Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page A

pale white skin.
    For nearly an hour she slept deeply in the warm February sun, and when she awoke, her right arm was lying across her mouth where Dude had placed it when he left the yard to get some of the turnips before his father had eaten them all.

Chapter V
    D OWN IN THE THICKET, hidden from the house and road by the four-foot wall of brown broom-sedge, Jeeter’s conscience began to bother him. His hunger had been abated temporarily, and his overalls pockets were filled with turnips, but the slowly formed realization that he had stolen his son-in-law’s food sickened his body and soul. He had stolen food before, food and everything else he had had opportunity to take, but each time, as now, he regretted what he had done until he could convince himself that he had not done anything so terribly wrong. Sometimes he could do this in a few minutes, at other times it was days, and even weeks, before he was satisfied that God had forgiven him and would not punish him too much.
    The sound of Dude’s voice behind him in the woods was like the voice of God calling him to punishment. Dude had been crashing through the thicket and beating the underbrush with a blackjack stick for the past half hour trying to find Jeeter before all the turnips had been eaten.
    There was a hollow silence in the woods around Jeeter between Dude’s yells, and Jeeter felt humble and penitent. He carefully wiped the blade of the knife with which he had pared the turnips, and thrust it into his pocket. Then he jumped up and ran out of the thicket and into the broom-sedge. He could see the roof of the house and the tops of the chinaberry trees, but he had no way of knowing whether Lov had gone home.
    Dude saw him the moment he came out of the underbrush and started through the sedge.
    “Hey! Where you running off to now?” Dude shouted at him, running across the field to cut Jeeter off from the house.
    Jeeter stopped and waited for Dude to reach him. He took out half a dozen of the smallest turnips and laid them in Dude’s outstretched hands.
    “What made you run off and try to eat them all up for, and not give me none?” Dude demanded. “You ain’t the only one what likes turnips. I ain’t had no more to eat this week than you has. You’re as mean as an old snake at times. Why didn’t you want me to have none?”
    “The good Lord is against theft,” Jeeter said. “He don’t make no provision for the future for them that steals. They has got to look out for theirselves in the afterlife. Now I got to get right with God and confess my sins. I done an evil deed this day. God don’t like for His people to do that. He won’t take no notice of sinners. And theft is the worse deed a human can do, near about.”
    “Hell,” Dude said, “you talk like that near about every time you steal something, but you don’t never stick to it afterwards. You’re just trying to keep from giving me some more turnips. You can’t fool me.”
    “That’s a sinful thing to say about a man who’s tried all his life to stand right with God. God’s on my side, and He don’t like to hear people talking about me in that manner. You ought not to talk like that, Dude. Ain’t you got no sense at all?”
    “Give me some more,” Dude said. “Ain’t no use for you to try to keep them all by talking like that. That ain’t going to get you nowhere. That don’t mean nothing to me. I know better than to get fooled this time.”
    “You’ve already had five, ain’t you?” Jeeter said, counting the ones he had left in his pockets. “You don’t need no more.”
    Dude thrust his hand into the nearest pocket and jerked out as many as he could hold in his hand. Jeeter hit at him with his elbows, but Dude did not mind that. Jeeter was too weak to hurt him.
    “That’s all you’re going to have,” Jeeter said. “I’m taking what’s left and give to Ada and Ellie May. I expect they be almost as hungry as I was. They’ll be waiting now to get some. Has Lov gone