Tobacco Road (10 page)

“I’m going to mention it to him when I see him, but I don’t know how he’ll take it. I expect he’s got a wife and a raft of children to provide for. Maybe he’ll give it to me, though.”

“Reckon Tom has got some children?”

“Maybe some.”

“I sure would like to see them. I know I must have a whole lot of grandchildren somewhere. I’m bound to have, with all them boys and girls off from home. If I could see Tom maybe I wouldn’t mind it so bad that I can’t see the rest of them. I just know I ought to have grandchildren somewhere in the country.”

“Lizzie Belle and Clara has got a raft of children, I reckon. They was always talking about having them. And they say over in Fuller that Lizzie Belle has got a lot of them. I don’t know how other folks know more about such things than I do. Looks like I ought to be the one who knows the most about my children.”

“Maybe you could get Tom to bring his children over here for me to see. You tell him I want to see my grandchildren, and maybe he’ll consent to bring them.”

Ada had talked several times about Tom bringing his children to see her. Every time Jeeter said anything about going over to Burke County where Tom’s cross-tie camp was, she reminded him not to forget to tell Tom what she had said. But from year to year, as Jeeter failed to start, she had become less inclined to talk about the possibility of seeing any of the grandchildren. Jeeter could not get started. He would say he was going the next day, but he always put off the trip at the last minute.

Jeeter made a false start somewhere nearly every day. He was going to Fuller, or he was going to McCoy, or he was going to Augusta; but he never went when he said he would. If he told Ada at night that he was going to McCoy early the next morning, he would decide at the last minute to go to Fuller or Augusta instead. Usually he would have to stop and walk out over the old cotton fields and look at the tall brown broom-sedge, and that made him think about something else. When he did walk out into the sedge, the chances were that he would lie down and take a nap. It was a wonder how he ever got the wood cut that he hauled to Augusta. Sometimes it took him a whole week to cut enough blackjack for a load.

Just then it was the beginning of the new season that was causing him to change his mind so frequently. The smell of the burning broom-sedge and pine undergrowth was in the air every day now. Some of the land was even being broken away off in the distance, and he could detect the aroma of freshly turned earth miles away. The smell of newly turned earth, that others were never conscious of, reached Jeeter’s nostrils with a more pungent odor than any one else could ever detect in the air. That made him want to go out right away and burn over the old cotton fields and plant a crop. Other men were doing that all around him, but even if he succeeded in borrowing a mule, Jeeter did not know where to begin begging for credit to buy seed-cotton and guano. The merchants in Fuller had heard his plea so many times that they knew what he was going to ask for as soon as he walked in the door, and before he could say the first word they were shaking their heads and going back where he could not follow them. He did not know what to do about it.

Jeeter postponed nearly everything a man could think of, but when it came to plowing the land and planting cotton, he was as persistent as any man could be about such things. He started out each day with his enthusiasm at fever pitch, and by night he was still as determined as ever to find a mule he could borrow and a merchant who would give him credit for seed-cotton and guano.

T
HE SUN HAD BEEN
up only half an hour when Bessie reached the Lester house on the morning after her sudden departure. She had said then that she was going home to ask God to let her marry Dude. Jeeter had not expected her to come back for several days.

No one was in sight as she crossed the yard and ran through the front door calling Dude.

“Dude—you Dude! Where is you, Dude?” she called.

Jeeter was just getting out of bed when he first heard her; she ran into the bedroom while he sat on a chair pulling on his shoes.

“What you want with Dude, Bessie?” he asked sleepily. “What you want Dude for?”

Bessie ran around the room looking into the beds. There were three beds in which all the Lesters slept. Ada and Jeeter used one of them, Ellie May and the grandmother another, and Dude slept alone.

Ellie May sat up in bed, awakened by the disturbance, and rubbed her eyes. Bessie jerked back the quilts on Dude’s bed, and ran into the next room where the roof had fallen in. It was the other bedroom, the room where most of the children had formerly slept, and it had been deserted because one section of the roof had rotted away. It was filled with plunder.

Bessie came back and looked under Ada’s bed.

“What you want with Dude this time of day, Bessie?” Jeeter asked.

She still did not stop to answer Jeeter’s questions. She ran through the kitchen calling Dude at the top of her voice.

As soon as he could lace his shoes and put on his jumper, Jeeter followed her out into the backyard. His drooping black felt hat was on his head, because his hat was the first thing he put on in the morning and the last he took off at night.

Dude was drawing a bucket of water at the well, and Bessie reached him before he could tip the bucket and get a drink. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his face excitedly. Dude fought back at first, but as soon as he saw it was Bessie he smiled at her and put his arms around her waist.

Jeeter went closer and watched them. Presently Bessie took a side-comb from her head and began combing Dude’s stiff black hair and smoothing it down with the palms of her hands. Dude’s hair was coarse and bristly, and it stood straight on its ends no matter how much it was combed and brushed. Sometimes he could manage to make it lie down for a few minutes by sousing his head in a pan of water and then combing it hurriedly; but as soon as the water began to dry, the hair would stand straight up again as if it were attached to springs. Dude’s hair was as wiry as hog-bristles.

“I never seen a woman preacher carry-on over a young sapling like that before,” Jeeter said. “What you want to do that to Dude for, Bessie? You and him is hugging and rubbing of the other just like you was yesterday on the front porch.”

Bessie smiled at Dude and Jeeter. She leaned against the well-stand and tucked up her hair. She had not waited that morning to pin it up.

“Me and Dude is going to get married,” she said. “The Lord told me to do it. I asked Him about it, and he said, ‘Sister Bessie, Dude Lester is the man I want you to mate. Get up early in the morning and go up to the Lester place and marry Dude the first thing.’ That’s what He said to me last night, the very words I heard with my own ears while I was praying about it in bed. So when the sun came up, I got out of bed and ran up here as fast as I could, because the Lord don’t like to be kept waiting for His plans to be carried out. He wants me to marry Dude right now.”

Dude looked around nervously as if he was thinking of trying to run off to the woods and hide. He had forgotten how anxious he had been to go home with Bessie the evening before when she first mentioned marriage.

“You hear that, Dude?” Jeeter said. “What you think about doing it with Sister Bessie?”

“Shucks,” he said. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why can’t you do that?” Jeeter demanded. “What’s ailing you? Ain’t you man enough yet?”

“Maybe I is, and maybe I ain’t. I’d be scared to do that with her.”

“Why, Dude,” his father said, “that ain’t nothing to be afraid about. Bessie ain’t going to hurt you. She knows how to treat you. Sister Bessie, there, has been married before. She’s a widow-woman now. She knows all about how to treat men.”

“I wouldn’t hurt you none, Dude,” she said, putting her arm around his neck and drawing his arms tighter around her waist. “There ain’t nothing to be scared of. I’m just like your sister, Ellie May, and your Ma. Women don’t scare their menfolks none. You’ll like being married to me, because I know how to treat men fine.”

Ada elbowed her way past Jeeter and Dude. She had not waited to plait her hair when she heard what Bessie wanted. She stood beside Dude and Bessie, with her hair divided over the front of her shoulders, plaiting one side and tying a string around the end, and then beginning on the other braid. She was as excited as Bessie was.

“Bessie,” she said, “you’ll have to make Dude wash his feet every once in a while, because if you don’t he’ll dirty-up your quilts. Sometimes he don’t wash himself all winter long, and the quilts get that dirty you don’t know how to go about the cleaning of them. Dude is just careless like his Pa. I had the hardest time learning him to wear his socks in the bed, because it was the only way I could keep the quilts clean. He would never wash himself. I reckon Dude is just going on the same way his Pa done, so maybe you had better make Dude wear his socks, too.”

Ellie May had come out of the house and was standing behind a chinaberry tree in order to hear and see what was taking place beside the well-stand. The grandmother was in the yard too; she was peering from behind the corner of the house lest any one should see her and make her go away.

“Maybe you and Dude will help get me a stylish dress,” Ada suggested shyly. “You and him know how bad I want a dress of the right length to die in. I’ve long ago give up waiting for Jeeter to get me one. He ain’t going to do it in time.”

All of them stood by the well looking at each other. When Jeeter caught Dude’s eye, Dude hung his head and looked at the ground. He did not know what to think about it. He wanted to get married, but he was afraid of Bessie. She was nearly twenty-five years older than he was.

“Do you know what I’m going to do, Jeeter?” Bessie asked.

“What?” Jeeter said.

“I’m going to buy me a new automobile!”

“A new automobile?”

“A brand-new one. I’m going to Fuller right now and get it.”

“A brand-new one?” Jeeter said unbelievingly. “A sure-enough brand-new automobile?”

Dude’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes glistened.

“What you going to buy it with, Bessie?” Jeeter asked. “Is you got money?”

“I’ve got eight hundred dollars to pay for it with. My former husband left me that money when he died. He had it in insurance, and when he died I got it and put it in the bank in Augusta. I aimed to use it in carrying on the prayer and preaching my former husband used to like so much. I always did want a brand-new automobile.”

“When you going to buy a new automobile?” Jeeter asked.

“Right now—to-day. I’m going over to Fuller and get it right now. Me and Dude’s going to use it to travel all over the country preaching and praying.”

“Can I drive it?” Dude asked.

“That’s what I’m buying it for, Dude. I’m getting it for you to drive us around in when we take a notion to go somewheres.”

“When is you and Dude going to do all this riding around and praying and preaching?” Jeeter said. “Is you going to get married before or after?”

“Right away,” she said. “We’ll walk over to Fuller right now and buy the new automobile, and then ride up to the courthouse and get married.”

“Is you going to get leave of the county to get married?” he asked doubtfully. “Or is you just going to live along without it?”

“I’m going to get the license for marrying,” she said.

“That costs about two dollars,” Jeeter reminded. “Is you got two dollars? Dude ain’t. Dude, he ain’t got nothing.”

“I ain’t asking Dude for one penny of money. I’ll attend to that part myself. I’ve got eight hundred dollars in the bank, and some more besides. I saved my money for something just like this to happen. I’ve been looking for it to happen all along.”

Dude had been dropping pebbles into the well for the past few minutes. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Bessie. He looked straight into her face, and the sight of the two cavernous round nostrils brought a smile to his lips. He had looked at her nose before, but this time the holes seemed to be larger and rounder than ever. It was more like looking down into a double-barrel shotgun than ever before. He could not keep from laughing.

“What you laughing at, Dude?” she asked, frowning.

“At them two holes in your nose,” he said. “I ain’t never seen nobody with all the top of her nose gone away like that before.”

Bessie’s face turned white. She hung her head in an effort to hide her exposed nostrils as much as possible. She was sensitive about her appearance, but she knew of no way to remedy her nose. She had been born without a bone in it, and after nearly forty years it had still not developed. She put her hand over her face.

“I’m ashamed of you, Dude,” she said, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes. “You know I can’t help the way I look. I been like that ever since I can remember. Won’t no nose grow on me, I reckon.”

Dude dug the toes of his shoes in the sand and tried not to laugh. But almost as suddenly as he had first looked at Bessie’s face and broken into a smile, he stopped and scowled meanly at himself. It was the remembrance of the new automobile that made him stop laughing at Bessie. If she was going to buy a brand-new car, he did not care how she looked. It would have been all right with him if she had had a harelip like Ellie May’s, now that he could ride all he wanted to. He had never driven a new motor car, and that was something he wanted to do more than anything else he could think of.

“I didn’t mean no harm,” he said uneasily. “Honest to God, I didn’t. I don’t give a damn how your nose looks.”

Bessie smiled again, and put her arms around his waist. She looked up at him again, her face so close to his that he could feel her breath. He had to stop trying to see down into her nose, because it hurt his eyes, and made them ache, to focus them on an object only a few inches away. Her nostrils were only a dark blur on her face when they were standing so close together.

“Can I drive the new automobile, sure enough?” he asked again, hoping he had not made her change her mind. “Is you going to let me drive it?”

“That’s why I’m getting it, Dude. I’m getting it for you to drive all over the country in. Me and you is going to get married, and we can ride all the time if we want to. I won’t stop you from going somewhere when you want to go. You can ride all the time.”