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

much time that I’d forget about it for days at a stretch. And then I’d get reminded like when we’d dug up some lilac bushes from next to her porch and planted them next to mine. “There,” she had said to me, “now every time you get a whiff of them lilacs you will think of this day and us planting them together.” And I said, “Lord God, Granny, don’t talk like that.” And she said, “Why, honey, look at how long I’ve had. Eighty year in case you can’t count that high. I am older’n anybody I know, ’cepting for Lige Blackett and I reckon they’ll have to knock Lige in the head with a frying pan on Judgment Day.” When I laughed she did, too, but then she said, “Don’t you tell I said that. Them Blacketts is mean as snakes and dumber than four buckets of hair.” We both snickered about that because it was the truth, and then she reached out and pushed my hair back off my face like she used to do when I was a girl. “Just remember, Arty.” And I said, “What?” And she got the funniest look on her face and said just this one word: “Everything.”
    • • •
    N OW HERE WE ALL was, and I knew with every bone in me that this would be the last time we was all together. And with the knowing of that, it seemed like everywhere I looked I saw something to store up to take out and study later on.
    That was the first time I noticed that Mary’s little sister Julie kept sneaking looks at Larkin. She was a real sweet girl and awfully clever, but Julie did not look like Mary is the kindest way I can think to say it. I recall thinking,
You poor thing,
because Larkin did not look at her even once during that long preaching. His eyes went nowhere but to where Mary and Hackley set. So mine did too and I had to hide my smile behind my hand when Hackley tried to put his arm up around her waist and her back went straight as a poker and he finally took it away and his neck got all red. And I thought,
Good for you, Mary. You keep that up and you might get him yet.
    Mommie was bustling about, making sure all the young’uns had plates and spoons. She’d turned fifty a few months back and was more grayheaded now than blond. She was right in amongst my young’uns slinging food like a crazy woman. I had told her to wait till I finished nursing Zeke Jr. but she went right on with her rat killing like I had never said a word so I let her do it. I leaned back against the tree and looked at my brood. Abigail was like looking Mommie right in the face. John Wesley had my brown hair and green eyes and so did Sylvaney. Ingabo had curly red hair and Zeke Jr. was going to be redheaded too. I had got real tired of folks asking where these two got their red hair. Lige Blackett come right out and spoke what I knew everybody was thinking: “Are you sure these two are Zeke’s?” And Ifired right back at him, “Don’t you think I won’t smack you just because you are an old man.” But they is no doubt about who daddied Carolina. She looked like she was picked right out of Zeke’s hind end, right down to her shiny black hair and purplish blue eyes. She was a Wallin to the bone.
    About then Larkin come wandering up and of course Carolina set up a howling for him to pick her up. She was crazy about him and he petted her something awful.
    Mommie shaded her eyes and watched as he settled Carolina on his shoulders. “You have plumb growed up,” she said. Larkin blushed like a girl. I couldn’t help deviling him a little.
    “You better watch out, honey. Won’t be long before some of these little gals set their eyes on you and go running for their mommies’ brooms.”
    Carolina perked right up on that and hollered, “Larkin has already promised to marry me, Mama. Ain’t you, Larkin?”
    “That’s right, missy. You need to hurry and get grown ’cause I need me a good cook. You can cook now, I know. And course you can keep house and all? Sweep and scrub the floors, milk the cows, wash my clothes, see to the garden, hoe