Cold Sassy Tree (17 page)

I expected him to explode. Instead he just went out on the back porch, poured some water from the bucket into the gray enamel basin on the shelf, washed up, came on in, sat down at the table, and said the blessing over the pie and milk. He didn't fuss at all, and didn't seem to notice she wasn't wearing the gold wedding band, which was still on the piano. She'd told me the ring was a little big and kept slipping off when her hands were in the soapy wash water.

While I bolted down my pie, Grandpa blurted out that Son Black had come in the store that morning. "He says you and him had a unner-standin'. He's talkin' bout breach a-promise. He got any call to think you was go'n marry him?"

Miss Love looked startled. "If he did, it was all in his own head. He talked about us getting married, but I always just passed it off as a joke."

"Thet's all I need to know," said Grandpa, finishing up his pie. "Miss Love, you think you could trim my hair some?" He tried to smooth it down with his hand, but it was too thick and bushy to mind anything but scissors.

"I'd love to trim your hair, Mr. B." There in the kitchen she danced around, studying his face this way and that, and finally burst out, "Mr. Blakeslee, you don't know how long I've wanted to see what's under that shelf of a mustache and that old gray beard!"

He jerked his arm across his face. "I didn't say cut my beard off, woman. I said cut my hair. I reckon the beard could use a li'l trimmin', but thet's all, hear. I ain't fond a-shavin'."

She didn't give up. "With a close haircut and a thin mustache and no beard, sir, you'd look—distinguished! Can I? Oh, please, Mr. Blakeslee?"

"I don't think so. I ain't seen my face in so long I mightn't know me."

"Wouldn't nobody know you, Grandpa," said I, pitching a hunk of cheese in the air so it dropped into my mouth. "Cain't you just see my daddy and Uncle Camp and Cudn Hope if you walked in the store shaved? They'd take you for a stranger and sell you a mule collar or something."

The idea really appealed to him. "By dang, Will Tweedy, you right. They wouldn't know me from Adam!"

"But you won't look like somebody who needs a mule collar," Miss Love protested. "You'll look like a judge who's come in for fine tobacco. All right, Mr. B.?" She was real excited. "Can I? Please?"

"By George, yes!" he said, slapping his knee. "If'n you can fix a lady's hair to go with them fancy hats, Miss Love, I reckon you ain't go'n make me look no worse'n I already do. Will Tweedy, go git the strop and my Wade and Butcher razor. Hit used to be my daddy's," he told her. "And, son, find them hair-cuttin' scissors yore granny always used. They's somewhere on my bureau."

Miss Love cut off most of the thick gray beard with the scissors, after which Grandpa wrapped a steaming towel around his face to soften the stubble. He shaved kind of awkward, nicking his face in several places. Then Miss Love trimmed the mustache into a pencil-thin line and cropped his hair down from a mane to short as mine.

Boy howdy, I couldn't believe what a difference! His hair and mustache being dark, he looked years younger without the gray beard. His face was lean and handsome. He looked like a fine gentleman.

Later, considering who arrived on the train that same evening, I couldn't help thinking how glad I was that Miss Love got Grandpa changed from a bushy-headed, bushy-faced old country man to somebody she could be proud to stand beside and introduce as her husband.

G
RANDPA
couldn't stop looking at himself in the mirror. Preening like a rooster, he kept saying things like "I do recollect seein' thet feller somewheres before. Ain't he a buster though!"

Miss Love was so excited she hugged him.

I could tell the hug surprised her as much as it did Grandpa, who looked like he didn't know whether to hug her back or not, which he didn't. But he seemed mighty pleased, and didn't object when she said, "Mr. B., don't go back to the store wearing that same tobacco-stained shirt, or you won't fool a soul."

Grandpa generally wore just two shirts a week, and Saturday wasn't his day to change. But he went to his room and came out buttoning a clean one. Then as he pulled up his suspenders, he said, real formal, "I'm much obliged to you, Miz Rucker Blakes-lee."

He hardly ever thanked anybody for anything. Gratitude embarrassed him. I guess the words popped out because he was so pleased to see how good he looked after all these years.

While he dusted off his hat, Miss Love said, "You'd really look spiffy in a new cut of suit, Mr. Blakeslee."

"Cain't afford no new suit," he said gruffly.

"I'll make you one."

"Thet'd be a dang waste a-time. I wouldn't live to wear it out. Will Tweedy, you think they'll know me at the store?"

"No, sir! Specially if you walk in kind of sideways, so they won't see your arm off."

He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I better git on back. Camp'll go to sleep if'n I ain't there." He set his hat at a jaunty angle and raised his hand good-bye. Reminded me of a little boy going off by himself for the first time.

We stood watching as he walked across the tracks, a new sort of strut in his long stride. "Boy howdy, Miss Love," said I, still amazed at the change. "If I was at the store and Grandpa walked in, I wouldn't know him. I might think I'd seen him somewhere, but I wouldn't know him."

She turned towards me, beaming. "He likes it, Will Tweedy! And isn't your grandfather a handsome man! You and him—I mean you and he—you look a lot alike, Will. I never realized it before."

"Granny always said so."

"It's the mouth and the shape of the jaw, and—" She put her hand on my shoulder, turned me toward her, and studied my face. Blushing, I bent my head. "No, look at me, Will. It's also your eyes, big like his. And your brows are arched like his."

Soon as Miss Love went to the kitchen, I went hunting for the painted mirror that usually hung over the marble-top table in the front hall—the mirror Aunt Loma and Mama both wanted. I found it laid across a table in the parlor. Bending over the glass, I stared around Saint Cecilia at the organ and all the painted angels and flower garlands to see if something of Grandpa would stare back at me.

Well, gosh, yes. Now that I had finally seen his face, I could say I did look like him. A lot like him. When I grinned at myself, the lower lip turned up at the corners, just like Grandpa's. His mouth was like a boy's anyhow, except looser. I preened a while, this way and that. If I looked like Grandpa, and Miss Love thought he was handsome, then that meant I was handsome, too.

Lee Roy and them might not think so, but Miss Love did.

I combed my hair down with my fingers, squeezed a red sore place on my chin, and examined my upper lip to see if my mustache was any more ready to be shaved than yesterday. Hearing Miss Love coming, I sort of waved good-bye to myself and straightened up. She said, "Will, bring those pasteboard boxes in off the back porch to the company room, and I'll tell you what to do next."

When I came in with the boxes, I asked, "Ma'am, what you want me to do with'm?" I couldn't see her over the high stack I carried, but I knew she was in there. I could hear her opening drawers.

"I want you to pack up everything in this bureau," she said evenly. "And the things in the wardrobe, too."

"Everything?" I dropped the boxes. They fell with a thick dull clatter. I couldn't believe it. Without so much as a by-your-leave from Mama or Aunt Loma, Miss Love was planning on getting rid of Granny's belongings!

"Yes, everything. Mostly it's stuff that was packed away—old quilts and things your grandmother obviously wasn't using but I suppose hated to get rid of. The clothes she was wearing are all in Mr. Blakeslee's room. He wants everything in there to stay the way she had it."

I couldn't think what to say to that. So I asked, "Where we go'n put what's in here, Miss Love?"

"I want you to take it home. Your mother and Loma can go through it and throw stuff out or give it away. I need the space for my things, you see. It's—uh, this will be my room." She blushed.

It slowly dawned on me that it already was her room. Several of her dresses hung on wall nails, and also her nightgown, and she had pushed back a blue thousand-eye tray on the princess dresser to make room for a shoebox full of her combs and ribbons and doodads. Why, she had already brought over her things from the Crabtrees'! Two big trunks sat in front of the fireplace.

Looking around, I noticed a small poster tacked on the wall, advertising a women's suffrage speech in Baltimore in 1888. It said:

The Subject: Throw Off the Yoke of Oppressor Man!
Miss Hannah Lee, The Long-Tongued Orator
Will Emit Impassioned Yawps at Borough Hall
7 O'Clock Monday Night!
The Belva E. Lockwood Quartette
Will Furnish Discord!
Come One, Come All
And Bring Your Chewing Gum!

I didn't want to offend Miss Love, but I thought that was the silliest thing I ever read. Seeing I was trying to keep a straight face, she giggled. "Go on. Laugh. Your grandpa did. I laugh myself, every time I look at it. That's why I put it up."

"I thought you wanted women to get the vote, Miss Love."

"I do. Oh, I do. But that doesn't mean I can't laugh."

"'The long-tongued orator will emit impassioned yawps,'" I read. "Haw, I sure would of liked to hear that! Was she chewin' chewin' gum while she talked?"

Miss Love laughed. "I doubt it, Will, but I wasn't there. I found that poster on the sidewalk later. For a long time I tried to figure it out. I didn't know whether Miss Hannah Lee thought the suffrage movement was getting too grim and made this up to poke fun at herself and the rest of us, or whether some printer did it as an insult. I just know that every time I start taking life too seriously, I can look at that silly poster and get my sense of humor back."

Laughing merrily, she started out the door, then turned and asked, "Did you ever hear of Belva E. Lockwood, Will?"

"No'm. Was she that lady scientist over in France? Well, no, I see she was a singer." I nodded toward the poster.

"More than a singer. She ran for president that year."

"Of what?"

"The United States. I campaigned for her. She was a lawyer in Washington, and I thought she had a lot of sense."

Miss Love left the room. I read the poster again, then looked around at her clothes and at the bed. Maybe Miss Love and Grandpa were sleeping in here out of respect for the dead. I mean, maybe they were trying to show respect by not using the bed where the dead had died. But then I remembered that the big bed Granny and Grandpa shared wasn't made up. That must mean Grandpa slept in there last night. Maybe on his wedding night, too.

Who ever heard of a married lady wanting to pretend she was still an old maid—even to having a room to herself? Was this her idea of "throwing off the yoke of oppressor man?"

Well, her sleeping like an old maid did prove one thing: she and Grandpa hadn't been sweet on each other before Granny died. I couldn't wait to go home and tell Mama.

"See?" I'd say. "They weren't courtin' on the sly or anything like that. The fact Miss Love is usin' the comp'ny room proves it. They just got married so she could stay there and keep house."

Aw, I couldn't say that to Mama.

For one thing, it wouldn't help. She'd get another headache trying to decide all over again what Miss Love wanted out of her daddy. If she didn't intend to have babies, what had made her willing to marry an old man? She wouldn't do it just to keep house for him.

Also, Mama would worry that somebody else might find out about the sleeping arrangement and start sniggering the way they did about Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy, who hadn't slept in the same room for thirty years. The Abernathys each claimed the other one snored, but nobody believed that was the real reason.

As I wiped the sweat off my face and picked up a pasteboard box, I knew I couldn't mention such to Mama anyway—about the beds, I mean. In her mind, I didn't know what went on in bedrooms.

Which I didn't. Not exactly. When I was little I asked Papa one day where babies came from and he said ask him again when I was ten and he'd tell me. As soon as we sat down to breakfast on my tenth birthday, I said, "Well, Papa, I'm ten!"

He said, "Yes, I know, son. Happy birthday!"

I waited for him to explain about babies, but he just kept eating. On his second cup of coffee I said, "Papa, you said when I got ten, you'd tell me where babies come from. Remember? You said—"

Mama blushed and picked up little Mary Toy, who was four, and took her out. Papa blushed and said, "Well, uh, let's see, son. It's kind of like the way hens lay eggs and then biddies hatch out of the eggs." He stood up and wiped his mouth on his napkin.

"But what about the rooster? Don't he have something to do with it? Bluford says the rooster does something when he lights on a hen. What—"

"I got to get down to the store, Will." It didn't dawn on me till after he left that I still didn't know any more about ladies having babies than I did yesterday when I was just nine.

Filling one of Miss Love's boxes, I remembered one time Smiley said his folks were gone off and he'd get his little sister to go down to the barn with us. He wanted to show me what "it" was like. I was twelve. His sister was only five and wouldn't know what it was all about, he said. But just the idea scared me so bad I made up that Papa had told me to build a shelf on the back porch for Mama's flower-potting stuff.

By then I understood how it was with roosters and hens, of course, and cows and dogs and cats. And because of all the smutty stories I'd heard, I had a pretty good guess about people. I certainly knew that getting married meant you were supposed to sleep in the same bed, and that the bed had a lot to do with having babies. When Aunt Loma got married, she and Camp didn't have but one bed. Still and all, I used to look at her and wonder if they had done "it." The day I found out she was in the family way, I finally knew for sure they had.

Well, it looked like Miss Love and Grandpa weren't aiming to do it or anything else—have a baby or sleep in the same bed, either one.