Cold Sassy Tree Read Online Free Page B

Grandpa retorted, "and you ain't go'n be no actress, neither. So hesh up." Loma went to her room and threw things, but Grandpa didn't hear it. He had gone on back to the store.
    I myself used to wonder why Loma didn't find some more actors to run off with—a thing she wanted to do—instead of marrying Campbell Williams just to spite her daddy. Well, and now her daddy had married Miss Love—maybe partly to spite Cold Sassy.
    "Loma and Pa, they're just alike." Mama was fuming. "They don't ever consider anybody else. Neither one of them. When I think of the nice widders Pa's age who'd be happy to marry him, I don't see why he had to pick an old maid from Up North who's had to work for a livin'."
    In Cold Sassy, ladies who work for pay are looked down on—except schoolteachers or widder women with no close kinfolks to turn to. Milliners are considered in a class with store clerks and telephone hello-girls.
    "Why wouldn't Pa let me look after him?" Mama went on. "We could of moved up to his house."

    "And go back to usin' lamps and privies?" asked Papa irritably. "And give up Queenie?" Grandpa didn't have electricity or running water and didn't believe in hiring colored help.
    That silenced my mother, but only for a minute. In a new burst of tears, she said, "Hoyt, Pa has disgraced the whole f-f-fam'ly. The whole t-town!"
    Most likely Papa was patting her shoulder again. "It's go'n turn out all right, hon. Just don't forget I work for him, and Camp works for him. Y'all have got to be nice to Miss Love. Now, hon, I need to get back to the store. Please, let's go eat."
    "You and Will eat." Mama's muffled voice came out of her pillow. "I'm not hungry. The nerve, that woman thinkin' she can take Ma's place! And everybody's go'n say—you mark my words—they go'n say Pa must have been sweet on her from the day he laid eyes on her. It's like he just couldn't hardly wait for Ma to p-p-pass!"
    I guess my mother didn't notice that Papa had left the room. I waited till he got downstairs before I crept down myself. I couldn't stand hearing her keep on talking against Grandpa.

4
    I USED TO TRY to undress Grandpa Blakeslee's face in my mind and think how he'd look clean-shaved. I never could picture him like that, but I liked looking at him the way he was—his eyes merry, his upper lip hidden under the droopy mustache, his bushy gray beard usually stained here and there with tobacco juice.

    Most people thought I was his spittin' image. Granny used to say I walked like Grandpa, twitched my shoulders like him—"cain't neither one a-y'all set still"—and looked like him "cept for yore eyes bein' brown and his'n so blue, and the fact yore nose ain't humped." Grandpa's nose had got broke three times, and it showed. First time, he was trying to fly: "I was maybe twelve year old. Jumped out'n a hayloft holdin' a dang umbrella and it turned inside out." The other two times, his nose got busted in fistfights.
    At fifty-nine, Grandpa still had all his teeth, which should be a comfort to Miss Love. He only wore glasses to read. He was lean, strong, straight, and taller than most men—the way I was taller than most fourteen-year-old boys. My grandmother was small. She could stand under his arm if he stuck it straight out, and never could keep up with him when they walked together. His long legs swung in giant strides; she trotted at his heels like a good little dog.
    Grandpa was a buster all right.
    He was a Democrat, a Baptist, and a devout Confederate veteran. The words
Abraham Lincoln
couldn't be spoke in his presence.
His only hand was soft and smooth, not like the rough, red, calloused hands of farmers. In a fight he used the elbow of his left arm as a deflector and his "fightin' right" to punch with.

    The fights were embarrassing to the family but real entertaining to the Baptists, for he would stand up at the next Wednesday night prayer meeting, in the testimonial and confessing part, and tell the Lord all