Tobacco Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

die.”
    “Look at that horsing Ellie May’s doing!” Dude said. “That’s horsing from way back yonder!”
    “By God and by Jesus, Lov,” Jeeter shouted across the yard, “what about them there turnips? Has they got them damn-blasted green-gutted worms in them like mine had? I been wanting some good eating turnips since way back last spring. If Captain John hadn’t sold off all his mules and shut off letting me get guano on his credit, I could have raised me a whopping big mess of turnips this year. But when he sold the mules and moved to Augusta, he said he wasn’t going to ruin himself by letting us tenants break him buying guano on his credit in Fuller. He said there wasn’t no sense in trying to run a farm no more—fifty plows or one plow. He said he could make more money out of farming by not running plows. And that’s why we ain’t got no snuff and rations no more. Ada says she’s just bound to have a little snuff now and then, because it sort of staves off hunger, and it does, at that. Every time I sell a load of wood I get about a dozen jars of snuff, even if I ain’t got the money to buy meal and meat, because snuff is something a man is just bound to have. When I has a sharp pain in the belly, I can take a little snuff and not feel hungry all the rest of the day. Snuff is a powerful help to keep a man living.
    “But I couldn’t raise no turnips this year. I didn’t have no mule, and I didn’t have no guano. Oh, I had a few measly little rows out there in the field, but a man can’t run no farm unless he’s got a mule to plow it with. A hoe ain’t no good except to chop cotton with, and corn. Ain’t no sense in trying to grow turnips with a hoe. I reckon that’s why them damn-blasted green-gutted worms got in them turnips. I didn’t have no mule to cultivate them with. That’s why they was all wormy.
    “Have you been paying attention to what I was saying, Lov? You ain’t never answered me about them turnips yet. I got a powerful gnawing in my belly for turnips. I reckon I like winter turnips just about as bad as a nigger likes watermelons. I can’t see no difference between the two ways. Turnips is about the best eating I know about.”
    Lov did not look up. He was saying something to Ellie May, and listening to what she was saying.
    Lov had always told Jeeter that he would never have anything to do with Ellie May because she had a harelip. At the time he had made a bargain with Jeeter about Pearl, he said he might consider taking Ellie May if Jeeter would take her to Augusta and get a doctor to sew up her mouth. Jeeter had thought the matter over thoroughly, and decided that it would be best to let Lov take Pearl, because the cost of sewing up the harelip would probably amount to more than he was getting out of the arrangement. Letting Lov take Pearl was then all clear profit to Jeeter. Lov had given him some quilts and nearly a gallon of cylinder oil, besides giving him all of a week’s pay, which was seven dollars. The money was what Jeeter wanted more than anything else, but the other things were badly needed, too.
    Jeeter had been intending to take Ellie May to a doctor ever since she was three or four years old, so that when a man came to marry her there would be no drawbacks. But with first one thing and then another turning up every now and then, Jeeter had never been able to get around to it. Some day he would take her, though; he told himself that, every time he had occasion to think about it.
    At the time Lov had married Pearl, he said he liked Ellie May more than he did her, but that he did not want to have a wife with a harelip. He knew the negroes would laugh at him. That was the summer before; several weeks before he had begun to like Pearl so much that he was doing everything he could think of to make her stop sleeping on a pallet on the floor. Pearl’s long yellow curls hanging down her back, and her pale blue eyes, turned Lov’s head. He thought there was not a more