Cold Sassy Tree (11 page)

Less than a mile past Mill Town, I rounded a bend and saw the train trestle up ahead, marching through the air high above the wooded gorge where Blind Tillie Creek ran. Just before we got to the trestle I whistled for my dog and went slipping and sliding down a red-dirt path, past dusty briar bushes that reached out to scratch me as I ate my fill of blackberries.

It was a sight cooler by the creek than up there on the tracks. I cut me a pole and was soon perched on a stump, fishing and eating fried chicken. Later I cut a blackgum twig to chew on and settled myself comfortable on the ground with the stump for a back rest.

It was nice and peaceful there. Watching the shallow water splash and churn over rocks, I almost forgot how mad I was at Mama for making me stay in mourning, how mad I was at her and Aunt Loma for fussing about Grandpa marrying when he clearly needed a housekeeper, and how mad I was at him and Miss Love for not caring how the family felt. But then I got mad at Papa. Here I was at last—fishing—and I couldn't enjoy it for feeling guilty.

I had sense enough to know my daddy really needed me to be home working the garden. But I wished he knew what it felt like to have fun. All Papa had ever done was work. Before he was knee-high to a gnat, his own daddy had him picking bugs off of cotton plants, and he was hoeing as soon as he knew the difference between a weed and a cotton stalk, and milking soon as his hands were big enough to squeeze a cow's tit. I bet he never in his life had sat in the shade of a train trestle holding a fishing pole and watching dragonflies walk on water.

Grandpa Blakeslee bragged a lot about my daddy being such a dandy worker. I was proud he wasn't lazy like his own daddy, who spent the summer days on his porch swatting flies and even had him a pet hen to peck up the dead ones. Grandpa Tweedy always claimed he couldn't work. "My veins is too small," he'd say. "My blood jest cain't git th'ew fast enough to let me do much." Naturally he had a beard. He was too lazy to shave. He was even too lazy and self-satisfied to go anywhere, except to preaching over at Hebron or to Cold Sassy to sell his cotton. Wasn't ever on a train but once, when he went to Dr. Mozely's funeral in Athens. All of us went, but first Grandpa Tweedy and my daddy had to decide if it was all right to ride that train. Being Sunday, it might be a sin.

Like Grandpa Tweedy, Papa worried all the time about sin on Sunday. He never let us read anything but the Bible and the
Christian Observer
on the Sabbath, and once talked Mr. Tuttle into locking up everybody's Sunday Atlanta papers at the depot till Monday morning. The fact that Cold Sassy put up with that for a month or more shows how much they respected my father. I respected him, too, as I said before. But I wished he knew what it felt like to need to go fishing.

My bait was gone again. I wasn't going to catch anything here. It was too hot and the creek too low. Might as well go home and get to work. But glancing around, I saw a mess of logs and brush on the other side and remembered the deep hole there. If any fish were in Blind Tillie Creek, that's where I'd catch them. I was just fixing to get up and wade across when I chanced to look up at the train trestle.

I had walked trestles plenty of times. I used to play on one out in Banks County with Cudn Doodle and them. But I'd never been on Blind Tillie Trestle. From where I sat, leaning against my tree stump and looking up, it seemed higher than a Ferris wheel. Higher even than the new Century Building in Atlanta, and it spanned a wide, deep gorge.

Miss Bertha at school had told us about the si-renes—the mermaids who used to sing to Greek sailors and they'd go off course to follow. Looking at that trestle, I felt like I was being sung to. Or maybe it was more like when the fire bells clang on Cold Sassy's horse-drawn fire engine and you just got to go chasing after it to where the smoke is billowing up.

That's how Blind Tillie Trestle called to me that day.

The longer I stared up at it and the blue sky and fleecy clouds beyond, the more it seemed like a bridge across the world. I wanted to see how things looked from up there. I don't even remember winding the fishing line around my pole, but all of a sudden I was clambering up the bank. Old T.R. raced me to the top and then barked at me till I got up there.

At the edge of the trestle, a brisk breeze had whipped up, and the tracks seemed to soar across the sky.

It never once occurred to me to be scared. But it occurred to the dog.

F
OLLOWING
behind me, T.R. crouched low and took a few careful steps onto the trestle. Then, whining, he turned and crawled back to solid ground, tail between his legs, and commenced begging me to come back, too.

When the dog saw I was laughing at him, he wet on the rail, scratched with his back paws in the dirt, and dashed off, trying to get me to play chase. After that didn't work, he bounded down the brambly path to the creek below, where we had just come from, and splashed over to the other side, trying to show me a better way to get there. Standing in the shallow water, T.R. barked and bragged his white-tipped tail like he'd done something to get praised for.

"Old yeller belly!" I called down to him, laughing. My voice echoed spooky between trestle and water and gorge. I sure wished Pink Predmore and them were up here with me.

I put one bare foot on the rail. It was hot but not enough to burn, so I walked on it a piece, arms spread-eagle, balancing with my fishing pole like a tightrope-walker at the circus. I remember wondering if any birds ever walked through the sky up there instead of flying over the gorge. I soon passed the sand barrel that was bolted onto the trestle beside the tracks. People have been known to jump into a trestle barrel if a train comes at the wrong time and they get trapped.

Two thirds of the way across, I stepped off the rail onto a crosstie and sat down, elbows on knees, to look around. I thought about putting a penny on the tracks for the train to flatten, then decided not to. The penny would fall in the creek. So I just sat there, looking way off, and tried to think who lived in that little white farmhouse with green shutters down in the valley. From up here the house looked like a fresh-painted toy. I wondered why nobody ever painted their houses out in Banks County, where Grandpa Tweedy lived. He didn't know what a can of paint looked like.

Enjoying the breeze, I stretched out, face down, to look through the crossties at the water below. Leaves floated on the creek like tiny boats. And here came a long stick, a wake trailing behind it. When the stick turned against the current to swim toward the bank, I saw it was a water moccasin and threw a cinder at it. I missed the snake, but my next cinder hit the white spot on old T.R.'s rump. He barked at me till he got distracted by a big terrapin crawling on the creek bank.

It sure beat being in mourning.

All of a sudden I saw T.R. raise his head to listen. Then he dashed up the path on the far side of the creek, barking all the way, and went to jumping around at the edge of the trestle. He like to had a fit for me to come on. Shoot, you'd think he heard the train or something. Wasn't near time for the train. I didn't hear anything myself except that dern dog barking.

But just to make sure, I moved my head over to the rail and put an ear against it, lazy-like, and—I could hear the clickety-clack! The train was coming! Well, I could make it easy. But as I scrambled to my feet, the fishing pole got wedged somehow between the rail and crosstie. Couldn't leave it that way. Might derail the train. By the time I got it loose, the clickety-clacks were plain as day and getting louder,
louder,
LOUDER!

I stumbled and fell. Jerking myself up, I saw I couldn't possibly get off the trestle before the train moved onto it. Like a fox who runs into a hound, I turned and sprinted the other way. From somewhere, as in a dream, I heard a scream and looked back just as the big smoking engine roared around a bend.

I knew the engineer saw me. His whistle was going
whoo-whoo-whoo
in quick fast blasts. The trestle shook like a leaf as the train hit it.

I thought to aim for the sand barrel.

God A'mighty help me, I wasn't go'n make it!
Jump!
No, too far, creek too low.... Whistle screeching in my ears.... Train heat almost at my heels....
Whoo-whoo-whoo!

At that moment I thought
FALL!

Like a doll pushed from behind, I fell face down between the rails and lay flat and thin as I could, head low between crossties, arms stretched overhead. As I was swallowed up in fire and thunder, I hugged my arms tight against my ears.

The engine's roar pierced my eardrums anyway, making awful pain. I was so scared I could hardly breathe, and there was a strong smell of heated creosote. Hot cinders spit on me from the firebox. Yet even as the boxcars clacked, knocked, strained, ground, and groaned overhead, it came to me that I wasn't dead. If there wasn't a dragging brake beam to rip me down the back, I was go'n make it!

Boy howdy, I did some fancy praying. All it amounted to was "God save me! Please God save me!" And then it was "Thank you, Lord, thank you, God, thank you, sir...." I guess what made it seem fancy was the strange peaceful feeling I got, as if the Lord had said, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant," or something like that. I wasn't dead! Boy howdy, boy howdy, boy howdy! I was buried alive in noise, and the heat and cinders stung my neck and legs and the bottoms of my feet. Still and all, that was what kept reminding me I wasn't dead.

I found myself counting boxcars, by the sound of them, which was a long sight different in this position, with my eyes shut tight against the dust and cinders, from being in Cold Sassy waiting for the train to get by so I could cross from South Main to North Main. The train had to end. Trains always do. It seemed like this one never would, but brakes were screeching and the clickety-clacks on the rails were slowing, so I knew the engineer was trying to stop.

I felt blistered from the heat. My straw hat was gone. My arms were so tight against my head that my ears felt numb, yet it wouldn't have hurt more if knives were being jabbed into my eardrums.

But boy howdy, I was alive! Thank you, Jesus.

All of a sudden I felt sunshine overhead. Opening my eyes and raising my head, I saw the red caboose getting smaller and smaller as it neared the end of the trestle. The shaking of the trestle stopped. All sounds were muted, as if I had a wad of thick cotton in both ears or was shut up in a padded closet. I felt limp and dizzy. And as knowledge of what could of happened hit me, I started shaking and crying.

I heard T.R. barking from what seemed like far off, but all of a sudden his tongue was on my face! By gosh, he had run out over that trestle he was so scared of! I grabbed and hugged him, crying, "Good ole dog, good ole T.R.!"

When the train finally stopped, its caboose was maybe a hundred feet beyond the trestle. Just then, despite being deafened, I heard a girl's voice scream out, "Will! Will Tweedy! You awright, Will?"

And then she was on the trestle running toward me, her arms outstretched. "I'm a-comin', Will!" she called. "I'm go'n holp you!"

T
HE GIRL
running toward me was Lightfoot McLendon, which didn't surprise me at all. If you've been run over by a train and you're alive to know it, what can surprise you after that?

She ran over the crossties barefooted, surefooted, lightfooted like her name. I wanted to quit crying and shivering, but what did it matter, anyhow? I was alive!

I no longer felt so boy-howdy about it, though. I was numb, I was half-deaf, I was sick, shaking, stinging, and smudged with dirt and oil. I fixed my eyes on Lightfoot as if she was one of Granny's angels come to fetch me, and put my arms tight around T.R. He crowded me—licking, wagging, whimpering. When Lightfoot reached us, I grabbed her, too, and the dog licked both faces. Hers and mine, hers, mine, hers, mine. She was crying, too.

She said something that must of been "Lemme holp you up, Will," and tried to pull me to my feet, whoop! Both of us nearly toppled off into the creek below. I tried not to look down.

"I don't ... I cain't ... I don't know if I can stand up," I mumbled. My voice came out of a well inside my head. She said something I couldn't understand.

Lightfoot bent so close that her long flaxen hair brushed against my face. It was tied with a string instead of plaited and I can still remember how sparkly white it looked in the sun. She yelled into my ear, "Kin you crawl, Will? If you cain't, them men comin' out'n the train can holp you."

I looked up to see men, women, and children rushing towards the trestle, and others swinging themselves out of passenger cars.Reminded me of bugs pouring out of a rotted cantaloupe if you kick it on the ground. The sight was enough to get me moving. Nobody was go'n tote me off that trestle.

"You go on first, Lightfoot!" I yelled. I reckon I was thinking if I couldn't hear her very good, she couldn't hear me, either. "I'll come behind you!" Grabbing a rail, I pulled myself up to a squat—but didn't have the nerve to turn loose and stand up. I was still shaky. The girl stood up, but swayed and then dropped down to her hands and feet, like me, and we moved on all fours, holding to crossties. Later somebody said we looked like spiders coming off that trestle.

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.