Cold Sassy Tree Read online

  "Sh-h!" Mama nodded toward me.

  I knew Loma was fixing to say "If only he hadn't got Miss Love's best friend in trouble and had to marry her." Everybody in town knew that story. I don't know why Mama thought I didn't.

  Nobody asked my opinion, but I had always admired Miss Love, with all that wavy brown hair piled atop her head, and that smiley, freckledy face and those friendly gray-blue eyes. She was a merry person, like Grandpa. Always wore big flowered hats and bright-colored dresses, never "quiet" clothes like nice ladies were supposed to wear on the street. I could see how Miss Love could cheer up a man whose wife was short of breath for four years, dying for ten days, and dead for three weeks.

  Aunt Loma's face suddenly went redder than ever. Clearly she'd had a new thought. "Sister, with Love bein' Pa's milliner, and them seein' each other down at the store every day, people are go'n say—"

  "Will, I thought I told you to go get the eggs," Mama interrupted with a mad sound in her voice. "Now go on, right now. Mind me."

  I minded her. But she needn't think I didn't know what Aunt Loma was driving at. Well, there couldn't have been any carrying-on down at the store or we'd have heard about it long time ago. Anyhow, Miss Love wasn't that kind and neither was my grandfather. And heck, he loved Granny. Even now I couldn't hardly imagine him kissing another lady, or slapping her playful on the backside like he used to do Granny when he was in a teasing mood. I guess what I really couldn't imagine was Miss Love kissing him, much less marrying him. It was easy to see he needed looking after, but what did she need that an old man could give when she already had a beau her own age who was anxious to marry her?

  3

  I SAT DOWN on the back steps to think. I didn't see why Mama and Aunt Loma weren't glad Grandpa Blakeslee had found him a lady to marry. The sooner the better, if you asked me. The wedding couldn't be for a year or more, of course, but after that he wouldn't have to keep coming to our house for dinner or to Aunt Loma's every night for supper, which he'd been doing ever since Granny passed away. And Miss Love wouldn't have to bring a quart Mason jar full of hot coffee down to the store for him every morning like she'd been doing.

  Papa kept trying to get Grandpa to eat breakfast with us, being as he came by home anyhow for his snort. It wouldn't of been much trouble for Mama; all Grandpa ever wanted in the morning was four cups of coffee and some yeast bread, toasted hard and dipped in boiling water and then buttered. But when Papa said, "Sit down and have a bite with us, Mr. Blakeslee," Grandpa would say he just et. I reckon he thought if he took dinner and breakfast both at our house, it wouldn't be any time before Papa would be after him to move in with us.

  Well, this time next year Grandpa would be married, and if he didn't like what was put before him it would be Miss Love's little red wagon, not Mama's or Aunt Loma's. Also, they wouldn't have to see after him if he got sick. He was hard to take care of when he was ailing. Liked to groan and carry on. He'd lie down before supper on the daybed, moaning, "Oh, me, me.... Oh, me, me," and Granny just about went crazy listening to it, knowing that next morning he'd go on to the store anyway. The last year or two, no matter how bad he felt you couldn't make him stay home. He could have a cold so bad it sounded like pneumonia rattling around in there but he wouldn't stay home.

  That really used to worry my grandmother. She'd beg him not to go to work. "Mr. Blakeslee, I nurse everybody in town but my own husband. Please stay in bed t'morrer. Hear?"

  But he'd say, "I ain't thet big of a fool, Miss Mattie Lou. Ain't you ever noticed? Folks die in bed."

  Anyhow, now there wouldn't be any more worrying about Grandpa living by himself.

  Aunt Loma had already declared he couldn't live with her. Said she didn't have room. I don't know how she could say such as that when her daddy had given her husband a job and provided them a house to live in. Mama couldn't have said it—even if he didn't own our house, too, and even if Papa didn't work for him. Papa had been keeping the store ledgers since he was sixteen.

  Grandpa wouldn't of lived with Aunt Loma, of course, on account of her cats. The first time he went there for supper after Granny was buried, the next morning he started fussing about her cats the minute he got to our house for his snort. "I swanny to God, I seen one a-them cats jump up on Loma's kitchen stove last night! Tiptoed across thet red-hot stove on his dang claws and et right out of the pot!"

  I had been hoping Grandpa would come live with us. But even though she never said so, I knew Mama dreaded that possibility. Tell the truth, she was scared of her daddy, as if she wasn't sure he'd got over her not being a boy and her marrying a Presbyterian—though the way I heard it from Cudn Temp, Grandpa was all for her marrying my daddy, and had a fit when the Baptist deacons tried her for heresy.

  Heresy was his word for their word for her marrying a Presbyterian.

  According to Temp, the deacons voted to put it in the church records that "Mary Willis Blakeslee has swapped her religious birthright for a mess of matrimonial pottage." It made Grandpa mad as holy heck. "Anybody calls Hoyt Tweedy a mess of matrimonial pottage," he roared, "thet man is a-go'n answer to me." The deacons struck the pottage part from the record. But they turned Mama out of the Baptist communion just the same, and her only seventeen.

  That was one reason I didn't like the way Mama was carrying on so about Grandpa getting engaged. He had stuck up for her when she wanted to marry Papa. Why wouldn't she stick up for him now?

  I wasn't surprised at Aunt Loma, of course. She was the only child of Granny and Grandpa's to live more than a few years, besides my mother, and she'd been spoiled all her life. I reckon they thought they had to keep rewarding her for not dying. Anyhow, Loma never could think about much else for thinking about how to get her own way. Despite she was married now, and a mother, she hadn't grown up any that I could see. If it didn't suit her for her daddy to marry again, why, he just wasn't going to.

  Miss Love having worked for Grandpa at his store for two years or more, she must already know he was stingy and set in his ways. She also knew that, because of his having just the one hand, he needed special looking after. He bit off his fingernails, so keeping them short was no problem. But tough meat had to be cut up for him, and he needed help with his high-top shoes. Timmy Hopkins had been coming by to tie Grandpa's shoelaces ever since Granny took sick.

  But though Miss Love might not be a good cook after boarding so long, and probably couldn't of outworked Granny in a vegetable garden or rose garden or sickroom, most anybody could outdo Granny with a broom and a feather duster. She used to say, "A house will keep, whether you weed it or not, but that-air yard will git away from you in the bat of a eye." The only thing she liked to do indoors was cook and tend the sick. I remember one time she pulled off her apron after two days and nights nursing a neighbor lady and said, "They ain't no feelin' in the world like takin' on somebody wilted and near bout gone, and you do what you can, and then all a-sudden the pore thang starts to put out new growth and git well."

  I hadn't ever heard of Miss Love nursing the sick. But that wasn't any reason for Grandpa not to marry her. I just couldn't see why Mama and Aunt Loma were having a fit about it. The fact that I liked Miss Love didn't mean I hadn't loved Granny, and I figured it was the same with him.

  I was just fixing to get up off the back steps and go gather the eggs when Campbell Junior started squalling in the kitchen. I heard Aunt Loma go in there. "I got to get on home," she told our cook.

  "Yas'm," said Queenie. "B'ess his li'l heart, he be's hongry."

  "And I be's full as a Jersey cow," said Aunt Loma, mocking her. "Seems like all I do is nurse this bloomin' baby."

  "Shame on you, Miss Loma, talkin' lak dat. Some peoples cain' nuss dey baby, and some ain' got nary baby to nuss. You be's lucky."

  "Humph," said Loma, and left.

  Before I had a chance to move, Mama came out and lit into me for sitting there doing nothing. Said I was no-count and shiftless and why hadn't I gathered the eggs and I was supposed to have we
eded the lower garden two days ago and to go do that "but first you gather the eggs like you been told to. You go'n let the rats get'm. Or that no-count egg-sucker dog of yours."

  I resented that. T.R. didn't suck eggs. But I said yes'm.

  Mama went inside, and I was hardly down the three back steps before she stuck her head out of her bedroom window upstairs and hollered to me to watch for Papa and my grandpa when it was time for them to come to dinner.

  "Yes'm."

  "I got a sick headache," she said, like it was my fault, and put her hand up to her forehead as she faded back into the room. The window slammed shut and the shade came down to keep it cool in there.

  In a kind of furious daze, forgetting the eggs, I got a big old gray peach basket off the porch and dragged it down the path. The garden was to the left of the barn and the pasture, hidden from the house by the smokehouse and a pecan grove and a row of little peach trees that because of the drought had dropped hard knotty fruit not even fit to make spiced pickle with.

  Gourd leaves that yesterday drooped down like a hundred little half-closed umbrellas were now freshened with dew. But it was already hot, great goodness, and the dirt was powder-dry. I hadn't weeded since the last rain. I started pulling up the grass and weeds as if they were Miss Love Simpson—like I thought getting rid of them would get rid of her and bring Granny Blakeslee back from the grave and let us be a normal family again.

  Nothing had been normal since Granny died. Mama was grieving herself to death, Papa was sterner than ever, Aunt Loma was meaner, the laughter had gone out of Grandpa, and if he was about to sell the store, it wouldn't of upset everybody any more than him aiming to marry his milliner.

  Worst of all, for me, was being in mourning.

  I just didn't think I could stand any more mourning. For three whole weeks of summer vacation they hadn't let me play baseball or go fishing or anything. I couldn't mention the camping trip I'd been planning all spring with Pink Predmore and Lee Roy Sleep and Smiley Snodgrass, and I had missed a chance to ride in a Buick automobile all the way to Atlanta. Pink's uncle over in Athens invited him and me to go so we could fix his flat tires and push the car up hills—and out of ditches if it rained and the roads got slick. Pink went, but Mama wouldn't let me go. Also, I didn't get to go downtown for the Fourth of July parade, and they hadn't let me read the funny paper since the day Granny passed on.

  Papa never had let us read the funny paper on Sunday. That was a sin. We had to save it till Monday. But now we were having to save the funnies indefinitely, and sometimes the newspaper got taken to start a fire with before I could tear out the page. The Katzenjammer Kids had dropped clean out of my life. Seems like I missed them about as much as I missed Granny. Maybe more. They were up there on the shelf in Mama's chiftbrobe with things happening to them, whereas Granny wasn't anywhere.

  I wished she could come back for just a minute. I'd ask her wouldn't she hate my giving up the funnies and the automobile trip when there wasn't a thing I could do for her anymore. Despite she had wanted a nice funeral, I knew she wouldn't expect a boy to walk around with a long face the rest of his life.

  I was just fixing to quit weeding and rest a spell under the big hickernut tree when I noticed my shadow was underfoot, nearly straight down. It must be right at dinner time. Gosh, Mama had told me to watch out for Papa and Grandpa. Dashing past the barn, the smokehouse, and Mama's flower pit, I ran through the house and got to the front door just as Papa hurried up the walk. He was by himself.

  "Where's Grandpa at?" I asked.

  "Where's Mama at?" he asked. He was sweaty and red-faced from rushing home and he looked upset.

  "She's gone to bed, sir. I think she's sick."

  Even now, eight years later, I remember how my papa looked that day—like a thundercloud, but also like a pitiful, lightning-struck tree. Taking the stairs two at a time, he didn't even notice me following behind.

  As he burst into the darkened second-floor bedroom, he said, "Mary Willis, guess what! Your daddy just left in his buggy with Miss Love Simpson! Said they were off to Jefferson to get married!"

  Mama bolted up. "You mean already?" she screeched. "Today?"

  "You knew it?" roared Papa. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't dream he meant today!" Then she blurted out what all Grandpa had said that morning. "Hoyt, he said it didn't matter, said Ma havin'just passed away didn't matter! He said ... he said Ma was d-dead as she—" she started crying. "Dead as—oh, Hoyt, I c-cain't bear to repeat his w-words! He said ... Ma was dead as she'd ever b-be!"

  Peeping in the doorway, I saw my mother was laying across the bed, on her side, pressing a handkerchief to her mouth. Papa had sat down by her and was patting her shoulder. He kissed her forehead. "There, there, Mary Willis hon. Don't carry on so. I admit it, I was surprised myself. But Lord knows, Mr. Blakeslee needs somebody to see after him. Hon, I'm sure Miss Love will be good to him. She'll—"

  "She'll get the store, that's what she'll do!" cried Mama. "And this house! Maybe everything he owns! What if she has a baby, Hoyt? Did you think about that? And what if she marries again after Pa dies? Oh, Hoyt...."

  I knew my mother thought the marriage was a scandal, but this was the first I guessed that she saw Miss Love as a scoundrel, a villain, out to steal hers and Aunt Loma's inheritance.

  Slowly it dawned on me that if Grandpa Blakeslee died and left Miss Love the store, she really could marry again and let her new husband run it. And if he was somebody like Son Black, he might just push my daddy and Uncle Camp clean out. The threat was sobering even to me.

  But somehow the picture didn't fit. Maybe Grandpa didn't care what folks said or thought about him, but he cared a lot about Mama and Papa and Aunt Loma. I mean, he didn't like Aunt Loma a lot, but he loved her. Also, he set great store on a man doing right by his family.

  Peeping in again, I saw Papa had his arm around Mama. She was crying. "When a woman m-marries a man old enough to be her f-father," she said, "you can b-b-bet your ... bottom dollar it's for ... w-what she can g-g-get out of him.... Pa's a fool, Hoyt! And I just don't see h-how we can start all over when he d-dies. Oh, Hoyt...!"

  She kept wailing and Papa kept patting her. I didn't know what to think about all that, but I knew I didn't want them to catch me out there listening. Tiptoeing around to the other side of a golden oak bureau that was in the hall near their bedroom door, I squatted down.

  "I'm sick over the whole thing," Mama muttered. "Just sick! No tellin' what kind of fam'ly she comes from. There's a milliner in Athens who trained with Love in Baltimore and she says Love's daddy fought on the Union side in the War. That by itself should of made Pa think twice, feelin' like he does about Yankees. Hoyt, we don't even know what her father does, for heaven's sake, or whether the fam'ly has any education or background, or any standin' at all in their community." Mama was a great one for not marrying beneath yourself.

  Papa argued that the family surely must be educated, judging by the way Miss Love talked so proper. "She seems like somebody with background."

  "Well, one thing I know, Miz Predmore says the only letters Love Simpson gets from Baltimore are from the millinery company that trained her. The postmaster told her. We figure she must be ashamed of her folks. If she don't write them and don't hear from them and don't ever say pea-turkey about them to anybody, something's wrong."

  "Please, hon, don't let yourself get all wrought up."

  "Her fam'ly could be common as Camp's folks, for all we know. Ignorant. No-count. Even low-down. I still don't see how Loma could of married into that sharecropper white trash. With all her education and advantages, she's got a daddy-in-law who cain't read or write and a mother-in-law who dips snuff. And Camp's sisters work in the fields just like colored girls. Thank the Lord they didn't come to the weddin'."

  Papa couldn't stand it when Mama got to low-rating Uncle Camp's people. "Now, hon, that don't have anything to do with your pa."

  "It does, too. Even if Love's folks ain't
ignorant, they could be dead-beats. Jesus said take up your cross and follow Me, but He didn't ast us to go out and nail ourselves to a board. Some fine day, mark my words, Love's fam'ly will get off the train from Baltimore to come live off of Pa. Just like Camp's folks are go'n be livin' off of he and Loma before it's over. Or maybe livin' with them. Only reason Loma married Camp, she was mad cause Pa wouldn't let her go off with those actors. That's just exactly why. She was bound and determined to get her way about something—just to spite Pa."

  It was true. A touring Shakespeare company had let Loma try out after their performance in Cold Sassy's brush arbor and then asked her to join the troupe. Everybody in town said Lord help Loma if she ends up an actress. Even if she got rich and famous and did command performances for Edward VII, like she said she would, she couldn't ever live down the taint.

  But Grandpa said, "Loma, I ain't a-go'n let you do it. Ain't no tellin' what kind of a life you'd live with them kind a-folks."

  She stomped and cried and carried on something awful. "I wish I was a boy so I could go off on my own!"

  "I wish you was a boy, too, but you ain't," Grandpa retorted, "and you ain't go'n be no actress, neither. So hesh up." Loma went to her room and threw things, but Grandpa didn't hear it. He had gone on back to the store.

  I myself used to wonder why Loma didn't find some more actors to run off with—a thing she wanted to do—instead of marrying Campbell Williams just to spite her daddy. Well, and now her daddy had married Miss Love—maybe partly to spite Cold Sassy.

  "Loma and Pa, they're just alike." Mama was fuming. "They don't ever consider anybody else. Neither one of them. When I think of the nice widders Pa's age who'd be happy to marry him, I don't see why he had to pick an old maid from Up North who's had to work for a livin'."

  In Cold Sassy, ladies who work for pay are looked down on—except schoolteachers or widder women with no close kinfolks to turn to. Milliners are considered in a class with store clerks and telephone hello-girls.