Cold Sassy Tree Read online

  "Why wouldn't Pa let me look after him?" Mama went on. "We could of moved up to his house."

  "And go back to usin' lamps and privies?" asked Papa irritably. "And give up Queenie?" Grandpa didn't have electricity or running water and didn't believe in hiring colored help.

  That silenced my mother, but only for a minute. In a new burst of tears, she said, "Hoyt, Pa has disgraced the whole f-f-fam'ly. The whole t-town!"

  Most likely Papa was patting her shoulder again. "It's go'n turn out all right, hon. Just don't forget I work for him, and Camp works for him. Y'all have got to be nice to Miss Love. Now, hon, I need to get back to the store. Please, let's go eat."

  "You and Will eat." Mama's muffled voice came out of her pillow. "I'm not hungry. The nerve, that woman thinkin' she can take Ma's place! And everybody's go'n say—you mark my words—they go'n say Pa must have been sweet on her from the day he laid eyes on her. It's like he just couldn't hardly wait for Ma to p-p-pass!"

  I guess my mother didn't notice that Papa had left the room. I waited till he got downstairs before I crept down myself. I couldn't stand hearing her keep on talking against Grandpa.

  4

  I USED TO TRY to undress Grandpa Blakeslee's face in my mind and think how he'd look clean-shaved. I never could picture him like that, but I liked looking at him the way he was—his eyes merry, his upper lip hidden under the droopy mustache, his bushy gray beard usually stained here and there with tobacco juice.

  Most people thought I was his spittin' image. Granny used to say I walked like Grandpa, twitched my shoulders like him—"cain't neither one a-y'all set still"—and looked like him "cept for yore eyes bein' brown and his'n so blue, and the fact yore nose ain't humped." Grandpa's nose had got broke three times, and it showed. First time, he was trying to fly: "I was maybe twelve year old. Jumped out'n a hayloft holdin' a dang umbrella and it turned inside out." The other two times, his nose got busted in fistfights.

  At fifty-nine, Grandpa still had all his teeth, which should be a comfort to Miss Love. He only wore glasses to read. He was lean, strong, straight, and taller than most men—the way I was taller than most fourteen-year-old boys. My grandmother was small. She could stand under his arm if he stuck it straight out, and never could keep up with him when they walked together. His long legs swung in giant strides; she trotted at his heels like a good little dog.

  Grandpa was a buster all right.

  He was a Democrat, a Baptist, and a devout Confederate veteran. The words Abraham Lincoln couldn't be spoke in his presence. His only hand was soft and smooth, not like the rough, red, calloused hands of farmers. In a fight he used the elbow of his left arm as a deflector and his "fightin' right" to punch with.

  The fights were embarrassing to the family but real entertaining to the Baptists, for he would stand up at the next Wednesday night prayer meeting, in the testimonial and confessing part, and tell the Lord all about it. One Wednesday night he ended a long prayer with "Lord, forgive me for fittin' thet man yesterd'y—though Thou knowest if I had it to do over agin I'd hit him harder."

  Grandpa was a good shot with a pistol. He never went hunting, but he could prop a Winchester rifle on a fence and shoot into the mouth of a Coca-Cola bottle fifty feet away and not even chip the glass, except for the hole at the bottom where the bullet came out.

  I never could figure why Papa and Mama let him keep his quart jars of moonshine in the closet in our company room. At the time, Papa made and drank locust beer, and Mama made scuppernong and blackberry wines for church communion. After the Georgia legislature declared a prohibition against alcoholic beverages in 1907, Papa quit making or drinking beer—he believed in being law-abiding—and the churches started using fruit nectars instead of wine. But even before Prohibition, neither Papa nor Mama could stand whiskey-drinking.

  Yet there stood those jars of corn whiskey on our closet shelf.

  Why couldn't my daddy ask him to keep them down at the store? Or after Granny died and wasn't there anymore to disallow it, why didn't he take the stuff to his own house?

  My parents never once spoke of his drinking in front of me or Mary Toy. Acted like he just went in the company room to hitch up his suspenders or something. But I doubt they could of said anything even if he hadn't been Mama's papa and Papa's employer. Grandpa had the manner of a king or duke: when he said do or don't do something, you said yessir before you thought. And if he said he meant to do something—like keep his corn whiskey in your closet or marry Miss Love Simpson—if you couldn't say yessir, you sure-dog didn't say no sir. Not out loud.

  What I admired most was his flair for practical jokes. That was a way of life you could learn early, as I discovered when I was little bitty and Cudn Doodle told me to lick a frozen wagon wheel and my tongue stuck to the ice. Playing jokes didn't have to stop because you got grown. Grandpa must of been twenty-five at least when he turned over the privy at the depot with a Yankee railroad bigwig in it.

  I didn't want to be like my grandfather in all ways. I thought I wanted to be like Papa, at least sometime in the distant future. But right now Grandpa was more fun than Papa and didn't worry near as much, if at all, about sin. And he was real proud of me. I was the son he never had.

  While I was still in dresses he put me to sorting nails at the store and getting out rotten apples and potatoes. By time I was seven, he let me make deliveries for him in my goat cart. It was his notion that when I got grown, he would give me an interest in the store and take me into partnership.

  It was my notion to be a farmer. Papa wanted to buy the old home place out in Banks County from his daddy and let me run it. But at the time Grandpa Blakeslee married Miss Love, I still hadn't got up the nerve to tell him my plans.

  Most folks thought, as Miss Effie Belle Tate put it, that Grandpa was "both rich and well-to-do." For sure he was one of Cold Sassy's leading merchants. Had him a big brick store with mahogany counters, beveled glass mirrors, and big colored signs for Coca-Cola, Mother's Friend (Take to Make Childbirth Easier), Fletcher's Castoria, Old Dutch Cleanser, McKesson and Robbins liniment, and all like that.

  I liked to look at the advertisements in the mail-order catalogues he kept by the cash register. Manhood Restored was my favorite:

  Nerve Seeds guaranteed to cure all nervous diseases such as Weak Memory, Loss of Brain Power, Headaches, Wakefulness, Lost Manhood, Nightly Emissions, nervousness, all drain and loss of power in generative organs of either sex caused by over-exertion, youthful errors, excessive use of tobacco, opium or stimulants which lead to infirmity, consumption or Insanity. Can be carried in vest pocket. $1 per box address Nerve Seed Co., Masonic Temple, Chicago, 111.

  Grandpa had him a big sign out front over the entrance to the store. In fancy red letters outlined in gold it said:

  GENERAL MERCHANDISE

  Mr. E. Rucker Blakeslee, Proprietor

  Besides keeping the store's ledgers, my daddy took a lot of the buying trips to Atlanta and Baltimore and New York City. I went to New York with him one time when I was little bitty. I'd heard about damnyankees all my life and there I was in a city just full of them. It scared me to death.

  Granny's Uncle Lige Toy, who used to have a restaurant business feeding county prisoners, was in charge of Grandpa's cotton warehouse, one of the biggest in north Georgia, and also the store's cotton seed business. Uncle Lige was the one to talk to if you wanted to put your bales in storage till you could get a better price.

  A third cousin of Papa's, Hopewell Stump, from out in Banks County, clerked and took care of the chickens that folks brought to trade out for nails, flour, sugar, coal oil, coffee, and chewing tobacco. There used to be smelly chicken coops out on the board sidewalk in front of every store in town, but after Cold Sassy was incorporated in 1887, the Baptist missionary society ladies petitioned the town council to get rid of them. So when Grandpa built his brick store in 1892 he put a great big chickenhouse in back, and every Friday Cudn Hope shipped hens, roosters, and frying-size pullets to Athens
or Atlanta on the train.

  Uncle Camp mostly swept the floor and put out stock, and in the wintertime broke up wooden shipping crates to burn in the stove. Grandpa called him "born tired and raised lazy." Said getting him to finish something was like pushing mud. "Money don't jump out at you, boy," he'd say. "You got to work for it."

  Campbell Williams was Uncle Camp's whole name. He was a pale thin fellow with pale thin yellow hair and a pale thin personality. He was always checking the time so he could show off his gold pocket watch.

  He wasn't but nineteen when he came to Cold Sassy from over near Maysville, Georgia. The day Camp walked into the store and asked for a job, Grandpa took one look and said he didn't need no hep right now. Camp got him a job at the tannery, working for Wildcat Lindsey, but soon lost it, and then worked a while at the gin. Grandpa didn't bring him into the store till after he married Aunt Loma, and never did have any respect for him.

  Love Simpson was the first woman Grandpa ever hired. She grew up in Baltimore and had never married but didn't look or act like any other old maid in town. She was tall, plump, and big-bosomed, stood very straight, moved lively, and wore flouncy, fashionable clothes. Miss Love had a sparkly way of talking and she laughed a lot.

  I remember the first time I saw her. I had been standing in front of the store watching a flock of turkeys trot through town. If a turkey strayed, a man would snap a long whip around its neck and pull it back in line.

  When I went inside, there was the new milliner, seated at a table littered with feathers, bird wings, satin bows, stiff tape, bolts of velvet, linen, silk, and so on, and several life-size dummy heads. She had one of the heads in her lap, wrapping folds of pink velour around it and sticking pins here and there to hold the cloth in place. Looking up, she saw me, smiled and said, "What's all the commotion outside, honey?" She had two pins in the corner of her mouth and had to speak around them.

  "A turkey drive, ma'am. The men are rushin' to get'm through town before first dark, cause when it's time to roost, they go'n fly to the nearest tree and they ain't go'n budge till daybreak."

  I was only twelve then. It was before I got long-legged, so with her sitting down and me standing, my head was just about level with hers. I forgot all about the turkeys, I was so busy smelling her perfume and looking at her freckles. They were like brown pepper. She had gray-blue eyes, long black lashes, a tilted-up nose, a big smiley mouth, and thick wavy brown hair piled high and perky on her head.

  Miss Love took the pins out of her mouth. "I guess you live here in Cold Sassy," she said, smiling extra friendly.

  "Yes'm. I'm Will Tweedy, ma'am. You must be the new milliner."

  "And you must be Mr. Hoyt's boy." She nodded in the direction of Papa, who was over by the cash register.

  "Yes'm."

  "He is a very nice man, and good-looking, too." That pleased me. Papa was stocky, not tall, but he was neat about his clothes, had a handsome face, and shaved every morning. Most men in Cold Sassy had a beard or just shaved on Saturday night to get ready for Sunday.

  Miss Love held up the dummy head with the pink velour wrapping, turning it this way and that to get the effect. "You like this hat, Will Tweedy?"

  I didn't have much opinion about hats, or much interest either. "Well'm," I mumbled, "I cain't hardly tell what it's go'n look like yet."

  Miss Love laughed. A hearty laugh. Her lips were so red they looked painted almost. "You're a good diplomat, Will Tweedy."

  One thing I noticed that day was how proper Miss Love spoke. Till then, I never met anybody who could talk as proper as Aunt Carrie. Aunt Carrie was taught to speak cultured at a private school in Athens run by a French woman, Madame Joubert.

  I found out later that Miss Love learned to talk right from a rich educated lady in Philadelphia that she used to go stay with every spring and fall, making hats for her and her daughters.

  "Mrs. Hanover was always correcting my grammar and pronunciation," Miss Love told me. "If I mumbled or made the least little mistake, I had to say it over and over till I got it right. I guess Mrs. Hanover liked me. She said that with my flair for fashion, her friends couldn't tell me from one of them till I opened my mouth. 'Cultivate good speech, Miss Simpson,' she'd say, 'and you can marry above yourself.' She gave me her finishing school grammar book. I still have it. I felt certain if I memorized that book I could marry the Prince of Wales—or at least a railroad president."

  Grandpa was real proud of the store having a milliner trained at the Armstrong and Cater Company in Baltimore. In 1901, the company had sent Miss Love and her best friend out to a big store in Texas. When she wanted to leave Texas, Armstrong and Cater sent her, sight unseen, to Grandpa. He had written asking for a milliner and Miss Love was available, so that's all there was to it. But for weeks after she came to town, men would poke Grandpa in the ribs, nod toward the milliner's table, and say, "You shore know how to pick'm, Mr. Blakeslee," or, "You got you a real looker, ain't you?" Grandpa would grin and say you dang right.

  At first Miss Love stayed at Granny and Grandpa's house, in their company room. Later she boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Eli P. Crabtree, whose son Arthur was bad to drink and took an overdose of laudanum in the cemetery one cold night. They found him dead the next morning, huddled up against his sweetheart's tombstone, and now Miss Love was renting Arthur's old room. The Crabtrees thought she was real nice, but she didn't tell her business to them or anybody, and didn't have close friends. The only thing Cold Sassy knew about her was what that milliner in Athens told Aunt Loma.

  Besides about her daddy being in the Union Army, the woman told it as gospel that after Miss Love got engaged to a rich Texas rancher and went home to Maryland to make her trousseau clothes, her best friend got you-know-what by her fee-ance, and they eloped. Aunt Loma said if her fee-ance and her best friend were that kind of trash, "it don't speak so well for Love Simpson."

  You have to take into account that Aunt Loma was just eighteen when Miss Love hit town, and the jealous type. Aunt Loma was blue-eyed and had the thickest long curly red hair you ever saw, with little tendrils around her face that made her look sweet and innocent. Till Miss Love came, she was considered just the prettiest thing in Cold Sassy, and also the most fashionable. While visiting one time in Atlanta, Loma went to M. Rich & Bros, and bought herself some handmade French drawers with lace-edged ruffles, and also what she called "a blue poky-dot foulard dress with an overskirt of Georgette crepe." Grandpa like to had a fit about her spending the money, but after she cried, he let her alone about it. The only thing not fashionable about Aunt Loma was her bosom.

  She was so flat you didn't have to be big to be bigger, and Miss Love Simpson was definitely bigger. At some point Miss Love made the mistake of remarking that Loma had just the perfect figure for the stylish new shirtwaists with lots of tucks and ruffles in front. That was because of Loma's flat busts, so though it was meant as a compliment, she was insulted. She hadn't had much to do with Miss Love since, especially not after one Saturday when she wanted to buy a little blue hat with white bird wings on it that Miss Love was wearing and didn't want to sell. I heard what was said because I was down at the store washing fly spots off the show window.

  "You've sold hats off your head before," Aunt Loma argued, pushing out her bottom lip.

  "I know," Miss Love answered sweetly. "But I made this hat special to go with this dress. Let me fix up something else for you."

  Aunt Loma's face flushed red as her hair, she was so mad, and she flounced off acting like a store-owner's daughter to a hired hand. "I must say, Love Simpson," she hissed, "you'd do well to quit thinking you're good as your betters!"

  As they say in Cold Sassy, Aunt Loma was behind the door when they passed out the tact. And her temper was such that if King Edward VII or the Lord God Almighty Himself had been around when she got mad, she wouldn't of talked any less awful. In fact, she'd of been glad of the extra audience.

  I just couldn't stand Aunt Loma. As long as I could remember, she'd boss
ed me like I was her slave. She was only six years older than me, for gosh sake, which to my mind didn't give her any right to lord it over me like she was a hundred. God help Miss Love Simpson if she really had gone off and married Grandpa against her will—against Aunt Loma's will, I mean. I hoped Miss Love understood what she was up against. I could of told her, because I had been up against Aunt Loma all my life.

  There were some people in Cold Sassy who called Miss Love "that Yankee woman" or made fun of her for being a suffragette. Not a man in town thought it mattered a hoot about women voting, and only two ladies went to the first women's suffrage meeting Miss Love set up. Either nobody else was interested or their husbands wouldn't let them come, one. After that meeting, most folks felt a little uneasy about Miss Love. Still and all, just about everybody liked her.

  The men liked her because she was pretty and friendly and, as Mr. Cratic Flournoy put it, full of ginger and pepper.

  The ladies liked her because she made hats that could of come straight out of New York City. Also, she had a pattern book of the newest styles and would order patterns for anybody who wanted her to, and she showed the ladies how to fix their hair fashionable.

  The congregation at the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, liked her because her piano-playing was loud and lively. Ever since Miss Love started playing for preachin', folks had sung out good, patting their feet and generally getting in shape to shout and amen during the sermon.

  Just the same, Cold Sassy thought it was one thing to like Miss Love and another thing entirely to marry her. Especially if your wife died just three weeks ago.