Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

  When Mr. Predmore came in for pipe tobacco, for instance, Grandpa smiled big and friendly and said, "We havin' preachin' and communion agin at my house come Sunday. Miss Love and me, I mean. We'd be mighty proud to have you and yore fam'ly join us." Knowing he was being taunted, Mr. Predmore didn't answer. "Won't cost you a red cent," Grandpa called after him as he stalked out. "We don't pass no dang collection plate."

  Uncle Lige whispered to Papa, "Thet in iteself would be a miracle—hearin' a sermon 'thout havin' to pay for it." Cudn Hope laughed, but Papa looked like he'd just heard heresy incarnate.

  Showing off for customers, Uncle Lige kept making jokes about miracles, and Grandpa joked back. "Who knows, Lige, might be we'll even turn water into wine, haw! Ifn we do, I'll save you some." Then, waving his arm to include several customers in the store, Grandpa called out like a dern circus barker, "Come one, come all y'all! Be glad to have you. We ain't havin' Sunday school, jest singin' and prayin' and preachin'. Miss Love's go'n make ten pound cakes to take care a-the communion crowd." Whacking a slab of cheese off the round for Thurman Osgood, the dwarf, Grandpa wrapped it and said as he handed down the package, "Join us Sunday mornin', son. We go'n have us a good time."

  The church people of Cold Sassy, Georgia, didn't look at Sunday morning as the time to have a good time. As Grandpa expected and intended, they took it like he was making fun of religion, or like he was asking folks to come to a house of ill repute and call it church. People said it looked like Mr. Blakeslee just wanted to make everybody mad. Which he did.

  Mr. Flournoy said he and his wife would come, but most folks either acted like they didn't hear the invite or else huffed out of the store without buying a thing.

  Finally Papa dared to say "Mr. Blakeslee, folks are mad about you makin' fun of the Lord's Day. What if they quit buyin' from us?"

  Grandpa just laughed. "Ain't go'n happen. You think anybody's go'n hitch up and ride a buggy all the way to Commerce just for twenty pounds a-sugar or a dime's worth a-nails at Hard-man Hardware or Williford, Burns, and Rice? Naw, Hoyt. Hit's easy to git mad, but it takes time to go over to Commerce."

  What my daddy didn't see was that Grandpa was madder than anybody else in Cold Sassy. Grandpa had thought marrying Miss Love was a cheap way to get a white housekeeper and not be a burden on his daughters, but now the town had changed her from a nice pleasant milliner into a Mad Hatter who cried all the time.

  33

  GRANDPA didn't preach the sermon at his second home church service. He asked Queenie's husband, Loomis, to do it.

  Despite all the invites, the congregation didn't swell much that day. Only Mr. and Mrs. Cratic Flournoy came—probably because they liked Miss Love, but also because they liked to sing and couldn't bear the thought of trying to drag through another hymn with Miss Effie Belle feeling her way over the piano. But they claimed later they went to remind Cold Sassy in general and the Methodists in particular that God loves sinners and forgives them, "and we ought to, too."

  Cold Sassy thought Grandpa had really stepped out of bounds, asking a Negro preacher to give the sermon. Old Loomis had preached many a one in the white kitchens of Cold Sassy. If he was bringing in stovewood and noticed a silver spoon that was tarnished, he'd say, "You know, white folks, 'ligion be jes lak dis here silver. You got to keep it polish reg'lar or it don' shine, naw suh."

  Every June during the time of our school exhibition, the graduating class gave orations and dialogues on Friday night. Then on Saturday night the colored would make money for their church by putting on a show for us white folks. First they'd have a Negro minstrel, then a Negro sermon by Loomis, all dressed up in his dingy white vest, black pants, jim-swing black tailcoat, and beaver hat. Later, after the spirituals, Loomis and old Uncle Lem would put on a debate, all in fun. Old Lem always took the "nigi-tive" and Loomis the "infirmity." I remember one time the evening ended with Loomis saying, "You know, white folks, when a man cast his bread pon de waters, it gwine come back buttered toast, praise Jesus." Passing his hat, he joked, "Tonight, I represents de waters. So cast yo bread on me an' de good Lawd gwine bless yo gingerosity." Everybody laughed—and Loomis made some extra money.

  But everybody knows there's a difference between a colored preacher preaching in a white kitchen or at the Negro entertainments and the same man preaching in a white parlor. Nobody blamed Loomis. He worked at the store, so he had to do what he was told. But Cold Sassy felt like Grandpa was slapping the town in the face, all over again, and nobody doubted Miss Love had put him up to it.

  The Flournoys told it all over town, what Loomis said at the end of his parlor sermon. "Mr. Rucker, sir? Miss Love? Y'all scuse me fer sayin' so, but y'all white peoples knows better'n to ack lak dis. De Lawd God wonts peace mongst His peoples. He say git on back to yo own church an' quit dis here foolish-ment."

  I, for one, had a lot rather been hearing Loomis up at Grandpa's house than listening to the Presbyterian preacher saying what's go'n happen to you if you dance, play cards, or spend your money on "adorn-ments," like fur coats. There wasn't a fur coat in Cold Sassy, but any time he talked about sin he brought up fur coats.

  Mama and I weren't really listening that morning, though. We were worrying about my daddy. He had stayed home, and he wasn't sick.

  Papa had been trying his best to cheer Mama up ever since the Tuesday before, when, as Aunt Loma put it, "Miss Love grabbed Sister's ticket to New York." Wednesday at breakfast he even offered to take Mama to Atlanta for the day, but she said, "Hoyt Tweedy, I'm not bout to be disrespectful of the dead for just a li'l old seventy-mile trip."

  The next night he actually stayed home with her instead of going to the Presbytery meeting. That worried Mama. She said, "Hoyt, you haven't missed a meetin' since you had the flu ten years ago. What will people think?"

  He touched her cheek, real tender, and said, "I'm tired, Mary Willis. I thought maybe you and me could go to bed early tonight."

  "Aw, shah, Hoyt," she said impatiently. But then she put her arms around his neck and her head on his shoulder and cried.

  Friday morning Papa had taken the train to Atlanta. "Business," he explained, but wouldn't say any more. When he got home late that evening, he was all smiles. After breakfast Saturday morning, when Mama wiped her mouth for him to kiss her good-bye, he kissed her twice and then came back and kissed her twice again.

  I wasn't the only one wondering what he was up to. Queenie said, "Lawd Jesus, Mr. Will, yo pa he ack lak he got a dimon ring in his pocket!"

  Queenie fried a chicken and cooked up a mess of vegetables for dinner that day, but I don't think Papa knew what he was eating. He talked a mile a minute the whole meal. He was so chock full of news, Mama nor I could get in a word. "Oh, by the way, Will," he said, forking a drumstick onto his plate. "A mill girl came in the store today to buy some black goods for a dress. Said her daddy died. She ast if I knew you."

  My heart thumped hard. "Did she say her name?"

  "No. But she was a pretty little thing, and clean."

  "Tow-headed?"

  "Ain't they all tow-headed?" Papa swished buttermilk in his mouth. I could tell he was watching me. Town people thought you couldn't be too careful when it was a question of your children hobnobbing with mill folks.

  "It may have been the girl that hepped me off the trestle. You know, after the train ran over me," I said casually. "She's in my grade at school. Mama, can I have the chicken head?"

  "Don't you always?" She suspicioned me, too.

  "Well," said my daddy, "the girl ast me to tell you that her and her aunt are go'n take her daddy back home to the mountains for buryin'."

  "On the train?"

  He shrugged. "I reckon."

  Queenie was clearing the table. Papa put out a hand to stop her as she reached for the chicken platter. "Mary Willis," he said to Mama, "just look at that platter!"

  Was it dirty or something? Mama looked. Queenie looked. I looked. Near as I could tell, it was just a wing, a back, and a giz zard, laying
lonely on the platter. "That's all we have left over," Papa complained. "Queenie, from now on if you fry a pullet this small, fry two."

  "Yassuh, Mr. Hoyt!" To Queenie, that just meant more for her to take home. But Papa saw it as his providing a bounteous table.

  I did admire his style that day. Some might think what difference did it make, who would know? Well, Queenie knew. And she would tell Loomis and her cousin Sissyretta and all her friends who did yard work or cooked in white kitchens or took in washing or nursed white children. Naturally they would all tell their white folks, and two days from now, everybody in town would know Mr. Hoyt Tweedy could afford more food than he needed.

  Papa had always been looked up to in Cold Sassy as a good man with a flair for good living. You wouldn't say he put on airs or pretended to be what he wasn't, but unlike Grandpa Blakeslee, he liked seeming well-off and "modrun." Unlike Mama, he didn't worry about folks thinking bad of him, but he always made sure they thought well of him.

  When Papa went back to the store after dinner, he was whistling.

  It wasn't till Sunday morning that Mama got really worried about him. After working till Saturday midnight at the store, he always bathed before he went to bed so he could sleep later on Sunday, and normally he was barely up in time to eat breakfast and get to Sunday school. But this Sabbath morning he was already dressed when I went out to milk the cow. I could hear him singing and whistling clear to the barn.

  At breakfast, Mama said, "My, you feel good this mornin', don't you, Hoyt?" And she smiled at him across the breakfast table. She looked real pretty in a new black and white striped wrapper, and instead of having her hair pulled back in a plain knot, she had done it up for church in a pompadour.

  You can imagine the shock when we got downstairs in our Sunday clothes, ready for Sunday school, and Papa said he wasn't go'n go.

  It didn't make any sense. He was wearing his suit and had his Bible in his hand, but there he stood, saying he had to stay home. I noticed his hand shook a little, and his eyes sparkled.

  We couldn't of been more dumfounded. Papa was a deacon. Papa was clerk of the session. Papa was church treasurer. Papa couldn't just not go, for gosh sake. While Mama stared at him with her mouth open, I offered to stay home with him.

  "You will not," he said sternly. "Y'all go on now. Make haste, or you'll be late." He walked nervously to the door, looked up and down the street, then practically pushed us out onto the porch. When I looked back, he had sat down in the swing and opened his Bible.

  Mama was all to pieces as we went down the walk. "Will, do you think he's gone crazy?" she whispered, her face pale.

  After Sunday school, folks naturally asked where was Mr. Tweedy. Looking confused and flustered, which she was, Mama said weakly, "He seems to be ailin'." I opened my mouth to say he looked all right to me, but she poked me in the ribs.

  When we got to our pew, Mama let me know what her real fear was. "I bet your daddy's up there with Pa and them," she whispered from behind the palm-frond fan she was fluttering like a house afire. I shrugged, which was supposed to mean that couldn't be it.

  Tell the truth, that possibility was uppermost in my own mind, even though I couldn't believe it. Papa was anxious to please Grandpa, but not anxious enough to desecrate the Sabbath by singing songs like "Bird in a Gilded Cage" or "Waltz Me Around Again, Willie." Certainly not "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-de-Ay."

  As the Presbyterian preacher commenced his sermon, I was puzzled by the behavior of Mr. French Gordy, who sat with Miss Sarah in front of us, smelling of soap as usual. He kept turning around during the sermon to grin at us, yet when church finally let out, he rushed past and didn't even wait for his wife, much less stop to ask Mama what my daddy was sick with.

  Everybody else did, however. Mama looked embarrassed and upset as she said over and over, "I don't know. I just don't know what's wrong with Mr. Tweedy."

  In a minute here Mr. French came back, his ruddy face beaming, and took my mother's arm. "Mary Willis, how I wish your ma was alive to see this miracle! You and Will come outside and look!" When she hesitated, kind of dazed, he pushed her toward the church's big open door. I ran ahead to go see.

  If Santy Claus had been out there with his sleigh and his reindeer that hot Sunday morning, it wouldn't of been any more surprising than the sight of Papa grinning like a chessy cat from the driver's seat of a big shiny red Cadillac car! He was wearing a cap and goggles, and his Sunday suit just barely showed under a long linen coat.

  The automobile had a black canvas roof, slotted rubber tires, and a brass horn, and was shimmying and shaking and backfiring to beat the band.

  "Papa!" I yelled, forgetting I wasn't supposed to holler in the churchyard. Everybody else had forgot, too. I was the first to reach the motorcar, but the congregation quickly crowded around. "Mama!" I called, looking towards the church steps. "Come on!"

  Mama stood there on Mr. French's arm like she was looking at a man with a tail. She was pure transfixed, mouth gaping, eyes shining. There must of been thirty or forty people crowded around, and they got quiet just from the sight of her. "Well, I declare. I declare, Hoyt, don't you beat all!" she said finally, and then, "Well, I swan. Won't Mary Toy have a fit!"

  There wasn't a Presbyterian in Cold Sassy who wasn't proud for Mama at that moment. Something good had finally happened to Miss Mary Willis.

  I opened a back door, jumped in, bounced on the seat, and started asking Papa questions. With all the engine racket, he couldn't hear a word I said. He was busy shaking hands with all the men, anyhow, and getting slapped on the back and being asked for a ride.

  Boy howdy, that was some morning.

  I'm not sure Mama ever would of made it to the Cadillac if Papa hadn't climbed out and gone to get her. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as he led her to his shaking red chariot. Picking up a new linen coat off the front seat, he held it out grandly for her to put on, then draped a big dust veil over her hat and face, and handed her in. When she turned toward the congregation and waved, everybody smiled and clapped.

  About then the motor conked out. Papa was so excited he like to never got it started again. He cranked, then showed me how, and I cranked, but nothing happened. "Let me check the directions," he said, reaching in his pocket to take out a little booklet.

  It said he had forgot to use the gas feed.

  Away we went at last. But we went away lots slower than if we'd had the horse and buggy. Papa hadn't practiced his driving but for a few minutes before church let out, so he wasn't all that sure he could remember where the foot brake was or how much gas to feed. Also, every time he saw a buggy or wagon coming, he had to stop the car and shut off the motor so the horses wouldn't bolt. It was a slow progress till we were out in the country.

  As we got to going faster, a grand cloud of dust rose behind us and folks ran out of their houses to watch us go by. Every time we hit a bump or just missed a squawking chicken we'd laugh like children. Boy howdy, what a day! Mama yelled over the racket, "Hoyt, I just cain't believe it! When did you buy it? Can we afford it? Where did you have it hid? Does Pa know about it?"

  I kept begging him to let me drive. "Naw!" he yelled. "I better learn how first myself, Will!"

  Coming back into town, we passed Grandpa's house just as he and Miss Love came out on the front veranda with the Flournoys. Big Loomis, who naturally took his communion cake in the kitchen, was just coming around the house from the back door as Papa honked the brass horn and we all waved.

  They were too dumfounded to wave back, I reckon, or maybe didn't recognize anybody but me, on account of the linen coats and Mama's veil and Papa's goggles. Papa didn't stop or so much as slow up. It was grand, the way we raced by!

  "Oh, won't she be jealous!" Mama crowed when we got home. There was no doubt who was meant by she.

  I felt real satisfied. I knew Miss Love would love to have a motorcar, probably more than my mother wanted to go to New York City. So now they were just about even.

  Which was what my da
ddy had in mind.

  If you'd paid him to do it, Papa couldn't of stood up to Grandpa and argued to get Mama the trip. But he had the nerve to ride by Grandpa's house and not stop.

  34

  MAMA PUT DINNER on the table that day while Papa rode Queenie around the block. After we ate, I started clearing out the barn shed for a garage, but couldn't make much headway for folks dropping by to see the automobile. They admired the shiny red paint, blew the horn, tried out the seats, and of course asked to ride. Some were jealous, I could tell. There is a price to pay for having the first something in town. But Lee Roy, Smiley, Pink, and Dunse McCall were as excited as if it was their folks' car. They asked me all kinds of questions: What's the choke for, and lemme see the toolbox, and how do you start it, and how do you stop it, and how fast will it go.

  It helped feelings a lot when, by the next Sunday, Papa and I had practiced enough to take passengers out. Aunt Loma bid first, her and Uncle Camp. Papa took Aunt Carrie home after dinner, then let me drive Pink and them around the block by myself. Later we went and got Miss Effie Belle. Poor old Mr. Bubba, he wanted to go so bad, but Miss Effie Belle thought the excitement would be too much for anybody 102. I think that meant she was scared he might wet his pants.

  Papa offered to ride Grandpa around, but Grandpa wouldn't even get in. "A car is a fool dangerous contraption. Worse'n a bicycle," he said. "I speck Miss Love would like to go, though."

  Instead of asking her, Papa said, "I just remembered, Mr. Blakeslee, I told Mary Willis I'd be back by now." And we drove off. It was so pointed that I felt embarrassed for Miss Love's sake—but pleased for Mama's.

  The next morning I hitched up Big Jack to the buggy and took Grandpa and Miss Love and a mountain of grips to the depot. They would go to Savannah by train and get a boat there for New York City. Standing in the shade of the Cold Sassy tree, I watched their train pull out, then drove Jack home, turned him into the pasture with Miss Love's horse, filled their feed boxes and the watering trough, fed the chickens, and got the Toy family Bible off the desk in the hall like Mama told me to. She had asked Grandpa for it and he'd said shore you can have it, come git it. But Mama thought it best to wait till they left for New York.