Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [52]
“It don’t appear to be hurt much,” he said. “Maybe it ain’t hurt none at all. We has got to haul a load of wood to Augusta to-day, because there ain’t no more meal and chicory in the house to eat.”
Bessie watched Dude start up the engine and back away from the stump. He swung around it, and drove carefully the remaining few yards to the pile of blackjack. Jeeter began picking up the pieces of scrub oak and hurling them like javelins into the back seat.
“I reckon I’d better put the top down,” Dude said. “It won’t hold much unless the top’s down.”
He began unfastening the set screws holding the top to the wind-shield, while Jeeter and Bessie continued to hurl blackjack into the back seat.
“There won’t be no room for Ada to go along, too, will there?” Jeeter said. “She’ll be powerful put out when she sees us drive off to Augusta and not stopping to take her along. The last time me and Dude went up there in my car, she and Ellie May liked to had a fit, but it wasn’t no use, because we needed all the room for wood.”
“Well, I ain’t going to stay at home,” Bessie said. “I’m going just as big as the next one. You can’t make me stay here.”
“I’m going,” Dude said. “Can’t nobody make me stay here. I’m going to drive the car.”
He had thrown the top back and was trying to tie it down. Most of it had been folded up, but some of it hung down as far as the rear axle. He could not find any means of making it stay folded, so he allowed it to hang down behind.
“I sure ain’t going to miss going,” Jeeter said. “It’s my wood I’m taking to sell. I’m going to be the first one to go.”
The scrub oak had been cut into varying lengths the past week when Jeeter and Dude had spent a day in the grove getting a load ready to sell. Some of it was a foot in length, but most of it was anywhere from three to six feet long. The length in which it had been cut was the length of the stunted trees after they had been hacked off with an axe at the stump. As soon as a tree was hacked down, Jeeter had taken the axe and broken the limbs off, and then the wood was ready to haul. The blackjack never grew much taller than a man’s head; it was a stunted variety of oak that used its sap in toughening the fibres instead of growing new layers and expanding the old, as other trees did. The blackjack sticks were about two or three inches in diameter, and wiry and tough as heavy pieces of wire or small iron water-pipes.
It took them about half an hour to pile on as much wood as the back seat would hold. After that, Jeeter began binding it to the body with baling wire so none of it would drop off along the road while they were riding to Augusta. The ends of the blackjack protruded in all directions, sticking out several feet on each side and behind. Others had been jabbed straight into the upholstery, and they appeared to be the only ones that did not need fastening. The rusty baling wire broke nearly every time Jeeter attempted to fasten it to the door-handles, and he would have to stop and splice the ends, twisting them until they would hold. The task of loading the blackjack and tying it on to the car took nearly two hours, and even then several pieces of wood fell off when one of them touched the car or leaned against it.
With the wood in place, Dude drove back across the field towards the house, going no faster than a man’s walk, but even then the wood persisted in falling off. Jeeter and Bessie came behind, picking up the sticks and carrying them to the house.
Ada and Ellie May were in the yard when they got there. The grandmother waited behind a chinaberry tree to see what they were going to do. Ada stood squarely in front of the car, waiting to find out where she was going to sit. The grandmother went to the corner of the house and stood there, all except her face hidden from view.
“Where is I going to sit and ride?” Ada said. “I don’t see no sitting place for nobody much, with all that wood you got loaded.”
Jeeter waited several minutes, hoping that Bessie would undertake to answer Ada. When she did not, Jeeter got in and sat down beside Dude.
“There ain