Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [10]
“Have you been paying attention to what I was saying, Lov? You ain’t never answered me about them turnips yet. I got a powerful gnawing in my belly for turnips. I reckon I like winter turnips just about as bad as a nigger likes watermelons. I can’t see no difference between the two ways. Turnips is about the best eating I know about.”
Lov did not look up. He was saying something to Ellie May, and listening to what she was saying.
Lov had always told Jeeter that he would never have anything to do with Ellie May because she had a harelip. At the time he had made a bargain with Jeeter about Pearl, he said he might consider taking Ellie May if Jeeter would take her to Augusta and get a doctor to sew up her mouth. Jeeter had thought the matter over thoroughly, and decided that it would be best to let Lov take Pearl, because the cost of sewing up the harelip would probably amount to more than he was getting out of the arrangement. Letting Lov take Pearl was then all clear profit to Jeeter. Lov had given him some quilts and nearly a gallon of cylinder oil, besides giving him all of a week’s pay, which was seven dollars. The money was what Jeeter wanted more than anything else, but the other things were badly needed, too.
Jeeter had been intending to take Ellie May to a doctor ever since she was three or four years old, so that when a man came to marry her there would be no drawbacks. But with first one thing and then another turning up every now and then, Jeeter had never been able to get around to it. Some day he would take her, though; he told himself that, every time he had occasion to think about it.
At the time Lov had married Pearl, he said he liked Ellie May more than he did her, but that he did not want to have a wife with a harelip. He knew the negroes would laugh at him. That was the summer before; several weeks before he had begun to like Pearl so much that he was doing everything he could think of to make her stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor. Pearl’s long yellow curls hanging down her back, and her pale blue eyes, turned Lov’s head. He thought there was not a more beautiful girl anywhere in the world. And for that matter, no man who had ever had the opportunity of seeing Pearl had ever gone away without thinking the same thing. It would have been impossible for her to dress herself, or even to disfigure herself, in a way that would make her plain or ordinary-looking. She became more beautiful day by day.
But Lov’s wishes were unheeded. Pearl, if it was possible, was more determined than ever by that time to keep away from him. And now that Ellie May had dragged herself all the way across the yard, and was now sitting on his legs, Lov was thinking only of Ellie May. Aside from her harelip, Ellie May was just as desirable as the next girl a man would find in the sand-hill country surrounding the town of Fuller. Lov was fully aware of that. He had tried them all, white girls and black.
“Lov ain’t thinking about no turnips,” Dude said, in reply to his father. “Lov’s wanting to hang up with Ellie May. He don’t care nothing about the way her face looks now—he ain’t aiming to kiss her. Ain’t nobody going to kiss her, but that ain’t saying nobody wouldn’t fool with her. I heard niggers talking about it not long ago down the road at the old sawmill. They said she could get all the men she wanted, if she would keep her face hid.”
“Quit chunking that there ball against that old house,” Jeeter said angrily. “You’ll have the wall worn clear in two, if you don’t stop doing that all the time. The old house ain’t going to stand up much longer, noway. The way you chunk that ball, it’s going to pitch over and fall on the ground some of these days. I declare, I wish you