Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [22]
“Looking at her slit with my eyes won’t offend nobody. He don’t care about my eyes. What would He want to take them out for?”
“Just like I was saying. If the Lord had told you to cut your eyes out because they offended Him, you wouldn’t have done it. That showed you was a powerful sinner. Or if He had told you to cut off your hand, or your ears, for the same reason, you wouldn’t have obeyed Him. And He knowed if He told you to stop fooling with Ellie May, you wouldn’t have cut off the root of the evil like He said do. That’s the reason He sent Ellie May into the world with a slit in her lip. He figured she would be safe from a sinner like you, because you wouldn’t like the looks of her.”
“The Lord be praised,” Jeeter said. “You sure have opened my eyes to the way of God. I never knowed before about that, I declare. If I had knowed it, I sure would have cut myself off when I was fooling around over there at Peabody’s. Then if I had done that, Ellie May wouldn’t look like she does now, would she, Bessie?”
“It’s just like I said. The Lord knows more about us humans’ ways than we do.”
“I’ve been a powerful sinful man in my time, I reckon. I never knowed I ought to cut myself off before. Maybe it’s not too late now. I sure don’t want to let the devil get hold of me.”
Bessie turned to Dude again, smiling at him and holding her arms tighter around his neck. Dude did not know what to do next. He liked to touch her, and feel her, and he wanted her to hug him some more, as she had done. He liked to feel her arms tight around him, and have her rub him. Yet he could not believe that Bessie was hugging him for any real reason. She had stopped praying fifteen minutes before, but she still made no motion to release him and make him get up.
“Say, Sister Bessie,” Jeeter said, leaning forward and squinting his eyes under his heavy black brows, “what in hell is you and Dude doing there? You and him has been squatting there, hugging and rubbing of the other, for near about half an hour.”
Dude hoped she would not make him get up, because he liked to feel her pull him tight to her breast and squeeze him in her arms.
Bessie tried to stand up, but Dude would not let her. She sat down again beside him on the floor, running her fingers through his hair.
“Durn if I ever saw a woman preacher take on like that before,” Jeeter said, shaking his head. “Looks to me like you ain’t going to do no more praying to-day. You and Dude is hugging and rubbing of the other, ain’t you? By God and by Jesus, if it ain’t so!”
Bessie got up and sat down in the chair. She tried to make Dude go away, but he stood in front of her, waiting for her to touch him.
“The Lord was speaking to me,” she said. “He was telling me I ought to marry a new husband. I can’t get around much by myself, and if I was to get married to a man, maybe I could do more preaching and praying. The Lord would turn him into a preacher too, and both of us could travel around spreading the gospel.”
“He didn’t tell you to marry Dude, did He? Dude ain’t no preacher. He ain’t got sense enough to be one. He wouldn’t know what to preach about when the time came to get up and say something.”
“Dude would make a fine preacher,” she interrupted. “Dude would be just about as good at preaching and praying as my former husband was, maybe better. The Lord and me could show him how to do. It ain’t hard at all after you catch on to it.”
“I wish I was in my younger days. If I was, I could maybe do it myself with you. I could do it yet, only Ada, there, has got so she don’t want me fooling with the women-folks no more. I know I could do as fine preaching and praying as the next one. It ain’t that what’s holding me back—it’s Ada, there. She’s got a queer notion that I might take to fooling with the women-folks. Well, I ain’t saying I wouldn’t if I had half a chance, neither.”
“It would require a younger man for me to be satisfied,” Bessie said. “Dude there is just suitable for preaching and living with me. Ain’t you, Dude?”
“You want me to go home with you now?” he said.
“I got to pray over it first, Dude,