Cold Sassy Tree

  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.

  35

  THE 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."

  Without waiting for an answer, I turned the corner and drove through the cemetery gates and down the narrow wagon road that wound around old graves and old trees. I didn't once think to wonder if Miss Alice Ann or Mr. Homer or anybody had seen me turn into the graveyard with a mill girl in the front seat.

  From habit, I headed for the Toy burial plot. After I cut off the motor it was really quiet in there, and cool under the trees. Light-foot said, "Jest listen to them birds sangin'. Hit shore is a pretty place, Will. And so peaceful."

  "Well, it seems peaceful when I look at old graves like those." I pointed towards the moldy headstones of people I never knew, some of them born a hundred and fifty years ago or more in Scotland or Ireland or New Hope, Pennsylvania. "But, Lightfoot, I feel like I'm go'n suffocate when I think about Granny Blakeslee or my friend Bluford Jackson, layin' down there in the dark."

  An uneasy look came on her face and she sighed a long sigh. "My daddy passed, Will."

  "Yeah, Papa told me. Said you came in the store."

  The silence hung heavy over us as I tried to think of something to say. Lightfoot kept rubbing the brass horn with her right thumb. Finally she looked at me kind of shy-like and asked if I'd been in any fights lately. "I seen you fightin' lots a-times at school. You're a good skull-knocker, Will."

  I blushed under the compliment. "Well, I ain't had time for it lately," I said. "Anyhow, I mostly fight to keep from gettin' called a sissy. And it's a way to get my share of whippin's at school. If you don't get whippin's, they call you teacher's pet."

  She laughed. "Ain't nobody go'n call you a sissy or teacher's pet, either one, Will."

  "Well, I reckon. But I mostly fight for fun, like my grandfather does. If I feel like sayin' to somebody I bet I can lick you, I say it and we square off and all the boys crowd around, rootin' for one or the other of us, and everybody has a good time." I paused and added, "But it's a real fight when I'm tryin' to beat up Hosie Roach."

  She rubbed the brass horn some more, and then said, without looking at me, "Why come you hate Hosie, Will?"

  "I don't know. He's—well, snobby and smart-aleck. Always got a chip on his shoulder. And he's dirty."

  She said real low, "He ain't got no bathtub like you."

  I hated feeling ashamed for having a bathtub. "You seen Hosie this summer, Lightfoot?"

  She blushed. "Ever day. He works same shift in the mill as me. Will, you'd like Hosie if'n you knowed him better. He's real smart—like you. Everbody at the mill thinks he's go'n amount to something some day. I mean, you know, get a job thet ain't at the mill."

  "Yeah. Maybe."

  Feeling around for something better than Hosie to talk about, I showed her how the gears worked, and the choke, and then thought to ask if she saw the covered wagons that came through Cold Sassy last week.

  "Yeah. I went out on the highway to watch them pass. I 'as thinkin' it might be folks I knew from White County. But turned out they 'as from way up in the mountains. My folks is from the hills, not the mountains."

  Silence. A breeze rustled the leaves overhead and cooled us some. Then Lightfoot said she came through Cold Sassy one time when she was little bitty. "They 'as ten or twelve fam'lies in our wagon train, takin' thangs south to sell in Washin'ton, Georgie. Quilts and arsh potatoes, you know, and them blue mountain cabbages, and apples and chinquapins and home-twist t'bacca. All like thet."

  I grinned. "And moonshine?"

  She grinned back. "Yeah, I reckon. I remember we stopped in Cold Sassy on the way back home. Went in a store and bought a cast-arn stove, and some piece goods and sugar and coffee. Might be it 'as yore grandpa's store. I always remembered Cold Sassy cause it 'as sech a funny name."

  "It ain't funny if you know how it came about. You ever noticed that great big sassafras tree, Lightfoot? The one over by the depot?"

  She nodded.

  "Everybody calls it the Cold Sassy tree. Back a hundred years ago it was a big sassafras grove there, and the wagoners goin' through said that was the coldest spot between the mountains and Augusta. They all knew what was meant if somebody said let's camp at them cold sassy trees. By time settlers got to comin' in, Cold Sassy was its natural name."

  "Hit still sounds funny, Will. Leastways to me it does," said Lightfoot.

  "Lots of other folks think that. There's talk about changin' it to something prosperous-soundin', the way Harmony Grove was changed to Commerce a few years ago. Don't you think Commerce is a awful improvement over a pretty name like Harmony Grove?"

  More silence, except for birds twittering and a dog barking somewhere. I felt uncomfortable. Aunt Loma's right, I thought. Southerners can't just sit and not say anything. I said, "My granny's great-granddaddy led a wagon train here from North Ca'lina. They were the first settlers."

  "Had he heired the land?"

  "Maybe, I don't know. I think he had a land grant for fightin' in the Revolution."

  "Where I come from, most folks jest tuck it up. Their land, I mean. Maybe thet's what yore folks done."

  Time lagged again till Lightfoot asked would anybody mind if she looked around some.

  "Naw, course not." Jumping down, I ran around and helped her out, like she was Cinderella stepping out of a coach. I showed her Granny's unmarked grave. "The tombstone ain't come yet," I explained, embarrassed. "Grandpa ordered one from Sears, Roebuck, but it ain't come yet." Then I took her over to the Sheffield plot. Being as Mr. Sheffield owned the cotton mill, I thought she might like to see where some of his money went. "I'm go'n show you two big fancy headstones for men who weren't dead when they were buried," I said gaily.

  "They warn't dead?" She was horrified, the way I'd felt when Granny told me about it. Stopping before a huge marble tombstone carved like a scroll, I said, "See? 'Daniel Bohannan Sheffield.' He was the Sheffields' only son."

  "He got
buried alive?"

  "Naw, course not. Ain't nobody under there. Granny said Mr. Dan married a rich Jew lady in New York and was go'n bring her home to meet the fam'ly, but Miz Sheffield wrote him not to come. Said anybody who'd marry a Yankee or a Jew was the same as dead—specially if it was a Yankee Jew. Turned out the bride's family shut the door on her, too, but I don't know if they buried her. Anyhow, Mr. and Miz Sheffield put up this tombstone. See, it don't give a date. Just says 'Died in a foreign land.'"

  "He still livin'?" Lightfoot looked around like she thought Mr. Dan might be standing behind her.

  "Who knows? They don't talk about him. Now let me show you the other one. See that big carved marble angel over yonder?" As we walked toward it, I told her about Mrs. Sheffield's youngest brother. "Granny said he was around my age when the Yankee army came through. Just fourteen or fifteen. The Laceys lived on a big plantation, and they sent this boy down the Savannah River one dark night in a rowboat with a trunk full of money and silver and jewels—all like that. If he made it to Savannah, he was s'posed to buy passage on a ship to England and wait out the War over there. Which he did. But when it was over, he didn't come home. Granny said after Mr. Sheffield started the mill and they could afford it, Miz Sheffield hired her a lawyer over in England, and he found out her brother had squandered everything. He was workin' as a chim'ly sweep. Wanted to come home."