Cold Sassy Tree: Chapters 11–20

Usually they’d read the plaque that was nailed to its trunk: “Sassafras: family Lauraceae, genus Sassafras, species S. albidum. Note how the leaves vary in shape on the same twig, some having no lobes, some two or three.”

Like all depot agents, Mr. Tuttle was cow coroner for the railroad, so I guessed right off that this was the farmer whose cow and mule got killed yesterday. Death by train isn’t unusual out in the country.

I could still hear those two fussing after I passed the foundry, but then everything got drowned out as the 1:10 from Athens approached.

The train was so long that before all of it passed us we were beyond the stores, the Confederate monument, the livery stable, the tanyard, the cotton gin, and Sleep’s Ice and Coal, and nearly to Mill Town.

Old Charlie and his mule were both string-halted, each having a tight ligament in the leg that made him limp.

As T.R. and I walked the railroad tracks past the sweaty, dirty, hostile faces of Mill Town, I couldn’t help wondering if a summer of slaving at the spindles would take away Lightfoot’s hopes—and my notion that she walked in a cloud of fresh mountain air.

The dog romped through the daisies and weeds and tall grasses growing along the tracks.

Less than a mile past Mill Town, I rounded a bend and saw the train trestle up ahead, marching through the air high above the wooded gorge where Blind Tillie Creek ran.

Looking at that trestle, I felt like I was being sung to. Or maybe it was more like when the fire bells clang on Cold Sassy’s horse-drawn fire engine and you just got to go chasing after it to where the smoke is billowing up.

Opening my eyes and raising my head, I saw the red caboose getting smaller and smaller as it neared the end of the trestle.

Lightfoot bent so close that her long flaxen hair brushed against my face.

Some of the passengers rushing to get back on the train stopped to watch as Loomis loped over the trestle.

We saw men, and women, and children pull back into the bushes and brambles as the train got rolling.

For another, I’d never hear the last of it if Pink and them somehow found out a girl was waiting for me under Blind Tillie Trestle. Guffaw and haw!

“Lookit this ’ere boy!” he shouted, like he was a barker at the county fair and me the prize pig.

Miss Winnie lived in a sharecropper house on the Stedman farm.

“But nary a hair on that chile’s head got tetched. The good Lord spared her. And when she was seventeen, God called her to China as a missionary. Pore thang got over thar and died of the smallpox two months later.”

I felt like the Prodigal Son. When my mother headed for the dining room, her eyes shining with joy, I knew she was fixing to get out her gold and white china dessert plates.

It’s not easy for a pretty lady with her chin in the air to look flustered, but Miss Love did.

She was wearing a hand-embroidered blue dress, her brown hair in a big pompadour, and had on a little blue hat with white bird wings—the same hat Aunt Loma tried to buy that time.

I felt blasphemous even to think it, much less say it out loud.

I reckon I ain’t very forgivin’, son. I can forgive a fool, but I ain’t inner-rested in coddlin' hypocrites.

“And now I ast yore blessin’ on this here girl I married today.” Miss Love raised her head and stared up at Grandpa, mouth agape.

“Hit’ll still be thar t’morrer, Lord willin’. The Lord ain’t willin’, it’ll be gone. Now git in the house and study yore catechism till time to leave for preachin’.”

I wondered would she meet her match in Miss Love. Or would Miss Love do like Mama and kowtow to Loma for the sake of peace in the family?

Wearing an old felt hat and dirty overalls, Son sat sideways, slumped, with one leg crossed over the mule’s shoulder and the other hanging loose. He looked so seedy I wondered what Miss Love, or even Aunt Loma, had ever seen in him.

“That ain’t surprisin’, Son,” Toddy Hughes said with a leery grin, “bein’ as yesterd’y was Mr. Blakeslee’s weddin’ day. Or ain’t you heard?”

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.”

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 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.

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.

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.”

It got her dander up, my saying that. “The rug is moldy, mildewed, and full of moths, Will,” she snapped.

“He says you and him had a unner-standin’. He’s talkin’ bout breach a-promise. He got any call to think you was go’n marry him?”

With a close haircut and a thin mustache and no beard, sir, you’d look—distinguished!

Grandpa couldn’t stop looking at himself in the mirror. Preening like a rooster, he kept saying things like “I do recollect seein’ thet feller somewheres before. Ain’t he a buster though!”

He set his hat at a jaunty angle and raised his hand good-bye. Reminded me of a little boy going off by himself for the first time.

Looking around, I noticed a small poster tacked on the wall, advertising a women’s suffrage speech in Baltimore in 1888. It said:
The Subject: Throw Off the Yoke of Oppressor Man!

Miss Hannah Lee, The Long-Tongued Orator
Will Emit Impassioned Yawps at Borough Hall
7 O'Clock Monday Night!

“I said,”—three stiff, prissy notes—“‘It’s not proper, Mr. Blakeslee. It’s not even right.’” A pause, then sad chords. “‘Sir, Miss Mattie Lou has been dead only three weeks.’ What he said then sent chills down my spine, Will.” Heavy bass notes followed by harsh discords.