Tobacco Road Part 13

He lay awake a long time after Ada was asleep. It was quiet in the house, now that there was no one else there to keep them company.

Jeeter tossed and turned, smelling the aroma of pine and broom-sedge smoke in the night air. With it came the strong odor of freshly turned earth somewhere a longway off. He looked straight up at the black ceiling, solemnly swearing to get up the next morning and borrow a mule. He was going to plow a patch to raise some cotton on, if he never did anything else as long as he lived.

He went to sleep then, his mind filled with thoughts of the land and its sweet odors, and with a new deter mination to stir the earth and cultivate plants of cotton.

The fire burned l.u.s.tily through the night. It went-farther and farther towards the west where the young pines grew, and it burned through the groves of blackjack, leaving the scrub-oak trees standing blackened and charred. They would not die, but the young pines would.

The dawn was beginning to break in the east, and the wind s.h.i.+fted to the north, blowing a final night breeze before daylight. The fire in the broom-sedge on each side of the house burst into renewed vigor in the path of the wind, and it burned back towards the centre where it had started. When it reached the point where the sedge ended at the rim of blackened ground, it would die out. In the meantime there were the fields on each side of the house to burn. After that, there would remain to be burned only the land far back in the woods and on the hills where the blue smoke and red flames climbed above the tree-tops.

Beside the house, the broom-sedge fire leapt higher in the early morning breeze. It came closer and closer to the house, and only a thin strip of sandy yard separated it from the building. If a brisk wind caught the fire at the moment when it was burning hardest, it would whirl the embers of gra.s.s against the house, under it, and onto the roof.

The moment when the sun came up the wind caught the fire and sent it swirling through the dry gra.s.s. Torn by the wind, stems of flaming gra.s.s were showered on the house, some dying as they burned out, others leaving a glowing spark imbedded in the dry tinder-like s.h.i.+ngles that had covered the house for fifty years or more. There were cracks in the roof where the more rotten s.h.i.+ngles had been ripped and blown away by the strong autumnal winds, and in these the embers spread quickly.

Jeeter and Ada usually got up with the sun, and it was that time now. Neither of them came to the windows now, however, nor did either of them open the door. They were both asleep.

The fiery, red flaming roof was a whirling ma.s.s of showering embers in a short time. The dry tinder-like s.h.i.+ngles, rotted by the autumn and winter rains and scorched by the searing spring and summer sun for two generations, blazed like coals in a forge. The whole roof was in flames in a few seconds, and after that it was only a matter of minutes until the rafters, dry and dripping with pine pitch, fell down upon the floor of the house and upon the beds. Half an hour after the roof had first caught, the house was in black smoking ashes. Ada and Jecter had not known what had happened.

Several near-by farmers had seen the smoke and flames as they were getting up at sun-rise. Most of them hurried along the tobacco road and across the fields to the Lester place with the intention of helping to save some of the furniture. They had not realized how fast the dry pitchdripped house had burned to the ground, until they reached it.

There was a crowd of twenty or thirty men standing around the ashes when Lov and Ellie May reached the place, and when Bessie and Dude got there. There was nothing anybody could do then. There was nothing that could be saved. Jeeter's old automobile was a pile of rust-colored junk.

Some of the men took long blackjack poles and poked around in the ma.s.s of ashes, hoping to find the bodies and to take them out before they were burned any more but the heat of the ashes drove every one back for a while.

"The Lord had a curse on this house," Bessie said. "He didn't want it to stand no longer. Praise the Lord!"

n.o.body paid any attention to Bessie.

"Jeeter is better off now than he was," one of the farmers said. "He was near about starved to death half the time and he couldn't raise no crops. It looks to me like his children ought to have stayed at home and helped him run a farm."

Lov's first thought on seeing the smoking ashes was to remember Jeeter's prayerful plea about the care he wanted taken of his body when he died. Now it did not matter, because there was very little of it left.

After the coals had cooled, the men went into the ashes and carried out the two bodies and laid them down under the chinaberry tree beside the road. The tree's green limbs had been scorched, but it was too far away from the house to burn. The other chinaberry trees in the yard had been closer to the house, and they had burned almost as quickly as the house.

Preparations were begun at once to dig the grave. The men found two or three charred and broken-handled shovels and a pick behind the scorched and blistered corn-crib, and asked Lov where he wanted the grave dug. They decided to dig it in the blackjack grove, because if some one did decide to farm the land that year or the following ones, there would be no danger of the grave being plowed up so soon.

The men dug the grave, and carried the remains, stretched out on the blackjack poles, to the grove. They were lowered into the ground. Some of the men asked Bessie to say a short prayer before the bodies were covered, but she refused to say anything for Jeeter or Ada. There was nothing, then, left to do but to throw the earth in and smooth the mounds with the back of the shovels.

Most of the farmers hurried back to their homes for breakfast. There was nothing else to be done.

Lov sat down by the lone chinaberry tree and looked at the blackened ma.s.s of ashes, Bessie and Dude stayed a while, too; they had to wait on Lov. Ellie May hovered in the distance, looking on, but never coming close enough to be noticed by Lov or the others.

"I reckon old Jeeter had the best thing happen to him," Lov said. "He was killing himself worrying all the time about the raising of a crop. That was all he wanted in this life--growing cotton was better than anything else to him. There ain't many more like him left, I reckon. Most of the people now don't care about nothing except getting a job in a cotton mill somewhere. But can't all of them work in the mills, and they'll have to stay here like Jeeter until they get taken away, too. There ain't no sense in them raising crops. They can't make no money at it, not even a living. If they do make some cotton, somebody comes along and cheats them out of it. It looks like the Lord don't care about crops being raised no -more like He used to, or He would be more helpful to the poor. He could make the rich people lend out their money, and stop holding it up. I can't figure out how- they got hold of all the money in the county, anyhow. Looks like it ought to be spread out among everybody."

Dude poked around in the ashes looking for whatever he could find. There had been nothing of value in the house; but he liked to dig in the ashes and toss out the twisted tin kitchen dishes and china doork.n.o.bs. The charred and crusted iron casters of the wooden beds were there, and nails and screws; almost everything else in the house had been made of wood or cloth.

"Old Jeeter had one wish fulfilled," Lov said. "It wasn't exactly fulfilled, but it was taken care of, anyhow. He used to tell me he didn't want me to lock him up in the corn-crib and go off and leave him when he died. That's what happened to his daddy. When his daddy died, Jeeter and the men who were sitting up with the body locked it in the corn-crib at night while they rode to Fuller for tobacco and drinks. They put it in the crib so nothing would happen to it while they was gone. When they went to bury it the next day, a big rat jumped out of the box. It had gnawed into the coffin while it was laying in the crib, and it had eaten all one side of the old man's face and neck. That was what Jeeter was afraid would happen to him, and he used to make me promise him three times a day that I wouldn't lock him up in the crib when he died. There wasn't no use of him worrying so because there ain't been no rats in the crib in many a year, except when they come back sometimes to look around and see if any corn has been put in it."

"I don't think the Lord took to Jeeter none too much," Sister Bessie said. "Jeeter must have been a powerful sin. ful man in his prime, because the Lord wasn't good to him like He is to me. The Lord knows us all like that. He knows when we're good and when the devil is in us."

"Well, it don't make no special difference now," Lov said. "Jeeter's dead and gone, and he won't be bothered no more by wanting to grow things in the ground. That's what he liked to do more than anything else, but somehow he never got a chance to do it much. Jeeter, he would lots rather grow a big crop of cotton than go to heaven."

"If he'd gone to Augusta and worked in the cotton mill like the rest of them done, he would have been all right. There ain't no money for a man like him farming all the time when he can't get no credit."

"I reckon Jeeter done right," Lov contended. "He was a man who liked to grow things in the ground. The mills ain't no place for a human who's got that in his bones. The mifis is sort of like automobiles--they're all right to fool around in and have a good time in, but they don't offer no love like the ground does. The ground sort of looks out after the people who keeps their feet on it. When people stand on planks in buildings all the time, and walk around on hard streets, the ground sort of loses interest in the human."

Dude came out of the ashes, shaking the black flakes off his shoes and overalls. He sat on the ground - and looked on silently. Ellie May still hovered in the distance, as if she were afraid to come any closer to the ashes of the house.

"Ada didn't get no stylish dress to die in, though," Lov said. "I sort of hoped she would, too. It's a pity about that, but it don't make no difference now. Her old dress was burned off of her in the fire, and she was buried just like G.o.d made her. Maybe that was better than having a stylish dress, after all. If she had died of age, or anything like that, she wouldn't have had no stylish dress, noway. She would have had to be buried in the old one she had. It sort of worked out just right for her. She didn't know she didn't have a stylish dress to die in. It didn't make no difference if it was the right length or not."

No one mentioned the old grandmother, but Lov was glad she had been killed the day before. He did not feel that it would have been right to bury her body in the same grave with Jeeter and Ada, or even in the same field. They had hated her so much that it would have been taking advantage of her death to put Mother Lester's body next to theirs. She had lived so long in the house with Jeeter and Ada that she had been considered nothing more than a door-jamb or a length of weatherboarding. But it could be said about her, Lov thought to himself, that she never complained of the treatment she received. Even when she was hungry, or sick, no word had pa.s.sed her lips. She had lived so long with Ada and Jeeter that she had believed it was useless to try to protest. If she had said anything, Jeeter or Ada would have knocked her down.

Dude was the first to get into the automobile, and Sister Bessie soon followed. They waited for Lov to get in so they could go back to their house and cook breakfast. Alter he was in, Ellie May came and sat down beside him n the back seat. Dude steered the car out of the yard, and turned down the tobacco road towards the blackened coal chute and the muddy red river.

Almost immediately, Dude began blowing the horn.

When they were going over the first sand hill, Lov looked back through the car curtain and saw the Lester place. The tall brick chimney standing blackened and tomb-like in the early morning sunlight was the only thing that he could see.

Dude took his hand, off the horn-b.u.t.ton and looked at Lov.

"I reckon I'll get me a mule somewhere and some seed-cotton and guano, and grow me a crop of cotton this year," Dude said. "It feels to me like it's going to be a good year for cotton. Maybe I could grow me a bale to the acre, like Pa was always talking about doing"

About the Author.

From the day of his birth, December 17, 1903, in Coweta County, Georgia, until he reached the age of twenty, Erskine Caidwell rarely lived longer than a year in one place. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he left home at fourteen to wander through the Deep South, Mexico, and Central America. At seventeen, he enrolled at Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina, for a short time. He next entered the University of Virginia on a scholars.h.i.+p, and there began writing short stories. Later he attended the University of Pennsylvania, then spent eight years in Maine, where he wrote _Tobacco Road_ and _G.o.d's Little Acre_. The _Sat.u.r.day Review_ called the latter, "one of the finest studies of Southern poor whites that has ever come into our literature." He worked as a seaman, cotton picker, cabdriver, bodyguard, cub reporter, cook, and waiter.

Best known for his novels and short stories, Mr. Caldwell was also a journalist of note, having been a newspaper and radio correspondent in Europe during World War He died onApril 11, 1987.