Tobacco Road (16 page)

Dude was thrown against the steering-wheel, and Bessie shot forward off the seat and struck her head against the wind-shield. Where her forehead had hit the glass there were a hundred or more cracks, branching out like a wet spider-web in the sunshine. None of the glass shattered, though, and the wind-shield was still intact. She did not know what had happened.

“Praise the Lord,” Bessie shouted, pulling herself out of her cramped position on the floor-boards. “What’s we done this time, Dude?”

“I reckon we rammed into a stump,” he said. “I clear forgot about them old dead stumps out here in the sedge. I couldn’t see nothing at all for the sedge. It covers everything on the ground.”

Both of them got out and went to the front. A two-foot stump had stopped them.

The blackened pine stump, hidden from view by the four-foot wall of brown broom-sedge, stood squarely in front of the axle. It was partly decayed, and except for the heart of it, the car would have knocked it down and gone ahead without any trouble. As it was, the axle was not badly bent; actually the car was going only fifteen miles an hour, and there had not been enough force to twist the axle out of shape. The wheels had sprung forward a few inches, but aside from that, there was nothing to worry about. The car was still almost as good as new.

Jeeter came running up just then with his hands and arms full of rusty baling wire, which he had found behind the corn-crib.

They did not have to tell him what had happened, because he could see just as well as they did that the front axle had hit the stump and sprung the wheels forward several inches.

“It don’t appear to be hurt much,” he said. “Maybe it ain’t hurt none at all. We has got to haul a load of wood to Augusta to-day, because there ain’t no more meal and chicory in the house to eat.”

Bessie watched Dude start up the engine and back away from the stump. He swung around it, and drove carefully the remaining few yards to the pile of blackjack. Jeeter began picking up the pieces of scrub oak and hurling them like javelins into the back seat.

“I reckon I’d better put the top down,” Dude said. “It won’t hold much unless the top’s down.”

He began unfastening the set screws holding the top to the wind-shield, while Jeeter and Bessie continued to hurl blackjack into the back seat.

“There won’t be no room for Ada to go along, too, will there?” Jeeter said. “She’ll be powerful put out when she sees us drive off to Augusta and not stopping to take her along. The last time me and Dude went up there in my car, she and Ellie May liked to had a fit, but it wasn’t no use, because we needed all the room for wood.”

“Well, I ain’t going to stay at home,” Bessie said. “I’m going just as big as the next one. You can’t make me stay here.”

“I’m going,” Dude said. “Can’t nobody make me stay here. I’m going to drive the car.”

He had thrown the top back and was trying to tie it down. Most of it had been folded up, but some of it hung down as far as the rear axle. He could not find any means of making it stay folded, so he allowed it to hang down behind.

“I sure ain’t going to miss going,” Jeeter said. “It’s my wood I’m taking to sell. I’m going to be the first one to go.”

The scrub oak had been cut into varying lengths the past week when Jeeter and Dude had spent a day in the grove getting a load ready to sell. Some of it was a foot in length, but most of it was anywhere from three to six feet long. The length in which it had been cut was the length of the stunted trees after they had been hacked off with an axe at the stump. As soon as a tree was hacked down, Jeeter had taken the axe and broken the limbs off, and then the wood was ready to haul. The blackjack never grew much taller than a man’s head; it was a stunted variety of oak that used its sap in toughening the fibres instead of growing new layers and expanding the old, as other trees did. The blackjack sticks were about two or three inches in diameter, and wiry and tough as heavy pieces of wire or small iron water-pipes.

It took them about half an hour to pile on as much wood as the back seat would hold. After that, Jeeter began binding it to the body with baling wire so none of it would drop off along the road while they were riding to Augusta. The ends of the blackjack protruded in all directions, sticking out several feet on each side and behind. Others had been jabbed straight into the upholstery, and they appeared to be the only ones that did not need fastening. The rusty baling wire broke nearly every time Jeeter attempted to fasten it to the door-handles, and he would have to stop and splice the ends, twisting them until they would hold. The task of loading the blackjack and tying it on to the car took nearly two hours, and even then several pieces of wood fell off when one of them touched the car or leaned against it.

With the wood in place, Dude drove back across the field towards the house, going no faster than a man’s walk, but even then the wood persisted in falling off. Jeeter and Bessie came behind, picking up the sticks and carrying them to the house.

Ada and Ellie May were in the yard when they got there. The grandmother waited behind a chinaberry tree to see what they were going to do. Ada stood squarely in front of the car, waiting to find out where she was going to sit. The grandmother went to the corner of the house and stood there, all except her face hidden from view.

“Where is I going to sit and ride?” Ada said. “I don’t see no sitting place for nobody much, with all that wood you got loaded.”

Jeeter waited several minutes, hoping that Bessie would undertake to answer Ada. When she did not, Jeeter got in and sat down beside Dude.

“There ain’t no room for you,” he said.

“Why ain’t there no room for me, if there’s room for you and Dude and that hussy, there?”

“Sister Bessie ain’t no hussy,” Jeeter said. “She ain’t nothing like that. She’s a woman preacher.”

“Being a woman preacher don’t keep her from being a hussy. That could help to make her a bigger one. Something acts that way, because she is a big old hussy.”

“What make you say that about Bessie?” he said.

“Last night she was walking all around the room with none of her clothes on. If I hadn’t made you put on your overalls when I did, there ain’t no telling what she might have done. She’s a hussy.”

“Now, Ada,” he said, “you ought not to talk like that about Bessie. She’s a woman preacher, and she’s married to Dude, too.”

“That don’t make no difference. She’s a hussy, all the same. She always fools around with the men-folks. She don’t never stay in the house and help clean it up like I has to do. She’s taking after the men-folks because she’s a hussy. When she goes preaching, she always does the preaching to the men-folks and don’t pay no attention to the women-folks at all.”

“I ain’t got nothing to say against Sister Bessie. She’s a woman preacher, and what she does is the Lord’s doings. He instructs her what to do.”

“Ada is peeved because I married Dude and came here to stay,” Bessie said to Jeeter. “She don’t like it because I’m going to stay in the room.”

“You shut your mouth now, Ada,” Jeeter said, “and let us be going. I got to sell this load of wood in Augusta to-day.”

Dude started the car, and Bessie got in and sat on the edge of the seat beside Jeeter. There was barely enough room for all three of them.

Ada ran towards them, trying to jump on the running-board, but Dude speeded up the car and she could not get on. When he suddenly cut the wheels and turned out of the yard into the tobacco road, the rear wheel barely missed running over Ada’s feet. She shouted after them, but the car was going so fast by that time that it was useless to run after them and try to stop them. She went back into the yard and, with Ellie May, stood looking at the cloud of dust that hid the car from view. The grandmother came from behind the corner of the house and, picking up the old croker sack, started to the thicket for dead twigs. She was already hungry again, although she had had a cup of chicory only two or three hours before.

Dude slowed down when they approached the crossroad where they were to turn off the tobacco road and enter the State highway to Augusta. He did not slow down enough, however, because the momentum swung the load of blackjack to the offside, and the entire top of the pile fell in the road.

Jeeter and Dude worked half an hour getting the wood in place again, and with Bessie helping the little that she could, it was then ready to be tied down again. Jeeter went across the field to a negro cabin and borrowed two plow-lines. He came back and threw them over the wood and tied the ends down tightly.

“Now, that will hold it, durn that blackjack,” he said. “There ain’t nothing else in the world like plow-lines and baling wire. The two together is the best in the world to do anything with. Give me a little of both and I can do any kind of job.”

They were off again, speeding down the highway towards Augusta. The city was now only twelve miles away.

Dude was a good driver, all right; he swung out of the tracks just at the right moment every time he met another automobile. Only two or three times did he almost run head-on into other cars. He was so busy blowing the horn that he forgot to drive on the right-hand side of the road until the last minute. Most of the cars they met gave them plenty of road when they heard the horn blowing.

Jeeter could not talk, because he was holding his breath most of the time. The swiftness of the car frightened him so badly he could not answer Bessie’s questions. She looked grimly ahead most of the time, proud of her automobile and hoping that the negroes and farmers they passed in the fields beside the road would know it belonged to her instead of thinking it was Jeeter’s or Dude’s.

It was between noon and one o’clock when they reached the half-way point. Augusta was then only a little over seven miles away, and when they got to the top of the last hill they would be able to see the city down in the valley beside the big muddy river.

The last hill they had to climb before reaching that point was a long one. It was a mile and a half from the creek at the bottom to the filling-station on top, and they were about half way up, when suddenly the car slowed down to a few miles an hour. The water was boiling in the engine and radiator, and steam shot higher than the top of the wind-shield. The engine was making a great noise, too. It sounded as if it were knocking in the same way that Jeeter’s old car had, only a little harder and a little louder.

“What’s the matter with us?” Bessie said, leaning over the door and looking around outside.

“It must have got hot climbing the hill,” Dude said. “I don’t know what else is wrong with it.”

They went a hundred yards, and the car stopped. The engine choked down, and the steam whistled out of the pipes like pistons on a freight train at the coal chute.

Jeeter jumped out and shoved a big rock under the rear wheel before Dude could put on the brakes. The car stopped rolling backwards.

“What’s the matter with it, Dude?” Bessie said again. “Is something gone wrong?”

“I reckon it just got hot,” he said.

He made no effort to get out. He sat under the steering-wheel, grasping it tightly and jerking it from side to side as far as it would go. Presently he began blowing the horn again.

“That won’t help it none, Dude,” Jeeter said. “You’ll wear out that durn horn before you know it, if you keep doing that all the time. Why don’t you get out and try to do something?”

Several automobiles passed them at high speed, going up the hill and coming down, but none of them slowed up or stopped to offer help.

Another car was coming slowly up the hill behind them. It was coming very slowly in low gear, and it was steaming like Bessie’s new car. As it chugged slowly past them, some of the negroes leaned out and looked at the stalled automobile.

One of them called to Jeeter.

“What’s the matter with your automobile, white-folks? It looks like it ain’t going to run no more.”

“By God and by Jesus!” Jeeter said, angrily. “What’s your name, nigger? Where you from?”

“We come from Burke County,” he said. “What you want to know that for, white-folks?”

Before Jeeter could say anything more, the negroes’ car was a hundred yards up the hill, and gaining speed. Jeeter had been going to make them pull Bessie’s car up the hill, if he could have stopped them.

Dude cranked up the engine and put the car into gear. Jeeter and Bessie hopped on the running-board just in time, because Dude soon had the car going fast. The engine had cooled, and they were going faster than the negroes’ car. They gained on the car ahead and were getting ready to pass it, when suddenly the engine began knocking louder than ever, and they came to a stop.

“This is the durndest automobile I ever saw,” Jeeter said. “It don’t do the same thing long enough to make me accustomed.”

They had stopped this time on top of the hill. Dude was getting ready to let it roll down, when Jeeter saw the filling-station, and he told Dude to wait a minute.

“I’ll bring some water and put it in,” he said.

He crossed the road and went into the filling-station. He was back in a few minutes carrying a bucket of water. The man who ran the station came out with him.

While Jeeter was unscrewing the radiator cap, the other man was raising the hood to measure the oil.

“The trouble with you people, brother,” he said, “is you ain’t got a drop of oil in your car. Your bearings is burned out. How far did you come from?”

Jeeter told him they lived near Fuller on the old tobacco road.

“You’ve already ruined your new car,” he said. “That’s a shame. I hate to see people who don’t know no better ruining automobiles.”

“What’s wrong with it now?” Bessie said.

“Your new car is ruined, sister. It’ll take a gallon and a half of oil to put enough in it to run on. Do you want me to fill it up for you?”

“How much does it cost?” Bessie said.

“A dollar and a half.”

“I didn’t aim to pay out money on it.”

“Well, it won’t run no more unless you put oil in it. It looks to me like you didn’t have enough in it to start with.”

“I ain’t got but two dollars,” she said. “I was going to buy gasoline with most of that.”