My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams

Author:Sheila Kay Adams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: North Carolina - History - Civil War, Historical, Appalachian Region, Cousins, Southern, Sagas, North Carolina, General, Romance, 1861-1865, Triangles (Interpersonal Relations), Historical Fiction, War & Military, Singers, Fiction, Ballads, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780345476951
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

I HAD LAID DOWNwith Pearl way up in the night just to try to rest as I knew I would not sleep, and it was just getting daylight when we heard footsteps on the porch.

Mary come up out of that chair like she’d been scalded and jerked open the door. “Oh, Hack, Oh, Hack!” she kept saying over and over.

But the way he acted you’d have thought he’d just been out hunting. For once I think he was really trying to put our minds at ease, and especially Mary’s. “Hell, honey. I ought to git rounded up and took off more often, if this is how I’ll be treated when I get back.”

“Are you all right, son?” You could tell Daddy was just worried to death.

“Finer than frog hair.” And he grinned at all of us but I noted how pinched he looked around his eyes and then knowed for certain it was all just a big show.

“Come and eat,” Mommie said, holding his arm and all but dragging him to the table.

“All right, all right. Let me get untangled from Mary and I’ll eat. I am plumb starved, sure enough.”

It was while he was eating that he told his tale. He said they’d went along rounding up men until they had joined up with another group coming down from Shelton Laurel. They had been asked a bunch of questions, and then they had made some of them join up with the Confederacy on the spot. When it come his turn, one of the fellers had asked him if he was Andrew Chandler’s son-in-law. They had asked him to sign his name on a paper and let him come home.

I could see Daddy had went white as a sheet and he said, “Oh, God, son, what did you sign your name to?”

“And that was all?” Larkin asked.

“Well, pretty much.” Hackley would not look at Daddy. “I told them I had been planning to join up as soon as I got my crops in anyhow. They reminded me that the Conscription Act had took effect back last month and that it was the law that I sign up, so I did. Then they let me go.”

“Oh, God, help us.” Mary’s voice was barely a whisper.

“So you’ll go now?” Daddy asked.

“Nah. I won’t have to go right now. Won’t have to leave till the end of this month.” He give such a big yawn that his jaw popped. “But for right now I’m going to bed. I am wore out.”

Larkin followed him all the way to the bed.

“Hack, what about Fee?”

Hackley set down on the edge of the bed and went to pulling off his boots before he fell sideways on the bed. “They took him on. He didn’t go quiet neither. Took three of them to drag him off and that damn dog of his was absolutely trying to eat them up. They aimed to shoot it but didn’t. Finally just whistled it up and took it off, too.”

“But Fee won’t

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