To Make My Bread (4 page)

“Four panes of glass,” Granpap said.

“Pap, you ain't done it!”

“No,” Granpap said. “I ain't. But I wanted to.”

It made him angry that he wanted to and could not. He had to think of Emma just when he was about to order the window from Swain.

“Ain't ye gone yet?” he rasped at John. “Go get your hay. Look at Bonnie. There's a woman for ye.”

Bonnie was in the door with both hands stretched over a heap of grass in her skirt. She looked as if she was holding in a big belly that was about to burst.

“Put it down,” Emma said to Bonnie, “and come help me with the quilts.”

“Windows!” Emma said to Bonnie when they were settled in the other room. “Windows, when we've spent most of the change for cotton and backing for the quilts. And we need a cow and a steer.”

She held up a quilt top with a Bear Paw design made of pieces kept carefully for years in the trunk, and looked at one corner.

“Your stitches,” she said to Bonnie, “are like chicken tracks. I'm most ashamed to let Ora and Jennie see them.”

The boys had carried word to Ora and Jennie that Emma would be glad to have them next day for quilting.

“You're both boy-girls.” Emma folded the quilt top and took out the Lone Star she had made the winter before John was born and never got the cotton nor backing for. “Always wanting to run around like boys instead of helping your Mas.”

“Is Ora's Sally coming over?” Bonnie asked.

“No,” Emma said shortly. “Sally's got to stay home.”

“To work for her Ma,” Bonnie added. She looked at Emma and Emma looked at her.

“Some day you'll get too big for your breeches,” Emma said. “Thinking you're smarter than your Ma. Take that end and stand away from me and be quiet.”

The next day Ora McClure came and Jennie Martin walked from Possum Hollow. The McClures had in a way of speaking swapped forces, for Granpap and the boys were over helping Frank put up a new shed. John was left at home. It was not often that Granpap and the boys included him in their excursions, for they still felt that he belonged with the women. He stood by the fire while the women sat at the hickory frame set up in the middle of the room out of the way of cold air blowing between the doors, but close enough for light. On the fire a pot of cabbage boiled, and John had put a jug of cider that Jennie brought down in the spring.

Bonnie pressed up against the frame to watch. When it was time she handed the thread. Emma sat at the head, high above the frame, but not so high as Ora, for Ora was a tall rawboned woman. Her face was rectangular and the features were big, as if they had been carved out of a rock on the side of a mountain. With a face like that she should have been enough to frighten anyone. But there was a kindness in her big mouth and when she was not talking her whole face showed a Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee feeling. She had great hands that surprised because they were so skillful with the needle. Jennie Martin looked so small beside the two others. Her tiny pinched face did not come far above the frame and she had to get out of the chair when the stitches took her across to the center of the quilt.

“When we were young ones,” Emma said with her head bent over the frame, “they had regular parties for quilting.”

“Yes.” Ora snapped a piece of thread between her teeth. “We lived close together there. Hit was a big settlement.”

“But never any dancing, like here,” Emma said. “We had quiltings and maybe played Weavily Wheat or some other game, but no dancing. They thought Pap was a sinner for playing dance tunes.”

They were really talking to Jennie Martin. She and Jim had recently moved to Possum Hollow from over North Range. Jim was kin of the McClures.

“Everybody,” Ora said, “took to religion like boys take after a gal.”

“But the religion didn't keep them from drinking,” Emma added. “Boys and men, they drank same as here.”

“Recollect that still above the church?”

“Near the haunted thicket. I reckon I do.”

“The men used to go up and come back refreshed as with the water of life,” Ora chuckled.

“And sometimes they would tell about the ghost.”

“I saw it once,” Ora said.

Jennie Martin looked up. “Was hit real?”

John sat down and leaned against the chimney. The women bent over the frame. It was late fall and the sun got down behind the west mountains early. There were already dark corners in the room where the light from the doors and the fire did not reach. Bonnie, feeling lonesome, went over and sat near John by the fire.

“I saw something,” Ora said. “Something white way back in the laurel thicket. And hit moved.”

“Tell about it,” Emma urged.

“Late one evening,” Ora said, talking mostly to Jennie, “Frank McClure and Jim McClure dared Emma and me to go up and see the ghost. It was just before church one evening. And we went.”

Emma interrupted. “But when we got just below I was too scared to go any further.”

Ora went right on. “The still was above the thicket in a little cove. The thicket was alongside a trail high up on the mountain. Hit was a dark thicket. The leaves were high on top and under were black limbs. Up above, the leaves rustled in the wind, but under where the dark limbs were hit was all quiet like church at night when the preacher is about to make a prayer.

“We got there and stood just outside the thicket with me standing between the two boys shivering and hoping I wouldn't see what I had come to see. And while we watched something white rose up and moved around between the black limbs of laurel, something long and white.”

Jennie Martin looked over her shoulder into the dark corner of the room. “Oh,” she gasped.

“There's a lot of shadows in thickets,” Emma said.

“I may be wrong,” Ora was not one to press too far. “I said so then, and I'll say it now. But I wouldn't go there by myself. It was a Tate still,” she explained to Jennie, “and old man Tate was killed up there by the Law. People said hit was his ghost.”

“Do you believe the dead come back?” Jennie asked.

Ora answered, “I've heard of visitations.”

“I've got a husband and three young ones in the burying ground,” Emma said. “And they've never come back.”

“Sometimes they have to walk where they're laid,” Ora told her.

“I declare,” Jennie sighed. “I'm glad Jim's a-coming for me to-night. I'd be plumb scared to go home by myself.”

“Well,” Emma wanted to comfort Jennie. “I've never seen anything. Hit may be that ghosts walk. But maybe they don't. Maybe what Ora saw was a shadow, or one of Tate's sheep.”

“How's Granma Wesley?” Ora asked Jennie.

“She's still in the bed with her rheumatic fever,” Jennie answered. The Wesleys were her near neighbors in Possum Hollow. “She says hit's a sure sign of a hard winter, her getting the fever so soon.”

“She'll never live to finish that coverlet,” Ora said.

Over at the Wesleys, under a shed joined to the cabin, there was a frame for weaving. The treadles were worn, for the frame had belonged to the first Wesleys who had settled in the mountains no one knew how many years before. In the cabin by the fireplace was a spinning wheel. Granma Wesley owned two sheep and she planned to finish a coverlet from their wool before she died. Each year she sheared the animals herself, combed the wool and spun it into thread for the loom. In the summer on a clear day anyone passing through Possum Hollow near enough to the cabin could hear the loom. Everyone knew about Granma Wesley's sheep and her great wish to finish the coverlet before she died.

“Pore old woman,” Emma said. “I hope she'll finish. She'll never rest quiet in her grave unless she does.”

“Every year she gets the fever sooner than the year before,” Ora said. “Hit looks bad.”

Jennie went back to something she had said before. “She says hit's a sign of a hard winter—that she's laid up so early.”

“We've had mighty light weather so far,” Ora said. “But maybe she's right. You never can tell what the Lord will send.”

G
RANMA
W
ESLEY
'
S
prophecy came true. That winter was the worst in years. And the cold was harder to bear because the fall had been so balmy and spring-like. Heavy snows kept the ground covered. Food became scarce. To make matters worse, the Swains came down on credit at the store. Hal would possibly have helped his neighbors, but Sally, his wife, would not allow it. She said they could not support the whole community. If they gave credit, the money would never be paid back. What she said was true. Yet there was a hushed up resentment felt at her and at Hal. Everyone knew they and their children had enough, while others were close to starvation.

For some time the McClures had potatoes, and as long as the shot lasted there was an occasional rabbit. Then the shot gave out, and one day Emma had to tell the others that the last potato had been eaten. It had been hard for her to believe this. She had got down into the trench and felt in every corner, hoping she might find some small ones hidden in the straw. There was not a single potato left.

Now there was only one hope for food. Granpap and the boys dragged themselves out of the cabin each day and waded through the snow looking for rabbit tracks. There was no ammunition for the guns, and the dogs were too weak from hunger to be of any use. One day they did track a rabbit. Kirk went ahead of the others. He had a piece of knotted pine wood in his hand. Kirk was swifter than Granpap and Basil though they tried to keep up. When they had their usual strength either Kirk or Basil could have run a rabbit down in the snow and killed it with a stick. But it was different now. Kirk felt ashamed and angry that he could not outrun the little animal that was handicapped by the deep snow into which its hind legs sunk each time it leaped. The little cotton tail flying up and down before him seemed to mock at his weakness. Too exhausted to follow any further he flung the stick after the little animal. The stick fell far away from the rabbit, and with a final leap the animal disappeared in the woods. Kirk stood in the snow and called out every vile name he knew after the rabbit. And when he turned around and saw Granpap and Basil behind him watching, he cursed them. Granpap took up a double handful of snow and threw it deliberately into Kirk's face. In an instant Kirk was on the old man like a wildcat and they wallowed together in the snow. It did not take long for this sudden spurt of nervous energy to wear itself out. When Basil had got them apart they lay in the snow side by side without moving. Only they breathed with heavy nervous breaths, like sobs.

They walked back to the cabin slowly. It was an effort for Granpap and Kirk to lift their feet. Basil, who had a little energy left, walked ahead. Kirk was glad for him to be the first to show Emma and the children their empty hands. For the past few days he had wanted never to return to the cabin, because there he must see Emma's eyes dart to his hands.

At the cabin Emma watched the young ones grow thinner. She saw John's brows knit as they had done since he was a baby when he was in pain. For the first time John knew what it meant to have pains in his belly because it was empty. He had been hungry before for a day perhaps, but Granpap had always managed to provide something. Now his belly had been empty for three days. The pains were grasshoppers jumping from one blade of grass to another. They hopped from one place to another in his belly and each time they lit a sharp pain struck him. Bonnie felt the pains. She sat in a corner with her arms pressed tightly over her belly. She was trying to hold the grasshoppers from jumping. Emma watched them. There was nothing for her to do but watch. Her eyes were bright like small kerosene lamps with reflectors behind them. And the lamps gleamed out at the children and at Granpap and the boys when they came from the woods. She was ready and waiting to get up and cook whatever they brought in. But they brought nothing.

They could not go to Ora's for help, for the other McClures were cleaned out and there they had more mouths to feed. During this time neighbors kept away from neighbors as if they were afraid or ashamed to show each other their misery.

Only in Possum Hollow there was food for a little while. For Sam Wesley killed Granma Wesley's precious sheep. They were old and tough, but the meat, boiled for a day in the wash pot, saved the family. The Martins got a share, and other neighbors who were closer than the McClures, who were divided from the people around Swain's Crossing by the snow-covered summit of Thunderhead. Granma Wesley, lying in bed, knew nothing of the slaughter of the sheep. If she lasted out the winter Sam would tell her when it was necessary. They fed her soup from the meat, and Sam told Jim Martin he had lied until his God could never forgive him about the source of the juice Granma had swallowed.

One morning Emma opened the door and found instead of the dark made by clouds the bright light of the sun. Her weak eyes closed to shut out the glare of the sun on snow, and she went inside the cabin. It was good to have the sun, but at present she was not able to bear the sudden change. By nightfall much of the snow had melted. And it seemed that the sun brought good luck. For the next morning Frank McClure walked over in the slush to pass word that Swain was giving credit. One slab of fat-back, a half sack of meal, and a round of shot to every family.

The question was, who would go for the food. Frank McClure was already exhausted with his four-mile walk across the mountains. He brought good news. Yet those who received it sat without a word at first. They sat as they had been sitting for the past two days, listlessly around the fire, except when one of them had dragged out for wood.

“Well,” Emma said at last. “It looks as if we can't meet our good fortune.”

“Hit's late coming,” Granpap told her.