Cold Sassy Tree (12 page)

As we neared the end of it, there were shouts and whistles and cheers from the folks crowded there, and finally a burst of clapping. The last few steps of the way, hands reached out to pull us to our feet. Then I was caught up in the arms of a huge man wearing overalls and a train cap—the engineer who'd waved at me in Cold Sassy. Giving me a bear hug, he shouted, "God a'mighty, boy! God a'mighty!" It was like I was his own son. He'd never even seen me before that day, I don't think, but it was like I was his own son.

In bed that night, going over and over what all happened, it dawned on me that by saving myself, I had saved the train engineer from running down a life, never mind it wouldn't of been his fault. That's why he was so glad to see me.

He was still holding me tight when I looked back and saw that T.R. was right out there where we'd left him on the trestle. Yelping and whining, he crouched forlorn between the rails, yearning towards us but not moving.

"T.R.!" I yelled, pointing at him, and the crowd took it up.

"Come 'ere, boy!" a man called, giving a loud piercing whistle.

"Here, boy! Here, boy!" from someone else.

"Come on, pup, you kin make it!"

More whistles. Arms outstretched toward him. And me shaking worse than ever, too weak to yell again. The dog wouldn't budge. Howling, barking, whimpering, he finally tried to crawl, but quit when one hind leg slipped through the crossties. He just let it hang there. He was frozen.

"Won't somebody g-go get him?" I was weeping now. "That's my dog!"

But the engineer, one bulging arm still around my shoulders, suddenly yanked me towards the train. "We gotta git outer here, boy! Come on, folks, git back on the train!" he hollered. "They's another'n comin'!" Then, handing me over to the conductor, he and the fireman sprinted toward the engine, way up the tracks.

The conductor, a tiny man in a beaver hat and Prince Albert coat, was jumping up and down like a tin clown. "Make haste, folks!" he yelled, waving his hat and pushing me toward the caboose. "We had to put on two trains! Other'n will be along any minute! Got to clear the tracks!"

"I ain't go'n leave my dog!" I said, turning back.

Lightfoot sprang forward. "I'll go git him, Will!"

The conductor grabbed her. "We ain't got time! I ain't go'n let you be on that-air trestle for the next train to hit. Besides, you cain't tote that big dog, honey. You too little bitty."

A new voice swept by like a wind, deep and booming. "I's gwine git him, Mr. Will!" It was big black Loomis, Queenie's husband, six feet six and three hundred pounds, hat on and coattails flapping. Racing by me, without even slowing down he hit the trestle like it was no different from the tracks in Cold Sassy. T.R. recognized Loomis right off and started crawling in, belly scraping the crossties.

Some of the passengers rushing to get back on the train stopped to watch as Loomis loped over the trestle. It was like they were hypnotized. But the conductor and the regular train travelers sure weren't hypnotized. They kept yelling for us to come on.

As the crowd pulled and pushed me toward the cars, my head corkscrewed back just in time to see the black man swing T.R. up and drape him around his neck, like in the Bible picture of the lost lamb and the shepherd. Then I got handed up to the conductor, who stood on the steps of the caboose—Lightfoot right behind me. The conductor was screaming for folks to run on up to the other passenger cars. "Ain't room for nobody else on this here caboose!"

But they let big Loomis on. He handed up the dog. Then, ducking, he swung himself through the door just as the train lurched forward. T.R. licked my face, wagging his tail into a blur, while I and the others cheered the black giant.

Some of the passengers didn't make it back onto the train. We saw men, and women, and children pull back into the bushes and brambles as the train got rolling. They looked anxious but most smiled and waved. Those of us who were by a window waved back.

Big Loomis had moved onto the little platform at the back. I figured he didn't feel right, being in the same car with white folks, though Lord knows nobody cared right then. All of a sudden Loomis yelled, "Jesus save us, dare's dat dar udder train! He ne'ly at de trestle!"

Fear spread over faces. A lady screamed. I felt like screaming. Clapped a hand over my mouth so I couldn't. Lightfoot caught my other hand and held it tight, her eyes wide, her face gone white. Somebody yelled, "Conductor, cain't you run faster?"

The oncoming engine hit the trestle, whistle screaming
WHOO-WHOO-WHOO.
The question was could it be braked fast enough and could we speed up fast enough.... The chasing engine got bigger and bigger as the gap between us closed, then shrunk as our engineer picked up speed. The last I saw before we rounded a bend, the other train had stopped and was picking up everybody we'd left beside the tracks.

Lightfoot sat by me on the short run to Cold Sassy. T.R. lay across my feet. Loomis had come back in, and he stood with one hand on my shoulder, his black face shining with pride and sweat. Hot as he was from running, he kept on the long black jim-swing coat till he saw me shivering, and then he put it around me. Queenie had sewed that coat. Weren't any white men in town big enough to where Loomis could wear their old clothes, so she had to make nearly everything he had. The cloth smelled sweaty, but I didn't care. I didn't know there was lubricating oil on my overalls and in my hair, where it had dropped off the engine parts, and I'm afraid it got on the coat that Loomis was so proud of. Shouting above the train noise, I told him much obliged for saving T.R.

"You be's welcome, Mr. Will. You know dat."

I loved Loomis. His whole name was Annie Mae Hubert Knockabout Loomis Toy. After his mama had ten boys, she said the nex' baby gwine be name Annie Mae no matter whut. She always called him Annie Mae, but nobody else did. His daddy was owned by the Toys is how he got his last name. Loomis worked for us off and on all my life—milking till I got big enough, plowing the garden till I got big enough, fixing fences and chopping wood till I got big enough. He beamed down at me now, showing his two gold front teeth, and rolled his eyes toward Heaven. "You sho got you a frien' Up Yonder, Mr. Will. Sho nuff! I speck it cause yo daddy and mama be sech good peoples. Lawdy, Lawdy, it gwine be a happy time at yo house t'night!"

I hadn't thought that far. Good gosh, Papa would be mad as heck about my sneaking off!

The train rocked on toward Papa.

Lightfoot was scrooched up in the corner of the bench, swaying with the motion of the train. I looked over at her, red-faced from the heat and sweaty and dirty as me. Her long whitey hair hung in damp strands and there were briar scratches on her hands. Tears brimming in her blue eyes suddenly spilled over. I figured she was picturing me flattened like a penny on the trestle rails. But what she said, in a wail hard to understand over the train racket and me still part deaf, was "I left my bucket in the blackberry bushes, Will! Hit were might near full!"

I couldn't think what to say. If she hadn't rushed to help me, she wouldn't of lost the bucket, and I knew those blackberries weren't picked to make a pie with or to put up as jam or jelly or wine. They were for supper. Like as not, all else her folks would have was fried fatback, cream gravy, and corn pone.

The girl blushed, like it just dawned on her that she had let out how poor and hungry she was, and turned her face away from me.

Trying to sound like I thought berry-picking was just something she did for fun, I said, "Why'n't we go pick some more early in the mornin'? Mama's been astin' me every day when am I go'n get her some blackberries."

As a matter of fact, Mama never asked me to pick anything anymore, except in our garden. Between her and Papa and Grandpa I was too busy with home chores and store work to go hunting wild fruit. Mama bought our blackberries and yellow plums and muscadines from little colored boys who came by, or from doddery old colored men, or from fat black women with shy stair-step children, each toting two lard buckets full.

"If we go back to Blind Tillie Trestle we can find your bucket," I said. "How bout tomorrow?"

Soon as that was out of my mouth I didn't know why I said it.

For one thing, I didn't particularly want to walk through Mill Town again. For another, I felt sick. Sick at my stomach. 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!

And if Mama and them found out it was a mill girl, I'd be hard put to explain it. No town boy or girl from a nice home would be caught dead with a linthead.

I was about to make up some excuse when I felt the clickety-clacks slow down and saw Cold Sassy going by the train windows. Remembering Papa, I forgot all about Lightfoot's blackberry bucket. Him laying on the strap wouldn't be the half of it. He'd keep me in the store, garden, and stable the rest of the summer.

Sick at heart, I knew I didn't even want to meet Lightfoot tomorrow.

I tried to think up some excuse, but no matter what I said, it was such in Cold Sassy that she would read
mill girl/town boy
written all over me and she'd hate me the rest of her life, despite she had helped me up from under the wheels of death, so to speak.

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.

W
HEN 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.