Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [5]
“Aw, go to hell, you old dried-up clod,” Dude said, throwing the ball at the side of the house with all his might and scooping up a fast grounder on the rebound. “Nobody asked you nothing.”
The old grandmother, Jeeter’s mother, crawled under the front porch for the old burlap sack, and went across the tobacco road towards the grove for some dead twigs. No one paid any attention to her.
Wood for the kitchen stove and fireplace was never cut and hauled to the house; Jeeter would not do it, and he could not make Dude do that kind of work. Old Mother Lester knew there was no food for them to cook, and that it would be a waste of time for her to go after the dead twigs and make a fire in the cook-stove; but she was hungry, and she was always hoping that God would provide for them if she made a fire in the kitchen at meal-time. Knowing that there were turnips in Lov’s sack made her frantic with hunger. She could sometimes stand the pain of it in her stomach when she knew there was nothing to eat, but when Lov stood in full view taking turnips out of the sack, she could not bear the sight of seeing food no one would let her have.
She hobbled across the road and over the old cotton field that had not been planted and cultivated in six or seven years. The field had grown up in broom-sedge at the start, and now the gnarled and sharp stubs of a new blackjack growth were beginning to cover the ground. She tripped and fell several times on her way to the grove of trees, and her clothes had been torn so many times before that the new tears in the skirt and jacket could not be distinguished from the older ones. The coat and shirt she wore had been torn into strips and shreds by the briars and blackjack pricks in the thicket where she gathered up the dead twigs for fire-wood, and there never had been new clothes for her. Hobbling through the brown broom-sedge, she looked like an old scarecrow, in her black rags.
The February wind whistled through the strips of black cloth, whirling them about in the air until it looked as if she were shaking violently with palsy. Her stockings had been made by wrapping some of the longer of the black rags around her legs and tying the ends with knots. Her shoes were pieces of horse-collars cut into squares and tied around her feet with strings. She went after the dead twigs morning, noon, and night; when she returned to the house each time, she made a fire in the cook-stove and sat down to wait.
Ada shifted the snuff stick to the other side of her mouth and looked longingly at Lov and his sack of turnips. She held the loose calico dress over her chest to keep out the cool February wind blowing under the roof of the porch. Every one else was sitting or standing in the sunshine.
Ellie May got down from the pine stump and sat on the ground. She moved closer and closer to Lov, sliding herself over the hard white sand.
“Is you in mind to make a trade with them turnips?” Jeeter asked Lov. “I’m wanting turnips, God Himself only knows how bad.”
“I ain’t trading turnips to nobody,” he said.
“Now, Lov, that ain’t no way to talk. I ain’t had a good turnip since a year ago this spring. All the turnips I’ve et has got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them. I sure would like to have some good turnips right now. Wormy ones like mine was ain’t fit for a human.”
“Go over to Fuller and buy yourself some, then,” he said, eating the last of his fourth turnip. “I went over there to get mine.”
“Now, Lov, ain’t I always been good to you? That ain’t no way for you to talk. You know I ain’t got a penny to my name and no knowing where to get money. You got a good job and it pays you a heap of money. You ought to make a trade with me so I’ll have something to eat and won’t have to starve to death. You don’t want to sit there and see me starve, do you, Lov?”
“I don’t make but a dollar a day at the chute. House-rent takes up near about all of that, and eating, the rest of it.”
“Makes no difference, Lov. I ain’t got a penny to my