Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [59]
In about five minutes both he and Bessie came down the stairs. The man was in front and Bessie behind.
Out in the street, where they had left the car, Jeeter found the bag of crackers and cheese, and he began eating them hungrily. Dude took a handful of crackers and put them into his mouth. A few doors away was a store with a Coca-Cola sign on it, and all of them went in and got a drink.
“You don’t look like you slept none too much last night,” Jeeter said. “Couldn’t you go to sleep, Bessie?”
She yawned and rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. She had dressed hurriedly, and had not combed her hair. It hung matted and stringy over her face.
“I reckon the hotel was pretty full last night,” she said. “Every once in a while somebody came and called me to another room. Every room I went to there was somebody sleeping in the bed. Looked like nobody knowed where my bed was. They was always telling me to sleep in a new one. I didn’t sleep none, except about an hour just a while ago. There sure is a lot of men staying there.”
Jeeter led them outside the store and they got into the automobile and drove off towards the residential part of the city. Bessie yawned, and tried to take a nap on the front seat.
Selling the load of blackjack was no easier than it had been the afternoon before. Nobody wanted to buy wood, at least not the kind Jeeter had for sale.
By three o’clock that afternoon all of them were thoroughly tired of trying to find somebody to take the wood.
Sister Bessie wanted to go back home, and so did Jeeter. Bessie was sleepy and tired. Jeeter began swearing every time he saw a man walking along the street. His opinion of the citizens of Augusta was even less than it had been before he started the trip. He cursed every dollar in the city.
Dude was anxious to go back home, because he would have the opportunity of blowing the horn when they went around the long curves on the highway.
Bessie bought the gasoline and Jeeter paid for it out of the money they had left. No trouble with the engine developed, and they sailed along at a fast rate of speed for nearly ten miles.
“Let’s stop a minute,” Jeeter said.
Dude stopped the car without question and they all got out. Jeeter began untying the plow-lines and untwisting the baling wire around the load of blackjack.
“What you going to do now?” Bessie asked him, watching him begin throwing off the sticks.
“I’m going to throw off the whole durn load and set fire to it,” he said. “It’s bad luck to carry something to town to sell and then tote it back home. It ain’t a safe thing to do, to take it back home. I’m going to pitch it all off.”
Dude and Bessie helped him, and in a few minutes the blackjack was piled in the ditch beside the road.
“And I ain’t going to let nobody else have the use of it, neither,” he said. “If the rich people in Augusta won’t buy my wood, I ain’t going to let it lay here so they can come out and take it off for nothing.”
He gathered a handful of dead leaves, thrust them under the pile, and struck a match to them. The leaves blazed up, and a coil of smoke boiled into the air. Jeeter fanned the blaze with his hat and waited for the wood to catch on fire and burn.
“That was an unlucky trip to Augusta,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ve ever had such luck befall me before. All the other times I’ve been able to sell my wood for something, if it was only a quarter or so. But this time nobody wanted it for nothing, seems like.”
“I want to go back some time and spend another night at that hotel,” Bessie said, giggling. “I had the best time last night. It made me feel good, staying there. They sure know how to treat women real nice.”
They waited for the blackjack to burn so they could leave for home. The leaves had burned to charred ashes, and the flame had gone out. The scrub oak would not catch on fire.
Jeeter scraped up a larger pile of leaves, set it on fire, and began tossing the sticks on it. The fire burned briskly for several minutes, and then went out under the weight of the green wood.