Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [24]
Now that he was alone he began to worry all over again about the way he had treated Lov. He wanted to do something to make amends. If he went down to the chute the next morning and told Lov how sorry he was and that he promised never to steal anything from him again, he hoped that Lov would forgive him and not try to hit him with chunks of coal. And while he was about it, he could stop by Lov’s house and speak to Pearl. He would tell her that she had to stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor, and be more considerate of Lov’s wants. It was bad enough, he knew, to have to put up with a woman all day long, and then when night came to be left alone, was even worse.
“Ain’t you going to haul no more wood to Augusta?” Ada demanded. “I ain’t had no new snuff since I don’t know when. And all the meal is gone, and the meat, too. Ain’t nothing in the house to eat.”
“I’m aiming to take a load over there tomorrow or the next day,” Jeeter said. “Don’t hurry me, woman. It takes a heap of time to get ready to make a trip over there. I got my own interests to consider. You keep out of it.”
“You’re just lazy, that’s what’s wrong with you. If you wasn’t lazy you could haul a load every day, and I’d have me some snuff when I wanted it most.”
“I got to be thinking about farming the land,” Jeeter said. “I ain’t no durn woodchopper. I’m a farmer. Them woodchoppers hauling wood to Augusta ain’t got no farming to take up their time, like I has. Why, I expect I’m going to grow near about fifty bales of cotton this year, if I can borrow the mules and get some seed-cotton and guano on credit in Fuller. By God and by Jesus, I’m a farmer. I ain’t no durn woodchopper.”
“That’s the way you talk every year about this time, but you don’t never get started. It’s been seven or eight years since you turned a furrow. I been listening to you talk about taking up farming again so long I don’t believe nothing you say now. It’s a big old whopping lie. All you men is like that. There’s a hundred more just like you all around here, too. None of you is going to do nothing, except talk. The rest of them go around begging, but you’re so lazy you won’t even do that.”
“Now, Ada,” Jeeter said, “I’m going to start in the morning. Soon as I get all the fields burned off, I’ll go borrow me some mules. Me and Dude can grow a bale to the acre, if I can get me some seed-cotton and guano.”
“Humph!” Ada said, leaving the porch.
Chapter VII
JEETER DID NOT go down to the coal chute to see Lov. Neither did he go to the house to speak to Pearl.
There were always well-developed plans in Jeeter’s mind for the things he intended doing; but somehow he never got around to doing them. One day led to the next, and it was much more easy to say he would wait until tomorrow. When that day arrived, he invariably postponed action until a more convenient time. Things had been going along in that easy way for almost a lifetime now; nevertheless, he was again getting ready to burn off the fields and plow the land. He wanted to raise a crop of cotton.
Having an operation performed on Ellie May’s lip was one of those things that Jeeter had been waiting for fifteen years to do. Several times each year he had said he was going to take her to a doctor in Augusta; when he did make an effort to take her there, he usually never got any farther than the store at the crossroad, where something was certain to come up that caused him to change his plans.
In the course of all those years he had actually reached Augusta two or three times with the sole intention of having the operation performed; but it had always resulted in something coming to his mind