Cold Sassy Tree (6 page)

We didn't pay her any attention. Granny really was better, no doubt about it. In the days that followed she slept a lot, but not with that awful unnatural deep breathing, and she could talk plainer and move her left hand, and the left side of her face wasn't dead-looking.

The first sign that Mrs. Avery might be right, or at least that there was a change, started one evening about a week later. It was about five o'clock. I was the one sitting by the sickbed. Granny had been dozing when all of a sudden she roused up and grabbed my arm. "Willy, look-a-there at them two coats fightin' in the corner! That littlest coat don't have a gnat's chance!"

Before I could answer, she whispered, "They's a old woman in Mr. Blakeslee's cheer. Go away, woman! She's hid-jus, Willy—face all puckered like them doll heads made out'n dried apples. Go on, git!"

"Ain't nobody in the chair, Granny."

"Ain't now. I got rid of the old booger." She sounded proud of herself. Then in a panic she whispered, "Willy, she didn't leave! She's up on the wall!"

I was scared. I didn't know what to do. Mama had gone down to our house to change clothes. Grandpa, wore out, was sound asleep on the narrow daybed in the back hall. I was just fixing to call him when Granny smiled and said, "Old booger's gone, thank the good Lord!" Then she drifted off into a perspiry sleep.

Trying to cool her off some, I picked up the cardboard fan that said
BIRDSONG'S FUNERAL PARLOR
in big letters and under it
Rest in the Lord.
The fan seemed like an omen. A chill goose-bumped my arms. I fanned fast so as not to read the words, but they had already brought to mind Great-Granmaw Tweedy, how at her first funeral she sat up in her coffin at the graveyard and screamed. They were fixing to close the lid on her and nail it down, and she wasn't dead.

I shuddered, and just then Granny Blakeslee's eyes opened wide in a horror of her own.

"Willy?" she whispered. "What's them two men doin' over yonder? See? Look on the far side a-the cemetery." She pointed. "They got shovels. They comin' over here! They go'n steal me!" Grabbing my arm, she pulled me down on the bed—pulled so strong that if she'd really been pulling me into her grave, I wouldn't of been scareder.

"Grandpa!" I yelled. But then she loosened her hold and looked up past me, as if seeing a wonderment. "Y'all come for me?" she called out, real friendly.

Granny listened, like to somebody talking ... looked disappointed ... then smiled politely and said, "Well, when y'all ready for me, just holler." Then in a strong, trembling voice she said, "Ain't they a sight, Willy!"

"Ma'am, I don't see nothin'."

Granny kept nodding and smiling, like greeting folks at church, and reached up like to touch somebody.

"What you see?" I asked eagerly.

"Angels! Son, this here room's just full a-angels!" Her voice sent another thrill up my spine. "They got lacy wings, and they's all dressed up in quilted robes.... The softest, prettiest colors, Will! Lordy, they keep a-comin'. They's flyin' out'n the quilt chest! You cain't see'm? They come out, and then they float up and on off—clear th'ew the ceilin'! They's just beautiful, son! Bye-bye now," she called. She kept looking this way and that, smiling and waving. "Y'all come see me agin, hear." Every time one batch of angels left, another batch came out of the chest.

"Go git your grandpa," Granny ordered. "I bet he can see'm. They's just everwhere...."

When Grandpa stumbled in, rubbing his eyes, she said to him,
"Lookit the quilted angels, Mr. Blakeslee!... Aw, shoot, they done gone." Granny sagged down weak against the pillows, exhausted, her fingers plucking the sheet.

Mrs. Avery always said you know death's on the way when a sick person goes to picking at the covers.

"Mr. Blakeslee, I seen the most beautiful bein's...." As Grandpa plopped down in the rocker, she went to telling him about it and got all excited again. "I wouldn't take a pretty for them angels!" She said it over and over. "I just wish you—"

"Forgit all thet, Miss Mattie Lou." Grandpa said finally. He spoke soft to her, like you would to a child. "Hit were jest a dream. You all tangled up in yore mind. Go to sleep now." He slid his left elbow under her neck, circling his other arm around her, and pulled her close to him, rocked her against him.

"Mr. Bla'slee," she mumbled, "if you'd a-come ... a mite sooner ... you'd a-seen'm....I seen a...."

"Sh-h-h. Go to sleep now, Miss Mattie Lou," he whispered, his strong arms holding her, gently rocking, slow and gently rocking. "You all tuckered out. Sleep now. Go to sleep."

She drifted quickly into a deep snoring stupor. By next day you could hardly wake her—and if you did, a minute later she'd go right back into that loud, awful breathing. The last time Grandpa got her roused up, she looked scared and said, "Sump'm terrible.... Sump'm awful's a-matter ... w' me...."

Grandpa smoothed the damp hair from her forehead, spoke soft. "Tell you the truth, you been pretty sick, Miss Mattie Lou. But you gittin' better now. You jest real tired and need to rest. So go on back to sleep, hear. I'll set right here by you. I ain't go'n go leave you, Miss Mattie Lou." He choked up. "I ain't ever go'n leave you...."

But she left him. That night the angels came back for her, like she'd asked them to.

And nobody who saw the heartbreak on Grandpa's face when Granny breathed her last would have thought for one minute that he was glad to get shet of her so he could marry Love Simpson.

A
FTER
G
RANDPA
and Miss Love eloped, a lot of people felt sure he had never so much as looked at the milliner till after Granny died and he needed a housekeeper.

But those same folks were sure as certain that Miss Love had had designs on him ever since Miss Mattie Lou took sick, and was after him from the minute he became a widower.

"I was onto Love Simpson from the beginnin'," skinny old Miss Effie Belle Tate told Mama after the elopement. "Nobody else suspicioned what was goin' on, but I did." Because of living next door to Grandpa, Miss Effie Belle acted like God had sent her a special delivery letter explaining all the goings-on. "Miss Mattie Lou's body wasn't hardly gone to the funeral parlor before that woman was down to your pa's house, washin' and moppin' and dustin' and sweepin'." The pink wart quivered on her thin upper lip. "I knew the minute Miss Love got out a broom that she was after the nearest of kin. Why else would a white woman go over to your daddy's house to get it cleaned up for the funeral?" she asked Mama. "Hit wasn't like he didn't have you and Loma to do for him."

But at the time of Granny's funeral, Miss Effie Belle had sung a different tune entirely. I remember how she talked across the coffin to Mama. "Ain't Love Simpson sweet to pitch in like this? After workin' for your pa two years, I reckon she knows how economical he is. He ain't go'n hire nobody to hep, and Lord knows, you and little Loma got your hands full. Not to mention your hearts bein' full to overflowin' with grief."

All Miss Effie Belle did for Grandpa that day was bring over a chocolate cake and a caramel cake. Being eighty-nine years old, she'd had plenty of practice and was by far the cake champion of Cold Sassy. Still and all, two cakes weren't anything like equal to the trouble Miss Love went to on the day before the funeral. Besides all the cleaning, she had washed and dried dishes for hours in Granny's hot kitchen. The house was full of sad people, come to cry and eat and drink tea, and Granny didn't have enough dishes without somebody being in the kitchen to wash each plate and glass as soon as it got set down.

If Miss Love had notions about Grandpa that day—the way Miss Effie Belle claimed later—having to use a privy and draw well water and go to the back porch to throw out the dirty dishwater would have been enough to make her think twice.

That night after supper, Aunt Loma, Uncle Camp, us Tweedys, and Grandpa sat in the parlor with the remains and the visitors. But Miss Love was still working in the kitchen—by lamplight, I might add. I remember Grandpa went back there two or three times to tell her to quit. She said she wasn't tired a bit, but she must of been about to break half in two.

Mama and them had expected we would all sit up with Granny that night. But at ten o'clock, when Miss Love finally got through and came in the parlor and asked if there was anything else she could do, Grandpa not only told her to go on home, he told all of us to. "Ain't nobody go'n set up with Miss Mattie Lou but me."

"Pa, we don't mind a bit," my mother said. "We want to. You need us."

"I don't need nobody but yore ma."

While we were saying good night, I saw Miss Love put her hand on Grandpa's arm.

"You done too much," he told her gruffly.

"Not at all," she said. "Sir, the first winter I was here, when I had the flu, Miss Mattie Lou came and bathed me every morning—like she was my own mother. I won't ever forget that. I want to do anything I can to help you now." She said it so sweet, with tears in her eyes.

Grandpa blew his nose loud. "Uh, well, good night, Miss Love. I'm much obliged."

When I was halfway down the front steps, he called me. "Will Tweedy? Git up here fore sunup, boy. I want you to hep me."

Anybody who had been with us next morning wouldn't ever wonder how Grandpa had felt about Granny—before she died or after.

I got there at daybreak. The parlor door was shut where Granny was, and I could see the flickering glow of lamplight under the door as I walked down the cool dark hall. I wanted to go look at her, but I was scared to, by myself. I hurried to the back porch.

In the half-light I could see Grandpa out in Granny's rose garden. He was cutting rosebuds, which for him wasn't easy with just the one hand, and dropping each one into a big zinc tub. Without even a howdy or good morning as I walked toward him, he called, "Git out yore pocketknife, Will Tweedy."

"What you want me to do, sir?"

"Hep cut them roses."

When it came to feeling close to Granny, being in the garden was a sight better than sitting by her coffin. Out there amidst all the growing things, it seemed like maybe she'd just gone to the shed room to get a hoe instead of being off in Heaven.

I stood and looked for a long time. Over yonder were what she called her "word plants"—the wild flowers she planted because they had names she liked. Creepin' Charlie, Lizzie run by the fence, love's a-bustin', fetch me some ivy cause Baby's got the croup....In the next bed were medicinal herbs she used in potions for sick folks: squaw weed, hepatica, goldenseal, ginseng for the brain, jewelweed for poison ivy rash, wolf milk for warts, and fleabane and pale bergamot, which Granny would rub on her face and arms to keep off mosquitoes and gnats.

But on that early June morning, the heavy scent of roses was what made my heart ache. It was hard to believe the roses could be so alive and her so dead.

"Make haste, son. Come hep me." Grandpa was impatient.

"How many we go'n pick?" I asked, coming up where he was.

"All of'm," he said, waving his arm stub over the big garden. It had been a late spring and there were still masses of roses. Red, white, light pink, dusky pink, yellow. All colors, all kinds. The garden had a border of climbing Seven Sisters on the west side, a
hedge of red roses on the side next to Miss Effie Belle's house, white roses against the henhouse, and yellow tree roses at the far end. "Just git the buds," ordered Grandpa. "The wide-open ones won't last out the funeral."

Grandpa had him an idea.

I toted tubs full of roses to the back porch. Drew buckets and buckets of well water to pour over them. And about time the first rays of sunlight hit the back steps, I sat down out there with my grandfather.

First he took a square of Brown Mule out of his pocket, bit off a plug, and settled it in his left cheek. Then he leaned his chair back against the porch wall and got to work. While I trimmed off the lower leaves and thorns, Grandpa took a big split-open croker sack and poked each rose stem into the loose burlap, weaving it in and out, then in again, like a pin being stuck into cloth. In no time at all he had him a solid blanket of roses. It was beautiful.

I noticed for the first time the pile of big croker sacks by his chair.

He spat tobacco juice in an arc that just missed a Rhode Island Red pecking dirt in the swept yard. The hen shrieked, flapped her wings, and ran off. Handing me what he had done, Grandpa said, "Now, son, git this here thang down under some water. Yore granny always soaks roses under water fore she puts'm in a pitcher." He didn't notice he was talking as if Granny was in her kitchen, fixing to cook us some grits, instead of laid out in a coffin in the parlor.

It will help to show what Granny meant to Grandpa if I point out that it wasn't a cheap homemade coffin she was in. It was a fine readymade one he'd ordered years ago when rich Mr. Sheffield was thought to be dying and didn't. It had been upstairs at the store ever since, alongside the stock of corn planters, fertilizer spreaders, mule collars, iron washpots, hat trees, and extra brass racks for readymade dresses. When I was little bitty, I used to close my eyes whenever I had to walk by that coffin.

There were some who said later that Grandpa, stingy as he was, wouldn't have used that expensive coffin for Miss Mattie Lou if he wasn't trying to make it up to her for something he'd done wrong—such as lusting in his heart after Miss Love or being too stingy to give Granny electricity and a bathroom.

If he wasn't ashamed about the lights and plumbing, maybe he
should of been. But personally I didn't think guilt had anything to do with the nice coffin. I thought he used it because he loved her. Despite all I found out later, I still think so.

Grandpa told Granny one time that dead folks ought to be put right in the ground as the Lord intended. I was there and heard it. "And I want me a party when I die, not a funeral. Remember thet."

She didn't act shocked like Mama would of. As a matter of fact, she laughed. "Don't go talkin' bout dyin', Mr. Blakeslee. I druther live in the past than dwell on that part of the future. Still, since you brung it up, I'll say this: my feeling bout buryin' ain't the same as your'n. You remember that." She said the dead body was sacred, it having been a house for the mind and soul, and as such it deserved proper respect. "A nice funeral is a sort of thank-you," she added. "A person's body oughtn't to be treated like no old dead dog."