Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [64]
He stopped at the rear of the automobile and was looking at the rack where the spare tire and extra wheel had been, when he saw the great dent in the body. He stared at it until Dude and Bessie stopped talking.
“You won’t be fit to preach a sermon next Sunday if you cuss like that,” she was saying. “Good folks don’t want to have God send them sermons by cussing preachers.”
“I ain’t going to say it no more. I ain’t never going to cuss no more.”
Jeeter motioned to them to come to the back of the car. He pointed to the dent in the body. The centre of it had been knocked in about ten or twelve inches, dividing the body into two almost equal halves.
“What done that?” he asked, still pointing.
“We was backing out from the cross-tie camp and ran smack into a big pine tree,” Bessie said hesitantly. “I don’t know what made it happen. Looks like everything has tried to ruin my new automobile. Ain’t nothing like it was when I paid eight hundred dollars for it in Fuller the first of the week.”
Dude ran his hands over the dent. The cracked paint dropped to the white sand. He tried to make the dent look smaller by rubbing it.
“It ain’t hurt the running of it none, though, has it?” Jeeter said. “That’s only the body smashed in. It runs good yet, don’t it?”
“I reckon so,” Bessie said, “but it does make a powerful lot of noise when it’s running down hill—and up hill, too.”
Ada came over and looked at the dent in the back of the car. She rubbed her hands over it until more of the cracked black paint dropped off and fell on the white sand at her feet.
“What does Tom look like now?” Ada asked Bessie. “I reckon he don’t look like he used to, no more.”
“He looks a lot like Jeeter,” she said. “There ain’t much resemblance in him and you.”
“Humph!” Ada said. “There was a time when I’d declared it was the other way around.”
Jeeter looked at Ada, and then at Bessie. He could not understand what Ada was talking about.
“What did Tom say when you told him you and Dude was married now?” Jeeter said.
“He didn’t say nothing much. Looked to me like he didn’t care one way or the other.”
“Tom said she used to be a two-bit slut when he knowed her a long time back,” Dude said. “He told it right to her, but she didn’t say nothing. I reckon he knowed what he was talking about, because she didn’t say it was a lie.”
Sister Bessie grabbed Dude around the neck again and shook him vigorously. Jeeter and Ada stood beside them watching. Ellie May had heard everything, but she had not come any closer.
Dude jerked away from Bessie more quickly than he had the first time. He was learning how to get away from her more easily.
“God damn you!” he shouted, striking at her face with his fist. “Why in hell don’t you keep off me!”
“Now, Dude,” Bessie pleaded tenderly, “you promised me you was not going to cuss no more. Good folks don’t want to go and hear a Sunday sermon by a cussing preacher.”
Dude shrugged his shoulders and walked away. He was getting tired of the way Bessie jumped on him and twisted his neck every time he said something she did not want to hear.
“When’s Dude going to start being a preacher?” Jeeter asked her.
“He’s going to preach a little short sermon next Sunday at the schoolhouse. I’m already telling him what to say when he preaches.”
“Looks like to me he ought to know that himself,” Jeeter said. “You don’t have to tell him everything to do, do you? Don’t he know nothing?”
“Well, he ain’t familiar with preaching like I is. I tell him what to say and he learns to say it himself. It won’t take him long to catch on and then I won’t have to tell him nothing. My former husband told me what to say one Saturday night and I went to the schoolhouse the next afternoon and preached for almost three hours without stopping. It ain’t hard to do after you catch on. Dude’s already told me what he was going to preach