Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [64]
Jeeter slouched away and leaned against the corner of the house. He looked sharply at Bessie, saying nothing.
“I near about ruined my new automobile letting you fool with it,” she said. “I ought to had better sense than to let you get near it. Hauling that load of blackjack to Augusta tore holes all in the back seat.”
“You ain’t going to take me riding in it none?” he asked, standing erectly by the house.
“No, sir! You ain’t going to ride in my new automobile no more. That’s why I wouldn’t let you go with me to see Tom this morning. I don’t want you around it no more, neither.”
“By God and by Jesus, if that’s what you’re aiming to do, you can get off my land,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and pulling at the rotten weatherboards behind him. “I ain’t none too pleased to have you around, noway.”
Bessie did not know what to say. She looked around for Dude, but he was not in sight.
“You’re going to make me leave?”
“I done started doing it. I already told you to get off my land.”
“It don’t belong to you. It’s Captain John’s land. He owns it.”
“It’s the old Lester place. Captain John ain’t got no more right to it than nobody else. Them rich people up there in Augusta come down here and take everything a man’s got, but they can’t take the land away from me. By God and by Jesus, my daddy owned it, and his daddy before him, and I ain’t going to get off it while I’m alive. But durned if I can’t run you off it—now git!”
“Me and Dude ain’t got no place to go. The roof is all rotted away at my house.”
“That don’t make no difference to me. I don’t care where you go, but you’re going to get off this land. If you ain’t going to let me ride in the new automobile when I wants to, you can’t stay here. I’m tired looking at them two dirty holes in your durn nose, anyhow.”
“You old son of a bitch, you!” she cried, running to him and scratching his face with her fingernails. “You’re nothing but an old dirty son of a bitch, you is! I hope God sends you straight to hell and never lets you out again!”
Ada came running around the corner of the house when she heard the cries of Bessie. The sight of Jeeter’s bleeding face threw her into a fit of uncontrollable anger. She hit at Bessie with her fists and kicked her with her feet.
Dude came running, too. He stood looking at the fight while all three of them were striking and scratching one another. Ellie May grinned from behind a chinaberry tree.
Bessie retreated. Both Ada and Jeeter were fighting her, and she was unable to strike back. She ran to the automobile and jumped in. Jeeter picked up a stick and hit her with it several times before Ada took it from him and began poking Bessie in the ribs with it. The sharp point hurt her much more than Jeeter’s blows on her head and shoulders had, and she screamed with pain.
Both Ellie May and the grandmother came out from behind the chinaberry trees and watched all that was taking place.
Dude jumped in and backed the car towards the road as fast as he could. His choice lay with Sister Bessie. He liked to drive an automobile too much to let hers get away from him on account of a little scrap like that.
Mother Lester, who had watched the fight from the start, ran across the yard to get behind another china-berry tree where she could see from a better location everything that was happening. She had no more than reached a point midway between two chinaberry trees when the rear end of the automobile struck her, knocking her down and backing over her.
Bessie leaned out of the car, shaking her fists and making faces at Ada and Jeeter. They followed the automobile to the tobacco road.
“You old sons of bitches, you!” she yelled at them at the top of her high-pitched voice. “All of you Lesters is dirty sons of bitches!”
Ada picked up a big rock and hurled it at the car as hard as she could. By that time, Bessie and Dude were several hundred feet away, and Ada’s big stone fell short of the mark by three-fourths of the distance. She should have known she did not have the strength to throw rocks as large as that. It was almost as big as a stove-lid.