Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell Read Free Book Online

do, Lov?” Dude said. “They hardly blow the whistles at all. If I was a fireman I’d pull the whistle cord near about all the time. They make a noise about as pretty as an automobile horn does.”
    Dude sat on the pine stump until Lov got up and staggered across the yard towards the tobacco road. Lov looked all around in every direction, hoping he might see Jeeter hiding somewhere close. He was sure that Jeeter had gone to the pine woods beyond the old cotton field though, and he knew it would be a waste of time trying to find him and catch him. It was too late to stop him now.
    Ellie May lay where she was; stretched out flat on the ground, on her back. Perspiration had matted her hair against her forehead and neck, and her pink gingham dress was twisted under her shoulders and head in such a way that it made a pillow for her to lie on. Her mouth looked as if it had been torn; her flaming red upper gum looked like a bleeding, painful wound under her left nostril. Her divided lip quivered, and her body trembled.
    “You ought to give me them overalls when you’re done with them,” Dude said. “I ain’t had a new pair of overalls since I can remember. Pa says he’s going to buy me and him both some one of these days when he sells a lot of wood, but I ain’t putting none too much trust in what he says. He ain’t going to sell no wood, not more than a load at a time, noway. He tells more lies than any man I ever heard of. I reckon he’d rather lie about it than haul wood to Augusta. He’s that lazy he won’t get up off the ground sometimes when he stumbles. I’ve seen him stay there near about an hour before he got up. He’s the laziest son of a bitch I ever seen.”
    Lov went to the middle of the road and stood there uncertainly, his legs wide apart to keep his balance, and his body swaying backward and forward like a drunken man’s. He began brushing the sand off of his clothes, and shaking it out of his hair. Sand was in his pockets and shoes, and even his ears were full of it.
    “When is you going to buy yourself an automobile, Lov?” Dude asked. “You make a heap of a lot of money at the chute—you ought to buy yourself a great big car, like the ones the rich people in Augusta has got. I’ll show you how to run it. I know all about automobiles. Pa’s old Ford ain’t much to look at now, but when it was in good running order I used to run the wheels off of it sometimes, near about. You ought to get one that has got a great big horn on it. Whistles and horns make a pretty sound, don’t they, Lov? When is you going to get you an automobile?”
    Lov stood in the middle of the road for the next ten or fifteen minutes, looking out over the top of the sagging brown broom-sedge towards the thicket where Jeeter was. After he had waited until he did not know what else to do, he staggered up the road in the direction of his house and the coal chute. Pearl would be at the house when he reached it, but as soon as he walked inside she would run out the back door and stay until he left. Even if she did not leave the room when he entered the house, she would not look at him nor have anything to say. He could look at her long yellow hair hanging down her back, but that was all. She would not allow him to come close enough to look into her eyes; if he tried to do that, she would certainly run off into the broom-sedge.
    Ada and Dude watched him until he was out of sight beyond the rise in the ridge, and then they turned their backs and looked at Ellie May in the yard.
    Dude went to the pine stump and sat down to watch the red wood-ants crawl over the stomach and breasts of his sister. The muscles of her legs and back twitched nervously for a while, and then slowly the jerking stopped altogether, and she lay still. Her mouth was partly open, and her upper lip looked as if it had been torn wider apart than it naturally was. The perspiration had dried on her forehead and cheeks, and smudges of dirt were streaked over her