Tobacco Road (12 page)

“I’ll be powerful much obliged if you will do it for me,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

“Sister Bessie Rice.”

“You must be preacher Rice’s widow, ain’t you?”

“He was my former husband.”

“Who are you going to marry, Sister Rice?”

“That’s him back there by the door.”

“Who?”

“Dude. His name is Dude Lester.”

“You ain’t going to marry him, are you?”

“That’s what I came here to get leave of the county for. Me and him is going to get married.”

“Who—that kid?” Is he the one who’s going to marry you?”

“Dude said he would—”

“That boy ain’t old enough to marry yet, Sister Rice.”

“Dude, he’s sixteen.”

“I can’t give you a license—you’ll have to wait a while and come back next year or so.”

“Dear God,” Bessie said, dropping to her knees on the floor, “this man says he won’t give me leave to marry Dude. God, You’ve got to make him do it. You told me last night to marry Dude and make a preacher out of him, and You have got to see me through now. I’m all excited about getting married. If You don’t make the county give me leave to marry, I don’t know what evil I might—”

“Wait a minute!” the Clerk shouted. “Stop that praying! I’d rather give you the license than listen to that. Maybe we can do something about it.”

Bessie got up smiling.

“I knowed the Lord would help me out,” she said.

“Has that boy got the consent of his parents? He can’t get married unless he’s got the consent of both parents, according to the law for his age. What does he want to marry you for anyway? He’s too young to marry an old woman like you. Come here, son—”

“Don’t you try to talk him out of it,” Bessie said. “If you start that, I’ll pray some more. God won’t let you keep us from marrying.”

“What do you mean by coming here to marry this old woman, son? You ought to wait and marry a girl when you grow up.”

“I don’t know,” Dude said. “Bessie, there, brought me along with her.”

“Well, I can’t give you a license to marry,” the Clerk said. “It’s against the law for a boy under eighteen years old to marry without his parents’ consent. And no amount of praying can change the law, neither. It’s down on the books and it won’t come off.”

“Dear God,” Bessie began again, “You ain’t going to let this man put us off, is You? You know how much I been counting on marrying Dude. You ought not to let nothing stop—”

“Wait a minute! Don’t start that again!” the Clerk said. “Who are this boy’s folks?”

“His Ma and Pa don’t care,” Bessie said. “They’re glad of it. I talked to them both early this morning on the way down here to Fuller.”

“What’s his daddy’s name?”

“Jeeter Lester is Dude’s Pa, and I don’t reckon you would know his Ma if I was to call her name. Her name is Ada.”

“Sure, I know Jeeter Lester, and I don’t reckon he does care. Nor his wife, either. I had to give Lov Bensey a license to marry one of the young girls, because Jeeter said he wanted it done. She wasn’t but twelve years old then either, and it was a shame to marry her so young. But it’s in the law, and I had to do it. She was a pretty little girl. I never seen a girl before in all my life with such pretty yellow hair and blue eyes. Her eyes was exactly the same color as robins’ eggs. I swear, she was one pretty sight to see.”

“Dude is older than that,” Bessie said. “Dude, he is sixteen.”

“How old are you, Sister Rice? You didn’t tell me your age.”

“I don’t have to tell you that, do I?” she said.

“That’s the law. I can’t give you the license if you don’t state your age.”

“Well—I was thirty-eight not so long back.”

“How old are you now?”

“Thirty-nine, but I don’t show it yet.”

“Who’s going to support you two?” he asked. “That boy can’t make a man’s wages yet.”

“Is that in the law, too?”

“Well, no. The law doesn’t require that question, but I thought I’d just like to know about it myself.”

“The Lord will provide,” Bessie said. “He always makes provision for His children.”

“He don’t take none too good care of me and mine,” the Clerk said, “and I been a supporting member of the Fuller Baptist church since I was twenty years old, too. He don’t do none too much for me.”

“That’s because you ain’t got the right kind of religion,” Bessie said. “The Baptists is sinners like all the rest, but my religion provides for me.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“It ain’t got no regular name. I just call it ‘Holy,’ most of the time. I’m the only member of it now, but Dude is going to be one when we get married. He’s going to be a preacher, too.”

“You’ll have to pay me two dollars for the license,” he said, writing on the sheet of paper. “Have you got it?”

“I’ve got it right here. I don’t see, though, why folks has to pay to get married. It’s God’s doings.”

“There’s something else I’m going to ask you. It’s not required by law, and some clerks don’t ask about it, but being a good Baptist I always feel like I ought to.”

“What’s it about?”

“Has either of you got any disease?”

“Not that I know about,” she said. “Has you, Dude?”

“What’s that?”

“Disease,” the Clerk said again, pronouncing the word slowly. “Like pellagra and chicken-pox, or anything like that. Is there anything wrong with you, son?”

“I ain’t got anything wrong with me that I know about,” Dude said. “I don’t know what that thing is, noway.”

“You sure you haven’t?” he asked Bessie. “Did your husband leave you with disease of any kind? What did he die of?”

“He died of age mostly, I reckon. He was well on to fifty when we was married.”

“Has either one of you got venereal disease?”

“What’s that?” Bessie asked.

“You know—” he said, “venereal disease. Maybe you call it sex trouble.”

“I used to take a powerful number of bottles of Tanlac, but I ain’t lately because I ain’t had the money to buy them with.”

“No, not that. What I’m talking about comes from women sleeping with men, sometimes.”

“My former husband had mites on him pretty bad sometimes. I had to wash both him and me off with kerosene to get rid of them.”

“No, not mites. Lots of people get those on them. It’s something else—but I reckon you ain’t got it, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“What other things do you want to know?” Bessie said.

“That’s all, I reckon. Now, you give me the two dollars.”

Bessie handed him the two soiled and ragged one-dollar bills she had been gripping in her hand. She had several more in her skirt pocket, all of them rolled in a handkerchief and the ends tied together. It was all the money she had left, now that the eight hundred dollars had been paid for the new automobile.

“Well, I reckon you two will get along all right,” the Clerk said. “Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t.”

“Is you a married man?” Bessie asked.

“I been married fifteen years or more. Why?”

“Well, I reckon you know how pleased me and Dude is to get married, then,” she said. “All married folks know how it is to get married.”

“It’s all right at the beginning, but it don’t keep up like that long. After you been married a year or two a man wants to go out and do it again all over, but it can’t be done. The law puts a stop to it after the first time, unless your wife dies, or runs off, but that don’t happen often enough to make it of any good.”

“Me and Dude is going to stay together all the time, ain’t we, Dude?”

Dude grinned, but he did not speak.

Bessie had the license in her hand, and she did not wait to hear the Clerk talk any more. She pulled Dude out of the room, and they left the courthouse and ran to the new automobile.

They got in to ride home. Dude blew the horn several times before he started the motor, and again before he put the car into gear. Then he turned it around in the street and drove it out of Fuller towards the tobacco road. Bessie sat erect on the back seat, holding the marriage license tight in both hands so the wind would not blow it away.

T
HE
L
ESTERS HEARD
D
UDE
blowing the horn far down the tobacco road long before the new automobile came within sight, and they all ran to the farthest corner of the yard, and even out into the broom-sedge, to see Dude and Bessie arrive. Even the old grandmother was excited, and she waited behind a chinaberry tree to be among the first to see the new car.

“Here they come!” Jeeter shouted. “Just look at them! It’s a brand-new automobile, all right—just look at that shiny black paint! Great-day-in-the-morning! Just look at them coming yonder!”

Dude was driving about twenty miles an hour, and he was so busy blowing the horn he forgot to slow down when he turned into the yard. The car jolted across the ditch, throwing Bessie against the top three or four times in quick succession, and breaking several leaves of the rear spring. Dude slowed down then, and the automobile rolled across the yard and came to a stop by the side of the house.

Jeeter was the first to reach the new motor car. He had run behind it while Dude was putting on the brakes, and he had held to the rear mudguard while trying to keep up with it. Ellie May and Ada were not far behind. The grandmother came as quickly as she could.

“I never seen a finer-looking automobile in all my days,” Jeeter said. “It sure does make me happy again to see such a handsome machine. Don’t you reckon you could take me for a little trip, Bessie? I sure would like to go off in it for a piece.”

Bessie opened the door and got out. The first thing she did was to take the bottom of her skirt and rub the dust off of the front fenders.

“I reckon we can take you riding in it some time,” she said. “When me and Dude gets back, you can go riding.”

“Where is you and Dude going to, Bessie?”

“We’re going to ride around like married folks,” she said proudly. “When folks get married, they always like to take a little ride together somewhere.”

Ada and Ellie May inspected the car with stifled admiration. Both of them then gathered up the bottoms of their skirts and shined the doors and fenders. The new automobile shone in the bright sun like a looking-glass when they had finished.

Dude climbed over the door and ordered his mother and sister away from the car.

“You and Ellie May will be ruining it,” he said. “Don’t put your hands on it and don’t stand too close to it.”

“Did you and Dude get married in Fuller?” Jeeter asked Bessie.

“Not all the way,” she said. “I got leave of the county, however. It cost two dollars to do that little bit.”

“Ain’t you going to get a preacher to finish doing it?”

“I is not! Ain’t I a preacher of the gospel? I’m going to do it myself. I wouldn’t allow no Hard-shell Baptist to fool with us.”

“I knowed you would do it the right way,” Jeeter said. “You sure is a fine woman preacher, Sister Bessie.”

Bessie moved towards the front porch, twisting the marriage license in her hands. Every one else was still looking at the new automobile. Ellie May and Ada stood at a safe distance so Dude would not run them away with a stick. The old grandmother had gone behind a china-berry tree again, awed by the sight.

Dude walked around in a circle so he could see all sides of the car. He wanted to be certain that nobody put his hands on the car and dulled its lustre.

Jeeter sat down on his heels and admired it.

Bessie had gone half way up the front steps, and she was trying to attract Dude’s attention. She coughed several times, scraped her feet on the boards, and rapped on the porch with her knuckles. Jeeter heard her, and he looked around to find out what she was doing.

“By God and by Jesus!” he said, jumping to his feet. “Now wasn’t that just like a fool man?”

The others turned around and looked at Bessie. Ellie May giggled from behind a chinaberry tree.

“Ada,” Jeeter said, “Sister Bessie is wanting to go in the house. You go show her in.”

Ada went inside and threw open the blinds. She could be heard dragging chairs around the room and pushing the beds back into the corners.

“Didn’t you and Dude stop off in the woods coming back from Fuller?” he asked Bessie.

“We was in a hurry to get back here,” she said. “I mentioned it, sort of, to Dude, but he was blowing the horn so much he couldn’t hear me.”

“Dude,” Jeeter said, “don’t you see how bad Sister Bessie is wanting to go in the house? You go in there with her—I’ll keep my eye on the automobile.”

While Dude was being urged to go into the house, Bessie went slowly across the porch to the door, waiting to see if Dude were following.

Ellie May drew herself up on her toes and tried to look into the bedroom through the open window. Ada was still busily engaged in straightening up the room, and every few minutes she would push a chair across the floor and jerk an end of one of the beds into a new position.

“What is they going to do in there, Ma?” Ellie May asked.

Ada came to the window and leaned out. She pushed Ellie May’s hands from the sill and motioned to her to go away.

“Sister Bessie and Dude is married,” she said. “Now you go away and stop trying to see inside. You ain’t got no business seeing of them.”

After her mother had left the window, Ellie May again raised herself on the sill and looked inside.

Dude had gone as far as the front door, but he lingered there to take one more look at the automobile. He stood there until Ada came out and pushed him inside and made him go into the room with Bessie.

There was barely any furniture in the room. Besides the three double beds, there was a wobbly dresser in the corner, which was used as a washstand and a table. Over it, hanging on the wall was a cracked mirror. In the opposite end of the room was the fireplace. A broom-sedge sweeper stood behind the door, and another one, completely worn out, was under Ada’s bed. There were also two straight-back chairs in the room. As there were no closets in the house, clothes were hanging on the walls by nails that had been driven into the two-by-four uprights.

The moment Dude walked into the room, Bessie slammed the door, and pulled him with her. She took the marriage license from her skirt pocket and held it in front of her.