To Make My Bread (26 page)

T
HAT
Saturday night Ora's family, Emma and Bonnie were together in the front room of the mill house. The lamp was lit and set on the chimney shelf. Over in one corner the bed, with Ora's best quilt on top, made a place for the younger children who had gone to sleep.

Bonnie and Sally pushed the young ones close together so that there was space on the edge of the bed to sit. On this first night all wanted to keep together. And they talked little and then only in low voices as if there was someone sick in the next room whom they were afraid to wake.

There were two windows, one that opened on the porch and one at the side, and before those windows they felt exposed. They had been accustomed to cabins where doors shut out the night every evening at sundown. Now there were the blank spaces through which the darkness outside stared in at them. And there was a feeling that the dark had eyes. And the sounds—the creaking of a joist, someone passing on the road outside, the short scraping that the stove pipe made settling into place—were unknown and mysterious.

Even Ora felt uncomfortable, and when Frank walked into the kitchen she followed him. It was better there. The fire was not quite dead in the stove and it made a little glow in the room. Standing near Frank, there by the stove, with the quietness and strangeness around them, Ora wanted to put out her hand and touch him; but they had not touched for so long except in bed she could not bring herself to do so. She thought of Emma who had been sad all the afternoon and evening. They had been set against each other since early in the day, and even Granpap's going had not brought them together again. She felt now that Emma was right about the curtains, not because they would be pretty, but because a house with windows needed something across them at night to hold in the light and shut out the dark.

“I think,” she said to Frank, wanting to talk with him and perhaps in talking draw closer, “maybe we'll have t' get some goods to put over the windows.”

“Yes,” Frank answered. He said nothing else, and made no move to say anything more intimate.

Ora went into the front room. It was useless to wait in there for Frank to say more. He was simply not a talking man.

“Emma,” Ora said, “soon as we can well get some kind of covers for the windows.”

She saw Emma's face soften up where it had been hard before, not hard with meanness, but hard with worry.

“Hit'll be nice,” Emma said, but it seemed not to mean anything to her.

Ora went to the mantel shelf, “We don't need to use so much oil,” she said and turned the lamp wick down until there was only a tiny light. With the turning down of the light the whole darkened room became a part of the dark outside, and gradually the heavy, sad feeling in the room lightened. Like birds when early morning light comes, Sally and Bonnie began to chatter, only this was dark that had unloosened their tongues.

Sally, thinking about the mill, and about working there all night, took herself back to the hills. She dreaded the work in the factory, and the work at home when during the day she must have charge of all the young ones while Ora took her turn at the mill.

“I wish I was back up there,” she said.

“Do ye?” Bonnie asked. She could not think of anyone not wanting to stay.

“Yes, I do,” Sally told her. “Maybe you don't, because you're t' get a schooling.”

“Maybe you could get a schooling,” Bonnie said.

“I'm too old. I've got t' work.”

“Maybe you'll have some beaus.”

“I don't want any. I've got Jesse.”

Young Frank broke in there. “Yes, ye do want beaus,” he said. “I saw ye making eyes at those men at the store.”

“I did not,” Sally told him, “I did not, Young Frank.”

“Ye'll be forgetting Jesse in a week.”

“I won't.”

“And maybe he'll forget you, as well. Right now he's maybe a-courting Lorene, or . . .”

“Or maybe he's a-courting fiddlesticks,” Sally cried out at him. She was trying to be defiant and sure of herself, but it was too much, thinking of Jesse so far away. Sobs began to come up in her throat. They choked her and then came through with tears coming at the same time—sobs and tears together. She lay face down on the bed and cried all over the feet of the young ones who were sprawled there.

“Be ashamed,” Ora said to Young Frank.

She went to Sally and patted her on the shoulder. “Don't ye worry, Sally. Right now Jesse is probably a-mooning all over Choah Mountain wishing for ye.”

They were sorry for Sally, yet it was somehow satisfying to have her cry like that. It took away some of the loneliness. Her crying woke the young ones, and when the baby added some howls to Sally's and the others began to join in there was so much to do for a time it was not possible to think of other things. Emma helped Ora get the young ones into the other room. They put Sally and Bonnie in Emma's bed so that Sally, if she cried again, would not disturb the children.

Emma stayed in the room. She was ready to get in the bed herself, for it had been a tiring day. Ora hesitated at the door with the lamp in her hand.

“Do ye want the lamp, Emma?” she asked, for Emma's lamp was still tied up in some old jeans in her trunk.

“No,” Emma said. “I'll just get right in with Sally and Bonnie.”

Still Ora hesitated in the door, holding the lamp up high, and looking into Emma's face.

“What's a-worrying ye?” she asked. “Is hit something special, or just for Granpap and John?”

“Granpap'll care for John,” Emma said as if Ora had said something ugly about Granpap.

“Well,” Ora was impatient with Emma for wanting to keep hard and angry, “well, I'll take the lamp back to Frank, then.” Yet she waited longer, but turned her eyes away from Emma.

“I know Granpap can take care,” Emma said low as if she was speaking to the floor at which she was looking. “Hit's just that I can't picture them anywheres. If I could picture them hit would be better. And then—there's something else. I clean forgot to get that money from Granpap. He's got all we have in that belt around his waist.”

This was something real to worry over. It was something so definite that Ora could not keep it out of her mind. And all next day she reassured Emma if for a moment she saw Emma looking as if the worry had come over her again.

“He knows how much store ye set by hit,” she said.

“He knows,” Emma answered. Then she added, “Sometimes he forgets.”

The day was quiet and still, for it was a Sunday. The young ones out in the yard stared back at the children next door on both sides. Sally and Bonnie sat on the front steps and watched the children, and got stared at by all the people who passed. Not that the staring was open, but they could see that eyes were turned their way, especially in the afternoon when people came from other parts of the village to take Sunday walks on the country road. Most of these were couples, young men and women, and Sally looked after them with wishing in her eyes and on her face.

“If Jesse was here,” she said to Bonnie, “we'd walk down the road like that.”

“And would ye kiss?” Bonnie asked, half in fun, as the grownups teased Sally.

“Hit's what we'd go for,” Sally told her, trying to make what she said sound as if it was a joke. But each couple that came made her arms hurt with wanting Jesse; until she could not bear the sight of them and went inside.

That night while they were in the kitchen at the supper table the front door opened. The person who opened it came in the door as if he belonged. His boots sounded confidently on the floor as he came through the dark front room toward the light in the kitchen.

Emma thought, “Hit's Granpap come back,” and she stood up ready to welcome him. No one else moved. They sat with eyes raised up watching the doorway. “Hit's Jesse,” Sally said. And sure enough it was Jesse, six feet of real mountain flesh, standing there looking at them—no, he was looking at Sally. It was good to see the way she got into his arms. This was not a coquettish Sally or one holding back for manner or bashfulness.

No one said anything against it when Jesse told them he had come for Sally, and they must get married the next morning. Only Ora asked if they couldn't wait until night when all could be there to see them married.

It was necessary for Jesse to be at work Tuesday morning. The only reason he had been able to follow Sally was that a piece of machinery had gone wrong at the saw mill and his work was put off one day. But he must be there when the Company said, or else lose his place. Too many other people wanted it.

“Maybe the man at the office would let ye off for the morning,” Emma suggested to Ora and Frank. No one, not Frank and not Ora took up that suggestion.

“Hit'll be enough,” Ora thought, “to have to tell them at night about Sally not working.”

Jesse and Sally left them to think it out. They were anxious to get outside on the porch or the road where there was some friendly darkness.

Ora looked at the others. She wanted to say, “How can I work when there'll be nobody here to care for the young ones in the day?” And Frank wanted to speak out, “How can I care for ye all?” Yet they sat without speaking around the table and looked at Sally's place, and none of them would have thought of saying, “Sally has got to stay,” or, “Let her wait. She's young.”

Only Ora spoke out loud as if answering all their secret objections. “Sally is ripe for marriage,” she said.

And when no one added to this she spoke again, “Hit's best she's going now, for she'd go sometime soon.”

Frank went out to water the steers and came back again.

“They can take the steers,” he said, “and keep ours.”

“And leave the sledge,” Ora suggested. “They won't need hit going up, and can climb faster without. Jesse is young and strong and can make another.”

At sun-up next morning with the first whistle blowing, Ora, Frank and Emma stood at the bottom steps with Sally on the porch above them. Each of them had lunch done up in a paper.

Frank said, “I reckon we'll find ye gone, Sally, when we come back this evening.”

And Sally said, yes, she reckoned they would find her gone. Then she went back into the kitchen, where she had already said good-by to Ora, to cry.

She and Bonnie got the young ones up and made them some breakfast. Ora had nursed the baby before she left, and Bonnie knew from taking care of Minnie's child what to give it to eat, now it could not have Ora's milk all day.

Jesse came for Sally at eight. They found a preacher, and went through the proper words that made them man and wife.

Back at the house Jesse harnessed the steers and drove them without the sledge. Sally walked by his side in her wrinkled calico dress, very proud. They used the country road because Jesse had found that it was a short cut to the road that went up into the mountains.

Bonnie stood on the steps and watched them go up the road. She would never forget that she had seen them like this, and that she had seen Jesse kiss Sally in the front room. When they were out of sight she clung to the post by the steps and pressed her cheek hard against it. A sound inside the door made her spring away, thinking she heard Young Frank. It was Little Raymond, and he made her remember that for the present she must take Sally's place.

G
RANPAP
and John reached the city in the afternoon. They were tired, and the hard streets of the town did not help the tired feet to get along very fast.

“We've got to find re-union headquarters,' Granpap told John, for that was what the veteran said must be done as soon as they reached the city.

Around a sharp corner they entered a long street of brick buildings, some of them six stories high. Stretching his neck backward, John counted the stories, for he could count up to ten, or even more when it was necessary and he was willing to make the great effort. From one of the buildings to another hung streamers of red and white and in the windows were flags. It was a sight for a person to remember, the street white in the sun and clear down its length the red and white bunting and the red flags with some blue and white on them. “Hit's the stars and bars,” Granpap said. “Hit's General Lee's flag.”

The street was full of people, women and girls in fine clothes and men dressed in gray with white beards or gray ones. And there were young men in caps. Almost at every step they knocked into someone, or a person stepping hastily to get somewhere brushed against them. Granpap caught John's hand in his and held it tight. Under the other arm he held the quilt Emma had given them in case they had to sleep out at night. At times people who had brushed past turned round to look. But no one stopped long enough for Granpap to ask, “Where are re-union headquarters?”

“Just hold out, Son,” Granpap repeated more than once.

At a corner some people had gathered together. They were watching an old black man. Here, Granpap thought, where people were still he might be able to ask the way. The black man wore a curious sort of uniform. There was a pair of pants with a red stripe down the sides, and a gray coat like the Confederates. On his head was a cap and in his hand he held a broom. Some of the boys who were there called out to him, but the grizzled black man paid no attention to them. He swept the sidewalk carefully over and over in the same spot; then without any reason he suddenly knelt down and aimed at the automobiles that were passing in the street. He yelled, “Boom! boom!” as a child does who is playing that he is hunting wild beasts. Suddenly he jumped to his feet again and swept the sidewalk before the people who were passing.

A man dressed in Confederate gray asked another, “Who is that?” And the other man said. “He's an old nigger who used to drive a hack around here. Now he's crazy and comes up to the main street every day at the same time. He's harmless so we let him alone.”