Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [7]
“And now I can’t get no credit, I can’t hire out for pay, and nobody wants to take on share-croppers. If the good Lord don’t start bringing me help pretty soon, it will be too late to help me with my troubles.”
Jeeter paused to see if Lov were listening. Lov had his head turned in another direction. He was looking at Ellie May now. She had at last got him to give her some attention.
Ellie May was edging closer and closer to Lov. She was moving across the yard by raising her weight on her hands and feet and sliding herself over the hard white sand. She was smiling at Lov, and trying to make him take more notice of her. She could not wait any longer for him to come to her, so she was going to him. Her harelip was spread open across her upper teeth, making her mouth appear as though she had no upper lip at all. Men usually would have nothing to do with Ellie May; but she was eighteen now, and she was beginning to discover that it should be possible for her to get a man in spite of her appearance.
“Ellie May’s acting like your old hound used to do when he got the itch,” Dude said to Jeeter. “Look at her scrape her bottom on the sand. That old hound used to make the same kind of sound Ellie May’s making, too. It sounds just like a little pig squealing, don’t it?”
“By God and by Jesus, Lov, I want some good eating turnips,” Jeeter said. “I ain’t et nothing all winter but meal and fat-back, and I’m wanting turnips something powerful. All the ones I raised has got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them. Where’s you get them turnips at anyhow, Lov? Maybe we could make a trade of some kind or another. I always treated you fair and square. You ought to give them to me, seeing as I ain’t got none. I’ll go down to your house the first thing in the morning and tell Pearl she’s got to stop acting like she does. It’s a durn shame for a gal to do the way she’s treating you—I’ll tell her she’s got to let you have your rights with her. I never heard of a durn gal sleeping on a pallet on the floor when her husband has got a bed for her, nohow. Pearl won’t keep that up after I tell her about it. That ain’t no way to treat a man when he’s gone to the bother of marrying. It’s time she was knowing it, too. I’ll go down there the first thing in the morning and tell her to get in the bed.”
Lov was paying no attention to Jeeter now. He was watching Ellie May slide across the yard towards him. When she came a little closer, he reached in the sack and took out another turnip, and began taking big bites out of it. He did not bother to wipe the sand from it this time.
Ada shifted the snuff stick to the other side of her mouth again, and watched Ellie May and Lov with gaping jaw.
Dude stood watching Ellie May, too.
“Ellie May’s going to get herself full of sand if she don’t stop doing that,” Dude said. “Your old hound used never to keep it up that long at a time. He didn’t squeal all the time neither, like she’s doing.”
“By God and by Jesus, Lov,” Jeeter said, “I’m wanting turnips. I could come near about chewing up a whole croker sack full between now and bedtime to-night.”
Chapter III
JEETER’S REITERATED AND insistent plea for turnips was having less and less effect upon Lov. He was not aware that any one was talking to him. He was interested only in Ellie May now.
“Ellie May’s straining for Lov, ain’t she?” Dude said, nudging Jeeter with his foot. “She’s liable to bust a gut if she don’t look out.”
The inner-tube Jeeter was attempting to patch again was on the verge of falling into pieces. The tires themselves were in a condition even more rotten. And the Ford car, fourteen years old that year, appeared as if it would never stand together long enough for Jeeter to put the tire back on the wheel, much less last until it could be loaded with blackjack for a trip to Augusta. The touring-car’s top had been missing for seven or eight years, and the one remaining fender was linked to the body with a piece of rusty baling wire. All the springs and horsehair had disappeared from the upholstery; the children had taken the seats apart to find out what was on the inside, and nobody had made an attempt to put them together again.