Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

yet?”
    “He went back to the chute long ago,” Dude said.
    They started walking through the broom-sedge towards the house. Long before they reached the road they could see Ada and Ellie May waiting in the yard for them. The grandmother was crouching in the doorway, afraid to come out any farther.
    “I reckon the women folks is pretty hungry, too,” Dude said. “Ellie May’s belly was growling all last night. It woke me up this morning, starting all over again.”
    Ellie May and Ada sat down on the steps when Dude and Jeeter came into view. They waited patiently while Dude and Jeeter broke through the broom-sedge, and as they came nearer, Ada went up on another step. The grandmother crouched in the doorway, clinging to the frame with both hands. None of them was more hungry than she was.
    There was another woman in the porch, too. She sat swaying backward and forward in the rocking-chair, and singing a hymn at the top of her voice. Each time she reached the highest note she could go, she held it until her breath gave out and then she started all over again.
    Jeeter jumped over the drain ditch and came across the yard with Dude at his heels. As soon as he saw the woman in the rocking-chair his face brightened, and he almost stumbled in his haste to reach her.
    “The good Lord be praised!” he shouted, seeing Bessie Rice sitting on the porch. “I knowed God would send His angel to take away my sins. Sister Bessie, the Lord knows what I needed, all right. He wants me to give up my sinful ways, don’t He?”
    Ada and Ellie May jerked at Jeeter’s overalls’ pockets, extracting the remaining turnips in desperate hurry. Jeeter tossed three of the smallest ones on the porch in the direction of the door. The grandmother fell on her knees and clutched them hungrily against her stomach, while she munched the vegetable with her toothless gums.
    “The Lord told me to come to the Lester house,” the woman preacher said. “I was at home sweeping out the kitchen when He came to me and said, ‘Sister Bessie, Jeeter Lester is doing something evil. You go to his place and pray for him right now before it’s too late, and try to make him give up his evil goings-on.’ I looked right back at the Lord, and said, ‘Lord, Jeeter Lester is a powerful sinful man, but I’ll pray for him until the devil goes clear back to hell.’ That’s what I told Him, and here I is. I came to pray for you and yours, Jeeter Lester. Maybe it ain’t too late yet to get on the good side of the Lord. It’s people like you who ought to be good, instead of letting the devil make you do all sorts of sinful things.”
    “I knowed the good Lord wouldn’t let me slip and fall in the devil’s hands!” Jeeter shouted, dancing around Bessie’s chair. “I knowed it! I knowed it! I always been on God’s side, even when things was the blackest, and I knowed He’d jerk me out of hell before it was too late. I ain’t no sinner by nature, Sister Bessie. It’s just the old devil who’s always hounding me to do a little something bad. But I ain’t going to do it. I want to go to heaven when I die.”
    “Ain’t you going to give me a turnip, Jeeter?” she said. “I ain’t had so much to eat lately. Times is hard for the good and bad alike, though I sometimes think that’s not just exactly right. The good ought never be hard put to it, like the sinful ought to be all the time.”
    “Sure, Bessie,” Jeeter said, giving her several turnips. He selected the largest ones he could find. “I know how you like to eat, about as bad as the rest of us. I wish I had something to give you to take home. When I had plenty, I used to give Brother Rice a whole armful of chickens and sweet potatoes at a time. Now I ain’t got nothing but a handful of measly little turnips, but I ain’t ashamed of them. The Lord growed them. His doings is good enough for me. Ain’t they for you?”
    Sister Bessie smiled happily at Jeeter and his family. She was always happy