Cold Sassy Tree (25 page)

"Miz Jones and Mama laid Granmaw out. Fixed her mouth shut with a handkerchief tied under her chin and over her head. Papa hepped my uncles finish makin' the coffin, and soon as the preacher came, we ate dinner quick and set out for Hebron, it bein' a hot day and her not embalmed or anything. And like I said, they carried her to the graveyard in this very wagon here. Used those same mules out yonder, Big Red and Satan. All the way to Hebron, Mary Toy complained about us havin' to miss the Ringling Brothers Circus over in Athens. Every time we had to walk up a hill to save the horses, she'd say why couldn't Granmaw have died last week."

It gave us the creeps, sitting there in that hearse. It was pitch-black dark before the rain finally drizzled away and the moon came out. Wispy clouds scurried across the sky like little ghosts.

I said maybe there was enough dry wood under the wagon to build a fire with.

The fire warmed us some, after we finally got it going, but it didn't cheer anybody up. "I wish we had some good old hot buttered arsh potatoes," said Lee Roy.

Every now and again somebody would say, "I ain't scared a-no old dead woman." Or, "Is all that so, Will?" Once Pink went shush and whispered, "Y'all hear that?...I thought I heard something. Over by the wagon...."

"Just the wind," I said airily, holding a twig in the fire till it got red hot on the end, like a long cigar. I waved it in circles a while, thinking what I could tell next. Pink got up off his log and turned his back to the fire. As we sat listening to the katydids, singing loud as they came out into the wetness, the moon lit up a layer of fog below us.

Blu Jackson is dead, I thought bitterly. Granny Blakeslee is dead. And reckon what has happened by now with Grandpa and Miss Love? I wanted to go home.

Dunse was like-minded. "I'm sick of this dern campout." He groaned. "I'm hungry and I'm cold." Huddled in a blanket, he kicked at a log on the fire. It sent up sparks. The flaring of light made big shadows dance on the wet gray canvas of the hearse.

Suddenly it didn't make any sense at all to stay on here till next week, when all we had to do was leave. I said as much, and the faces lit by the campfire grinned with relief. So it was decided. We would set out for Cudn Jake's place early in the morning and get Miss Love's racehorse.

Not a one of the boys would sleep in or under the wagon that night, despite the ground was wet as heck. I had counted on that. I was going to have a bed of hay all to myself. But as I put one foot up on the axle to climb in, I decided I might as well stay out with the fellers instead.

That night Bluford Jackson came to me in a dream. He didn't look dead but said he was. Said he was damaged goods in the worst way. He wanted me to tell Emma Lee Crutchfield to let him sit by her at preachin' next Sunday and please to save a space for him in her family pew.

"How big a space do you take now, Blu? Same as before, or just a inch or two?"

He didn't answer that. Just said he'd need Sunday clothes, and would I find him some and leave them in the crotch of the maple tree in his backyard.

"What you need clothes for, Blu? If you went to church naked as a jaybird, nobody'd know it."

"Ain't that the least you can do for me, Will, considerin' it was your firecrackers?" That made me mad, but he kept talking. "Will, I got lots of time now. If you want to be a doctor, when you get to medical school you can make room for me in your seat and I'll hep you with your lessons and all."

"I'm not go'n be a doctor. You the one was go'n be a doctor. I'm go'n farm. I cain't live your life for you, Blu." Then I woke up, frightened, and shivering from the cold.

I didn't tell my dream to the fellers, but weeks later I told it to Grandpa Blakeslee. I said, "Grandpa, it was like Blu didn't believe he was dead. Like he don't know what bein' dead means, for gosh sake."

Grandpa studied on it a minute and said, "I think it's you thet don't believe he's dead, son. I think it's you thet don't know what bein' dead means. But who does? Only them as has passed on."

Cudn Rachel was almost as big and fat as Mrs. Jones, and said she could spot hungry boys a mile away. She and Cudn Jake had already eaten, but her cook made us some big graham biscuits and fried half a ham, looked like, and a bunch of eggs, and put a gallon of milk on the table. The cook, having heard about our bears, said this blessing: "Lawd, hep us an' feed us, an' keep our en'mies from us, cause some'll come upon us, an' take our rations from us. A-men." We ate it all.

Miss Love's horse turned out to be a tall, prancy black gelding with a star on his forehead. With him tied behind the wagon on a lead rope, head held proud and high, we felt mighty fancy on the down-go to Cold Sassy, and we made mighty good time. The mules knew they were headed home.

We did lots of talking about whether or not Miss Love could train him. And then for the first time since we left Cold Sassy, the boys got to talking about her and Grandpa. Smiley started it. He said his mother thought Miss Love must have money and that's why Mr. Blakeslee married her. "My grandmother always did think the reason Mr. Blakeslee married Miss Mattie Lou was cause her daddy owned all that land."

That really made me mad. "Shut up!"

"Miss Mattie Lou was a old maid, wasn't she? Why would anybody marry a old maid cept for land or money?"

"I said shut up!" I yelled.

"Yeah, shut up, Smiley," said Dunse. "It ain't right to talk like that about the dead."

But they couldn't let go of the subject. And the more they got my goat, the worse things they said, especially about Miss Love.

Things like "Hey, Will, how long you think they been sweet on one another?" and "You reckon Miss Love's too old to have babies?"

"They ain't plannin' to have babies," I burst out, furious. "Grandpa and Miss Love have a business arrange-ment."

"What you mean by that?" Lee Roy asked with a smirk.

"I mean Miss Love is sleepin' in the comp'ny room," I said. "She's just livin' down there to keep house."

"I don't believe it."

"Well, it's so."

"Says who?"

"Says her. She told me."

"Haw! Since when have ladies started sayin' such as that to a boy? Shoot-dog."

Then Smiley crowded close up behind the driver's seat to talk ugly about the rich-lookin' stranger from Texas. "I heard he tore her clothers half off fore he got done kissin' her."

"Well, he didn't!" I was really mad now. "And I ought to know. I was there."

The boys took to making up jokes then, saying things you wouldn't want said about your grandpa's wife even if you hated her. I decided to change the subject. I swear I didn't know when I opened my mouth that I would say what I said, but it changed the subject all right:

"Y'all want to hear about Aunt Loma nursin' a pig?"

"You mean Campbell Junior?" asked Pink Predmore.

"I ain't talkin' bout the baby." We had started down a steep hill. "Slow down, Big Red. Whoa, Satan! Lee Roy, push hard on the brake post! The wagon's go'n run over the team!" Careening downhill, bumping over rocks and dried mud holes, we like to shook apart before we got the dern wagon under control.

"Did you say Miss Loma nursed a pig?" Pink asked as soon as he was able.

"You mean she put a pig up to her tits and let it suck?" asked Smiley.

"If Miss Loma did that, she must be crazy," said Dunse. "Anyhow, Will, how would you know it?"

I didn't, of course. One time I overheard Mama and Aunt Loma talking about a distant cousin over in Athens that did it to keep her milk going while her baby was in the hospital, but I just made up that it was Aunt Loma.

"Well, you know Campbell Junior was born little," I began, thinking fast. "I mean he didn't weigh more'n a fryin'-size chicken. Born early."

"Funny, I don't recollect him ever bein' little bitty," said Lee Roy.

"Well, he was. To keep him warm they had to put him in a pasteboard box with hot water bottles wrapped in towels all around him." That part was true. You just couldn't get Aunt Loma's house warm in winter. The rest I made up as I went along. "He was too weak to suck good, so Mama showed Aunt Loma how to milk herself and they gave it to him with a eyedropper. But seems like she never really had full bags. Not enough milk to feed a jaybird. And the baby bein' such a sorry sucker, they were scairt she'd go dry."

We were moving up a hill now, the mules straining forward. I flipped their rumps with the whip.

"Get to the pig," fat Lee Roy said impatiently. "Tell us bout the pig."

"Well, my daddy fine'ly got on the telephone and rung up a hospital doctor over in Athens and ast what to do. It was the doctor said get a pig."

"Naw!" The boys said naw like there was just one voice for the four of them.

"Yeah! The doc said a pig would really get her milk goin'."

"I don't believe any lady would nurse a pig," said Dunse. "Not even your Aunt Loma."

"You can believe it or not, it's so," said I, and at the moment I half-believed it myself. "They sent me out to Grandpa Tweedy's in the buggy to get one. His Poland China sow had just whelped a new litter. I got the runtiest and took it home in a box. Mama bathed it and wrapped it up in a blue blanket and took it in to Aunt Loma. Mama couldn't stand the sight, that little pig gruntin' and pushin', but I heard her tell Papa that Loma said it felt real good. You know how if a cow ain't stripped proper she gets a swollen bag and sore tits? Well, Aunt Loma had been hurt-in' a lot, besides worryin' bout the baby starvin' to death. She nursed that pig a week or more, I don't remember how long."

"If the pig was nursin' her," asked Pink, doubting, "what was happenin' to Campbell Junior?"

I thought fast. "The way it worked," I said, "Aunt Loma would let the baby nurse her a few minutes. Then she'd milk herself into a bottle. Then while Mama went to work feedin' Campbell Junior with a eyedropper, Granny would wrap the pig up and take it in to Aunt Loma, to get her stripped good. After that, I or Mary Toy, one, had to take the pig and feed it some cow's milk with a baby bottle so it wouldn't starve to death. We had a three-ring circus goin' there for a while."

"What happened to the pig?" asked Lee Roy as we crested a hill.

"Granny cooked him."

"Taste all right?"

"Nobody could eat him," said I. "But from then on Campbell Junior got fatter and fatter, and it's all on account of Aunt Loma havin' so much milk from gettin' started good with that pig."

"How come nobody's heard all this till now?" Pink said after while. He had laid down back there in the hay. "I cain't figure you knowin' something that good, Will, and keepin' it to yourself."

"Papa said I couldn't go fishin' for a year if I told it," I lied. "Which reminds me, don't
y'all
tell it, or what I said about Miss Love and Grandpa, either." All of a sudden I was real worried about what Miss Love would think if she heard it, but they all crossed their hearts and hoped to die.

It was really something to make up an outlandish story like that. I thought up another one right off, but needing a little time to work it out, all I said was, "Maybe I'll tell y'all about Aunt Loma and the rubber busts."

"The rubber what?" asked Smiley.

"Aunt Loma's rubber bust set that she bought for her weddin'. But y'all got to promise not to repeat it."

They like to fell out of the wagon promising, but I said let's wait till we stop to eat. Right off, Lee Roy commenced saying how hungry he was, though it was only ten o'clock.

"Me, too," said Dunse. "I'm starved. Wonder what Miss Rachel put in the basket?"

We soon saw an old wagon road that led up to a lonesome chimney and on to a shady creek. As we turned off the highway, I said, "I'll tell y'all just one fact that's important to the story. Until Campbell Junior was on the way, Aunt Loma was flat as a battercake, so to speak. Before she got married, Grandpa used to say he never could find a towel; Loma was always makin' herself a bosom or a bustle, one."

First we had to tend to the mules and Miss Love's racehorse. Then while Dunse pulled out Cudn Rachel's basket, I got shet of my clothes and jumped in the creek. I was hot, for one thing, and also I'd been remembering a floating trick Blu Jackson told me about last fall. He said you won't sink if you stretch your arms out on the water like Jesus Christ crucified, or like ten minutes to two on a clock. Well, it worked, by gosh. I felt like I was on a mattress. When I made my body straight and stiff, even my toes rose out of the water.

"Bet cain't any of y'all float this good!" I yelled. They all took off their clothes, waded in, and laid down on the water, but their feet and legs sank straight down as usual.

It made Smiley mad. "You just layin' in shallows, Will. You ain't floatin'."

"I am, too. It's deep here. Come feel." And he did, whooshing his arm under my back to make sure. I rocked like a boat, my toes still sticking out of the water.

"You ain't never floated like that before," said Pink, still suspicious.

I tried making a pillow out of my hands, putting them under the back of my head, and that worked even better. Closing my eyes, I could of gone to sleep if the boys hadn't pounced on me and sent me under.

Without bothering to put on clothes, we opened up Cudn Rachel's picnic and ate, sitting on the mossy creek bank with our feet cooling in the water. When I finished, I lay back, feet still in the water, and said, "Now I'm go'n tell about Aunt Loma and the rubber busts!

"Well, when Aunt Loma was go'n get married," I began, "she ordered her this rubber bust set from Sears and Roebuck, but she couldn't get'm blowed up. It was nearly time for the weddin' and she couldn't get the bicycle pump to work, so she ast me to do it." I sat up, splashing my feet in the cool water. "Said she'd pay me a dollar. Also said she'd kill me if I told anybody."

"Specially us, haw!" said Pink, raising on one elbow to chuck a rock at a hickernut tree.

"Well, so I blowed'm up. But then I took a needle and stuck this little bitty hole in the left bust. It went
psssssssssssst
all through the weddin' and Aunt Loma had a flat by the last I-do! You never in your life saw a bride as mad as her, or one holdin' her bouquet as high up."