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

he was not singing big and loud, he would have had to be singing a little loud since we could hear him from where he was up in the Dave Newground. Well, I knowed then for sure that the high pure voice of the boy was gone. And then he really let loose and the flesh pebbled up on my arms.
    My dearest dear, the time draws near when you and I must part.
    And no one knows the inner grief of my poor aching heart,
    Or what I’ve suffered for your sake, the one I love so dear.
    I wish’t that I could go with you, or you might tarry here.
    I wish’t your breast was made of glass, and in it I’d behold
    My name in secret I would write, in letters of bright gold.
    My name in secret I would write, believe me when I say
    You are the one that I’ll love best unto my dying day.
    And when you’re on some distant shore, think on your absent
friend
    And when the wind blows high and clear, a line to me pray send.
    And when the wind blows high and clear, pray send it, love, to me
    So I might know by your hand-write how times has gone with
thee.
    And I knew he was
in
that song. Who knows what had gone on in his head to put him in it, but he was there. I know what was in my head, though, standing there in that hot field with Granny grinning like a mule eating saw briers right below me and this black cloud of gnats dancing a jig right in front of my eyes. And I swear I felt like somebody had took their fist and hit me square in the belly and I almost doubled up. Of a sudden I was in that song too and really knew it for the first time. They was coming a time when all of us would live in a world that Granny did not and I could not help it. I started to cry and Granny must have thought I was doing that because he was singing again. And she said, “Lord, it is really just like hearing Pappy again.” And I commenced to hoeing because I could not for the life of me say a word to her.

5
    T HEY WAS NEVER A time when something was not happening with them boys. And I will not call them men, even though Larkin was fifteen and Hackley was almost nineteen. They is some men that will always be boys, and Hackley was one of them. Some of that, bless his heart, was the way his history wrote itself, but my guess is he would have always been that way. Though Larkin was big as a skinned mule, he acted like nothing but the young bull that he was. I swear him and Hackley had two or three fistfights a week back then. Not with each other all the time, though they did have one or two when Larkin either beat hell out of Hackley or he would let Hackley whup him ’cause he felt sorry for him, because it
was not
in Hackley to quit. One time they got into it down at the store and Larkin hit Hackley so hard both his feet come off the ground and he went over the bank right into the branch. Then here he come back and Larkin knocked him over the bank again and again here he come back. He done that four times and every time Larkin would say, “Stay down, Hackley,” but Hackley would not. Finally Clee Buck-ner took ahold of Hackley and held his feet off the ground till he calmed down enough to be set down. And as soon as he was turnedloose, don’t you know that he went right back at Larkin. I saw the look on Hackley’s face then and knowed what had to be, so I hollered out, “You’re going to have to put him down, Larkin.” And that time when he hit Hackley he went down like you’d throwed a sack of flour on the floor. It is a good thing for them both that they did not get into it often.
    They almost come to blows about Larkin’s name of all things. I always wondered when that would break out, and it happened right here at the house, too. We was having a frolic and Hackley had put his fiddle down and was out with the men drinking. Now, do not get me wrong. I am not above having a drink myself now and again, but I am not for getting knee-walking drunk. I never did see no sense in that and still don’t. But the men had ganged up and Sol Bullman’s liquor was flowing