Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) (6 page)

“I'm gettin' me a magnolia tree.” She didn't sound Yankee at all. Her short red hair, damp with sweat, had shrunk into tight curls.

“You go'n carry it on the train?”

“In my lap all the way, if I have to.”

I took the trowel out of her hands. “Let me do that. You need a bigger pot.”

“I cain't hold too big a pot,” she protested.

“But if it's too little a pot you won't have enough dirt to nourish the tree. I'll get one out of the flower pit. And we need some good black dirt instead of this red clay.”

She stood there watching, rubbing her hands together to get off the dirt, while I dug up the seedling and potted it with black dirt from out by the cowshed. “Don't let it dry out,” I said, watering it from the rain barrel, “and give it plenty of light. Do you have a window facin' south?”

“How do you tell south?”

I explained as simply as I knew how. “If sun comes in a window in the mornin', that's the east side of the buildin'. If it's sunny in the afternoon, that's the west side. If it doesn't come in at all, that's north. The best exposure is southern. Come winter, sunlight will flood into a south window.” I didn't say how dumb it was for anybody to be thirty-one years old and not know such, though I was tempted. “I hope you don't expect to show off this li'l old thing. It won't impress anybody.”

Brushing dirt off the pot with my hands, I looked at Aunt Loma. She was wiping her eyes. “I'm not takin' it to impress anybody,” she said, her lip quivering. “I'm takin' it for myself. It...I need somethin' to remind me of home.”

I handed her the seedling. “Mama has a scrap left over from that new oilcloth on the kitchen table. Tie some around the pot, why don't you? So it won't get your dress dirty. Well, good-bye, Aunt Loma.” I put my arms around both of them—her and the baby magnolia. “Look after this good, hear, and look after your boy. And you look after yourself.”

“You too, Will. Do you still see Trulu?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“Just asking. You're too good for her anyway. Well, good-bye, Will.”

“You haven't said when you're gettin' married.”

“Some time next month. In New York, of course. Not here.”

“Mama will have a conniption fit.”

“It can't be helped.” Her tone was formal, defensive.

“I don't know as I can get off work long enough to make the trip.”

“It won't be a family kind of wedding,” she said quickly. “Just the two of us, and a justice of the peace. And Campbell Junior, of course, and two of our friends for witnesses.”

I was about to say nobody in our family had ever got hitched in a courthouse when she added, “Pa and Miss Love did it that way, remember.” Raising her chin, she said again, “Good-bye, Will,” and started up the back steps with her magnolia tree.

Campbell Junior wasn't the only one trying to act brave.

“Aunt Loma?” I called after her. “Uh, take the oilcloth off when you get there, hear? The roots'll rot if it cain't drain.”

She nodded.

I called again. “Don't worry if the leaves fall off. That won't mean it's dead.”

***

Though it wasn't anywhere near train time, I didn't want to hang around. I'd had about all the sad good-byes I could take. I decided to amble on up to Miss Love's. Check over the animals. See who was home.

On the way I met Sampson. “What you got there, son?” I asked.

“A present for Campbell Junior.” He proudly held up a big contraption of nailed-together wood scraps. “See, sir, he can mash this and that and that, and then turn this magic wand down towards Georgia and wish himself right back home. If he does everything right, the wish will come true. I invented it!”

After inspecting and admiring and not saying it had about as much chance of going to New York as Campbell Junior had of staying here, I asked Sampson if he thought Miss Klein was a good teacher.

He said she sure was strict.

I asked if Miss Klein and Miss Clack and Miss Hazelhurst had got home yet.

“No, sir. All the teachers stayed in after school. They had to go to the principal's office,” he said, spinning a loosely nailed stick on his invention. “I don't think they've been bad. They just had to go meet.”

“Yeah, well, son, I'm on my way to your house. It's time to inspect the livestock.” Every so often I'd stop by to check over Papa's cow, Grandpa's old mule, Miss Love's gelding, known as Mr. Beautiful, and Sampson's pony, Miss H, named by him when he was four and learning the alphabet. “You still puttin' that salve on H's leg?” I asked.

The boy hedged. “Uh, most of the time Loomis does it, Uncle Will. Mother pays him to feed and water, so I just asked him to doctor H's leg, too, while he's at it.”

“It's not your place to tell Loomis what to do.”

“He said he'd be glad to. Just glad to.”

“Well, you're old enough now to do all the stable work. You're not even feedin' and curryin' the pony?”

“Why should I, Uncle Will? I don't ride her anymore. She's got so little, and all she wants to do is walk or trot. Hey, just let me run give this to Campbell Junior. I'll be right back. I want to show you my new circus trick on Mr. Beautiful!”

“You're gettin' too big for your britches, but, you're not big enough for that tall horse. Stay off of him, Sampson.”

His face reddened. “Mother lets me. I don't have to mind you.”

“And I don't have to fool with a smart aleck named Simpson.” I turned to walk away. He grabbed my arm.

“Please don't call me Simpson, Uncle Will. Cause of Miss Klein, everybody at school calls me Simpleton now. Please, Uncle Will? I was just mad at you. I didn't mean it, sir.”

I looked at him hard. “Try being a friend to Campbell Junior this afternoon, Sampson. He's in bad need of one right now.”

W
HEN
I got back to Miss Love's house after checking the animals,
I
was naturally hoping Sanna Klein would be there. She wasn't, and it occurred to me that even if she came in before
I
had to leave, she probably wouldn't be by herself. So
I
sat down at the kitchen table and wrote her a note, using my office stationery with the letterhead
Cooperative Extension Service, Georgia State College of Agriculture, Athens, Georgia.

***

Dear Miss Klein,

I would still like to see you Sunday night provided you get in from Jefferson early enough. I plan on being in Cold Sassy anyway, so you don't need to let me know ahead. I'll come down to Miss Love's right after supper to see if you're back yet, and we can go to church. I often spend Sunday night with my folks and ride the early freight train back to Athens next morning.

Please excuse the eccentric appearance of this paper. It's been folded up in my pants pocket.

Hoyt Willis Tweedy

***

Miss Love kept envelopes on top of her desk. I wrote “To Miss Klein” on one and dropped the letter in the teachers' mail basket on the hall table by the stairs. I couldn't help noticing Miss Klein had a letter there from Mrs. Henry K. Jolley in Mitchellville, and two more in long business envelopes with the embossed return address
Blankenship, Crowe, and Blankenship, Attorneys-at-Law, Jefferson, Georgia.
In a bold scrawl above the print was written “Hugh A. Blankenship, Jr.”

I knew about the legal firm of Blankenship and Crowe. I used to go over to Jefferson sometimes for court week with Pink Predmore and his lawyer-daddy, and if it was a trial that amounted to anything, you could count on Mr. Blankenship or Mr. Crowe representing one side or the other. I was discouraged for a second or two but tossed my note in the basket anyway.

I blame everything that's happened between Sanna and me on the sight of that name scrawled so bold and confident, as if he and his daddy's firm had legal rights to her. Before that moment I'd only been smitten by Sanna Klein's beauty. Suddenly I was determined to marry her.

That's what I was thinking as I headed for the front door, but I stopped in my tracks when I realized that the veranda was occupied. I recognized the voice of Miss Alice Ann Boozer. “Did you know Loma Blakeslee Williams come in on the train last week from New York City?”

“Everybody this side the cemetery knows it,” said a voice I couldn't quite place. “Why you think I wouldn't know a thing like that?”

“Cause you been gone, Miz Jones,” said Miss Alice Ann.

Of course. The other lady was the wife of the Reverend Brother Belie Jones.

I knew I ought to go speak to them, but not being in much of a mood for woman talk, I tiptoed over to Miss Love's wing chair by the window and sat down with a magazine. But I couldn't read with those voices floating right in. I heard Miss Alice Ann ask Mrs. Jones how was her sister.

“Sister's really on the down-go,” said the preacher's wife. “But I couldn't just stay on there till Kingdom Come. Like I told her, Brother Jones needs lookin' after too. So yesterd'y I hired her a colored girl and took the train home.”

“Where is it she lives? I never can remember.”

“A little coal-minin' town—Brilliant, in Alabama.”

“Funny name.”

I could hear rocking chairs just going to town out there. Then one stopped and Miss Alice Ann spoke again. “When's Miss Love go'n git here?”

“Any minute now. I ‘phoned down at the store, and she said meet her here, she'd be on terreckly. I've got my good fall hat in this hatbox. She's go'n make it over. I'm sure glad you happened along to keep me comp'ny.”

With the chairs going
rockity-rockity-rockity,
I didn't have to be out there to see Mrs. Jones, a tall stout lady in her sixties with swimmy eyes and a red face, probably fanning herself with a piece of cardboard, or Miss Alice Ann, so fat she didn't have a lap and so short her little feet barely touched the floor.

Years ago Miss Alice Ann had caught me kissing Lightfoot McLendon in the cemetery and told it all over town. I hated her back then, but now she was just an old lady. Suddenly she said, “I bet you ain't heard about Loma Williams splashin' her bare chest with cold well water, Miz Jones. I mean
BARE
chest! Done it out on the Tweedys' back porch!”

“My land!”

“And she was wearin' her shirtwaist tucked into some long baggy purple pants! I seen a movin' pitcher show one time with some ha-reem women dancin' in thin baggy pants. That's all right for heathen women, I reckon, but it don't speak well of a Christian lady to wear such.”

“No, it don't.”

“Anyhow, Queenie said Loma splashed water on herself awhile and then buttoned up that shirtwaist and commenced to stretch. This-a-way and that-a-way, up, down, and sideways. Queenie told Miz Predmore she got skeered Miss Loma'd had a stroke, she went to breathin' so hard! Time she got done she was downright raspin'—like a peach seed had got stuck in her th'oat!” Sitting inside by the open window, I nearly laughed out loud. Mama hadn't told me all this.

“Loma told Queenie how in New York City she stands in front of a open window to splash herself—even when hit's a-snowin'. Said you sho do feel good when you git th'ew.”

“It don't take a genius to know why you'd feel good to git th'ew,” said Mrs. Jones, “but it'd take a fool to think it up in the first place. All I got to say, folks sure do turn strange when they go live in New York City.”

“I reckon you know Loma's done got herself engaged to one a-them Yankees. Shoo, now. Git away!” she yelled all of a sudden. “I think God invented yellow jackets just to drive folks off of their porches. Specially in hot muggy weather like we been havin'. Shoo, shoo! Git! Shoo! What Loma ought to do, she ought to come on back to P.C. where she belongs.”

“I don't know as she belongs down here anymore,” Mrs. Jones put in. “A woman who'd smoke and wear pants? And make her livin' on a vaudeville stage?”

Almost in hugging distance of the conversation, I wanted in the worst way to go join in. But I knew if I went out there, they'd just go to talking about the weather.

“Of course she don't admit she works in vaudeville,” Miss Alice Ann was saying. “Loma calls it a the-ater. But lately she's been doin' mannequin work, too!”

“No!”

“Yes'm! She told somebody that's how she met this man that she's a-go'n marry. Her and some other ladies was modelin' Gossard corsets one mornin', s'posed to be just lady buyers in the auditorium, but halfway th'ew, somebody spied a man hidin' under a seat off to the side, and hit was him! Loma told it herself. She thinks it's funny.”

I sure thought it was funny. But not one hee-hee or ha-ha came from the preacher's wife. “I bet he got hustled out in a hurry,” she said with disgust.

“I speck he did. But Loma said he come backstage later and ast her to go eat with him, and Lord if she didn't have any better sense'n to do it! He took her to one a-them fancy rest'rants. I reckon with him bein' so old, and hit daylight and a nice place, Loma figured he couldn't do her no harm.”

So that's how Aunt Loma got her diamond.

“Too bad she didn't stay here and marry Herbert Sloan back when he ast her to. Li'l Herbert, I mean. Not his daddy. But they say Loma said Li'l Herbert was pussy-footy—and besides, she couldn't stand the name Herbert, and anyhow she wouldn't marry anybody short as him if his name was Valentino.”

Mrs. Jones snorted. “I bet if Loma had of known Li'l Herbert would inherit that pile of money, he'd of looked two feet taller. All I got to say is anybody mean enough to say a thing like that about such a sweet little man deserves to marry a Yankee. I never could understand how she's had so many men chasin' after her. I got to admit it, though, she's helt on to her looks.”