Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) by Olive Ann Burns Read Free Book Online

certainly strange. Here’s a word I never heard of. I can’t imagine what it means, but it’s in my handwriting! It’s spelled H-E-R-E.’”
    The faces around our supper table went blank. Campbell Junior was the first to laugh. He never had been dull-witted.
    â€œH-E-R-E,” Mama murmured. “H-E-R-E.” Then it dawned on her—and the rest of us. “That spells
herel
Just plain old HERE! ”
    â€œHear, hear!” I said, and even Aunt Loma got off her high horse and laughed. All of us did.
    Then Mary Toy changed the subject again. “On the train ride home,” she said, looking at me, “I saw that redheaded Sorrows boy. You remember the Sorrowses, Will.”
    â€œYeah, they moved to Commerce a few years ago. Julian Sorrows was in my class. We called him Julie.”
    â€œThat’s right. Julie. He’s the one I saw. He told me he had enlisted in the Army. He seemed so proud.”
    I knew what Mary Toy was saying: why hadn’t I enlisted yet. And I knew Mama and Papa were sitting there hoping I never would. Her question and their dread hung in the air. Even to my own family I was embarrassed to admit I got turned down just for being skinny. Mary Toy and Loma wouldn’t believe it, and Mama and Papa would want to starve me to death.
    I marveled how easy it had been to tell Sanna Klein.
    Of course I was registered for the draft—one of 120,000 white boys registered in Georgia. “Did you know that more’n a hundred thousand Georgia Negroes are registered?” I asked casually. “If they keep callin’ up our colored boys, Southern farmers sure will be hurtin’ for wages hands. Already are hurtin’ from so many colored families movin’ up North, and now they’re worried about the Army’s draftin’ jarheads.”
    â€œJarheads?” asked Campbell Junior.
    â€œI’m talkin’ about mules, son. Last week the paper said the United States has already shipped a hundred thousand mules to France, and three hundred thousand horses. They pull artillery and ammunition wagons.”
    Papa was always uneasy with war talk, whereas Mary Toy was obsessed with it. She had a sweetheart, an engineering student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Now she said he’d written that aviators were being trained on the Tech campus, and that he wanted to apply to be one.
    â€œThat’s what I’d like to do,” I said. “Fly an air machine. I expect they want lightweight aviators.” I glanced at Papa. When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I expect aerial fightin’ will get more and more important as the war goes on.”
    Mary Toy put in eagerly, “Remember what Grandpa Blakeslee said his granddaddy said? How someday people would ride through the air? Grandpa said folks thought the old man had lost his mind.”
    â€œI wish it was still just a prediction,” said Mama. “Imagine, flyin’ through the sky! The very idea scares me half to death.”
    Campbell Junior nodded. “Me too. I’d just bout soon fly, though, as go to a old military school full of Yankees.”
    Sitting beside him, I patted his knee, then pushed back my chair. “Son, I got to head on back to Athens. But Tuesday I’m go’n come to Cold Sassy, and I’m go’n take you to the drugstore and we’ll get some ice cream. I’ll buy you the big dish. Mama, I hate to eat and run, but I don’t want to let the road get dark on me. Aint Loma, I’ll see you Tuesday too. I’ll kiss you good-bye then.”
    She always knew when I was teasing. “You don’t exactly have to kiss me Tuesday, either,” she said, smiling as I stood up. “But I hope you will.” She wagged her left hand in my face again, and the diamond sparkled.

5
    I HAD already set up Tuesday to go see Mr. Ambrose Hall, whose one-horse farm was just south of Cold Sassy on the road to Commerce. To