Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [49]
“Why didn’t you go to Augusta?” Jeeter asked. “You went down to the crossroads and I thought sure you was going to Augusta.”
“We didn’t go that way,” Dude said, “we went the other way—toward McCoy. And we went clear to McCoy, too.”
Jeeter walked to the front of the car and looked at it. Dude climbed out and stopped blowing the horn for a while.
“Praise the Lord,” Jeeter said, “what went and done that?”
He pointed to the right front fender and headlight. Everybody stopped dusting and gathered around the radiator. The fender was twisted and crumpled until it looked as if somebody had taken a sledge-hammer and tried to see how completely he could maul it. The right headlight had been knocked off. Only a piece of twisted iron and a small strand of insulated wire remained where it had been. The fender had been mashed back against the hood.
“It was a wagon what done that,” Dude said. “We was coming back from McCoy, and I was looking out at a big turpentine still, and then the first thing I knowed we was smashed smack into the back end of a two-horse wagon.”
Bessie looked at the mashed fender and missing headlight, but she said nothing. She could hardly blame it on the devil this time, as she had been riding in the car herself when the accident occurred, but it seemed to her that God ought to have taken better care of it, especially after she had stopped and prayed about it when she bought the automobile that morning in Fuller.
“It don’t hurt the running of it none, though, does it?” Jeeter asked.
“It runs like it was brand new yet,” Dude said. “And the horn wasn’t hurt none at all. It blows just as pretty as it did this morning.”
The fender had been crumpled beyond repair. It was lying against the hood of the car and, except for the jagged edges, it appeared as if it had been removed. Apparently nothing else, with the exception of the headlight, had been damaged; there were no dents in the body, and the wheels and axle seemed to stand straight and in line. The broken spring made the left rear end sag, however. “That don’t hurt it none,” Jeeter said. Don’t pay no attention to it, Bessie. Just leave it be, and you’ll never know it was any different then it was when you got it brand new.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I ain’t letting it worry me none, because it wasn’t Dude’s fault. He was looking at the big turpentine still alongside the road, and I was too, when the wagon got in our way. The nigger driving it ought to have had enough sense to get out of our way when he heard us coming.”
“Wasn’t you blowing the horn then, Dude?” Jeeter said.
“Not right then I wasn’t, because I was busy looking at the big still. I never saw one that big nowhere before. It was almost as big as a corn-liquor still, only it wasn’t as shiny-looking.”
“It’s a shame to get the new car smashed up so soon already, though,” Bessie said, going back and wiping off the dust. “It was brand new only a short time before noon, and now it’s only sundown.”
“It was that nigger,” Dude said. “If he hadn’t been asleep on the wagon it wouldn’t have happened at all. He was plumb asleep till it woke him up and threw him out in the ditch.”
“He didn’t get hurt much, did he?” Jeeter asked.
“I don’t know about that,” Dude said. “When we drove off again, he was still lying in the ditch. The wagon turned over on him and mashed him. His eyes was wide open all the time, but I couldn’t make him say nothing. He looked like he was dead.”
“Niggers will get killed. Looks like there ain’t no way to stop it.”
The sun had been down nearly half an hour and the chill dampness of an early spring night settled over the ground. The grandmother had already gone into the house and got into bed. Ada went up on the porch, hugging her arms across her chest to keep warm, and Bessie started inside, too.
Dude and Jeeter stood around the car until it was so dark they could not see it any longer, and then they too went inside.
The glare of woods-fire soon began to light the sky on the horizons, and the smell of pine smoke filled the damp evening air. Fires