Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [55]
“How much does it cost?” Bessie said.
“A dollar and a half.”
“I didn’t aim to pay out money on it.”
“Well, it won’t run no more unless you put oil in it. It looks to me like you didn’t have enough in it to start with.”
“I ain’t got but two dollars,” she said. “I was going to buy gasoline with most of that.”
“Me and Dude ain’t got none,” Jeeter said. “But when I sell this load of wood, I’ll have a dollar and a half, maybe.”
“You pour the oil into it,” Bessie said. “I don’t want to ruin my new automobile. I bought it brand new in Fuller yesterday.”
“It’s already ruint, sister,” the man said, “but you’ll have to put oil in it if you’re going in to Augusta and back to Fuller again.”
They waited while he poured the oil in, and then Bessie gave him the money. She had the bills tied in a handkerchief, and it took her several minutes to untie the hard knots.
Dude started the engine, and they moved slowly off the hill-top and rolled down the long grade to Augusta. The car was running like new again by the time they reached the bottom of the hill, but the engine made more noise than the one in Jeeter’s car. The bearings and connecting rods were so loose they made a jingling sound when the car was going more than fifteen miles an hour down hill.
Chapter XVI
THREE HOURS HAD already been spent in trying to sell the load of blackjack. Apparently there was not a man in Augusta who wanted to buy it. At some of the houses Jeeter went to, the people at first said they needed wood, but after they had asked him how much he wanted for it they were suspicious. Jeeter told them he was asking only a dollar, and then they asked him if he were selling split pine at that small price. He had to explain that it was blackjack, and not even sawn into stove length. The next thing he knew the door was slammed in his face, and he had to go to the next house and try again.
At a little after six o’clock the wood was still piled on the back seat of the car, and no buyer was in sight. Jeeter began stopping people on the streets in a final and desperate effort to dispose of the wood at fifty cents; but the men and women he approached took one look at the blackjack piled on the car and walked off, evidently thinking it was a joke of some kind. Nobody was foolish enough to buy blackjack when pine wood burned better and was less trouble to use.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Jeeter told Bessie. “It’s getting almost too late to go back home, and nobody wants to buy wood no more. I used to sell it with no effort any time I brought a load up here.”
Dude said he was hungry, and that he wanted to go somewhere and eat. Sister Bessie had half a dollar; Jeeter had nothing. Dude, of course, had nothing.
Jeeter had planned to sell the wood for a dollar, and then to buy some meat and meal to take home to eat; but he did not know what to do now. He turned to Bessie questioningly.
“Maybe we better start back toward Fuller,” she said. “I can buy two gallons of gasoline, and that ought to be enough.”
“Ain’t we going to eat nothing?” Dude said. “My poor belly is as dry as the drought.”
“Maybe we could sell something else,” Jeeter said, looking at the automobile. “I don’t know what we has got to sell, though.”
“We ain’t going to sell my new automobile,” Bessie said quickly. “It was brand new only yesterday. That’s one thing nobody ain’t going to sell.”
Jeeter looked the car over from front to back.
“No, I wouldn’t think of doing nothing like that. But you know, Bessie, maybe we could sell a wee biddy piece of it, sort of.”
He walked around the car and grasped the spare tire and wheel in his hands. He shook it violently.
“It’s near about loose, anyhow,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt the new car none, Bessie.”
“Well, I reckon we got to,” she said slowly. “That tire and wheel ain’t doing us no good, noway. We can’t ride on but four of them at a time, and five is a big waste.”
They drove around the block until they found a garage. Jeeter went in and made inquiry. Presently a man came out, took the tire and wheel off, and rolled it through the garage door.