Cold Sassy Tree (33 page)

Away we went at last. But we went away lots slower than if we'd had the horse and buggy. Papa hadn't practiced his driving but for a few minutes before church let out, so he wasn't all that sure he could remember where the foot brake was or how much gas to feed. Also, every time he saw a buggy or wagon coming, he had to stop the car and shut off the motor so the horses wouldn't bolt. It was a slow progress till we were out in the country.

As we got to going faster, a grand cloud of dust rose behind us and folks ran out of their houses to watch us go by. Every time we hit a bump or just missed a squawking chicken we'd laugh like children. Boy howdy, what a day! Mama yelled over the racket, "Hoyt, I just cain't believe it! When did you buy it? Can we afford it? Where did you have it hid? Does Pa know about it?"

I kept begging him to let me drive. "Naw!" he yelled. "I better learn how first myself, Will!"

Coming back into town, we passed Grandpa's house just as he and Miss Love came out on the front veranda with the Flournoys. Big Loomis, who naturally took his communion cake in the kitchen, was just coming around the house from the back door as Papa honked the brass horn and we all waved.

They were too dumfounded to wave back, I reckon, or maybe didn't recognize anybody but me, on account of the linen coats and Mama's veil and Papa's goggles. Papa didn't stop or so much as slow up. It was grand, the way we raced by!

"Oh, won't she be jealous!" Mama crowed when we got home. There was no doubt who was meant by
she.

I felt real satisfied. I knew Miss Love would love to have a motorcar, probably more than my mother wanted to go to New York City. So now they were just about even.

Which was what my daddy had in mind.

If you'd paid him to do it, Papa couldn't of stood up to Grandpa and argued to get Mama the trip. But he had the nerve to ride by Grandpa's house and not stop.

M
AMA PUT DINNER
on the table that day while Papa rode Queenie around the block. After we ate, I started clearing out the barn shed for a garage, but couldn't make much headway for folks dropping by to see the automobile. They admired the shiny red paint, blew the horn, tried out the seats, and of course asked to ride. Some were jealous, I could tell. There is a price to pay for having the first something in town. But Lee Roy, Smiley, Pink, and Dunse McCall were as excited as if it was their folks' car. They asked me all kinds of questions: What's the choke for, and lemme see the toolbox, and how do you start it, and how do you stop it, and how fast will it go.

It helped feelings a lot when, by the next Sunday, Papa and I had practiced enough to take passengers out. Aunt Loma bid first, her and Uncle Camp. Papa took Aunt Carrie home after dinner, then let me drive Pink and them around the block by myself. Later we went and got Miss Effie Belle. Poor old Mr. Bubba, he wanted to go so bad, but Miss Effie Belle thought the excitement would be too much for anybody 102. I think that meant she was scared he might wet his pants.

Papa offered to ride Grandpa around, but Grandpa wouldn't even get in. "A car is a fool dangerous contraption. Worse'n a bicycle," he said. "I speck Miss Love would like to go, though."

Instead of asking her, Papa said, "I just remembered, Mr. Blakeslee, I told Mary Willis I'd be back by now." And we drove off. It was so pointed that I felt embarrassed for Miss Love's sake—but pleased for Mama's.

The next morning I hitched up Big Jack to the buggy and took Grandpa and Miss Love and a mountain of grips to the depot. They would go to Savannah by train and get a boat there for New York City. Standing in the shade of the Cold Sassy tree, I watched their train pull out, then drove Jack home, turned him into the pasture with Miss Love's horse, filled their feed boxes and the watering trough, fed the chickens, and got the Toy family Bible off the desk in the hall like Mama told me to. She had asked Grandpa for it and he'd said shore you can have it, come git it. But Mama thought it best to wait till they left for New York.

I hoped it would be years before she looked in that Bible and saw how Miss Love had written herself into the family.

I may have said already that on Wednesdays all the stores in Cold Sassy closed for the day at noon. On Wednesday that week, we left in the Cadillac right after dinner to drive out to Cudn Temp's and bring Mary Toy home. The trip was up one hill and down another on humpback roads, two feet deep in dust all the way. Papa worried about dark thunderheads in the distance. Lord knows we needed rain. But if the road got wet, we'd soon be two feet deep in red mud instead of dust. The clouds passed off, though, and we had only one puncture, and everybody at Cudn Temp's like to had a fit about the motorcar. Mary Toy just couldn't believe it was really ours.

The purple had faded out of her hair, but it was still a right peculiar shade of red.

We got home too late for prayer meeting, so after supper the four of us just sat out on the veranda together in the cool dark. Mary Toy was curled up in Papa's lap in the swing, and Mama sat content beside them. Sprawled on the top step, I leaned against a turned post and listened to the swing's slow creaking. It felt like we were a real family again. "I'm glad you home, Mary Toy," I said, and meant it.

"Will's tired of gatherin' eggs," Mama teased.

"But maybe Mary Toy's forgot how," said Papa, tickling her ribs.

"I ain't, either. Cudn Temp's got a heap of layin' hens. Guess what was in one of the nests, Mama? A great big black snake!"

"Lord hep us!" Mama shrieked.

"He was sound asleep," Mary Toy said. "Just nice as he could be. Me and Sara Christine, we—"

"Sara Christine and I," Mama corrected, but I could tell her mind was on the snake, not the grammar.

"We petted him."

"No!"

"Yes'm, and I put him in my apron and went and showed him to Cudn Temp."

"Lord hep us!"

For a while all you could hear was crickets cricketing and the swing creaking ... back and forth, back and forth. Mary Toy said sleepily, "Mama, what am I s'pose to call Miss Love? Do I call her Granny?"

"Say Miss Love, just like you been doin'." Mama's voice was hard. "She's not your grandmother by any stretch of the imagination. She's only your grandpa's wife, and there's a big difference."

On Sunday, which was the first Sunday in August, we drove the Cadillac to the Presbyterian church out at Hebron for the annual reunion and dinner on the grounds. Grandpa Tweedy and Mrs. Jones were there, of course, and we took them to ride.

The next Wednesday, Papa took the whole day off and we went to Comer and back, which he thought had never been done before in one day.

If the Cadillac had been a circus elephant, it couldn't of done a better job of taking Mama's and Cold Sassy's mind off of Grandpa Blakeslee and Miss Love.

T
HE CAR
was all Cold Sassy talked about, and all we talked about in the family. You'd think Grandpa and Miss Love had just disappeared, instead of being off in New York enjoying Mama's trip. Then Miss Love's picture postcards of Coney Island and Ellis Island started coming.

Most folks who take a trip send postcards. Usually they write, "Having wonderful time wish you were here," or "How are you fine I hope," or maybe just their name. What Miss Love did, she wrote every lady and schoolgirl in Cold Sassy about something special she'd found for her at the wholesale house.

Miss Vada Goosby was so pleased, she came down to show Mama her postcard. It said, "I've picked out the nicest pattern for you and some lovely crêpe de Chine that is just your best color! I can't wait for you to see it!"

Mrs. Boozer—Miss Alice Ann, not Miss Catherine—came in the store for some flour and sugar one day and told Papa she'd never got mail from as far away as New York City before. She was showing the card to everybody. Miss Love had written her about "a stylish cloak that is inexpensive but will look elegant on you."

Mrs. Flournoy reported that Miss Love had ordered a whole outfit with her in mind.

Loma's card said, "Your father wants to pay for a lovely dress I picked out for you! I can't wait to see if I guessed right on the size! You'll be the grandest lady in town next summer!"

Aunt Loma hooted. "Pa wants to pay for me a dress? That'll be the day. And why next summer? Why not now? Well, I'll believe it when I see it."

She half-believed she had a free dress, though, when here came a card to Mama saying Grandpa was buying her a black grosgrain coat. "It will look really ritzy when you ride to church in the new Cadillac this fall!" wrote Miss Love. "I've found all the materials to make a hat to go with it, too!"

Mary Toy heard only that Grandpa had "a surprise" for her, but Miss Love wrote other girls about a dress or pattern or a bolt of poky-dot material or some such. She knew this would make them start pestering their mamas as to when Miss Love would be back and when would the wholesale house ship the orders.

Mama and Aunt Loma grudgingly admired the postcard salesmanship. Papa was beside himself about it. I heard him tell Cudn Hope that the postcards were "a stroke of genius." With just a one-cent stamp apiece, Miss Love had let every lady and girl in Cold Sassy know she had been thought about way up in New York City. Papa said, "When word gets out that the shipment is in, it's go'n look like we're havin' the women's missionary meetin' down here."

I got a postcard. It said, "Your grandfather and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all you are doing at our house. I hope Mr. Beautiful is behaving. Yours, Miss Love."

I kissed Yours and then I kissed Miss Love—the words, I mean. But I felt let down. Everybody else in the family could look forward to presents from New York, but it seemed like I was doing all the work for just a thank-you.

Tell the truth, I wasn't doing near what I'd meant to, because when I wasn't busy at the store or hurrying through chores at home, I was out driving with Papa, either practicing or going somewhere, or else washing and polishing the Cadillac. It got a layer of dust every time we drove around the block.

Smiley and Pink and them worked on it about as much as I did. Lots of times Mama came out there to the barn shed and sat on the milking stool just to watch us. It was like she couldn't believe we really had a motorcar unless she could go to ride or sit and look at it, one.

Tell the truth, we none of us could quite believe it.

One morning I was just fixing to run up to Grandpa's and lead Miss Love's horse around some when here came fat Lee Roy Sleep, saying the Gypsy caravans were going through town.

The Gypsies always came in August—telling fortunes, selling lace, tarring barn roofs, trading horses and mules. It was a sight to see—the bright-painted wagons with little curtained windows, and the horses decorated with tassels and silver beads. Cold Sassy always turned out to watch. By time Lee Roy and I got downtown, the caravans had reached the public well near my grand-daddy's store. Several Gypsy men were on horseback, riding ahead of or behind their wagons or leading strings of mules and horses. I still remember a pretty, olive-skinned girl I saw that day, riding on a big gray stallion behind a heavy-set man who was dusky black. At the well he reined in and the girl slid off to drink from the flowing pipe. Getting up my nerve, I walked over to her and asked politely, "Where are y'all from?"

She looked scared and mumbled in a foreign accent, "I do not know." Before she could say anything else or even get her a drink, the man spoke short to her in another language and jerked her back up on the horse, and they rode off to rejoin the caravans. When I told Papa about it, he said he wouldn't trust anybody who didn't know where they came from.

I still think about the Gypsy girl sometimes. Then as now, you hardly ever saw any olive-skinned people in Cold Sassy. And boy howdy, she was pretty.

I also still think about another girl I saw that day. Lightfoot McLendon. Not more than an hour after the Gypsies passed through town, I saw Lightfoot walking the railroad tracks towards Mill Town.

I was driving the Cadillac, taking some corn and squash and tomatoes to old Mr. Slocum, who was laid up with a bad back. The car made a swell racket, and if I went slow, folks who heard me coming had plenty time to run out on the porch and watch me drive by. They'd wave, and I'd honk the horn.

I recognized Lightfoot even when she was way up ahead. But gosh, she was changed. I'd always thought of her as bounding along like a young mountain goat, but now she looked like any other mill hand. Shoulders slumped, head down, hair pulled back tight and plain. She turned as the auto came up behind her, and I saw that her face was thin and pale against the black of her mourning dress.

Braking quick, I stopped beside the tracks and blew the horn at her. "Lightfoot!" I called. "Come 'ere a minute!"

She shaded her eyes against the sun. "Will? Thet you?"

"Come look-a-here at my automobile!"

She came running across the railroad ditch to the road and, like a wilted pot plant that just got watered, smiled up at me with the purest pleasure on her face. "Law, is this here yore'n?"

"Well, it's—ours. My daddy bought it."

"I ain't never been this close to a motorcar afore." She ran her hand over the red paint of the hood. "Don't it feel shiny! Kin I set in the seat fer jest a minute, Will?"

"Better'n that. I'll ride you down the road a piece. Hop in." As she stepped up on the running board, I nodded toward the basket of corn and tomatoes in the back seat. "I'm takin' those to a old man who lives over on the other side of the cemetery."

I wished I could give her the vegetables. It would kind of make up for that bucket of blackberries she lost. But her pride was in my way. It would be the same as saying I knew that nothing grew good in the hard-packed clay behind the mill houses, and that mill hands didn't have plows to cultivate the soil deep or money for guano.

Well, it was something, at least, to give Lightfoot her first ride in a car.

I tried to make conversation, but had to yell over the car racket, and she had such a thin voice I couldn't hear a word she said. Just before turning left at the corner house where Miss Alice Ann Boozer and Mr. Homer lived, I stopped to let her out—then had an idea. "I'm go'n turn up this street," I said, "but if you ain't in a hurry, we could drive into the cemetery and sit and talk a while."