Free My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams Page A

down now, honey. Hit makes me dizzy to set up long.”
    I took the cup and looked down in it a minute, then I turned it up and drunk what was left. It burned like fire going down and I was thankful for it. My belly got all warm and I felt a little light-headed and was glad for that as well.
    He eased her back onto the mattress and I pulled the quilts up and made a big do of tucking them under her chin. She’d stopped eating a week ago and I kept piling on the quilts because I couldn’t stand the thoughts of her being cold.
    “Mommie will come tomorrow,” I said to Larkin.
    “It’ll be too late tomorry, honey,” she whispered, staring out the door.
    We never said nothing and in a little bit she said it again and her voice was a little stronger.
    “I said it’ll be too late tomorry. I don’t aim to be here when the day breaks.”
    And I could tell by her tone that she meant just what she said.
    She dozed off, but Larkin kept on holding her hand. Of a sudden she roused up and her eyes flew open.
    “Josie? Oh, Josie, look. Them cats has found the nest of baby rabbits back an under the porch. Oh, no! They’ve hurt one of ’em bad. Try to catch it. We’ll nurse it back. Damn cats!” Her hands sort of twisted around on the quilt and then were still.
    Larkin leaned back hard in the chair, brought his hands up to his face, and fisted his eyes. I thought he was fixing to cry and I wanted to say to him,
This dying is hard business,
but I did not because his head nodded forward and his chin dipped toward his chest and I knowed he was asleep. I was tired myself but knew I could not sleep so I set there still as a rock and waited—for what, I did not know. A stretch of time went by and up on the mountain the big cat squalled again and I thought,
If any sound could wake the dead it would be that,
and then I felt all funny because I had even thought it. But it did wake Larkin up. We set a long while with neither of us saying a word. Then I was so glad he had not gone with them boys and left me there by myself. When Granny spoke I think it scared us both.
    “Larkin, boy? Carry me out into the moonlight. I want to see it all one more time.”
    I would have hated to have been the one that tried to stop him from taking her out. It was not going to be me, even if I did think it was too cold. He took her up quilts and all, ducked through the door and they was gone out into the bright of that October moon.
    If I close my eyes I can still see it and it was a sight to see. He stood in the middle of all that light and it changed them both into something other than what they had been inside the house. Though I had never seen no haints I allowed as how they must look just like themand though I knowed it was Granny and Larkin I could not help myself making an
X
over my heart.
    Granny sort of sighed and said, “Ain’t many folks gits to leave this world by the light of a blue moon. Two full hunter’s moons . . .” Her eyes glowed with the light. “Sing for me, Larkin.”
    “What do you want me to sing, Granny?”
    “Why, my favorite,” she said.
    And though his voice was soft, it was the best I would ever hear him sing “Pretty Saro.”
    When I first come to this country, in 1749,
I saw many fair love’yers but I never saw mine.
I viewed all around me, saw I was quite alone
And me a poor stranger and a long ways from home.
    Fare-thee-well to old mother, fare-thee-well to father, too,
I’m a-goin’ for to ramble this wide world all through,
And when I get weary, I’ll sit down and cry,
And think of my darlin Pretty Saro, my bride.
    Well hit’s not this long journey I’m a-dreading for to go.
Nor the country I’m a-leavin’ nor the debts that I owe
There’s only one thing that troubles my mind,
That’s leavin’ my darlin’ Pretty Saro behind.
    Well I wish’t I was a poet, an’ could write some fine hand.
I would write my love a letter that she might understand,
And I’d send hit by the waters where the islands