Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell Page A

and brushed. Sometimes he could manage to make it lie down for a few minutes by sousing his head in a pan of water and then combing it hurriedly; but as soon as the water began to dry, the hair would stand straight up again as if it were attached to springs. Dude’s hair was as wiry as hog-bristles.
    “I never seen a woman preacher carry-on over a young sapling like that before,” Jeeter said. “What you want to do that to Dude for, Bessie? You and him is hugging and rubbing of the other just like you was yesterday on the front porch.”
    Bessie smiled at Dude and Jeeter. She leaned against the well-stand and tucked up her hair. She had not waited that morning to pin it up.
    “Me and Dude is going to get married,” she said. “The Lord told me to do it. I asked Him about it, and he said, ‘Sister Bessie, Dude Lester is the man I want you to mate. Get up early in the morning and go up to the Lester place and marry Dude the first thing.’ That’s what He said to me last night, the very words I heard with my own ears while I was praying about it in bed. So when the sun came up, I got out of bed and ran up here as fast as I could, because the Lord don’t like to be kept waiting for His plans to be carried out. He wants me to marry Dude right now.”
    Dude looked around nervously as if he was thinking of trying to run off to the woods and hide. He had forgotten how anxious he had been to go home with Bessie the evening before when she first mentioned marriage.
    “You hear that, Dude?” Jeeter said. “What you think about doing it with Sister Bessie?”
    “Shucks,” he said. “I couldn’t do that.”
    “Why can’t you do that?” Jeeter demanded. “What’s ailing you? Ain’t you man enough yet?”
    “Maybe I is, and maybe I ain’t. I’d be scared to do that with her.”
    “Why, Dude,” his father said, “that ain’t nothing to be afraid about. Bessie ain’t going to hurt you. She knows how to treat you. Sister Bessie, there, has been married before. She’s a widow-woman now. She knows all about how to treat men.”
    “I wouldn’t hurt you none, Dude,” she said, putting her arm around his neck and drawing his arms tighter around her waist. “There ain’t nothing to be scared of. I’m just like your sister, Ellie May, and your Ma. Women don’t scare their menfolks none. You’ll like being married to me, because I know how to treat men fine.”
    Ada elbowed her way past Jeeter and Dude. She had not waited to plait her hair when she heard what Bessie wanted. She stood beside Dude and Bessie, with her hair divided over the front of her shoulders, plaiting one side and tying a string around the end, and then beginning on the other braid. She was as excited as Bessie was.
    “Bessie,” she said, “you’ll have to make Dude wash his feet every once in a while, because if you don’t he’ll dirty-up your quilts. Sometimes he don’t wash himself all winter long, and the quilts get that dirty you don’t know how to go about the cleaning of them. Dude is just careless like his Pa. I had the hardest time learning him to wear his socks in the bed, because it was the only way I could keep the quilts clean. He would never wash himself. I reckon Dude is just going on the same way his Pa done, so maybe you had better make Dude wear his socks, too.”
    Ellie May had come out of the house and was standing behind a chinaberry tree in order to hear and see what was taking place beside the well-stand. The grandmother was in the yard too; she was peering from behind the corner of the house lest any one should see her and make her go away.
    “Maybe you and Dude will help get me a stylish dress,” Ada suggested shyly. “You and him know how bad I want a dress of the right length to die in. I’ve long ago give up waiting for Jeeter to get me one. He ain’t going to do it in time.”
    All of them stood by the well looking at each other. When Jeeter caught Dude’s eye, Dude hung his head and looked at the