THREE HOURS HAD already been spent in trying to sell the load of blackjack. Apparently there was not a man in Augusta who wanted to buy it. At some of the houses Jeeter went to, the people at first said they needed wood, but after they had asked him how much he wanted for it they were suspicious. Jeeter told them he was asking only a dollar, and then they asked him if he were selling split pine at that small price. He had to explain that it was blackjack, and not even sawn into stove length. The next thing he knew the door was slammed in his face, and he had to go to the next house and try again.
At a little after six o’clock the wood was still piled on the back seat of the car, and no buyer was in sight. Jeeter began stopping people on the streets in a final and desperate effort to dispose of the wood at fifty cents; but the men and women he approached took one look at the blackjack piled on the car and walked off, evidently thinking it was a joke of some kind. Nobody was foolish enough to buy blackjack when pine wood burned better and was less trouble to use.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Jeeter told Bessie. “It’s getting almost too late to go back home, and nobody wants to buy wood no more. I used to sell it with no effort any time I brought a load up here.”
Dude said he was hungry, and that he wanted to go somewhere and eat. Sister Bessie had half a dollar; Jeeter had nothing. Dude, of course, had nothing.
Jeeter had planned to sell the wood for a dollar, and then to buy some meat and meal to take home to eat; but he did not know what to do now. He turned to Bessie questioningly.
“Maybe we better start back toward Fuller,” she said. “I can buy two gallons of gasoline, and that ought to be enough.”
“Ain’t we going to eat nothing?” Dude said. “My poor belly is as dry as the drought.”
“Maybe we could sell something else,” Jeeter said, looking at the automobile. “I don’t know what we has got to sell, though.”
“We ain’t going to sell my new automobile,” Bessie said quickly. “It was brand new only yesterday. That’s one thing nobody ain’t going to sell.”
Jeeter looked the car over from front to back.
“No, I wouldn’t think of doing nothing like that. But you know, Bessie, maybe we could sell a wee biddy piece of it, sort of.”
He walked around the car and grasped the spare tire and wheel in his hands. He shook it violently.
“It’s near about loose, anyhow,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt the new car none, Bessie.”
“Well, I reckon we got to,” she said slowly. “That tire and wheel ain’t doing us no good, noway. We can’t ride on but four of them at a time, and five is a big waste.”
They drove around the block until they found a garage. Jeeter went in and made inquiry. Presently a man came out, took the tire and wheel off, and rolled it through the garage door.
Jeeter came walking briskly across the street, holding out several green notes. He counted them one by one before Bessie and Dude.
“Ain’t we lucky folks, though?” he said.
“How much money did it bring?” she asked.
“He said three dollars was more than enough, but that much sounded like a heap of money to me. And here it is! Ain’t they pretty and new, though? Out there at Fuller all the money I ever saw was just about ready to fall apart, it was that worn out. Up here in Augusta the people has got good money.”
The next stop was a small grocery store. Jeeter got out and bought a large sack of soda crackers and two pounds of yellow cheese. He came back to the car and offered the food to Dude and Bessie. They all broke off chunks of cheese and stuffed their mouths full of crackers.
“Just help yourself, Bessie,” he said. “Take all you want. Run your hand in the poke and eat until you is full. Dude, there, might hog it all if you don’t take care of your own wants.”
Jeeter was feeling fine. It was the first time since he could remember that he had been to Augusta and could get something to eat when he wanted it. He smiled at Bessie and Dude, and waved to people passing along the street. When a woman passed, he took off his hat and bowed.
“Augusta is a fine place,” he said. “All these people here is just like us. They is rich, but that don’t make no difference to me. I like everybody now.”
“Where is we going now?” Bessie said.
“There’s a place to sleep right up above the store,” Jeeter said. “Supposing we sleep in there to-night, and then tomorrow morning sell the wood—ain’t that what we ought to do?”
Dude liked the suggestion, but Bessie hesitated. It looked to her as if it might cost a lot of money to spend the night in the hotel.
“Maybe it will cost too much,” she said. “You go upstairs and see how much it costs.”
Jeeter stuffed another handful of crackers and cheese in his mouth, and went up the flight of stairs where the hotel was. There was a small sign over the door, dimly lighted, which said it was a hotel.
He came back in less than five minutes.
“They’ll let us stay for fifty cents apiece,” he said. “They is pretty much crowded, and there ain’t but one room vacant, but we can stay if we wants to. I sure do, don’t you, Bessie? I ain’t never stayed all night in a hotel before.”
Bessie by that time had set her heart on spending a night in a hotel in the city, and she was ready to go up the stairs when Jeeter said it would cost fifty cents for each of them.
“Now you hold on tight to that money, Jeeter,” she said. “That’s a heap of money to lose. You don’t want to let it get away from you.”
They walked up the narrow stairway and found themselves in a small, dusty room. It was the lobby. Half a dozen straight-back chairs and a table were in the dimly lighted room. The man who ran the hotel took them to the table and told them to sign their names on the register. Jeeter told him they would have to make their marks.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jeeter.”
“Jeeter what?”
“Jeeter Lester, from out near Fuller.”
“What’s the boy’s name?”
“Dude’s name is Dude, the same as mine.”
“Dude Lester?”
“That’s right.”
“And what’s her name?” he asked, looking up at Bessie.
Bessie smiled at him, and he looked at her legs. She hunched her left shoulder forward and hung her head downward. He looked her over again.
“Her name is Mrs. Dude,” Jeeter said.
The man looked at Dude and then at Bessie, and smiled. He was holding the pen for them to touch while he made the cross-marks opposite their names.
Jeeter gave him the money, and they were taken up another stairway to the third floor. The halls were dark, and the rooms shadowy and unventilated. He opened a door and told them to walk in.
“Is this where we sleep?” Jeeter asked him.
“This is the place. It’s the only room I got left, too. We’re pretty full to-night.”
“This sure is a fine place,” Jeeter said. “I didn’t know hotels was such fine places before. I wish Lov was here to see me now.”
There was only one bed in the room; it was large, flat, and high off the floor.
“I reckon we can crowd in the bed some way,” Jeeter said. “I’ll sleep in the middle.”
“There’s plenty of room for all of you,” the man said, “but maybe I can find another bed for one of you.”
He went out and shut the door.
Jeeter sat down on the bed and unlaced his brogans. The dusty shoes fell with heavy thuds on the bare floor. Dude sat in the chair and looked at the room, the walls, and the ceiling. The yellow plaster had dropped off in many places, and more hung loose, ready to fall the next time there was a vibration.
“We might as well go to bed,” Jeeter said. “Ain’t no sense in sitting up.”
He hung his black felt hat on the bed-post and lay down. Bessie was standing before the wash-stand mirror taking down her hair.
“Ada ought to see me now,” Jeeter said. “I ain’t never slept the night in a hotel in all my days. I bet Ada won’t believe I’m telling the truth when I tell her.”
“You ain’t got no business sleeping in bed with me and Bessie,” Dude said. “You ought to get out on the floor.”
“Now, Dude, you wouldn’t begrudge me one night’s sleeping, would you? Why, Bessie, there, is all willing, ain’t you, Bessie?”
“You hush your mouth, Jeeter!” she said. “You make me feel so foolish when you say that!”
“It’s only me and you, Dude,” he said. “It’s not like it was somebody else. I been wanting to sleep with you and Bessie for the longest time.”
Some one knocked on the door and, before they could answer it, the man walked in.
“What did you say your name was?” he asked Bessie.
He walked over to the washstand where she stood, and waited close beside her.
“Mrs. Dude—” Jeeter said. “I told you that already once.”
“I know—but what’s her first name? You know what I mean—her girl’s name.”
Bessie put her dress over herself before she told him.
“Bessie,” she said. “What do you want to know that for?”
“That’s all right, Bessie,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
He went out and shut the door.
“These city folks has got the queerest ways,” Jeeter said. “You don’t never know what they is going to ask you next.”
Dude took off his shoes and coat and waited for Bessie to get into bed. She had sat down on the floor to take off her shoes and stockings.
Jeeter sat up in bed and waited for her to finish. A door nearby was slammed so hard that pieces of yellow plaster dropped off the ceiling to the bed and floor.
Suddenly some one knocked on the door again, and it was opened immediately. This time it was a man whom they had not seen before.
“Come on down the hall, Bessie,” he said.
He waited outside until Bessie got up from the floor and went to the door.
“Me?” she said. “What you want with me?”
“Come on down to this other room, Bessie. It’s too crowded up here.”
“They must have found another bed for us,” Jeeter said. “I reckon they found out that there was more beds empty than they thought there was.”
He and Dude watched Bessie gather up her clothes and leave the room. She carried her dress, shoes, and stockings in one hand, and her hat in the other. After the door was closed, the building became quiet again.
“These city people has queer ways, don’t they, Dude?” Jeeter said, turning over and closing his eyes. “They ain’t like us folks out around Fuller.”
“Why didn’t you go to the other bed?” Dude said. “Why did the man tell Bessie to go?”
“You never can tell about the queer ways of city folks, Dude. They do the durndest things sometimes.”
They both lay awake for the next half hour, but neither of them said anything. The light was still burning, but they did not try to turn it off.
A board in the hall floor squeaked, and Bessie came in carrying her clothes in her hands.
“Don’t you like the place they provided you with in the other room?” Jeeter asked, sitting up. “What made you come back, Bessie?”
“I reckon I must have got in the wrong bed by mistake or something,” she said. “Somebody else was in it.”
Dude rubbed his eyes in the glare of the electric light, and looked at Bessie.
“Bessie is sure a pretty woman preacher, ain’t she?” Jeeter said, looking at her.
“I didn’t have time to dress again,” she said. “I had to leave right away, and there wasn’t no time to put my clothes on.”
“That man ought to know what he was doing at the start. Ain’t no sense in making people change beds all night long. He ought to let folks stay in one bed all the time and let us sleep some.”
“Men sure is queer in a hotel,” Bessie said. “They say the queerest things and do the queerest things I ever saw. I’m sure glad we stayed here, because I been having a good time to-night. It ain’t like it is out on the tobacco road.”
There was a tapping on the door again, and a man opened it. He looked at Bessie, and beckoned her to the door.
“Come here, Bessie,” he said, “there’s a room down at the other end of the hall for you.”
He waited outside the partly opened door.
“I went to one room just a little while ago, and there was a man in the bed.”
“Well, that’s all right. Down at this other room is another bed for you. Come on, I’ll go with you and show you how to get there.”
“By God and by Jesus,” Jeeter said. “I never heard of the likes of it in all my life. The men here is going to wear Bessie out, running her from one bed to another all night long. I don’t reckon I’ll ever come to this kind of hotel again. I can’t get no peace and sleep.”
Bessie picked up her clothes and went out. The door was closed, and they heard her and the man walking down the hall.
“I reckon she’s fixed up this time so she won’t have to change beds again,” Jeeter said. “I can’t stay awake no longer to find out.”
Dude went to sleep, too, in a few minutes.
At daybreak, Jeeter was up and dressed, and Dude got up a few minutes later. They sat in the room for the next half hour waiting for Bessie. At last Jeeter got up and went to the door and looked up the hall and down it.
“I reckon we’ll have to go hunt Sister Bessie,” he said. “Maybe she got lost and can’t find this room. It was dark out there last night, and things look different in the daytime up here in the city.”
They opened the door and walked to the end of the hall. All the doors were closed, and Jeeter did not know which one to open. The first two he opened were not occupied, but the next one was. He turned the knob and went inside. There were two people asleep in the bed, but the woman was not Bessie. Jeeter backed out of the room and closed the door. Dude tried the next room. The door of that one was unlocked, too, and Jeeter had to go across the room and look at the woman’s face before he was satisfied she was not Bessie. In the other rooms they entered they failed to find Bessie, and Jeeter did not know what to do. The last room they entered had only a single bed and he was about to close the door, when the girl opened her eyes and sat up. Jeeter stood looking at her, not knowing what else to do. When the girl was fully awake, she smiled and called Jeeter to her.
“What you want?” he said.
“Why did you come in here?” she said.
“I’m looking for Bessie, and I reckon I’d better go hunt for her some more. I’m liable to disgrace myself if I stay here looking at you.”
She called Jeeter again, but he turned his back and ran out of the room. Dude caught up with his father.
“By God and by Jesus, Dude,” Jeeter said. “I never saw so many pretty girls and women in all my days. This hotel is just jammed with them. I’d sure lose my religion if I stayed here much longer. I’ve got to get out in the street right now.”
At the foot of the stairway they saw the man who had rented them the room the night before. He was reading the morning paper.
“We’re ready to leave now,” Jeeter said, “but we can’t find Sister Bessie.”
“The woman who came in with you last night?”
“She’s the one. Sister Bessie, her name is.”
“I’ll get her,” he said, and started up the stairs. “What’s wrong with her nose? I didn’t notice it last night, but I saw it this morning. It gives me the creeps to look at it.”
“She was born like that,” Jeeter said. “Bessie ain’t much to look at in the face, but she’s a right smart piece to live with. Dude, here, he knows, because he’s married to her.”
“She’s got the ungodliest-looking nose I ever saw,” the man said, going up the stairs. “I hope I never get fooled like that again in the dark.”
In about five minutes both he and Bessie came down the stairs. The man was in front and Bessie behind.
Out in the street, where they had left the car, Jeeter found the bag of crackers and cheese, and he began eating them hungrily. Dude took a handful of crackers and put them into his mouth. A few doors away was a store with a Coca-Cola sign on it, and all of them went in and got a drink.
“You don’t look like you slept none too much last night,” Jeeter said. “Couldn’t you go to sleep, Bessie?”
She yawned and rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. She had dressed hurriedly, and had not combed her hair. It hung matted and stringy over her face.
“I reckon the hotel was pretty full last night,” she said. “Every once in a while somebody came and called me to another room. Every room I went to there was somebody sleeping in the bed. Looked like nobody knowed where my bed was. They was always telling me to sleep in a new one. I didn’t sleep none, except about an hour just a while ago. There sure is a lot of men staying there.”
Jeeter led them outside the store and they got into the automobile and drove off towards the residential part of the city. Bessie yawned, and tried to take a nap on the front seat.
Selling the load of blackjack was no easier than it had been the afternoon before. Nobody wanted to buy wood, at least not the kind Jeeter had for sale.
By three o’clock that afternoon all of them were thoroughly tired of trying to find somebody to take the wood.
Sister Bessie wanted to go back home, and so did Jeeter. Bessie was sleepy and tired. Jeeter began swearing every time he saw a man walking along the street. His opinion of the citizens of Augusta was even less than it had been before he started the trip. He cursed every dollar in the city.
Dude was anxious to go back home, because he would have the opportunity of blowing the horn when they went around the long curves on the highway.
Bessie bought the gasoline and Jeeter paid for it out of the money they had left. No trouble with the engine developed, and they sailed along at a fast rate of speed for nearly ten miles.
“Let’s stop a minute,” Jeeter said.
Dude stopped the car without question and they all got out. Jeeter began untying the plow-lines and untwisting the baling wire around the load of blackjack.
“What you going to do now?” Bessie asked him, watching him begin throwing off the sticks.
“I’m going to throw off the whole durn load and set fire to it,” he said. “It’s bad luck to carry something to town to sell and then tote it back home. It ain’t a safe thing to do, to take it back home. I’m going to pitch it all off.”
Dude and Bessie helped him, and in a few minutes the blackjack was piled in the ditch beside the road.
“And I ain’t going to let nobody else have the use of it, neither,” he said. “If the rich people in Augusta won’t buy my wood, I ain’t going to let it lay here so they can come out and take it off for nothing.”
He gathered a handful of dead leaves, thrust them under the pile, and struck a match to them. The leaves blazed up, and a coil of smoke boiled into the air. Jeeter fanned the blaze with his hat and waited for the wood to catch on fire and burn.
“That was an unlucky trip to Augusta,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ve ever had such luck befall me before. All the other times I’ve been able to sell my wood for something, if it was only a quarter or so. But this time nobody wanted it for nothing, seems like.”
“I want to go back some time and spend another night at that hotel,” Bessie said, giggling. “I had the best time last night. It made me feel good, staying there. They sure know how to treat women real nice.”
They waited for the blackjack to burn so they could leave for home. The leaves had burned to charred ashes, and the flame had gone out. The scrub oak would not catch on fire.
Jeeter scraped up a larger pile of leaves, set it on fire, and began tossing the sticks on it. The fire burned briskly for several minutes, and then went out under the weight of the green wood.
Jeeter stood looking at it, sadly. He did not know how to make it burn. Then Dude drew some gasoline from the tank and poured it on the pile. A great blaze sprang up ten or twelve feet into the air. Before long that too died down, leaving a pile of blackened sticks in the ditch.
“Well, I reckon that’s all I can do to that damn-blasted blackjack,” Jeeter said, getting into the car. “It looks like there ain’t no way to get rid of the durn wood. It won’t sell and it won’t burn. I reckon the devil got into it.”
They drove off in a swirl of yellow dust, and were soon nearing the tobacco road. Dude drove slowly through the deep white sand, blowing the horn all the way home.