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

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 whichplants 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 goodand 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