Cold Sassy Tree (15 page)

"Call me Aint Loma and I'll let you by!" she yelled in a high, child voice.

"I won't! Move!"

"Say Aint Loma!" With every flap of her arms, her body swelled, till she and the train were the same size, and me caught between.

"You ain't my aunt!
MOVE!
"

Struggling out of the dream, I heard myself babbling sounds that made no sense. Gosh a'mighty, if only I'd had time to grab Loma and push her off into the gorge or under the train wheels! I was so mad it took me a minute to see that I was safe and alone in my room at home. In the next instant, a time out of my childhood flashed before me: the day Loma turned twelve. It put light on what had long been a dark puzzlement.

Up till that birthday we were like a sister and a little brother. She'd get mad and hit me if I crossed her or sassed her, and I'd do meany things to her, like tripping her up or putting sugar in her salt cellar. Still and all, we got along about like you'd expect till, on the day she was twelve (I was just six), she ordered me in a growny tone to start calling her Aint Loma. "Say it. Call me Aint Loma." She raised her fist over my head.

"Silly, you ain't my aunt."

"I am so, too. Ast Sister." Sitting smug in the porch swing, she cut herself another piece of chocolate birthday cake.

"I want some, Loma." I held out my hands.

"If you say Aint Loma and ast me nice."

Jerking her braids, I ran upstairs to my room and slammed the door. Later, coming out, I nearly stepped on my lead soldiers, which Grandpa had ordered for me from London, England. They were in a pile by the door. All broken.

I never forgot the pitiful sight of those dead soldiers, some without heads or arms, some with legs missing, and rifles bent or snapped in two. But I had forgotten why Aunt Loma did it.

After the dream I remembered everything: how I cried till suppertime about the soldiers but still wouldn't say Aint Loma. How she taunted me, singsonging, "Crybaby, come let your Aint Loma hold you."

"I'm go'n tell Mama on you!" I yelled.

"You do and I'll say you done it. And who you think she'll believe, smarty crybaby? She's seen you get mad and tear up things before."

I spat in Loma's face.

She told Mama on me for spitting at her. I said she broke my lead soldiers. She said I did it. Mama believed her instead of me, and Papa whipped me good. That night when she tucked me in, Mama said, "Will, sugar, try to be a better boy tomorrow. Hear?"

"Yes'm. But tell Loma to quit sayin' she's my aunt. She says I got to call her Aint Loma."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow, son. Go to sleep now."

You need to understand that in Cold Sassy when the word "aunt" is followed by a name, it's pronounced
aint,
as in Aint Loma or Aint Carrie. We also say
dubya
for the letter "w",
sump'm
for something,
idn
' for isn't,
dudn
' for doesn't,
raig'n
for reckon,
chim'ly
for chimney,
wrench
for rinse,
sut
for soot, as in train or chim'ly sut, and
like
for lack, as in "Do you like much of bein' th'ew?" Well, I know that how we speak is part of what we are. I sure don't want Cold Sassy folks to sound like a bunch of Yankees. But I don't want us to sound ignorant, either, and pronunciations like
sump'm
and
id'n
sound ignorant. So I'm trying to remember not to use such—except right now to tell how Loma became Aint Loma.

The morning after our fuss about it, Mama sat me down for a talking-to. "Now, sugarfoot, you got to get something straight," she began. "Loma is my sister, which makes her your aunt. And it's high time you started callin' her that. She's twelve now, a young lady."

"Then how come she's still goin' barefooted?"

"Well, she cain't go barefooted anymore. And you got to start showin' her proper respect. You hear? Take in that lip and answer me."

"Yes'm."

"Look at me when you answer me."

"Yes'm."

"Now if I hear of you and your Aint Loma fussin' about this again, you go'n get another whippin'. You understand?"

"Yes'm."

Loma was at our house as much as at her own, I reckon, and for a long time after Mama laid down the law I didn't call her anything. But because Mama and Papa and Grandpa and Granny started speaking of her to me as "your Aint Loma," I gradually thought of that as her name, and after the awful first time, saying it wasn't much harder than saying doodly-squat or Peter Rabbit. By time Mary Toy was old enough to talk, Loma was Aint Loma to both of us. And though I finally forgot
why
she broke my soldiers—until the nightmare — I never forgot or forgave her for doing it.

When Miss Love came into my life, Aunt Loma was still my prime hate, and getting even with her was still my prime goal.

Mama thought hating folks was sinful. She could make allowances for anybody. When I'd get to fussing about Aunt Loma, she'd say, "Your Aunt Loma means well, son. I know she's hateful sometimes, but she's got a good heart."

Good heart, my foot. Aunt Loma's heart was down on a level with Mr. Angus Tuttle's, and he had caused me more whippings than I could count. Us boys were always trying to get back at him. Just for instance, one day we sneaked into his barn, just fooling around, and chanced to see a gallon of the yellow paint that he put on the handles of all his farm tools so if somebody showed up with a yellow-handled hoe, everybody would know it was stolen from Mr. Tuttle.

Well, it was real cold the day we went in there, and his barn was full of mules, horses, and cows brought in from his farm; sharecropper tenants being bad to steal, if you live in town, it's the custom to bring in all your animals, wagons, and farm tools for the winter. What we did, and it was my idea, we dipped every horse, mule, and cow tail in that yellow paint. When one flipped, good gosh it sent a spray of yellow all over the dern animal, the stalls, the hayracks, everything. Then we got the idea to paint all the hoofs yellow, too, and the cows' horns, and we caught a rooster that was up on the rafters and painted his beak and toenails.

You never saw anybody mad as Mr. Tuttle when he got home, and he never doubted who'd done it. That night Mama didn't just ask me to be a better boy; she insisted on it.

If I had told her just how much I hated Mr. Tuttle, she wouldn't of believed it. But compared to the way I felt about Aunt Loma, he was like a favorite uncle.

There were a few other people I couldn't stand, like Hosie Roach, the mill boy in my class at school. Most mill children went to school just two or three years, then dropped out to work at the spindles. If they were too little to reach the spindles, they stood on boxes. Children caught playing on the job got a whipping from the supervisor. I didn't like to think about that. I didn't like to think about mill children at all, and never had to as long as the mill ran its own school. Then a few years back, though the
Cold Sassy Weekly
ran editorials against "allowing cotton mill folks to mix and mingle with the children of our fair city," the school board voted to close the mill school and let the lintheads come to ours. Papa was one of the board members in favor. If he'd had to sit next to Hosie, I bet you he'd of thought twice.

Hosie was still not through high school, even though he was twenty-one. He'd work a few months in the mill, then come to classes a few months. Sometimes he worked at night after being at school in the day. So he hadn't been promoted regular, despite he was right smart for a mill boy. Our superintendent kept trying to get him to quit school, but Hosie vowed he was go'n graduate if it took him till he was thirty years old.

We were always fighting at recess. I really hated him, and the feeling was mutual. But compared to Aunt Loma, Hosie Roach seemed like a best friend.

Then there was Grandpa Tweedy, my daddy's daddy out in Banks County. He talked hard times morning, noon, and night. Called himself a farmer, but you never saw him behind a plow or driving a team. Lazy, great goodness. Like the lilies of the field in the Bible, he toiled not, neither did he spend his own money. He was always asking Papa to help him out. All he ever did was sit on the porch and swat flies, and like I said, even had him a pet hen to peck them up.

When Papa left the farm at sixteen to go work for Grandpa Blakeslee, he made twenty dollars a month and had to send half of it home to pay the field hand who took his place. That was the custom. But even after Papa married at nineteen, making forty dollars a month, he still had to send Grandpa Tweedy ten of it till the day he was twenty-one. My mother never said she didn't like her father-in-law, but I could tell she didn't, and that may of been why.

What started me hating him, he wouldn't let me fish on Sunday. Said it was a sin. I remember I put out some set hooks late one Saturday, thinking if I caught a fish, it wouldn't be a sin to take him off the hook next morning. End his suffering, you know. Early Sunday I ran down to the river and one of the lines was just a-jiggling! But when I ran up the hill and asked Grandpa's permission to get my fish off the hook, he said, "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'."

Of course the fish was gone Monday morning. But I got back at Grandpa Tweedy. I'd noticed a big hornet's nest in the privy, just under the tin roof, so I bided my time behind a tree till I saw him go in there. Giving him just long enough to get settled good, I let fly a rock and it hit that tin roof like a gunshot. Grandpa burst out of there in a cloud of hornets, trying to swat and hold his pants up at the same time. He knew I'd done it. "Will Tweedy, I'll git you, boy!" he yelled. "I'll git you!"

I just couldn't hardly stand him. One time when he was fussing about tenants stealing out of his woodpile, I watched while he drilled holes in several sticks of stovewood, filled the holes with gunpowder, sealed them over with candlewax, and put them on top of the woodpile. "What if somebody gets kilt?" I asked him.

I was just a little bitty boy, so I believed him when he said, "Ain't go'n hurt nobody. Hit'll jest scare the livin' daylights out of'm."

Next morning at breakfast we heard a big whomp, boom from the tenant shack. A few minutes later, the cook rushed in and said, "Mist' Tweedy, one them white-trash chillun's hand done got tore up, po li'l lamb, an' dey stove's ruint."

Grandpa saucered his coffee and took a big slurp before he spoke. His voice was hard. "Well, then I reckon they won't steal no more a-my far wood."

You can see why I despised Grandpa Tweedy and didn't have a dab of respect for him. But compared to Aunt Loma, he was King Arthur and I was a Knight of the Round Table.

Lying there in the dark, thinking about Aunt Loma, I got really mad. She could of at least pretended to be glad I'd escaped from the jaws of death on that trestle. It wouldn't of hurt her. But she hadn't said one word, and then flounced off without so much as a good night to Grandpa and Miss Love.

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?

I
T'S NOT
to my credit that the next morning I forgot all about telling Lightfoot we'd pick blackberries.

I couldn't of gone. I had to wait for Toddy Hughes to come by and interview me for the Atlanta newspaper. Also, I felt awful tired, and Dr. Slaughter had said I better stay quiet and not get hot. Mama would have a fit if I tried to go off somewhere. She wouldn't even let me milk that day. Got Loomis to do it.

There wasn't any way to let Lightfoot know, but I should of at least remembered.

I guess what messed me up was so many folks coming to call, from right after breakfast on. If they weren't asking me about getting run over by the train, they were asking Mama about Grandpa and Miss Love.

I was on the front veranda with young Toddy Hughes about ten o'clock when Mr. Son Black rode up bareback on his red mare mule. He had unhitched her from the plow and she still had on her collar, the traces draped over her neck. 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.

"Whoa, Lucy," he said to the mule, then kicked her halfway up our walk and asked where my granddaddy was. He sounded mad. "I want to see him. He ain't come in yet at the store."

"That ain't surprising Son," Toddy Hughes said with a leery grin, "bein' as yesterd'y was Mr. Blakeslee's weddin' day. Or ain't you heard?"

Son spat. "I heard."

"Well, and I just guess they slept late," Toddy called as the mule turned away and trotted down the walk.

"Mr. Hughes!" snapped Mama, who came out on the porch in time to hear that.

Toddy stood up quick, blushing, and said, "Sorry, ma'am. Sorry. Well, I'll mosey along. Got to go write this up and put it on the telegraph to Atlanta. I, uh, reckon they'll use it right away, Will. The paper ain't likely to of had anything like bein' run over by a train and lived to tell it before. Uh, be seein' you, ma'am." He tipped his straw hat to Mama. Looked like he couldn't get away fast enough.

He was gone before I remembered I was going to tell him about Lightfoot McLendon running out on the trestle to help me off and about Loomis saving my dog. Likely they wouldn't of put Loomis in the paper, him being colored, but I meant to ask Toddy to try.

It's no credit to me that I was sort of glad he rushed off before I could tell him about Lightfoot. I didn't want to hear what Pink and Lee Roy and them would say about me and her if they saw her name in the paper. Also, it would take Mama and Papa a month to convince folks that, no, I wasn't at the trestle with a mill girl. She just happened to be picking berries nearby.

Aunt Loma spent most of that morning at our house, fussing about Miss Love and jerking the baby around like it was all his fault that his grandpa had disgraced the family. She kept saying, "I'm go'n get even with Love Simpson if it's the last thing I ever do."