Free My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams

this. You and Arty need to come of it because it ain’t going to be no time till it’s just you and her for it. And I don’t know what in this world Larkin will do when I am gone.”
    Of a sudden I felt selfish. All I had thought of was me, me, me, and it were Larkin what stood to lose biggest of all and he probably did not even know. I set straight up then and looked around for him. It did not take me long to find him. He was right back over there at the store where them men was still talking, no doubt that war business. And as if they had read my very thoughts I heard somebody holler out the word
War.
    Granny shook her head and her next words come out on a long sigh that sounded like it had whistled right out of her soul. “All this talk about war. The men might fight it, but it is always the women that suffers it.”
    And Mommie said, “They’ll be no war. But even if they is, it won’t be nothing to us.”
    “They will be sides took, and that will mean a fight,” Granny said, and right then it hit me and Mommie at the same time because neither one of us had a word to say back to her. Zeke Jr. slept on, but my mind was flying. How old did you have to be before you did not have to go off to fight? Or how young? Would Daddy have to go? Surely he would not, as he were an old man of fifty-one. If not him, then what of my brothers David and Willy? They was both married and had a dozen young’uns between and surely they would not have to go. But Robert and Hackley would. And I almost laughed at the thought of Hackley in a war, but I did not because I felt that yes, hewould have to go too. Then I felt cold all over because I thought of Larkin and Zeke. But I am not one to worry with something that I cannot wrap my mind around.
They will not be a war
is all I could think as I picked Zeke Jr. up off that quilt and hauled myself to my feet.
They will not be a war because Arty will not allow it.
    But they was nobody there to sass me back and tell me that Arty might not be the one in charge on that day.

6
    G RANNY WANTED THE DOOR open and the light of the hunter’s moon had come dashing itself across the floor like bright-colored water and had crawled its way up in the bed with her. If you had told me that corruption would lay waste to a body the way it had Granny’s in just three months, I would have called you a dirty liar. But it had, and laying there in that bed she looked as little as one of my least girls. Larkin was setting in the doorway with his feet on the outside step. He had his elbows propped on his knees and his hands was hanging down loose between them. I almost wished that he had gone on hunting with Hackley and them boys that had stopped by here before good and dark. He looked pitiful setting there. The moon’s light laid flat on his face, and had it been a summer moon, it would have been pretty to see. But they is something about moonlight in the fall that I did not like then and do not like now. Granny had twisted and turned and fought the covers so that I was just wore out with trying to keep her covered up. From up on the ridge above the house, a panther squalled and a hen in the chicken coop answered it with a nervous chuckle. Granny opened her eyes and looked right at me.
    “That would be the little hen Hattie give me two year ago. She’s a good layer and right pert for a hen anyways,” she said.
    Larkin got up and drug him a chair to set next to me. The slats squeaked as he leaned forward to take her skinny little hand in his big one. He brought up the crock of white liquor we’d been keeping next to the bed. He took a sip and tilted it in her direction. “You ready for some more, Granny?”
    “Pour me some and help me set up,” her voice come all whispery.
    I sloshed a fair amount into a tin cup and Larkin helped her up. He looked at me and I saw his hurt plain as day. How anybody could be as little as her and still live was beyond us both. She slurped noisily from the cup. “Lay me back