Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell [71]
But, even if he could not raise a crop that year, he could at least make all preparations for one. He could burn over the broom-sedge and the groves of blackjack and the fields of young pine seedlings. He could have the land ready for plowing in case something happened that would let him plant a crop of cotton. He would have the land ready, in case—
It was late afternoon on the first of March. He walked across the old cotton field through the waist-high broom-sedge towards the blackjack grove at the rear of the house; he kicked at the crumbly earth lying exposed between the tufts of sedge, thinking there was still time in which to arrange for credit at the stores in Fuller. He knew the time for burning and plowing had ended the day before, but there still lingered in the warm March air something of the new season. The smell of freshly turned earth and the odor of pine and sedge-smoke hovered over the land even after burning and plowing was done. He breathed deeply of it, filling his body with the invigorating aroma.
“Maybe God will send some way to allow the growing of a crop,” he said. “He puts the land here, and the sun and rain—He ought to furnish the seed and the guano, somehow or other.”
Jeeter firmly believed that something would happen so he would be able to keep his body and soul alive. He still had hope left.
The late afternoon sun was still warm, and the air was balmy. There had been no cold nights for almost a week. People could sit on their front porches in the evening now without feeling the chill night air of February.
The breeze was blowing from the east. The white smoke of the broom-sedge fire coiled upward and was carried away towards the west, away from Jeeter’s view of the house and tobacco road. He stood watching it burn slowly away from him, and at the fire eating along the ground under the brown broom-sedge. There were several hundred acres of the land to burn; the fields that had not been cultivated, some of them for ten or fifteen years, were matted with the dry grass. Beyond the fields lay the woods of yellow pine and blackjack. The fire would probably blaze and smoulder three or four days before it would burn itself out and die along the shores of the creeks farther away.
“If Tom and some of the older boys was here, maybe they could help get some seed-cotton and guano somehow,” he said. “I know where I might could borrow a mule, if I had the seed-cotton and guano to plant. But a mule ain’t no good without the rest of things. Wouldn’t nothing grow in the new rows except broom-sedge and blackjack sprouts.”
He walked back to the house, to sit on the back steps a while before bed-time and watch the long line of yellow fire in the sedge.
It was long after dark before he got up and went into the house. From the rear bedroom window where he stood taking off his heavy shoes, Jeeter watched with fascination the distant fire that had melted into a vivid red with the fall of darkness. Some of the fire had gone far over the hills, and all that could be seen of it was the dull orange glow in the sky above it. Other sections of it had circled around the fields like cornered snakes, and burned on both sides of the house. In the centre, where he had stood that afternoon when he struck the match, there was a deep dark hole in the earth. The ground would remain black until it rained again.
He lay awake a long time after Ada was asleep. It was quiet in the house, now that there was no one else there to keep them company.
Jeeter tossed and turned, smelling the aroma of pine and broom-sedge smoke in the night air. With it came the