Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

At some point amid the sighs and moans and murmurs, Miss Love pulled away and whispered, "It was my...." Her voice was shaking so I couldn't hear the word she said.

  Grandpa didn't either. "What'd you say?"

  "It was m-my f-f-father. My father. I said it was my f-father, Mr. Blakeslee!"

  "You mean—?" He got up off the bed, and she did, too. "God A'mighty! Miss Love, you ain't got no call to tell me a thang like thet!" She couldn't talk for crying. "Sh-h-h-h," Grandpa whispered. "Sh-h-h-h. Hit don't matter now. Sh-h-h...."

  "Don't shush me. It does m-matter. And I'm ... I'm g-going to stop cr-crying and tell you everything. Sir, please, don't s-say hush."

  And she got aholt of herself and she talked. And she talked and talked. Talked low and fast. "No matter what you say, Mr. Blakeslee, you won't want me for a wife. It's too—awful. But I'm going to tell you. When I finish, maybe you'll pity me or maybe you'll be sick of me, but at least you'll know I couldn't help it. Maybe you won't ... be angry." Her voice shook so at first that she was hard to understand, but she got out that it happened when she was twelve years old.

  "You don't have to tell me, Miss Love," Grandpa protested.

  "I do have to. So don't interrupt."

  I doubted she remembered that I was just two feet away, and I forgot about trying to sound asleep. But they wouldn't of noticed if I'd started banging on the wall.

  "We lived in three rooms upstairs in somebody's house. I had a little cot like this one, in a small room next to what we used as a sitting room. Their bed was in the sitting room. Mama had heart trouble, Mr. Blakeslee. Everybody knew she was dying, and the lady and man downstairs helped her all they could. They had gone somewhere that night—I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if they'd been home. Well, I woke up when Father came in drunk, as usual, and I heard Mama coughing and crying. She asked him for some water, but, Mr. Blakeslee, Father just laughed. Laughed!"

  "Don't, Miss Love—"

  She didn't hear him. Her voice had got mechanical, like she was reciting a story she'd read in the newspaper—one that didn't have anything to do with her. "After Mama's coughing subsided, she said, 'Timothy, when I'm gone, you will take care of Love, won't you?' I'd heard her say that sort of thing many times, and it always made him mad. I just thought he never wanted her to talk about dying, as if it wouldn't happen if she didn't say the words. But that night he suddenly screamed a man's name at her. 'He's her daddy, tell him to take care of her!'

  "There was an awful silence, and then Mama said, 'Hush! Love might hear you. And you know it's not so, Timothy. He married somebody else, remember? Years before I even met you!' Father said that didn't prove a thing. He was so drunk, Mr. Blakeslee. He cursed and said, 'We were married exactly one week, Cleo, when you called me his name! I won't ever forget that.' Mama said it didn't mean she'd been seeing him, but Father wasn't listening. He said, 'You were carrying his baby. Admit it. Why else would you have married a man like me?' She was crying, but she got out something like 'God help me, I didn't know what you were like! But as God is my witness, I was not pregnant!' Father just laughed. 'Why was she born in eight months? Answer me that.' He shouted at her like she was deaf. 'She is his child. Ain't she?'"

  "Hesh up, Miss Love," Grandpa pleaded. "You don't have to—"

  "I have to. Mama was crying and went into the most awful fit of coughing, but he just cursed her. It was awful, listening to them. Then I heard Father stagger towards my room, yelling, 'By God, I'll show you what I think the truth is!' As he came in where I was, he was still yelling at Mama. I'll never forget his words. 'Would a man kill his own flesh and blood, Cleo?' I heard her scream, and I screamed. I tried to get under the cot, but he caught my arm. Then he said, 'Aw, she's too pretty just to kill! Cleo? Listen to me. Would I take my own daughter? No, by God. But, by God, I can take another man's daughter!'"

  Miss Love's voice sunk to an awful whisper. "And then he—he raped me! Raped me, Mr. Blakeslee! I tried to fight him off, but he—"

  Grandpa must of started shaking her. "I hear you, Miss Love! Don't say thet word agin!"

  "The whole time, he was screaming, 'You know what I'm doing in here, Cleo?' But she didn't answer. Finally he left. Stumbled down the stairs and went away. When I got to Mama, she was on the floor in the hall, unconscious. I held her for what seemed like hours. When the people who lived below came home, they got the doctor."

  She sighed a long sigh. "Mama had been trying to get to me, but she passed out. We talked about it later, she and I. She said I had two choices. I could dwell on this the rest of my life—let it make me scared of everybody and bitter against Father—or I could forgive him and put my hand in God's and live my life. Something she said.... Well, I realized Mama didn't know he had....I realized she hadn't heard anything after he screamed would a man kill his own flesh and blood. So I never told her what really happened. She had suffered enough. But all the years after, I never forgot what she said about forgiving him. And I thought I had. I even got over feeling defiled—till I told Clayt and he did what he did. So, Mr. Blakeslee, now you know. You don't have to wonder. Just accept that I was defiled and hate it and I can never be anybody's wife. I don't even want to ... be a wife. I'll leave Cold Sassy as soon as I can."

  Grandpa's voice was hoarse. "Hit don't make no difference, Miss Love."

  "I believed Mr. McAllister when he said that. Never again.... Leave me alone, Mr. Blakeslee! Go to bed and leave me alone!"

  "Damnit, woman! Damnit, I.... Where's yore daddy now?"

  "I don't know. Died drunk, probably. We never saw him again. He didn't come to Mama's funeral."

  There was absolute silence in that room then, except they were both breathing hard. I thought sure Grandpa would try to comfort her. Make her see how much he loved her, how nothing mattered now except to forget all that and let him take care of her. Maybe he would have, but she said to him in a voice cold as metal, "I said leave me alone!" And he did.

  Grandpa stalked out, shut the door, and stood there by the bed, shaking. I never saw him madder. I watched as he tiptoed over to the chest, raised the lid, pulled out a quilt, wrapped it around him. He stood by the window for the longest kind of a time, then knelt down by the windowsill and covered his face with his hand. Grandpa was crying, but he didn't make a sound except a hoarse gasp when he had to breathe. At some point I knew he had gone to praying.

  It must of been an hour or more before he came to bed. I don't think he slept at all. I know I didn't.

  Soon as I heard Miss Gussie in the kitchen, I bounced out of bed. "Better get up, Grandpa! Man from Athens might be here early. Boy howdy, I slept like a log! Hope I didn't root you, sir."

  "I wouldn't know, son." He looked like he'd been beat up, but he said he slept like the dead.

  "Reckon we better get Miss Love up?" I asked. Without waiting for his answer, I called through the door. "Miss Love? Hate to wake you up, but that mechanic could be here any time now. We slept like the dead in here. We rarin' to go!"

  It was a nice breakfast with Miss Gussie and Mr. Nolly. Nobody would have guessed how mad Grandpa and Miss Love were at each other.

  The mechanic came at seven o'clock. Soon as he fixed the radiator and cleaned the oil and grime off the engine, we took the Jamisons for a quick ride and then left Cushie Springs.

  If Grandpa had ridden home in the back seat with his arm around Miss Love, I'd of thought everything I heard was just a bad dream.

  But he rode up front with me.

  42

  MISS LOVE did a lot of horseback riding the next few weeks, and if she ever stopped to talk to anybody, I didn't hear about it. Whenever I went up there to clean the stable, I walked around the house, not through it. I didn't know what to say to her.

  Grandpa? Hearing him joke and tease and tell tales down at the store, you wouldn't of known he had a care in the world, unless you studied his eyes. Since That Night, they were never merry. And he started to look bushy again, and older, and you could see his mean streak better.

>   For instance, there was the matter of Mr. Clem Crummy having a drawing to get a new name for the Cold Sassy Hotel, recently bought from old Mr. Boop. After sprucing it up a little, Mr. Clem advertised a drawing in the paper "for a name more befitting this fine, refurbished, modern establishment." The Crummys put a big shoebox on the hotel desk, and Cold Sassy filled it up with names like the Waldorf and the Savoy. Mama's entry was the Hotel Prince Edward. Mine was the Hotel Bedbug. Grandpa entered a name, but wouldn't say what it was.

  At four o'clock on Sunday, less than two weeks before Thanksgiving, Mr. Clem held his drawing on the hotel piazza. Nobody but him took it serious, but it was somewhere to go, so Cold Sassy went. Well, Miss Love didn't go. I remember that.

  When Mr. Clem pulled his fat hand out of the shoebox and looked at the piece of paper, seemed like he couldn't believe what he saw. I was just sure he'd drawn the Hotel Bedbug! But he hadn't. "For pity sake, Rucker," he exploded, "if I'd a-wanted a name like that, I'd a-used my own!" Then he commenced to laugh. "Folks, Rucker here done named my place after hisself. The Rucker Blakeslee Ho-tel. Ain't he a card, though! I swanny, Rucker, you shore do know how to make a joke. Well, Miss Pauline, bring back the shoebox. I'll try agin."

  While everybody laughed, Grandpa walked up so close to Mr. Clem they just about touched stomachs. "You done got you a name, Mr. Crummy. The Rucker Blakeslee Ho-tel."

  The crowd got silent and uneasy. Mr. Clem looked like he didn't know what to say. "But ... ain't it just a joke?"

  "Hit was when I put it in the box," said Grandpa. "Hit was jest go'n be something to tell and laugh about, same as if'n you'd named it the Crummy Hotel. I never thought to git drawed." Though a smile was playing around under his mustache, his eyes were hard. "But now thet it's the one, I kind a-like the sound of it. You wanted a fine fancy name for yore establish-ment? A symbol of success and ca-racter? Well, sir, seems to me like you got one." Looking back at me, Grandpa grinned.

  "You cain't make me do that!" Mr. Clem was sputtering. "It's my ho-tel!"

  "But it's my name!" Grandpa put his forefinger on Mr. Crummy's big chest. "Yore ad said you'd use whatever name got drawed. Ifn you don't carry out the drawin', I'll sue for breach a-promise. You can put 'Clem Crummy, Proprietor' on yore sign if you got a mind to, but what it's go'n be called is the Rucker Blakeslee Ho-tel."

  Everybody thought Grandpa would take back the name after he'd had his fun. I knew he wouldn't. Like I said, he was not one to let go of a grudge, and several years back Mr. Clem had cheated him in a land deal. Well, now he'd got even—got even and then some. But that didn't mean he wasn't still mad about it.

  The next evening, Grandpa came down sick. In a day or two he was coughing and said he thought it was a relapse of lung disease from war deprivation. He said his symptoms were just like what went through the 6th Georgia one winter, and sent word to the family that nobody was to come up there.

  "Rucker says it's ketchin' as sin," Doc said. "I told Miss Love she better be careful. Boil his plate and fork and all. I don't want no epidemic gittin' started in this town."

  Mama was real worried. Not being sure Miss Love knew how to tend the sick, she took some chicken soup up there for him. Grandpa liked the soup but wouldn't let her in the house. She might ketch what he had. Miss Love said he coughed and groaned a lot, but was eating well. "I just don't understand it," she told Mama.

  Something seemed fishy to me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe he was really sick. On the other hand, if Miss Love had started packing to leave, he might just be playing sick to keep her there. If she'd decided to stay but still refused to be his wife, maybe he was pouting. Or maybe he was heartsick, hating her for what her daddy did to her but still not willing to give her up.

  What I thought was that he loved her as much as ever and had decided to stay home till she gave in. I recalled him telling me one time, "When you don't know which way to turn, son, try something. Don't jest do nothin'."

  The one time I saw Miss Love during his confinement, she said, "He groans all the time, but he eats enough for a regiment. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, ignore him or worry."

  She must of decided to ignore him, because after about ten days she got the idea of training Mr. Beautiful to old Jack's buggy. She'd hitch up and go off for hours. Grandpa soon let everybody know that the contagious period was over and insisted on going to ride with her. Said he was still weak, but the cold fresh air would be good for his lungs. After that, they were behind the horse every day, bundled up together under the automobile lap robes, her holding the reins and the whip, him sitting stiff and straight beside her. They would speak a greeting if they passed you, but as Miss Effie Belle said, it was like they didn't know each other or anybody else, either.

  Before long, though, they were laughing and talking on their rides, and Grandpa was howdying and joking with everybody he saw.

  He had become the grand duke of Cold Sassy again.

  Like everybody else, Aunt Loma was relieved that her daddy was better. But, tell the truth, she'd been too busy directing the school's Christmas play to worry much about him.

  Mama went over there one morning and found Loma sitting at the kitchen table writing in a tablet. She didn't seem to care that there were dust devils under the beds or that it was time for Uncle Camp to come to dinner. She said she had to work on the play. I expect it was the first time she'd been happy since she got married. Just before school let out every day, she'd bring Campbell Junior down to our house, hand him over to Queenie, and prance off to direct rehearsals like she'd got a call to do it from God Almighty Himself.

  Aunt Loma didn't make me be in the play. But anything she needed she called on me and got so bossy I couldn't stand it hardly. Two weeks before play night, she told me to catch her a live mouse for Claude Wiggins to drop out of a shoebox in the third act.

  The mouse was supposed to create pandemonium at a Christmas party on stage.

  I think now that if Aunt Loma hadn't wanted the live mouse, it never would of dawned on me to mess up the play. The way it happened, my cousin Doodle and Uncle Skinny came in from their farm in Banks County about three o'clock one Sunday evening to spend the night with us and pick up a wagonload of feed corn next morning at the store. Doodle and I had just gone out to the barn to pitch down hay for his mules when in strolled Pink Predmore, Lee Roy Sleep, and Smiley Snodgrass.

  After a hard cold spell in late November, there's nothing like a nice warm day to make you restless. You just want to do something, for gosh sake!

  Lying in the warm sunshine in the hayloft, we tried to think up something, but didn't have any luck. We were all kind of irritable. Doodle, who had his head resting on a horse collar, raised up to spit a stream of tobacco juice over Smiley's head, and Smiley got mad as heck. "You better be glad none a-that landed on me," he said, growling.

  Doodle leaned over in the other direction and spat through the hay hole. Looking down below, he aimed next at the big barrel down there. "Damn," he muttered. "I missed it. Hey, Will, ain't thet the barrel with them drownded rats yore daddy said to bury?"

  "Gosh, yeah." I had forgotten about it. Climbing down from the loft, we all went and looked at the three big stinking rats, floating in the barrel amongst the ears of corn that had been the bait.

  Everybody knows that when a barn rat looks down into a barrel that seems half full of shucked corn, he never suspicions that it's really half full of water. By time he finds out, he's trapped. He can't climb up the rounded sides.

  "Gosh, look how white they are," said Pink, poking one with a corn cob. "How come brown rats bleach out in the water?"

  Lee Roy had a thought that made him shudder. "You reckon colored folks turn white like that if they drown?"

  "Where you s'pose the color goes?" asked Smiley.

  "I reckon it just dissolves," said I, gathering up the rats on a pitchfork. "Doodle, get that shovel over yonder, hear, and hep me dig a hole."

  Pink was suddenly inspired. "Whoa!" he yelled,
catching my arm. "Let's save the rats for Miss Loma! For the school play!"

  "Haw, yeah!" echoed fat Lee Roy, clapping Pink on the back. "Cain't you just see them rats droppin' out of Claude's shoebox?"

  "Be mighty rank by then," said I. "School play's not till two weeks, you know." But they knew by my wide grin that in my mind I was seeing stinking dead rats on Aunt Loma's stage.

  We hawed and guffawed, and then—I think because I'd taken off my shoes and it felt so warm and good and free with my bare toes twiddling in the dirt—it came to me that we should get Aunt Loma some live rats to keep her live mouse company. "We'll put shucked corn down in the barrel without any water," I explained as we went out to bury the dead. "We ought to be able to catch us a few by the night of the play."

  What we got was nineteen, collecting sometimes two or three a night. One looked big as a cat. Smiley found a large metal cage in his attic and brought it over. We padded it with hay and put it in an empty stall in our barn, hidden under some dirty old croker sacks.

  On the day of the play, Lee Roy and Smiley backed out. Put their tails down and slunk right out from under the best practical joke ever thought up by man or boy in Cold Sassy, Georgia. It really made me mad.

  Pink said maybe backing out was a good idea.

  "Well, you can back out, but I ain't." I was furious. If Pink didn't help me, there was no way I could get that heavy cage into the auditorium.

  "I'll stick with you, Will," he said, miserable.

  That night about first dark, he and I lifted the cage onto a wheelbarrow, covered it good with the croker sacks, and wheeled it around the house through the pecan grove. Mary Toy was playing hopscotch in the yard and like to had a fit to know what we had. "Something Aunt Loma wants for the play," I said. "But we cain't tell anybody. It would spoil the surprise."