Cold Sassy Tree

  25

  I MET PINK early Monday morning in front of Clark's Drug Store to wait for Mr. Lias Foster, the rural mailman, who would be coming from Commerce in his buggy. "He's a talker," I warned. "If he cain't think of anything else, he'll say, 'Git yore foot away from thet aigg basket fore you bust them aiggs.'" We both laughed.

  "What's he takin' eggs to country people for?"

  "He ain't. They give him eggs for stamps. He puts stamps on their letters and then trades out the eggs at Grandpa's store or at Williford, Burns, and Rice in Commerce."

  Mr. Lias made three buggy trips a week, delivering letters, newspapers, and Sears, Roebuck packages in Banks County. Out one day and back the next. The rural post offices were mostly in farmhouses, my Grandpa Tweedy's place being one of them.

  We waited for Mr. Lias at the drug store because Cold Sassy's post office was in there, a big pigeonhole desk over where the telephone central switchboard used to be. They had moved the switchboard to Miss Lucille's house so that she could operate it nights as well as days. When Mr. Lias arrived, we followed him inside. Five or six old men were already sitting around in there, talking crops and fussing about the gov'ment in Washington while they cut one another's hair. A colored man named Henry had started a white barbershop in Cold Sassy a few years back, but these old fellers liked the drug store better. Folks coming in for their mail would stop and talk a while.

  "Hey, Will, where y'all goin'?" Mr. Tom Rainwater asked me.

  "Out to Banks County, Mr. Tom. My Grandpa Tweedy's got a big blue North Ca'lina wagon, and we go'n borrow it and go campin'."

  The ride started off as a high ole time, us laughing loud and cutting up behind Mr. Lias as the buggy racked out of Cold Sassy. Old T.R. trotted ahead or dropped behind or went dashing off across worn-out fields grown up in broom sedge. Pink and I talked about camping plans till the clip-clopping of the horses made him sleepy. Mr. Lias, contrary to his usual nature, said next to nothing. So I was left to myself.

  I sat staring at his lean old hulk in the front seat and at the hind ends of the dappled-gray horses. I hardly noticed when one of the horses raised his tail and plopped in rhythm with the clip-clop. I didn't see the red dust that coated sassafras bushes and wild flowers by the roadside. I hardly noticed the blackberries that glistened among the brambles. All I saw was Bluford Jackson in his grave.

  The camping trip had been Blu's idea. We were talking about it that morning we climbed up the water tower to throw down lighted firecrackers and scare people—the day Blu got the firecracker burn that gave him lockjaw.

  Though I liked Pink just fine, I couldn't help thinking that if Blu hadn't of died, it would be him going out to Banks County with me this hot July morning. I wondered had he rotted down to bones yet. How long did it take? And what about Granny? Despite the fine hardwood casket, might she have worms in her already?

  Lord help me.

  I tried to think about Lightfoot McLendon's hair shining white in the sun, but that just set me to worrying about whether she went to Blind Tillie Trestle on Saturday, expecting me to be there like I said I would. Dern, why hadn't I tried some way to get word to her?

  Right about then, Mr. Lias looked over his shoulder at me and asked how did my folks take it when they found out Mr. Blakeslee done got marrit.

  "They took it all right." I knew whatever I said would be written down in his mind to deliver with the mail.

  "The milliner is a handsome lady, you can say thet for her."

  "Yessir. How's Miss Ora, Mr. Lias?"

  "Tol'able. Jest tol'able. She ain't never really got over her pleurisy." He flopped the reins. "I been thinkin' lately on Sal, my first wife. How she ruint my life."

  "Ruint your life, sir?" I grabbed his words like they were a rope to hang on to.

  Mr. Lias clucked his cheek sideways and flipped the reins till the horses picked up their trot. Then he waved at two old country ladies sitting on their front steps picking through a little girl's hair for cooties. They waved back and stared after us. I thought Mr. Lias would go on telling about his wife then, but his tongue had already burned out. He just sat there, flopping the reins every now and again or slapping at a fly or fanning his leathery face with his straw hat. We passed a chain gang of Negro convicts grading the road. They had to step into the ditch to let us pass. Then he spoke.

  "I knowed hit were a mis-take, soon as me and Sal got marrit. She warn't like any woman I ever seen before. A purty thang, but when it come to washin' or cookin', if she'd a-moved any slower she'd a-been goin' backwards. Everthang happened to her was con-trary to nature. If she'd a-drownded, I'd a-gone upstream to look for her. And she said sech dang-fool thangs. When she was in the fam'ly way, her ma got worrit bout Sal was losin' weight. You know what Sal said? She said, 'Ma, I cain't see I've lost any. But course I ain't looked under my feet yet, haw.' She thought thet was cute talk. I told her she sounded like a idjit. 'For God's dang sake, Sal, shet up fore some jedge commits you to Milledgeville.'"

  Another silence. Clip-clop, clip-clop, slap, flop, fan. Reins jiggling, horses snorting and pooting, buggy rocking and creaking, steel wheel rims hitting rocks, a caw-caw from a crow somewhere, T.R. way off in the woods, barking at something.

  Another mile and Mr. Lias's gravelly old voice said, "I was pitchin' hay one mornin', Sal up thar on the wagon seat a-holdin' the reins, when here come Mr. James Henry's bull. A mean'un. Charged me, and got me down right by the wagon. My wife, she had two good wood axes up thar beside her, but she didn't do one dang thang to hep me."

  He spat. After we passed the Antioch Baptist Church, I couldn't stand watching him think any longer. I poked him on the shoulder. "How'd you get away from the bull, Mr. Lias?"

  "Huh? Why, I gouged his eyes out," he said, matter of fact.

  "Reached up and grabbed a horn with one hand and gouged with the other'n. Then I quick rolled under the wagon out'n his way. I would a-kilt thet bull if I could of. Dang thang run off a-bellerin' and a-bleedin' and a-bumpin' into haystacks and fences. Thet very next week, I found out my wife been runnin' round on me for five year with a sorry low-down good-fer-nothin' cropper on Mr. James Henry's place. I don't doubt a minute but he let thet bull out and sicked him on me."

  Silence. The horses picked their way around a hole in the road. Mr. Lias spat again. "One night I got my gun and follered Sal straight to his house. Busted the door down and caught'm together, and had the dang hammer pulled back to shoot'm both when it dawned on me they warn't worth killin', neither one of'm. Eased the hammer back and lowered my gun and plain walked off. I went to live in Cold Sassy with my brother's fam'ly and got the mail route."

  "What about Miss Sal?"

  "Died. Got bit by a cottonmouth at a church picnic. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Good riddance, saith I, and the next year I marrit a spinster lady over in Commerce with a nice house. Miss Ora. She's three inches taller'n me and six year older, but she tells me a dozen times a day how much she loves me."

  By then I was barely listening. From the minute Mr. Lias mentioned Miss Sal carrying on with another man, I went to thinking about Miss Love carrying on with Mr. McAllister.

  If Grandpa hadn't heard about the kissing yet, he was the only one in Cold Sassy still left to tell.

  Gosh, what if he found out before we left for the mountains? If he decided to send Miss Love back to Baltimore, he sure as heck wouldn't want me to go on to Cornelia for any racehorse.

  The buggy rolled between gullied slopes of red clay. Then we passed the gristmill built by my great-grandfather Tweedy around 1850 on the Hudson River, and rattled through the cool of the covered bridge he built across the river to join his land together. I wondered how a man smart enough to do all that could of had a son lazy as my Grandpa Tweedy, who couldn't even get around to treating his cows for hollow horn or when they got maggots under the skin.

  One time I asked Papa didn't he think his daddy was lazy, leaving all the work to field hands or sorry no-count tenants and croppers. Papa sai
d, "Your granddaddy's just fresh out of hope, son, like most farmers in Georgia these days."

  I wished I could of known Grandpa Tweedy's daddy, but he died of the typhoid in 1867. He was too old to go fight in the War of the Sixties, but they made him a general in the local militia. General Tweedy, he was called. By time I came along, most everybody in Banks County thought General Tweedy had been a high monkity-monk in the Army of the Confederacy instead of just in the home guard. And I never heard any Tweedy, not even my own daddy, try to correct the impression.

  Mr. Lias turned his team off the highway into the rutty lane that led up to the old home place. It, too, was built by General Tweedy, out of hand-hewed logs and hand-sawed and hand-planed boards, and had portholes in the upper story for shooting Indians.

  I poked Pink awake. "Someday I'm go'n farm this land," I bragged, gesturing in every direction. "Papa's go'n buy it and let me farm it."

  Mr. Lias spoke up. "Everbody always figgered you'd go in the store with Mr. Blakeslee, Will."

  "Well, I ain't. I like farmin'. All there is to store work is watchin' out for rice weevils and rotten potatoes, and keepin' the rats out of the seed corn." I was feeling real smart-aleck. "But on a farm it's always something to worry about or be excited about. Foot-and-mouth disease, weevils, too much rain, too little rain, hired hands goin' off in the night with half your tools.... I'm a gambler, I reckon, because the way I see it, farmin' is one big dice game."

  "You talkin' like a dang fool, Will," said Mr. Lias. "Ain't nothin' excitin' bout a dang weevil, or plantin' fer seventeen-cent cotton and then cotton goes down to twelve cent cause everbody overplanted. I'm glad to be out of it. Ever now and agin you make enough to cover the mortgage and taxes and pay off the store thet give you credit. But even when it's a good fall, you might's well count on it, Will: fore the year's out yore mule's go'n die or yore barn burn down."

  I wasn't discouraged. "I've heard farmers talk like that all my life, Mr. Lias. But, see, I aim to study agriculture over at the University and learn better ways. For instance, I ain't go'n buy corn from a store to feed my livestock. I'm go'n grow my own corn. And cotton ain't go'n be my only cash crop."

  "Well, if it ain't, boy, you cain't git no lien from the store. And if'n you don't git no lien, you cain't buy no seed and guano. Well, you could, I reckon. Bein' who you are. Yore ganddaddy'll give you good terms, and he ain't go'n charge you double when you send a nigger to town to git sugar and coffee on credit."

  I didn't like him suggesting Grandpa overcharged, but I let that go by. Naturally Grandpa would give me favorable terms. But it was better farming methods I counted on to turn a profit. "I'll learn how to plan ahead," I said.

  "See can you learn how to plan ahead for rain or drought, son. Do thet and they'll give you a prize over at thet Ag College." Mr. Lias clucked his team up to a trot. "Hope you don't never have to find out what it's like, bein' pore. But ain't no farmer in Georgie seen thet prosperity Mr. Henry W. New-South Grady used to write about in them Atlanta newspapers. When I was farmin', I'd go in town and them bankers and store men treated me like white trash. Since I got this here job carryin' the mail, I git some respect."

  As we rode past the old barn, weathered gray and leaning into a clump of hollyhocks and daisies, I pointed toward the shed. "Our wagon's in there, Pink. It's got a cover that flares up four or five feet, front and back. My great-grandfather brought his whole family down to Georgia in it, even his old daddy. His daddy was a blacksmith with four forges, till he crippled his arm, and a missionary to the Indians besides."

  "Gosh," said Pink, impressed.

  "I knowed yore great-grandpa when I was a boy," said Mr. Lias. "General Tweedy was his name. He shore was a fine old man."

  When we turned into the swept yard, I noticed for the first time how rundown the place looked. Almost like white trash lived there. Grandpa Tweedy wasn't white trash. He owned his land. But, like all farmers, he had to contend with high taxes, high freight rates, and land so worn out that he might spend more for guano than he could get for his cotton crop. Still and all, he got better terms at the store than most, on account of my daddy, and Papa helped out some with cash money. Times weren't as hard for him as they could be.

  Grandpa Tweedy was sitting on the porch swatting flies. His pet hen, a White Leghorn, clucked with excitement every time the swatter came down. I guess I saw him through Pink's eyes that morning, because I was embarrassed all of a sudden, how seedy Grandpa Tweedy looked in ragged overalls, his beard so long and scraggly.

  While Mr. Lias walked to the back of the buggy to get out the mail, Pink and I went up on the porch. Before we could even say howdy, Grandpa Tweedy hollered to Miz Jones to put on two extry plates for dinner.

  "Besides for Mr. Lias?" she called from inside the house.

  "Yes'm," he yelled back. "Will's here, and another boy." Then he thundered his gravelly voice at me. "Will, answer me. 'What is God?'"

  Without batting an eye I quoted from the Shorter Catechism in my best Sunday school voice: "'God is a Spirit, Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable.'"

  Grandpa Tweedy had been drilling me on the catechism all my life. "Now, tell me. 'What is a lie?'" He picked up his swatter off the floor, killed a fly on his arm as he said the word lie, and flipped the fly off for the chicken.

  "'A lie is an abomination in the sight of God and...' uh, 'and a...'"

  "And a what, boy?"

  I knew the answer. I was just debating whether to give it or act smart and show off before Pink. I decided to act smart. "'A lie is an abomination in the sight of God,'" I repeated, "'and a very present help in time of trouble!' Ain't that right, Pink?"

  Before Grandpa could bless me out for being sacrilegious, I told him about getting run over by the train. He said, "Thar you go, son, temptin' the Almighty Hisself."

  Then I stated my business, namely, that Papa wanted him to let me use Big Red and Satan and the covered wagon. "Some of us boys are go'n go campin'."

  Grandpa banged on the arm of his rocking chair. "What you arter be doin' instead, you arter be studyin' the catechism and the Bible. Ain't thet right, Lias? You ever see sech a smart-aleck boy?"

  Coming up the porch steps, Mr. Lias grinned and said I was smart-aleck, all right. "But he ain't a bad boy, Mr. Tweedy."

  "Then he must a-changed here lately."

  Real respectful, I asked, "Is it all right for us to take the team and the wagon, sir? Papa said you might could spare'm."

  "I need them mules." It was like he'd forgot Papa was the one that bought Big Red and Satan in the first place. "I need them and the wagon, both. You know good'n' well we use thet wagon ever fourth Sunday to go to Hebron for preachin'."

  "We'll be back long fore time for Hebron, Grandpa."

  "Well, anyhow, hit ain't all right with me. What y'all go'n go campin' for? Why cain't you jest lay out in some a-them woods around Cold Sassy a few days, or come out here?"

  "Time for dinner, y'all," Mrs. Jones called from the door. "How you do, Will? Who's your young friend?"

  She was a huge fat woman, Grandpa Tweedy's third wife, and I liked her. The reason she was still Mrs. Jones, Grandpa had called her that all the time they were courting—her being a widow woman—and after they got married he was too lazy to bother changing her name. Granny Blakeslee used to laugh about that, and she thought it worth mentioning that Mrs. Jones had kicked Mr. Jones after he was dead. Of course, Mrs. Jones hadn't known he was dead. She just thought he was snoring again. Doc said the snore was the breath going out for the last time.

  As we started in to dinner, Grandpa Tweedy walked over to the edge of the porch and picked up a conch shell off the banister rail. "I ordered this'n from Savannah," he told Pink, and blew a loud blast. "Thet's to call the hands to dinner," he explained.

  We had just sat down to the table when a rumble of colored men's voices suddenly drifted in from the kitchen. It was the field hands, coming in to eat. "Miz Jones, reach back of you and shet the kitchen door," said Grandpa Tw
eedy. "Now, Willy. Hit jest makes me nervous, the idee a-you takin' off in thet big wagon. And shore as sin, if it ain't here we'll need it."

  I knew he meant somebody might die. The covered wagon was the hearse for anybody who needed one in that part of Banks County. General Tweedy had taken his last ride in it nearly forty years before, to the Hebron graveyard. His widow, Arminda, my great-grandmother, had gone in it to the same place just a year ago, and also when she died the first time.

  Before Grandpa Tweedy could say any more about the wagon, Mr. Lias said, "Y'all heard bout Will's other granddaddy gittin' marrit last week?"

  "Is thet a fact," said Grandpa, helping his plate. "Seems like it wadn't more'n a week or two ago, Lias, you come in with a message from Hoyt sayin' Miss Mattie Lou had died. Rucker shore acks fast."

  Mrs. Jones wanted to know who was the bride, who married them, and all about it. Then she asked, "Will, is they any more room in Mr. Blakeslee's cemetery plot? Besides for him, I mean? You reckon they's room for this Miss Love in there with him and Miss Mattie Lou?"

  "Yes'm," I said, embarrassed. "I think so."

  Grandpa Tweedy grinned. "Miz Jones worries bout where I'm go'n put her down when the time comes, son. Hit bein' the custom, I got to be buried twixt yore daddy's mama, Will, and Miss Flo. But Miz Jones don't want to be put at our feet, which is the only other space left."

  "That's all right, Mr. Tweedy, I fine'ly figgered out a plan," she said, laughing merrily. "Want to hear?"

  He looked up, suspicious. "Say it."