Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [66]
“She didn’t say nothing to me.”
“Then what makes you think she went up there, instead of going off in the woods somewhere?”
“I didn’t even know she was running off up there till Jones Peabody came by the chute and told me he met her up near Augusta when he was coming back to Fuller with an empty lumber truck. He said he stopped and asked her where she was going to, and if I knowed she’d left home, but she wouldn’t talk to him. He said she looked like she was near about scared to death. He came and told me about it the first thing. He said he knowed I wouldn’t know about it.”
“Pearl, she was just like Lizzie Belle. Lizzie Belle up and went to Augusta just like that!” He snapped his fingers, jerking his head to one side. “I didn’t know nothing about it till I seen her up there on the street once. I asked her what made her run off without saying nothing to her Ma and me about it, but she wouldn’t talk none. I thought all the time that she was staying out in the woods somewhere for a while, but I knowed it was Lizzie Belle the first time I looked at her. She had on some stylish clothes and a hat, but they didn’t fool me. I knowed it was Lizzie Belle, even if she wouldn’t talk to me. She was working in a cotton mill across the river from there, all that time. I knowed then why she up and went there, because Ada told me. Ada said Lizzie Belle wanted to have some stylish clothes and a hat to wear, and she run off up there to work in a cotton mill so she could get them kind of things herself.”
“Pearl never said nothing to me about wanting a stylish dress and a hat,” Lov said. “I make a dollar a day at the chute, and I could have bought her a dress and a hat if she had told me she wanted them. But Pearl never said nothing to me—she never said nothing to nobody. She slept on that durn pallet on the floor and wouldn’t answer my requests when I told her to do something I wanted done.”
“I reckon about the best thing you can do, Lov, is to let her be. She wasn’t satisfied living down here on the tobacco road, and if you was to bring her back, she’d run off again twice as quick. She’s just like Lizzie Belle and Clara and the other gals. I can’t recall all of their names right now, but it was every durn one of them, anyhow. They all wanted some stylish clothes. They wasn’t satisfied with the pretty calico and gingham their Ma sewed for them. Well, Ada ain’t satisfied neither, but she can’t do nothing about it. That’s how the gals took after their Ma. I sort of broke Ada of wanting to go off and do that. She don’t talk no more about buying of stylish clothes and a hat, excepting a dress to die in and be buried in. She talks about getting a stylish dress to die in, but she ain’t going to get it, and she knows she ain’t. She’ll die and be buried in the ground wearing that yellow calico she’s got on now. I broke Ada of wanting to run off, but them gals was more than I could take care of. There was too durn many of them for only one man to break. They just up and went.”
“Maybe she’ll come back,” Lov said. “Reckon she’ll come back, Jeeter?”
“Who—Pearl? Well, I wouldn’t put no trust in it. Lizzie Belle went off and she ain’t never come back. None of the other gals came back, neither.”
“I sort of hate to lose her, for some reason or another. She was a pretty little girl—all them long yellow curls hanging down her back always made me hate the time when she’d grow up and be old. I used to sit on the porch and watch her through the window when she was combing and brushing her hair in the bedroom—”
“That sure ain’t no lie,” Jeeter said. “Pearl had the prettiest yellow hair of any gal I ever saw. It was a plumb shame that she was so bad about wanting to stay by herself all the time, because I used to want to have her around me. I wish Ada had been that pretty. Even when Ada was a young gal, she was that durn ugly it was a sin. I ain’t never seen an uglier woman in the whole country, unless it’s that durn woman preacher Bessie. Them two dirty holes in her face don’t do a man no good to look at.”
“Pearl always took a long time to fix herself up, woman-like. I used to want to tell her there wasn