Read Online Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns - Free Book Online
Authors: Olive Ann Burns
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done and buttin' in with suggestions. Fore you know it, half a-Cold Sassy'll be down here a-cryin' and carryin' on, tryin' to see how I and yore ma and Loma is a-takin' it. I cain't stand thet. So we got to git th'ew."
I figured the real reason he didn't want anybody to see the rose blankets, it would spoil his surprise for the funeral. But of course he couldn't admit that.
Before long we heard somebody at the front of the house. Probably Mama, but I knew he was scared it was Aunt Loma. He made me drag the zinc tubs full of watered-down rose blankets into the shed room by the back porch. Then, with me on one side of the tub and him on the other, we toted the rest of the roses to the barn and finished out there.
When he thought we had enough, he told me to cut a sack half in two for him. Leaving an oval space the shape of a head on a pillow, he put the last rosebuds around the oval. I guessed what he aimed to do with it.
First I had to go ask Mama to clear folks out of the parlor where Granny was. Then me and Grandpa went in there from the dining room. I couldn't believe how many big vases and baskets of yard flowers had been brought in and set on tables and on the floor around the coffin.
It gave me the creeps, helping Grandpa slip his pillow sham of roses under Granny's head. But touching her didn't seem to bother him. He patted her face and smoothed her hair, and even pried up her stiff hands and moved them a little. Then all of a sudden his face scrooched up, and in a choky voice he ordered me to leave and tell Mama not to let nobody come in on him.
It was ten o'clock, and like I say, I was hungry. Folks had already brought over more cakes and pies, and platters of fried chicken and ham, and their good china bowls full of string beans, butterbeans, okra, and tomatoes. Enough to feed a ox, really. So I ate. I was in the kitchen finishing a piece of Miss Effie Belle's caramel cake when Grandpa found me again.
My mother stuck a glass of buttermilk in his hand and he drank it, but I'm not sure he even noticed. He was all business. "Will Tweedy?"
"Sir?"
"Go hitch up Big Jack."
"Yessir."
He walked with me to the back porch. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others he said, "When you git Jack hitched, lay them rose thangs in the buggy and bring it on up here."
"Yessir."
When I got back with the buggy, Grandpa was out on the porch picking long nails from a dusty glass jar on the long-legged,
blue-painted old slab table. A hammer handle stuck out of his pants pocket. "Load up, son."
"Yessir."
The mourners were all up front with the corpse—admiring the roses that framed her head, I expect. So not a soul except Mama saw me bring the zinc tubs out of the shed room. She marveled, I could tell, but said nothing as I dragged each one to the edge of the porch, tilted it to drain the water out, then loaded "them rose thangs" on the back of the buggy. I didn't know how many blankets we had, but I was sure it was too many.
Grandpa said, "Naw, son, it's jest enough."
Enough for what? He didn't say, I didn't ask, and neither did Mama, who watched as we drove off.
He let me keep the reins. Said we were bound for the cemetery—"but first, son, we'll go by yore house." I didn't have to wait till the whiskey was on his breath to guess why.
The grave was already dug, of course, close behind all his and Granny's children that hadn't lived to grow up, and just a little ways from the Toy plot, where Granny's daddy was buried between her mama and his second wife. He had a granite tombstone. His wives had slabs of brown marble off of washstands.
I always thought a single marker joining the graves of a man and wife looked like the head of a double bed. In the moldy old Crane plot was a wide granite headstone that joined three graves—like a triple bed, you might say. This is what it said:
Here Lies Luzon Theophilus Crane
A Good Man
Eugenia Lamson Crane And Lucy Wylie Who
His Wife Should Have Been His Wife
"Did the
I figured the real reason he didn't want anybody to see the rose blankets, it would spoil his surprise for the funeral. But of course he couldn't admit that.
Before long we heard somebody at the front of the house. Probably Mama, but I knew he was scared it was Aunt Loma. He made me drag the zinc tubs full of watered-down rose blankets into the shed room by the back porch. Then, with me on one side of the tub and him on the other, we toted the rest of the roses to the barn and finished out there.
When he thought we had enough, he told me to cut a sack half in two for him. Leaving an oval space the shape of a head on a pillow, he put the last rosebuds around the oval. I guessed what he aimed to do with it.
First I had to go ask Mama to clear folks out of the parlor where Granny was. Then me and Grandpa went in there from the dining room. I couldn't believe how many big vases and baskets of yard flowers had been brought in and set on tables and on the floor around the coffin.
It gave me the creeps, helping Grandpa slip his pillow sham of roses under Granny's head. But touching her didn't seem to bother him. He patted her face and smoothed her hair, and even pried up her stiff hands and moved them a little. Then all of a sudden his face scrooched up, and in a choky voice he ordered me to leave and tell Mama not to let nobody come in on him.
It was ten o'clock, and like I say, I was hungry. Folks had already brought over more cakes and pies, and platters of fried chicken and ham, and their good china bowls full of string beans, butterbeans, okra, and tomatoes. Enough to feed a ox, really. So I ate. I was in the kitchen finishing a piece of Miss Effie Belle's caramel cake when Grandpa found me again.
My mother stuck a glass of buttermilk in his hand and he drank it, but I'm not sure he even noticed. He was all business. "Will Tweedy?"
"Sir?"
"Go hitch up Big Jack."
"Yessir."
He walked with me to the back porch. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others he said, "When you git Jack hitched, lay them rose thangs in the buggy and bring it on up here."
"Yessir."
When I got back with the buggy, Grandpa was out on the porch picking long nails from a dusty glass jar on the long-legged,
blue-painted old slab table. A hammer handle stuck out of his pants pocket. "Load up, son."
"Yessir."
The mourners were all up front with the corpse—admiring the roses that framed her head, I expect. So not a soul except Mama saw me bring the zinc tubs out of the shed room. She marveled, I could tell, but said nothing as I dragged each one to the edge of the porch, tilted it to drain the water out, then loaded "them rose thangs" on the back of the buggy. I didn't know how many blankets we had, but I was sure it was too many.
Grandpa said, "Naw, son, it's jest enough."
Enough for what? He didn't say, I didn't ask, and neither did Mama, who watched as we drove off.
He let me keep the reins. Said we were bound for the cemetery—"but first, son, we'll go by yore house." I didn't have to wait till the whiskey was on his breath to guess why.
The grave was already dug, of course, close behind all his and Granny's children that hadn't lived to grow up, and just a little ways from the Toy plot, where Granny's daddy was buried between her mama and his second wife. He had a granite tombstone. His wives had slabs of brown marble off of washstands.
I always thought a single marker joining the graves of a man and wife looked like the head of a double bed. In the moldy old Crane plot was a wide granite headstone that joined three graves—like a triple bed, you might say. This is what it said:
Here Lies Luzon Theophilus Crane
A Good Man
Eugenia Lamson Crane And Lucy Wylie Who
His Wife Should Have Been His Wife
"Did the
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