My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams Page A

back and her blue eyes just flashing, and I have to say she was a good-looking woman. But she would not take Hackley from Mary. I knew that as good as I knew my own name. I felt sorry for her but I did not have the heart to tell her what I knew.
    • • •
    I T WAS GETTING UP towards four o’clock that evening when Larkin come by the house bringing me a mess of deer meat that him and Hackley had killed that morning. As I was washing it, he said they had been in the woods all day. I did not tell him that I had talked to Maggie. I just let him talk and to be honest with you, I only about half listened. They is only so much interest I can keep up for a boy talking about hunting deer all day long. But of a sudden he had all my attention because I heard him say this: “So I told him to marry, then.” And I said, “What?” He looked at me with his eyes as dark as the sky on a new moon and said, “I told him to go ahead and marry Mary.” And though I knew he was hurt and I was trying to pet him a little, my mind went to wondering what if Mary was to find out about all this business about Maggie. Wouldn’t that change a tune or two?
    But at that time I was not remembering that my brother was nobody’s fool.
    B IG J OHN AND D AISY Stanton had their big frolic right at Christmastime. I was having a big time that night and I must admit to drinking of Sol’s liquor. I was even flirting a little with some of the men just to get Zeke’s attention. Me and him both knew I would never do anything other than some harmless flirting, but he liked to know that other men still noticed me and, oh, they did. So I didn’t even know that Larkin was on the place until I saw him standing in front of the door looking mad as hell with little Julie Chandler looking up at him all serious.
    That night when we was going home, Zeke told me that Hackley had told most everybody there that Maggie had been walking out with Larkin. I allowed as how nobody had told me that and Zekelaughed and said, “Honey, they would not have dared to tell you.” No wonder Larkin looked so mad and I can’t believe that he didn’t slap the hell out of Hackley for the lying dog that he was. Poor Larkin. Getting all the talking about but getting none of the goody.
    I remember he danced a lot with Julie that night. Maggie come but barely spoke to me and kept herself right in the middle of a big crowd of men laughing too loud with her eyes way too bright. And Hack-ley never laid that fiddle down a single time. He come by and give me a big kiss on the cheek and told me I was the prettiest girl there, and even though I knew he was full of himself and told him as much, it still pleased me. He was on fire with that fiddle and played some of the best music I’d ever heard him play.
    If they was any doubt before as to who he loved and aimed to marry they would not be after. My pretty little brother broke a hundred hearts that night.
    They’d just finished a Virginia reel when Hackley went to playing “The True Lover’s Farewell,” and while he was playing, he went across that floor and stood right in front of Mary. Her face was red as a beet and Hackley was looking her right in the eye. And she looked right back at him too. Rosa Wallin come up to me then and said, “That Hackley could charm the birds right out of the trees, Arty,” and I said, “It is not him that is doing the charming.” And it was not. Mary Chandler was the charmer, if you want to know the truth. He stood there and sung every word right to her.
    A-rovin’ on one winter’s night
And a-drinkin’ good old wine,
A-thinkin’ about that pretty little girl
That broke this heart of mine.
    Oh, she is like some pink-a rose
That blooms in the month of June.
She’s like a musical instrument
Just late-lie put in tune.
    Oh, fare you well, my own true love,
So fare you well for a while.
I’m going away but I’m coming back
If I go ten thousand miles.
    And it’s who will shoe your pretty little feet?
Oh,