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

like water that night. And Sol’s liquor went down sweet and you didn’t realize it had you till you was plumb cross-eyed and talking in tongues. As you probably know, they is happy drunks and mean drunks and crazy drunks. Hackley was a crazy drunk and wanted to go to fighting every time. So he’d had him a few drinks and, foolish like, Larkin set in about his name. Why Granny had mentioned it in the first place is beyond me, but she did. Larkin set right in wanting to know just how it was that Hackley had come up with his name. And Hackley said, “It just come to me.” Larkin’s eyes was black as the night and he said, “Is that right?” Hackley allowed that it was. They went back and forth for a bit and of a sudden they was both mad as hell and right in each other’s face. I run in between them and said for them to both hush. Hackley barked out a laugh and said, “Well, I was just four year old, what did you expect?” And Larkin said, “Something better than being named after a coon dog.” And me desperate to keep them from fighting, blared out, “Well, hewas a damn good coon dog,” which set everybody to laughing including Hackley and Larkin. Later I told Larkin he ought to have been thankful ’cause Mommie had told me Aunt Polly aimed to name him after Grandpap Shelton. And he allowed as how that might have been better and I allowed back as how no, it would not have, since Grandpap’s name was Redderdick.
    But they stayed into it with them other boys around home. Zeke come in laughing one night telling me how a bunch of them had got to playing poker, which I do not believe in because it is spending money that none of us has. He said Hoy and Roy McIntosh was there and I knowed what he was going to say before he said it. I really think Hackley just did not like the way they looked or held their mouths or something just as foolish because they got into it every time they run up on each other. That was the first time that I heard how Hack-ley and Larkin had took to fighting back to back. When I thought of how deadly the two of them would be doing that I got the cold chills. Larkin that had them big fists and Hackley that would not quit.
    W HEN D ECORATION D AY COME it seemed like everybody in the world headed out to Sodom. It was always on the second weekend in August and folks started coming in on that Friday. Everybody was in a right festive mood and we’d all gang up and clean off every grave in every cemetery. It looked so pretty on that Sunday with all the graves mounded and raked smooth. I have thought about that a lot over the years and know now that they had to have been graves we didn’t even know about. When I think of all the folks that has died, been buried, and forgot about, it makes me know that our lives are but a flash in the pan and we really are a short time here and a long time gone.
    I have to tell you now that this year was different. I felt it right off as soon as we got to the church. I am not saying it looked any different. The little church was no big fancy thing, just a little box shape with a steeple on top in which, I’m proud to say, was a bell that we had bought from up north. On the inside we had benches that didn’t have splinters on them, which is a good thing. I have set on ones that did and that was not good, because if you study about it they is no good way to dig a splinter out of that part. At the front we had a pulpit and Zeke’s brother Hugh had rocked in a pretty fireplace. Two big old sugar maples stood guard on either side and they were a sight to see in the fall of the year. They give shade in the summer, and that was a good thing since it was hot as blazes this year. The men had knocked together a bunch of tables and they were already swagging with food by the time we got there to add our load. I’d cooked late into the night and got up before daylight to fry chicken and I know heaven could not smell no better than it did under them trees.
    A clot of men had