"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 at 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 about Sunday. He knows now what he's going to say when the time comes."
"What's he going to preach about Sunday?"
"About men wearing black shirts."
"Black shirts? What for?"
"You ask him. He knows."
"Black shirts ain't nothing to preach about, to my way' of thinking. I ain't never heard of that before."
"You come to preaching at the schoolhouse Sunday afternoon and find out."
"Is he going to preach _for_ black shirts, or _against_ black shirts?"
"Against them."
"What for, Sister Bessie?"
"It ain't my place to tell you about Dude's preaching. That's for you to go to the schoolhouse and hear. Preachers don't want their secrets spread all over the country beforehand. Wouldn't nobody take the trouble to go and. listen, if they did that."
"Maybe I don't know nothing about preaching, but I ain't never heard of nobody preaching about men wearing black shirts--against black shirts, at that. I ain't never seen a man wearing a black shirt, noway."
"Preachers has got to preach _against_ something. It wouldn't do them no good to preach _for_ everything. They got to be _against_ something every time."
"I never looked at it that way before," Jeeter said, "but there might be a lot in what you say. Though, take for instance, God and heaven--you wouldn't preach _against_ them, would you, Sister Bessie?"
"Good preachers don't preach about God and heaven, and things like that. They always preach _against_ something, like hell and the devil. Them is things to be against. it wouldn't do a preacher no good to preach for God. He's got to preach against the devil and all wicked and sinful things. That's what the people like to hear about. They want to hear about the bad things."
"You sure is a convincing woman, Sister Bessie," he said. "God must be proud of having a woman preacher like you. I don't know what He's going to think about Dude, though. Specially when he starts preaching _against_ men wearing black shirts. I ain't never seen a man wearlug a black shirt, noway, and I don't believe there's such a thing in the country."
Jeeter bent over and rubbed his hands on the dent in the body of the car. He scraped the surface paint with his fingernails until most of it had peeled off and fallen on the ground.
"Stop doing that to my automobile," Bessie said. "Ain't you got no sense at all? You and Ada has near about got all the paint off of it already doing that."
"You wouldn't talk to me like that, would you, Bessie?" he asked. "I ain't hurting the automobile no more than it's already done."
"Well, you keep your hands off it, anyhow."
Jeeter slouched away and leaned against the corner of the house. He looked sharply at Bessie, saying nothing.
"I near about ruined my new automobile letting you fool with it," she said. "I ought to had better sense than to let you get near it. Hauling that load of blackjack to Augusta tore holes all in the back seat."
"You ain't going to take me riding in it none?" he asked, standing erectly by the house.
"No, sir! You ain't going to ride in my new automobile no more. That's why I wouldn't let you go with me to see Tom this morning. I don't want you around it no more, neither."
"By God and by Jesus, if that's what you're aiming to do, you can get off my land," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and pulling at the rotten weatherboards behind him. "I ain't none too pleased to have you around, noway."
Bessie did not know what to say. She looked around for Dude, but he was not in sight.
"You're going to make me leave?"
"I done started doing it. I already told you to get off my land."
"It don't belong to you. It's Captain John's land. He owns it."
"It's the old Lester place. Captain John ain't got no more right to it than nobody else. Them rich people up there in Augusta come down here and take everything a man's got, but they can't take the land away from me. By God and by Jesus, my daddy owned it, and his daddy before him, and I ain't going to get off it while I'm alive. But durned if I can't run you off it--now git!"
"Me and Dude ain't got no place to go. The roof is all rotted away at my house."
"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. "Y
ou'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 chinaberry 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.
Eighteen
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 appened.
"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 with the toes of his shoes to find out how dry it was. He believed the soil held just the right amount of moisture needed for plowing, but he wanted to be sure of it, because he was confident that he could borrow a mule somewhere and begin plowing and planting early the following week.
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 air 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 said 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 m the bed if I tied her there I was gomg to 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 hei 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, 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 she run off up there to work in a cotton mill so she could get them kind of things herself."
"Pearl never said nothing to me about wanting a stylish dress and a hat," Lov said. "I make a dollar a day at the chute, and I could have bought her a dress and a hat if she had told me she wanted them. But Pearl never said nothing to me--she never said nothing to nobody. She slept on that dum pallet on the floor and wouldn't answer my requests when I told her to do something I wanted done."
"I reckon about the best thing you can do, Lov, is to let her be. She wasn't satis
fied living down here on the tobacco road, and if you was to bring her back, she'd run off again twice as quick. She's just like Lizzie Belle and Clara and the other gals. I can't recall all of their names right now, but it was every durn one of them, anyhow, They all wanted some stylish clothes. They wasn't satisfied with the pretty calico and gingham their Ma sewed for them. Well, Ada ain't satisfied neither, but she can't do nothing about it. That's how the gals took after their Ma. I sort of broke Ada of wanting to go off and do that. She don't talk no more about buying of stylish clothes and a hat, except a dress to die in and be buried in. She talks about getting a stylish dress to die in, but she ain't going to get it, and she knows she ain't. She'll die and be buried in the ground wearing that yellow calico she's got on now. I broke Ada of wanting to run off, but them gals was more than I could take care of. There was too durn many of them for only one man to break. They just up and went."
"Maybe she'll come back," Lov said. "Reckon she'll come back, Jeeter?"
"Who--Pearl? Well, I wouldn't put no trust in it. Lizzie Belle went off and she ain't never come back. None of the other gals came back, neither."
"I sort of hate to lose her, for some reason or another. She was a pretty little girl--all them long yellow curls hanging down her back always made me hate the time when she'd grow up and be old. I used to sit on the porch and watch her through the window when she was comb lug and brushing her hair in the bedroom--"
"That sure ain't no lie," Jeeter said. "Pearl had the prettiest yellow hair of any gal I ever saw. It was a plumb shame that she was so bad about wanting to stay by herself all the time, because I used to want to have her around me. I wish Ada had been that pretty. Even when Ada was a young gal, she was that dum ugly it was a sin. I ain't never seen an uglier woman in the whole country, unless it's that durn woman preacher Bessie. Them two dirty holes in her face don't do a man no good to look at."
"Pearl always took a long time to fix herself up, woman-like. I used to want to tell her there wasn't no other girl in the whole country who was nowhere as pretty as she was, but she wouldn't listen to me. And I lived with her so long I sort of got used to seeing her every day, and I don't know what I'm going to do now wheü she's gone to Augusta to stay. I'll miss them long yellow curls hanging down her back, and that pretty face of her. too. Aside from that, I don't know of a prettier sight to see than to look in her pale blue eyes early in the morning before the sun got up so high it threw too much light in them. Early in the morning they was the prettiest things a man could ever want to look at. But they was pretty any time of the day, and sometimes I used to sit and shake all over, for wanting to squeeze her so hard. I don't reckon I'll ever forget how pretty her eyes was early in the morn-. lug just when the sun was rising."
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