Cold Sassy Tree: Chapters 21–30

He must of been six feet three at least and walked with a different gait altogether from the men in Cold Sassy.

She wasn’t deaf or anything, like her brother, but I was hoping if Miss Love had any ears left, she would hear me and run sit down prim and proper in the parlor.

“You put your hands on me again, Clayton McAllister, I’ll gouge your eyes out! I’ll kill you!”

She stared at him,dumfounded. “Get me? What’re you talking about?”

“How a philanderer like you could sit in judgment on me, I’ll never understand!”

"...I poured out my heart in that letter. When it came back in the mail, I opened it and read it. Lord, I was glad you never knew how I had groveled at your feet!”

Maybe Grandpa wasn’t in a fighting mood that day, or maybe he took one look at Mr. McAllister and figured discretion was the better part of valor, as the saying goes.

From there I got to thinking about predestination. The Southern Presbyterians believe that what is to be is to be and you can’t do a thing about it.

“Mr. Blakeslee,” she said, her eyes cast down, “I don’t want an annulment. If I weren’t married to you, I still wouldn’t marry him.”

A man with a bad conscience, and stubborn enough to lug something this heavy all the way from Texas, he ain’t a-go’n lug it back home.

Likely he’s skittish and high-strung. Most racehosses are. If I know Cudn Jake, thet free hoss may have more wrong with it than havin’ to eat.

Holding a plate in midair, she looked at me kindly, smiling that big wide smile as if this was no bigger problem than getting the stove hot enough to fry the croquettes.

But I for sure knew, and it was my own grandfather’s wife I was hankering after, which seemed like an awful sin.

“And her just two days past vowin’ to cleave only unto Rucker! I swanny to God, these modrun women are something else.”

Naturally Mama stayed home. Said she had a headache. Probably she did. But mostly she was too mortified to face the congregation.

Then after folks talked about Miss Love cleavin’ to somebody besides Grandpa, they had to speculate about her church affiliation.

I sat staring at his lean old hulk in the front seat and at the hind ends of the dappled-gray horses.

“Died. Got bit by a cottonmouth at a church picnic. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Good riddance, saith I, and the next year I marrit a spinster lady over in Commerce with a nice house. Miss Ora. She’s three inches taller’n me and six year older, but she tells me a dozen times a day how much she loves me.”

Well, if it ain’t, boy, you cain’t git no lien from the store. And if'n you don’t git no lien, you cain’t buy no seed and guano.

He owned his land. But, like all farmers, he had to contend with high taxes, high freight rates, and land so worn out that he might spend more for guano than he could get for his cotton crop.

“‘A lie is an abomination in the sight of God,’” I repeated, “‘and a very present help in time of trouble!’ Ain’t that right, Pink?”

Before Grandpa could bless me out for being sacrilegious, I told him about getting run over by the train.

The upshot of this remembering was that my grandfather not only went with us to the pasture and watched us catch Big Red and Satan, but got two of his field hands to come help us load the wagon bed with corn, oats, and hay.

Careening downhill, bumping over rocks and dried mud holes, we like to shook apart before we got the dern wagon under control.

His Poland China sow had just whelped a new litter. I got the runtiest and took it home in a box.

It was really something to make up an outlandish story like that.

I glared at Pink on the seat beside me, holding the brake post, and then at the others lolling back there in the hay.

Brother Hoyt, Love is the one you ought to say hush to. After her tirade down at the store last week, how can you think it’s just me and Sister keepin’ the town talkin’?

Well, it warn’t a letter, jest a old newspaper clippin’ bout fallen women. Hit said thangs like ‘A female by one transgression forfeits her place in society forever.’

With me sitting in the swing and Mama in the tall porch rocker, she launched into a tirade about desecration of the Sabbath.

There wasn’t much conversation in the store while Miss Love gathered up her hat-making gee-gaws.

Papa was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say. Miss Love didn’t seem to notice. (“Too brazen to even blush,” Mrs. Predmore told Mama.)

I figured later she was mad not only about the church piano stool being jerked out from under her, but about her whole life: having a drunkard for a daddy, getting jilted by Mr. McAllister, and being looked on in Cold Sassy as a Yankee outsider.

“Don’t you want to know what I’ll get out of this arrangement?” Her voice was impudent, but Papa told Mama she looked tired and her lips trembled.

It’s far-fetched to compare that to Miss Love blowing up Cold Sassy, but I’m saying it’s one thing to embarrass a hen and another thing entirely to embarrass a family and a whole town.

I didn’t get a chance to see if my nerve would hold up to my indignation, because she was just nice as you please.

“Well, yes, Will.” A wry little smile lit her face. “But I guess I thought I should at least offer to leave.”

When I heard it splash, I turned the crank to draw it up and, feeling that I was being what Aunt Loma called gallant, offered Miss Love the first cool drink.

“I went just once. When I was a little girl.” She smiled kind of wistful.

Then he opened the door wide, bowed to Papa with a big flourish, and said, ‘Enter, sir! The store is yours!’