Tobacco Road Part 12

"You ain't going to take me riding in it none?" he asked, standing erectly by the house.

"No, sir! You ain't going to ride in my new automobile no more. That's why I wouldn't let you go with me to see Tom this morning. I don't want you around it no more, neither."

"By G.o.d and by Jesus, if that's what you're aiming to do, you can get off my land," he said, s.h.i.+fting his weight from one foot to the other and pulling at the rotten weatherboards behind him. "I ain't none too pleased to have you around, noway."

Bessie did not know what to say. She looked around for Dude, but he was not in sight.

"You're going to make me leave?"

"I done started doing it. I already told you to get off my land."

"It don't belong to you. It's Captain John's land. He owns it."

"It's the old Lester place. Captain John ain't got no more right to it than n.o.body else. Them rich people up there in Augusta come down here and take everything a man's got, but they can't take the land away from me. By G.o.d and by Jesus, my daddy owned it, and his daddy before him, and I ain't going to get off it while I'm alive. But durned if I can't run you off it--now git!"

"Me and Dude ain't got no place to go. The roof is all rotted away at my house."

"That don't make no difference to me. I don't care where you go, but you're going to get off this land. If you ain't going to let me ride in the new automobile when I wants to, you can't stay here.- I'm tired looking at them two dirty holes in your durn nose, anyhow."

"You old son of a b.i.t.c.h, you!" she cried, running to him and scratching his face with her fingernails. "You're nothing but an old dirty son of a b.i.t.c.h, you is! I hope G.o.d sends you straight to h.e.l.l and never lets you out again!"

Ada came running around the corner of the house when she heard the cries of Bessie. The sight of Jeeter's bleeding face threw her into a fit of uncontrollable anger. She hit at Bessie with her fists and kicked her with her feet.

Dude came running, too. He stood looking at the fight while all three of them were striking and scratching one another. Ellie May grinned from behind a chinaberry tree.

Bessie retreated. Both Ada and Jeeter were fighting her, and she was unable to strike back. She ran to the automobile and jumped in. Jeeter picked up a stick and hit her with it several times before Ada took it from him and began poking Bessie in the ribs with it. The sharp point hurt her much more than Jeeter's blows on her head and shoulders had, and she screamed with pain.

Both Ellie May and the grandmother came out from behind the chinaberry trees and watched all that was taking place.

Dude jumped in and backed the car towards the road as fast as he could. His choice lay with Sister Bessie. He liked to drive an automobile too much to let hers get away from him on account of a little sc.r.a.p like that.

Mother Lester, who had watched the fight from the start, ran across the yard to get behind another chinaberry tree where she could see from a better location everything that was happening. She had no more than reached a point midway between two chinaberry trees when the rear end of the automobile struck her, knocking her down and backing over her.

Bessie leaned out of the car, shaking her fists and making faces at Ada and Jeeter. They followed the automobile to the tobacco road.

"You old sons of b.i.t.c.hes, you!" she yelled at them at the top of her high-pitched voice. "All of you Lesters is dirty sons of b.i.t.c.hes!"

Ada picked up a big rock and hurled it at the car as hard as she could. By that time, Bessie and Dude were several hundred feet away, and Ada's big stone fell short of the mark by three-fourths of the distance. She should have known she did not have the strength to throw rocks as large as that. It was almost as big as a stove-lid.

Eighteen After the dust had settled on the road, Ada and Jeeter came back into the yard. Mother Lester still lay there, her face mashed on the hard white sand. From the corner of the house, Ellie May looked at what had appened.

"Is she dead yet?" Ada asked, looking at Jeeter. "She don't make no sound and she don't move. I don't reckon she could stay alive with her face all mashed like that."

Jeeter did not answer her. He was too busy thinking of his hatred for Bessie to bother with anything else. He took another look at the grandmother and walked across the yard and around to the back of the house. Ada went to the porch and stood there looking back at Mother Lester several minutes, then she walked inside and shut the door.

Mother Lester tried to turn over so she could get up and go into the house. She could not move either her arms or her legs without unbearable pain, and her head felt as if it had been cracked open. The automobile had struck her with such force that she did not know what had hit her. Both of the left wheels had rolled over her, one of them across her back and the other on her head. She had not known what had happened. More than anything else she wanted to get up and lie down on her bed. She struggled with a final effort to raise her head and shoulders from the hard sand, and she managed to turn over. After that she lay motionless.

When he had finished getting a fresh drink of water at the well, Jeeter walked out into the broom-sedge, kicking the ground with the toes of his shoes to find out how dry it was. He believed the soil held just the right amount of moisture needed for plowing, but he wanted to be sure of it, because he was confident that he could borrow a mule somewhere and begin plowing and planting early the following week.

While he walked around in the waist-high broom-sedge, Lov was racing down the tobacco road, hatless and out of breath. Lov began shouting to Jeeter as soon as he reached the front yard, and Jeeter ran out of the sedge to meet him and find out what the trouble was.

Lov was dressed in his dirty black overalls, the pair he wore at the chute when he shovelled coal into the scoops. His hat had blown off when he started running to Jeeter's, and he had not waited to go back and pick it up. Lov's fiery red air stood almost straight up; ordinarily, it was falling down over his forehead and getting into his eyes.

He saw the old grandmother lying in the yard and he slowed down to look at her, but he did not linger there. He ran until he was face to face with Jeeter.

"What you doing down here at this time of day, Lov?" Jeeter said. "Why ain't you working at the chute?"

Lov did not speak for several minutes. He had to wait until he could regain his breath. He sat on the ground, and Jeeter squatted on his heels beside him.

They were not far from the well. Ellie May was standing beside the stand drinking from the bucket when Lov reached Jeeter, but she did not run away immediately. She waited until Lov sat down, so she could hear what he had to tell Jeeter.

"What's the matter, Lov?" Jeeter asked. "What happened down at the chute that made you run here so fast?"

"Pearl--Pearl--she run off!"

"Run where to?" Jeeter said calmly, disappointed because it was not something of more interest to him. "Where'd Pearl run to, Lov?"

"She's gone to Augusta!"

"Gone to Augusta!" Jeeter said, straightening up. "I thought maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere for a spell, like she was always doing. Reckon what she run off to Augusta for?"

"I don't know," Lov said, "but I reckon she just up and went. I don't know what else she done it for. I didn't hurt her none this morning. I didn't do nothing to her, except throw her down on the bed. She got loose from me, and I ain't seen her since."

"What was you trying to do to her?"

"Nothing. I was only going to tie her up with some plow-lines to see if I could do it I figured she'd have to stay m the bed if I tied her there I was gomg to loose pretty soon."

"How you know she's run off to Augusta? Maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere again. Did she tell you she was going to run off to Augusta?"

"She didn't say nothing to me."

"Then what makes you think she went up there, instead of going off in the woods somewhere?"

"I didn't even know she was running off up there till Jones Peabody came by the chute and told me he met hei up near Augusta when he was coming back to Fuller with an empty lumber truck. He said he stopped and asked her where she was going, and if I knowed she'd left home, but she wouldn't talk to him. He said she looked like she was near about scared to death. He came and told me about it the first thing. He said he knowed I wouldn't know about it."

"Pearl, she was just like Lizzie Belle. Lizzie Belle up and went to Augusta just like that!" He snapped his fingers, jerking his head to one side. "I didn't know nothing about it till I seen her up there on the street once. I asked her what made her run off without saying nothing to her Ma and me about it, but she wouldn't talk none. I thought all the time that she was staying out in the woods somewhere for a while, but I knowed it was Lizzie Belle the first time I looked at her. She had on some stylish clothes and a hat, but they didn't fool me. I knowed it was Lizzie Belle, even if she wouldn't talk to me. She was working in a cotton mill across the river from there, all that time. I knowed then why she up and went there, because Ada told me. Ada said Lizzie Belle wanted to have some stylish clothes and a hat to wear, and she run off up there to work in a cotton mill so she could get them kind of things herself."

"Pearl never said nothing to me about wanting a stylish dress and a hat," Lov said. "I make a dollar a day at the chute, and I could have bought her a dress and a hat if she had told me she wanted them. But Pearl never said nothing to me--she never said nothing to n.o.body. She slept on that dum pallet on the floor and wouldn't answer my requests when I told her to do something I wanted done."

"I reckon about the best thing you can do, Lov, is to let her be. She wasn't satisfied living down here on the tobacco road, and if you was to bring her back, she'd run off again twice as quick. She's just like Lizzie Belle and Clara and the other gals. I can't recall all of their names right now, but it was every durn one of them, anyhow, They all wanted some stylish clothes. They wasn't satisfied with the pretty calico and gingham their Ma sewed for them. Well, Ada ain't satisfied neither, but she can't do nothing about it. That's how the gals took after their Ma. I sort of broke Ada of wanting to go off and do that. She don't talk no more about buying of stylish clothes and a hat, except a dress to die in and be buried in. She talks about getting a stylish dress to die in, but she ain't going to get it, and she knows she ain't. She'll die and be buried in the ground wearing that yellow calico she's got on now. I broke Ada of wanting to run off, but them gals was more than I could take care of. There was too durn many of them for only one man to break. They just up and went."

"Maybe she'll come back," Lov said. "Reckon she'll come back, Jeeter?"

"Who--Pearl? Well, I wouldn't put no trust in it. Lizzie Belle went off and she ain't never come back. None of the other gals came back, neither."

"I sort of hate to lose her, for some reason or another. She was a pretty little girl--all them long yellow curls hanging down her back always made me hate the time when she'd grow up and be old. I used to sit on the porch and watch her through the window when she was comb lug and brus.h.i.+ng her hair in the bedroom--"

"That sure ain't no lie," Jeeter said. "Pearl had the prettiest yellow hair of any gal I ever saw. It was a plumb shame that she was so bad about wanting to stay by herself all the time, because I used to want to have her around me. I wish Ada had been that pretty. Even when Ada was a young gal, she was that dum ugly it was a sin. I ain't never seen an uglier woman in the whole country, unless it's that durn woman preacher Bessie. Them two dirty holes in her face don't do a man no good to look at."

"Pearl always took a long time to fix herself up, woman-like. I used to want to tell her there wasn't no other girl in the whole country who was nowhere as pretty as she was, but she wouldn't listen to me. And I lived with her so long I sort of got used to seeing her every day, and I don't know what I'm going to do now whe she's gone to Augusta to stay. I'll miss them long yellow curls hanging down her back, and that pretty face of her. too. Aside from that, I don't know of a prettier sight to see than to look in her pale blue eyes early in the morning before the sun got up so high it threw too much light in them. Early in the morning they was the prettiest things a man could ever want to look at. But they was pretty any time of the day, and sometimes I used to sit and shake all over, for wanting to squeeze her so hard. I don't reckon I'll ever forget how pretty her eyes was early in the morn-. lug just when the sun was rising."

"Maybe you would like to take Ellie May down to your house, Lov?" Jeeter suggested. "She ain't got a man, and it looks like she ain't never going to get one, unless you take a fancy to her. You and Ellie May was hugging and rubbing of the other the first of the week, around at the front of the house. Maybe you would want to do that some more?"

"Reckon if I was to go up to Augusta and find her, she would let me bring her back home to stay?" Lov asked. "Reckon she would, Jeeter?"

"Who--Pearl?" Jeeter asked. "No, I wouldn't recommend that. You'll lose your time down there at the chute while you was looking for her, and it's like I said at the start. Pearl is just like Lizzie Belle and Clara and all the rest of the gals. They was plumb crazy for getting stylish clothes. None of them gals of mine liked to wear the calico and gingham Ada sewed."

"But Pearl--she might get hurt up there in Augusta--"

"Lizzie Belle and Clara took care of themselves all right, didn't they? They didn't get hurt none. Now, as I was saying about Ellie May. You can take her to your house, Lov. Ellie May would be crazy about going down there to stay all the time. She wouldn't be never getting down on no durn pallet on the floor, neither."

"Seeing them long yellow curls hanging down her back used to make me cry sometimes. I'd look at her pretty hair and eyes so long that I thought I'd go crazy if I didn't touch her and see deep down into her eyes. But she wouldn't never let me come close to her, and that's what made the tears fall out of my eyes, I reckon. I been the lonesomest man in the whole country, for the longest time. Pearl was so pretty it was a sin for her to do like she done."

"Ellie May's got to get a man somewhere. She can't stay here all the time. When me and Ada's dead and gone, there won't be n.o.body to watch after her. If she stayed here at the home by herself the n.i.g.g.e.rs would haul off and come here by the dozens. The n.i.g.g.e.rs would get her in no time, if she was here by herself."

"The last pretty I got for Pearl was some green beads pn a long string. I gave them to her and she put them around her neck, and I swear to G.o.d if it didn't make her the prettiest little girl I ever saw or heard about in the whole country."

"If you want to take Ellie May with you now, I'll tell her to wash herself up and get ready to go," Jeeter said.

"I might take Elbe May for a while, and I might not. I don't know what I'm going to do about Pearl, yet. I wish I could get her to come back."

"Ellie May's got--"

"Ellie May's got that ugly-looking face," Lov said. "I don't know as how I would want to look at it all the time."

"You would sort of get used to it, slow-like," Jeeter said. "It don't bother me none now. I got used to looking at the slit and I don't notice it no more."

Lov stood up and leaned against the well. He was silent. for a long time, looking out over the tall brown broomsedge. Jeeter watched him, and whittled on a little stick with his pocket knife.

Ellie May was behind another chinaberry tree then. She had moved from one to another while Lov and Jeeter were busy talking. She had at last come closer so she could hear what was being said.

Presently Lov turned around and looked at Ellie May She jerked her head behind the chinaberry tree before he could see her face.

"I've got to be going back to the chute," he said. "That afternoon freight will be coming along pretty soon flow, and it always empties all the scoops. I got to get back and fill them up before the pa.s.senger comes. They raise h.e.l.l about the scoops being empty, because that makes the train have to wait until I can load them up."

He and Jeeter went around the house to the front yard. Neither of them had thought of Mother Lester again until they saw her lying on the sand. She was proc.u.mbent, and her face was mashed on the ground, but she had moved several feet closer to the house.

"What's wrong with her?" Lov said.

"Dude and Bessie backed the new automobile over her when they left. They was trying to get away before I could hit Bessie again, and they ran over her. I got it in good and heavy for that woman preacher now. I ain't letting her set foot on my land another time. She treated me bad about riding in the new automobile. She wouldn't let me go riding with her at all."

Lov walked over to where the old grandmother lay on the hard white sand. She had stopped bleeding, and she made so sound.

"Looks like she's dead," he said. "Is she dead, Jeeter?"

Jeeter looked down and moved one of her arms with his foot.

"She ain't stiff yet, but I don't reckon she'll live. You help me tote her out in the field and I'll dig a ditch to put her in."

They carried the body by the hands and feet, and put it down in the broom-sedge. Jeeter went to get a shovel from behind the corn-crib.

"You think that over what I said about Ellie May," Jeeter said. "I'll send her down to your house in time to cook your supper to-night. Ellie May won't treat you bad like Pearl done. Ellie May won't sleep on no durn pallet on the floor."

Lov started back down the tobacco road towards the coal chute. He shuffled his feet along the road, ifiling his shoes with sand. He did not look back.

Jeeter went out into the field with the shovel and began digging a grave to put his mother in. He dug in the earth for ten or fifteen minutes, and then called Ellie May. She had been standing in the yard behind a chinaberry tree waiting for Jeeter to tell her to go to Lov's.

"You wash yourself and go down to Lov's house and fix up for him," he told her, leaning wearily on the shovel handle. "He'll be coming home for supper tonight, and you cook him what he tells you."

Ellie May dashed into the house before Jeeter could finish giving her his instructions. She could not wait any longer.

He dug some more earth out of the ground, making the ditch a little longer.

Ellie May came out of the house in less than five minutes, running towards the road. Jeeter threw down the shovel and ran after her.

"You come back here m the morning after Lov goes to work and bnng some victuals with you, de you hear?" he shouted. "Lov makes a dollar a day at the chute, and he's got rations for a lot of victuals. Me and your Ma ain't got nothing up here. We get pretty hungry sometimes. You remember that."

Ellie May had run all the way across the yard and was racing down the middle of the tobacco road as fast as she could. Before Jeeter could say anything else to her, she was a hundred yards away. He had wanted to tell her to bnng him a pair of Lov's overalls too, the next when she brought the cooked food. She looked as if she was in such a great hurry to reach Lov's house that he let her go. She could make another trip the next day with the overalls.

Nineteen.

The time for spring plowing was over. Throughout the last two weeks of February the weather had been dry and the ground crumbly; there had been no finer season for plowing and planting in six or seven years. Usually at that time rains came every few days and kept the earth continually wet and soggy; but this year the season had begun in the middle of February with clearing skies, and a gentle breeze had been drying the moisture in the ground ever since the winter rains had stopped.

Farmers around Fuller who were undertaking to raise a crop of cotton this year had finished their plowing by the end of the month. With such an early start, there seemed to be no reason why, with plenty of hot weather during the growing season, the land should not yield a bale of cotton to the acre that fall. All farmers would put in as much guano as they could buy, and there was no limit to the number of pounds of cotton an acre would yield if fertilizer could be bought and used with a free hand. A bale to the acre was the goal of every cotton farmer around Fuller, but the boll:weevil and hard summer rains generally cut the crop in half. And on the other hand, if it was a good year for the raising of cotton, the price would probably drop lower than it had before. Not many men felt like working all year for six- or seven-cent cotton in the fall.

Jeeter had lived through the season for burning broom-sedge and pine woods, and through the time for spring plowing, without having done either. It was still not too late to begin, but Jeeter did not have a mule, and he did not have the credit to purchase seed-cotton and guano at the stores. Up until this year, he had lived in the hope that something would happen at the last moment and provide a mule and credit, but now it seemed to him that there was no use hoping for anything any more. He still look forward to the following year when he could perhaps raise a crop of cotton, but it was an antic.i.p.ation not so keen as it once had been. He had felt himself sink lower and lower, his condition fall further and further, year after year, until now his trust in G.o.d and the land was at the stage where further disappointment might euily cause him to lose his mind and reason. He still could not understand why he had nothing, and would never have anything, and there was no one who knew and could tell him. It was the unsolved mystery of his life.

But, even if he could not raise a crop that year, he could at least make all preparations for one. He could burn over the broom-sedge and the groves of blackjack and the fields of young pine seedlings. He could have the land ready for plowing in case something happened that would let him plant a crop of cotton. He would have the land ready, in case-- It was late afternoon on the first of March. He walked across the old cotton field through the waist-high broomsedge towards the blackjack grove at the rear of the house; he kicked at the crumbly earth lying exposed be.tween the tufts of sedge, thinking there was still time in which to arrange for credit at the stores in Fuller. He knew the time for burning and plowing had ended the day before, but there still lingered in the warm March air something of the new season. The smell of freshly turned earth and the odor of pine and sedge-smoke hovered over the land even after burning and plowing was done. He breathed deeply of it, filling his body with the invigorating aroma.

"Maybe G.o.d will send some way to allow the growing of a crop," he said. "He puts the land here, and the sun and rain--He ought to furnish the seed and the guano, somehow or other."

Jeeter firmly believed that something would happen. so he would be able to keep his body and soul alive. He still had hope left.

The late afternoon sun was still warm, and the air was balmy. There had been no cold nights for almost a week. People could sit on their front porches in the evening now without feeling the chill night air of February.

The breeze was blowing from the east. The white Smoke of the broom-sedge fire coiled upward and was carried away towards the west, away from Jeeter's view of the house and tobacco road. He stood watching it burn slowly away from him, and at the fire eating along the ground under the brown broom-sedge. There were several hundred acres of the land to burn; the fields that had not been cultivated, some of them for ten or fifteen years, were matted with the dry gra.s.s. Beyond the fields lay the woods of yellow pine and blackjack. The fire would probably blaze and smoulder three or four days before it would burn itself out and die along the sh.o.r.es of the creek farther away.

"If Tom and some of the older boys was here, maybe they could help get some seed-cotton and guano somehow," he said. "I know where I might could borrow a mule, jf I had the seed-cotton and guano to plant. But a mule ain't no good without the rest of the things. Wouldn't nothing grow in the new rows except broomsedge and blackjack sprouts."

He walked back to the house, to sit on the back steps a while before bed-time and watch the long line of yellow fire in the sedge.

It was long after dark before he got up and went into the house. From the rear bedroom window where he stood taking off his heavy shoes, Jeeter watched with fascination the distant fire that melted into a vivid red with the fall of darkness. Some of the fire had gone far over the hills, and all that could be seen of it was the dull orange glow in the sky above it. Other sections of it had circled around the fields like cornered snakes, and burned on both sides of the house. In the centre, where he bad stood that afternoon when he struck the match, there was a deep dark hole in the earth. The ground would remain black until it rained again.