Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [21]
Ada twisted around to see why Dude was staying on the porch. He and Bessie were still kneeling down beside the chair, with their arms around each other.
“Dude’s sixteen years old now,” Jeeter said. “That makes him two years younger than Ellie May. Well, pretty soon he’ll be getting a wife, I reckon. All my other male children married early in life, just like the gals done. When Dude gets married, I won’t have none of my children left with me, except Ellie May. And I don’t reckon she’ll ever find a man to marry her. It’s all on account of that mouth she’s got. I been thinking I’d take her up to Augusta and get a doctor to sew up her lip. She’d marry quick enough then, because she’s got a powerful way with her, woman-like. Ain’t nothing wrong with her, excepting that slit in her lip. If it wasn’t for that, she’d been married as quick as Pearl was. Men here around Fuller all want to marry gals about eleven or twelve years old, like Pearl was. Ada, there, was just turning twelve when I married her.”
“The Lord intended all of us should be mated,” Bessie said. “He made us that way. That’s what my former husband used to say. I’d tell him that a man needs a woman, and he’d say a woman needs a man. My former husband was just like the Lord in that respect. They both believed in the same thing when it came to mating.”
“I reckon the Lord did intend for all of us to get mated,” Jeeter said, “but He didn’t take into account a woman with a slit in her mouth like Ellie May’s got. I don’t believe He done the right thing by her when He opened up her lip like that. That’s the only contrary thing I ever said about the Lord, but it’s the truth. What use is a slit like that for? You can’t spit through it, and you can’t whistle through it, now can you? It was just meanness on His part when He done that. That’s what it was—durn meanness.”
“You shouldn’t talk about the Lord like that. He knows what He done it for. He knows everything. He wouldn’t have done it if He didn’t have a good purpose in mind. He knows what He makes men and women for. He made Ellie May’s face like that with a good reason in mind. He had the best reason in the world for doing it.”
“What reason?”
“Maybe I ought not to say it, Jeeter.”
“It ain’t no secret between you and the Lord, is it, Sister Bessie?”
“No, ain’t no secrets between us. But I know.”
“You know what?”
“Why He made her lip slit open.”
“Ain’t you going to tell me?”
“Brother Jeeter, He done that to her lip to save her pure body from the wicked men.”
“What men? I’m the only man around here.”
“It’s you, Brother Jeeter.”
“I ain’t wicked. I’m sinful at rare times, but I never been wicked.”
“It’s all the same to God. It don’t make no difference to Him which it is.”
“What did I do? I don’t see how stealing a few measly turnips and sweet potatoes once in a while has anything to do with Ellie May’s face.”
“Brother Jeeter, the Lord done that to her lip to save her pure body from being ruined by you. He knowed she would be safe in this house when He made her like that. He knowed that you was once a powerful sinner, and that you might be again if—”
“That’s the truth,” Jeeter said. “I used to be a powerful sinful man in my time. I reckon I was at one time the most powerful sinful man in the whole country. Now, you take them Peabody children over across the field. I reckon clear near about all of them is half mine, one way or another. And then I used to—”
“You wait till I finish accusing you, Jeeter, before you start lying out of it.”
“I ain’t lying out of it, Bessie. I just now told you how powerful sinful I once was. There was a man and his wife moved here from—”
“As I was saying, you didn’t keep none of it hid from the Lord—”
“But Henry Peabody didn’t know nothing about it though—”
“—He knowed that you might take it into your head to ruin Ellie May. The Lord knows everything, and He’s got his reasons. He knowed you was such a powerful sinful man long years ago that you wouldn’t have obeyed Him if He told you to take your eyes out, if your eyes offended Him.