To Make My Bread (22 page)

About two miles away, judging by mountain sight, in the middle of streets and streets of small houses, one exactly the same size and height of the other, sat a huge brick building. As Emma thought, it was like a hen with chickens that have come out of the same setting, all of one size. Only how many hundreds of chickens this old hen had brought forth! Even from the rise they could scarcely see where the rows of houses stopped.

Up from the brick structure rose two huge chimneys, towering into the sky, like two towers of Babel. Smoke poured out of them into the wide open heavens.

Emma felt one of the steers nosing at her shoulder. Then Ora came from the back of the sledge with the baby in her arms.

“Hit's the factory,” Emma said to Ora with a catch in her voice.

Ora wondered if it was the evening sun on Emma's face that made it look so queer, almost glorified. The look and Emma's voice made her wish to be very practical and every-day.

“I reckon hit couldn't be anything else,” she said. “Hit looks like a working place.”

T
HE
big doors of the factory, some distance from the road, stood open. A few people, women and men, were straggling one by one into these doors. Granpap halted the steers at the near end where a one story brick building jutted out from the large one even with the road. Here, someone had said, they could apply for work.

Granpap and Frank entered first. Emma and Ora sat on the steps at one side so they would not be in the way of anyone who wished to go in, and Ora began again to feed the crying baby. John and Young Frank guarded the steers and the sledge, and the two girls, leaving the other children to Ora and Emma, walked timidly to a corner that was nearest. Sally had her sunbonnet off and fanned herself vigorously. Bonnie peeped from under her bonnet observing everything that was to be seen.

Across the road there was a large wooden building with a platform in front, like a porch. Two or three young men who were lounging on the platform watched Sally. She was wearing her new calico dress. It was wrinkled and soiled but it could not hide the fact that Sally had a nice figure.

“Ain't that a woman for ye?” Ora asked Emma, though her words were not so much a question as a statement. She nodded her head toward Sally's back. “She knows those pants over there are a-looking at her.”

The two girls stood at the corner for a moment, then turned and walked back sedately to the steps. Bonnie was much smaller than Sally, though she was getting to be a woman, and promising to be pretty. Now she had the sunbonnet pulled down over her eyes, as if she was afraid to let anyone see her face. Ora looked under the bonnet when the girls were standing before them. “Are ye shamed of something, Bonnie?” she asked.

“No,” Bonnie said, and looked down at her bare feet. Sally had shoes, bought at Swain's, but they had thought it was not necessary for Bonnie to have them. She was four years younger than Sally. “What's that a-rumbling?” Bonnie asked, partly because she hadn't found any words for Ora.

“I feel it, too.” For some time Emma had felt a throb in the air, a dull shake to the ground, as if people were dancing a long way off. Now when Bonnie spoke she felt out for the sound as she had often done for sounds around the cabin at night, when she was not sure where they came from.

They all listened, feeling out, like Emma, to locate the cause of the throb.

“Hit's the factory, I think,” Emma said. She spoke in a whisper as if she was afraid the factory would hear. “You remember that church song,” she went on speaking low to Ora, “that says, ‘There's power in the blood.' Well, that sound seems t' say, ‘There's power in the factory, there's power in the factory.' ”

After she had said it she was a little ashamed as she always was of some of her notions before Ora. But she saw Bonnie look up from under her bonnet as if she understood.

“Yes,” Ora answered. Perhaps she was going to say something else, for her mouth was open, when another and very different sound startled them. It was a terrible, earsplitting shriek, as if many people cried out in sorrow, just once.

Sally covered her ears with her hands, and Bonnie's eyes under the bonnet grew round and wide as they did when she was disturbed. The steers out in the road moved as if about to start off. John called out “Whoa” and pulled on the ropes.

One of the young men across the road, seeing Sally's frightened gesture, called out, “It's just the factory whistle,” and laughed.

“Look!” Emma said. “Look, Ora.”

From the two doors of the factory came streams of people, women and girls, men and children. It was almost more than anyone could bear to see so many people at once. The doors belched them out in two long streams that came together at the road. Here they divided again and spread out across the road, some of them going out toward the long rows of houses, some toward the place where the McClures watched. A few of these looked curiously at the steers as they passed, but most of them hurried on without noticing the strangers. They were sunk down into a sort of sleep, or perhaps they were thinking only of getting home. The late afternoon sun shone right on the factory and made out of its windows fiery eyeballs that watched the home-goers steadily.

“I didn't think there was so many people, anywhere,” Emma said, with a gasp, watching them go by.

“I reckon all the houses ain't here for nothing,” Ora thought, and then said it out loud, and added, “Hit's a sight of houses.”

“And a sight of people,” Emma repeated. In herself she was feeling that with so many there might not be a place for her and hers. How could the man that owned the place want more when he had so many already?

She was relieved when Granpap and Frank came out of the office, for they would say if there was a place. But Granpap said nothing at first. He went to the sledge, took the ropes from John's hand and turned the steers, so that the sledge faced the other way.

Then he turned his head toward them. “I feel we'd best go back where we came from,” he said in a loud voice.

“What is it, Frank?” Emma asked.

“They told us to wait,” Frank said. “And we waited. Then Granpap asked how long, and the man said just wait. So we did. Then he came to us and said, ‘Hit's too late. Come to-morrow.' ”

There would be no house for the night, then. And the young ones needed a roof over their heads and a little straw or something to sleep on under their bodies. Granpap was waiting, but they could not follow him. They could not turn back to the hills, now they were at the place where they had been promised work. Perhaps to-morrow if there was no work they could bear to turn back, but not late in the evening with the sun going down.

Granpap stood with the ropes in his hands, a boy on each side, waiting. Frank walked across the road to one of the men who had left the factory a few moments before. They spoke a few words, then the stranger came back with Frank across the road. He was a small man and limped somewhat, which made him lag just a step behind Frank as they walked up to Granpap. He was kindly looking, and seemed ready to help, and spoke to Granpap respectfully as someone in the hills might have spoken. The others came nearer and listened as if the words said were something to eat with which they might fill their hungry bellies.

The stranger said there was a place where they could stay for the night. “I'll show you,” he added and led the way, limping along in front of the sledge at the side of the left steer. “One of the preachers keeps a boarding house. He'll give you a place to sleep and food if you wish it.”

“We were told,” Granpap said to the man, “they needed us for the factory. From the way they act hit don't seem so.”

“Well,” the man said, “I reckon now you're here they've got you.”

“Got me?” Granpap spat out. Emma was hushed and strained, fearing that Granpap would make trouble. The man saw that he had not said what was right. “Well, not exactly. But they probably think if you've come so far, you aim to stay.”

Emma walked up to Granpap and touched him on the arm to get his attention. “Let's stay, Granpap. The young ones need a bed. Look at them. They're s' tired. And you know Ora ought t' have rest.”

Granpap looked behind him and saw Ora with the baby in her arms, and Sally carrying little Raymond, while the others dragged along as if the next step was their last, for with the talk of bed and food being near they had let themselves down to rest, so there was no more fight in them for the present.

“I'll see,” he told Emma, but she recognized the sound in his voice that said he was nearly ready to give in. She turned to listen while the stranger talked to Frank.

“You weren't even put down in the Doomsday Book?” he asked Frank.

“No. The man told us ‘to-morrow' and that was all.”

There was a silence. They walked along on the road between the rows of houses. Smoke was beginning to come out of those chimneys that had been cold before. On the porches that had been empty there were some men and younger children.

“What was that you said?” Frank spoke as if he hated to ask a question. “What was it you called some book?”

“Doomsday Book,” the stranger answered. “We call it so around here. I don't know where the name came from.”

Frank wished to ask what this book meant to them if it meant anything. Emma wanted to know, and Ora was wondering what it meant, a Doomsday Book. But none felt like asking just what it was. Perhaps they were a little afraid of what the man might say, and so much had happened they could wait for more.

The stranger left them at a corner. “You go to the left,” he said. “And it's the third house on the left, the long house.”

Granpap knocked at the door. Someone said in a sleepy voice, “Who is it?” Granpap knocked again and the door opened. A man in shirt sleeves stood before them holding to the knob. He had a full head of tousled hair, and his small blue eyes blinked at them sleepily.

“Is the preacher here?” Granpap asked.

“I'm the preacher,” the man said, and passed a hand over his head to smooth down the hair. “Come in,” he said. He stepped on the porch and opened another door that led into a hallway. “Come in,” he repeated, then as if he was just waking up, “What do you want?”

Up a short flight of stairs he showed them two rooms, each with two double beds. Ora could almost have cried looking at the beds. She wanted to sit right down on one of them, and lie back. “And lie back,” she said to herself, “I'd like to lie back right now.” But they must wait for the price.

When the preacher told Granpap and Frank they spoke together for a moment, then Granpap put some money in the preacher's hand. When she saw that Ora lay back against the pillow at the head of the bed and closed her eyes.

“If you want supper,” the preacher told them, “it's fifty cents and twenty-five for the children.” He was very business-like.

The smell of cooking came up the stairs from the kitchen and Emma could see that the young ones were sniffing the smell. Her own nose was not far behind theirs.

“We'll let ye know if we'll eat,” Granpap told the preacher.

When the preacher had gone they watched each other. No one dared say, “Let's eat here.”

But John spoke up. “My belly aches, smelling hit,” he said, and held to his belly with both hands.

Granpap looked at John. “Does it, boy?”

“Yes,” John said. “Hit feels like a deep spring, and empty.”

“Granpap,” Emma spoke softly, “we can do without a meal in the morning.”

“Frank?” Granpap asked his question with one word.

“Hit's best t' go down,” Frank said.

They had a full meal of hominy and gravy and hot biscuits and meat. But in the morning the full feeling had gone, and the smell of breakfast cooking spread over the house and even followed them through the open front door, as if the breakfast, at least, was hospitably urging them to stay.

I
T
was early morning and freshness was still in the air, for the sun was not up far enough to bake everything. The last whistle had come from the factory some time before, but a few late workers passed them on the street. Unlike those who had walked slowly from work the evening before, these late ones hurried along as if the devil was behind lashing them on with his tail.

Granpap had stayed to finish some talk with the Confederate who was going to the reunion in the city.

“He had a uniform like the one in the picture at the station,” Bonnie said to Emma, pronouncing “uniform” very carefully since she had just learned the word.

“Yes,” Emma said. She remembered the picture very well and how Granpap had stood before it for some time.

John had stayed behind with Granpap but they soon came along. Emma looked at Granpap anxiously. If he got any ideas about going to the city, they were done for. She remembered that he had the money in a belt around his waist.

“He's a Confederate veteran,” John said to Bonnie, and Emma listened, because Granpap kept his eyes away from her, and she was cut off from talk with him.

“Was hit General Lee?” Bonnie asked, for she had felt awe for the white bearded old man in the gray suit who had sat at supper with them the night before.

“No, he's the preacher's wife's Pa and he's a-going to stay with his other daughter in the city while the reunion's a-going on. There's going t' be a parade to-day—with uniforms.”

“Hit'll cost him a fortune t' go,” Emma said, loud enough for Granpap to hear.

“Hit's half fare on the train, Emma,” Granpap said. “And in the city they will board and lodge ye for nothing.”

“I don't believe big talk any more,” Ora put in. She knew what Emma was fearing.

“This talk is true, Ora.” Granpap turned and looked at Ora out of his bright blue eyes, and she felt Frank, on her other side, touch her arm. Frank was always a quiet one, and hated especially to mix in a neighbor's business.