My Old True Love (28 page)

“Well, if he’s drownded I hope he’s happy, or if he’s on some battlefield slain,

Or if he’s taken another girl and married, why, I’d love the girl that would marry him.”

His fingers being long and slender, into his pockets they did go.

Said, “Here’s the ring that you once gave me before I started for the war.”

She threw her lily white arms around him and straight before him she did fall,

Said, “You’re the man that used to court me before you left here for the war.”

Said, “I been on the deep sea sailing and I been sailing for seven years long,

And if I’d stayed gone seven years longer no woman on earth could’ve married me.”

That was the prettiest I would ever hear that sung. They was nobody could sing like Larkin Stanton, and that was all there was to it.

We set on for a while after he’d quit, and then Mary looked at me and said, “Arty, I sometimes feel like I have somehow betrayed your brother.” I took a long time to answer her and what I finally said to her was this. “Life is not for the dead and gone. It is just for the living. That is the only way it can ever be. As hard as it might sound, we have to turn loose of the dead and let them go.”

S
OMEBODY ASKED ME ONE
time if now that I was a old woman, if I had got things sorted out in my mind and was used to the idea of dying. I said to them what I will say now to you. No, I have gotten more used to living. That’s just how it is.

I
CAUGHT
M
ARY’S BABY
in September that year, and she was just like looking her mommie in the face. When I took her to
Larkin, he held out his big hands and I put her in them. He looked down into that little heart-shape of a face and he literally went to swaying. I reached out a hand to steady him and laughed. But then he lifted his face up and I saw his eyes. They was a great stillness in them, and my breath caught in my throat. Before I could say anything to him, he took and shoved that baby back at me, a sob tore itself loose from his throat, and he turned and went running hell bent off the porch. I took the baby back in to Mary and told her some men was profoundly touched when they see what their loins have created. But I was troubled to my very soul. As soon as I could, I lit out after him and found him down at the spring. What he was doing down there was not natural.

The deep water that had pooled for the spring was still as glass. All around us the summer bugs was churring and singing, but he didn’t even seem to hear them. He was staring right down into that water like he was waiting for something to rise right up out of it. He give a little shake of his head like he was telling somebody I could not see,
no, no.
Then he slapped the water with the flat of his hand and ripples went to streaking out every which way. “Can’t I have this thing?” he said right out loud. “Can I live it? Can I?”

My heart was feeling like it was going to bust out of my body, but I did not say a word. This was for him to figure. I watched as he put his face right down next to the water for all the world like he aimed to kiss his reflection. And then he said to himself, “They is nothing left but to live it.”

I slipped off and he did not even know I was there.

O
F COURSE
R
OXYANN OWNED
her daddy’s heart from the first birth cry. Larkin loved her so much that he would have walked
a rotten foot-log over hell to have got to her. And he caught her heart in them big hands of his as well. I ain’t never in all my days seen a young’un wean itself as quick as she did, and I believe she done it on purpose so she could go around with her daddy. And in the love he had for her, for a while at least, Larkin Stanton was a man content.

I reckon that was a good thing too, for right before Roxyann’s first birthday, Mary was breeding again. Now, they was no sickness with this one and she worked like a man through that winter. I was not a bit surprised when she birthed Luke right on time. He was a great big boy and I could not help it that my mind went back to when his daddy come into this world, which seemed like a lifetime ago. They named him Luke, after Larkin’s own daddy.

The older Luke got, the more he looked like his daddy. He was a quiet and serious young’un, and him and Hack Jr. was close from the very start. They was the same difference in age as what was between Larkin and Hackley. I swear for me it was just like I’d been tossed back in time watching them grow. One was sturdy, small, and blond and already taking up his daddy’s fiddle and singing the old love songs. And Luke so big and dark, dogging Hack Jr.’s every step. Most of the time I called Luke Larkin and could not help it.

I reckon it was when Rosalie was born that Larkin began to change.

I
GUESS SOMETIMES WE
just get so caught up in the living through life that we miss the living of it. I know that is what happened them years right after Larkin and Zeke come from the war. We went along, and went along, and in what seemed no time a’tall, Abigail was getting married.

And with each year that rolled over our heads, Larkin got stiller and quieter.

I was like Mary and slow to notice. We was all so busy that we hardly had time enough to think, let alone notice how quiet Larkin had come to be. He was a lot like Zeke in that way, and I guess we’d just got used to him being about and not saying much. And he was in and out, working as hard as the rest of us. So when she come by the house with her face all pinched up with worry, I told her what had taken me a long time to figure with Zeke, that men is just different and don’t always feel the need to face bark back and forth like us women do. She seemed to feel a little better by the time she left.

But I kept on studying about it and was plumb taken aback with just how long it had been since Larkin had darkened my own door. I decided right then and there that I had to catch hold of that big young’un and see what and all was churning around and about in that big head of his. A few days later I struck out for their house. But when I got over there I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening right in front of my eyes.

Mary was setting in front of the fire with a lap full of mending and Larkin was setting at the table. I went by him and dropped a big smacking kiss on the top of his head but he barely grunted at me. I never let on and started talking a blue streak with Mary, but I was sneaking looks at him every chance I could. Lord, but his eyes looked like little black chips and there was a still watchfulness in them. His mouth all thinned out and a big muscle was jumping in his jaw. Finally I couldn’t stand it no more and I said just his name, “Larkin?” and my voice sounded funny even to me. The look he shot me was gone so fast my head wondered if I had seen it at all. But my heart had caught it all right, and his eyes were still holding on to some of it as well.

“What?”

Mary was watching us and her little face was looking like she was
going to take to crying just any minute. I just stared at him and then said the first thing that popped into my mind. “I love you, son.”

The dark thing in his eyes was gone in a flash and he smiled. “Why, I love you, too.”

I did not know what had just happened, but I knew with the awfulest feeling of despair that this was not the first time whatever it was had squatted in him. And with something that felt an awful lot like fear, I knew it would not be the last.

M
ARY REACHED FOR THE
cup of coffee in front of her, but her hand trembled so that she had to set it back down without even taking a drink. “I don’t even know how long he’s been this way. But, Lord have mercy, Arty, I see it everywhere now and it does nothing but get worser between us.”

She had lost so much weight that her eyes looked to be sunk back in her head. “What are you seeing in him that is troubling you so?”

“With me he’s quiet as the grave,” Mary said. “But he talks to them boys like they are dogs.
Worse
than dogs. And they are
good
boys, Arty. You know that. They don’t sass, they do what they’re told.” She swiped at her eyes. “For the most part they do, but they’re boys and sometimes they get off to playing, you know?”

“I know, honey. Mine’s the same way,” I said and then, trying to soothe her, I said, “Zeke gets so mad he could spit. Hollers at them sometimes, too.”

Mary folded her little hands and put them in her lap. She looked down, studying them, and when she spoke her voice was low. “Hollering ain’t all he does.”

I reached out and patted her hand. “Mary, hollering ain’t all Zeke does. It ain’t all I’ve done, neither.”

“Has Zeke ever kicked them?” She raised eyes that seemed to carry all the pain in the world.

I felt myself go cold as ice on the inside and even my heart stilled. “Kick them? You mean kicks with his foot?” Now I knowed she meant with his foot. How else would you kick something, or worse yet someone, but I was just so shocked, you have to understand.

When I said that it was like I had reached out and uncorked a jug and turned it over as one ugly story after another come pouring out. My heart sunk lower and lower as she talked, and I kept thinking to myself,
What in this world has happened?

Mary talked for a long time and then she just stopped. The room was quiet and a bright square of sun came through the small window that was my pride and joy. The only sound was from the clock on the fireboard and we both jumped when it chimed out the hour.

“Lord, I’ve got to go,” Mary said. “I left Rosalie with Roxyann, and she’ll be crying the house down wanting her mommie.”

I followed her onto the porch. Mary looked so thin. I put my arms around her and hugged her up, and I was mad as hell and my voice was just shaking. “I have a mind to talk to Larkin Stanton, Mary, whether you want me to or not.” At the look on her face I could not stay mad and softened my voice up. “But I won’t if you think it’ll just make it worse.”

Mary swiped her hair back with both hands. “Don’t say nothing to him right now.”

I looked her hard right in the eyes. “All right. But all you’ve got to do is ask.”

“Thanks so much, Arty.”

She was almost to the edge of the yard when I hollered out, “Mary?”

She turned.

“He ain’t hit you or the girls, has he?”

Mary shook her head. “Oh no, he’s gentle as ever with them. And no, he ain’t hit me neither.” Her shoulders sagged. “I know it sounds crazy as hell, but sometimes I wish he would. Him hitting me would be better than this awful watching that he’s doing.”

M
ARY HAD NEVER SEEN
Larkin really drunk, so the first time he come up the path singing at the top of his lungs, she really thought things might be fixing to change. She said he laughed, took her on his lap, said sweet things to her and aside from the strong smell of his breath, he seemed more like himself than he had in months. He’d sat at the table wearing a big toothy grin while she’d fixed supper. It was the first relaxed meal they’d all had together in a long while.

She said it just broke her heart when the boys come sneaking in after washing up and that they’d perched on the bench like birds ready to take flight. Luke actually flinched when Larkin dropped his knife. She had looked at Hack Jr. and caught his look of pure old relief when it dawned on him that the awful quiet would not rule this time. Larkin was actually laughing and cutting up and deviling him about this or that young girl. For all that his speech was slurred, at least he was talking to them.

She said she was feeling pretty good, but that had come to an end when they finished supper and Hack Jr. had said, “Daddy?”

Larkin had looked up from his plate with his eyes glassy and his grin on all crooked. “What, son?”

“Willis and a bunch of them are going to let their dogs run. Can me and Luke take Hummer and go with them?”

She said she’d thought to herself,
Oh, no. Don’t ruin this, son. Don’t.

But her quick glance at Larkin realized it was already done.

His eyes had gone flat as a snake’s and his smile was gone. “You wanting to lay out all night?”

Hack Jr. heard the change but he was already in it now. He swallowed and went on, “We’d be back before daylight, plenty of time to do our work.” He glanced quick at Larkin, and even though he saw the stillness on his face, the dark knitting of his brow, he plunged ahead. “We ain’t done nothing like that in so long, Daddy. Not since—” and one more look at his daddy had stopped him right there.

Mary said everybody went quiet, and even Roxyann stopped dead still on her way to the sideboard with a stack of plates.

Larkin placed both hands flat on the table. “Since what, Hack?” Of a sudden they was no slurring of words, and that happened so quick it scared the hell out of Mary. “Hack,” she said, “you and Luke take the slop bucket out.”

“Hush, Mary.” His voice had gone soft and his eyes was holding that awful dark thing.

But when Hack Jr. lifted his chin, Mary said she’d felt something almost joyful rise up in her breast. Her son’s jaw was set and they was a certain cockiness about him. His lower lip came out in a bit of a pout, and the blue eyes that he offered Larkin was not one bit afraid. I reckon his daddy popped out in him, and that was not lost on Larkin.

Them big hands what was on the table made into big fists and he brought both of them up and slammed them both down on the table so hard that the dishes bounced. “Don’t you look at me that way.”

But, though it was a shout, it carried no anger. His voice had held such pain it sounded almost like a plea.

Without thought Mary had put her hand out to him.

“Don’t, just don’t,” he’d said as he’d swatted her hand away. Then he’d jumped up and went to staggering for the door. By the time Mary had gathered her wits enough to go after him, the night had swallowed him up.

That was the first night he didn’t come home.

T
HAT FALL WAS A
misery for them all. When Larkin was home, he was mean drunk. There were the few odd times when he’d come swaggering in, right playful, laughing, singing, grabbing her around the waist. Mary come to dread those times worst of all. He’d run the children off from the house and they would flee ahead of him like a bunch of scared little animals.