Cold Sassy Tree (39 page)

When I had the tire back on, I wiped my hands on a rag from the toolbox and said, "Now, Grandpa, you can crank her up again."

"Thet was my first and last time," he said, fishing in his pants pocket for his plug tobacco. "A artermobile ain't nothin' but a dang roller coaster. A mule's at least got sense of its own."

"Aw, Grandpa, come on." I tried to pull him toward the car. "It ain't hard, sir. You can learn."

"I'm shore I can, but I ain't a-goin' to. Anyhow, it's Miss Love's turn."

I motioned her towards the driver's seat, but she opened the back door and climbed in. "I think," she said in a weak voice, "that I'll wait my turn till later."

"Yes'm," I said, relieved. "It seems like maybe a good idea."

It looked like Miss Love was going to be a good driver. She wanted to practice without Grandpa in the car. The first time I took her out in the country, she just about sat on the brake and didn't go but two miles an hour, but she looked real stylish with her dust veil draped over Grandpa's driving cap and goggles, and she reeked of perfume. She said she always wore lots of perfume when she was nervous.

Two days later she speeded up considerable, and got brave enough to drive all the way home. We were in front of her house in no time, but instead of turning in, she kept right on going. "I want to drive to the store!" she yelled over the putt-putt. She was real excited. "I've been telling Mr. Blakeslee how easy driving is! I want him to see!"

It's just a pity that a bee got under Miss Love's dust veil about time she crept the car around the Confederate monument. I reckon it was the perfume did it. Probably the bee thought he'd found a flower. Then while Miss Love was slapping at him under her veil, the bee fell down the front of her dress! Got to crawling around on her bosom, I reckon, because she commenced screaming and hitting her chest, and the car went clean out of control! I grabbed for the wheel as Miss Love took her hands and feet off of everything and covered her eyes.

People screamed and ran, horses and mules screeched and rared. The Pierce bounced onto the curb of the monument, grazing the marble where it says our noble dead, then ambled across the street and bumped to a stop against the sycamore tree near the cast-iron watering trough in front of Grandpa's store. Miss Love didn't even notice when I cut off the ignition. She was still fighting the bee. As Grandpa and my daddy rushed out, followed by a bunch of customers, Miss Love screamed. "He bit me! He bit me! Somebody help! Get him out of here!"

"Will Tweedy, be-have yoreself!" yelled Grandpa as Miss Love leaped out of the car and ran in the store.

"I ain't done nothin', sir! She's got a bee down her dress!"

We rushed into the store. Uncle Lige motioned towards the storage room. "She run in thar!" Grandpa found her behind a stack of ninety-five-pound sacks of cow feed. Her veil and linen duster were on the floor beside the bee, which she had stomped to death, and Miss Love was buttoning her shirtwaist. Turning her back to us, she sobbed. "I g-got stung, Mr. Blakeslee."

He looked helpless, like he didn't know what to do, then commenced patting her shoulder. "Hit's all right, Miss Love," he whispered. "Hit's all right."

I couldn't help thinking that though Miss Love could sass Mr. McAllister back to Texas and glare down a town full of folks sitting in judgment on her, with a bee in her bosom she was helpless as any lady I knew.

Finally she turned and faced Grandpa. Her cheeks were wet and she clutched her swelling breast with one hand, but she had control of her voice. "Mr. Blakeslee," she announced, "I'll not drive that or any car again. Ever."

"Now, Miss Love—"

"Sir, I mean it."

I couldn't hardly stand to see her give up. "You'll learn, Miss Love. It ain't like you go'n get a bee down you every time you drive."

She ignored that. "I guess we're alike, Mr. Blakeslee. I don't trust machinery. I don't understand how it works. I can talk to a horse and calm him down, but I can't talk to
that!
" She pointed in the general direction of the sycamore tree. "Oh, Mr. Blakeslee, I wanted a car so bad!" She started crying again. "How can we ever g-go m-motoring now!"

Grandpa, real agitated, looked over at me, where I stood leaning against a big wooden box. "Son," he said, "it 'pears to me like if thet dang Pierce ever sees the road agin, it's a-go'n have to be you at the wheel."

A
NY MULE HEAD
could see that the automobiles wouldn't last long parked in front of the store—children jumping on the seats, men and big boys monkeying with the wires and knobs trying to see which did what. Papa was real upset about it. I finally told Grandpa we ought to make room for the cars in the buggy-and-wagon shed behind the store, but he dismissed the idea with a backward flip of his hand. "I ain't a-go'n do thet. Two elephants tied out yonder wouldn't draw customers to the store as good as them artermobiles."

That was the Lord's truth. Cold Sassy never had been a whirlpool of excitement. If the preacher's wife's petticoat showed, the ladies could make that last a week as something to talk about. We had our share of cotton-gin fires, epidemics, storms, and lawsuits, of course, but the only diversion we could count on was protracted meetings, recitals, ice cream socials, fish fries, and lectures—a doctor talking up his cure for cancer, an old man telling how he tracked a mammoth moose for nineteen days back in 1856, a young fellow talking about "Across Asia on a Bicycle." It's easy to see why not even the scarlet of the Cold Sassy tree in autumn could equal our big shiny automobiles as something to rave about, especially with the open invite to come sit in them and take a ride.

By the end of the week, though, even Grandpa was worried. "I reckon maybe you better move'm on to the back, Will Tweedy," he said. He was let down about it, I could tell, but he made sure nobody forgot the cars were back there. Any time he had an audience of customers, Grandpa would say what a dang marvel a artermobile is, and then light in talking about car-owners taking all-day trips together, sending delegations to the Georgia legislature to talk up better roads, and having auto races "uphill, downhill, cross-country, and hind-part-before."

While Grandpa did the talking, Papa and I did the driving people around. It was my job to give a driving lesson every Saturday after our drawing.

Miss Love did what the man in New York called "pushing the merchandise." For one thing, she wanted to order a lady mannequin for the store window and dress it up in a linen duster and dust veil like one she saw at the Cadillac agency in New York City. Grandpa said, "Thet's jest fol-de-rol and foolish-ment. Them big dolls cost too much to think about, much less buy." But that wasn't the end of it.

Soon as the weather got cooler, Miss Love turned herself into a big doll. Sat in the store window nearly all day, wearing a veil, a duster, and a frozen smile. She'd be a statue till she had to scratch or something, then come outside for a few minutes and talk to folks about the latest in motorcar fashions.

Grandpa was really pleased, for Miss Love in the store window was a sight to behold. White folks and colored, too, stood in clumps staring at her. If she chanced to bat her eyes or yawn or shift a little in the chair, they'd poke one another in the ribs and haw and guffaw. Boys clowned and made faces trying to make her laugh, but she looked straight ahead and never even cracked a smile.

When Aunt Loma happened along, carrying the baby, she stared at Miss Love a minute, then flounced into the store and came over where I stood putting bars of Octagon soap on a shelf. "Love looks foolish," she grumped.

Loma was jealous. The store window being like a little stage and her having taken elocution, she considered herself the only person in Cold Sassy qualified to act like a dummy.

The county sheriff from over at Homer watched Miss Love a while and then went in and put down on a Pierce.

A country woman watched Miss Love and spent her egg money on a dust veil. Her husband was furious when he saw her draping the veil over her sunbonnet. Said you go git Mr. Blakeslee to give yore money back. But she wouldn't. Straightening up proud on her cut-off chair in the wagon, she said, "The same dust as gits on them fancy ladies in artermobiles gits on me when they go racin' by. I got jest as much right to look nice in a cloud a-dust as they do."

Late in September I drove Miss Love and Grandpa to the county fair over in Jefferson. Grandpa sold a car while Miss Love and I were on the Ferris wheel. Then he won the big prize at the rifle booth for three bull's eyes in a row. That really impressed Miss Love, and also the man who ran the booth. He wouldn't let Grandpa shoot again.

We had a swell time, just the three of us. I wrote down in my journal that night how pretty Miss Love looked. Her freckledy face was lit up with excitement all day, and seemed like Grandpa couldn't keep his eyes off of her.

I also wrote down that although he sat up front with me all the way to Jefferson—telling me when to slow down, when to speed up and, son, watch out for thet there bump in the road—coming home he sat with Miss Love, his right arm resting on the back of her seat.

Considering what happened soon after, it's interesting that I sensed it was worth noting in the journal how he sat with her on the trip home.

Early in October we had our first cold snap, and the next Monday, soon after I got to the store from school, Miss Love came in saying let's plan an overnight motoring trip for the weekend. "Weather permitting, of course. Wouldn't you like to take your family, Mr. Hoyt?"

Before Papa could answer, Grandpa said he'd rather take a day trip, get back to his own bed.

"That's a sign you're growing old, Mr. Blakeslee," she teased.

I could tell it made him mad. "Hit jest don't suit me to go off now. Anyhow, what's the hurry?"

"The hurry is because we can't count on many more nice weekends." Miss Love's fingers went to drumming on the counter. "Once winter sets in, that's the end of any real motoring till spring. We can't travel when it's freezing cold."

"Thet's one way a artermobile ain't no different from a horse and buggy, Miss Love. So you ain't tellin' us nothin' we don't know."

"But I so wanted—" She looked up at Grandpa like a little girl who's been told she can't play with her new doll.

Papa butted in. "It's out of the question for us both to be gone on Sarady right now, Miss Love. Farmers are comin' in to pay up credit accounts and seed and fertilizer loans, and I'm run ragged with the automobile bizness. And—"

"And me and Lige are knee-deep in cotton, buyin' and warehousin' it," Grandpa argued. "So it'll have to be jest a Sunday ride or not a-tall, Miss Love."

"Well, of course. I understand, Mr. Blakeslee. I guess ... I guess it just seemed so—" Her mouth trembled like she might cry, but Grandpa didn't notice. He had got busy with a customer.

I tried to cheer her up. "If it's as cold next weekend as today, Miss Love, we cain't go anywhere anyhow."

On Friday it was still cold, with a strong wind. But Saturday turned off so warm you had to look at the reds and yellows and browns of the trees to remember how we'd shivered all week.

Papa thought it would be just as nice on Sunday, maybe better. "I'll get Mary Willis to fix enough food for all of us," he told Grandpa, "and we'll leave right after preachin'. Go out in the country and have a nice picnic together."

But Miss Love had a different idea. On my way home to milk, I met up with her and Mr. Beautiful, out for a late-evening canter. When she reined in, the horse prancing sideways and jerking the bit, she asked if I thought Papa and Mama would be willing to leave at daybreak. "That way we could go a long way."

"Yes'm, we could if Papa would miss Sunday school and preachin'. But he won't."

"Well, why don't we go then? Just you and Mr. Blakeslee and I."

Remembering the good time we'd had at the fair, I thought that was a swell idea. But I shook my head. "Papa ain't go'n let me miss, either, Miss Love."

The horse snorted, impatient. She patted his neck, spoke soft to him. "Whoa, baby. Whoa.... You could ask him, Will."

"Ain't no use."

And that's what I thought. But when my daddy and I got back to the store—Saturday nights being one of our busiest times— Grandpa said, "Hoyt, I know how you and Mary Willis feel bout missin' preachin', but I'd like to leave early t'morrer mornin'."

Papa wanted to, I could tell, and not only just to please Grandpa. But he pushed Satan behind him. "Not this time, Mr. Blakeslee. Me bein' treasurer of the session, I got to be there t'morrer." He didn't mention Sin on Sunday, but I could feel the words hanging in the air.

About then old Mr. Billy Whisnant shuffled in and asked for a jar of lini-ment. "Hit shore heps my rheumatiz," he whined as Papa went to get it off the shelf. Mr. Billy looked around and saw me but didn't speak. He hadn't said pea-turkey to me, as a matter of fact, since I cut his wood too long.

But I wasn't studying him while Papa wrapped up the liniment and made change. I was thinking how lucky Miss Love and Grandpa were, going to church at home. The Flournoys having long since returned to the Methodists, it was just the two of them. They could run into the parlor, sing fast, pray quick, and be on the road before the rest of Cold Sassy got out its Sunday clothes.

I should explain that, though Grandpa never mentioned their preachin' service anymore or invited anybody to come, Cold Sassy knew the blasphemy was still going on. Miss Effie Belle could hear them singing when she got home from playing for the Methodists, and what she heard wasn't "Holy Spirit, Truth Divine."

After Mr. Billy shuffled out, Papa commenced toting up some figures, which meant the subject of an all-day motor trip was closed. But Grandpa didn't let it drop. "I respect yore position in the Presbytery, Hoyt, but I'd be much obliged if Will Tweedy could leave early to drive us." He laughed. "Miss Love is threat-enin' to drive us if'n the boy cain't go." Not waiting for Papa to object, Grandpa turned to me. "Son, if you ain't up home by time we ready to eat, we'll save you some breakfast. I don't want yore ma gittin' up early to feed you."