,

First hit bent and then hit broke, all down by the green wood-side-y.

She leaned her back against the thorn, all alone and lone-y,

There’s where her two purty babes were born, all down by the
green wood-side-y.

She pulled out her snow-white breast, all alone and lone-y,

And bid them purty babes suck their best, all down by the green
wood-side-y.

She took her hair so long and neat, all alone and lone-y,

To tie them with, both hands and feet, all down by the green
wood-side-y.

She took a penknife keen and sharp, all alone and lone-y,

And pierced these two purty babes to the heart, all down by the
green wood-side-y.

And with a napkin from her head, all alone and lone-y.

She wrapped them up when they were dead, all down by the green
wood side-y.

She wiped her penknife on her shoe, all alone and lone-y,

But the more she wiped the redder hit grew, all down by the green
wood-side-y.

She placed them under a marble stone, all alone and lone-y,

And prayed this murder would never be known, all down by the
green wood-side-y.

I can just see Larkin, eyes shut tight, already making it his own, imagining that poor girl returning to her father’s house pretending to be still a maid, thinking of the ghosts of the murdered children coming to call. Them children then telling their own mommie she was doomed for hell.

He’d be learning it to me in a week’s time and asking, “Why do you reckon she let them suck if she just aimed to kill them?” I had no answer unless it was that she was a coldhearted and selfish bitch, which is just what I said to him. And he said he’d asked Hackley the same thing and I asked, “Well, what did he say?”

Hackley said just this: “Hell if I know. Just the way them old songs is, sometimes.”

I
HAD MY FOURTH
child that we named Sylvaney the year Larkin turned thirteen, and that was also the year I was afraid he would never sing again.

Hugh Wallin’s singing school met every summer where he taught the shape-note singing which went like this: a flag shape for fa, circle for sol, diamond for mi, and a square for la. When we all learned the music, we would sing the poetry. The church was always full to busting and we divided ourselves into the three parts, which was tenor, lead, and bass. The singing always started at 9:00 in the morning and more times than not we’d go straight through until supper-time with the number of folks singing ebbing and flowing as some would quit and eat and come back to sing again.

Every time Hackley got called on to lead a hymn the tenors, which was where all the young girls was setting, would go all a-twitter. He knew it, too; however much he acted like he didn’t, he did. And this day was no different. He stood and literally flowed into the open center and even I could see what they did. He might have been little but he had that way of moving that women just loved. He held himself all loose and easy and his eyes looked lazy and quick at the same
time. Even some of the older women set into fanning themselves. Maggie Hensley was like a worm in a hot skillet, and if I’d acted like that about another man Zeke Wallin would’ve slapped me blind. I would not have blamed him neither.

All but Mary Chandler. She set there with her hands folded on top of her book and never offered Hackley so much as a glance. And I believe that’s why she was all he could see.

“‘Sacred Throne,’ folks. Page thirty-five.” He waited until pages had ceased rustling and all eyes were on him. Satisfied, he raised his right hand and began to beat out the time.

“Now sing your parts! Everbody sing!”

This was Hackley’s favorite hymn and he had no use for the book in his hand. His eyes were never still as he began to sing the lead shapes. And each section in that little church began to sing in harmony so rich it caused my throat to swell up.

“Now sing the poetry!” He throwed back his head, closed his eyes, and I forgot everything except the sound. There was a big silence when we finished. Hugh new what he was doing when he called on Larkin to lead the next. Not many people could follow Hackley.

Larkin stood and walked to the square.

“Let’s sing ‘Windham,’ page two hundred and seven.” All eyes gazed at him expectantly. “Let’s pitch it.” He closed his eyes and relaxed. His voice took the first note, then began the climb up the scale.

“Sol, fa, mi, la, sol.”

On the high sol Larkin’s voice sang out confident and full. Then it cracked. A little frown puckered his forehead and he cleared his throat and started again.

“Sol, fa, mi, la, sol.”

Again he couldn’t hold it. It was so quiet in there that I could hear folks laughing and talking out where they was eating.

“That’s a good pitch, Larkin. Let’s sing the shapes,” Hugh said.

I could see his hand trembling as he started to beat out the time and sing the shapes to the hymn.

Finally he just quit singing but stayed on beating out the time for everybody else. I quit, too, and watched the sweat run down his face into his eyes. Then the song ended and he ought to have set down, but he didn’t. Instead he brought up his book and stared at it dumb-looking as a cow, as though somewhere in there amongst the shapes he had memorized so easy when he was but a child lay the answer. He looked at me and I swear he looked like he was drowning.

Me and Granny both come to our feet but Hackley beat us to him.

“I’ll lead the next one,” Hack said, and though he laid a sympathetic hand on Larkin’s arm, he couldn’t quite hold back the grin that skittered across his mouth. And I thought,
Don’t do this to him, Hackley, you little shit.
But he’d already done it.

Hackley give him a little shove. “It’ll be all right,” he said.

“Don’t pay Hack no mind,” I hollered right out. “Sing with the basses. Your voice won’t break if you sing low.”

It didn’t. For Larkin did not sing another note the rest of that long day.

I
DONE SOMETHING THAT
day that I rarely did. I left Abby and Zeke to fix their own supper and mind the young’uns and I went over the hill to Granny’s. I did take Sylvaney but would’ve left her too if I hadn’t knowed my bosoms would give me a fit if she didn’t nurse. And it were a good thing I did ’cause I was there a long time. Granny had her hands full of one awfully pitiful man-child.

He was setting on the porch, long legs drawed up, head resting on his knees, and he never even looked up when I howdied the house.

Me and Granny whispered around out back for a few minutes, then we both went out on him. Granny put her knobby old hand on his hair and her touch was so gentle it jerked tears to my eyes.

“Hit happens that-a-way, honey. Yer voice is changing into that of a man. You’ll still be able to sing, just deeper and different. You’ll see. Same thing happened to Hackley. ’Course hit went quick fer him. Didn’t it, Arty?”