To Make My Bread (23 page)

“Well,” Ora said faintly, but she gave Granpap's look back again.

“Ye ain't thinking of going, Granpap,” Emma spoke up quietly from where she was walking just behind Granpap and the others.

Granpap did not answer, but just before they reached the office at the mill she caught up and looked full into his face, and saw by the way his lids came down that he was away in his mind planning something.

“Frank,” she whispered and took hold of Frank's arm before he could step into the office. “Couldn't ye talk to Granpap? I'm afeard he's going.”

“No, Emma, I can't tell Granpap what t' do.”

“Just ask him if he's a-going, then,” Emma urged.

“Granpap,” Frank said in a loud voice, for when he made up his mind he must say a thing quickly and have it done, “be ye going t' the reunion?”

“I reckon not, Frank,” Granpap answered, and there was plenty of disappointed wishing in his voice. “I reckon Emma and the young ones need me right now.”

They were right in front of the office door. Here all of them, even Granpap, faltered on the steps as if some wild animal waited behind the door. A man came out and ran down the steps and over the hard ground to the door of the factory. In his hurry he left the door open and with this encouragement they walked through to the room inside.

There were benches against two sides of the big room, a hallway led to the back, and opposite the side wall was a small window like that in the station which was for tickets. Granpap went up and stood in front of this window. Presently a young woman came and said, “What do you want?”

“I want the man that hires,” Granpap said in a firm voice.

“All right,” the young woman said, and Granpap stood aside to wait. He almost stepped on a little boy who had come in after them through the door.

“Watch out, young 'un,” Granpap said very loud. In trying not to step on the child he almost lost his own balance.

The young woman came back to the window. “What is it?” she asked sharply.

“Here's a young one wants something,” Granpap told her. He stepped aside again and almost tripped over a dry goods box that stood there. Emma was not always easy with Granpap and sometimes feared him. Now, when he seemed so uncertain, for the first time in her life she felt pity toward him.

“What do you want,” the young woman called through the window, for she could not see the child. He was about five years old and was not tall enough to reach up. He seemed to know how to remedy that, for he reached out with his small hands—Emma had time to see how bony they were, like his face—and lifted the box to a spot just beneath the window. Then he climbed on it with a serious and business-like air as if this was his special affair and no one was to interfere. He stretched his neck toward the young woman behind the bars.

“A book of scrip for Mis' Hardy,” he said in a high little voice that everybody could hear all over the room.

“Mis' what Hardy?” the girl asked.

“Mis' Fayette Hardy.”

She slapped a book on the shelf between them. “Tell her it's her second this month,” she said.

“Yes'm,” the child answered. He got down off the box, put it carefully in its place along the wall just behind Granpap and trotted out with the book in his hand.

For a long while the window remained empty. Though it was empty, all of them, at least the grown-ups, looked at it anxiously as if by expecting they could make someone appear in the space. And no one appeared there after all, for a man came in through the hallway and spoke to Granpap.

“Yes,” Granpap answered his question. “We want t' hire.” Frank got up from the bench and walked over to them. The man turned and looked at Emma, at Ora and the baby in Ora's arms. His eyes lingered a moment on Sally and Young Frank, then passed over the younger children quickly.

“Sit down here,” he said to Granpap and Frank, pointing to chairs in front of a table. He went back through the hallway and came again with a large book in his arms. This he let drop on the table. Sitting before the open book, the man began to turn the pages. Granpap and Frank sat like two images of stone while the pages turned in the man's hands, over and over. “Over and over” sounded in Emma's mind and mixed in with the throbbing of the factory. She sat forward on the edge of the bench.

Suddenly the man stopped turning and looked up. “Name,” he asked.

“McClure,” Granpap said at once, and just after him Frank said, “McClure.”

“Same family?” the man asked and wrote something with a pen in the book.

“We're two families,” Granpap told him.

Then questions popped out of the man's big mouth one after another so fast that Ora and Emma, stretching forward to hear, could not understand them all.

How many of the family alive, how many dead, how many could work, were they healthy or sickly.

“Tell her to stand up,” the man said to Frank, pointing to Sally.

Frank turned around in his chair. “Stand up, Sally,” he told her. Sally stood up, and anyone could see that beneath the long skirt her knees were bent and shaking.

“Don't be afraid,” the man said, and smiled at Sally. He looked her up and down. “All right,” he told her and pointed his pen at Young Frank. “Now you stand up,” he said. He put down their ages, Sally, sixteen, Young Frank, fourteen, Esther nine years, Hattie seven, Raymond two and the baby nine months. Then it was Bonnie, thirteen, and John, eleven, who must stand. It sounded to Bonnie from the way the man repeated before he put down the name that he had given her another name that was not McClure, and for some time she thought of herself as Bonnie Thirteen instead of Bonnie McClure.

The man opened his big mouth again. He called out to the young woman at the window. “Miss Andrews, ask Mr. Burnett to come in.” And in a few moments Mr. Burnett came up to the table. The two men talked together in whispers, and when they finished, Mr. Burnett walked into the back part of the building. There was a curved space between his legs, and his feet met flat, side by side on the floor. He took short steps that carried him quickly out of sight.

The man at the desk said nothing. Granpap and Frank sat before him like figures of stone, and the others waited, almost breathless. If the man would only say something and give them some peace!

Presently a boy came in and gave the man a key. His wide mouth flapped open again, as he spoke to Granpap. But he spoke too softly for them to hear.

Emma heard Granpap say out loud. “Hit's not true. I can walk thirty miles in one day and kill a bear at the end.”

The man smiled. His hand went up in the air flat and he said very kindly, “That's enough.” But it was evident he meant exactly what he said. Emma, waiting to hear Granpap say more, saw only that he sat in his chair like a stone image. She thought, “Granpap is changed if he can stand that kind of talk.” And then another thought, sharp and quick, come. “Maybe all this will change us. Maybe in a year we won't be the same—Granpap or any of us.”

As if his interest in Granpap was finished, the man turned to Frank, gave him the key and spoke to him in a low voice. Then he picked up the great book and walked away through the hall to the mysterious place beyond.

Frank got up. “I guess we'd better go,” he said to Granpap. But the old man, who was usually ahead of Frank, sat right on in the chair. “Granpap,” Frank repeated, “we better be a-going.”

Granpap rose up slowly from the chair.

Emma came up to them. “Why was hit just one key?” she asked in a low voice, so the girl wouldn't hear. Frank touched her on the arm. They let Granpap walk ahead. He went as if he could not see where to walk.

“What is it, Frank?” Emma asked.

“Didn't you hear?” Frank looked at her in surprise.

“He talked s' low.”

“He said t' Granpap, ‘You're too old t' work in the mill, only as a night watchman, and the places are all filled.' ”

“Oh,” Emma gasped out. “Oh, hit don't seem right.” She spoke quite loud then, not caring about the girl, and Granpap had gone outside along with the others.

“And, Emma, he said you must board with us, unless you want the young ones t' work. You must have two elders t' work if you get a house, two elders or four young ones working.”

Ora came back through the door. “Are you coming?” she asked them.

“Yes,” Frank answered. He hesitated. “You could let the young ones work, Emma,” he said.

“No, I can't, Frank. They're going t' school. If I have t' work my hands off they're going t' get schooling . . . . But I didn't think about being a boarder.”

“What is it?” Ora asked.

“We've got t' board with ye, Ora,” Emma told her.

“Well, Emma, let's go find that house, then we can set down and worry all we want. I want t' set down in a house again for once.”

“W
HERE
'
S
Granpap?” Emma asked when she came out of the office.

Bonnie looked up the road and Emma, looking, saw that Granpap was already on his way to get the steers. And she saw that his shoulders were drooped over and that he moved slowly as if his legs had suddenly grown stiff with rheumatism. She wanted to follow him and say, “Ye're not s' old, Granpap. Only a little while ago ye were tramping over the mountains like a young buck, and a-cursing anybody that got in your way.”

She turned to Frank, “Frank, tell him hit's all right. Hit don't matter if he don't work.”

“I'll tell him what I can, Emma,” Frank said and walked up the road to overtake Granpap.

“Emma, we'd better go,” Ora said. “That boy is having fits.” She nodded to the boy from the office who was stepping impatiently from one foot to the other. He was some distance away as if he thought by going a little forward he could hurry them on.

“Hurry up,” the boy said. “I can't wait all day.” He must have come from the city, for he was dressed in a fine suit and a white shirt like the young man who had come up to the mountains.

John and Young Frank ran ahead to keep up with the boy and Bonnie and Sally stayed not far behind.

“That boy was a-stepping around so, I thought he must want to go somewheres,” Ora said to Emma. “I wanted to say, ‘Don't mind us, young man, just step to the side of the road and turn your back.' ”

“Oh, no, Ora, you wouldn't.”

“Yes, I would, Emma, he had too much sass in his manners. I would have done it in another minute.”

As they went further out the red mud became so thick it sucked at their feet.

“Esther,” Ora told her daughter, “pick up Raymond and carry him to Sally. He can't walk any more in this mud. Sally!” she called out. “Wait for Esther.”

The rows of houses on each side of the street were silent, as if all the people had deserted their homes. Only smoke coming from some of the chimneys showed there was life going on inside. The houses further out were not so nice as those close to the mill. On the edge of the village they were old looking and some were unpainted. Ora noticed that the pumps had been close together, about every two blocks, at first. Now they walked for some time before they passed another one sitting with its one arm akimbo at a corner.

Then the road stopped abruptly at a field. The boy from the office, having pointed out a place to the two boys, passed them on his way back. John and Young Frank waited at the corner. John leaned against a pump which was there and waved to them, trying to make them hurry. At the left on the side of a slope there were three unpainted houses.

John and Young Frank led the way to the middle house. They stood and looked at it, Ora and Emma tall in the midst of the young ones. The house was square and had a chimney, and a very nice porch clear along the front. In the back yard, just as in the back yard of all the houses, was a tiny outhouse. One of its hinges was broken, and the door swung back, so that inside they could see the slanted seat, with the hole which daylight from the back outlined clearly.

“Well,” Ora said, fingering the key, “let's go in. I reckon we've got a right . . . . I'm glad,” she told Emma, “the water is near. Did ye notice the pump?”

“Hit'll seem funny,” Emma thought out loud, “to get water from one of those.”

To Ora Emma's words sounded disappointed and melancholy.

“Why, Emma, hit's not s' bad.”

“I sort of reckoned we'd get water out of the wall, like at the station,” Emma said. “Well . . .” She stopped speaking.

“Let's go in.” Ora went resolutely up the high steps and unlocked the door before them.

They did not stay long in the two front rooms. Bonnie found the stove in the kitchen and called them to look. There, sure enough, just as the young man had said, stood a cooking stove in a corner of the kitchen.

Ora opened the oven door, while the children stood around gaping at the iron box, and peering when they could under the arms of the elders into the dark interior. On a plate of tin John found a piece of iron with a handle at one end. He reached under Ora's arm and stuck the bent piece at one end of the iron into a place where it seemed to belong, and pushed on the handle. The round lid fell off with a clatter and scattered soot in every direction.

Sally, dusting her dress, walked to the window, and Bonnie followed her. But Emma and Ora stayed bent over the stove as if it was a sick person they were trying to coax back to life. It would have been good to make a fire at once, but there was no fuel. Emma stared down at the place where a fire had been once. She saw ashes and a gray end of hickory log with the bark still on. It was smooth at one end where the saw had cut through, and black at the other irregular end where the last fire used by the people before them had not quite finished burning it up.

Looking at the ashes, and the cold round piece that had not finished burning, Emma thought sadly that other people had lived in the house. Perhaps they had been glad to leave this place which she had worked so hard to reach. It made her suddenly angry against those people who had felt so little pleasure in this house. She wished she had those people before her so that she could defend this house, her house, against them. Then it came to her that the house was not hers but Ora's. She turned her back on the dark place with the ashes and went over to Bonnie who was playing with the window, pushing it up and letting it down.