Jeeter and Dude came into the house, stumbling through the darkness. There was a lamp in the house, but no kerosene had been bought that whole winter. The Lesters went to bed at dark, except in summer when it was warm enough to sit on the porch, and they got up at daylight. There was no need for kerosene, anyway.
Jeeter sat down on his bed beside Ada and pulled off his heavy shoes. The brogans fell on the floor like bricks dropped waist high.
"We stopped in every house we came to, and got out and visited a while," Bessie said. "Some of them wanted prayer, and some didn't. It didn't make much difference to me, because me and Dude was all excited about riding around. Some of the people wanted to know where I got all the money to buy a brand-new car, and why I married Dude, and I told them. I told them my former husband left me eight hundred dollars, and I said I married Dude because I was going to make a preacher out of him. Of course, that was only one reason why we got married, but I knew that would be enough to tell them."
"Nobody said things against you, did they, Sister Bessie?" Jeeter asked. "Some people has got a way of talking about people like us."
"Well, some of them did say a few things about me marrying Dude. They said he was too young to be married to a woman my age, but when they started talking like that, we just got in our new automobile and rode off. A lot of them said it was a sin and a shame for to take my husband's money and buy an automobile and get married to a young boy like Dude, but while they was doing the talking, me and Dude was doing the riding, wasn't we, Dude?"
Dude did not answer.
"I reckon Dude has gone to sleep," Jeeter said. "He worked pretty hard to-day, driving that automobile clear to McCoy and back again."
Ada sat up in bed.
"Take them overalls off, Jeeter," she said angrily. "I ain't never seen the like of it. You know I ain't going to let you sleep in the bed with them dirty pants on. I have to tell you about it nearly every time. They dirty-up the bed something bad. You ought to know I ain't going to stand for that."
"It's pretty cold again to-night," Jeeter said. "I get chilly when I don't sleep with my overalls on. It seems like I can't do nothing no more like I want to. Sleeping in overalls ain't going to hurt nothing, noway."
"You're the only man I ever knowed of who wanted to sleep in his overalls. Don't nobody else do like that."
Jeeter did not answer her. He got up out of bed and climbed out of his overalls and hung them on the foot of the bed. When he got back under the quilts, he was shivering all over. Bessie could be heard over the other side of the room stepping around in her stockinged feet getting ready for bed. She had kept her shoes on until she removed her clothes.
Jeeter lifted his head from under the cover and tried to look through the darkness of the room.
"You know, Bessie," he said, "it sort of makes me feel good like I was before I lost my health to have a woman preacher sleep in my house. It's a fine feeling I has about you staying here."
"I'm a woman preacher, all right," she said, "but I ain't no different in other ways from the rest of the womenfolks. Jeeter, you know that, don't you?"
Jeeter raised himself on his elbow and strained his eyes to see through the darkness across the room.
"I hope you ain't leaving us no time soon," he said. "I'd be powerful pleased to have you sleep here all the time, Bessie."
Ada thrust her elbow into his ribs with all her strength, and he fell down groaning with pain on the bed beside her.
Bessie could be heard getting into her bed. The cornshuck mattress crackled, and the slats rattled as she lay down and stretched out her feet. She lay still for several minutes, and then she began to stretch her hands out towards the other side, the impact of her arms making the shucks crackle more than ever.
Suddenly she sat up in bed, throwing the quilts aside.
"Where's Dude?" she demanded angrily, her voice gruff and unnatural. "Where is you, Dude?"
Not a sound was to be heard in the room. Ada had sat upright, and Jeeter had sprung to a sitting position on the side of the bed. Bessie's corn-shuck mattress crackled some more, and then the thump of her bare feet on the pine floor could be heard all over the house. Jeeter still did not attempt to speak or to move. He waited to catch every sound in the house.
"You Dude--you Dude!" Bessie cried from the centre of the room, trying to feel her way from bed to bed. "Where is you, Dude--why don't you answer me? You'd better not try to hide from me, Dude!"
"What's the matter, Bessie?" Jeeter said.
"Dude ain't in the bed--I can't find him nowhere at all."
Reaching for his overalls, Jeeter jumped to his feet. He began fumbling in his pockets for a match. At last he found one, and bending over, he struck it on the floor.
The flare of the match revealed every one in the room. Every one was there except Ellie May and Dude. Bessie was only a few feet away from Jeeter, and he tried to look at her. She was shielding her eyes from the light.
Ada crawled out of bed and stood behind Jeeter the moment she saw Bessie.
"Put them overalls on," she commanded Jeeter. "I don't know what you and her is up to, but I'm watching. You put them overalls on right now. I don't care if she is a woman preacher, she ain't got no right to stand on the floor in front of you like she is."
Jeeter hesitated, and the match burned down to his fingers. He stepped into his overalls, put one arm through a gallus, and reached into his pocket for another match.
Bessie was still standing beside Jeeter, but when he struck the match, she ran to Mother Lester's bed. She jerked back the covers, and she saw Dude sound asleep. The grandmother was awake, and she lay trembling in her old torn black clothes.
Jeeter shook Dude awake and pulled him to the floor. Ada jerked him by the arm.
"What you mean by not getting in bed with Bessie?" Jeeter demanded, shaking him roughly by the collar.
Dude looked around him and blinked his eyes. He was unable to see anything in the glare of the match.
"What you want?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"Dude, he didn't know which bed to get in," Sister Bessie said tenderly. "He was so tired and sleepy he didn't look to see which one we was goin' to sleep in, did you, Dude?"
"Dude, you can't act that way," Jeeter said. "You got to keep your eyes open when you get married. Bessie, here, got powerful nervous when she didn't find you in bed."
Ada went back to bed, and Jeeter followed her. He did not take off his overalls, and Ada went to sleep without thinking about them.
Ellie May came in after a while and got into bed with her grandmother. No one spoke to her.
The grandmother had been wide awake all the time, but no one said anything to her, and she did not try to tell Bessie that Dude was in her bed. No one ever said any. thing to her, except to tell her to get out of the way, or to stop eating the bread and meat.
Dude and Bessie went to their bed and lay down. Sister Bessie tried to talk to Dude, but Dude was tired and sleepy. He did not answer her. The rustling sound of the corn-shuck mattress continued most of the night.
Fifteen
Jeeter drank his third cup of chickory and cleared his throat. Dude had already left the kitchen and gone to the yard, and Sister Bessie was on the back porch combing her hair. Jeeter went down the back steps and leaned against the well.
"It would be a pretty smart deal if I was to take a load of wood to Augusta to-day," he said. "Me and Dude's got a'big pile of it all cut and ready to haul. Now, if we was to pile it in the new automobile it wouldn't take no time to haul it to the city, would it, Bessie?"
She finished combing her hair, stuck half a dozen pins and the rhinestone comb into it, and walked with Jeeter over to the automobile.
"Maybe it would hold a load," she said. "There ain't so much room in the back seat, though."
"Mine holds a fair load, and it ain't no bigger than that one. They is the same kind of automobiles. The only difference being that yours is near about a brand-new one now."
D
ude turned on the switch and raced the engine. The motor hummed perfectly. The tightness that had bothered Dude the day before had gone, and the engine was in good running order. He blew the horn several times, grinning at Jeeter.
"I'd sort of like to take a trip to Augusta, all right," Bessie said. "Me and Dude was going there yesterday, before we changed our mind and went down to McCoy instead."
"It won't take long to put a load of wood in the back," Jeeter said. "We can leave pretty soon. Dude--you drive the automobile out across the field yonder to that pile of wood we been cutting the past week. I'll get some pieces of baling wire to bind the load good and tight so it won't drop off."
Bessie got in beside Dude, and they started out across the old cotton field towards the grove of blackjack. The field had grown up into four-foot broom-sedge in the past few years. Once it had been the finest piece of tobacco land on the whole farm.
The rows of the last crop of cotton were still there, and as the car gathered speed, the bumps tossed Dude and Bessie up and down so suddenly and so often that they could not keep their seats. Dude grasped the steering.. wheel tightly and held himself better than Bessie could; Bessie bobbed up and down as the car raced over the old cotton rows and her head hit the top every time there was a bump. They had gone about a quarter of a mile, and were almost at the edge of the grove where the pile of blackjack was, when suddenly there was a jarring crash that stopped the car dead in its tracks.
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 about fifteen miles an hour, and there had not been enough force to twist the axle out of shape. The wheels had sprung f orward 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 chickory 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 don'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 like 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 for 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 carrying 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 makes 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 w
omen-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 today."
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 chickory 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.