Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [52]
Ada crawled out of bed and stood behind Jeeter the moment she saw Bessie.
“Put them overalls on,” she commanded Jeeter. “I don’t know what you and her is up to, but I’m watching. You put them overalls on right now. I don’t care if she is a woman preacher, she ain’t got no right to stand in the floor in front of you like she is.”
Jeeter hesitated, and the match burned down to his fingers. He stepped into his overalls, put one arm through a gallus, and reached into his pocket for another match.
Bessie was still standing beside Jeeter, but when he struck the match, she ran to Mother Lester’s bed. She jerked back the covers, and saw Dude sound asleep. The grandmother was awake, and she lay trembling in her old torn black clothes.
Jeeter shook Dude awake and pulled him to the floor. Ada jerked him by the arm.
“What you mean by not getting in bed with Bessie?” Jeeter demanded, shaking him roughly by the collar.
Dude looked around him and blinked his eyes. He was unable to see anything in the flare of the match.
“What you want?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Dude, he didn’t know which bed to get in,” Sister Bessie said tenderly. “He was so tired and sleepy he didn’t look to see which one we was going to sleep in, did you, Dude?”
“Dude, you can’t act that way,” Jeeter said. “You got to keep your eyes open when you get married. Bessie, here, got powerful nervous when she didn’t find you in bed.”
Ada went back to bed, and Jeeter followed her. He did not take off his overalls, and Ada went to sleep without thinking about them.
Ellie May came in after a while and got into bed with her grandmother. No one spoke to her.
The grandmother had been wide awake all the time, but no one said anything to her, and she did not try to tell Bessie that Dude was in her bed. No one ever said anything to her, except to tell her to get out of the way, or to stop eating the bread and meat.
Dude and Bessie went to their bed and lay down. Sister Bessie tried to talk to Dude, but Dude was tired and sleepy. He did not answer her. The rustling sound of the corn-shuck mattress continued most of the night.
Chapter XV
JEETER DRANK HIS third cup of chicory and cleared his throat. Dude had already left the kitchen and gone to the yard, and Sister Bessie was on the back porch combing her hair. Jeeter went down the back steps and leaned against the well.
“It would be a pretty smart deal if I was to take a load of wood to Augusta to-day,” he said. “Me and Dude’s got a big pile of it all cut and ready to haul. Now, if we was to pile it in the new automobile it wouldn’t take no time to haul it to the city, would it, Bessie?”
She finished combing her hair, stuck half a dozen pins and the rhinestone comb into it, and walked with Jeeter over to the automobile.
“Maybe it would hold a load,” she said. “There ain’t so much room in the back seat, though.”
“Mine holds a fair load, and it ain’t no bigger than that one. They is the same kind of automobiles. The only difference being that yours is near about a brand-new one now.”
Dude turned on the switch and raced the engine. The motor hummed perfectly. The tightness that had bothered Dude the day before had gone, and the engine was in good running order. He blew the horn several times, grinning at Jeeter.
“I’d sort of like to take a trip to Augusta, all right,” Bessie said. “Me and Dude was going there yesterday, before we changed our mind and went down to McCoy instead.”
“It won’t take long to put a load of wood in the back seat,” Jeeter said. “We can leave pretty soon. Dude—you drive the automobile out across the field yonder to that pile of wood we been cutting the past week. I’ll get some pieces of baling wire to bind the load good and tight so it won’t drop off.”
Bessie got in beside Dude, and they started out across the old cotton field towards the grove of blackjack. The field had grown up into four-foot broom-sedge