Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

  Passing the Cold Sassy tree, I felt a new wave of nausea. Amidst the jolts and grinds and the whoosh of steam as the engineer braked into the depot, big Loomis pulled me to my feet and said again, "Lawdy, Mr. Will, yo ma and pa dey gwine be sho nuff proud dis eeb'nin'."

  I never found out why Mr. Tuttle was way back there at the caboose when the train pulled in. I just knew that when I looked out the window I found myself staring right into his hard little eyes.

  Loomis half pushed, half carried me to the door. I was shaking like the palsy and scared to death I'd puke or start crying. If the earth had opened up and dropped me clear to China, that would have been just dandy with me.

  14

  WHEN I TRY to put together the rest of July 5, 1906, it seems hazy. And not just because eight years have gone by now. It was hazy at the time.

  I remember worrying after I got to bed that night about not telling Lightfoot good-bye or thanking her. I guess she followed me and Loomis and the dog off the train, but I never saw her after I got surrounded by the other passengers. They were touching me, patting my arm, congratulating me. A tall old man with bulging eyes and a big goiter on his neck pressed a five-dollar gold piece in my hand and got back on the train without saying a word. One little boy begged for a piece of my shirt. I felt foolish, but I pulled off a loose button and gave it to him.

  Loomis pushed me through the crowd, bowing and scraping to the white folks, but pushing all the same. "Pleas'sir, let dis here boy pass.... Please'm, we's gotta git dis here boy home."

  There were Cold Sassy folks at the depot and of course they were puzzled why I was such a hero. I saw Shoeshine Peavy, a young colored boy. He was staring at me, and so was the dwarf, little old Thurman Osgood, who always watched the trains come in. Mr. Beach drove up in his buggy, bringing his wife and little girls to catch the train to Athens. They and others pressed around me, asking questions. "What happened, Will?" "You git hurt?" "Somebody tell us what happened!"

  "Please, white folks, let dis boy pass. He don't feel lak talkin'...."

  Then the big engineer ran up. "Lookit this 'ere boy!" he shouted, like he was a barker at the county fair and me the prize pig. Waving in my direction, he boomed out his news: "This 'ere boy just now got run over by this 'ere train! Look at him good, folks! Ran over by a train on the trestle and livin' to tell it! Not a hair on his head hurt, folks, not one Goddamn hair, praise be the good Lord!"

  Normally I didn't mind being on stage. But what with shaking and shivering and about to cry and vomit and all, I just wanted to get home. It was awful, everybody crowding around like I was a side show, asking how'd it happen and what was I doin' on the trestle anyhow, and what you mean, ran over?

  "Mr. Will he ain't feelin' too good," Loomis kept insisting. "He need to git on home." He was still talking polite, but not smiling.

  About then Mr. Tuttle got to me. "Engineer said you was on Blind Tillie Trestle. You know you shouldn' a-been up there, boy!"

  I didn't answer. I figured Mr. Tuttle was picturing me cut to pieces and himself down at my house trying to settle, cheap, my folks' claim against the railroad. Gosh, would I be worth any more than a dead cow and mule? Or would Mr. Tuttle have sat in our parlor and argued about it.

  When Mr. Beach offered to carry me home in his buggy, I said, "Thank you, sir, I'd sure be much obliged." We just live across the street and two houses down from the depot, but I wasn't certain I could walk it, and I sure as heck didn't want Loomis totin' me like a sick calf.

  You can imagine how it was when we got to my house and Mr. Beach told Mama what happened. Trying not to cry, she led me in and made me lay down on the black leather davenport in the front hall. I was shivering like a wet dog; she put a heavy quilt over me. She was wiping the dirt and grime from my face with a wet washrag when Papa tore through the front door.

  "Loomis said—" he began, then must have been too mad to say any more, because he just stood over me. Fastening my eyes on his knees, I saw they were shaking. I waited for him to take off his belt. When he didn't, I got the nerve to look up at him.

  Tears were streaming down Papa's cheeks. He had his straw hat across his chest like folks do when a Confederate veteran's funeral procession passes on its way to the graveyard. I stared up at him, tears wetting my own cheeks. Suddenly he knelt down beside Mama, put his hat on the floor, grabbed my right hand in both of his, and held on like he'd never let go. I couldn't help it; I sat up and threw my arms around my daddy's neck. He held me tight for a long time, till I quit shaking. He didn't say a word.

  Papa hadn't hugged me I don't reckon since the day I was twelve years old.

  Well, then he put his arms around Mama. "Oh, Hoyt," she whispered. "The little grave we've got in the cemetery ... I don't think I could stand it if—oh, Hoyt, our boy is alive!" Then she grabbed aholt of me and cried like I was dead.

  At some point my daddy walked toward the back hall and was gone a while. When he came back in he said, "You don't have to worry about the milkin', son. I did it."

  It's not to my credit that I had forgot all about the cow. Well, I reckon he needed to go get aholt of himself.

  I didn't want any supper, and they didn't, either. Mama just brought some buttermilk and cold corn lightbread and they sat there by me in the hall to eat it.

  About first dark, Cold Sassy arrived.

  Good ole Loomis, he must of galloped all over town telling about my escape on the train trestle, because everybody seemed to know all about it. Just the same, they kept asking questions that I didn't feel like answering.

  Lots of ladies brought cake or pie—like if somebody had died.

  I wanted to see Grandpa Blakeslee. I almost asked if him and Miss Love were back yet from getting married, but there wasn't any use giving Mama another headache.

  I remember Aunt Loma and Uncle Camp coming in. The baby, fat and sweaty and dumb-looking, was fast asleep on her shoulder. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Campbell Junior was the fattest baby ever seen in Cold Sassy. Aunt Loma looked furious. She didn't so much as ask how I was feeling. Why would my getting run over make her so mad? Maybe she was mad because I'd lived to tell it.

  But for once it wasn't me she was mad at. "How could Pa have run off with That Woman!" she whispered to Mama.

  "Hush, Loma," said Mama, placing her hand on my arm. "That's not important right now. Not compared to Will."

  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.

  Pink and Smiley and Dunse McCall came in, tiptoeing over to me like I was a haint or a corpse, or like they planned to yessir and no-sir me from now on. Finally Pink mumbled, "You didn't have to go do a fool thing like that, Will." He was proud of me and jealous both, I could tell.

  "Aw, go get you a piece of pie," said I. Propped on my elbow, holding up my head with my hand, I grinned at the three of them. They grinned back, and Smiley kind of joshed my shoulder as they moved toward the dining room, where Aunt Carrie and Miss Sarah, French Gordy's wife, were slicing cakes and pies. I could hear the dessert plates rattling as Mama took them out of the china cabinet.

  I could also hear several ladies talking low over near the front door. I knew by the crackledy voice that Miss Alice Ann Boozer was one of them. She said somebody seen Rucker Blakeslee and the Simpson woman havin' supper at the ho-tel. "A weddin' supper, I s'pose you'd call it. Rucker didn't never spend one dime takin' Mattie Lou to no ho-tel. Bet you she haints them two t'night."

  "Well, I heard little Loma threw a pure fit down at the store today," said somebody else. "You want my opinion, Rucker's been hopin' to git shet a-Mattie Lou ever since he laid eyes on the milliner. But be ye not disencouraged. The Lord says vengeance is His'n."

  Miss Sarah heard this last as she came through the hall with the big plate of sliced cake. Going over to the talking ladies, she whispered, "I saw her and Rucker right after they come in from Jefferson. He calle
d me over to say they'd just got married. 'She wants a weddin' pitcher,' he said, and they went in Mr. Hale's photo shop. I couldn't believe the nerve."

  "I heard Mr. Hale refused to take the pitcher," said Miss Alice Ann.

  "Well, good for him," said somebody. "Imagine, a weddin' pitcher this soon after Mr. Hale took a funeral pitcher of Mattie Lou laid out in her coffin and all them baskets of flowers around her."

  I knew Mr. French would be upset about the wedding. His mother having married Granny's daddy, they grew up together like brother and sister. The day Granny died, Mr. French said to Mama, "Mr. Blakeslee is a good decent man. But Mattie Lou done all the givin'."

  The talkers moved on then, because a covey of Presbyterian ladies were coming in. I shut my eyes like sleeping as they marched over to stare at the corpse.

  "Dear boy, hit just wadn' his time to die," Miss Looly said softly.

  "S'pose it wadn' his time to die but it was that trestle's time to fall?" her sister breathed, touching my cheek. "Or what if it was that train engineer's time to die? What would of happened to Will?"

  "Shet up, Cretia," whispered Miss Looly. "Hit ain't for us to ast sech questions. Hit were the Lord's will for the boy to live. All we got to do is be thankful."

  For a moment I swelled with importance, getting talked about like that. Then for no good reason I saw myself as Raw Head and Bloody Bones, spinning into nothing under giant wheels and thunder. I felt sick again, and scared. I didn't want to be a nothing.

  I wished Grandpa would come, but I knew he wouldn't. Not on his wedding night.

  15

  WHO CAME instead of Grandpa was the Methodist preacher. Standing over me, he said, "Son, John Wesley got saved from a fire as a boy and he started the Methodist church. Now you been spared, Will. Miraculously spared. Maybe the Lord's got special plans for you, too—like preachin' the gospel."

  Miss Lizzie Mae Tuttle came in the door as he said that. She hooted. "God sure better get to work if He's got in mind to make a preacher out of Will Tweedy." Everybody laughed, including me. "Mr. Tuttle's go'n be on over terreckly," she added, like she thought I'd asked for him personal.

  Cudn Hopewell Stump spoke up from the parlor. "God spared Li'l Beulah Samples in that cyclone back in 'eighty-four. Y'all recollect them Sampleses? Used to live over on the Athens road."

  Raising my head, I saw Cudn Hope lean forward in his chair, taking aim at the brass spittoon on the hearth. But him being known as a poor shot with tobacco juice, I reckon Mama cringed, because he said, "Jest a minute, folks," and went outside to spit over the banisters.

  When he got back, his wife, Cudn Agnes, had taken over the story, telling how Big Beulah sent Little Beulah over to take Miss Winnie Blalock a basket of sweet potatoes. Miss Winnie lived in a sharecropper house on the Stedman farm. "Jest fore Li'l Beulah got thar, a storm come up and hailstones big as this commenced a-fallin'." She made a circle with her plump thumb and forefinger.

  "Lord, some them hailstones was big as teacups and weighed a pound," Cudn Hope said, sitting down again. "I seen'm. If one had a-fell on Beulah's head, she'd a-been with Jesus 'thout ever knowin' what hit her."

  "Pore thang had jest jumped under a bridge to git shelter from the hail," said Cudn Agnes, "when here come a great big ole dark funnel-shape cloud, full a-planks and trees and dust. Hit was a-roarin' like a freight train!"

  Cudn Hope grabbed the story back. "First it sucked up the Stedman house, like 'tweren't no more'n a leaf, and—"

  "And after that house went whirly off into the sky, dipped down agin and tuck Miss Winnie's house—and her in it!"

  Cudn Hope said, "Li'l Beulah had to watch whilst Miss Winnie went flyin' off to Kingdom Come. Next thang she knew—"

  "Next thang she knew, the cyclone was liftin' the bridge right up from over her, like it was a piece a-paper." Mama, who had come to sit by me on the davenport, put her hand on mine and kept it there while Cudn Agnes finished the story. "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."

  But Cudn Hope got in the last word. "Us that knowed her," he said, "never doubted she saved some Chinamen first."

  "I swannee to God," somebody breathed, and the room was quiet for a moment.

  "Is that cyclone why the woods around here are full of uprooted pine stumps?" the Methodist preacher said finally.

  Cudn Hope said naw, that happened around 1882. "We had a big wind and rainstorm one night and near all the pine trees blowed down. Peeler and Lovin Comp'ny put a sawmill in there and sawed'm up."

  Papa told the preacher, "The stumps all point northeast to southwest. You can hunt coons in those woods at night and never need a compass."

  It was after somebody brought in lemonade that they started on hit-by-the-train stories.

  Mr. Gordy told how, back in aught-one or aught-two, Cold Sassy's first steam fire engine got hit crossing the tracks to the old Sanders Hotel fire. The engine was smashed and both horses killed, and a fire hook stabbed young Addis Morgan in the head and spilled his brains out.

  "Next day they found one a-them horses' hoofs up past the depot," remembered old man Frazier. "It was already crawlin' with maggots."

  "Oh, Lord, Will," whispered Mama, and got up and hurried toward the bathroom. Knowing Mama, I figured it was to vomit. In my mind I pictured that horse hoof. Then I pictured somebody finding my own foot at the water's edge on Blind Tillie Creek. About then Mr. Cratic Flournoy came out in the hall and noticed how pale I was, I reckon, and deliberately told one you could laugh at, about Mr. Farnam's brood sow getting picked up on the train's cowcatcher, and all it amounted to was the sow had a free ride to town. Wasn't hurt a bit. When somebody sent word to Mr. Farnam, why, he just walked into the depot and led her back home to her pigs.

  Toddy Hughes lumbered in. Besides working at the foundry, he was a young stringer for the Atlanta Constitution Tri-Weekly. Said he wanted to write me up. Nobody in our family had ever been written up in the Atlanta papers. I was real excited, but Mama said he better wait till tomorrow. Oh, gosh, he might change his mind or forget about it. But he promised he'd be by right after breakfast.

  And here came Mr. Tuttle, acting like he'd personally saved me and like maybe I was his favorite young friend. After he inquired how I was, somebody asked him about the cow and mule that was killed yesterday. Then he told about one time ten or fifteen years ago when the southbound train ran over a bull yearling on a curve. "Two or three boxcars turned over and rolled down into the ravine. Spilled a mess of flour and sugar and I don't know what-all."

  My daddy remembered riding his horse out there to see the wreck. "It looked like snow had fell down that embankment."

  "When I ast the farmer how much he wanted for his dead yearlin'," said Mr. Tuttle, laughing, "he stood lookin' out at all that flour and stuff spilled broadcast down the bank and said, 'Tuttle?' he said, 'Tuttle, I'm willin' to strike off even, if you are. I think my bull got the best of it.'"

  In the midst of the ladies' shrieky laughter and the men's guf faws and haws, Dr. Slaughter hurried in. "How you feelin', son?" he asked. "I just heard, Mary Willis. I been out in the country all day. I want to be sure Will's all right."

  While he poked around on my stomach, felt my bones, and told Mama not to give me anything but liquids tonight, we heard a commotion at the door and Grandpa's voice boomed out from the veranda: "Gosh a'mighty! Ifn I'd a-knowed y'all had made up a party for us, we'd a-got here sooner!"

  16

  I FOUND OUT LATER that Grandpa and Miss Love knew about the train running over me. After Loomis spread the word all over town, Mr. Jimmy Dan Allsup had rushed into the hotel dining room to tell Grandpa, who was sitting at the little round table with Miss Love, eating a wedding supper of fried catfish and banana fritters.

  Next day Mr. Allsup told French Gordy that Grandpa turned white as a sheet. Soon as he found out I wa
s all right, though, he said they might as well finish supper. He'd have to pay for it anyway, and besides there wasn't anything at his house for Miss Love to cook. But Grandpa didn't let on to the crowd gathered at our house but what he thought they were all there to celebrate the wedding.

  It's hard to believe how he carried that off.

  It was like he didn't hear the silence that greeted them and didn't see Mama go pale or Aunt Loma flounce out of the parlor and down the hall, handling the baby so rough he woke up squalling. Grandpa walked in like it was the usual thing to go off and get a new young wife before your old wife is cold in the grave. Like it never dawned on him anybody would mind.

  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. And as Grandpa pushed her forward, it was on her that all the eyes fastened. One by one the men stood up, the way you're supposed to when a lady comes in, but they looked uncertain what to say.

  There was no uncertainty about Grandpa. "By golly, I'm shore glad to see you folks!" he said, ushering Miss Love toward the parlor door and ignoring me on the davenport in the hall. His blue eyes twinkled with excitement. First time I'd seen any life in him since Granny took sick.

  Like there was no way in creation that anybody could know what he and Miss Love had been up to, Grandpa said, "We got a surprise for all y'all." Standing in the double doorway to the parlor, his back to me, he put his right arm around Miss Love's shoulders and said, "We'd like to announce we done got married this evenin', over at Jefferson. Folks, meet the new Miz Enoch Rucker Blakeslee! Mary Willis? Where's Mary Willis?" Mama was right there, but he hollered like she was way at the back of the house. "Mary Willis, come kiss the bride. Loma?"