Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

Please stay in bed t’morrer. Hear?” But he’d say, “I ain’t thet big of a fool, Miss Mattie Lou. Ain’t you ever noticed? Folks die in bed.”

After Papa’s big decision, she kept leftover sausage or ham or fried streak-a-lean in her warming oven in case we came by after school. Pork didn’t matter all that much to me, but the fact Granny saved me some mattered a lot. It was like getting hugged,

But to mourn, that’s different. To mourn is to be eaten alive with homesickness for the person.

“By George, gittin’ ran over by a train must a-been some experience!” He acted like it was something to remember instead of something to forget.

“Life bullies us, son, but God don’t. He had good reasons for fixin’ it where if’n you git too sick or too hurt to live, why, you can die, same as a sick chicken.

If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog. You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?”

“Maybe Jesus was talkin’ in His sleep, son, or folks heard Him wrong.

“All I know,” he added, “is thet folks pray for food and still go hungry,

They’s a heap more to God’s will than death, disappoint-ment, and like thet. Hit’s God’s will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin’. . . . ” He laughed. “I reckon I ain’t very forgivin’, son. I can forgive a fool, but I ain’t inner-rested in coddlin’ hypocrites. Well anyhow, folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”

“Reading King Arthur is what made me an old maid, Will. I kept holding out for a hero, a knight in shining armor. I really thought some rich, exciting man would come riding up on a white horse and rescue me from being poor and unhappy. After I fell in love with the man in Texas. . . . Well, he was rich and had a white horse, but he was no knight. And neither is Son Black. He couldn’t qualify as the hero in a cheap novel.”

Ever church ought to do thet—give God a good time stead of pomouthin’ and always be astin’ Him to save us from temptation and sufferin’ and death.

But I’d still like to hear you explain Jesus sayin’ ast God for something and you’ll get it. One time I prayed for a million dollars, to test Him, and didn’t get one dime.” “Thet was jest wishin’. Hit warn’t prayin’.”

Folks had criticized Miss Love the week before for wearing black as if she was grieving for Granny. Now she was awful to wear red.

I knew Mama and them were shocked at Aunt Carrie, but she made sense to me. Long as you didn’t hurt anybody, why shouldn’t you dance if you liked dancing, and marry again if you needed looking after, and go fishing or wear a flowerdy dress if it might lift your grief a little? Yes, and hold and kiss a lonely mill girl.

“Ain’t gittin’ carried away part a-what lovin’ is?”

“Why’d you have to raise this up from the dead, anyhow? You go’n put the past on and wear it like sackcloth and ashes the rest a-yore days?”

I picked up the wrench and changed the washer. Nobody was go’n say Campbell Williams was so sorry that he couldn’t even fix a faucet. It was a small thing to do for somebody brave enough to put a pistol in his mouth and shoot.

“They’s plenty men thet are mean and hateful, son, or they cheat folks, or beat their wives and their colored, but when they die, them preachers cain’t say enough nice thangs. Well, Camp he warn’t evil or hateful, either one. He jest couldn’t do nothin’. So doggit, Will Tweedy, ain’t you or nobody else go’n say he’s gone to Hell. He jest couldn’t stand it no more. Would a lovin’ God kick a boy unhappy enough to do what pore Camp did?”

“Well’m, faith ain’t no magic wand or money-back gar’ntee, either one. Hit’s jest a way a-livin’. Hit means you don’t worry th’ew the days. Hit means you go’n be holdin’ on to God in good or bad times, and you accept whatever happens. Hit means you respect life like it is—like God made it—even when it ain’t what you’d order from the wholesale house.

When Jesus said ast and you’ll git it, He was givin’ a gar’ntee a-spiritual healin’, not body healin’. He was sayin’ thet if’n you git beat down—scairt to death you cain’t do what you got to, or scairt you go’n die, or scairt folks won’t like you—why, all you got to do is put yore hand in God’s and He’ll lift you up.

“Jesus meant us to ast God to hep us stand the pain, not beg Him to take the pain away. We can ast for comfort and hope and patience and courage, and to be gracious when thangs ain’t goin’ our way, and we’ll git what we ast for. They ain’t no gar’ntee thet we ain’t go’n have no troubles and ain’t go’n die. But shore as frogs croak and cows bellow, God’ll forgive us if’n we ast Him to.”

Grandpa had only considered what he wanted when he wrote all those instructions; he didn’t give a thought to what it would be like for us to gather around a gaping hole before we’d hardly realized he was dead, before we’d hardly even got started on the grieving.