My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams

ganged up on the porch of Jim Leake’s store. Others stood about in the yard. I could not believe how quiet they was, so I just had to wander over there to see what and all was going on. They weren’t even milling about much, and I could still see where the dirt showed marks from Cassie’s broom.
    I went over to where Larkin was leaning against one of the posts and leaned against him. He was as still as that post listening to Wade Hensley reading the results of the election for governor from the
Asheville News
. Nobody spoke until he finished reading every thing they was to read.
    “Damned if Marshall didn’t go big for Ellis. Says here a hundred and fifty-six for him and eighty-two for Pool.”
    “What about that!” Ruben Gosnell was whittling away and thehead and neck of a little bird that looked like a living thing was coming right up out of that stick. “What do you reckon they was thinking?”
    “Not much, you want my opinion,” Shadrack said. I did not care for Shadrack even if he was Zeke’s brother. He put on airs and I told him that one time. I also told him that he put his britches on just like everybody else, so they was no love at all lost between us. “How anybody could vote for that lying suck-ass is beyond me. ’Specially after he shit us with all them promises to git that road in down through Paint Rock.”
    “Bet Shelton Laurel laid it to Ellis’s hide, didn’t they?” Hugh said. I did like Hugh, and especially his wife Rosa. Me and her had been friends for all our lives and I knowed how good he was to her and their boys. They is something to be said about a man that is good to his wife and does not use his fists on her like some others I know—which would include Shadrack, I just might tell you.
    Daddy was setting next to Wade and he leaned over and squinted at the little print in the paper.
Poor old Daddy,
I thought,
His eyes are getting bad.
“Ellis didn’t git a single vote in Shelton Laurel. Pool got fifty-one.” He looked up. “’Course, Ellis got four out of thirty votes in our district.”
    Andrew Chandler give a wave of his hand that said oh-forget-about-that. “Bet that was them Eckerds off on Spillcorn. They been fools since God’s dog was a pup. Can’t even hold it against them. They can’t help it.”
    As Wade folded up the paper, Daddy said, “Well, every other district in the county except Little Pine went big for Ellis, as did Buncombe County. It’ll be four more years of the same old shit.”
    “What hurt Pool was that business about putting a tax on everything,”Zeke said. Me and him had talked a long time about that over the last month and I had told him that them folks down east ought not to have to pay for our roads and such up here but they ought not to make us pay taxes on stuff we had to have to barely survive, neither.
    Andrew snorted. “How exactly you reckon they was going to figure out what we had that they could put a tax on? Ain’t nobody coming into my house and nosing about, making lists.”
    “Felt the same way, Andrew.” Daddy said. “But they was no way I was gonna vote for them yeller dogs that’s in, either. We was between a rock and a hard place.”
    “Can’t trust none of them politicians far as you can rare back and throw ’em out in the yard, anyways.” Ervin Ramsey leaned forward and spit off the end of the porch. “Old Pearlie, God rest him, used to say the only folks fit to be in charge of things is them what don’t want to be.”
    “I really miss old Pearlie,” Andrew said. “He had a way of putting things that went right to the quick.”
    Wiley Franklin wiped his face. He was bad to sweat and his handkerchief was already sopping wet. “Well, now,” he said, “Pool said something a week or so ago that was right on the money. He said they’s a time coming and coming soon when we’re going to wind up gitting into it with each other over this slave thing. Said them what owns niggers here in North Carolina can’t raise