Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) by Olive Ann Burns Page A

whispered, distressed. “I don’t...can you just tell Miss Love I’m back, Mr. Tweedy? And...” she reached out and touched my hand, “and thank you.” With that, she grabbed her bag and disappeared up the stairs.
    During Sanna Klein’s miserable recital of broken glass and gravy stains I had begun to feel as if this were something we were in together. But walking home for dinner with my folks, I kept puzzling. None of what Miss Klein told me explained why she’d come back so early in the day, or why it was the daddy who brought her home. Why not the sweetheart?
    She couldn’t have flunked out of the fancy family. If so, Mr. Blankenship wouldn’t have sounded so kind and sad, saying he wished things had turned out different.
    What did it all mean? It was months before I found out.
    ***
    Cudn Milford and his wife, Cudn Zena, had arrived by buggy, in time to go to church with Mama and Papa. When I got home they were on the front porch with Papa. They lived in Pocatelago Community, better known as Poky, which was eight miles from P.C. All Poky amounted to was a large general store at the crossroads and farms all around. One of those farms was where Grandpa Blakeslee grew up.
    Cudn Zena’s face was lop-sided from a stroke. Her right eye and cheek drooped and the right side of her mouth, which made her
f
’s come out like
h’
s. But that didn’t stop her from talking.
    â€œMy, don’t you look hine, Will!” she said as I came up the steps. “Spittin’ image of Cudn Rucker, ain’t he, Mr. Milhord. But, son, you need some weight on you. Skinniest, long-leggedest thang I ever seen. Come ’ere and hug this old lady!”
    â€œHow you been doin’, Cudn Zena,” I asked, reaching down to her in a bear hug.
    â€œWell, my hace ain’t too good, but the rest of me is as good as common, thank you, thank you.” Cudn Zena always was a talker, once she got started, and right then she got started telling Papa and me her latest hope for a cure. “Y’all know Porter Springs, don’t you, up in the mountains near Dahlonega? Other day I got to rememberin’ my Uncle Alva, how he was so afflicted with the rheumatism, he dragged his heet around like an alligator. And he got well at Porter Springs. Told me he stayed three days in a boardin’ house up thar and drank two gallons a day of that mineral water, and when he come home, he could walk just hine and go about his worldly bizness.”
    Cudn Milford butted in. “She wants me to take her up yonder, but I cain’t afford it. Miss Zena, I’m willin’ if you’re willin’ to sleep in a tent.”
    â€œI got my aigg money,” she replied from the good side of her mouth.
    â€œMaybe he likes you the way you are,” I said cheerfully.
    â€œWell, I don’t. Lookin’ like a clown don’t matter much, but my eye hurts. Hit cain’t blink. I have to keep my hand over it like this and tie a rag across it at night. Uncle Alva told me bout lots of sick hoiks he met up there, stayin’ in them little cottages or the boardin’ house or the ho-tel and drankin’ the water. Just miracles. One man had piles in the worst way, and he spent hive days on the spring water and his piles was healed. A lady who’d had laig sores for seven years got cured in a two-week period. Now, listen to this, Hoyt—a man from White County had the dropsy? You know, somethin’ wrong with his heart and him swole up all over? Uncle Alva said the man at the ho-tel said the man come up there swole up all over like he’d bust if you stuck a pin in him. Weighed three hundret pound if he weighed a ounce. And drankin’ that water made him start shrinkin’. In just three weeks he was down to a hundret and thirty. The ho-tel man swore on a Bible that time he was ready to leave, this man could run, wrestle, li’t thangs like anybody else! I