Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [65]
Chapter XVIII
AFTER THE DUST had settled on the road, Ada and Jeeter came back into the yard. Mother Lester still lay there, her face mashed on the hard white sand. From the corner of the house, Ellie May looked at what had happened.
“Is she dead yet?” Ada asked, looking at Jeeter. “She don’t make no sound and she don’t move. I don’t reckon she could stay alive with her face all mashed like that.”
Jeeter did not answer her. He was too busy thinking of his hatred for Bessie to bother with anything else. He took another look at the grandmother and walked across the yard and around to the back of the house. Ada went to the porch and stood there looking back at Mother Lester several minutes, then she walked inside and shut the door.
Mother Lester tried to turn over so she could get up and go into the house. She could not move either her arms or her legs without unbearable pain, and her head felt as if it had been cracked open. The automobile had struck her with such force that she did not know what had hit her. Both of the left wheels had rolled over her, one of them across her back and the other on her head. She had not known what had happened. More than anything else she wanted to get up and lie down on her bed. She struggled with a final effort to raise her head and shoulders from the hard sand, and she managed to turn over. After that she lay motionless.
When he had finished getting a fresh drink of water at the well, Jeeter walked out into the broom-sedge, kicking the ground with the toes of his shoes to find out how dry it was. He believed the soil held just the right amount of moisture needed for plowing, but he wanted to be sure of it, because he was confident that he could borrow a mule somewhere and begin plowing and planting early the following week.
While he walked around in the waist-high broom-sedge, Lov was racing down the tobacco road, hatless and out of breath. Lov began shouting to Jeeter as soon as he reached the front yard, and Jeeter ran out of the sedge to meet him and find out what the trouble was.
Lov was dressed in his dirty black overalls, the pair he wore at the chute when he shovelled coal into the scoops. His hat had blown off when he started running to Jeeter’s, and he had not waited to go back and pick it up. Lov’s fiery red hair stood almost straight up; ordinarily, it was falling down over his forehead and getting into his eyes.
He saw the old grandmother lying in the yard and he slowed down to look at her, but he did not linger there. He ran until he was face to face with Jeeter.
“What you doing down here at this time of day, Lov?” Jeeter said. “Why ain’t you working at the chute?”
Lov did not speak for several minutes. He had to wait until he could regain his breath. He sat on the ground, and Jeeter squatted on his heels beside him.
They were not far from the well. Ellie May was standing beside the stand drinking from the bucket when Lov reached Jeeter, but she did not run away immediately. She waited until Lov sat down, so she could hear what he had to tell Jeeter.
“What’s the matter, Lov?” Jeeter asked. “What happened down at the chute that made you run here so fast?”
“Pearl—Pearl—she run off!”
“Run where to?” Jeeter asked calmly, disappointed because it was not something of more interest to him. “Where’d Pearl run to, Lov?”
“She’s gone to Augusta!”
“Gone to Augusta!” Jeeter said, straightening up. “I thought maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere for a spell, like she was always doing. Reckon what she run off to Augusta for?”
“I don’t know,” Lov said, “but I reckon she just up and went. I don’t know what else she done it for. I didn’t hurt her none this morning. I didn’t do nothing to her, except throw her down on the bed. She got loose from me, and I ain’t seen her since.”
“What was you trying to do to her?”
“Nothing. I was only going to tie her up with some plow-lines to see if I could do it. I figured she’d have to stay in the bed if I tied her there. I was going to turn her loose pretty soon.”
“How you know she’s run off to Augusta? Maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere again. Did she tell you she was going to run off to Augusta?