Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

brown broom-sedge, and that made him think about something else. When he did walk out into the sedge, the chances were that he would lie down and take a nap. It was a wonder how he ever got the wood cut that he hauled to Augusta. Sometimes it took him a whole week to cut enough blackjack for a load.
    Just then it was the beginning of the new season that was causing him to change his mind so frequently. The smell of the burning broom-sedge and pine undergrowth was in the air every day now. Some of the land was even being broken away off in the distance, and he could detect the aroma of freshly turned earth miles away. The smell of newly turned earth, that others were never conscious of, reached Jeeter’s nostrils with a more pungent odor than any one else could ever detect in the air. That made him want to go out right away and burn over the old cotton fields and plant a crop. Other men were doing that all around him, but even if he succeeded in borrowing a mule, Jeeter did not know where to begin begging for credit to buy seed-cotton and guano. The merchants in Fuller had heard his plea so many times that they knew what he was going to ask for as soon as he walked in the door, and before he could say the first word they were shaking their heads and going back where he could not follow them. He did not know what to do about it.
    Jeeter postponed nearly everything a man could think of, but when it came to plowing the land and planting cotton, he was as persistent as any man could be about such things. He started out each day with his enthusiasm at fever pitch, and by night he was still as determined as ever to find a mule he could borrow and a merchant who would give him credit for seed-cotton and guano.

Chapter IX
    T HE SUN HAD BEEN up only half an hour when Bessie reached the Lester house on the morning after her sudden departure. She had said then that she was going home to ask God to let her marry Dude. Jeeter had not expected her to come back for several days.
    No one was in sight as she crossed the yard and ran through the front door calling Dude.
    “Dude—you Dude! Where is you, Dude?” she called.
    Jeeter was just getting out of bed when he first heard her; she ran into the bedroom while he sat on a chair pulling on his shoes.
    “What you want with Dude, Bessie?” he asked sleepily. “What you want Dude for?”
    Bessie ran around the room looking into the beds. There were three beds in which all the Lesters slept. Ada and Jeeter used one of them, Ellie May and the grandmother another, and Dude slept alone.
    Ellie May sat up in bed, awakened by the disturbance, and rubbed her eyes. Bessie jerked back the quilts on Dude’s bed, and ran into the next room where the roof had fallen in. It was the other bedroom, the room where most of the children had formerly slept, and it had been deserted because one section of the roof had rotted away. It was filled with plunder.
    Bessie came back and looked under Ada’s bed.
    “What you want with Dude this time of day, Bessie?” Jeeter asked.
    She still did not stop to answer Jeeter’s questions. She ran through the kitchen calling Dude at the top of her voice.
    As soon as he could lace his shoes and put on his jumper, Jeeter followed her out into the backyard. His drooping black felt hat was on his head, because his hat was the first thing he put on in the morning and the last he took off at night.
    Dude was drawing a bucket of water at the well, and Bessie reached him before he could tip the bucket and get a drink. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his face excitedly. Dude fought back at first, but as soon as he saw it was Bessie he smiled at her and put his arms around her waist.
    Jeeter went closer and watched them. Presently Bessie took a side-comb from her head and began combing Dude’s stiff black hair and smoothing it down with the palms of her hands. Dude’s hair was coarse and bristly, and it stood straight on its ends no matter how much it was combed