Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [67]
While he walked around in the waist-high broom-sedge, Lov was racing down the tobacco road, hatless and out of breath. Lov began shouting to Jeeter as soon as he reached the front yard, and Jeeter ran out of the sedge to meet him and find out what the trouble was.
Lov was dressed in his dirty black overalls, the pair he wore at the chute when he shovelled coal into the scoops. His hat had blown off when he started running to Jeeter’s, and he had not waited to go back and pick it up. Lov’s fiery red hair stood almost straight up; ordinarily, it was falling down over his forehead and getting into his eyes.
He saw the old grandmother lying in the yard and he slowed down to look at her, but he did not linger there. He ran until he was face to face with Jeeter.
“What you doing down here at this time of day, Lov?” Jeeter said. “Why ain’t you working at the chute?”
Lov did not speak for several minutes. He had to wait until he could regain his breath. He sat on the ground, and Jeeter squatted on his heels beside him.
They were not far from the well. Ellie May was standing beside the stand drinking from the bucket when Lov reached Jeeter, but she did not run away immediately. She waited until Lov sat down, so she could hear what he had to tell Jeeter.
“What’s the matter, Lov?” Jeeter asked. “What happened down at the chute that made you run here so fast?”
“Pearl—Pearl—she run off!”
“Run where to?” Jeeter asked calmly, disappointed because it was not something of more interest to him. “Where’d Pearl run to, Lov?”
“She’s gone to Augusta!”
“Gone to Augusta!” Jeeter said, straightening up. “I thought maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere for a spell, like she was always doing. Reckon what she run off to Augusta for?”
“I don’t know,” Lov said, “but I reckon she just up and went. I don’t know what else she done it for. I didn’t hurt her none this morning. I didn’t do nothing to her, except throw her down on the bed. She got loose from me, and I ain’t seen her since.”
“What was you trying to do to her?”
“Nothing. I was only going to tie her up with some plow-lines to see if I could do it. I figured she’d have to stay in the bed if I tied her there. I was going to turn her loose pretty soon.”
“How you know she’s run off to Augusta? Maybe she just went off in the woods somewhere again. Did she tell you she was going to run off to Augusta?”
“She didn’t say nothing to me.”
“Then what makes you think she went up there, instead of going off in the woods somewhere?”
“I didn’t even know she was running off up there till Jones Peabody came by the chute and told me he met her up near Augusta when he was coming back to Fuller with an empty lumber truck. He said he stopped and asked her where she was going to, and if I knowed she’d left home, but she wouldn’t talk to him. He said she looked like she was near about scared to death. He came and told me about it the first thing. He said he knowed I wouldn’t know about it.”
“Pearl, she was just like Lizzie Belle. Lizzie Belle up and went to Augusta just like that!” He snapped his fingers, jerking his head to one side. “I didn’t know nothing about it till I seen her up there on the street once. I asked her what made her run off without saying nothing to her Ma and me about it, but she wouldn’t talk none. I thought all the time that she was staying out in the woods somewhere for a while, but I knowed it was Lizzie Belle the first time I looked at her. She had on some stylish clothes and a hat, but they didn’t fool me. I knowed it was Lizzie Belle, even if she wouldn’t talk to me. She was working in a cotton mill across the river from there, all that time. I knowed then why she up and went there, because Ada told me. Ada said Lizzie Belle wanted to have some stylish clothes and a hat to wear, and