Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [17]
“Hell,” Dude said, “you talk like that near about every time you steal something, but you don’t never stick to it afterwards. You’re just trying to keep from giving me some more turnips. You can’t fool me.”
“That’s a sinful thing to say about a man who’s tried all his life to stand right with God. God’s on my side, and He don’t like to hear people talking about me in that manner. You ought not to talk like that, Dude. Ain’t you got no sense at all?”
“Give me some more,” Dude said. “Ain’t no use for you to try to keep them all by talking like that. That ain’t going to get you nowhere. That don’t mean nothing to me. I know better than to get fooled this time.”
“You’ve already had five, ain’t you?” Jeeter said, counting the ones he had left in his pockets. “You don’t need no more.”
Dude thrust his hand into the nearest pocket and jerked out as many as he could hold in his hand. Jeeter hit at him with his elbows, but Dude did not mind that. Jeeter was too weak to hurt him.
“That’s all you’re going to have,” Jeeter said. “I’m taking what’s left and give to Ada and Ellie May. I expect they be almost as hungry as I was. They’ll be waiting now to get some. Has Lov gone yet?”
“He went back to the chute long ago,” Dude said.
They started walking through the broom-sedge towards the house. Long before they reached the road they could see Ada and Ellie May waiting in the yard for them. The grandmother was crouching in the doorway, afraid to come out any farther.
“I reckon the women folks is pretty hungry, too,” Dude said. “Ellie May’s belly was growling all last night. It woke me up this morning, starting all over again.”
Ellie May and Ada sat down on the steps when Dude and Jeeter came into view. They waited patiently while Dude and Jeeter broke through the broom-sedge, and as they came nearer, Ada went up on another step. The grandmother crouched in the doorway, clinging to the frame with both hands. None of them was more hungry than she was.
There was another woman in the porch, too. She sat swaying backward and forward in the rocking-chair, and singing a hymn at the top of her voice. Each time she reached the highest note she could go, she held it until her breath gave out and then she started all over again.
Jeeter jumped over the drain ditch and came across the yard with Dude at his heels. As soon as he saw the woman in the rocking-chair his face brightened, and he almost stumbled in his haste to reach her.
“The good Lord be praised!” he shouted, seeing Bessie Rice sitting on the porch. “I knowed God would send His angel to take away my sins. Sister Bessie, the Lord knows what I needed, all right. He wants me to give up my sinful ways, don’t He?”
Ada and Ellie May jerked at Jeeter’s overalls’ pockets, extracting the remaining turnips in desperate hurry. Jeeter tossed three of the smallest ones on the porch in the direction of the door. The grandmother fell on her knees and clutched them hungrily against her stomach, while she munched the vegetable with her toothless gums.
“The Lord told me to come to the Lester house,” the woman preacher said. “I was at home sweeping out the kitchen when He came to me and said, ‘Sister Bessie, Jeeter Lester is doing something evil. You go to his place and pray for him right now before it’s too late, and try to make him give up his evil goings-on.’ I looked right back at the Lord, and said, ‘Lord, Jeeter Lester is a powerful sinful man, but I’ll pray for him until the devil goes clear back to hell.’ That’s what I told Him, and here I is. I came to pray for you and yours, Jeeter Lester. Maybe it ain’t too late yet to get on the good side of the Lord. It’s people like you who ought to be good, instead of letting the devil make you do all sorts of sinful things.”
“I knowed the good Lord wouldn’t let me slip and fall in the devil’s hands!” Jeeter shouted, dancing around Bessie’s chair. “I knowed it! I knowed