Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [40]
“The Lord will provide,” Bessie said. “He always makes provision for His children.”
“He don’t take none too good care of me and mine,” the Clerk said, “and I been a supporting member of the Fuller Baptist church since I was twenty years old, too. He don’t do none too much for me.”
“That’s because you ain’t got the right kind of religion,” Bessie said. “The Baptists is sinners like all the rest, but my religion provides for me.”
“What’s the name of it?”
“It ain’t got no regular name. I just call it ‘Holy,’ most of the time. I’m the only member of it now, but Dude is going to be one when we get married. He’s going to be a preacher, too.”
“You’ll have to pay me two dollars for the license,” he said, writing on the sheet of paper. “Have you got it?”
“I’ve got it right here. I don’t see, though, why folks has to pay to get married. It’s God’s doings.”
“There’s something else I’m going to ask you. It’s not required by law, and some clerks don’t ask about it, but being a good Baptist I always feel like I ought to.”
“What’s it about?”
“Has either of you got any disease?”
“Not that I know about,” she said. “Has you, Dude?”
“What’s that?”
“Disease,” the Clerk said again, pronouncing the word slowly. “Like pellagra and chicken-pox, or anything like that. Is there anything wrong with you, son?”
“I ain’t got anything wrong with me that I know about,” Dude said. “I don’t know what that thing is, noway.”
“You sure you haven’t?” he asked Bessie. “Did your husband leave you with disease of any kind? What did he die of?”
“He died of age mostly, I reckon. He was well on to fifty when we was married.”
“Has either one of you got venereal disease?”
“What’s that?” Bessie asked.
“You know—” he said, “venereal disease. Maybe you call it sex trouble.”
“I used to take a powerful number of bottles of Tanlac, but I ain’t lately because I ain’t had the money to buy them with.”
“No, not that. What I’m talking about comes from women sleeping with men, sometimes.”
“My former husband had mites on him pretty bad sometimes. I had to wash both him and me off with kerosene to get rid of them.”
“No, not mites. Lots of people get those on them. It’s something else—but I reckon you ain’t got it, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“What other things do you want to know?” Bessie said.
“That’s all, I reckon. Now, you give me the two dollars.”
Bessie handed him the two soiled and ragged one-dollar bills she had been gripping in her hand. She had several more in her skirt pocket, all of them rolled in a handkerchief and the ends tied together. It was all the money she had left, now that the eight hundred dollars had been paid for the new automobile.
“Well, I reckon you two will get along all right,” the Clerk said. “Maybe you will, and maybe you won’t.”
“Is you a married man?” Bessie asked.
“I been married fifteen years or more. Why?”
“Well, I reckon you know how pleased me and Dude is to get married, then,” she said. “All married folks know how it is to get married.”
“It’s all right at the beginning, but it don’t keep up like that long. After you been married a year or two a man wants to go out and do it again all over, but it can’t be done. The law puts a stop to it after the first time, unless your wife dies, or runs off, but that don’t happen often enough to make it of any good.”
“Me and Dude is going to stay together all the time, ain’t we, Dude?”
Dude grinned, but he did not speak.
Bessie had the license in her hand, and she did not wait to hear the Clerk talk any more. She pulled Dude out of the room, and they left the courthouse and ran to the new automobile.
They got in to ride home. Dude blew the horn several times before he started the motor, and again before he put the car into gear. Then he turned it around in the street and drove it out of Fuller towards the tobacco road. Bessie sat erect on the back seat, holding the marriage license tight in both hands so the wind would not blow it away.
Chapter XI
THE LESTERS HEARD DUDE blowing