Tobacco Road (2 page)

Lov had by that time moved a few steps nearer the yard and had sat down in the tobacco road with his feet in the drain ditch. He kept one hand gripped tightly around the mouth of the sack where it had been tied together with a piece of twine.

Ellie May continued to peer from behind the china-berry tree, trying to attract Lov’s attention. Each time he glanced in that direction, she jerked her head back so he could not see her.

“What you got in that there croker sack, Lov?” Jeeter shouted across the yard. “I been seeing you come a far piece off with that there croker sack on your back. I sure would like to know what you got on the inside of it. I heard it said that some people has got turnips this year.”

Lov tightened his grip on the mouth of the sack, looking from Jeeter to the next Lester in turn. He saw Ellie May peering at him from behind the chinaberry tree.

“Did you have a hard time getting what you got there in the sack, Lov?” Jeeter said. “You look like you is all out of breath.”

“I want to say something to you, Jeeter,” he said. “It’s about Pearl.”

“What’s that gal done now, Lov? Is she treating you mean some more?”

“It’s just like she’s always done, only I’m getting pretty durn tired of it by this time. I don’t like the way she acts. I never did take to the way she does, but it’s getting worse and worse all the time. All the niggers make fun of me because of the way she treats me.”

“Pearl is just like her Ma,” Jeeter said. “Her Ma used to do the queerest things in her time.”

“Every time I want to have her around me, she runs off and won’t come back when I call her. Now, what I say is, what in hell is the sense in me marrying a wife if I don’t get none of the benefits. God didn’t intend for it to be that way. He don’t want a man to be treated like that. It’s all right for a woman to sort of tease a man into doing what she wants done, but Pearl don’t seem to be aiming after that. She ain’t teasing me, to her way of thinking, but it sure does act that way on me. Right now I feel like I want a woman what ain’t so—”

“What you got in that there croker sack, Lov?” Jeeter said. “I been seeing you for the past hour or longer, ever since you came over the top of that far hill yonder.”

“Turnips, by God,” Lov said, looking at the Lester women.

“Where’d you get turnips, Lov?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know!”

“I was thinking maybe we might fix up some sort of a trade, Lov—me and you. Now, I could go down to your house and sort of tell Pearl she’s got to sleep in the bed with you. That’s what you was aiming to speak to me about, wasn’t it? You want her to sleep in the bed, don’t you?”

“She ain’t never slept in the bed. It’s that durn pallet on the floor that she sleeps on every night. Reckon you could make her stop doing that, Jeeter?”

“I’d be pleased something powerful to make her do what she ain’t doing. That is, if me and you could make a trade with them turnips, Lov.”

“That’s what I came by here for—to speak to you about Pearl. But I ain’t going to let you have none of these turnips, though. I had to pay fifty cents for this many in a sack, and I had to walk all the way to the other side of Fuller and back to fetch them. You’re Pearl’s daddy, and you ought to make her behave for nothing. She don’t pay no attention to nothing I tell her to do.”

“By God and by Jesus, Lov, all the damn-blasted turnips I raised this year is wormy. And I ain’t had a good turnip since a year ago this spring. All my turnips has got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them, Lov. What God made turnip-worms for, I can’t make out. It appears to me like He just naturally has got it in good and heavy for a poor man. I worked all the fall last year digging up a patch of ground to grow turnips in, and then when they’re getting about big enough to pull up and eat, along comes these damn-blasted green-gutted turnip-worms and bore clear to the middle of them. God is got it in good and heavy for the poor. But I ain’t complaining, Lov. I say, ‘The good Lord knows best about turnips.’ Some of these days He’ll bust loose with a heap of bounty and all us poor folks will have all we want to eat and plenty to clothe us with. It can’t always keep getting worse and worse every year like it has got since the big war. God, He’ll put a stop to it some of these days and make the rich give back all they’ve took from us poor folks. God is going to treat us right. He ain’t going to let it keep on like it is now. But we got to stop cussing Him when we ain’t got nothing to eat. He’ll send a man to hell and the devil for persisting in doing that.”

Lov dragged the sack of turnips across the drain ditch and sat down again. Jeeter laid aside the rotten inner-tube and waited.

L
OV OPENED THE SACK,
selected a large turnip, wiping it clean with his hands, and took three big bites one after the other. The Lester women stood in the yard and on the porch looking at Lov eat. Ellie May came from behind the chinaberry tree and sat down not far from Lov on a pine stump. Ada and the old grandmother were on the porch watching the turnip in Lov’s hand become smaller and smaller with each bite.

“Now, if Pearl was anything like Ellie May, she wouldn’t act like she does,” Lov said. “I’d have taken Ellie May at the start if it wasn’t for that face of hers. But I knowed I couldn’t sleep with no peace of mind at night with her in the bed with me, and knowing how it looked in the daylight. Pearl looks pretty, and she’s a right smart piece to want to sleep with, but I just can’t make her stay off of that durn pallet on the floor when night comes. You got to come down there and make her do like she ought to act, Jeeter. I been married to her near on to a whole year, and all that time I could just as well been shovelling coal at the chute night and day without ever going to my house. That ain’t the way it was intended for it to be. A man has the right to want his wife to get in the bed when dark comes. I ain’t never heard of a woman wanting to sleep on a durn pallet on the floor every night in the whole year. Pearl is queer that way.”

“By God and by Jesus, Dude,” Jeeter said, “ain’t you never going to stop bouncing that there ball against that there old house? You’ve clear about got all the weatherboards knocked off already. The durned old house is going to pitch over and fall on the ground some of these days if you don’t stop doing that.”

Jeeter picked up the inner-tube again, and tried to make the patch stick to the rubber. The old automobile against which he was sitting was the last of his possessions. The year before, the cow had died, leaving him with the car. Up until that time he had had a way of boasting about his goods, but when the cow went, he did not even mention the car any more. He had begun to think that he was indeed a poor man. No longer was there anything he could mortgage when the time came each spring to buy seed-cotton and guano; the automobile had been turned down at the junk yard in Augusta. But he still had wood to sell; it was the wiry blackjack that grew behind the house. He was trying now to patch the inner-tube so he could haul a load of it to Augusta some time that week. Ada said all the meal was gone, and the meat, too. They had been living off of fat-back rinds several days already, and after they were gone, there would be nothing for them to eat. A load of blackjack would bring fifty or seventy-five cents in Augusta, if he could find a man who would buy it. When the old cow had died, Jeeter hauled the carcass to the fertilizer plant in Augusta and received two dollars and a quarter for it. After that, there was nothing left to sell but blackjack.

“Quit chunking that durn ball at them there weatherboards, Dude,” he said. “You don’t never stop doing what I tell you. That ain’t no way to treat your old Pa, Dude. You ought to sort of help me out, instead of always doing something contrary.”

“Aw, go to hell, you old dried-up clod,” Dude said, throwing the ball at the side of the house with all his might and scooping up a fast grounder on the rebound. “Nobody asked you nothing.”

The old grandmother, Jeeter’s mother, crawled under the front porch for the old burlap sack, and went across the tobacco road towards the grove for some dead twigs. No one paid any attention to her.

Wood for the kitchen stove and fireplace was never cut and hauled to the house; Jeeter would not do it, and he could not make Dude do that kind of work. Old Mother Lester knew there was no food for them to cook, and that it would be a waste of time for her to go after the dead twigs and make a fire in the cook-stove; but she was hungry, and she was always hoping that God would provide for them if she made a fire in the kitchen at meal-time. Knowing that there were turnips in Lov’s sack made her frantic with hunger. She could sometimes stand the pain of it in her stomach when she knew there was nothing to eat, but when Lov stood in full view taking turnips out of the sack, she could not bear the sight of seeing food no one would let her have.

She hobbled across the road and over the old cotton field that had not been planted and cultivated in six or seven years. The field had grown up in broom-sedge at the start, and now the gnarled and sharp stubs of a new blackjack growth were beginning to cover the ground. She tripped and fell several times on her way to the grove of trees, and her clothes had been torn so many times before that the new tears in the skirt and jacket could not be distinguished from the older ones. The coat and shirt she wore had been torn into strips and shreds by the briars and blackjack pricks in the thicket where she gathered up the dead twigs for fire-wood, and there never had been new clothes for her. Hobbling through the brown broom-sedge, she looked like an old scarecrow, in her black rags.

The February wind whistled through the strips of black cloth, whirling them about in the air until it looked as if she were shaking violently with palsy. Her stockings had been made by wrapping some of the longer of the black rags around her legs and tying the ends with knots. Her shoes were pieces of horse-collars cut into squares and tied around her feet with strings. She went after the dead twigs morning, noon, and night; when she returned to the house each time, she made a fire in the cook-stove and sat down to wait.

Ada shifted the snuff stick to the other side of her mouth and looked longingly at Lov and his sack of turnips. She held the loose calico dress over her chest to keep out the cool February wind blowing under the roof of the porch. Every one else was sitting or standing in the sunshine.

Ellie May got down from the pine stump and sat on the ground. She moved closer and closer to Lov, sliding herself over the hard white sand.

“Is you in mind to make a trade with them turnips?” Jeeter asked Lov. “I’m wanting turnips, God Himself only knows how bad.”

“I ain’t trading turnips to nobody,” he said.

“Now, Lov, that ain’t no way to talk. I ain’t had a good turnip since a year ago this spring. All the turnips I’ve et has got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them. I sure would like to have some good turnips right now. Wormy ones like mine was ain’t fit for a human.”

“Go over to Fuller and buy yourself some, then,” he said, eating the last of his fourth turnip. “I went over there to get mine.”

“Now, Lov, ain’t I always been good to you? That ain’t no way for you to talk. You know I ain’t got a penny to my name and no knowing where to get money. You got a good job and it pays you a heap of money. You ought to make a trade with me so I’ll have something to eat and won’t have to starve to death. You don’t want to sit there and see me starve, do you, Lov?”

“I don’t make but a dollar a day at the chute. House-rent takes up near about all of that, and eating, the rest of it.”

“Makes no difference, Lov. I ain’t got a penny to my name, and you is.”

“I can’t help that. The Lord looks at us with equal favor, they say. He gives me mine, and if you don’t get yours, you better go talk to Him about it. It ain’t none of my troubles. I’ve got plenty of my own to worry about. Pearl won’t never—”

“Ain’t you never going to stop chunking that durn ball against the house, Dude?” Jeeter shouted. “That noise near about splits my poor head wide open.”

Dude slammed the baseball against the loose weatherboards with all his might. Pieces of splintered pine fell over the yard, and rotten chunks dropped to the ground beside the house. Dude threw the ball harder each time, it seemed, and several times the ball almost went through the thin walls of the house.

“Why don’t you go somewheres and steal a sack of turnips?” Dude said. “You ain’t fit for nothing else no more. You sit around here and cuss all the time about not having nothing to eat, and no turnips—why don’t you go somewheres and steal yourself something? God ain’t going to bring you nothing. He ain’t going to drop no turnips down out of the sky. He ain’t got no time to be wasted on fooling with you. If you wasn’t so durn lazy you’d do something instead of cuss about it all the time.”

“My children all blame me because God sees fit to make me poverty-ridden, Lov,” Jeeter said. “They and Ma is all the time cussing me because we ain’t got nothing to eat. I ain’t had nothing to do with it. It ain’t my fault that Captain John shut down on giving us rations and snuff. It’s his fault, Lov. I worked all my life for Captain John. I worked harder than any four of his niggers in the fields; then the first thing I knowed, he came down here one morning and says he can’t be letting me be getting no more rations and snuff at the store. After that he sells all the mules and goes up to Augusta to live. I can’t make no money, because there ain’t nobody wanting work done. Nobody is taking on share-croppers, neither. Ain’t no kind of work I can find to do for hire. I can’t even raise me a crop of my own, because I ain’t got no mule in the first place, and besides that, won’t nobody let me have seed-cotton and guano on credit. Now I can’t get no snuff and rations, excepting once in a while when I haul a load of wood up to Augusta. Captain John told the merchants in Fuller not to let me have no more snuff and rations on his credit, and I don’t know where to get nothing. I’d raise a crop of my own on this land if I could get somebody to sign my guano-notes, but won’t nobody do that for me, neither. That’s what I’m wanting to do powerful strong right now. When the winter goes, and when it gets to be time to burn off broom-sedge in the fields and underbrush in the thickets, I sort of want to cry, I reckon it is. The smell of that sedge-smoke this time of year near about drives me crazy. Then pretty soon all the other farmers start plowing. That’s what gets under my skin the worse. When the smell of that new earth turning over behind the plows strikes me, I get all weak and shaky. It’s in my blood—burning broom-sedge and plowing in the ground this time of year. I did it for near about fifty years, and my Pa and his Pa before him was the same kind of men. Us Lesters sure like to stir the earth and make plants grow in it. I can’t move off to the cotton mills like the rest of them do. The land has got a powerful hold on me.