Tobacco Road Part 3

"Just like I was saying. If the Lord had told you to cut your eyes out because they offended Him, you wouldn't have done it. That showed-you was a powerful sinner. Or if He had told you to cut off your hand, or your ears, for the same reason, you wouldn't have obeyed Him. And He knowed if He told you to stop fooling with Ellie May, you wouldn't have cut off the root of evil like He said do. That's the reason He sent Ellie May into the world with a slit in her lip. He figured she would be safe from a sinner like you, because you wouldn't like the looks of her."

"The Lord be praised," Jeeter said. "You sure have opened my eyes to the way of G.o.d. I never knowed before about that, I declare. If I had knowed it, I sure would have cut myself off when I was fooling around over there at Peabody's. Then if I had done that, Ellie May wouldn't look like she does now, would she, Bessie?"

"It's just like I said. The Lord knows more about us humans' ways than we do."

"I've been a powerful sinful man in my time. I reckon. I never knowed I ought to cut myself off before. Maybe it's not too late now. I sure don't want to let the devil get hold of me."

Bessie turned to Dude again, smiling at him and holding her arms tighter around his neck. Dude did not know what to do next. He liked to touch her, and feel her, and he wanted her to hug him some more, as she had done. He liked to feel her arms tight around him, and have her rub him. Yet he could not believe that Bessie was hugging him for any real reason. She had stopped praying fifteen thinutes before, but she still made no motion to release him and make him get up.

"Say, Sister Bessie," Jeeter said, leaning forward and squinting his eyes under his heavy black brows, "what in h.e.l.l is you and Dude doing there? You and him has been squatting there, hugging and rubbing of the other, for near about half an hour."

Dude hoped she would not make him get up, because he liked to feel her pull him tight to her breast and squeeze him in her arms.

Bessie tried to stand up, but Dude would not let her. She sat down again beside him on the floor, running her fingers through his hair.

"Durn if I ever saw a woman preacher take on like that before," Jeeter said, shaking his head. "Looks to me like you ain't going to do no more praying to-day. You and Dude is hugging and rubbing of the other, ain't you? By G.o.d and by Jesus, if it ain't so!"

Bessie got up and sat down in the chair. She tried to make Dude go away, but he stood in front of her, waiting for her to touch him.

"The Lord was speaking to me," she said. "He was. telling me I ought to marry a new husband. I can't get around much by myself, and if I was to get married to a man, maybe I could do more preaching and praying. The Lord would turn him into a preacher too, and both of us could travel around spreading the gospel!"

"He didn't tell you to marry Dude, did He? Dude ain't no preacher. He ain't got sense enough to be one. He wouldn't know what to preach about when the time came to get up and say something."

"Dude would make a fine preacher," she interrupted. "Dude would be just about as good at preaching and praying as my former husband was, maybe better. The Lord and me could show him how to do. It ain't hard at all after you catch on to it."

"I wish I was in my younger days. If I was, I could maybe do it myself with you. I could do it, yet, only Ada, there, has got so she don't want me fooling with the women-folks no more. I know I could do as fine preaching and praying as the next one. It ain't that what's holding me back--it's Ada, there. She's got a queer notion that I might take to fooling with the women-folks. Well, I ain't saying I wouldn't if I had half a chance, neither."

"It would require a younger man for me to be satisfied," Bessie said. "Dude there is just suitable for preaching and living with me. Ain't you, Dude?"

"You want me to go home with you now?" he said.

"I got to pray over it first, Dude," she said. "When I come back by here the next time, I'll let you know. You'll have to wait until I can ask the Lord if you'll do. He's sometimes particular about his male preachers, especially if they is going to marry women preachers."

Bessie ran down the steps and over the hard white sand of the yard. When she reached the tobacco road, she turned around and looked at the Lesters on the front porch several minutes.

Presently, without waiting to walk, she began running through the deep white sand towards her house two miles away on the bluff above the Savannah.

Bessie's home, a tenant house of three rooms, and a corn-crib, sat on the edge of the bluff. That was where the country dropped down into the swampy Savannah River Valley. The house, covered with unpainted weatherboards, sat precariously on three piles of thin stones. The fourth pile had fallen down ten or twelve years before, making one end of the house sag to the ground.

"Well," Jeeter said. "Sister Bessie is up to something all right. It looks to me like she's got her head set on marrying Dude, there. I never seen such hugging and rubbing of the other as them two was doing. Something is going to come of it. Something is bound to happen."

Dude snickered and stood behind a chinaberry tree so n.o.body could see him. Ellie May watched him from behind the pine stump, smiling because she had heard what Bessie had said.

Jeeter sat looking out over the old field of brown broom-sedge, and wondering if he could borrow a mule somewhere and raise a crop that year. The time for spring plowing had already arrived, and it made him restless. He did not like to sit idly on the porch and let the spring pa.s.s, without burning and plowing. He had decided that he could at least burn over the fields, even if he did not yet know how he could get a mule and seed-cotton and guano. He would have gone out then and set the broomsedge on fire; but he felt comfortable where he was, and the burning of the fields could wait until the next day. There was plenty of time left yet. It would not take him long to put in a crop when once he got started.

Now that he was alone he began to worry all over again about the way he had treated Lov. He wanted to do something to make amends. If he went down to the chute the next morning and told Lov how sorry he was and that he promised never to steal anything from him again, he hoped that Lov would forgive him and not try to hit him with chunks of coal. And while he was about it, he could stop by Lov's house and speak to Pearl. He would tell her that she had to stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor, and be more considerate of Lov's wants. It was bad enough, he knew, to have to put up with a woman all day long, and then when night came to be left alone, was even worse.

"Ain't you going to haul no more wood to Augusta?" Ada demanded. "I ain't had no new snuff since I don't know when. And all the meal is gone, and the meat, too. Ain't nothing in the house to eat."

"I'm aiming to take a load over there to-morrow or the next day," Jeeter said. "Don't hurry me, woman. It takes a heap of time to get ready to make a trip over there. I got my own interests to consider. You keep out of it."

"You're just lazy, that's what's wrong with you. If you wasn't lazy you could haul a load every day, and I'd have me some snuff when I wanted it most."

"I got to be thinking about farming the land," Jeeter said. "I ain't no durn woodchopper. I'm a farmer. Them woodchoppers hauling wood to Augusta ain't got no farthing to take up their time, like I has. Why, I expect I'm going to grow near about fifty bales of cotton this year, if I can borrow the mules and get some seed-cotton and guano on credit in Fuller. By G.o.d and by Jesus, I'm a farmer. I ain't no durn woodchopper."

"That's the way you talk every year about this time, but you don't never get started. It's been seven or eight years since you turned a furrow. I been listening to you talk about taking up farming again so long I don't believe nothing you say now. It's a big old whopping lie. All you men is like that. There's a hundred more just like you all around here, too. None of you is going to do nothing, except talk. The rest of them go around begging, but you're so lazy you won't even do that."

"Now, Ada," Jeeter said, "I'm going to start in the morning. Soon as I get all the fields burned off, I'll go borrow me some mules. Me and Dude can grow a bale to the acre, if I can get me some seed-cotton and guano."

"Humph!" Ada said, leaving the porch.

Seven.

Jeeter did not go down to the coal chute to see Lov. Neither did he go to the house to speak to Pearl.

There were always well-developed plans in Jeeter's mind for the things he intended doing; but somehow he never got around to doing them. One day led to the next, and it was much more easy to say he would wait until tomorrow. When that day arrived, he invariably postponed action until a more convenient time. Things had been going along in that easy way for almost a lifetime now; nevertheless, he was again getting ready to burn off the fields and plow the land. He wanted to raise a crop of cotton.

Having an operation performed on Ellie May's lip was one of those things that Jeeter had been waiting for fifteen years to do. Several times each year he had said he was going to take her to a doctor in Augusta; when he did make an effort to take her there, he usually never got any farther than the store at the crossroads, where something was certain to come up that caused him to change his plans.

In the course of all those years he had actually reached Augusta two or three times with the sole intention of having the operation performed; but it had always resulted in something coming to his mind at the last minute that he thought he needed more than Ellie May needed an operation. Once it was plow-lines that he could not do without another day, even though he had no mule to use them on; another time it was snuff he had to have, and so he had stopped at the store and spent what little money he had, and they returned home with nothing accomplished.

Ellie May did not protest. She could not have been made to believe that her harelip could be sewn together in such a way that only the faintest suggestion of a scar would remain. She had become so accustomed to the gaping narrow opening in her mouth that she could not believe that it was possible for her ever to look any different from the way she always had.

On those very few occasions when Jeeter had made preparations to go to the hospital, and when he had talked to Ellie May about going there, she would stand behind the corner of the house, or behind one of the many chinaberry trees scattered around the house, and grin. The Lesters had spoken so frequently about her harelip that she had come to believe that Jeeter's proposal to have it operated upon was merely another way of making fun of her appearance. She remained hidden behind the house or a chinaberry tree until the subject of conversation was changed, and only came out where she could be seen when she was certain nothing more would be said about her.

"It ain't no sin to look like that, Ellie May," Jeeter had told her. "You came into the world that way from G.o.d, and that's the way He intended for you to look. Sometimes I think maybe it would be a sin to change it, because that would be doing over something He made."

"Well, all I got to say," Ada had stated, "is that it's a shame He didn't make Dude with the slit instead of Ellie May. A gal ain't got no business looking like that. Women ain't good for nothing but to marry and work for men, and when one of them has that kind of thing on her, there ain't no man I ever heard of who's going to use her. If it was Dude who had the slit, it wouldn't make no difference at all. Men ain't noticed as much in the face as women is, noway."

Once when Ellie May went to the schoolhouse several years before, to enter the first grade, she returned home before noon and never went back again. The teacher told her she was too old to attend school with little children, but the real reason for sending her home was because the other boys and girls laughed at her harelip so much they could not study their lessons. So Ellie May came back home and never went again. Dude had never attended school, either; Jeeter said he was needed at home to help him do the work.

But if Jeeter was indifferent towards Ellie May's need for an operation, there was one thing in his life he tried to do with all the strength in his mind and body. The one thing was the farming of the land. There had been scarcely a moment in his life during the past six or seven years when he was not thinking about it, and trying to discover some way by which he could raise cotton. When Captain John had moved to Augusta seven years before, it seemed to be the end of all farming as far as Jeeter was concerned, but he would not give up the struggle to break the land each spring and plant cotton.

Jeeter could never think of the loss of his land and goods as anything but a man-made calamity. He sometimes said it was partly his own fault, but he believed steadfastly that his position had been brought about by other people. He did not blame Captain John to the same extent that he blamed others, however. Captain John had always treated him fairly, and had done more for him than any other man. When Jeeter had overbought at the stores in Fuller, Captain John let him continue, and he never put a limit to the credit allowed. But the end soon came. There was no longer any profit in raising cotton under the Captain's antiquated system, and he abandoned the farm and moved to Augusta. Rather than attempt to show his tenants how to conform to the newer and more economical methods of modern agriculture, which he thought would have been an impossible task from the start, he sold the stock and implements and moved away. An intelligent employment of his land, stocks, and linpiements would have enabled Jeeter, and scores of others who had become dependent upon Captain John, to raise crops for food, and crops to be sold at a profit. Cooperative and corporate farming would have saved them all.

Jeeter was now reduced to painful poverty. His means of livelihood had been taken away, and he was slowly starving.

The entire section of land around him had originally been owned by Jeeter's grandfather. Seventy-five years before, it had been the most desirable soil in the entire west-central part of Georgia. His grandfather had cleared the greater part of the plantation for the production of tobacco. The soil at that time was better suited to the cultivation of tobacco than to that of any other crop. It was a sandy loam, and the ridge was high and dry. Hundreds of tumbled-down tobacco barns, c.h.i.n.ked with clay, could still be found on what was left of the plantation; some of them were stifi standing but most of them were rotted and fallen down.

The road on which Jeeter lived was the original tobacco road his grandfather had made. It was about fifteen miles long, and extended in a south-easterly direction from the foothills of the Piedmont, where the sand hills started, and ended on the bluffs at the river. The road had been used for the rolling of tobacco casks, large hogsheads in which the leaf had been packed after being cured and seasoned in the clay-c.h.i.n.ked barns; thousands of hogsheads had been rolled along the crest of the ridge which connected the chain of sand hills, and they had made a smooth firm road the entire distance of fifteen miles. Sometimes the casks had been pushed by gangs of negroes to the river steamboats, other times they were pulled by teams of mules; but always the crest of the ridge was followed, 'cause when off it the hogsheads would have rolled downhill into the creeks which ran parallel with the road to the river, and once wet, the leaf would have been ruined and worthless.

After seventy-five years the tobacco road still remained, and while in many places it was beginning to show signs of washing away, its depressions and hollows made a pertnanent contour that would remain as long as the sand hills. There were scores of tobacco roads on the western side of the Savannah Valley, some only a mile or so long, others extending as far back as twenty-five or thirty miles into the foothills of the Piedmont. Any one walking cross-country would more than likely find as many as six or eight in a day's hike. The region, topographically, was like a palm leaf; the Savannah was the stem, large at the bottom and gradually spreading out into veins at the top. On the side of the valley the creeks ran down like the depressions in the palm leaf, while between them lay the ridges of sand hills, like seams, and on the crests of the ridges were the tobacco roads.

Jeeter's father had inherited about one-half of the original Lester plantation, and approximately half of that had quickly slipped through his fingers. He could not pay the taxes, to begin with, and much of it had been sold to satisfy the county's claims from year to year. The remainder he farmed the best he could. He raised cotton exclusively, but because of the sandy loam he found it necessary to use more and more fertilizer each year. The loose sandy soil would not hold the guano during the hard summer rains, and it was washed away before the roots of the plants could utilize it.

By the time Jeeter was old enough to work in the fields, the land had become such a great item of expense that most of it was allowed to grow up into pines. The soil had become depleted by the constant raising of cotton year after year, and it was impossible to secure a yield of more than a quarter of a bale to the acre. More and more guano was poured into the fields, and faster and faster was it washed away through the loose sandy soil before the cotton plants were able to reach it.

When his father died, what was left of the Lester lands and debts was willed to Jeeter. The first thing that happened was the foreclosure of the mortgage. In order to satisfy the creditors, all the timber was cut, and another large portion of the land was sold. Two years later Jeeter found himself so heavily in debt that he did not own a single acre of land, or even a tenant house, after the claims had been settled. The man who purchased the farm at the sheriff's sale was Captain John Harmon. Captain John allowed Jeeter and his family to live in one of the houses, and to work for him on shares. That was ten years before the World War.

From that time forward, Jeeter had sunk each year into a poverty more bitter than that of the year before. The culmination had apparently been reached when Captain John sold the mules, and other stock and moved to Augusta. There was then to be no more two-thirds' share of a year's labor coming to Jeeter, and there was never again to be credit for food and snuff and other necessities at the stores in Fuller. With him, Captain John took his credit. Jeeter did not know what to do. Without snuff and food, life seemed not worth living any longer.

By that time, most of the children had left home and gone to Augusta and elsewhere. Jeeter did not know where all of them were now.

There had been seventeen children born to Ara and him. Five had died, and the twelve living were scattered in all directions. Only Ellie May and Dude were still at home; Pearl was only two miles away, but she never came to the house to see Jeeter and Ada, and they had never been to see her. The children who had died were buried in different parts of the farm. The land had been plowed over since their deaths, and as the graves were unmarked, no one would have known where to look for them if he had wanted to find them.

With the exception of Dude and Ellie May, all the children were married. Jeeter thought he knew where Tom was, but he was not certain. He had heard in the stores in Fuller that Tom, who was the oldest boy, was running a cross-tie camp in the next county at a place about twenty miles away.

n.o.body had the slightest idea where most of the others were, nor if all of them were still living. Lizzie Belle had been the last one to leave home. She had -gone away several years before, saying she was going to work in a cotton mill across the river from Augusta. There were ten or more cotton mills in Horsecreek Valley, but she had not said which one she was going to work in. Jeeter had been told that she was still there, and that she was married and had seven children already. He did not know if it was true or not, because neither he nor Ada ever received a letter.

There were times when Jeeter became lonesome without all his children around him, and he wished some of them would come back to see him, or write letters. He wondered then, too, if it were possible that they had sent him letters he had not received. There was no rural delivery route on the tobacco road, and he did not have a mail box; but he had said several times that he was some day going to the post-office in Fuller to ask if there was a letter for him from Lizzie Belle or Clara or Tom, or any of the others. He knew he would have to get somebody to read the letters to him if he did hear from them, because neither he nor Ada had ever learned to read. He had been in Fuller hundreds of times since he first thought of asking at the post-office for a letter, but he had not yet got around to making inquiry there.

Some day he hoped to be able to get over to Burke County and see Tom. He had been planning a trip over there for several years, but first it was the old automobile that had prevented him from getting started, then it was bad weather and muddy roads that held him back.

The trip to see Tom had been planned for two purposes; he wanted to see his son, of course, and to talk to him, but his main object in going was because he believed Tom would give him some money regularly when he found out how poor he was and how badly he and Ada needed snuff and food. From the things Jeeter had heard in the stores in Fuller, he knew Tom could aflord to give him a few dollars every week. The people said that Tom owned fifty or sixty mules, and twice that many oxen, and that he received a lot of money for the cross-ties he sold the railroad. Jeeter heard that several times in Fuller, and be knew it must be true. He could not believe that Tom would refuse to help him and Ada when he told his son how poor they were. Now that winter was pa.s.sing, Jeeter hoped to be able to make the trip some time that summer. The roads would not be muddy then, and the days would be much longer.

The pa.s.sing of winter and the slow growth of early spring had its usual effect on Jeeter. The warm late February days had kindled in him once more the desire to farm the land. Each year at that season he made a new effort to break the ground and to find means of buying seed-cotton and guano on credit from the merchants in Fuller. His attempts had always ended in the refusal of anybody to give him a dime's worth of credit. However, he burned a field here and a field there on the farm each spring, getting the growth of broom-sedge off the land so it would be ready to plow in case some one did lend him a mule and give him a little seed-cotton and guano. Each year for the past six or seven it had been the same.

There was an inherited love of the land in Jeeter that all his disastrous experiences with farming had failed to take away. He had lived his whole life there on a small remnant of the Lester plantation, and while he realized it was not his legally, he felt that he would die if he had to move away from it. He would not even consider going elsewhere to live, even though he were offered a chance to work another man's farm on shares. Even to move to Au gusta and work in the cotton mills would be impossible for him. The restless movement of the other tenant f armers to the mills had never had any effect on Jeeter. Working in cotton mills might be all right for some people, he said, but as for him, he would rather die of starvation than leave the land. In seven years his views on the subject had not been altered; and if anything, he was more determined than ever to remain where he was at all costs.

When Lizzie Belle left, Ada had said she wanted to move to Augusta, too; but Jeeter would not listen to her argument. There had never been a time when he wanted to leave the land and live in a mill village.

"City ways ain't G.o.d-given," Jeeter had said, shaking his head. "It wasn't intended for a man with the smell of the land in him to live in a mill in Augusta. Maybe it's all right for some people to do that, but G.o.d never meant for me to do it. He put me on the land to start with, and I ain't leaving it. I'd feel just like a chicken with his head cut off living shut up in a mill all the time."

"You talk like an old fool," Ada had said angrily. "It's a whole lot better to live in the mills than it is to stay out here on the tobacco road and starve to death. Up there I could get me all the snuff I needed. Down here I ain't never got enough to calm me."

"G.o.d is aiming to provide for us," he had answered her. "I'm getting ready right now to receive His bounty. I expect it to come most any time now. He won't let us stay here and starve. He'll send us some snuff and rations pretty soon. I been a G.o.d-fearing man all my life, and He ain't going to let me suffer no more."

"You just sit there and see! This time ten years from now you'll be just like you is now, if you live that long. Even the children has got more sense than you has-- didn't they go off and work in the mills as soon as they was big enough? They had better sense than to sit here and wait for you to put food in their empty, mouths and bellies. They knowed you'd never do nothing about it, except talk. If I wasn't so old, I'd go up to the mills right now and make me some money."

"The Lord sends me every misery He can think of just to try my soul. He must be aiming to do something powerful big for me, because He sure tests me bard. I reckon He figures if I can put up with my own people I can stand to fight back at the devil."

"Humph!" Ada had said. "If He don't hurry up and do something about it, it will be too late. My poor stomach gives me a powerful pain all day long when I ain't got the snuff to calm it."

Eight.

There was nothing Jeeter could find to do in the sand hills that would pay him even a few cents a day for his labor. There were no farmers within twenty miles who hired help, because practically all of them were in Jeeter's condition, some of them in an even worse one; nor were there any lumber mills or turpentine stills anywhere near the tobacco road that would employ him. The only job in the surrounding country was the one at the coal chute, and Lov had held it since the Augusta and Georgia Southern Railroad was first built. Even if Jeeter could have taken the job away from Lov, the work would have been too hard for him to do. Filling the big iron scoops all day long and rolling them to the edge of the structure where they were dumped into the engine tenders, required a strong back and stronger arms. Lov could do the work, because he had become accustomed to doing it. For Jeeter to attempt such hard labor in the weakened condition he was in would have been foolish even if the railroad would have hired him.

The hope that he would find Tom was Jeeter's sustaining strength. Behind his hopeful belief that Tom would give him some money lay his fear of dying without a suit of clothes to be buried in. He had developed a growing horror of dying in overalls.

Ada, too, talked a lot about getting clothes to die in. She wanted a silk dress, and it mattered little to her whether the color was red or black, so long as it was stylish in length. Ada had a dress she had been keeping several years to die in, but she was constantly worried for fear that the dress might not be of the correct length. One year it was stylish to have dresses one length, and the next year they were mysteriously lengthened or shortened several inches. It had been impossible for her to keep up with the changes; consequently, even though she had a dress put away, she still tried to make Jeeter promise to buy her a new one that would be in style and in keeping with the times when she should die.

Ada believed she would die almost any day. She was usually surprised to wake up in the morning and discover that she was still alive. The pellagra that was slowly squeezing the life from her emaciated body was a lingering death. The old grandmother had pellagra, too, but somehow she would not die. Her frail body struggled day after day with the disease; but except for the slow withering of her skin and flesh no one was able to say when she would die. She weighed only seventy-two pounds now; once she had been a large woman, and she had weighed two hundred pounds twenty years before. Jeeter was angry with her because she persisted in living, and he would not let her have any food when he could keep her from eating. However, she had learned how to find her own means of sustenance, such as it was. How she did it, no one knew. Sometimes she would boil leaves and roots, at other times she would eat wild gra.s.s and flowers in the fields.

Jeeter had already given implicit instructions regarding his own burial. He had impressed upon both Ada and Lov the importance and necessity of carrying out his plans. He expected to outlive Ada; but in case he should be killed in his automobile, he had made her promise to buy him a suit of clothes. If that was impossible, she was to go to Fuller and ask some of the merchants to give her an old suit for him. Lov, too, had had to swear that he would see that Jeeter was buried in a suit of clothes instead of in overalls.

But there was another thing connected with his death that was of equal importance.

Jeeter had a horror of rats. That was strange, because he had lived with them around him all his life, and he knew their ways almost as well as he did those of men. His reason for hating rats was because of an incident that had happened when his father died while Jeeter was a young man.

The old Lester had died in the same house Jeeter now occupied, and he was buried on the following day. That night, while Jeeter and the other men were sitting up with the body, some one had suggested that they all go to Fuller and get some Coca-Colas and tobacco. They were to sit up all night, and they had felt the need of something to drink and something to smoke. As all of the men, including Jeeter, had wanted to go to Fuller, they had put the body in the corn-crib and locked the door. The crib was the only place on the farm where anything could be locked up and found intact later. Negroes and white men had a habit of coming by the Lester house during the night and carrying away anything that had been left unprotected. None of the doors of the house had locks on them, but the crib door did have a lock. The men had placed the body inside, locked the door and put the key away, and had driven to Fuller for the Coca-Colas and tobacco.

They returned to the house about three or four hours later. As soon as the mules were unhitched from the buggies and tied to the wagon wheels for the rest of the night, the men unlocked the crib door, lifted out the wooden box, and carried it back into the house. The remainder of the night was spent in watching the casket, drinking Coca-Cola's, and smoking and chewing tobacco.

The following afternoon at the funeral, just as the casket was about to be lowered into the grave, the top was lifted off in order that the family and friends might take a last look at the deceased. The lid was turned back and just as it was fully open, a large corn-crib rat jumped out and disappeared in the woods. n.o.body knew how the rat had got inside until someone found a hole in the bottom of the wooden box where the rat had gnawed through while it was locked in the crib.

One by one the people filed past the casket, and each time it became the next person's turn to look at the body, a strange look came over his face. Some of the women giggled, and the men grinned at each other. Jeeter ran to the side of the box and saw what had happened. The rat had eaten away nearly all of the left side of his father's face and neck. Jeeter closed the lid and had the box lowered into the grave immediately. He had never forgotten that day.

Now that the time was coming when he would soon die, Jeeter had become more insistent than ever that his body was not to be put into a corn-crib or left where the rats could reach it. Lov had promised faithfully to see that the rats did not get to him before he was buried.

"You've got to swear to me you won't let me be left in the box where the rats can get me," Jeeter had said dozens of times. "I declare before the good Lord, Lov, that ain't a fit way to treat the dead. I've regretted my own father's circ.u.mstances every day since that happened, and I declare before the Lord, I sure don't want that thing to happen to me when I'm dead and can't do nothing about it."

"You don't need to worry none," Lov had said. "I'll dig a hole and put you in it right after you're gone. I won't wait for the next day, even. I'll put you in the ground the same hour you die, almost. I'll take care of your body. Don't you worry none."

"Just don't put the coffin in that durn corn-crib, Lov, no matter what else you do. There ain't no rats staying in there now since I ain't had corn in it for nearly five years, but they take trips back here every once in a while from the place they're staying at now just to make sure there. ain't been no corn put in it. Before they left they et up mule collars and everything else they could get hold of, they was that mad at me for not putting corn in there for them.' I used to bust them on the head with sticks, but that didn't stop them from coming back every once in a while. I was in there not so long ago. getting me some corn cobs and one of them bit my leg before I could get out. They have sure got it in good and heavy for me, because I don't put no corn in there for them to eat up."

Ada, too, had promised Jeeter to see that his body would not be left exposed to the rats that he hated so much. But Jeeter did not worry her as much as he did Lov, because he believed he would out-live her by several years.

Ada herself looked as if she might die before Jeeter did. Her teeth had all dropped out; she had dipped snuff since she was eight years old. Her teeth had not lasted very long after she was married. Her one concern, besides the constant desire for more snuff, was with her own death. The thought that she might not have a stylish dress when she died was bothering her night and day. She did not trust Jeeter any too much to furnish it when the time came; that was the reason she kept the old dress put away to be used in case a more up-to-date one was not bought for her.

"If I could find out where my daughters was living, maybe they would help me get a stylish dress to die in," she had said. "Lizzie Belle used to love her old Ma a lot. I know she'd help me get one if I could find out where she is at. And Clara might help some, too. She used to tell me how pretty I looked when I combed my hair of mornings and put on a clean ap.r.o.n and sunbonnet. I don't know if the others would want to help none or not. It's been such a long time since I saw the rest of them I've just about forgot what they was like. Seems like I can't recall all their names even, sometimes."

"Lizzie Belle might be making a lot of money over in the mills," Jeeter had said, "Maybe if we was to find her and ask her about it, she might come some time and bring us a little money. I know Bailey would bring us some snuff and rations if I knowed where to find him. Bailey wgs just about the best of all the boys. He was good to me even when he was just a little boy. He was never stealing all the mola.s.ses we had saving for supper, like the rest of them. I expect maybe he's got to be a pretty big merchant somewheres by now. He always said he was going to make a lot of money so he wouldn't have to go barefooted in the wintertime like Tom and Clara did when they went away."

Ada talked to Jeeter whenever the subject was that of their children away from home. It seemed as if she were not interested enough in other things to talk about them any more. She answered Jeeter's questions most of the time, and she scolded him when there was nothing in the house to eat. The rest of the time she had very little to say. But whenever Bailey's name, or Lizzie Belle's, or Clara's, or Walker's, or any of the children was mentioned, she lost the hollow look in her eyes and wanted to talk about them for the rest of the day. None of the children who had left home had ever come back to visit, nor had they ever sent a message. Because Ada and Jeeter had never received one, they believed that all of the children were alive. There was no way of knowing whether they were dead or not.

"I'm going over to Burke County and see Tom," Jeeter had told Ada. "I've made up my mind that I'll go over there and see him before I die. Everybody in Fuller tells me he's hauling cross-ties out of' the camp by the wagon load day and night. They say he's got a whopping big cross-tie camp over there. From what people say about him, I reckon he's a powerful rich man now. He sure ought to give me some money. Though it sometimes looks like a rich man will never help the poor; whereas the poor people will give away everything they has to help somebody who ain't got nothing. That's how it looks to me. Don't seem like it ought to be that way, but I reckon the rich ain't got no time to fool with us poor folks."

"When you see Tom, tell him that his old Ma would like powerful much to see him. You tell him that I said he was near about the best of the whole seventeen. Clara and Lizzie Belle was about the best, I reckon; but Tom and Bailey led the boys when it came to being good children. You tell Tom I said he was the best of them, and maybe he'll send me some money for a stylish dress."

"Pearl is the prettiest," Jeeter said. "Ain't none of the other girls got pretty yellow hair like she has. Nor them pale blue eyes, neither. She's the first Lester I ever saw who had yellow hair. It's funny about her having it, ain't it, Ada?"

"Pearl is my favorite, I reckon," Ada said. "I wish she would come to see me sometimes. I ain't seen her since she left last summer to get married to Lov."

"I'm going to tell Tom he ought to give me some money," Jeeter said. "The folks in Fuller say he's a powerful rich man now."

"You better not forget to mention to him that his old Ma sure would like for him to get her a stylish dress to die in. I know he won't stand back with a little of his money for a little thing like that."