Cold Sassy Tree (16 page)

Despite everybody acting so nice the night before, nobody went to call on Grandpa and Miss Love—at least nobody that I heard of. Even the few who weren't mad for Granny's sake likely didn't know what to say, under the circumstances, and nobody was going to risk criticism by paying a formal call or taking a wedding present. Not even those who had hugged her the night before would do that.

I wondered if the newlyweds had anything to eat. I knew Miss Love could make coffee, but after boarding so many years, she might not know how to cook anything else. "You go'n send them some dinner?" I asked Mama. "I could carry it up there."

She said, "You got to rest, like Dr. Slaughter told you. And I'll say it right now, Will: you are not to go runnin' up there all the time like you used to. We don't owe Love Simpson any favors. And you can see your granddaddy at the store. You understand?"

I understood, all right.

But Grandpa didn't.

He never appeared at the store at all that day, or at our house, either. When he didn't even come by for his whiskey, I and Papa and Mama must of each thought Miss Love didn't object to a man's having a little toddy at home. But then real early Saturday morning he stopped in as usual before work, like he still didn't have a closet of his own, and came out of the company room scratching his head and hitching up his trousers with his arm stub, the way he always did when he was excited or upset. Right in front of Mama, he said, "Will Tweedy, git on up home, son, and see can you hep Miss Love any. She's a-tearin' the place apart! Scourin' floors, washin' win-ders and curtains, and scrubbin' furniture like they's cooties or bedbugs in ever piece. She had me workin' all day yesterd'y."

"You, Pa? Housework? Shah!" Mama didn't believe it.

"Yes'm. Sunup to bedtime." A sheepish look came on his face. Pulling at his bushy beard, he announced, "Mary Willis, you and Loma got to come go th'ew yore ma's thangs."

Mama didn't answer.

"I ain't never see sech a one for cleanin' house as Miss Love." He spoke with a pride that he tried to hide. "You got time to hep her any, Mary Willis?"

"No, Pa, I haven't," she said. "Queenie and I are cannin' soup vegetables today. We got to, or lose everything, one." I was surprised she spoke up to him. She never had before. "And," she added firmly, "I'm countin' on Will to pick the vegetables."

Grandpa was a little taken back. "Well," he said. "All right. But send him on up soon as he gits th'ew."

My mama was really something when she got mad. Blue eyes blazing, hands on hips, she watched her daddy go down the walk and cross the railroad tracks. "Tearin' into that house like it was hers!" she muttered.

I thought Grandpa had prayed away all the town's hard feelings, and maybe he really had. But that was Thursday night and this was early Saturday morning, and he'd just showed he didn't know pea-turkey about how grown daughters feel when a young stepmother is brought into the family, or how they feel about being told to clear out their mama's personal belongings to make room for the new wife's things.

I saw what was going through Mama's mind like she was in the funny paper with a balloon coming out of her head:

It's enough he up and married like he did,
said the balloon.
It's enough they neither one, Pa nor Love, went anywhere the day after the weddin' and now everybody's sniggerin' about it. But to find out Miss Love cain't wait a minute to take over Ma's house is too much and then some.

Even I could see that for the bride to start fall cleaning the day after the wedding, in the middle of the hottest summer on record, was the same as announcing to the world that the first Mrs. Blakeslee was sloven and her house too dirty to live in—and that the Blakeslee daughters hadn't cared enough for their poor bereaved papa to keep it clean for him.

Mama and Aunt Loma always did think Grandpa should of hired a cook for Granny. Aunt Loma said as much to her daddy one time, but he just laughed. "Last buyin' trip I took," he said, "a New York feller got to talkin' bout Southern ladies rockin' on the porch at five o'clock ever evenin'. He called it a waste of woman power. Thet's the only time I ever seen eye to eye with a Yankee. Anyhow, Loma, yore ma had a long sight rather be a-workin' than a-settin'."

I was fixing to ask Mama what I was to do—I mean, was I to mind Grandpa or her—when she said in a spitting voice, "Will, pick everything that's ready and then make haste on up to your grandpa's."

She was scared she had gone too far in crossing him. And she was mad at herself for giving in.

I never in my life stripped a garden so fast, and my feet raced each other past the depot and the Cold Sassy tree and the nine houses between Grandpa's house and ours. I was about even with the Tate house when I caught the first muffled sounds of "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-de-Ay" on Granny's piano.

Miss Effie Belle's 102-year-old brother was sitting on their front porch, his square, moldy, splotched face unsmiling and vacant. I knew he couldn't hear Miss Love's music, not without his ear trumpet. But Miss Effie Belle could. Eighty-nine, and skin and bones like a mummy, she stood listening at her open front door, hands on hips and very grim of face.

Miss Effie Belle had a grim face any time, punctuated by a big pink wart that stuck out from the side of her upper lip like the feeler of a bee. She being the kind that put down newspapers so old Mr. Tate wouldn't track in dirt on her floors, you can imagine that she wasn't taking kindly to Miss Love's music. She would be thinking that when you've married somebody else's husband, if you play on her pi-ana it ought to be a contrite hymn that starts, "Lord, my sins be as scarlet" or "Too shamed to lift my head, Lord, too stained to hope for Heaven." Miss Effie Belle would call Miss Love awful to be playing dance-hall music.

I reckon the bride thought that with the parlor windows shut, nobody could hear it. That did dull the loudness, but not the joy and bam with which she played. The music really wasn't fittin', under the circumstances of Granny being dead and all, but it sounded mighty fine.

I didn't know whether to knock or just go on in, like I used to when Granny was alive. I knocked. But of course Miss Love couldn't hear me over the racket, so I tiptoed into the hall. Just then she went to singing, for gosh sake.
"TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY! TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY!"
I stood listening to the deep, rich good-times voice. Without a pause after the last "boom-de-ay," she burst into a chorus of "I'm Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage" and then sang "It'll be a hot time, in the old town, to-ni-ight!"

I sure would of missed something if that train had of killed me!

I stepped over the parlor rug, which was in the hall, rolled up like a long log. Nearby was a pile of dusty ragged sheets that Granny had kept draped over the upholstered parlor furniture. Following the song to the parlor, as if Miss Love was a Pied Piper, I stopped at the door in pure amazement.

The room, pounding with music, was so bright with sunlight it might near put my eyes out. It had always been dark and cool in there. I'd never seen the rich red velour on the loveseat and side-chairs or on what Granny called "my gentleman's and lady's chairs." Of course the sheets weren't on the furniture when Granny had lain in state in there, but even then, because of her being dead and all, the blinds were closed and the draperies drawn.

Today, despite the windows were closed, Miss Love had opened the shutters wide. And the dark heavy draperies weren't just pushed apart; they were down and laid across a chair, like a sweaty dress after Sunday morning preachin'.

The good smell of wet wood rose from the floor, still damp after being scrubbed. Granny's big upright grand piano had been pulled way out, at an angle to the wall, and I saw Miss Love's new gold wedding band on the piano top beside a rag and a square of beeswax in a saucer. I guess she had been about to polish the rosewood but sat down to play instead. The rug being out and the draperies down, the piano sounded tinny and alive.

Miss Love had started playing "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" with a strong marching beat and lots of walking bass. She still hadn't seen me, though I had a good side view of her. I stood by the door while she finished the hymn and ran through choruses of "Maple Leaf Rag," "Georgia Blues," and "Good Ole Summertime," which she hummed, then played again, singing the words. After that she bammed out "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis," as if her purpose in life was to play loud enough for old man Tate to hear through the shut windows.

I don't know what I was most flabbergasted at, the bright sun in the parlor (already fading the furniture, I was sure) or the bing-bang music (which I knew she would quit playing as soon as she saw me) or Miss Love herself, seated on the round stool, legs apart, long skirt hiked up above her knees (to be cooler, I reckon), and her heels and toes rocking the way I imagined a piano player's would in a cabaret.

Maybe it was her clothes. I had never seen Miss Love when she wasn't dolled up like one of those M. Rich & Bros, fashion advertisements in the Atlanta newspapers. Working at the store or playing for preachin' on Sunday at the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, she wore perfume and a hat, and her hair fixed fancy, and was always corseted and gusseted or whatever it was ladies did to shape their hips and bosoms.

But today she looked like a girl instead of a lady.

Her heavy brown hair was bound up and covered with a kerchief made out of a rag—actually a piece of Granny's old white outing nightgown. Mama always wore loose housework dresses at home, but Miss Love had on an old pink afternoon dress with white eyelet embroidery and a low-cut neckline. If she'd of bent down in that dress, her bosoms would of looked like two puppies trying to climb over a fence. Whenever her hands hit bass and treble chords at the same time, the bodice stretched tight across her bust, and on fast pieces, the jiggle was something to see! I tried not to stare, but I couldn't exactly help it.

With all that and her rollicking songs, I was on fire. My bare left foot patted to beat the band while she was singing "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby." Then she repeated the last line real slow and soft, except this time she sang, "Yes, sir, it's my baby ... yes, sir, this house is ... my baby ... now-ow..." She ended with a slow, subdued flourish of treble chords and finally one soft single bass note, like a Graphophone winding down.

"Boy howdy, Miss Love!" I exclaimed.

Surprised, she swung toward me on the piano stool, clutching her low dress front with one hand and flipping down the long pink skirt with the other.

"Will Tweedy!" she exclaimed, the way a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar might say "Mama!"

"I, uh, knocked, but you didn't hear me," I said. She blushed. I reckon she was embarrassed at being caught with her knees showing, or being caught so happy when her husband's real wife wasn't yet cold in the grave.

"What can I do for you?" she asked, as if this was the store and I was a lady come in to order an Easter hat.

"Uh, Grandpa said you could use some hep," I offered, hitching my overalls and scratching my left heel with my right big toe.

"I hadn't expected your mama could spare you."

"Grandpa told her to send me up here."

"That man! I never saw anybody get away like he did this morning." She laughed gaily, her hand still clutching the low dress front.

"I reckon he was scairt somebody would see him doin' housework," said I, grinning. "He don't know doodly-squat about cleanin', you know. The one that always hepped Granny was me. Uh, excuse me, ma'am," I said lamely. "I shouldn't of mentioned my grandmother."

Waving a hand in protest, Miss Love got up from the piano stool. She looked a little flustered, as if trying to decide what to say and how to say it. "Look here, Will. Miss Mattie Lou was nicer to me than anybody else in Cold Sassy. Even if she weren't all around me in this house, I'd never forget her. So please don't think I expect to take her place. I'm—well, I'm just going to try to look after your grandfather."

"Yes'm."

We talked a little about me on the train trestle. She asked if I felt all right and I said yes'm. Then she went to get a gold bar pin for her dress front, to make the neck higher, and I went out to the porch for a drink of well water. On the way back up the hall, I chanced to look in Grandpa's room and saw that the bed in there wasn't made up.

Mama wouldn't ever start anything else without she made up the beds first.

Miss Love had raised the parlor windows by time I got back. "First," she said cheerfully, "I'd like you to shake these dusty draperies outside. I want to make new ones, soon as I can get around to it; the room needs brightening. But these will do for now."

How was Granny going to stay all around Miss Love if she got new parlor draperies?

Next I hefted the rolled-up parlor rug over my right shoulder and started out to hang it on the line. "When you get through beating it, leave it out in the sun a while," she said.

"Uh, won't it fade in the sun? Mama always says sun will fade a rug." It didn't matter to me personally, but I knew what Mama and Cold Sassy would say if Miss Love ruined Granny's things.

It got her dander up, my saying that. "The rug is moldy, mildewed, and full of moths, Will," she snapped. "That's what happens when a room stays shut up. The sun may fade it a little, but at least it won't smell musty."

To my mind she was same as saying that Granny was a dirty housekeeper. I lacked the nerve to explain about Grandpa not hiring help. As if reading my mind, Miss Love came over and patted my arm. "I didn't mean to be passing judgment, Will. When a woman gets sick, the house gets sick, too."

She was in the dining room when I came in from beating the rug. "I'd like you to take down the curtains in here," she said, "and put them out to burn. They're rotten. Then please sweep the walls and the ceiling in here, and when the dust settles, we'll wash the windows and the floor. But first, Will, take the coat rack and the little pine desk out of the hall into the parlor. I've already washed and waxed them."

Toting the desk into the parlor, I saw that Miss Love had laid the big Toy family Bible on Granny's loveseat. Seeing it, I longed for Granny. It sounds crazy, but I still found it hard to believe she was gone, and half expected that her death wasn't really written down in the Bible.