Cold Sassy Tree

  "Willy?" she whispered. "What's them two men doin' over yonder? See? Look on the far side a-the cemetery." She pointed. "They got shovels. They comin' over here! They go'n steal me!" Grabbing my arm, she pulled me down on the bed—pulled so strong that if she'd really been pulling me into her grave, I wouldn't of been scareder.

  "Grandpa!" I yelled. But then she loosened her hold and looked up past me, as if seeing a wonderment. "Y'all come for me?" she called out, real friendly.

  Granny listened, like to somebody talking ... looked disappointed ... then smiled politely and said, "Well, when y'all ready for me, just holler." Then in a strong, trembling voice she said, "Ain't they a sight, Willy!"

  "Ma'am, I don't see nothin'."

  Granny kept nodding and smiling, like greeting folks at church, and reached up like to touch somebody.

  "What you see?" I asked eagerly.

  "Angels! Son, this here room's just full a-angels!" Her voice sent another thrill up my spine. "They got lacy wings, and they's all dressed up in quilted robes.... The softest, prettiest colors, Will! Lordy, they keep a-comin'. They's flyin' out'n the quilt chest! You cain't see'm? They come out, and then they float up and on off—clear th'ew the ceilin'! They's just beautiful, son! Bye-bye now," she called. She kept looking this way and that, smiling and waving. "Y'all come see me agin, hear." Every time one batch of angels left, another batch came out of the chest.

  "Go git your grandpa," Granny ordered. "I bet he can see'm. They's just everwhere...."

  When Grandpa stumbled in, rubbing his eyes, she said to him, "Lookit the quilted angels, Mr. Blakeslee!... Aw, shoot, they done gone." Granny sagged down weak against the pillows, exhausted, her fingers plucking the sheet.

  Mrs. Avery always said you know death's on the way when a sick person goes to picking at the covers.

  "Mr. Blakeslee, I seen the most beautiful bein's...." As Grandpa plopped down in the rocker, she went to telling him about it and got all excited again. "I wouldn't take a pretty for them angels!" She said it over and over. "I just wish you—"

  "Forgit all thet, Miss Mattie Lou." Grandpa said finally. He spoke soft to her, like you would to a child. "Hit were jest a dream. You all tangled up in yore mind. Go to sleep now." He slid his left elbow under her neck, circling his other arm around her, and pulled her close to him, rocked her against him.

  "Mr. Bla'slee," she mumbled, "if you'd a-come ... a mite sooner ... you'd a-seen'm....I seen a...."

  "Sh-h-h. Go to sleep now, Miss Mattie Lou," he whispered, his strong arms holding her, gently rocking, slow and gently rocking. "You all tuckered out. Sleep now. Go to sleep."

  She drifted quickly into a deep snoring stupor. By next day you could hardly wake her—and if you did, a minute later she'd go right back into that loud, awful breathing. The last time Grandpa got her roused up, she looked scared and said, "Sump'm terrible.... Sump'm awful's a-matter ... w' me...."

  Grandpa smoothed the damp hair from her forehead, spoke soft. "Tell you the truth, you been pretty sick, Miss Mattie Lou. But you gittin' better now. You jest real tired and need to rest. So go on back to sleep, hear. I'll set right here by you. I ain't go'n go leave you, Miss Mattie Lou." He choked up. "I ain't ever go'n leave you...."

  But she left him. That night the angels came back for her, like she'd asked them to.

  And nobody who saw the heartbreak on Grandpa's face when Granny breathed her last would have thought for one minute that he was glad to get shet of her so he could marry Love Simpson.

  8

  AFTER GRANDPA and Miss Love eloped, a lot of people felt sure he had never so much as looked at the milliner till after Granny died and he needed a housekeeper.

  But those same folks were sure as certain that Miss Love had had designs on him ever since Miss Mattie Lou took sick, and was after him from the minute he became a widower.

  "I was onto Love Simpson from the beginnin'," skinny old Miss Effie Belle Tate told Mama after the elopement. "Nobody else suspicioned what was goin' on, but I did." Because of living next door to Grandpa, Miss Effie Belle acted like God had sent her a special delivery letter explaining all the goings-on. "Miss Mattie Lou's body wasn't hardly gone to the funeral parlor before that woman was down to your pa's house, washin' and moppin' and dustin' and sweepin'." The pink wart quivered on her thin upper lip. "I knew the minute Miss Love got out a broom that she was after the nearest of kin. Why else would a white woman go over to your daddy's house to get it cleaned up for the funeral?" she asked Mama. "Hit wasn't like he didn't have you and Loma to do for him."

  But at the time of Granny's funeral, Miss Effie Belle had sung a different tune entirely. I remember how she talked across the coffin to Mama. "Ain't Love Simpson sweet to pitch in like this? After workin' for your pa two years, I reckon she knows how economical he is. He ain't go'n hire nobody to hep, and Lord knows, you and little Loma got your hands full. Not to mention your hearts bein' full to overflowin' with grief."

  All Miss Effie Belle did for Grandpa that day was bring over a chocolate cake and a caramel cake. Being eighty-nine years old, she'd had plenty of practice and was by far the cake champion of Cold Sassy. Still and all, two cakes weren't anything like equal to the trouble Miss Love went to on the day before the funeral. Besides all the cleaning, she had washed and dried dishes for hours in Granny's hot kitchen. The house was full of sad people, come to cry and eat and drink tea, and Granny didn't have enough dishes without somebody being in the kitchen to wash each plate and glass as soon as it got set down.

  If Miss Love had notions about Grandpa that day—the way Miss Effie Belle claimed later—having to use a privy and draw well water and go to the back porch to throw out the dirty dishwater would have been enough to make her think twice.

  That night after supper, Aunt Loma, Uncle Camp, us Tweedys, and Grandpa sat in the parlor with the remains and the visitors. But Miss Love was still working in the kitchen—by lamplight, I might add. I remember Grandpa went back there two or three times to tell her to quit. She said she wasn't tired a bit, but she must of been about to break half in two.

  Mama and them had expected we would all sit up with Granny that night. But at ten o'clock, when Miss Love finally got through and came in the parlor and asked if there was anything else she could do, Grandpa not only told her to go on home, he told all of us to. "Ain't nobody go'n set up with Miss Mattie Lou but me."

  "Pa, we don't mind a bit," my mother said. "We want to. You need us."

  "I don't need nobody but yore ma."

  While we were saying good night, I saw Miss Love put her hand on Grandpa's arm.

  "You done too much," he told her gruffly.

  "Not at all," she said. "Sir, the first winter I was here, when I had the flu, Miss Mattie Lou came and bathed me every morning—like she was my own mother. I won't ever forget that. I want to do anything I can to help you now." She said it so sweet, with tears in her eyes.

  Grandpa blew his nose loud. "Uh, well, good night, Miss Love. I'm much obliged."

  When I was halfway down the front steps, he called me. "Will Tweedy? Git up here fore sunup, boy. I want you to hep me."

  Anybody who had been with us next morning wouldn't ever wonder how Grandpa had felt about Granny—before she died or after.

  I got there at daybreak. The parlor door was shut where Granny was, and I could see the flickering glow of lamplight under the door as I walked down the cool dark hall. I wanted to go look at her, but I was scared to, by myself. I hurried to the back porch.

  In the half-light I could see Grandpa out in Granny's rose garden. He was cutting rosebuds, which for him wasn't easy with just the one hand, and dropping each one into a big zinc tub. Without even a howdy or good morning as I walked toward him, he called, "Git out yore pocketknife, Will Tweedy."

  "What you want me to do, sir?"

  "Hep cut them roses."

  When it came to feeling close to Granny, being in the garden was a sight better than sitting by her coffin. Out there amidst all the growin
g things, it seemed like maybe she'd just gone to the shed room to get a hoe instead of being off in Heaven.

  I stood and looked for a long time. Over yonder were what she called her "word plants"—the wild flowers she planted because they had names she liked. Creepin' Charlie, Lizzie run by the fence, love's a-bustin', fetch me some ivy cause Baby's got the croup....In the next bed were medicinal herbs she used in potions for sick folks: squaw weed, hepatica, goldenseal, ginseng for the brain, jewelweed for poison ivy rash, wolf milk for warts, and fleabane and pale bergamot, which Granny would rub on her face and arms to keep off mosquitoes and gnats.

  But on that early June morning, the heavy scent of roses was what made my heart ache. It was hard to believe the roses could be so alive and her so dead.

  "Make haste, son. Come hep me." Grandpa was impatient.

  "How many we go'n pick?" I asked, coming up where he was.

  "All of'm," he said, waving his arm stub over the big garden. It had been a late spring and there were still masses of roses. Red, white, light pink, dusky pink, yellow. All colors, all kinds. The garden had a border of climbing Seven Sisters on the west side, a hedge of red roses on the side next to Miss Effie Belle's house, white roses against the henhouse, and yellow tree roses at the far end. "Just git the buds," ordered Grandpa. "The wide-open ones won't last out the funeral."

  Grandpa had him an idea.

  I toted tubs full of roses to the back porch. Drew buckets and buckets of well water to pour over them. And about time the first rays of sunlight hit the back steps, I sat down out there with my grandfather.

  First he took a square of Brown Mule out of his pocket, bit off a plug, and settled it in his left cheek. Then he leaned his chair back against the porch wall and got to work. While I trimmed off the lower leaves and thorns, Grandpa took a big split-open croker sack and poked each rose stem into the loose burlap, weaving it in and out, then in again, like a pin being stuck into cloth. In no time at all he had him a solid blanket of roses. It was beautiful.

  I noticed for the first time the pile of big croker sacks by his chair.

  He spat tobacco juice in an arc that just missed a Rhode Island Red pecking dirt in the swept yard. The hen shrieked, flapped her wings, and ran off. Handing me what he had done, Grandpa said, "Now, son, git this here thang down under some water. Yore granny always soaks roses under water fore she puts'm in a pitcher." He didn't notice he was talking as if Granny was in her kitchen, fixing to cook us some grits, instead of laid out in a coffin in the parlor.

  It will help to show what Granny meant to Grandpa if I point out that it wasn't a cheap homemade coffin she was in. It was a fine readymade one he'd ordered years ago when rich Mr. Sheffield was thought to be dying and didn't. It had been upstairs at the store ever since, alongside the stock of corn planters, fertilizer spreaders, mule collars, iron washpots, hat trees, and extra brass racks for readymade dresses. When I was little bitty, I used to close my eyes whenever I had to walk by that coffin.

  There were some who said later that Grandpa, stingy as he was, wouldn't have used that expensive coffin for Miss Mattie Lou if he wasn't trying to make it up to her for something he'd done wrong—such as lusting in his heart after Miss Love or being too stingy to give Granny electricity and a bathroom.

  If he wasn't ashamed about the lights and plumbing, maybe he should of been. But personally I didn't think guilt had anything to do with the nice coffin. I thought he used it because he loved her. Despite all I found out later, I still think so.

  Grandpa told Granny one time that dead folks ought to be put right in the ground as the Lord intended. I was there and heard it. "And I want me a party when I die, not a funeral. Remember thet."

  She didn't act shocked like Mama would of. As a matter of fact, she laughed. "Don't go talkin' bout dyin', Mr. Blakeslee. I druther live in the past than dwell on that part of the future. Still, since you brung it up, I'll say this: my feeling bout buryin' ain't the same as your'n. You remember that." She said the dead body was sacred, it having been a house for the mind and soul, and as such it deserved proper respect. "A nice funeral is a sort of thank-you," she added. "A person's body oughtn't to be treated like no old dead dog."

  What she said didn't change Grandpa's thinking about buryings in general, but that being the way she felt, then he was going to see to it she got her thank-you. For Grandpa, that was a sign of love, because usually he did what he wanted to and never noticed that Granny might welcome a little consideration.

  By the time he finished covering another sack with roses, he was as excited as a little boy digging worms to go fishing.

  They were really something, those rose blankets. It seemed a shame to plan on covering up a fine coffin with them, but they were sure pretty.

  I stood up to stretch and scratch. I was hungry. After milking that morning, I had poured me a big glass of sweetmilk, warm right out of the cow, but that wasn't enough to call breakfast. I slumped down in a chair, tilting it against the side of the porch. "We picked way too many roses," I said, yawning.

  "No, we ain't. Now make haste, son. I don't want no kinfolks or neighbor ladies seein' what we done and buttin' in with suggestions. Fore you know it, half a-Cold Sassy'll be down here a-cryin' and carryin' on, tryin' to see how I and yore ma and Loma is a-takin' it. I cain't stand thet. So we got to git th'ew."

  I figured the real reason he didn't want anybody to see the rose blankets, it would spoil his surprise for the funeral. But of course he couldn't admit that.

  Before long we heard somebody at the front of the house. Probably Mama, but I knew he was scared it was Aunt Loma. He made me drag the zinc tubs full of watered-down rose blankets into the shed room by the back porch. Then, with me on one side of the tub and him on the other, we toted the rest of the roses to the barn and finished out there.

  When he thought we had enough, he told me to cut a sack half in two for him. Leaving an oval space the shape of a head on a pillow, he put the last rosebuds around the oval. I guessed what he aimed to do with it.

  First I had to go ask Mama to clear folks out of the parlor where Granny was. Then me and Grandpa went in there from the dining room. I couldn't believe how many big vases and baskets of yard flowers had been brought in and set on tables and on the floor around the coffin.

  It gave me the creeps, helping Grandpa slip his pillow sham of roses under Granny's head. But touching her didn't seem to bother him. He patted her face and smoothed her hair, and even pried up her stiff hands and moved them a little. Then all of a sudden his face scrooched up, and in a choky voice he ordered me to leave and tell Mama not to let nobody come in on him.

  It was ten o'clock, and like I say, I was hungry. Folks had already brought over more cakes and pies, and platters of fried chicken and ham, and their good china bowls full of string beans, butterbeans, okra, and tomatoes. Enough to feed a ox, really. So I ate. I was in the kitchen finishing a piece of Miss Effie Belle's caramel cake when Grandpa found me again.

  My mother stuck a glass of buttermilk in his hand and he drank it, but I'm not sure he even noticed. He was all business. "Will Tweedy?"

  "Sir?"

  "Go hitch up Big Jack."

  "Yessir."

  He walked with me to the back porch. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others he said, "When you git Jack hitched, lay them rose thangs in the buggy and bring it on up here."

  "Yessir."

  When I got back with the buggy, Grandpa was out on the porch picking long nails from a dusty glass jar on the long-legged, blue-painted old slab table. A hammer handle stuck out of his pants pocket. "Load up, son."

  "Yessir."

  The mourners were all up front with the corpse—admiring the roses that framed her head, I expect. So not a soul except Mama saw me bring the zinc tubs out of the shed room. She marveled, I could tell, but said nothing as I dragged each one to the edge of the porch, tilted it to drain the water out, then loaded "them rose thangs" on the back of the buggy. I didn't know how many blanke
ts we had, but I was sure it was too many.

  Grandpa said, "Naw, son, it's jest enough."

  Enough for what? He didn't say, I didn't ask, and neither did Mama, who watched as we drove off.

  He let me keep the reins. Said we were bound for the cemetery—"but first, son, we'll go by yore house." I didn't have to wait till the whiskey was on his breath to guess why.

  The grave was already dug, of course, close behind all his and Granny's children that hadn't lived to grow up, and just a little ways from the Toy plot, where Granny's daddy was buried between her mama and his second wife. He had a granite tombstone. His wives had slabs of brown marble off of washstands.

  I always thought a single marker joining the graves of a man and wife looked like the head of a double bed. In the moldy old Crane plot was a wide granite headstone that joined three graves—like a triple bed, you might say. This is what it said:

  Here Lies Luzon Theophilus Crane

  A Good Man

  Eugenia Lamson Crane And Lucy Wylie Who

  His Wife Should Have Been His Wife

  "Did the Wylies put that up, Mama?" I asked her one day. "I know it wasn't the Cranes did it."

  "Aw, shah!" she snapped, jabbing a cone-shaped tin cemetery urn into the ground for the jonquils we brought. "Quit readin' that trash and bring me that quart jar of water for the urn."

  Not far from Mr. and Mrs. Crane and Miss Wylie was a little bitty headstone that said "In Memory of Tweety, Jan. 4, 1894." I used to think that was a baby cousin of mine with the Tweedy name spelled wrong, but Mama said it was somebody's pet canary. "The Tweedys are always buried at Hebron," she reminded me. "I mean the older generations. This family"—she solemnly indicated the grave of my baby brother—"has started bein' buried here."

  Always before, the graveyard had seemed real interesting and peaceful. Just a quiet and reverent place. But in mid-June, 1906, the deep yawning hole that would swallow up Granny looked horrible, like it could suck me down.