Cold Sassy Tree (39 page)

Miss Love was laughing out loud now.

"Don't make fun a-me, woman!" yelled Grandpa. "Let's see you come have a try at it. You crank and I'll laugh."

As Miss Love sashayed to the front of the sedan, she looked back and winked at me, and I grinned and turned on the ignition. With one quick turn she had the engine putt-putting loud and pretty as you please. "It just needed a woman's touch!" she yelled sweetly. Grandpa swatted her behind as she went back to get in.

"I'm go'n shut it off now, Grandpa," I yelled. "You need to practice settin' all the dohickies, and I ain't sure you know how to crank it up yet. You get a knack for that by doin' it."

Glaring at me, Grandpa stalked back to the car, reached in, turned on the switch, pulled out the choke, spat, and went back to the front of the engine. Miss Love waited till he bent down to crank and then turned the key off again.

Crank, crank,
silence.
Crank, crank,
cuss.

"Gosh a'mighty dang!" He raised up. "I never did like to do anythang I ain't done before!" Jerking off his linen duster and his cap and goggles, he threw them on the hood of the car and said he was a-go'n crank thet dang Pierce if'n it took all day. "Wisht I hadn't never heard the word artermobile."

The harder he cranked, the harder we laughed. Miss Love didn't see him coming towards us till he was nearly to the driver's seat. He caught her reaching for the switch key.

"I seen you! I seen what you done!" Grandpa shook his fist in her face and said, "Woman, if I ketch you doin' sech as thet again, you go'n walk home!"

I swear I don't know how she had the nerve, but she laughed in his face.

He walked backwards to the front of the auto, watching her, and then made her get out. This time when he cranked, the motor roared. "Now thet's more like!" yelled Grandpa. With a satisfied grin, he flung his duster and goggles into the back seat, put on his cap at a jaunty angle, climbed in, and yelled over the racket, "Now then, I'm a'go'n drive this son-of-a-gun. How fast will she go, Will Tweedy? How do I start off? What do I do after we git to goin'?"

"Release the hand brake first, Grandpa!" I yelled over the engine noise. "Now, sir, feed a little gas.... Not much. Just a little bit till you get the hang of it. Go slow now!...Grandpa, don't wiggle the steerin' wheel so much!"

"Thet's what you done, son!"

"Only enough to keep it goin' straight."

"Thet don't make no sense a-tall."

We crawled along for a mile or two, Grandpa having the time of his life. Then we reached the crest of a hill—and the road plunged down on the other side like a roller coaster! I saw Grandpa swallow his tobacco chew as we picked up speed. "What do I do, son?" he yelled. "Whoa, doggit, whoa!" He tried to hold the steering wheel with his arm stub while turning off the switch key and moving every lever his hand could find. "Will Tweedy, stop the dang thang!"

"The brake! Use the brake, Grandpa!"

Faster and faster we went, Miss Love screaming and me yelling for the brake. At the foot of the hill, the road curved. With a wild turn of the steering wheel, Grandpa landed us in a shallow ditch.

Nobody was hurt, but it sure knocked the pride out of us, and it knocked the air out of the right front tire. It took me and Grandpa both to push the car onto the road, after which we just stood there looking at it. A crow called from a cornfield nearby. A fly buzzed around my ear. "We ought to brought Loomis along," I said, taking off the hot duster and my cap. "He could of just picked the car up and set it back on the road."

"If I'd a-had two good hands," said Grandpa, fuming, "I could a-kept it from happenin'."

I couldn't bring myself to remind Grandpa that he had two good feet, one of which should of found the brake.

While I patched the inner tube, Miss Love leaned against the hood of the car, looking like she might faint. Grandpa paced up and down scratching his head. Neither one watched what I was doing or tried to help me. Well, I'd teach them about inner tubes another day.

When I had the tire back on, I wiped my hands on a rag from the toolbox and said, "Now, Grandpa, you can crank her up again."

"Thet was my first and last time," he said, fishing in his pants pocket for his plug tobacco. "A artermobile ain't nothin' but a dang roller coaster. A mule's at least got sense of its own."

"Aw, Grandpa, come on." I tried to pull him toward the car. "It ain't hard, sir. You can learn."

"I'm shore I can, but I ain't a-goin' to. Anyhow, it's Miss Love's turn."

I motioned her towards the driver's seat, but she opened the back door and climbed in. "I think," she said in a weak voice, "that I'll wait my turn till later."

"Yes'm," I said, relieved. "It seems like maybe a good idea."

It looked like Miss Love was going to be a good driver. She wanted to practice without Grandpa in the car. The first time I took her out in the country, she just about sat on the brake and didn't go but two miles an hour, but she looked real stylish with her dust veil draped over Grandpa's driving cap and goggles, and she reeked of perfume. She said she always wore lots of perfume when she was nervous.

Two days later she speeded up considerable, and got brave enough to drive all the way home. We were in front of her house in no time, but instead of turning in, she kept right on going. "I want to drive to the store!" she yelled over the putt-putt. She was real excited. "I've been telling Mr. Blakeslee how easy driving is! I want him to see!"

It's just a pity that a bee got under Miss Love's dust veil about time she crept the car around the Confederate monument. I reckon it was the perfume did it. Probably the bee thought he'd found a flower. Then while Miss Love was slapping at him under her veil, the bee fell down the front of her dress! Got to crawling around on her bosom, I reckon, because she commenced screaming and hitting her chest, and the car went clean out of control! I grabbed for the wheel as Miss Love took her hands and feet off of everything and covered her eyes.

People screamed and ran, horses and mules screeched and rared. The Pierce bounced onto the curb of the monument, grazing the marble where it says our noble dead, then ambled across the street and bumped to a stop against the sycamore tree near the cast-iron watering trough in front of Grandpa's store. Miss Love didn't even notice when I cut off the ignition. She was still fighting the bee. As Grandpa and my daddy rushed out, followed by a bunch of customers, Miss Love screamed. "He bit me! He bit me! Somebody help! Get him out of here!"

"Will Tweedy, be-have yoreself!" yelled Grandpa as Miss Love leaped out of the car and ran in the store.

"I ain't done nothin', sir! She's got a bee down her dress!"

We rushed into the store. Uncle Lige motioned towards the storage room. "She run in thar!" Grandpa found her behind a stack of ninety-five-pound sacks of cow feed. Her veil and linen duster were on the floor beside the bee, which she had stomped to death, and Miss Love was buttoning her shirtwaist. Turning her back to us, she sobbed. "I g-got stung, Mr. Blakeslee."

He looked helpless, like he didn't know what to do, then commenced patting her shoulder. "Hit's all right, Miss Love," he whispered. "Hit's all right."

I couldn't help thinking that though Miss Love could sass Mr. McAllister back to Texas and glare down a town full of folks sitting in judgment on her, with a bee in her bosom she was helpless as any lady I knew.

Finally she turned and faced Grandpa. Her cheeks were wet and she clutched her swelling breast with one hand, but she had control of her voice. "Mr. Blakeslee," she announced, "I'll not drive that or any car again. Ever."

"Now, Miss Love—"

"Sir, I mean it."

I couldn't hardly stand to see her give up. "You'll learn, Miss Love. It ain't like you go'n get a bee down you every time you drive."

She ignored that. "I guess we're alike, Mr. Blakeslee. I don't trust machinery. I don't understand how it works. I can talk to a horse and calm him down, but I can't talk to
that!
" She pointed in the general direction of the sycamore tree. "Oh, Mr. Blakeslee, I wanted a car so bad!" She started crying again. "How can we ever g-go m-motoring now!"

Grandpa, real agitated, looked over at me, where I stood leaning against a big wooden box. "Son," he said, "it 'pears to me like if thet dang Pierce ever sees the road agin, it's a-go'n have to be you at the wheel."

A
NY MULE HEAD
could see that the automobiles wouldn't last long parked in front of the store—children jumping on the seats, men and big boys monkeying with the wires and knobs trying to see which did what. Papa was real upset about it. I finally told Grandpa we ought to make room for the cars in the buggy-and-wagon shed behind the store, but he dismissed the idea with a backward flip of his hand. "I ain't a-go'n do thet. Two elephants tied out yonder wouldn't draw customers to the store as good as them artermobiles."

That was the Lord's truth. Cold Sassy never had been a whirlpool of excitement. If the preacher's wife's petticoat showed, the ladies could make that last a week as something to talk about. We had our share of cotton-gin fires, epidemics, storms, and lawsuits, of course, but the only diversion we could count on was protracted meetings, recitals, ice cream socials, fish fries, and lectures—a doctor talking up his cure for cancer, an old man telling how he tracked a mammoth moose for nineteen days back in 1856, a young fellow talking about "Across Asia on a Bicycle." It's easy to see why not even the scarlet of the Cold Sassy tree in autumn could equal our big shiny automobiles as something to rave about, especially with the open invite to come sit in them and take a ride.

By the end of the week, though, even Grandpa was worried. "I reckon maybe you better move'm on to the back, Will Tweedy," he said. He was let down about it, I could tell, but he made sure nobody forgot the cars were back there. Any time he had an audience of customers, Grandpa would say what a dang marvel a artermobile is, and then light in talking about car-owners taking all-day trips together, sending delegations to the Georgia legislature to talk up better roads, and having auto races "uphill, downhill, cross-country, and hind-part-before."

While Grandpa did the talking, Papa and I did the driving people around. It was my job to give a driving lesson every Saturday after our drawing.

Miss Love did what the man in New York called "pushing the merchandise." For one thing, she wanted to order a lady mannequin for the store window and dress it up in a linen duster and dust veil like one she saw at the Cadillac agency in New York City. Grandpa said, "Thet's jest fol-de-rol and foolish-ment. Them big dolls cost too much to think about, much less buy." But that wasn't the end of it.

Soon as the weather got cooler, Miss Love turned herself into a big doll. Sat in the store window nearly all day, wearing a veil, a duster, and a frozen smile. She'd be a statue till she had to scratch or something, then come outside for a few minutes and talk to folks about the latest in motorcar fashions.

Grandpa was really pleased, for Miss Love in the store window was a sight to behold. White folks and colored, too, stood in clumps staring at her. If she chanced to bat her eyes or yawn or shift a little in the chair, they'd poke one another in the ribs and haw and guffaw. Boys clowned and made faces trying to make her laugh, but she looked straight ahead and never even cracked a smile.

When Aunt Loma happened along, carrying the baby, she stared at Miss Love a minute, then flounced into the store and came over where I stood putting bars of Octagon soap on a shelf. "Love looks foolish," she grumped.

Loma was jealous. The store window being like a little stage and her having taken elocution, she considered herself the only person in Cold Sassy qualified to act like a dummy.

The county sheriff from over at Homer watched Miss Love a while and then went in and put down on a Pierce.

A country woman watched Miss Love and spent her egg money on a dust veil. Her husband was furious when he saw her draping the veil over her sunbonnet. Said you go git Mr. Blakeslee to give yore money back. But she wouldn't. Straightening up proud on her cut-off chair in the wagon, she said, "The same dust as gits on them fancy ladies in artermobiles gits on me when they go racin' by. I got jest as much right to look nice in a cloud a-dust as they do."

Late in September I drove Miss Love and Grandpa to the county fair over in Jefferson. Grandpa sold a car while Miss Love and I were on the Ferris wheel. Then he won the big prize at the rifle booth for three bull's eyes in a row. That really impressed Miss Love, and also the man who ran the booth. He wouldn't let Grandpa shoot again.

We had a swell time, just the three of us. I wrote down in my journal that night how pretty Miss Love looked. Her freckledy face was lit up with excitement all day, and seemed like Grandpa couldn't keep his eyes off of her.

I also wrote down that although he sat up front with me all the way to Jefferson—telling me when to slow down, when to speed up and, son, watch out for thet there bump in the road—coming home he sat with Miss Love, his right arm resting on the back of her seat.

Considering what happened soon after, it's interesting that I sensed it was worth noting in the journal how he sat with her on the trip home.

Early in October we had our first cold snap, and the next Monday, soon after I got to the store from school, Miss Love came in saying let's plan an overnight motoring trip for the weekend. "Weather permitting, of course. Wouldn't you like to take your family, Mr. Hoyt?"

Before Papa could answer, Grandpa said he'd rather take a day trip, get back to his own bed.

"That's a sign you're growing old, Mr. Blakeslee," she teased.

I could tell it made him mad. "Hit jest don't suit me to go off now. Anyhow, what's the hurry?"

"The hurry is because we can't count on many more nice weekends." Miss Love's fingers went to drumming on the counter. "Once winter sets in, that's the end of any real motoring till spring. We can't travel when it's freezing cold."

"Thet's one way a artermobile ain't no different from a horse and buggy, Miss Love. So you ain't tellin' us nothin' we don't know."