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

she’d have to attend Sunday school and preaching in P.C., as is expected of teachers. In that case, I meant to be waiting when she and Miss Love and Sampson came in from the Methodist service. I took the train to P.C. Sunday morning and walked up to Miss Love’s house. Sunday school hadn’t let out yet, much less church, so I sat down on the porch swing, lit a cigar, and opened the
Atlanta Journal
wide.
    I had sense enough to know Miss Klein had probably spent last night with the Blankenships. But even if she had, at least I had an excuse to spend the morning enjoying the newspaper instead of wiggling and shoulder twitching through a long Presbyterian sermon with my folks.
    Fools in love get fool hopes. My idea was if Miss Klein hadn’t gone to Jefferson, I could save her from an afternoon of misery in her room alone. A few hours with me would surely seem better than nothing. I’d thought of taking her to ride, maybe out to my Grandpa Tweedy’s farm in Banks County. I knew I could use Papa’s car, since kinfolks were coming for Sunday dinner and would sit visiting all afternoon.
    Concentrating on the newspaper wasn’t easy, nervous as I was and distracted by hope and cooking smells from Miss Hyta Mae’s boarding house next door and a squirrel in the fig tree who kept barking at a cat. Finally my eyes lit on an item that interested me:
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The Rev. Mr. Jared Elder, age 70, has dug his own grave in Silver Shoal Community and lined the sides with Portland Cement. He is in good health, so expects to wait a few years before occupying the home he has prepared for his body. But he brags that when the final hour comes, his neighbors will not have to be summoned to dig a hole. Mr. Elder did a good job, but it does not look inviting.
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    I tore that out, and also a little boxed-off story about base pay for soldiers in different countries. I already knew American privates were drawing thirty-three dollars a month, but I never imagined that French privates got only a dollar-fifty, a soldier of the same grade in Russia thirty-two cents, and in Germany sixty-five cents. It said the British Army was paying seven dollars and sixty cents a month plus extra for service in France. Japanese privates earned eight dollars a year.
    Then I noticed a little item I’d almost missed:
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Miss Trulu Philpot, formerly of Athens, will be honored as Miss Liberty Bond at a gala in the nation’s capital on Saturday night, October 3, to raise money for the War Effort. This is “The Event” of Washington’s social season.
According to Miss Philpot’s mother, Mrs. Cason R. Philpot, her daughter’s “court” will include her escort, Captain Horace Luck, a U.S. Army aviator who leaves soon for France, and some of his fellow aviators.
Miss Philpot is staying with her maternal aunt and is one of this year’s most sought-after debutantes in Washington.
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    Lord, I was tired of Trulu intruding on everything I did.
    Trulu Philpot was a modern girl with hypnotic blue eyes and golden hair. Before Sanna, I never looked twice at a dark-haired girl. If you only dated blondes, I figured, you were sure to marry a blonde. I’d loved blondes ever since Lightfoot’s hair shone like an angel’s in the sunlight as she bent over me on Blind Tillie Trestle the day the train ran over me. Tru was a vamp and flirted with everybody, but I was the only one she fell in love with, and we got engaged. It had been announced and everything.
    Tru’s grandfather was a major general in the War Between the States and he was the man who built the whitecolumned mansion in Athens where Trulu and her family lived. That impressed Papa and Mama, and they were even more impressed when I said the whole Philpot family made the grand tour of Europe and Russia in 1910.
    They were less impressed when they met her. She’d just got her blond hair cut short—that was sometime before Loma cut