Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [53]
“Why ain’t there no room for me, if there’s room for you and Dude and that hussy, there?”
“Sister Bessie ain’t no hussy,” Jeeter said. “She ain’t nothing like that. She’s a woman preacher.”
“Being a woman preacher don’t keep her from being a hussy. That could help to make her a bigger one. Something acts that way, because she is a big old hussy.”
“What make you say that about Bessie?” he said.
“Last night she was walking all around the room with none of her clothes on. If I hadn’t made you put on your overalls when I did, there ain’t no telling what she might have done. She’s a hussy.”
“Now, Ada,” he said, “you ought not to talk like that about Bessie. She’s a woman preacher, and she’s married to Dude, too.”
“That don’t make no difference. She’s a hussy, all the same. She always fools around with the men-folks. She don’t never stay in the house and help clean it up like I has to do. She’s taking after the men-folks because she’s a hussy. When she goes preaching, she always does the preaching to the men-folks and don’t pay no attention to the women-folks at all.”
“I ain’t got nothing to say against Sister Bessie. She’s a woman preacher, and what she does is the Lord’s doings. He instructs her what to do.”
“Ada is peeved because I married Dude and came here to stay,” Bessie said to Jeeter. “She don’t like it because I’m going to stay in the room.”
“You shut your mouth now, Ada,” Jeeter said, “and let us be going. I got to sell this load of wood in Augusta to-day.”
Dude started the car, and Bessie got in and sat on the edge of the seat beside Jeeter. There was barely enough room for all three of them.
Ada ran towards them, trying to jump on the running-board, but Dude speeded up the car and she could not get on. When he suddenly cut the wheels and turned out of the yard into the tobacco road, the rear wheel barely missed running over Ada’s feet. She shouted after them, but the car was going so fast by that time that it was useless to run after them and try to stop them. She went back into the yard and, with Ellie May, stood looking at the cloud of dust that hid the car from view. The grandmother came from behind the corner of the house and, picking up the old croker sack, started to the thicket for dead twigs. She was already hungry again, although she had had a cup of chicory only two or three hours before.
Dude slowed down when they approached the crossroad where they were to turn off the tobacco road and enter the State highway to Augusta. He did not slow down enough, however, because the momentum swung the load of blackjack to the offside, and the entire top of the pile fell in the road.
Jeeter and Dude worked half an hour getting the wood in place again, and with Bessie helping the little that she could, it was then ready to be tied down again. Jeeter went across the field to a negro cabin and borrowed two plow-lines. He came back and threw them over the wood and tied the ends down tightly.
“Now, that will hold it, durn that blackjack,” he said. “There ain’t nothing else in the world like plow-lines and baling wire. The two together is the best in the world to do anything with. Give me a little of both and I can do any kind of job.”
They were off again, speeding down the highway towards Augusta. The city was now only twelve miles away.
Dude was a good driver, all right; he swung out of the tracks just at the right moment every time he met another automobile. Only two or three times did he almost run head-on into other cars. He was so busy blowing the horn that he forgot to drive on the right-hand side of the road until the last minute. Most of the cars they met gave them plenty of road when they heard the horn blowing.
Jeeter could not talk, because he was holding his breath most of the time. The swiftness of the car frightened him so badly he could not answer Bessie’s questions. She looked grimly ahead most of the time, proud of her automobile and hoping that the negroes and farmers they passed in the fields beside the road would know it belonged to her instead of thinking it was Jeeter