Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [6]
“My children all blame me because God sees fit to make me poverty-ridden, Lov,” Jeeter said. “They and Ma is all the time cussing me because we ain’t got nothing to eat. I ain’t had nothing to do with it. It ain’t my fault that Captain John shut down on giving us rations and snuff. It’s his fault, Lov. I worked all my life for Captain John. I worked harder than any four of his niggers in the fields; then the first thing I knowed, he came down here one morning and says he can’t be letting me be getting no more rations and snuff at the store. After that he sells all the mules and goes up to Augusta to live. I can’t make no money, because there ain’t nobody wanting work done. Nobody is taking on share-croppers, neither. Ain’t no kind of work I can find to do for hire. I can’t even raise me a crop of my own, because I ain’t got no mule in the first place, and besides that, won’t nobody let me have seed-cotton and guano on credit. Now I can’t get no snuff and rations, excepting once in a while when I haul a load of wood up to Augusta. Captain John told the merchants in Fuller not to let me have no more snuff and rations on his credit, and I don’t know where to get nothing. I’d raise a crop of my own on this land if I could get somebody to sign my guano-notes, but won’t nobody do that for me, neither. That’s what I’m wanting to do powerful strong right now. When the winter goes, and when it gets to be time to burn off broom-sedge in the fields and underbrush in the thickets, I sort of want to cry, I reckon it is. The smell of that sedge-smoke this time of year near about drives me crazy. Then pretty soon all the other farmers start plowing. That’s what gets under my skin the worse. When the smell of that new earth turning over behind the plows strikes me, I get all weak and shaky. It’s in my blood—burning broom-sedge and plowing in the ground this time of year. I did it for near about fifty years, and my Pa and his Pa before him was the same kind of men. Us Lesters sure like to stir the earth and make plants grow in it. I can’t move off to the cotton mills like the rest of them do. The land has got a powerful hold on me.
“This raft of women and children is all the time bellowing for snuff and rations, too. It don’t make no difference that I ain’t got nothing to buy it with—they want it just the same. I reckon, Lov, I’ll just have to wait for the good Lord to provide. They tell me He takes care of His people, and I’m waiting for Him to take some notice of me. I don’t reckon there’s another man between here and Augusta who’s as bad off as I is. And down the other way, neither, between here and McCoy. It looks like everybody has got goods and credit excepting me. I don’t know why that is, because I always give the good Lord His due. Him and me has always been fair and square with each other. It’s time for Him to take some notice of the fix I’m in. I don’t know nothing else to do, except wait for Him to take notice. It don’t do me no good to try to beg snuff and rations, because ain’t nobody going to give it to me. I’ve tried all over this part of the country, but don’t nobody pay no attention to my requests. They say they ain’t got nothing neither, but I can’t see how that is. It don’t look like everybody ought to be poverty-ridden just because they live on the land instead of going to the mills. If I’ve been a sinful man, I don’t know what it is I’ve done. I don’t seem to remember anything I done powerful sinful. It didn’t used to be like it is now, either. I can recall a short time back when all the merchants in Fuller was tickled to give me credit, and I always had plenty of money to spend then, too. Cotton was selling upwards of thirty cents a pound, and nobody came around to collect debts. Then all of a sudden the merchants in Fuller wouldn’t let me have no more goods on time, and pretty soon the sheriff comes and takes away near about every durn piece of goods I possessed. He took every durn thing I had, excepting that old automobile and the cow. He said the cow wasn