Cold Sassy Tree

  "Funny, I don't recollect him ever bein' little bitty," said Lee Roy.

  "Well, he was. To keep him warm they had to put him in a pasteboard box with hot water bottles wrapped in towels all around him." That part was true. You just couldn't get Aunt Loma's house warm in winter. The rest I made up as I went along. "He was too weak to suck good, so Mama showed Aunt Loma how to milk herself and they gave it to him with a eyedropper. But seems like she never really had full bags. Not enough milk to feed a jaybird. And the baby bein' such a sorry sucker, they were scairt she'd go dry."

  We were moving up a hill now, the mules straining forward. I flipped their rumps with the whip.

  "Get to the pig," fat Lee Roy said impatiently. "Tell us bout the pig."

  "Well, my daddy fine'ly got on the telephone and rung up a hospital doctor over in Athens and ast what to do. It was the doctor said get a pig."

  "Naw!" The boys said naw like there was just one voice for the four of them.

  "Yeah! The doc said a pig would really get her milk goin'."

  "I don't believe any lady would nurse a pig," said Dunse. "Not even your Aunt Loma."

  "You can believe it or not, it's so," said I, and at the moment I half-believed it myself. "They sent me out to Grandpa Tweedy's in the buggy to get one. His Poland China sow had just whelped a new litter. I got the runtiest and took it home in a box. Mama bathed it and wrapped it up in a blue blanket and took it in to Aunt Loma. Mama couldn't stand the sight, that little pig gruntin' and pushin', but I heard her tell Papa that Loma said it felt real good. You know how if a cow ain't stripped proper she gets a swollen bag and sore tits? Well, Aunt Loma had been hurt-in' a lot, besides worryin' bout the baby starvin' to death. She nursed that pig a week or more, I don't remember how long."

  "If the pig was nursin' her," asked Pink, doubting, "what was happenin' to Campbell Junior?"

  I thought fast. "The way it worked," I said, "Aunt Loma would let the baby nurse her a few minutes. Then she'd milk herself into a bottle. Then while Mama went to work feedin' Campbell Junior with a eyedropper, Granny would wrap the pig up and take it in to Aunt Loma, to get her stripped good. After that, I or Mary Toy, one, had to take the pig and feed it some cow's milk with a baby bottle so it wouldn't starve to death. We had a three-ring circus goin' there for a while."

  "What happened to the pig?" asked Lee Roy as we crested a hill.

  "Granny cooked him."

  "Taste all right?"

  "Nobody could eat him," said I. "But from then on Campbell Junior got fatter and fatter, and it's all on account of Aunt Loma havin' so much milk from gettin' started good with that pig."

  "How come nobody's heard all this till now?" Pink said after while. He had laid down back there in the hay. "I cain't figure you knowin' something that good, Will, and keepin' it to yourself."

  "Papa said I couldn't go fishin' for a year if I told it," I lied. "Which reminds me, don'ty'all tell it, or what I said about Miss Love and Grandpa, either." All of a sudden I was real worried about what Miss Love would think if she heard it, but they all crossed their hearts and hoped to die.

  It was really something to make up an outlandish story like that. I thought up another one right off, but needing a little time to work it out, all I said was, "Maybe I'll tell y'all about Aunt Loma and the rubber busts."

  "The rubber what?" asked Smiley.

  "Aunt Loma's rubber bust set that she bought for her weddin'. But y'all got to promise not to repeat it."

  They like to fell out of the wagon promising, but I said let's wait till we stop to eat. Right off, Lee Roy commenced saying how hungry he was, though it was only ten o'clock.

  "Me, too," said Dunse. "I'm starved. Wonder what Miss Rachel put in the basket?"

  We soon saw an old wagon road that led up to a lonesome chimney and on to a shady creek. As we turned off the highway, I said, "I'll tell y'all just one fact that's important to the story. Until Campbell Junior was on the way, Aunt Loma was flat as a battercake, so to speak. Before she got married, Grandpa used to say he never could find a towel; Loma was always makin' herself a bosom or a bustle, one."

  First we had to tend to the mules and Miss Love's racehorse. Then while Dunse pulled out Cudn Rachel's basket, I got shet of my clothes and jumped in the creek. I was hot, for one thing, and also I'd been remembering a floating trick Blu Jackson told me about last fall. He said you won't sink if you stretch your arms out on the water like Jesus Christ crucified, or like ten minutes to two on a clock. Well, it worked, by gosh. I felt like I was on a mattress. When I made my body straight and stiff, even my toes rose out of the water.

  "Bet cain't any of y'all float this good!" I yelled. They all took off their clothes, waded in, and laid down on the water, but their feet and legs sank straight down as usual.

  It made Smiley mad. "You just layin' in shallows, Will. You ain't floatin'."

  "I am, too. It's deep here. Come feel." And he did, whooshing his arm under my back to make sure. I rocked like a boat, my toes still sticking out of the water.

  "You ain't never floated like that before," said Pink, still suspicious.

  I tried making a pillow out of my hands, putting them under the back of my head, and that worked even better. Closing my eyes, I could of gone to sleep if the boys hadn't pounced on me and sent me under.

  Without bothering to put on clothes, we opened up Cudn Rachel's picnic and ate, sitting on the mossy creek bank with our feet cooling in the water. When I finished, I lay back, feet still in the water, and said, "Now I'm go'n tell about Aunt Loma and the rubber busts!

  "Well, when Aunt Loma was go'n get married," I began, "she ordered her this rubber bust set from Sears and Roebuck, but she couldn't get'm blowed up. It was nearly time for the weddin' and she couldn't get the bicycle pump to work, so she ast me to do it." I sat up, splashing my feet in the cool water. "Said she'd pay me a dollar. Also said she'd kill me if I told anybody."

  "Specially us, haw!" said Pink, raising on one elbow to chuck a rock at a hickernut tree.

  "Well, so I blowed'm up. But then I took a needle and stuck this little bitty hole in the left bust. It went psssssssssssst all through the weddin' and Aunt Loma had a flat by the last I-do! You never in your life saw a bride as mad as her, or one holdin' her bouquet as high up."

  "She yell at you, Will?" Pink asked, grinning.

  "She couldn't. The preacher was still marryin' them. But boy howdy, she shot me a look! She was so mad that when Uncle Camp had trouble pushin' the ring on her finger, she jerked her hand away and put it on herself. Uncle Camp is sort of a mouse, you know. When Aunt Loma fusses, he looks pitiful and says, 'I'm sorry, Loma Baby.' After they were man and wife, I heard him whisper, 'Loma Baby, what did I do?'"

  We all guffawed and hawed.

  "As you can imagine," I added, "I stayed out of the way till they got on the train to Tallulah Falls."

  I didn't say so to the boys, but Aunt Loma thought Camp had made reservations at a nice honeymoon hotel, whereas he planned on staying with his aunt. He said they could go see the falls just as good from her house as from the hotel, and a whole lot cheaper. It turned out his aunt was a widow woman with ten children, living in a nasty, rundown old cabin on a turkey farm where you couldn't get to the privy without stepping in turkey mess. Aunt Loma stayed ten minutes and, holding her nose, said she was taking the next train home.

  Before they left town, though, she dressed up in her first-day outfit and got a street photographer to snap a honeymoon picture of her and Camp smiling at each other in front of the biggest hotel in Tallulah Falls. But when the picture finally came in the mail, it wasn't her and Uncle Camp. It was another couple.

  Getting mixed up by the photographer seemed to be the last straw. Aunt Loma was not only mad at Camp, she was furious at Granny and Grandpa for not forbidding the marriage. And now that she was stuck with it, she was mad at Mama for having married so much better than her. Despite Camp had grown up in a tenant shack, she thought he knew what was meant by co
ming up in the world. Now she knew he didn't.

  27

  WE ROLLED INTO COLD SASSY about five o'clock that Saturday evening. As we neared my house, I said real solemn, "Now if y'all tell about the pig or the bust set, I'll catch heck." As if it was a casual afterthought, I added, "And don't tell your folks about Miss Love stayin' in the comp'ny room at Grandpa's house. Because if you do — "I glared at Pink on the seat beside me, holding the brake post, and then at the others lolling back there in the hay. "Because if you do," I repeated, and they knew I meant it, "I'll make up something and tell it on y'all, if you know what I mean." They hoped to die first.

  With my threat hanging over their heads, I trusted them all the time we unhitched and tended the mules, turning them out into Papa's pasture for the night.

  I trusted them while Queenie praised and patted the black gelding, which Mama wouldn't even look at. Mama hovered around, asking why did we come back so soon and how was Cudn Rachel and them, did we have a good time and stay cool, were we warm enough at night, and did we have enough to eat. But she didn't ask one thing about the gelding.

  I still trusted the boys when we all marched down to Grandpa's house, proudly leading the prancy horse to Miss Love, and helped her put him in a stall. When we were leaving she took my hand and said, "Will, he's just beautiful. Mr. Beautiful, that's what I'll name him. Thank you so much. Thank you."

  All the time we were unloading the covered wagon, I believed the boys wouldn't tell on me. I still believed it while I took a bath. But about time I sat down to eat, it came to me with a sinking feeling that probably everything I'd said was being repeated right now all over town.

  I wasn't too worried about Aunt Loma. Those were whacking good stories, if I do say so myself. And everybody would know they were made up. I'd made up things before. Anyhow, it would be worth a whipping to see Aunt Loma's face after she heard.

  What made my stomach sink was knowing I had betrayed Miss Love. Folks would already be sniggering about those separate rooms. It was a strange thing to me that the same people who condemned her on her wedding day for taking advantage of an old man's loneliness would be condemning her now, just ten days later, for denying Grandpa his rights.

  We were hardly through supper before here came Miss Sarah Gordy, saying I ought to be ashamed. Mr. French being Granny's stepbrother, his wife felt like they were kin and had a right to speak up in the family. After blessing me out, she took Mama in the house to tell her in private what all Mrs. Snodgrass said Smiley said I said. As they came out, Mama was nodding in agreement. "You're absolutely right, Miss Sarah. This time Will has gone too far."

  After Mrs. Gordy left, Mama made me go to my room while she told Papa what Miss Sarah said Mrs. Snodgrass said Smiley said I said. Mama's furious voice drifted up from the porch, and pretty soon Papa came to the bottom of the stairs and hollered for me to get down there. He was already taking off his belt when I came out my door.

  After the whipping, Papa said, "Son, we go'n go out to the barn, you and me. I think it's time I told you a few things."

  Boy howdy, at last. But it was just another lecture about respecting ladies. "It's not fittin' to make jokes about a woman's—uh, womanhood," Papa began, looking stern. "If you got to show off before a bunch of boys by makin' up tales about a woman's—" He sputtered, unable to say the word. "Well, if you got to make up a story, Will, for heaven's sake don't pin it on anybody that anybody knows."

  All in all, I came out about even on Aunt Loma that night. One beating and one lecture was about right for two good stories that would be told for a long time by old men playing checkers under the Cold Sassy tree at the depot. If Aunt Loma was mad, which she would be, that suited me just fine.

  The next day at Sunday dinner, Papa had hardly finished serving the baked hen when my mother said, real pleasant, "I wonder who played the piano for the Methodists today."

  "Miss Effie Belle," said Aunt Loma. Picking a curly red hair out of her sweet potato sooflay, she dropped it daintily to the floor. "They say there were lots of wrong notes and she played pretty slow, but they got by. Will, start the gravy. Don't just let it sit there."

  Scared Aunt Loma might switch from Miss Effie Belle's piano playing to my camping trip, I asked, "Why didn't Miss Love play?"

  "She wasn't there. That's one reason." Aunt Loma sounded like she'd just been weaned on a lemon.

  Mama said maybe Love went to the Baptist church with Grandpa.

  "If they came, I didn't see'm. Did you see'm, Camp?" I said maybe Miss Love is sick.

  "She's sick, all right," answered Aunt Loma, talking around a bite of chicken. "After two years of showin' off at the piano, your Miss Love has found out the Methodists can do without her. A committee of ladies went callin' on her last week, Will, to let our new Miz Blakeslee know that a married woman is expected to behave herself."

  "It wasn't like that," protested Papa. "The ladies just—"

  "—told her they didn't need her to play for preachin' anymore," Aunt Loma said, looking smug. "She tried to act like it didn't matter, but I bet after they left she threw things and cried her eyes out."

  "Loma, you listen here—" Papa said sternly.

  "Don't worry so, Brother Hoyt. What we're sayin' is in the bosom of the family." She looked straight at me then. "Unless Will here decides to tell it on his next campin' trip."

  Just by the way Papa jabbed his spoon in the sugar dish, I knew something was coming. But he stirred his coffee good and put the spoon down before exploding. "I don't know why you're so happy about all that, Loma. Your pa sure ain't. Now I want you and Mary Willis both to hush up talkin' about her."

  "You cain't make the whole town hush up, Brother Hoyt."

  "Well, y'all don't have to join in. What's done is done, and we go'n live with it and be nice." I knew and they knew he was saying we got to remember which side our bread is buttered on down at the store, and who is buttering it.

  "Brother Hoyt's right, Loma Baby," Uncle Camp said boldly. "We need to—"

  "Oh, shut up, Camp, and pass my coffee cup to Sister. I just want a half a cup, Sister. Brother Hoyt, Love is the one you ought to say hush to. After her tirade down at the store last week, how can you think it's just me and Sister keepin' the town talkin? It's mostly her."

  "Your daddy don't see it that way," said Papa. "He says Miss Love's bein' tarred and feathered for what ain't nobody's business but his and hers." I was dying to ask what Miss Love said at the store, but I didn't dare.

  Nobody spoke the rest of the meal except to say the gravy sure is good and please pass the muscadine jelly.

  Mainly to get out of Aunt Loma's way before she could catch me alone and fuss about the rubber busts and all, I hurried to the pasture right after dinner. Papa wanted me to get the team and the wagon back to Banks County. Just as I was backing the mules into place on either side of the wagon tongue, here came trouble in the form of Grandpa Blakeslee.

  Seeing him with short hair, and without that big droopy mustache and bushy gray beard, I was surprised all over again. I swear my granddaddy didn't look more'n eight or ten years older than my daddy.

  It was the expression on his face that made me uneasy, and the sharp edge on his voice. "You fixin' to take thet rig back out to the country?" he asked.

  "Yessir." I kept my eyes on the strap I was buckling. The leather was still damp from yesterday's mule sweat.

  Grandpa didn't speak again for a minute. Then he said, "Yore daddy says you go'n stop by Temp's place on the way back and see Mary Toy."

  "Yessir."

  While I hooked the traces, Grandpa asked did my mother change her mind yet about going to New York.

  "No, sir. Not as I know of.... Move over, Red!"

  As I fastened the last strap, out there in the hot sun with the mules snorting and stomping and twitching off green flies, he finally said it. "Will Tweedy, I'm plumb shamed a-you."

  I didn't have to ask why. I just stood there wondering who told him what I said about Miss Love taki
ng over the company room. I even wondered how it was phrased to him. "Grandpa, I was just tryin' to—"

  "I ain't inner-rested in what you was a-tryin' to do. What you done was bad enough. You done made a laughin' stock out a-Loma agin."

  Loma?

  Grandpa was mad about what I told on Aunt Loma?

  "Now she does bring a lot on herself," he was saying. "Loma's so hateful sometimes I'm sorry to have to claim her. But you don't make her no nicer by outsmartin' her ever few days or makin' fun of her. Them stories you told ain't so, and ain't fittin' to be told on no lady. Loma may be hateful, but she lives decent and you ain't a-go'n talk bout her like thet no more." He spat his tobacco juice close to Big Red's front hoofs. "You hear me?"

  "Yessir." I felt about as low as O.K. Dunbar crawling home drunk at midnight. I couldn't honestly say I was sorry, but I hung my head.

  I figured Grandpa would turn then and stalk off, but he didn't. After ordering me in no uncertain terms to apologize to Aunt Loma, he put his arm around my shoulders. "I sure want to hear bout thet campin' trip," he said with a rough tenderness in his voice. I felt like the sun had just come out.

  "We had us a swell time, Grandpa!" There wasn't any use saying otherwise. It's bad enough to be miserable on a camping trip without telling the world. Lighthearted now, I put one foot on the wagon axle, whistled for T.R., and swung myself to the driver's seat. The dog jumped up there beside me, landing so hard—zomp!—he liked to knocked me over.

  "Old T.R. knows you better be gittin' on if'n you go'n be home fore dark," said Grandpa. Then, squinting up at me, he went to talking like I had all day long. "We held church up at the house this mornin'."

  "Sir?"

  "I was the preacher, Miss Love was the pi-ana player, and the both of us made up the congregation. Hit was a real nice service." He enjoyed seeing I was confused. "Wish you'd a-been there, son. We sang us some hymns, after which I talked to the Lord a while, tellin' Him bout the week, and I then preached a sermon. Tell you the truth, I think I upset Miss Love."