Cold Sassy Tree (47 page)

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."

Mama bristled. "Yankee women do work like that, and colored women, and tenant farmers' wives and daughters. We don't. Loma heps in the house and that's enough."

Loma mostly stayed up in her room (my room) and did what she'd always wanted to, namely, write poems and plays. But pretending to be a writer wasn't much fun without an audience, so pretty soon she brought her pencil and paper down to the breakfast table. Once when the Muse was on her, she sat staring into space so long I got worried. "Reckon Aunt Loma's had a stroke?" I whispered to Queenie.

"Naw, suh, Mr. Will," she whispered back. "Miss Loma jes' be's sightin' on a poem. She do's lak dat lots a-time."

But it was easy to see the widow was restless, and before long she waylaid Grandpa, when he stopped by for his snort, to ask if she could come work at the store.

He said he'd think on it.

Lord knows he needed somebody, what with Miss Love gone to housekeeping, Uncle Camp gone to Hell, and spring just around the corner. Farmers would soon be coming in to arrange credit terms and buy seed and guano. Ladies were already picking through patterns and piece goods, planning their Easter dresses. And it looked like everybody and his brother was itching for an automobile. On a warm Saturday we could hardly wait on customers for taking folks to ride.

On the other hand, we couldn't afford to put them off, because the cars were beginning to sell. Grandpa read in the paper that in 1906 there were at least a thousand automobiles in Georgia, mostly owned by farmers, doctors, and residents of small towns. That really fired him up to try to sell a lot in 1907.

In the meantime, I was still the stable boy for Miss Love and Grandpa. I never had time to talk much when I went up there, but I couldn't help noticing she seemed happier lately, and that was a relief. Ever since That Night at Miss Gussie's house, I'd been scared we'd hear any day that she was leaving for Baltimore.

Or Texas.

I do remember complaining to her about the committee that had been set up to find a more modern name for Cold Sassy. "Papa's in favor," I grumped. "I don't see why he ain't noticed that the reason it's called Cold Sassy is because that's its name."

"Don't worry so, Will," said Miss Love, smiling her big-mouth smile. "You know your grandfather will never let it happen."

Miss Love was washing a kitchen window that looked clean to me already. It seemed like every time I went down there, she was washing floors or windows, one, despite she'd cleaned the whole house good last summer. "Miss Love, I reckon you ain't heard about fall and spring cleanin'," I said one day. She had come out on the back porch to empty her wash water just as I headed for the barn. I said, "In between spring and fall, and fall and spring, ma'am, you just s'posed to sweep and mop and use the feather duster and like that."

"I like the Yankee way better," she said, bristling. I reckon she thought Mama had criticized how she did. "Up North, ladies do extra cleaning every week in one room. Brush down the walls and wash the floor one week, maybe wash windows and curtains the next, and so on. When they get that room done, they start on another. The house stays nice year round, and it's not exhausting like doing all the heavy cleaning at once."

When I told Mama, she said, "I'd rather get worn out twice a year than stay worn out all the time."

The Rucker Blakeslee Hotel sign was finally up, and they said Mr. Clem Crummy just about got apoplexy every time a stranger asked was the ho-tel owned by the same feller had the brick store up the street. I knew Miss Love thought it was awful of Grandpa to hold Mr. Clem to the drawing, but he just laughed when she said so.

Then one day she came down to the store with a sign she had made. Grandpa read it and laughed. "Go on, put it in the winder," he said.

This is what was on it:

ATTENTION!
Drummers, Cotton Buyers, Railroad Men,
And Other Travelers!
Try the Elegant Refurbished
BLAKESLEE HOTEL
Fine Cuisine!
Clean, Bug-Free Beds!
Fiddle Music and Parlor Games Every Night!

The Crummys never even said thank you, but the sign got them some business that usually went to the boarding houses.

Miss Love's birthday was on Valentine's. (That's how come she was named Love.) The day before, Grandpa told me she had decided to give herself a present. She was going to use some of her savings to put in a bathroom, and of course a sink and faucet in the kitchen. "Hit's fol-de-rol and foolish-ment," he said, but he grinned proud.

That told me one thing. Whether Miss Love was now Grandpa's wife or still just his housekeeper, she wouldn't put her own money into plumbing if she was still thinking about leaving Cold Sassy. On the other hand, she had another think coming if she expected Grandpa to say "Don't spend yore money, let me give you the bathroom for your birthday." He had already bought her a present, a Home Graphophone. It cost five dollars from the Talking Machine Department at Sears, Roebuck and Co., and he'd ordered a dozen "best and loudest music records" to play on it.

A machine that could talk and play music was, as Grandpa kept saying, a dang marvel.

You can imagine that when Cold Sassy heard about the Graphophone, everybody remembered he never gave Miss Mattie Lou a birthday present. Granny had always insisted she didn't want one. "Birthdays is for chi'ren," she'd say. "I don't have to mark gittin' older. I can just look in the glass and tell." He did order Granny a coconut and a crate of oranges every Christmas to make him some ambrosia with, but his Christmas gift to Miss Love had been a new buggy top with side and back curtains, and now not two months later he'd bought her that Graphophone.

From Valentine's Day on, Grandpa never went back to the store after dinner on Wednesdays. Like I said, the stores in Cold Sassy closed every Wednesday around noon, but always before, he went back to work anyway. Said it was a good chance to ketch up on what needed doin'. But now it looked like he was ketchin' up on Miss Love.

Sometimes they'd go buggy-riding, closed up snug with the side and back curtains snapped shut. One freezing cold Wednesday I went through the house on my way to the barn and found them sitting in the warm kitchen, him in a rocking chair with his glasses on, reading to Miss Love while she sewed. One Sunday after dinner I went up there, just to visit a while, and Grandpa was laying on the daybed in the hall with Miss Love sitting right on the bed beside him, rubbing his forehead. When they saw me, she jumped like somebody caught stealing and hurried to the kitchen, and he sat up muttering something about a backache.

Plain as day, Grandpa was courting Miss Love. Why else would he be home with her so much? Why else would he have spent so much on the Graphophone and the records for it?

Despite I couldn't know if they still called each other Miss and Mister when it was just the two of them, I sensed a difference lately. They were always laughing and teasing, and whenever one came in a room where the other one was, you could read a book by the light on their faces.

To me they were like a book—a book with the last chapter missing. And I couldn't wait to know how it ended.

At school when we commenced studying
Romeo and Juliet,
the drama that might or might not be going on up at Grandpa's house laid itself down on every line Shakespeare wrote about love or marriage.

"Does she call him husband?" I read, and thought of Miss Love, not Juliet.

"Stony limits cannot hold love out!" That was Grandpa shouting at his Love. "O! I have bought the mansion of a love, but not possess'd it" was his lament.

But hark! Mayhap Miss Love doth use Juliet's words to tease:
"If thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay, so thou wilt woo...."

Well, Grandpa was wooing, no doubt about it. And seemed like Miss Love was enjoying being wooed. But was she yet saying him nay?

Whenever I was up at their house I'd go to wondering if she still slept in the spare room by herself, or did he come in there sometimes at night, or had she taken over Granny's side of his bed. It wasn't decent, the way I kept picturing in my mind what might or might not be going on and none of it any of my business. I just wished I knew one way or the other. Then maybe I could quit wondering and, as Papa would say, be-have myself.

One night I had to go take Grandpa a message from my daddy. As I ran up the front steps, I noticed the parlor draperies were pulled to. And despite the house was shut up tight, I could hear the music machine just a-going. Hurrying in, I saw they'd pushed all the parlor furniture back against the walls, Miss Love had put on a new dance record, and by golly she was teaching Grandpa the turkey trot!

He was bad to stumble, and kept stepping on her feet, but they were laughing and cutting up, just having the best time. I stood there grinning and they waved at me.

"I'm gittin' the hang of it, Will Tweedy!" bragged Grandpa, swinging her around. "Next time we go to New York City, I ain't go'n have to pay no partner for her! Here, Love, learn Will Tweedy how," he said, handing her over to me. "I got to rest a spell."

I was as stumbly as Grandpa, and kept stepping on her feet, too. But boy howdy, I had my arms around her and she was looking up at me, smiling, while Grandpa watched us and beat time to the music. When the machine started winding down, making funny groans and whines, we all three laughed like children.

Later I couldn't help but try and imagine what it would be like dancing with Lightfoot McLendon. In my mind I saw her in a silk ball gown, smiling up at me as I held her, and us circling and whirling.

I still thought about Lightfoot a lot, and still wondered sometimes if she hated me for kissing her. But I was too busy to moon over it much. Things had got real bad at the store.

Aunt Loma kept pestering Grandpa for a job. He didn't pay her any mind, but he did start saying he had to hire somebody. One morning before school I was stacking big sacks of cow feed and guano outside against the brick wall of the store when Grandpa ambled out, spat brown tobacco juice through a crack in the board sidewalk, and said, "Will Tweedy, you know the mill boy thet come in here a while back wantin' a job? What's his name, son?"

I knew right off who and what he had in mind, and it made me mad as heck. But all I said was, "Hosie Roach?"

"Thet's the one. Is he in school this term?"

"Yessir."

"How old you reckon Hosie is? He ain't a real big boy, as I recollect. But he's some older'n you, ain't he?"

"Yessir. He's prob'ly twenty. Maybe twenty-one." I couldn't help adding, "And still ain't finished school."

"Well, he seemed right smart to me." Grandpa had sense enough to know the reason Hosie hadn't graduated was that he worked a lot at the cotton mill and couldn't get to school regular. "I liked thet boy. Tell him to come see me this evenin', son. I got to git me some more hep."

I told Hosie what Grandpa said. He didn't jump up and down about it like I thought he would. Didn't even let on he was excited. But he couldn't hide the deep flush that came on his face.

"Tell Mr. Blakeslee I cain't come today," he said, putting his scaly hands in the pockets of his dirty, ragged overalls. "Tell him I'll be by t'morrer."

"He ain't go'n like it, you not comin' when he said to." I spoke hateful. "He's used to folks sayin' yessir when he tells'm something."

Hosie flushed again. I swear he looked like my dog T.R. when he's ashamed and trying to wag his tail and drag his belly at the same time. "Will," said Hosie, "be shore and say I'll see him t'morrer, hear. Tell him I'll be by fore school takes in."

I fell in step with Grandpa next morning as he left our house after his snort. "I'm goin' by the store and get me a pencil," I said.

Crossing North Main, with T.R. trotting ahead, I decided to speak up about Hosie Roach. "There ain't but four things wrong with him, Grandpa."

"What, son? Besides he's a mill boy."

"Some folks in Cold Sassy will think when it comes to workin' at your store, him bein' a linthead is enough and too much." I was being real smart-aleck. "Main thing, sir, he's got cooties and the itch and he stinks."

"He was clean as you thet day he come in astin' for a job."

"Well, he ain't clean when he comes to school. He don't grow much beard, but his hair's so long and tangled and dirty it looks like a dern cootie stable, haw!"