car horn whenever he gets behind the steering wheel to drive off somewhere. Over the course of the next two days, the automobile slowly gets wrecked more and more. First there is an accident with a wagon in which they end up killing the negro driver, and then Dude drives into a stump. The seats get torn by Jeeter’s blackjack wood, which he attempts to sell in the city of Augusta. The engine irreparably becomes damaged by being run without enough oil. On top of this, they sell the spare tire and wheel for three dollars in order to pay for gasoline, food, and a night at a disreputable hotel where Bessie willingly gets prostituted from room to room by the manager. Some days later Bessie refuses to let Jeeter ride in her car anymore, which makes him upset to the point of kicking her off the land. When she physically attacks him, Ada and Jeeter proceed to beat Bessie and poke her with sticks until she and Dude take off in the car. While fleeing from Ada and Jeeter’s onslaught, Dude backs the Ford right over Grandma Lester, who then lies with her face mashed into the sand, near dead. Lov runs down to see Jeeter, and asks him if he knows what happened to Pearl, who had run away to Augusta to be free of Lov and the bleak and desperate country life surrounding her. Jeeter notes that more than a few of his daughters have run away to the city. After this discussion about the girls running away, the two notice Grandma’s corpse and drag her into the field to dig her grave and bury her. Lov departs and Caldwell reflects on Jeeter's position as a tenant farmer in the South. Even though Jeeter, like so many others around him, had the urge to plant a crop during this time of the year, there was nothing he could do. His landlord was an absentee who abandoned Jeeter and the rest of those who had lived on his land and given him shares of their crop in exchange for credit for seeds and fertilizer. The stores in the city would not grant any more credit to Jeeter or any of the other farmers because it was too risky and there were too many asking for it. Jeeter sets a fire to burn off broom sedge and hopes somehow