My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams Page B

had made him. Last week I’d gone to see if her beans had come in and they had and I was stringing and breaking them up while she sewed the buttons on it. My John Wesley loves green beans and Mommie’s big greasys are the best. I must say Hackley looked like icing on a cake. Right then it come to me that my brother was one of the prettiest men I’d ever laid eyes on, even if he was grinning in a not so pretty way.
    He said, “Lark, look out yonder and tell me what you see.”
    “Don’t see much, Hack,” Larkin said, though he did not do much more than let his eyes skim over the crowd. I could tell that he was way more interested in them men what was still arguing there in front of the store because of what he said next. “Have you heard any of this talk about a war?”
    “War?” Hackley said, and I could have told Larkin that my brother had not lost a bit of sleep nor one waking minute with thoughts about no war. And then he said, “I want you to look at the damn prettiest girl in Madison County.”
    And I piped right in. “You better be thinking about something other than your jewel among women, Mary Chandler.” I was trying to be funny, and Larkin picked right up on this, but it was all lost on Hackley because he got real serious. That in itself was a wondrous thing to behold, because there was not much in life that roused Hack-ley to seriousness.
    “She is just that, sister.” He had not called me sister in a long time. Then I did know that Hackley Norton was as serious as the night was long about Mary Chandler. And what he said to us next sealed the deal. The crowd sort of parted, and though I could not see from where I was, Hackley could.
    “Why, that son of a bitch! Look-a there!”
    Like a shot I was up on my tippy-toes trying to see. “What, what?” I said.
    Larkin, being a full head and shoulders over me, said, “Willard’s trying to talk to Mary.”
    And Hackley went rushing off, saying real loud-like, “I’ll whup his ass!”
    Then the crowd parted like Moses had raised his stick and I could see Willard Bullman leaning toward Mary. She had on a cream-colored dress and her waist looked slim as a boy’s. I knowed for a fact that I would never see my own that slender again but I would not have traded places with her if it had meant I had to give up my young’uns and Zeke.
    Hackley went out through there like a little banty rooster and when Willard saw him coming he looked around right wild. I knowed what he was looking for was standing right beside me. Everybody with any kind of sense knowed that if you messed with Hackley you had Larkin to fight and that was no fun. This is not to say my brother was not a handful all by hisself. He was. But I had my suspicions that it was Larkin they really dreaded and then I knew it for a fact, because when Willard looked and seen Lark standing there on the porch he sort of slouched off into the crowd without so much as a backward look at Mary.
    But Larkin was looking at her, they was no doubt, and if you could have seen the look, it would have tipped his hand to you as it most certain did to me. It was such a look that I swear I had to look myself. And I will tell you what I saw. She was not short but not real tall, she was slender and not busty neither. Her dark red hair kept catching the light that was sifting down through the leaves. She had freckles,but they was not so many and she had that real white redhead skin. Her hands were as slender as Mommie’s and I could not help it, I looked at mine. I would never have hands like them, as my fingers were too short, and I would never have the slender waist neither. But I would not complain, since Zeke seemed to like the way I was put together just fine. But Mary Chandler was as close to being beautiful as any girl I’d ever seen and I had not even noticed it until that very moment in time. I must have had my head under a bushel or maybe I’d just been raising young’uns and living my own life, thank you