Cold Sassy Tree

  Naturally we all thought there would just be a quick private burying. Cold Sassy certainly never expected Camp would be brought home to lie in state.

  But he was.

  By first dark, Aunt Loma's little house was filling up with folks who had brought food and were waiting to speak to the new widow before settling in to eat. Loma was still upstairs in her room when here came Uncle Camp in a fine golden oak coffin with metal handles, riding in style in Mr. Birdsong's fine new glass-sided, gilt-trim black hearse drawn by two black horses with black plumes on their heads.

  As soon as the horses stopped, Mr. Birdsong got down from the driver's seat, went in the house, and asked everybody to leave the parlor. Then he and his three sons carried in the coffin, escorted by my grandfather. His grimness forbade any comment as he stalked across the yard behind the coffin. Those watching looked shocked, like it was as awful for Camp to be brought home like a regular corpse as for him to of shot himself in the first place.

  Though the undertaker clearly disapproved, they toted Uncle Camp into Aunt Loma's little parlor as if he had a right to be there. I followed close behind Grandpa, who told me to come in and close the sliding double doors.

  Mr. Birdsong unfolded his new collapsible casket stand and set it up right in front of the white mantelpiece that Uncle Camp had painted. I don't know why, but I walked over to see if the button, the pencil, and the cockroach were still there. They were, of course, just same as Granny's death was still in the Toy Bible.

  Loma had hung the Saint-Cecilia-at-the-organ mirror above the mantel. I watched in it as the boys lifted the casket onto the stand and Mr. Birdsong laid a big wreath of wax flowers on top, about where Uncle Camp's hands that held the pistol would now be pressed together in prayer.

  Mr. Birdsong always arranged dead hands like in prayer.

  Hitching his trousers with his arm stub, Grandpa looked around and said, "Git thet marble-top table over yonder, Will Tweedy, and set it by the head of a-thet coffin. Then see can you find a kerosene lamp to put on it." He must of thought the carbon bulb hanging from the ceiling was too raw-looking for a settin'-up.

  "Grandpa, you ain't go'n open the coffin, are you, sir?"

  "No, course not. Camp ain't in no condition for viewin'." He spoke calm, but went to scratching his head like he had the itch. "Where's Loma at, and yore daddy and mother?"

  "They all upstairs in the bedroom," I said. "Aunt Loma's still like she was at the depot. She don't even know what's goin' on. Grandpa, I thought you didn't like embalmin' and funerals and all."

  "I don't. But I don't like hypocrites, neither. I cain't stop folks from jedgin' Camp, but I ain't a-go'n let'm say how he's got to be buried. Where's Miss Love at?"

  "In the kitchen."

  "Go git her for me."

  "Yessir."

  "And bring a lamp."

  "Yessir."

  Wading through the crowd of silent people in the front hall, I found Miss Love busy getting out dishes. She knew Grandpa had brought Uncle Camp home. When she saw me at the kitchen door, she said, "Loma should be in there when people start paying their respects."

  "You think anybody'll go in, Miss Love?"

  "Yes. Because your grandfather will get his revolver if they don't." Turning to look at me as she reached for some dishes on a high shelf, Miss Love almost smiled. "But he won't have to, of course. Even grown people mind Mr. Blakeslee, Will—as if they had no choice."

  I couldn't help wondering had she minded him. Let him have his way with her, as the saying goes.

  I took a stack of plates out of her hands and set them on the kitchen table by a pile of papers that I recognized as copies of Loma's Christmas play. I reached for the lamp at the back of the table, where Loma had left it last time the lights went out. I felt awful. "Ma'am, do you think Uncle Camp might still be alive if Loma and Grandpa hadn't blessed him out so much? You think Grandpa is tryin' to make it up to him now?" I struck a match and put it to the lamp wick.

  "Sh-h-h, Will. We'll never know. Not even your grandfather will know, because he won't let himself think that way."

  "And couldn't admit it if he did?"

  "And couldn't admit it if he did."

  "Aunt Loma was the main one, I reckon, but she won't ever see how she treated him." In a low miserable voice I said, "Miss Love, I, uh, I didn't treat him so good myself."

  "We'll talk about it later, Will. Not now." Miss Love took off her apron, I picked up the lamp, and we hurried out.

  Mr. Birdsong and his boys were just leaving. I watched them walk across the gold cat-paw prints on the dining room floor and go out through the kitchen. Then we went on in the parlor, and Miss Love asked Grandpa if she should go get Loma and Mr. Hoyt and Mary Willis.

  "I want you here by me, where you belong to be," said Grandpa. "Let Will Tweedy go. Tell your daddy to bring Loma on down, son. But first, open them doors. Hit won't do to keep folks a-waitin'. They might leave." As he took aholt of Miss Love's elbow, I pushed open the double doors and he stood glaring at the silent, uneasy crowd. "Y'all can come on in now," he said, as if it never occurred to him they might not want to.

  All those Cold Sassy eyes moved past Grandpa and Miss Love and focused on the coffin. But nobody moved.

  "Cratic?" Grandpa spoke in a soft voice. "You and Miz Flournoy come first. Camp always thought a lot a-y'all." Mr. Flournoy came forward like a puppet on a string.

  Miss Love held out her hand to him. As Mr. Flournoy took it, he turned and looked back at his wife. "Mama?" he whispered. She looked nervous and uncertain, as if being in the same room with a suicide corpse might taint her. But she came on in and Mr. Flournoy ushered her forward.

  I watched the Flournoys stare at the coffin. I knew they were wondering if Mr. Birdsong had been able to make Uncle Camp look nat'ral, considering the circumstances. But then Mrs. Flournoy commenced crying. "Daddy," she sobbed, "we c-could of been nicer to that p-poor boy...."

  One by one, then in groups, Cold Sassy came in to view the hidden remains. Watching them file by, I felt like their tears weren't just from gruesome imaginings of the blasted head under the golden oak coffin lid. They cried from real sorrow. Like me and Mrs. Flournoy, they knew they could of been nicer.

  Hurrying out to go upstairs, I was surprised to see Grandpa following behind. "Hit's all right in the parlor now, son. I best see after Loma myself." As we pushed our way through the hall toward the stairs, I heard somebody ask where was the poor fatherless child. Somebody else said the baby was over at the Tweedys'. "The cook's keepin' him."

  Papa was kneeling by the window, praying. Mama sat on the foot of the bed, holding a wet washrag to her forehead. Aunt Loma? Still in the dressy black wool outfit she'd worn to Sue Lee's, she walked the floor in front of the bureau, back and forth, forth and back. She didn't cry or carry on. She looked like a sleepwalker. Back and forth, and I don't believe she knew where she was or even that she paced.

  "Loma?" Grandpa stood in the door. "I brung Camp's body home." My parents looked up, surprised, but Loma just kept pacing. He spoke louder. "Loma, I brung Camp's body home and folks are down there payin' their respects. They'll want to say their condolences to you." She kept walking. Back and forth, forth and back.

  Mama got up from the bed and put her hand on Loma's arm. "Sugar, here's Pa," she said softly.

  "Y'all go on down to the parlor," Grandpa told us. As we filed out, he was saying, "Loma? Come here to yore daddy, pet." I glanced back just as he caught her arm and pulled her to him. She looked slowly up, to see who had her. Then her eyes focused and tears ran down her cheeks. Clutching her arms around her daddy's waist, she hid her face against his chest. "Oh, Pa!" she cried. "Oh, Pa, I been so mean to him....I fussed so about the faucet...." She sounded like somebody lost. "Pa, I want to come home. Can I? Me and the baby? Please...."

  I didn't hear if he said yes or no, because I had to shut the door. But as I followed Mama and Papa down the stairs, I wondered would he let her. And would Miss Love let her? If she
and Grandpa were romancing, it sure would put a crimp in things to have Jealousy Incarnate underfoot.

  I couldn't help thinking that if all Grandpa needed was a housekeeper, Aunt Loma could keep house for him now. But even if he hadn't wanted Miss Love, it was just as well he didn't wait for Loma. If she had been born colored, not a soul would of hired her to clean up or cook, either one.

  Anyhow, Grandpa hadn't hardly passed the time of day with Loma since they quarreled about her being an actress, and things got even worse between them after she disobeyed him and married Uncle Camp. When Campbell Junior was born, he did go see the baby and made a big to-do over it being a boy, which really pleased Aunt Loma. But that was the end of that. It didn't really change anything. Whenever the two of them were in the same room, it was like they didn't know enough English to carry on a conversation. They both could hold a grudge like it was a life work.

  Well, it was awful to think what it had taken to make Grandpa treat Loma and Uncle Camp nice.

  There hadn't been a suicide in Cold Sassy since the Crabtrees' son, Arthur, got drunk on a cold winter night, laid down across his sweetheart's grave, and took an overdose of laudanum. Next morning when he was found, the bottle was laying by his body. Arthur never even got back home. The Crabtrees were so mad and hurt and ashamed, they took a pine casket out to the cemetery and put him right under, and to this day there isn't a marker on his grave. The burial service was just one sentence. The preacher said, "God won't forgive this awful thing he did." Dr. Slaughter thought it wasn't the laudanum that killed Arthur; it was laying out there all night in twenty-degree weather. But he was considered a suicide person just the same, since suicide was his clear intent. Two months before, when Arthur's sixteen-year-old sweetheart died of galloping consumption, the Cold Sassy Weekly had called her passing "the saddest and yet most beautiful death in memory, lamented in verse by her brother James, well-known invalid poet of Maysville, Georgia." The paper printed Brother James's whole long dern memorial poem about her. But poor Authur got just two lines: "Young Arthur Crabtree of this city became deceased last Thursday."

  Camp would of gone the same way as Arthur if it had been left up to his folks. The Williamses, I mean. Grandpa sent word to them right after it happened, but they sent word back saying they wouldn't come. That was the whole message. Despite Camp wrote in his letter that he wanted to be buried in Cold Sassy, Mama had hoped the Williamses would say bring our boy home. That was the usual thing to do when a young person died. "It would of saved a lot of embarrassment for Loma, considerin'," said Mama. "Not to mention the rest of the fam'ly."

  But if Mama or Cold Sassy thought Campbell Williams would end up with a quick private burying like Arthur Crabtree's, it had another think coming. Sunday at three o'clock, Camp had him a nice, long regular-type funeral in the Baptist church. Brother Belie Jones didn't give any eulogy, but he asked God to comfort the young widow and raise the baby in the Bosom of the Lamb, and then he read Scriptures for an hour.

  As the preacher finished the Twenty-third Psalm, he looked at Grandpa with a question mark on his face. Grandpa, who sat between Aunt Loma and Miss Love, glared hard at Brother Jones, and the preacher said, "Let us bow our heads a-gain in prayer." After reminding God that in the note to his wife, the deceased had asked His forgiveness, Brother Jones prayed, "Lord, Thou knowest this congregation is shocked and saddened by what has happened in our community. We know the Bible says it is a sin to take life, our own as much as anybody else's. But Lord, hep us to see that this boy was a poor lost soul and deservin' of our compassion."

  Grandpa nodded grimly, and the funeral was over.

  Nobody was sure that Camp's asking God's forgiveness before he pulled the trigger counted as much as if he had lived long enough to repent after doing the deed. But it was a comforting hope.

  No suicide person in living memory had ever been treated nice as Uncle Camp. Papa even wondered if maybe Grandpa gave some money to the Baptist church to get it done right, but Mama said that idea was far-fetched—"stingy as Pa is." Anyhow, it was a grand send-off. And as if the church funeral and the fine coffin weren't enough, Grandpa not only insisted Camp be laid to rest in the Toy plot but had Loomis dig the grave right at Miss Mattie Lou's feet.

  There were those who thought it was going far too far to put somebody who was already halfway to Hell at the feet of a lady who'd been a saint on earth if ever there was one. But Grandpa didn't ask anybody's permission.

  Later that evening, when we were all at Aunt Loma's to eat supper, I asked him if he thought Uncle Camp could of got to Hell already. Grandpa told me to shut up. "They's plenty men thet are mean and hateful, son, or they cheat folks, or beat their wives and their colored, but when they die, them preachers cain't say enough nice thangs. Well, Camp he warn't evil or hateful, either one. He jest couldn't do nothin'. So doggit, Will Tweedy, ain't you or nobody else go'n say he's gone to Hell. He jest couldn't stand it no more. Would a lovin' God kick a boy unhappy enough to do what pore Camp did?"

  Mama came up while Grandpa was talking. Right in front of her, he said he didn't want no funeral when he died. "I want a party, like them Irishmen have."

  It made me proud, how Grandpa was that day.

  But if I'd known from the beginning that Aunt Loma and Campbell Junior would come live with us instead of with him and Miss Love, and me have to give up my room and sleep winter and summer on a sawed-off old bed out on our back porch, I'd of been too mad at Uncle Camp to fix the faucet for him.

  45

  IT WOULD OF MADE a lot more sense for Loma to go live with her daddy and Miss Love. She and Campbell Junior could of had the upstairs room that was hers growing up.

  Doing her duty, Miss Love gave her an invite the day after the funeral. But Grandpa spoke up before Loma could open her mouth. "Naw, you better go live with Sister and Hoyt," he said. "I'm too old to hep raise a youngun."

  Despite Loma had begged to come home, I don't doubt she was relieved not to be going. Besides how she felt about Miss Love, there was how she felt about kerosene lamps, well water, and privies.

  Still and all, I didn't see why she couldn't just stay on where she was, and said so.

  "For pity sake, Will," said Mama, "I never thought to raise a boy so hardhearted. What fam'lies are for is to hep one another in time of trouble."

  "Well'm, but it ain't like Aunt Loma's homeless."

  "She cain't stay where she is. Not unless some older woman could go live with her, and I don't know who that would be. A widow pretty as Loma and not but twenty-one years old, what would people say? And how would she live? Lord knows, there's nothing under her mattress to fall back on."

  What she would fall back on was Grandpa, of course. And since he owned her house as well as ours, it hadn't taken him two minutes to see that by putting the two families together and leasing out Loma's place, the rent money would just about equal her upkeep.

  I know Aunt Loma didn't mind coming to our house a bit. She cried when Papa said she could bring only one cat, but losing the cats was nothing compared to gaining Queenie, who would help with the baby and do their washing and cook their food. Aunt Loma was a lot of things, but not dumb.

  The first week or two at our house, she stayed in her room (my room), crying about treating poor Camp so mean. But it wasn't long till she was mourning instead for the way he had treated her.

  During the Christmas holidays I went up to her room (my room) to see could I find my tobacco tags. I thought I had them in a Prince Albert can under a loose board near the fireplace in there. The door was open, so I went in, and there stood Aunt Loma in front of the mirror, staring at herself in the thin flowerdy dress Miss Love brought her from New York—the one she couldn't wear last summer because of being in mourning for Granny and couldn't wear next summer on account of being a widow.

  Seeing me in the glass coming up behind her, she jerked around and started yelling about Uncle Camp killing himself. "The nerve of him, leavin' me like this! Beholden to my daddy and my
brother-in-law for the very clothes on my back and the food in my mouth!"

  "Aw, Aunt Loma, you don't have to feel beholden," I said, honestly trying to be a comfort. "Mama says that's what families are for."

  Whereat she collapsed on the bed and went to crying. "Oh, Will, what's to become of m-me!"

  As Aunt Loma got used to Camp being gone, though, she seemed to take on new life. And despite it was crowded at our house, we all settled down. She and I had a run-in every now and again, but even Aunt Loma could see it was to her advantage to be nice. Except for nursing the baby, she was more or less free to hold him or put him down, same as if she was his grandmother or a maiden aunt. She never had to look after him unless she was in a mood to, because if he wasn't toddling around after me, he was with Mary Toy, unless he was with Mama or Queenie. Life was just easier now for Aunt Loma.

  Well, it wasn't easier for me. As always when things got behind in the family or at the store, I was the one who took up the slack. I never saw Pink and Lee Roy and Smiley except at school or church. I kept thinking I'd drive the Cadillac out toward Mill Town and see could I find Lightfoot McLendon and take her to ride, but I never got to.

  I finally asked Mama why couldn't Aunt Loma make herself more useful. "That way I might could play baseball every year or two with Pink and them, or go fishing sometime."

  Mama was at the sink, washing sweet potatoes to bake for supper. She said, not unkindly, "Don't talk bitter, Will. Loma's goin' through a bad time."

  "Yes'm, but it sure would hep if she could milk the cow and bring in stovewood."