Cold Sassy Tree Read Online Free Page A

me that if Grandpa Blakeslee died and left Miss Love the store, she really could marry again and let her new husband run it. And if he was somebody like Son Black, he might just push my daddy and Uncle Camp clean out. The threat was sobering even to me.
    But somehow the picture didn't fit. Maybe Grandpa didn't care what folks said or thought about him, but he cared a lot about Mama and Papa and Aunt Loma. I mean, he didn't
like
Aunt Loma a lot, but he loved her. Also, he set great store on a man doing right by his family.

    Peeping in again, I saw Papa had his arm around Mama. She was crying. "When a woman m-marries a man old enough to be her f-father," she said, "you can b-b-bet your ... bottom dollar it's for ... w-what she can g-g-get out of him.... Pa's a fool, Hoyt! And I just don't see h-how we can start all over when he d-dies. Oh, Hoyt...!"
    She kept wailing and Papa kept patting her. I didn't know what to think about all that, but I knew I didn't want them to catch me out there listening. Tiptoeing around to the other side of a golden oak bureau that was in the hall near their bedroom door, I squatted down.
    "I'm sick over the whole thing," Mama muttered. "Just sick! No tellin' what kind of fam'ly she comes from. There's a milliner in Athens who trained with Love in Baltimore and she says Love's daddy fought on the Union side in the War. That by itself should of made Pa think twice, feelin' like he does about Yankees. Hoyt, we don't even know what her father does, for heaven's sake, or whether the fam'ly has any education or background, or any standin' at all in their community." Mama was a great one for not marrying beneath yourself.
    Papa argued that the family surely must be educated, judging by the way Miss Love talked so proper. "She seems like somebody with background."
    "Well, one thing I know, Miz Predmore says the only letters Love Simpson gets from Baltimore are from the millinery company that trained her. The postmaster told her. We figure she must be ashamed of her folks. If she don't write them and don't hear from them and don't ever say pea-turkey about them to anybody, something's wrong."
    "Please, hon, don't let yourself get all wrought up."
    "Her fam'ly could be common as Camp's folks, for all we know. Ignorant. No-count. Even low-down. I still don't see how Loma could of married into that sharecropper white trash. With all her education and advantages, she's got a daddy-in-law who cain't read or write and a mother-in-law who dips snuff. And Camp's sisters work in the fields just like colored girls. Thank the Lord they didn't come to the weddin'."
    Papa couldn't stand it when Mama got to low-rating Uncle
Camp's people. "Now, hon, that don't have anything to do with your pa."

    "It does, too. Even if Love's folks ain't ignorant, they could be dead-beats. Jesus said take up your cross and follow Me, but He didn't ast us to go out and nail ourselves to a board. Some fine day, mark my words, Love's fam'ly will get off the train from Baltimore to come live off of Pa. Just like Camp's folks are go'n be livin' off of he and Loma before it's over. Or maybe livin' with them. Only reason Loma married Camp, she was mad cause Pa wouldn't let her go off with those actors. That's just exactly why. She was bound and determined to get her way about something—just to spite Pa."
    It was true. A touring Shakespeare company had let Loma try out after their performance in Cold Sassy's brush arbor and then asked her to join the troupe. Everybody in town said Lord help Loma if she ends up an actress. Even if she got rich and famous and did command performances for Edward VII, like she said she would, she couldn't ever live down the taint.
    But Grandpa said, "Loma, I ain't a-go'n let you do it. Ain't no tellin' what kind of a life you'd live with them kind a-folks."
    She stomped and cried and carried on something awful. "I wish I was a boy so I could go off on my own!"
    "I wish you was a boy, too, but you ain't,"