Tobacco Road (19 page)

“Well, that’s what he said, anyway. He told me to tell you and Ada to go to the county poor-farm and stay.”

“That sure don’t sound like Tom talking. Tom ain’t never said nothing like that to me before. I can’t see why he wants me and his Ma to go and live at the poor-farm. Looks like he would send me some money instead. I’m his daddy.”

“I don’t reckon that makes no difference to Tom now,” she said. “He’s looking after his own self.”

“I wish I had my young age back again. I wouldn’t beg of no man, not even my own son. But Tom ain’t like he used to be. Looks like he would send me and his old Ma a little bit of money.”

“Tom said to tell you to go to hell, too,” Dude told Jeeter.

Bessie jumped forward, clutching Dude by the neck, and shook him until it looked as if his head would twist off and fall on the ground. She continued to shake him until he succeeded in escaping from her grasp.

“You shouldn’t have told Jeeter that,” she shouted at Dude. “That’s a wicked thing to say. I don’t know nothing more sinful. The devil is trying to take you away from me so I can’t make a preacher out of you.”

“Christ Almighty!” he shouted at her. “You come near about killing me! I didn’t say that—Tom said it. I was just telling him what Tom said. I didn’t say it! You ought to keep off me. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

“Praise the Lord,” Bessie said. “You ain’t never going to make a preacher if you talk like that. I thought you said you was going to stop your cussing. Why don’t you quit it?”

“I ain’t going to say that no more,” Dude pleaded. He remembered that the automobile belonged to her. “I wouldn’t have said it that time if you hadn’t hurt my neck shaking me so hard.”

Jeeter walked around the automobile, trying to recover from the shock of hearing what they told him Tom had said. He could not believe that Tom had developed into a man who would tell his father to go to hell. He knew Tom must have changed a great deal since he knew him.

He stopped at the rear of the automobile and was looking at the rack where the spare tire and extra wheel had been, when he saw the great dent in the body. He stared at it until Dude and Bessie stopped talking.

“You won’t be fit to preach a sermon next Sunday if you cuss like that,” she was saying. “Good folks don’t want to have God send them sermons by cussing preachers.”

“I ain’t going to say it no more. I ain’t never going to cuss no more.”

Jeeter motioned to them to come to the back of the car. He pointed to the dent in the body. The centre of it had been knocked in about ten or twelve inches, dividing the body into two almost equal halves.

“What done that?” he asked, still pointing.

“We was backing out from the cross-tie camp and ran smack into a big pine tree,” Bessie said hesitantly. “I don’t know what made it happen. Looks like everything has tried to ruin my new automobile. Ain’t nothing like it was when I paid eight hundred dollars for it in Fuller the first of the week.”

Dude ran his hands over the dent. The cracked paint dropped to the white sand. He tried to make the dent look smaller by rubbing it.

“It ain’t hurt the running of it none, though, has it?” Jeeter said. “That’s only the body smashed in. It runs good yet, don’t it?”

“I reckon so,” Bessie said, “but it does make a powerful lot of noise when it’s running down hill—and up hill, too.”

Ada came over and looked at the dent in the back of the car. She rubbed her hands over it until more of the cracked black paint dropped off and fell on the white sand at her feet.

“What does Tom look like now?” Ada asked Bessie. “I reckon he don’t look like he used to, no more.”

“He looks a lot like Jeeter,” she said. “There ain’t much resemblance in him and you.”

“Humph!” Ada said. “There was a time when I’d declared it was the other way around.”

Jeeter looked at Ada, and then at Bessie. He could not understand what Ada was talking about.

“What did Tom say when you told him you and Dude was married now?” Jeeter said.

“He didn’t say nothing much. Looked to me like he didn’t care one way or the other.”

“Tom said she used to be a two-bit slut when he knowed her a long time back,” Dude said. “He told it right to her, but she didn’t say nothing. I reckon he knowed what he was talking about, because she didn’t say it was a lie.”

Sister Bessie grabbed Dude around the neck again and shook him vigorously. Jeeter and Ada stood beside them watching. Ellie May had heard everything, but she had not come any closer.

Dude jerked away from Bessie more quickly than he had the first time. He was learning how to get away from her more easily.

“God damn you!” he shouted, striking at her face with his fist. “Why in hell don’t you keep off me!”

“Now, Dude,” Bessie pleaded tenderly, “you promised me you was not going to cuss no more. Good folks don’t want to go and hear a Sunday sermon by a cussing preacher.”

Dude shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He was getting tired of the way Bessie jumped on him and twisted his neck every time he said something she did not want to hear.

“When’s Dude going to start being a preacher?” Jeeter asked her.

“He’s going to preach a little short sermon next Sunday at the schoolhouse. I’m already telling him what to say when he preaches.”

“Looks like to me he ought to know that himself,” Jeeter said. “You don’t have to tell him everything to do, do you? Don’t he know nothing?”

“Well, he ain’t familiar with preaching like I is. I tell him what to say and he learns to say it himself. It won’t take him long to catch on and then I won’t have to tell him nothing. My former husband told me what to say one Saturday night and I went to the schoolhouse the next afternoon and preached for almost three hours without stopping. It ain’t hard to do after you catch on. Dude’s already told me what he was going to preach about Sunday. He knows now what he’s going to say when the time comes.”

“What’s he going to preach about Sunday?”

“About men wearing black shirts.”

“Black shirts? What for?”

“You ask him. He knows.”

“Black shirts ain’t nothing to preach about, to my way of thinking. I ain’t never heard of that before.”

“You come to preaching at the schoolhouse Sunday afternoon and find out.”

“Is he going to preach
for
black shirts, or
against
black shirts?”

“Against them.”

“What for, Sister Bessie?”

“It ain’t my place to tell you about Dude’s preaching. That’s for you to go to the schoolhouse and hear. Preachers don’t want their secrets spread all over the country beforehand. Wouldn’t nobody take the trouble to go and listen, if they did that.”

“Maybe I don’t know much about preaching, but I ain’t never heard of nobody preaching about men wearing black shirts—against black shirts, at that. I ain’t never seen a man wearing a black shirt, noway.”

“Preachers has got to preach
against
something. It wouldn’t do them no good to preach
for
everything. They got to be
against
something every time.”

“I never looked at it that way before,” Jeeter said, “but there might be a lot in what you say. Though, take for instance, God and heaven—you wouldn’t preach
against
them, would you, Sister Bessie?”

“Good preachers don’t preach about God and heaven, and things like that. They always preach
against
something, like hell and the devil. Them is things to be against. It wouldn’t do a preacher no good to preach for God. He’s got to preach against the devil and all wicked and sinful things. That’s what the people like to hear about. They want to hear about the bad things.”

“You sure is a convincing woman, Sister Bessie,” he said. “God must be pretty proud of having a woman preacher like you. I don’t know what He’s going to think about Dude, though. Specially when he starts preaching
against
men wearing black shirts. I ain’t never seen a man wearing a black shirt, noway, and I don’t believe there’s such things in the country.”

Jeeter bent over and rubbed his hands on the dent in the body of the car. He scraped the surface paint with his fingernails until most of it had peeled off and fallen on the ground.

“Stop doing that to my automobile,” Bessie said. “Ain’t you got no sense at all? You and Ada has near about got all the paint off of it already doing that.”

“You wouldn’t talk to me like that, would you, Bessie?” he asked. “I ain’t hurting the automobile no more than it’s already done.”

“Well, you keep your hands off it, anyhow.”

Jeeter slouched away and leaned against the corner of the house. He looked sharply at Bessie, saying nothing.

“I near about ruined my new automobile letting you fool with it,” she said. “I ought to had better sense than to let you get near it. Hauling that load of blackjack to Augusta tore holes all in the back seat.”

“You ain’t going to take me riding in it none?” he asked, standing erectly by the house.

“No, sir! You ain’t going to ride in my new automobile no more. That’s why I wouldn’t let you go with me to see Tom this morning. I don’t want you around it no more, neither.”

“By God and by Jesus, if that’s what you’re aiming to do, you can get off my land,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and pulling at the rotten weatherboards behind him. “I ain’t none too pleased to have you around, noway.”

Bessie did not know what to say. She looked around for Dude, but he was not in sight.

“You’re going to make me leave?”

“I done started doing it. I already told you to get off my land.”

“It don’t belong to you. It’s Captain John’s land. He owns it.”

“It’s the old Lester place. Captain John ain’t got no more right to it than nobody else. Them rich people up there in Augusta come down here and take everything a man’s got, but they can’t take the land away from me. By God and by Jesus, my daddy owned it, and his daddy before him, and I ain’t going to get off it while I’m alive. But durned if I can’t run you off it—now git!”

“Me and Dude ain’t got no place to go. The roof is all rotted away at my house.”

“That don’t make no difference to me. I don’t care where you go, but you’re going to get off this land. If you ain’t going to let me ride in the new automobile when I wants to, you can’t stay here. I’m tired looking at them two dirty holes in your durn nose, anyhow.”

“You old son of a bitch, you!” she cried, running to him and scratching his face with her fingernails. “You’re nothing but an old dirty son of a bitch, you is! I hope God sends you straight to hell and never lets you out again!”

Ada came running around the corner of the house when she heard the cries of Bessie. The sight of Jeeter’s bleeding face threw her into a fit of uncontrollable anger. She hit at Bessie with her fists and kicked her with her feet.

Dude came running, too. He stood looking at the fight while all three of them were striking and scratching one another. Ellie May grinned from behind a chinaberry tree.

Bessie retreated. Both Ada and Jeeter were fighting her, and she was unable to strike back. She ran to the automobile and jumped in. Jeeter picked up a stick and hit her with it several times before Ada took it from him and began poking Bessie in the ribs with it. The sharp point hurt her much more than Jeeter’s blows on her head and shoulders had, and she screamed with pain.

Both Ellie May and the grandmother came out from behind the chinaberry trees and watched all that was taking place.

Dude jumped in and backed the car towards the road as fast as he could. His choice lay with Sister Bessie. He liked to drive an automobile too much to let hers get away from him on account of a little scrap like that.

Mother Lester, who had watched the fight from the start, ran across the yard to get behind another china-berry tree where she could see from a better location everything that was happening. She had no more than reached a point midway between two chinaberry trees when the rear end of the automobile struck her, knocking her down and backing over her.

Bessie leaned out of the car, shaking her fists and making faces at Ada and Jeeter. They followed the automobile to the tobacco road.

“You old sons of bitches, you!” she yelled at them at the top of her high-pitched voice. “All of you Lesters is dirty sons of bitches!”

Ada picked up a big rock and hurled it at the car as hard as she could. By that time, Bessie and Dude were several hundred feet away, and Ada’s big stone fell short of the mark by three-fourths of the distance. She should have known she did not have the strength to throw rocks as large as that. It was almost as big as a stove-lid.

A
FTER THE DUST
had settled on the road, Ada and Jeeter came back into the yard. Mother Lester still lay there, her face mashed on the hard white sand. From the corner of the house, Ellie May looked at what had happened.

“Is she dead yet?” Ada asked, looking at Jeeter. “She don’t make no sound and she don’t move. I don’t reckon she could stay alive with her face all mashed like that.”

Jeeter did not answer her. He was too busy thinking of his hatred for Bessie to bother with anything else. He took another look at the grandmother and walked across the yard and around to the back of the house. Ada went to the porch and stood there looking back at Mother Lester several minutes, then she walked inside and shut the door.

Mother Lester tried to turn over so she could get up and go into the house. She could not move either her arms or her legs without unbearable pain, and her head felt as if it had been cracked open. The automobile had struck her with such force that she did not know what had hit her. Both of the left wheels had rolled over her, one of them across her back and the other on her head. She had not known what had happened. More than anything else she wanted to get up and lie down on her bed. She struggled with a final effort to raise her head and shoulders from the hard sand, and she managed to turn over. After that she lay motionless.

When he had finished getting a fresh drink of water at the well, Jeeter walked out into the broom-sedge, kicking the ground with the toes of his shoes to find out how dry it was. He believed the soil held just the right amount of moisture needed for plowing, but he wanted to be sure of it, because he was confident that he could borrow a mule somewhere and begin plowing and planting early the following week.