Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [14]
“They ain’t thinking of coming in here,” Ada said. “Niggers has got more sense than trying to interfere with white-folks’ business. They don’t dare come.”
The colored men did not come any closer. They would have liked to help Lov, because they were friends of his, but they were more interested in waiting to see what Ellie May was going to do than they were in saving the turnips.
Ellie May was sweating like a plow-hand. Lov had got sand all over him, and she was trying to wipe it off with a corner of her gingham mother-hubbard, and to get to him again. Lov made a final and desperate plunge for the sack, and although he succeeded in getting nearly a foot closer to it, Ada hit him on the head with the blackjack stick so hard he slumped helpless on the ground with a weak groan. Ellie May was upon him in a single plunge; her excited, feline agility frightening him almost out of his mind. His breath had first been knocked from him by the force of Ellie May’s weight falling on his unprotected stomach, and her knees digging into him with the pain of a mule’s kick kept him from being able to breathe without sharp pains in his lungs. He was defenseless in her hold. While Ellie May held him, his arms pinned to the ground, Ada stood over him with her heavy blackjack pole, prepared to strike him on the head if he again tried to get up or to turn over on his stomach. The old grandmother waited on the other side with her stick held high and menacing above her head. She muttered under her breath all the time, but no one paid any attention to what she was trying to say.
“Has these turnips got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them, Lov?” Jeeter said. “By God and by Jesus, if they’re wormy, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I been so sick of eating wormy turnips, I declare I almost lost my religion. It’s a shame for God to let them damn-blasted green-gutted worms bore into turnips. Us poor people always gets the worse end of all deals, it looks like to me. Maybe He don’t intend for humans to eat turnips at all; maybe He wants them raised for the hogs, but He don’t put nothing else down here on the land in their stead. Won’t nothing but turnips grow in winter-time.”
Ellie May and Lov had rolled over and over a dozen or more times, like tumble-bugs; when they finally stopped, Lov was on top. Ada had followed them across the yard, and the grandmother too, and they stood ready to club Lov with the blackjack poles if he showed the first sign of trying to get up before Ellie May was ready to release him.
While the others were in the far corner of the yard, Jeeter suddenly jumped to his feet, hugging the sack of turnips tight to his stomach, and ran out across the tobacco road towards the woods beyond the old cotton field. He did not pause to look back over his shoulder until he was nearly half a mile away. In another moment he had disappeared into the woods.
The negroes were laughing so hard they could not stand up straight. They were not laughing at Lov, it was the actions of the Lesters that appeared so funny to them. Ada’s serious face and Ellie May’s frantic determination furnished a scene none of them could look at without laughing. They waited until every one had quieted down, and then they went slowly down the road towards Fuller talking about what they had seen in the Lester yard.
Ada and the grandmother presently went back to the porch and sat down on the steps to watch Ellie May and Lov. There was no longer any danger of him getting away. He did not even try to get up now.
“How many scoops-full does that No. 17 freight engine empty at the chute every morning, Lov?” Dude said. “Looks like to me them freight engines take on nearly twice as much coal as the passenger ones do. Them firemen on the freights is always chunking big hunks of coal at the nigger cabins along the track. I reckon that’s why they have to take on more coal than the passengers do. The passenger trains go faster, and the nigger firemen don’t have a chance to chunk out coal at the nigger cabins. I’ve seen near about a