Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [66]
“That don’t make no difference to me. I don’t care where you go, but you’re going to get off this land. If you ain’t going to let me ride in the new automobile when I wants to, you can’t stay here. I’m tired looking at them two dirty holes in your durn nose, anyhow.”
“You old son of a bitch, you!” she cried, running to him and scratching his face with her fingernails. “You’re nothing but an old dirty son of a bitch, you is! I hope God sends you straight to hell and never lets you out again!”
Ada came running around the corner of the house when she heard the cries of Bessie. The sight of Jeeter’s bleeding face threw her into a fit of uncontrollable anger. She hit at Bessie with her fists and kicked her with her feet.
Dude came running, too. He stood looking at the fight while all three of them were striking and scratching one another. Ellie May grinned from behind a chinaberry tree.
Bessie retreated. Both Ada and Jeeter were fighting her, and she was unable to strike back. She ran to the automobile and jumped in. Jeeter picked up a stick and hit her with it several times before Ada took it from him and began poking Bessie in the ribs with it. The sharp point hurt her much more than Jeeter’s blows on her head and shoulders had, and she screamed with pain.
Both Ellie May and the grandmother came out from behind the chinaberry trees and watched all that was taking place.
Dude jumped in and backed the car towards the road as fast as he could. His choice lay with Sister Bessie. He liked to drive an automobile too much to let hers get away from him on account of a little scrap like that.
Mother Lester, who had watched the fight from the start, ran across the yard to get behind another china-berry tree where she could see from a better location everything that was happening. She had no more than reached a point midway between two chinaberry trees when the rear end of the automobile struck her, knocking her down and backing over her.
Bessie leaned out of the car, shaking her fists and making faces at Ada and Jeeter. They followed the automobile to the tobacco road.
“You old sons of bitches, you!” she yelled at them at the top of her high-pitched voice. “All of you Lesters is dirty sons of bitches!”
Ada picked up a big rock and hurled it at the car as hard as she could. By that time, Bessie and Dude were several hundred feet away, and Ada’s big stone fell short of the mark by three-fourths of the distance. She should have known she did not have the strength to throw rocks as large as that. It was almost as big as a stove-lid.
Chapter XVIII
AFTER THE DUST had settled on the road, Ada and Jeeter came back into the yard. Mother Lester still lay there, her face mashed on the hard white sand. From the corner of the house, Ellie May looked at what had happened.
“Is she dead yet?” Ada asked, looking at Jeeter. “She don’t make no sound and she don’t move. I don’t reckon she could stay alive with her face all mashed like that.”
Jeeter did not answer her. He was too busy thinking of his hatred for Bessie to bother with anything else. He took another look at the grandmother and walked across the yard and around to the back of the house. Ada went to the porch and stood there looking back at Mother Lester several minutes, then she walked inside and shut the door.
Mother Lester tried to turn over so she could get up and go into the house. She could not move either her arms or her legs without unbearable pain, and her head felt as if it had been cracked open. The automobile had struck her with such force that she did not know what had hit her. Both of the left wheels had rolled over her, one of them across her back and the other on her head. She had not known what had happened. More than anything else she wanted to get up and lie down on her bed. She struggled with a final effort to raise her head and shoulders from the hard sand, and she managed to turn over. After that she lay motionless.
When he had finished getting a fresh drink of water at the well, Jeeter walked out into the broom-sedge, kicking the ground