Leaving Cold Sassy: The Unfinished Sequel to Cold Sassy Tree Read online

  Mary Toy spoke up. “Aunt Loma whistled at church this morning, Will. It was just beautiful!”

  Loma blushed with pleasure. As if suddenly realizing Mary Toy was somebody she cared about, she asked, “What are you majoring in, honey?”

  “Latin.”

  “Latin? I majored in elocution and it’s gotten me all the way to the New York stage. But, Lord, what in the world can you do with Latin?”

  Papa, about to bite into the pulley bone, waved it in protest. “Mary Toy’s go’n teach Latin, Loma. That’s what.”

  For a few minutes everybody just ate. I found myself staring at my blue-eyed, auburn-haired sister. She was flowering at college. Her face was plain, like Mama’s, but radiant in a special way. She and I liked each other.

  I glanced then from Mama at one end of the table to Papa at the other, noticing with surprise, as if I hadn’t been around lately, that Mama looked several years older than Miss Love, though they were the same age, and that Papa, at forty-eight, had gone from stocky to portly. Most prosperous middle-aged men got portly, as if it took a protruding stomach to show off a gold watch fob.

  The store had survived the depression of 1914. When farmers made money, the store did too and the war had sent cotton prices soaring, easing Papa’s worries. He’d started talking about buying the farm in Banks County from his father and giving it to me.

  Papa still didn’t have a sense of humor. People said if Mr. Hoyt heard something funny in the morning, it was night before he laughed. I knew he was a good man though, except for that one never-mentioned event that hung in the air at home. I wished he’d talk about it to me so I could tell him I didn’t really hold it against him. Well, maybe he knew I didn’t. We had got a lot closer since Grandpa Blakeslee died. When I was a boy I never noticed how Papa doted on me. I was too busy doting on Grandpa, despite Papa was always saying I made him proud.

  What hung in the air right now was the family’s unspoken objection to Mr. Vitch. Campbell Junior’s fork screeched across his plate, Mama set her tea glass in its coaster, Mary Toy fiddled with her napkin ring. The loudness of these small sounds was finally interrupted by Loma’s voice.

  She didn’t start off talking loud, just tight and bitter. “Y’all don’t want Campbell Junior to get the education he deserves, do you? Here he’s got a chance to go to a fine boarding school and you want to keep him stuck in P.C.—a backward town if I ever saw one.”

  Papa was indignant. Speaking as president of the school board, he said, “For Pete’s sake, Loma, Campbell Junior cain’t get a better education anywhere than right here. Mary Toy, pass the sugar. Chi’ren are lucky who grow up in a small town.”

  Loma snapped back at him, “You’re the epitome of small town, Brother Hoyt. You think the city limits of P.C. are the boundary of the world. Even Atlanta”—she sputtered—“to you Atlanta is just the Southeastern Fair every fall. And you think New York is on the other side of the moon.”

  “I’ve been to New York City, you know. How you think we’d stock the store if I didn’t go up there? But I tell you one thing, young lady. Anybody who’d deliberately go live in New York City is...”

  “See what I mean? What this is all about tonight is y’all never did want me to go to New York, and now you don’t want me to marry a Yankee.” She glared around the table. “Y’all are so smug—you more than anybody, Will.” Really gearing up, she had lapsed into Southern. “Why do y’all hate me? Why cain’t...why cain’t I live my life like I want to? Y’all are all like Pa. I had my big chance years ago, when that tourin’ Shakespeare company asked me to join the troupe. But, oh no, Pa said, ‘Loma, you ain’t go’n be no actress, so hesh up. I ain’t a-go’n let you do it.’ I’ll never forget the way he said it, like he was puttin’ his foot down on me, and squashin’ me. Then everybody in town had to have their say. ‘Lord hep Loma if’n she ends up a actress.’ I said someday I’ll be doin’ command performances for King Edward the Seventh, and they said even if I did, I’d never live down the taint. Why does everybody hate me?”

  “Now, Loma,” I said. “Now, Loma, don’t...”

  “Don’t you don’t me, Will Tweedy! It’s all y’all’s fault I married Campbell Williams. Pa said, ‘You ain’t marryin’ thet fool, Loma. I ain’t a-go’n let you.’ Well, I showed Pa. But I’d have thought twice if he’d left me alone.”

  Campbell Junior’s head hung down like a rosebud that had withered before it could open. Nobody said a word. As I’d just been reminded, if you talked back to Aunt Loma, it only fed the fire.

  “Everybody said I couldn’t make a livin’ in New York City, but I did.”

  “Now, Loma,” said Mama. “We just think, you ought to marry your own kind.”

  “Mr. Vitch is my own kind. He cares about the finer things of life. And I’m go’n marry him. And I’m go’n keep on with my career, no matter what he or anybody else says. I found out there’s not much future for an actress with a Southern accent who can only play Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln’s wife. But I’m not just any two-bit bo-hem’en. You’d know that if any of you had ever bothered to come see me perform. Y’all say you’re too busy to come. Main thing, y’all are ashamed of my bein’ an actress. You may like to know I’ve been offered a part in a real play! Mr. Vitch thinks I ought to quit the theater when we marry, but I’ve told him and told him...”

  She stopped. Her face was steamy red. In a frenzy, she raked her fingers through the short red curls, then clutched her forehead and threw her head back like in a New York melodrama. “I asked why y’all hate me. But I know why. Y’all are jealous. You’d like to be out of this hick town too, wouldn’t you? Well, Campbell Junior’s go’n be out of it, and have a chance to be somebody. He’s not...”

  “Loma Williams, shut up!” yelled Papa, banging his fist on the table.

  I thought she’d start crying or light into Papa, one. But she didn’t do either. Just pursed her lips and raised her chin—and shut us all out.

  It was Mama who looked ready to break apart.

  We all fell to eating again, or trying to. For once I couldn’t think of a thing to say. But Mary Toy did.

  With a forkful of string beans suspended halfway to her mouth, she grinned around the table as if Loma had just been chattering about somebody’s mah-jongg party or the price of French perfume. “Let me tell the funniest thing!” said Mary Toy, then took time to chew her beans before she told it. “You know I went over to Athens last week? I went for a lecture by a famous woman Latin scholar. She read from a prepared speech. But all of a sudden she stopped, just stood there staring at her paper. Finally, shaking her head she said, ‘This is certainly strange. Here’s a word I never heard of. I can’t imagine what it means, but it’s in my handwriting! It’s spelled H-E-R-E.’”

  The faces around our supper table went blank. Campbell Junior was the first to laugh. He never had been dull-witted.

  “H-E-R-E,” Mama murmured. “H-E-R-E.” Then it dawned on her—and the rest of us. “That spells herel Just plain old HERE!”

  “Hear, hear!” I said, and even Aunt Loma got off her high horse and laughed. All of us did.

  Then Mary Toy changed the subject again. “On the train ride home,” she said, looking at me, “I saw that redheaded Sorrows boy. You remember the Sorrowses, Will.”

  “Yeah, they moved to Commerce a few years ago. Julian Sorrows was in my class. We called him Julie.”

  “That’s right. Julie. He’s the one I saw. He told me he had enlisted in the Army. He seemed so proud.”

  I knew what Mary Toy was saying: why hadn’t I enlisted yet. And I knew Mama and Papa were sitting there hoping I never would. Her question and their dread hung in the air. Even to my own family I was embarrassed to admit I got turned down just for being skinny. Mary Toy and Loma wouldn’t believe it, and Mama and Papa would want to starve me to death.

  I marveled how easy it had been to tell Sanna Klein.

  Of course I was registered for the draft—one of 120,000 white boys
registered in Georgia. “Did you know that more’n a hundred thousand Georgia Negroes are registered?” I asked casually. “If they keep callin’ up our colored boys, Southern farmers sure will be hurtin’ for wages hands. Already are hurtin’ from so many colored families movin’ up North, and now they’re worried about the Army’s draftin’ jarheads.”

  “Jarheads?” asked Campbell Junior.

  “I’m talkin’ about mules, son. Last week the paper said the United States has already shipped a hundred thousand mules to France, and three hundred thousand horses. They pull artillery and ammunition wagons.”

  Papa was always uneasy with war talk, whereas Mary Toy was obsessed with it. She had a sweetheart, an engineering student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Now she said he’d written that aviators were being trained on the Tech campus, and that he wanted to apply to be one.

  “That’s what I’d like to do,” I said. “Fly an air machine. I expect they want lightweight aviators.” I glanced at Papa. When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I expect aerial fightin’ will get more and more important as the war goes on.”

  Mary Toy put in eagerly, “Remember what Grandpa Blakeslee said his granddaddy said? How someday people would ride through the air? Grandpa said folks thought the old man had lost his mind.”

  “I wish it was still just a prediction,” said Mama. “Imagine, flyin’ through the sky! The very idea scares me half to death.”

  Campbell Junior nodded. “Me too. I’d just bout soon fly, though, as go to a old military school full of Yankees.”

  Sitting beside him, I patted his knee, then pushed back my chair. “Son, I got to head on back to Athens. But Tuesday I’m go’n come to Cold Sassy, and I’m go’n take you to the drugstore and we’ll get some ice cream. I’ll buy you the big dish. Mama, I hate to eat and run, but I don’t want to let the road get dark on me. Aint Loma, I’ll see you Tuesday too. I’ll kiss you good-bye then.”

  She always knew when I was teasing. “You don’t exactly have to kiss me Tuesday, either,” she said, smiling as I stood up. “But I hope you will.” She wagged her left hand in my face again, and the diamond sparkled.

  5

  I HAD already set up Tuesday to go see Mr. Ambrose Hall, whose one-horse farm was just south of Cold Sassy on the road to Commerce. To get there I took the early afternoon freight train from Athens, riding high in the cab with the engineer, Mr. Talkington. We’d been friends ever since I saved him from killing me on Blind Tillie Trestle when I was fourteen. I was fooling around up there on the trestle when his train came thundering onto the tracks, headed right towards me. I quick stretched myself out thin between the rails and the train ran over me, but I lived to tell it. All of which happened the same day Grandpa Blakeslee eloped with Miss Love. Now I rode with Mr. Talkington anytime I couldn’t wait for the passenger train to Cold Sassy.

  I said good-bye to Mr. Talkington in Cold Sassy, borrowed Papa’s Buick, drove out to see Mr. Ambrose, then back to Cold Sassy, where Campbell Junior was waiting for me on Papa’s front steps.

  When we got to the drugstore, Dr. Clarke, the pharmacist, was behind the counter. He piled an extra scoop on Campbell Junior’s big-dish ice cream. “That ought to hold you from here to New York City,” he said, sliding it across the counter. “You want a big dish, Will?”

  “Yessir. I got to fatten up.”

  “You been eatin’ like a horse ever since you got legs, Will, but you still look like a crane. You’ll use up this much ice cream just twitchin’ your shoulders.”

  “I reckon I picked up that habit from my granddaddy. He was a champion shoulder-twitcher.”

  “For a fact he was,” said the druggist. “But, Will, if you want to gain weight, my advice is get married. I never knew a young man didn’t gain after the weddin’. I was up twenty pounds in three months. Campbell Junior, how bout a Co-Cola?”

  The boy looked at me. I nodded and said we’d both have a Coke.

  Dr. Clarke put each Coca-Cola glass under the syrup spout, then under the carbonated water spout, stirred with a long spoon, chipped some ice off the big block, spooned it in, and handed over the drinks.

  “No charge, Will. I mean for the boy’s extra scoop and his Co-Cola. Campbell Junior, do yourself proud in that Yankee school, hear? And when you get back home, come tell me if they make Co-Colas up yonder as good as I do.”

  “Yessir. Thank you, sir. But maybe they don’t drink Co-Colas up North, Dr. Clarke. Mama says they don’t eat fried chicken.”

  “Everybody drinks Co-Colas, son. Even Yankees.”

  As we sat down at one of the little round tables, white-topped on black iron legs, I nodded towards the ceiling fan. “Eat fast, Campbell Junior. The breeze feels mighty good, but it sure can melt ice cream.”

  While we ate, I told him about going to New York City with Papa on a buying trip for the store. I didn’t tell him how scared I was, being only seven and having heard all my life how mean damnyankees were.

  Campbell Junior got a little excited while I was raving on about the wonders of New York. But then he started talking about leaving home and all. “Miss Willa had a good-bye party for me today,” he said sadly. “She made a cake for the whole class. She gave me the biggest piece, Cudn Will, and she ain’t been my teacher but two days! I begged Mama to let me go to school in the mornin’, just till time for the train, but she says I cain’t.”

  When we got back to the house, I stood on the veranda with him, trying to think how to cheer him up. Then I remembered my buckeye. I pulled it out of my pants pocket and handed it to him. “For luck, son.”

  “Thank you, Cudn Will. Gosh, that makes forty-two!”

  “Forty-two?”

  “Wait a minute, can you?” He disappeared into the house and came back holding up a cloth tobacco sack. It bulged with buckeyes. “Everybody in my class brought me one today,” he said proudly. “For luck in my new school.”

  “Well, that ought to do it, Campbell Junior. If you run short of money, you can sell some to those Yankee boys.”

  “I bet they never heard of a buckeye,” he said.

  We shook hands, man to man. But then I hugged him. Hard.

  “You’ll do fine, big boy. Just remember where you’re from and who your folks are. Act proud.”

  He went inside, trying to be brave.

  ***

  Aunt Loma was in the backyard out near Mama’s flower pit, digging up a magnolia seedling. It was only a foot high, but it had five or six big waxy green leaves.

  Lighting a cigar, I watched a minute, then asked, “What you doin’, Aunt Loma?”

  “I’m gettin’ me a magnolia tree.” She didn’t sound Yankee at all. Her short red hair, damp with sweat, had shrunk into tight curls.

  “You go’n carry it on the train?”

  “In my lap all the way, if I have to.”

  I took the trowel out of her hands. “Let me do that. You need a bigger pot.”

  “I cain’t hold too big a pot,” she protested.

  “But if it’s too little a pot you won’t have enough dirt to nourish the tree. I’ll get one out of the flower pit. And we need some good black dirt instead of this red clay.”

  She stood there watching, rubbing her hands together to get off the dirt, while I dug up the seedling and potted it with black dirt from out by the cowshed. “Don’t let it dry out,” I said, watering it from the rain barrel, “and give it plenty of light. Do you have a window facin’ south?”

  “How do you tell south?”

  I explained as simply as I knew how. “If sun comes in a window in the mornin’, that’s the east side of the buildin’. If it’s sunny in the afternoon, that’s the west side. If it doesn’t come in at all, that’s north. The best exposure is southern. Come winter, sunlight will flood into a south window.” I didn’t say how dumb it was for anybody to be thirty-one years old and not know such, though I was tempted. “I hope you don’t expect to show off this li’l old thing. It won’t impress anybody.”

  Brushing
dirt off the pot with my hands, I looked at Aunt Loma. She was wiping her eyes. “I’m not takin’ it to impress anybody,” she said, her lip quivering. “I’m takin’ it for myself. It...I need somethin’ to remind me of home.”

  I handed her the seedling. “Mama has a scrap left over from that new oilcloth on the kitchen table. Tie some around the pot, why don’t you? So it won’t get your dress dirty. Well, good-bye, Aunt Loma.” I put my arms around both of them—her and the baby magnolia. “Look after this good, hear, and look after your boy. And you look after yourself.”

  “You too, Will. Do you still see Trulu?”

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “Just asking. You’re too good for her anyway. Well, good-bye, Will.”

  “You haven’t said when you’re gettin’ married.”

  “Some time next month. In New York, of course. Not here.”

  “Mama will have a conniption fit.”

  “It can’t be helped.” Her tone was formal, defensive.

  “I don’t know as I can get off work long enough to make the trip.”

  “It won’t be a family kind of wedding,” she said quickly. “Just the two of us, and a justice of the peace. And Campbell Junior, of course, and two of our friends for witnesses.”

  I was about to say nobody in our family had ever got hitched in a courthouse when she added, “Pa and Miss Love did it that way, remember.” Raising her chin, she said again, “Good-bye, Will,” and started up the back steps with her magnolia tree.

  Campbell Junior wasn’t the only one trying to act brave.

  “Aunt Loma?” I called after her. “Uh, take the oilcloth off when you get there, hear? The roots’ll rot if it cain’t drain.”

  She nodded.

  I called again. “Don’t worry if the leaves fall off. That won’t mean it’s dead.”

  ***

  Though it wasn’t anywhere near train time, I didn’t want to hang around. I’d had about all the sad good-byes I could take. I decided to amble on up to Miss Love’s. Check over the animals. See who was home.