Tobacco Road Part 7

"It won't be so very long now. We want to stay here a little while first. We got plenty of time to ride around, Dude."

"You going to let me drive it all the time?"

"Sure, you can drive it all the time. I don't know how to drive it, noway."

"You ain't going to let n.o.body else drive it, is you?"

"You is the only one who can drive it, Dude," she said. "But we got to hurry and finish marrying. You hold your end of the license while I pray."

Dude stood beside her, waiting for the prayer to be finished. She prayed silently for several minutes while he stood in front of her.

"I marry us man and wife. So be it. That's all, G.o.d. Amen."

There was a long silence while they looked at each other.

"When is we going for a ride?" Dude said.

"We is married now, Dude. We is finished being married. Ain't you glad of it?"

"When is we going for a ride?" Dude said.

"I got to pray now," she said. "You kneel down on the floor while I make a little prayer."

They knelt down to pray. Dude got down on all fours, looking straight into Bessie's nose while her eyes were closed.

"Dear G.o.d, Dude and me is married now. We is wife and husband. Dude, he is an innocent young boy, unused to the sinful ways of the country, and I am a woman preacher of the gospel. You ought to make Dude a preacher, too, and let us use our new automobile in taking trips all over the country to pray for sinners. You ought to learn him to be a fine preacher so we can make all the goats into sheep. That's all this time. We're in a hurry now. Save us from the devil and make a place for us in heaven. Amen."

There was a rustle of skirts as Sister Bessie jumped to her feet and began running excitedly around the room. She came back and pulled at Dude, making him put his arms around her waist.

Outside in the yard, Jeeter and Ellie May had been standing on their toes looking in through the window to see what Dude and Bessie were doing. There were no curtains over the windows, and the board blinds had had to be opened so there would be light in the room.

Dude stood for several minutes watching Bessie as she tried to pull him across the room. She finally sat down on one of the beds and attempted to make him sit beside her.

"You ain't going to sleep now, is you?" he asked. "It ain't time to go to bed yet. It ain't no more than noontime now."

"Just for now," she said. "We can go out again after a while and take a ride in the automobile."

Dude ran to the window to look at the car. For the moment, he had completely forgotten about it. When he reached the window, he saw Jeeter and Ellie May holding to the sill with the ends of their fingers and trying to see inside.

"What you doing that for?" he asked Jeeter. "What you want to look at?"

Jeeter turned away and looked out over the brown broom-sedge. Ellie May ran around to the back of the house and tip-toed into the hail through the kitchen.

Bessie came to the window and pulled Dude around until he faced her. Then she made him go back and sit down on the bed.

Suddenly, without knowing how it happened, Dude found himself on the bed with a quilt over him. Bessie had kicked her arms around him so tightly that he could not move in any direction.

Outside, he heard a ladder sc.r.a.pe against the weatherboards. Jeeter had found the ladder under the crib and had brought it to the window.

Twelve.

When Dude looked up, he saw that the door had been opened and that Ellie May, Ada, and the grandmother were crowding through it. He did not know what to do, but he tried to motion to them to go away.

He could not see Jeeter, because Jeeter was behind him, standing half-way up in the window with his feet supported on one of the rungs of the ladder. Bessie saw Jeeter, but she could not see the others.

Dude heard his grandmother groan and walk away. He could hear her feet sliding over the pine boards of the hail floor, the horse-collar shoes making an irritating sound as she went towards the front yard. He paid no more attention to the others.

After a while Jeeter cleared his throat and called Bessie. She did not answer him the first time he called, nor the next. Neither she nor Dude wanted to be disturbed.

When she persisted in not answering him, Jeeter climbed through the window, and walked across the room to the bed. He shook Dude by the collar until he turned around.

Jeeter, however, did not have anything to say to Dude. It was Bessie he wanted to speak to.

"I been thinking just now about it, Sister Bessie, and the more I think it over in my mind, the more I convince myself that you was right about what we was discussing yesterday on the porch."

"What you want with me, Jeeter?" she asked.

"Now, about that place in the Bible where it says if a man's eye offends G.o.d he ought to go and take it out."

"That's what the Bible says," she answered.

"I know It does. And that's what's worrying my soul so bad right now."

"But you is a religious man, Jeeter," she said. "Nothing ought to bother your conscience now. I prayed for you about them turnips you took from Lov. The Lord has forgot all about it now. He ain't going to hound you none on that account."

"It ain't about the turnips. It's about cutting myself off. Now, I reckon what you said was right. I ought to go and do it."

Dude turned around and tried to push Jeeter to the floor. Jeeter clung to the bedstead, and would not move away.

"Why you want to do that?" Bessie said.

"I been thinking about all you said so much that right now I know I ought to go ahead and cut myself off, so the Lord won't let me be tempted no more. I offended Him, and I know I ought to cut myself off so I won't do it no more. Ain't that right, Sister Bessie?"

"That's right," she said. "That's what the Bible says a man ought to do when he's powerful sinful."

Jeeter looked at Bessie. He pulled back the quilt so he could see her better.

"Maybe I can put it off a little while, though," he said, after thinking several minutes. "Now, maybe it ain't so bad as I thought it was. This time of year puts a queer feeling into a man, and he says a lot of things he don't stop to take into account. Along about when the time to plow the land and put seed in the rows comes around, a man feels like he ain't got no control over his tongue-- and don't want none. It's the same way with his actions. I feel that way every late February and early March. No matter how many children a man's got, he always wants to get more."

There was a silence in the house for a long time. Ellie May and Ada made no sound in the doorway. Jeeter sat on the bed deep in thought until Dude pushed him to his feet. Dude climbed out behind him.

When all of them were out in the yard again, Dude sat in the automobile and blew the horn. The women were busy wiping off the dust that had settled on the hood and fenders. The grandmother, though, did not come close to the car. She took her place behind a chinaberry tree and watched every movement of the others.

Jeeter sat on his heels beside the chimney, and thought over what Sister Bessie had said in the house. He was more convinced than ever that G.o.d expected him to fix himself so he would not have any more sinful thoughts about Bessie.

He decided, however, not to carry out his intentions just then. There was plenty of time left yet, he told himself, when he could go ahead and cut himself off, and so long as he did it before he offended G.o.d any more, it would be satisfactory. In the meanwhile, he would have time in which to try to convince himself more thoroughly that he should do it.

There was a little fat-back on rinds left in the kitchen, and Ada had baked some cornbread. The bread had been made with meal, salt, water, and grease.

All of them sat down at the table in the kitchen and ate the fat-back and cornbread with full appet.i.te. It was the first time that day that any of them had had food, and it would probably be the last. After the meat plate had been wiped clean of grease, and after the last of the cornbread was eaten, they went out into the yard again to look at the new automobile. The grandmother had hidden a piece of the bread in her ap.r.o.n pocket, and she put it under the mattress of her bed so she would have something to eat the next day in case Jeeter failed to buy some more meal and meat.

Jeeter wanted to take a ride right away. He told Bessie he wanted to go, and that he was ready. - Bessie had other plans, however. She said she and Dude were going to take a little ride that afternoon all alone, so they could talk over their marriage together without any disturbance. She promised Jeeter she would let him ride when they came back.

She and Dude got in, and Dude drove the car out of the yard and into the tobacco road towards the State highway. Jeeter thought they might be going to Augusta, but before he could ask them if they were, they had gone too far to hear him call.

"That Dude is the luckiest man alive," he told Ellie May. "Now ain't he?"

Ellie May started down the road through the cloud of dust to see him leave. She heard Jeeter talking to her, but she was too much interested in seeing the new car go down the road and in hearing Dude blow the horn to listen to what Jeeter said.

"Dude, he has got a brand-new car to ride around in, and he's got married all at the same time," Jeeter continued. "There's not many men who get all that in the same day, I tell you. The new car is a fine piece of goods to own. There ain't n.o.body else that I know of between here and the river who has got a brand-new automobile. And there ain't many men who has a wife as fine-looking as Sister Bessie - is at her age, neither. Bessie makes a fine woman for a man--any man, I don't care where you find him. She might be just a little bit more than Dude can take care of though, I fear. It looked to me like she requires a heap of satisfaction, one way and another, for a little woman no bigger than a gal. I don't know if Dude is that kind or not, but it won't take long for Bessie to find out. Now, if it was me, there wouldn't be no question of it. I'd please Sister Bessie coming and going, right from the start, and keep it up clear to the end."

Now Ellie May heard what Jeeter was saying, and it interested her. She waited to hear more.

"Now, you, Ellie May, it's time you was finding yourself a man. All my other children has got married. It's your time next. It was your time a long while ago, 'way before Pearl and Dude got married, but I make allowances for you on account of your face. I know it's harder for you to mate up than it is for anybody else, but in this country everybody has got to get mated up. You ought to go out and find yourself a man to marry right away, and not wait no longer. It might be too late pretty soon, and you don't want that to happen. It ain't going to get you nowhere fooling around with Lov like you was doing, because you can't get him that way. He's already married. It's the unmarried men you has got to get. There's a fine lot of boys running that sawmill over at Big Creek. You can walk over that way some day and make them take notice of you. It ain't hard to do. Women know how to make men take notice of them, and you're old enough to know all about it at your age. Them boys at the sawmill down there at Big- Creek ought to take a liking to you in spite of the way you look in the face. When a man looks at you from behind, he ought to want to mate up with you right there and then. That's what I heard Lov say one time, and he ought to know, because he's mated up now. Just don't show your face too much, and that won't stop the boys from getting after you."

When Jeeter looked at Ellie May again, she was crying. It was about the first time he had even seen her cry since she was a baby. He did not know what to do about it, nor to say about it, because he had never before had the occasion to try to calm a crying woman. Ada never cried. She never did anything.

Before he could ask her what the matter was, she had run off into the old cotton field; she ran towards the woods behind the house, jumping through the brown broom-sedge like a frightened rabbit.

"Now, I never seen the likes of that before," Jeeter said, "I wonder what it was that I could have said that made her carry-on like that?"

Thirteen.

Jeeter remained seated on his heels by the chimney in the yard for half an hour after Ellie May had run away crying. He stared at the tracks left in the yard by the new automobile, amazed at the sharpness of the imprint of the tire-tread. The tires of his own car, which was still standing in the yard between the house and the corn-crib were worn smooth. When they rolled on the sand, they left no track, except two parallel bands of smoothed sand. He was wondering now what he could do about his tires. If he could pump them all up at the same time, he could haul a load of wood to Augusta and sell it. He might even get as much as a dollar for the load.

It was fifteen miles to the city, and after he had bought enough gasoline and oil for the trip there and back, there would not be much left of the dollar. A quarter, possibly, with which he could buy two or three jars of snuff and a peck of cotton-seed meal. Even a quarter would not buy enough corn meal for them to eat. He had already begun buying cotton-seed meal, because corn meal cost too much. Fifteen cents would buy enough cotton-seed meal to last them a whole week.

But Jeeter was not certain whether it was worth the trouble of hauling a load of wood. It would take him nearly half a day to load the car with blackjack, and a half a day for the trip to Augusta. And then after he got there he might not be able to find anybody to buy it.

He still planned a crop for that year, though. He had by no means given up his plans to raise one. Ten or fifteen acres of cotton could be raised, if he could get the seed and guano. There was a mule over near Fuller he thought he could borrow, and he had a plow that would do; but it took money or an equal amount of credit to buy seed-cotton and guano. The merchants in Fuller had said they would not let him have anything on credit again, and it was useless to try to raise a loan in a bank- in Augusta. He had tried to do that three or four times already, but the first thing they asked him was whom did he have to sign his notes, and what collateral had he to put up. There was where the deal fell through every time. n.o.body would sign his notes, and he had nothing to put up for security. The men in the bank had told Jeeter to try a loan company.

The loan companies were the sharpest people he had ever had anything to do with. Once he had - secured a two-hundred-dollar loan from one of them, but he swore it was the last time he would ever bind himself to such an agreement. To begin with, they came out to see him two or three times a week; some of them from the company's office would come out to the farm and try to tell him how to plant the cotton and how much guano to put in to the acre. Then on the first day of every month they came back to collect interest on the loan. He could never pay it, and they added the interest to the princ.i.p.al and charged him interest on that, too.

By the time he sold his cotton in the fall, there was only seven dollars coming to him. The interest on the loan amounted to three per cent a month to start with, and at the end of ten months he had been charged thirty per cent, and on top of that another thirty per cent on the unpaid interest. Then to make sure that the loan was fully protected, Jeeter had to pay the sum of fifty dollars. He could never understand why he had to pay that, and the company did not undertake to explain it to him. When he had asked what the fifty dollars was meant to cover, he was told that it was merely the fee for making the loan. When the final settlement was made, Jeeter found that he had paid out more than three hundred dollars and was receiving seven dollars for his share. Seven dollars for a year's labor did not seem to him a fair portion of the proceeds from the cotton, especially as he had done all the work, and had furnished the land and mule, too. He was even then still in debt, because he owed ten dollars for the hire of the mule he had used to raise the cotton. With Lov and Ada's help, he discovered that he had actually lost three dollars. The man who had rented him the mule insisted on being paid, and Jeeter had given him the seven dollars, and he was still trying to get the other three to pay the balance.

Jeeter swore that he would never again have anything to do with the rich people in Augusta. They had hounded him nearly every day, trying to tell him how he should cultivate the cotton, and in the end they came out and took it all away from him, leaving him three dollars in debt. He had done all the work, furnished the mule and land, and yet the loan company had taken all the money the cotton brought, and made him lose three dollars. He told everybody he saw after that, that G.o.d was not working in a deal such as that one was. He told the men who represented the finance company the same thing.

"You rich folks in Augusta is just bleeding us poor people to death. You don't work none, but you get all the money us farmers make. Here I is working all the year myself, Dude plowing, and Ada and Ellie May helping to chop the cotton in summer and pick it in the fall, and what do I get out of it? Not a durn thing, except a debt of three dollars. It ain't right, I tell you. G.o.d ain't working on your side. He won't stand for such cheating much longer, neither. He ain't so liking of you rich people as you think He is. G.o.d, He likes the poor."

The men collecting for the loan company listened to Jeeter talk, and when he had finished, they laughed at him and got in their new automobile and drove back to Augusta.

That was one reason why Jeeter was not certain he could raise a crop that year. But he thought now that if he could get the seed and guano on credit from a man in Fuller, he would not be robbed. The people in Fuller were farmers, just as he was, or as he tried to be, and he did not believe they would cheat him. But every time hehad said something about raising credit in Fuller, the mer-chants had waved him away and would not even listen to him. - "Ain't no use in talking no more, Jeeter," they had said. "There's farmers coming into Fuller every day from all over the country wanting the same thing. If there's one, there's a hundred been here. But we can't help you people none. Last year we let some of you farmers have seed-cotton and guano on credit, and when fall came there was durn little cotton made, and what there was didn't bring more than seven cents, middling grade. Ain't no sense in farming when things is like that. We cant take no more chances. All of us has just got to wait until the rich give up the money they're holding back."

"But, praise G.o.d, me and my folks is starving out there on that tobacco road. We ain't got nothing to eat, and we ain't got nothing to sell that will bring money to get meal and meat. You storekeepers won't let us have no more credit since Captain John left, and what is we going to do? I don't know what's going to happen to me and my folks if the rich don't stop bleeding us. They've got all the money, holding it in the banks, and they won't lend it out unless a man will cut off his arms and leave them there for security."

"The best thing you can do, Jeeter," they had said, "is to move your family up to Augusta, or across the river in South Carolina to Horsecreek Valley, where all the mills is, and go to work in one of them. That's the only thing left for you to do now. Ain't no other way."

"No! By G.o.d and by Jesus, no!" Jeeter had said. "That's one thing I ain't going to do! The Lord made the land, and He put me here to raise crops on it. I been doing that, and my daddy before me, for the past fifty years, and that's what's intended. Them durn cotton mills is for the women folks to work in. They ain't no place for a man to be, fooling away with little wheels and strings all day long. I say, it's a h.e.l.l of a job for a man to spend his time winding strings on spools. No! We was put here on the land where cotton will grow, and it's my place to make it grow. I wouldn't fool with the mills if I could make as much as fifteen dollars a week in them. I'm staying on the land till my time comes to die."

"Have it your own way, Jeeter, but you'd better think it over and go to work in the cotton mills. That's what nearly everybody else around Fuller has done. Some of them is in Augusta and some of them is in Horsecreek Valley, but they're all working in the cotton mills just the same. You and your wife together could make twenty or twenty-five dollars a week doing that. You ain't making nothing by staying here. You'll both have to go and live at the county poor-farm pretty soon if you stay here and try to raise cotton."

"Then it will be the rich who put us there," Jeeter had said. "If we has to go to the poor-farm and live, it will be because the rich has got all the money that ought to be spread out among us all and won't turn it loose and give me some credit to get seed-cotton and guano with."

"You ain't got a bit of sense, Jeeter. You ought to know by now that you can't farm. It takes a rich man to run a farm these days. The poor has got to work in the mills." - "Maybe I ain't got much sense, but I know it ain't intended for me to work in the mills. The land was where I was put at the start, and it's where I'm going to be at the end."

"Why, even your children has got more sense than you, Jeeter. They didn't stay here to starve. They went to work in the mills. Now, there's Lizzie Belle up there in--"

"Maybe some of them did, but that ain't saying it was right. Dude, he didn't go, noway. He'll still here. He's going to farm the land some day, just like all of us ought to be doing."

"Dude hasn't got the sense to leave. If he had the sense your other children had, he wouldn't stay here. He would be able to see how foolish it is to try to farm like things is now. The rich ain't aiming to turn loose their money for credit. They're going to hold on to it to run the mill with."

Jeter remembered all that had been said, as he sat on his heels by the chimney, leaning against the warm bricks in the late February sun. He had heard men in Fuller say things like that dozens of times, and it always had ended in his walking out and leaving them. None of them understood how he felt about the land when the plowing season came each spring.

The feeling was in him again. Thi-s time he felt it moredeeply than ever, because in all the past six or seven years when he had wanted to raise a crop he had kept his disappointment from crus.h.i.+ng his spirit by looking forward to the year when he could farm -again. But this year he felt that if he did not get the seed-cotton and guano in the ground he would never be able to try again. He knew he could not go on forever waiting each year for credit and never receiving it, because he was becoming weaker each day, and soon he would not be able to walk between the plow-handles even if credit were provided for him.

It was because of his discouragement that the odor of wood and sedge smoke and of newly turned earth now filling the air, was so strong and pungent. Farmers everywhere were burning over the woods and the broom-sedge fields, and plowing the earth in the cotton lands and in the new grounds.

The urge he felt to stir the ground and to plant cotton in it, and after that to sit in the shade during the hot months watching the plants sprout and grow, was even greater than the pains of hunger in his stomach. He could sit calmly and bear the feeling of hunger, but to be cornpelled to live and look each day at the unplowed fields was an agony he believed he could not stand many more days..

His head drooped forward on his knees, and sleep soon overcame him and brought a peaceful rest to his tired heart and body.

Fourteen.

Dude and Sister Bessie came back at sunset. Dude was blowing the horn a mile away, when Jeeter first heard it, and he and Ada ran out to the road to watch them come. The horn made a pretty sound, Jeeter thought, and he liked the way Dude blew it. He was pressing the horn b.u.t.ton and taking his finger off every few seconds, like the firemen who blew the engine whistles when they were leaving the coal chute.

"That's Dude blowing the horn," Jeeter said. "Don't he blow it pretty, though? He always liked to blow the horn near about as much as he liked to drive an automobile. He used to cuss a lot because the horn on my car wouldn't make the least bit of a sound. The wires got pulled loose and I never had time to tie them up again."

Ada stood in the road watching the s.h.i.+ny new car come nearer and nearer. It looked like a big black chariot, she said, running away from a cyclone. The dust blown up behind did look like the approach of a cyclone.

"Ain't that the _prettiest_ sight to see?" she said.