My Old True Love (7 page)

Hackley went out through there like a little banty rooster and when Willard saw him coming he looked around right wild. I knowed what he was looking for was standing right beside me. Everybody with any kind of sense knowed that if you messed with Hackley you had Larkin to fight and that was no fun. This is not to say my brother was not a handful all by hisself. He was. But I had my suspicions that it was Larkin they really dreaded and then I knew it for a fact, because when Willard looked and seen Lark standing there on the porch he sort of slouched off into the crowd without so much as a backward look at Mary.

But Larkin was looking at her, they was no doubt, and if you could have seen the look, it would have tipped his hand to you as it most certain did to me. It was such a look that I swear I had to look myself. And I will tell you what I saw. She was not short but not real tall, she was slender and not busty neither. Her dark red hair kept catching the light that was sifting down through the leaves. She had freckles,
but they was not so many and she had that real white redhead skin. Her hands were as slender as Mommie’s and I could not help it, I looked at mine. I would never have hands like them, as my fingers were too short, and I would never have the slender waist neither. But I would not complain, since Zeke seemed to like the way I was put together just fine. But Mary Chandler was as close to being beautiful as any girl I’d ever seen and I had not even noticed it until that very moment in time. I must have had my head under a bushel or maybe I’d just been raising young’uns and living my own life, thank you very much.

I could not stand to see Larkin all but slobbering on himself. “If you are going to stare so hard, you ought to at least shut your mouth,” I said to him. And then I could have just bit my tongue right off at the look of longing and misery that moved through his eyes. Oh, how I wanted to take him in my arms and say, “Do not let this slip of a girl cause this thing,” but felt that I ought not because I’d been so hateful and because I did not want to shame him any more than I already had. Red as a beet, he turned back to the men that was now a big crowd and loud to boot. I was never so glad to see anybody in my life as I was to see that Fee had come up and was standing on the other side of Larkin.

“Howdy, Fee,” I said. His big round eyes settled on my face then moved on. Poor Fee. Talk about that hard row to hoe, well, he’d had one too. He had been named Pharaoh of Egypt Gosnell. Now why you would name a child that you loved that I do not know, and you cannot call somebody Pharaoh of Egypt anyhow, so we all called him Fee. Everybody thought he was simpleminded, but he were not and I know it. He did not think like the rest of us is all. And even though he was younger than me, Granny said he knew more about which
plants could cure you and kill you than anybody in this part of the world. And, Lord, but he had a way with animals that I have never seen the likes of. The big white dog at his side was a testament to that. She were not a hound dog but looked for all the world like a wolf and might well have been just that, for all I know. But she were a pretty thing with eyes that looked smarter than some folks I know.

Larkin and Fee was in a big way of talking, which meant they were standing around shuffling their feet since neither of them was big on talking and I sneaked a look at Fee. He was not the prettiest thing in the world. When he was just little, he was skinny and his head had looked too big for his body. But when he got to be a big boy, it seemed like overnight he started sprouting coarse hair and his arms and legs literally growed ropey strings of muscle. Now as a man grown his body had surely caught up with his head, and I will have to say that standing next to Larkin Stanton did not help his looks none. Lord, but Larkin was a pretty thing. Fee’s big lips skinned back over big wide-spaced teeth that was already stained from chewing ’baccer, and I allowed once more to myself that I would
never
dip snuff or chew until I no longer had teeth in my head. After that I don’t reckon it would matter none.

They was talking about the dog and I looked down at her. She was looking up at Fee like he was the best thing in the world and I squatted down next to her. “Hey there, you, pretty girl,” I said and she set them eyes on me and her ears stood straight up on her head. Her big red tongue come out quick as a snake and licked me right in the mouth. I couldn’t do nothing but laugh and that got her even more excited but all it took was one word from Fee to put her right back to setting. “Down,” he said. And I allowed that maybe he ought to come to my house and learn my young’uns how to behave as good
and we all three laughed at that thought.

Y
OU KNOW HOW THEY
is things in our life that we always remember right up to remembering right where we was, who was with us, how the sun laid on everything, what people said? Well, this proved one of them days. I’d seen Granny reach and take hold of her back down low and rub since I could remember. She was always lifting something too heavy and straining around. But it was the way she done it this day that I knew something was bad wrong. And I knew it with my very heart. When she’d come from the barn two year ago with a funny look on her face and told me she’d seen blood when she’d wiped herself I begged her to go see Hattie. Hattie told us that she had corruption, that it would get worse, but would take its own sweet time. And it had took so much time that I’d forget about it for days at a stretch. And then I’d get reminded like when we’d dug up some lilac bushes from next to her porch and planted them next to mine. “There,” she had said to me, “now every time you get a whiff of them lilacs you will think of this day and us planting them together.” And I said, “Lord God, Granny, don’t talk like that.” And she said, “Why, honey, look at how long I’ve had. Eighty year in case you can’t count that high. I am older’n anybody I know, ’cepting for Lige Blackett and I reckon they’ll have to knock Lige in the head with a frying pan on Judgment Day.” When I laughed she did, too, but then she said, “Don’t you tell I said that. Them Blacketts is mean as snakes and dumber than four buckets of hair.” We both snickered about that because it was the truth, and then she reached out and pushed my hair back off my face like she used to do when I was a girl. “Just remember, Arty.” And I said, “What?” And she got the funniest look on her face and said just this one word: “Everything.”

• • •

N
OW HERE WE ALL
was, and I knew with every bone in me that this would be the last time we was all together. And with the knowing of that, it seemed like everywhere I looked I saw something to store up to take out and study later on.

That was the first time I noticed that Mary’s little sister Julie kept sneaking looks at Larkin. She was a real sweet girl and awfully clever, but Julie did not look like Mary is the kindest way I can think to say it. I recall thinking,
You poor thing,
because Larkin did not look at her even once during that long preaching. His eyes went nowhere but to where Mary and Hackley set. So mine did too and I had to hide my smile behind my hand when Hackley tried to put his arm up around her waist and her back went straight as a poker and he finally took it away and his neck got all red. And I thought,
Good for you, Mary. You keep that up and you might get him yet.

Mommie was bustling about, making sure all the young’uns had plates and spoons. She’d turned fifty a few months back and was more grayheaded now than blond. She was right in amongst my young’uns slinging food like a crazy woman. I had told her to wait till I finished nursing Zeke Jr. but she went right on with her rat killing like I had never said a word so I let her do it. I leaned back against the tree and looked at my brood. Abigail was like looking Mommie right in the face. John Wesley had my brown hair and green eyes and so did Sylvaney. Ingabo had curly red hair and Zeke Jr. was going to be redheaded too. I had got real tired of folks asking where these two got their red hair. Lige Blackett come right out and spoke what I knew everybody was thinking: “Are you sure these two are Zeke’s?” And I
fired right back at him, “Don’t you think I won’t smack you just because you are an old man.” But they is no doubt about who daddied Carolina. She looked like she was picked right out of Zeke’s hind end, right down to her shiny black hair and purplish blue eyes. She was a Wallin to the bone.

About then Larkin come wandering up and of course Carolina set up a howling for him to pick her up. She was crazy about him and he petted her something awful.

Mommie shaded her eyes and watched as he settled Carolina on his shoulders. “You have plumb growed up,” she said. Larkin blushed like a girl. I couldn’t help deviling him a little.

“You better watch out, honey. Won’t be long before some of these little gals set their eyes on you and go running for their mommies’ brooms.”

Carolina perked right up on that and hollered, “Larkin has already promised to marry me, Mama. Ain’t you, Larkin?”

“That’s right, missy. You need to hurry and get grown ’cause I need me a good cook. You can cook now, I know. And course you can keep house and all? Sweep and scrub the floors, milk the cows, wash my clothes, see to the garden, hoe while I’m plowing, all that stuff? You can manage that, can’t you?”

I busted out laughing. I could tell by looking at Carolina’s face that she had not thought of all that. Larkin had just lost himself a candidate for wife, and I told him so.

Mommie held out her arms. Larkin bent down and Carolina fairly scrambled off and hit the ground running. I do not think she wanted to hear no more about marrying. But Mommie would not let it go. “She is way too young to be thinking about that stuff. And her and
Larkin is too close a kin to even let her think on it.”

And I thought,
Oh, no. Here is the pursed mouth and wrinkled-up nose look.
But I had got over that bothering me and could not help ruffling her feathers a little.

“Why, in six years Carolina will be old as I was when I married her daddy. By Larkin’s age I already had Abigail and we was working on John Wesley. Not even a full year between any of my first three. We was working mighty hard.”

I knew I had got Mommie’s goat by how red her neck got. I was sorry the minute it left my lips, but even though Larkin shot me a look, I could not wrap my tongue around the words to tell her I was sorry.

“Arty,” she said, and I could tell she was mortified. “Set there and talk about getting babies. I swear sometimes . . . .”

She did not say what. But I knew already. She thought I was way too much like Granny and she looked down at the very things in me that she loved in her mama. Mommie was awful bad to preach religion this and religion that. She tried to make everything you did fit in a right place or a wrong place. But that is not the way of it all the time. They is a wide swath of life that is lived right down the middle. I wished you could have seen her face the time she asked me if I had found Jesus and I told her I did not know he had got lost. Oh, but you should
never
say something like that to them folks what have strong beliefs. I thought Mommie’s eyes was going to pop right out on stems. I will never do that again.

About then I saw Granny take a drink from her crock and Mommie seed her too and I thought,
Oh, Lord,
and I was right, because Mommie set in on her right off.

“You ought not to drink spirits,” she said.

And Granny said back, “The gripe in my belly’s worse. Liquor with willer bark tea is about the only thing that helps it.”

Mommie looked right shocked at that but fussed at her, “That liquor ain’t good for your body or your soul. You ought to drink tea mixed with water. I don’t see how you hold all that liquor anyways.”

And Granny said the funniest thing I’d ever heard, but I know exactly what she meant now because I am the same way. She said, “Hell, Nancy, I can hold my liquor a lot better than I can hold my water nowdays.”

I laughed so hard that I had to lay down. Zeke Jr. fell asleep. I must’ve dozed a little, too, since the next thing I recall is hearing Mommie and Granny talking real low as they put food away and gathered up the dishes.

“Why do you reckon Arty won’t listen to a word I say? I swear sometimes she acts like I ain’t got the sense God give a goose and she just baits me.”

Of a sudden I was wide awake and listening to every word.

“Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.” Granny give that sound that meant she’d puffed out her cheeks. “Arty’s just who she is. And it ain’t just how she acts toward you. You got your ways too.”

That was surely the truth.

Mommie put on her best I-am-just-killed voice and said, “I have always wanted to be close to her. She is my oldest daughter.”

And Granny actually laughed at her. “Ye take yourself way too serious, Nancy Ann. Always your way or no way. Well, in case you ain’t noticed Arty is as tough as a pine knot and she has her own way.”

Mommie sounded so pitiful then that even I felt sorry for her.
“Well, I can done see that you’re just going to take her side of it.”

I was plumb surprised when Granny cut her off. “I have no time for this. You and Arty need to come of it because it ain’t going to be no time till it’s just you and her for it. And I don’t know what in this world Larkin will do when I am gone.”

Of a sudden I felt selfish. All I had thought of was me, me, me, and it were Larkin what stood to lose biggest of all and he probably did not even know. I set straight up then and looked around for him. It did not take me long to find him. He was right back over there at the store where them men was still talking, no doubt that war business. And as if they had read my very thoughts I heard somebody holler out the word
War.

Granny shook her head and her next words come out on a long sigh that sounded like it had whistled right out of her soul. “All this talk about war. The men might fight it, but it is always the women that suffers it.”

And Mommie said, “They’ll be no war. But even if they is, it won’t be nothing to us.”

“They will be sides took, and that will mean a fight,” Granny said, and right then it hit me and Mommie at the same time because neither one of us had a word to say back to her. Zeke Jr. slept on, but my mind was flying. How old did you have to be before you did not have to go off to fight? Or how young? Would Daddy have to go? Surely he would not, as he were an old man of fifty-one. If not him, then what of my brothers David and Willy? They was both married and had a dozen young’uns between and surely they would not have to go. But Robert and Hackley would. And I almost laughed at the thought of Hackley in a war, but I did not because I felt that yes, he
would have to go too. Then I felt cold all over because I thought of Larkin and Zeke. But I am not one to worry with something that I cannot wrap my mind around.
They will not be a war
is all I could think as I picked Zeke Jr. up off that quilt and hauled myself to my feet.
They will not be a war because Arty will not allow it.