To Make My Bread (5 page)

Kirk got up slowly. He took his old felt hat down from the wall and buttoned his shirt at the neck. They watched him go. They were still listless. The hope had not got into them, really.

Later Frank recovered a little and got up to go. Granpap and Basil went with him. They met Kirk just on the other side of Thunderhead. He had stopped on the trail, and was very sick from some crackers he had eaten at the store. Beside him was the food for the two families. And inside the meal sacks were two big soupbones. Swain had slaughtered a steer. There was very little meat on the bones, but at least the marrow would make enough flavor for soup. Frank left them at the fork of his trail and walked down carrying his part of the raw food.

Hearing that Kirk had been sick from the crackers, Emma made them all wait for soup. Her eyes glistened as she looked at the food. Before they had shone with a cold hard spark. Now they glistened warmly. She looked at the children warmly. For the last two days she had almost hated them, because she could do nothing to help them in their misery.

Long before all the power had been cooked from the bone she served the soup. She was forced to do this. For as soon as the soup began to send out an odor of cooked meat the faces in the cabin drew closer to the pot and hung over it. She was dizzy with hunger, and she saw the faces in a sort of daze as they moved closer to the pot. When the last drop of soup had been gulped down, Granpap took the bone from the pot. He laid it on the table and taking his ax from the corner tried to crush the bone. He was too weak to raise the ax very high, and it bounded off. The slippery bone fell to the floor. Everyone was watching Granpap. Their hunger was still very strong. And the dogs were watching. They pounced on the bone and would have taken it, but Kirk and Basil kicked them off. Granpap motioned the two boys away and raised his ax over the bone that lay on the floor. This time he smashed the bone in pieces, and there was enough for all of them. For some time after there was the sound of people sucking at bones, and when they were finished the dogs took what was left. They crunched with their sharper teeth and in their turn sucked at the edges.

Emma cooked the fatback and made corn pones. Then Granpap and the boys were strong enough to use the shot Kirk had brought from Swain's. As long as that lasted they would have meat.

T
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dogs, lean from the winter, dug into mole hills and ate scraps from the rabbits, so they grew a shade less scrawny. Plott, Granpap's bitch, was big with puppies. One day before light she woke them up with her howling and before John and Bonnie could reach her four puppies were born. Three were dead. The fourth John and Bonnie took for their own. They named it Georgy after the place outside where Granpap had fought when he was a boy.

John and Bonnie nursed the little furry pup as they sat around the fire at night. Though the spring was balmy as the fall had been, the nights were still frosty. Now they were all able to look back on the hard days and talk about them. The cold winter reminded Granpap and Emma of the great blizzard. John envied Kirk and Basil, for they remembered seeing the frozen cattle. The night of that storm some twenty frightened cattle, blinded by the snow, rushed across Swain's meadow until the rocky cliff of Barren She Mountain stopped them.

Jim Hawkins, who lived on the meadow side of Laurel Creek, had left Swain's store just in time, for as he reached his cabin the terrible blizzard began. He heard the animals scream. Two days later when people could travel through the snow, word went around that there was a sight to be seen in Swain's meadow. Granpap and the boys went with Frank McClure. They saw the frozen animals piled up against the cliff, like a monument carved out of the rock. Below was a mass of twisted legs, curved backs and upturned bellies frozen stiff together. On this mass were two yearlings. One of them had bitten into the neck of its brother. The bitten head leaned against the rock cliff, and its frozen eyes stared wide open at a laurel bush growing out of a crack in the rock just above. The mouth of the yearling, Granpap said, was wide open and the teeth showed. It seemed to be laughing at the others below.

The carefree days and evenings did not last very long. The shot gave out and about the same time Emma reached the bottom of the meal bag. There were other things needed at this time—seed and a steer for plowing. Granpap appealed to Swain. What he got was two pounds of meal—a back-door gift—but no credit. Granpap took the meal gratefully, but halfway back to the cabin he began to get angry at himself and at Swain. He was willing to pay debts. Hal knew he would pay what he owed. There and then he made up his mind that he would get some money and pay Hal for the little two pounds of meal, the back-door gift.

He carried the meal to Emma, and without waiting for a taste of corn pone, started away again. Emma wanted to know where he was going. Granpap did not answer. It was not necessary for Emma to know he was going to the McEacherns.

He was away three days. It took him this long to drive a load of wood far down the mountains to the outside. Under the wood there were some jugs and he carried them to a certain place, the back door of a cheap restaurant in Leesville. There he unloaded the wagon after dark and received some money, of which Bud and Sam gave him a small part. He took what the McEacherns offered to give, and it was not much. They were true to the promise they had made before, and added a bottle of drink to the money.

The old man stopped by Swain's and bought the necessary supplies. There were shot in his jeans and he could feel their weight. It made him proud and confident to have the shot there, though some of his pride and confidence came from the drink out of Sam's bottle. When Granpap left the store a steer hired from Swain plodded along behind him. Along the way he found it necessary to drink often. By the time he reached the cabin the bottle was empty. No one was waiting in front of the cabin. Granpap left the steer hitched outside and lifted the supplies into the room. Emma came in the back door and watched the old man trying to place them on the table.

“So ye're back,” she said. Granpap let the bundles slide to the floor. He looked around for the others. It was important for them all to know what he had done.

“They are over to Ora's,” Emma said, answering his look.

“I made money, Emma,” Granpap said. “And I paid Hal Swain for his back-door meal. And I bought more and have got money left ” He took five nickels from his pocket and shook them in his hand. They clinked together and made a sound of big money. It sounded as if there was a fortune done up in his big fist. He walked unsteadily to the fireplace and held the money over the gourd. He tried to make the gesture big and strong, but it ended up wavering and uncertain. The coins he dropped from his hand fell to the floor and rolled away. They struck the floor with flat sounds as if they were of no account.

“Sit down, Pap. Do sit down,” Emma said.

“Ain't ye glad, Emma?”

“Yes, I'm glad. I'm proud we've got so much.” Emma looked up from the floor where she was searching for the lost pieces of change. “Yes, I'm glad,” she repeated. “But I wish you would sit down.”

Granpap walked to Emma and stood above her. He balanced backward and forward on his toes first, and then on his heels. She thought for a moment that he was going to fall on her, and drew back, sitting on her heels.

“Hal Swain didn't want to take the money for the meal,” Granpap said. “He said no, and just then Sally came in, and I said, ‘Sally, here's some money I owe you,' and she took it. So he's paid. Even to the uttermost farthing,” Granpap roared out as the preacher sometimes did in church.

Emma left her search for the precious money. She took Granpap's arm and led him resolutely to the bed. In a few moments he was asleep, and she was able to find the fifth nickel that had rolled under the water bucket where it stood over a crack.

The next afternoon Granpap was out with Basil plowing up the ground. Emma had Bonnie and John in front of the cabin, helping to plant gourd seed. Granpap had slept off his drinks. He walked with plenty of assurance as he came around the cabin with Basil. It was almost time for supper.

“Kirk back yet?” Granpap asked. No one answered. It was clear that Kirk was not there. He had walked to the blacksmith's to get a metal ring put on a whittled sapling end for a bull tongue to be used in planting.

“Sure enough, then,” Granpap said, and he looked slyly at Emma. “He's gone to get a look at Minnie.”

“Maybe,” Emma said. And suddenly she left the gourd place and spoke sharply to Bonnie. “Now, Bonnie, you come on in. It's about time we made supper.”

As Granpap expected, Kirk came back by the short trail. Along with the bull tongue he brought three horseshoes and an iron rod beaten into a point at one end.

“Did ye see Minnie?” Granpap asked Kirk. John was sitting on the log step of the cabin. He saw that in answer to Granpap's baiting Kirk only brought the ax down harder on the iron stob he was knocking into the hard ground.

Basil spoke up. “Did ye see Minnie?” he asked Kirk.

“If I did it's none of your worry,” Kirk grunted.

“If you did it was on the sly,” Basil said. Which was probably true. Even John knew that Minnie Hawkins' pap kept all the boys off his sixteen-year-old daughter. He would not let them come within rocking distance of the cabin.

“You're a liar,” Kirk said. John saw Kirk's fists clench and the anger in his brother's voice made the blood run up in his head. It made him want to get up and fight.

Kirk edged up to Basil. Both the boys had their fists ready. They swayed toward each other like two saplings in a high wind.

“Kirk,” Granpap said. At the sound in Granpap's voice Kirk turned as if a wildcat had jumped on him from behind.

Granpap was looking toward Thunderhead. Below the high mountain on the second hill a man's figure stumped down the open trail. Very quietly Granpap sat down on the woodblock and the boys leaned against the cabin. There was a stillness, a quick hush. Even the mountains seemed to be holding back. The dogs lay on the ground inert in the late afternoon sunshine. They had not yet scented the stranger.

John was still like the others; and like them his muscles were tense. He knew, as they knew, this was no kin or person known coming down to them. Yet Granpap on his woodblock and the boys leaning against the cabin looked quiet and gentle, as if the stranger from the trail had sent down a spell that put them all to sleep.

The man disappeared behind a hill. As he came over the last rise and down the last slope the low sun shone on him slantwise from the west and made him black against the tree trunks and the hillside. There was no face to be seen, only on the back a large burden that made the legs stump down slowly and carefully along the trail.

The dogs ran ahead and met the stranger at the spring. Their barking broke the spell. Granpap moved.

“Call the dogs, Kirk,” he said. And Kirk went forward. Before he reached the spring, the stranger had let the pack slide from his back. He held it in front of him on the ground. Looking up through the hair that dangled in front of his eyes, John saw that the man was afraid of the dogs. And he smiled in himself. Then he looked again straight at the man. For there was something unusual about him, something astonishing. His shoulders had grown all awry. They were not the naturally bowed shoulders of people like Granpap and Emma who have leaned over a plow and hoe or a fireplace all their lives. There was a hump on the left side, like another head covered over with the shirt.

“It's Small Hardy, a peddler,” Kirk said, coming back with the dogs in front and the stranger not far behind.

Small Hardy set his pack on the ground and said Howdy to Granpap.

“Sit ye down,” Granpap told him and the man sat on the ground.

There was a silence.

“Come from far?” Granpap asked.

“From the towns,” Hardy said. He wiped his face with a red handkerchief. When he took off his soft hat a wide forehead showed with hair growing far back. The head looked like a hill, bald on one side with trees growing halfway down on the other.

“Going far?” Granpap asked.

“I'm aiming for Georgy,” the hump-back said. “They tell me you know the best trails.”

Granpap looked at the peddler suspiciously. The little man looked back. He seemed to be holding in words, as if he liked to talk, but held back because of the company he was in.

“You want steep trails or easy ones?” Granpap asked and he watched Hardy.

“Give me the easy ones,” Hardy said. Granpap seemed to be satisfied.

“Stay the night,” he told the peddler.

“If it won't put you out,” Small Hardy said.

“Emma,” Granpap called. Emma and Bonnie were already standing in the door. Emma answered.

“The stranger's staying,” Granpap said.

“He's welcome,” Emma spoke up, “to what we have.”

John wished to feel the pack on the ground by Small Hardy. It had the most curious shapes. And Small Hardy with the hump and his bulging pockets was like another pack himself, full of mysterious and unknown things. John edged closer to them. Perhaps he could reach out and touch.

Just then Georgy, the puppy he and Bonnie loved, came trotting into the front yard.

“Yours?” Hardy turned around and asked John. The question was so unexpected John drew back from the little man, who was only trying to make himself pleasant.

“Yes,” John said, looking at Hardy from under his lids.

“Want to sell?”

“Sell?”

“I could use the skin,” Hardy said, smiling.

Without answering John picked up the puppy and carried him into the house. He hated the little man, who showed up evil wanting to skin his dog. Yet John was still curious about the packs and hung around the door watching. But he held the dog in his arms. Presently the men came in from the yard and gathered around the fire.