Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell Page B

ground. He did not know what to think about it. He wanted to get married, but he was afraid of Bessie. She was nearly twenty-five years older than he was.
    “Do you know what I’m going to do, Jeeter?” Bessie asked.
    “What?” Jeeter said.
    “I’m going to buy me a new automobile!”
    “A new automobile?”
    “A brand-new one. I’m going to Fuller right now and get it.”
    “A brand-new one?” Jeeter said unbelievingly. “A sure-enough brand-new automobile?”
    Dude’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes glistened.
    “What you going to buy it with, Bessie?” Jeeter asked. “Is you got money?”
    “I’ve got eight hundred dollars to pay for it with. My former husband left me that money when he died. He had it in insurance, and when he died I got it and put it in the bank in Augusta. I aimed to use it in carrying on the prayer and preaching my former husband used to like so much. I always did want a brand-new automobile.”
    “When you going to buy a new automobile?” Jeeter asked.
    “Right now—to-day. I’m going over to Fuller and get it right now. Me and Dude’s going to use it to travel all over the country preaching and praying.”
    “Can I drive it?” Dude asked.
    “That’s what I’m buying it for, Dude. I’m getting it for you to drive us around in when we take a notion to go somewheres.”
    “When is you and Dude going to do all this riding around and praying and preaching?” Jeeter said. “Is you going to get married before or after?”
    “Right away,” she said. “We’ll walk over to Fuller right now and buy the new automobile, and then ride up to the courthouse and get married.”
    “Is you going to get leave of the county to get married?” he asked doubtfully. “Or is you just going to live along without it?”
    “I’m going to get the license for marrying,” she said.
    “That costs about two dollars,” Jeeter reminded. “Is you got two dollars? Dude ain’t. Dude, he ain’t got nothing.”
    “I ain’t asking Dude for one penny of money. I’ll attend to that part myself. I’ve got eight hundred dollars in the bank, and some more besides. I saved my money for something just like this to happen. I’ve been looking for it to happen all along.”
    Dude had been dropping pebbles into the well for the past few minutes. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Bessie. He looked straight into her face, and the sight of the two cavernous round nostrils brought a smile to his lips. He had looked at her nose before, but this time the holes seemed to be larger and rounder than ever. It was more like looking down into a double-barrel shotgun than ever before. He could not keep from laughing.
    “What you laughing at, Dude?” she asked, frowning.
    “At them two holes in your nose,” he said. “I ain’t never seen nobody with all the top of her nose gone away like that before.”
    Bessie’s face turned white. She hung her head in an effort to hide her exposed nostrils as much as possible. She was sensitive about her appearance, but she knew of no way to remedy her nose. She had been born without a bone in it, and after nearly forty years it had still not developed. She put her hand over her face.
    “I’m ashamed of you, Dude,” she said, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes. “You know I can’t help the way I look. I been like that ever since I can remember. Won’t no nose grow on me, I reckon.”
    Dude dug the toes of his shoes in the sand and tried not to laugh. But almost as suddenly as he had first looked at Bessie’s face and broken into a smile, he stopped and scowled meanly at himself. It was the remembrance of the new automobile that made him stop laughing at Bessie. If she was going to buy a brand-new car, he did not care how she looked. It would have been all right with him if she had had a harelip like Ellie May’s, now that he could ride all he wanted to. He had never driven a new motor car, and that was something he wanted to do more than anything else