My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams Read Free Book Online

them everyday, stuff like that. But, ye’ve no idea about them little things—Pappy was deaf in one ear and had a way of turning his good ear toward whoever was talking, sort of cocked his head to one side. He was a big man, and when he walked his feet would slap against the floor real heavy-like. Couldn’t sneak up on nothing, that’s why he had to be such a good shot with a gun. And, law how he’d laugh. Big booming sound. Why, he’d get so tickled sometimes that his eyes would just pour the water. And he was hot-natured and whenever he’s out working he’d sweat enough fer two men. He’d cuss them gnats something fierce.” And though her eyes were pouring water she laughed plumb out loud. “Called ’em dog-pecker gnats.”
    I couldn’t help it. I laughed too, and so did Larkin.
    Then she said, “I never knowed how quiet my world would be without him in it.”
    Larkin spread his fingers in a gesture of awkward compassion. “Granny, I—” he began.
    “Shhh. I’m studying about things, Larkin. Leave it be.”
    I KNOW THIS MIGHT sound funny, but what I remember most about that winter was how quiet it was. Always before, and I really do mean most of the time—and especially in the cold weather when sound carried best—you could hear Hackley or Larkin, and usually both, singing all over the cove. But Hackley had set in to someserious sparking with Mary, and though I’d bet you a hundred dollars that if Larkin was trying to sing, he was not doing it where anybody could hear him. He drug around like a whupped dog as Christmas come and went and a new year started. Though I felt sorry for him, it got to where I could not hardly stand to be around him. Granny said it didn’t seem to be hurting how much he could eat, which I witnessed firsthand when he come by the house to help Zeke slaughter a shoat that got its head hung between the bars of the hogpen and choked itself. He could flat put it away and was getting way tall and his shoulders was broadening up. He was going to be a pretty thing, but God, he was not pretty now. He slinked around looking like death warmed over, all hunched up and pulled in on himself, never looking nowhere but at the ground. I just wanted to wring a chunk out of him and say,
Larkin Stanton, you straighten up,
or something along them lines. But Zeke told me to let him be, that he’d come along, and I could only believe him since I had no experience at being a big boy. And it was not that I did not already have my hands full of young’uns and work, work, work. I was proud to see spring come on and then the summer, even though it brought biting flies, more fleas, and bloodsucking ticks. I could slap flies, pinch fleas, and pull ticks off. At least now I could work outside and get out of that cabin that got smaller and smaller every year.
    M E AND G RANNY WAS hoeing corn up in the Jimmy Field one day that was hot as Satan’s house cat. The air was so heavy I swear you could’ve wrung water from it like wringing out a dishrag. I had this banjo tune stuck in my head that Zeke had played the night before and that always drove me crazy. He said it was “George Booker” and I wished I could’ve gotten my hands on old George. I’dhave killed him as dead as a hammer. Of a sudden Granny stopped hoeing and cocked her head. She was one row down from me and I had been having to really bust it to stay out in front of her so as not to backtrash her row. When she leaned on her hoe you can bet I leaned on mine, too. Granny could hoe most folks plumb out of the field, but not me, and it was with some pride that I’d taken the upper row. But I reckon pride does really goeth before a fall as I felt like I was going to fall up at any minute. “What’s the matter?” I hollered and she waved a you-need-to-hush hand at me, which I did. I heard nothing but the very first of the frost bugs starting to sing out in the oaks and then it come to me, almost like a whisper. Larkin was singing. And though