To Make My Bread (13 page)

Sally called “Ant'ny” from behind the cabin and when the boys who were in front of Ora and Emma heard they called back “Over!” and the ball came bouncing over the roof because Sally could never learn to throw it high. Young Frank caught it and the three boys scurried around the house so that Young Frank could hit one of the other side. If he did this then the person who was hit would be his captive.

Emma could hear Bonnie laughing before she came running around the right side of the cabin. Her hair was down and flying back behind her. She was the first. Behind her came Sally and then the four young McClures, the last toddling along on his short legs. He did not look very formidable, but he got in Frank's way just as he was throwing the ball at Sally, and the ball missed. The dogs ran in circles barking at the children, and with their own pleasure in the excitement. And the children laughed and shouted. Sally and Bonnie yelled at Frank.

“You're no good.”

“You couldn't hit a dead possum.”

“Look at that little toddler,” Ora said, pointing to her next to youngest. “Running along, a-laughing—not knowing that trouble and sorrow are ahead of him.”

“Hit's best they don't know,” Emma said. She was glad to see John and Bonnie playing—yet she felt a disappointment that they could be so happy when they knew that Granpap might be put away for a long time if the trial went against him. They could forget so easily.

About dark Emma called the children to go home.

“Kirk might be till to-morrow,” she told Ora.

“You're welcome to stay,” Ora said.

“I know.” And Emma did know. But she wanted to get back to the cabin where she was on her own familiar ground. On the trail she walked along slowly. John and Bonnie kept close to her and she felt warmed because it seemed they were remembering Granpap again, though they did not speak. The rustling and panting of the dogs chasing imaginary animals in the bushes made sound for company, and this was enough. She did not wish to talk.

At the cabin Bonnie and John would not go to bed. Emma sat down on the door log.

“Get my shawl, then,” she told Bonnie, “and bring a quilt.”

She was still hoping to see Kirk and Granpap come along, Granpap riding the horse and Kirk walking behind. They were like this in her mind while she tucked the children up in the quilt. The shawl she drew close around her shoulders and held it with her arms crossed. Bonnie leaned against her, and on the other side of Bonnie John sat upright against the house with the corner of the quilt behind him.

Presently Emma's tongue was loosened. She had tired of peering into the dark and listening for a sound up the trail.

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “Granpap used to tell about the Civil War.” It comforted her to think of her pap back there and to talk about him. “He used to say as far as he knew there wasn't any civil kind of war. Not that he knew about.

“He said they was miserable, just miserable. He fought most two years. The last year there was a rich man's son, one of them that owned slaves before they was freed, and he was one of their army and only sixteen. He had a slave to take care of him like a nurse. And the slave had stayed on, taking care of the boy even after he knew he was freed. By that time, toward the end of the war, nobody, rich or poor had anything to eat.

“The soldiers used to sit around a campfire at night and the rich man's son had a book called ‘Lee's Miserables.' He'd read to them. The General that owned the army was named Lee. And after hearing the book the soldiers called themselves Lee's Miserables. Granpap said he used to get s' hungry . . . . Once he was a-scouting and he came across a little nigger. The little nigger was eating a piece of cornbread. Granpap said snot was running from the little nigger's nose on the bread. But Granpap hadn't eaten a thing for two days. He took the bread away from the little nigger and ate it. And it was the best meal, he said, he ever had.”

Bonnie raised up. She was almost asleep. Perhaps she had been asleep. She had heard the story before. But so had John heard it. Yet he was never tired of hearing it again, or of asking his own questions.

“Did he come?” Bonnie asked.

“No, but maybe he will. Maybe hit's why Kirk's s' late. They had to take turns one a-walking and the other a-riding.”

About daybreak Kirk returned. Emma was propped up against the door and Bonnie was lying against her. John had stretched out on the ground with only a piece of the quilt over him. They were all wet with dew. Emma waked up at once. At once she looked into the dark behind Kirk.

“Ye alone, Kirk?”

“Yes, Ma.” Kirk's voice came lost and hollow from the half dark.

“Come in and have coffee,” Emma said. The strain was over and she could wait to hear the rest. Granpap had been put away.

Kirk brought in wood. His head hanging with sleep, John followed Kirk to the woodpile and back again. Bonnie stayed close to Emma. When the fire was built up they sat around it to warm up while the coffee boiled.

“He got two years,” Kirk said.

“Two years,” Emma repeated. “Hit's s' long.”

“He stood up in court and talked to the judge,” Kirk said. “He said he'd fought in the Confederacy, and he'd done his duty and had a right to make money when his folks needed money. No government could take that right away.”

“Did he say that?” Emma asked. “Right up to the judge?”

“He did,” Kirk told her. “I heard him.”

“Hit won't help him,” Emma said shrewdly. “But I'm glad he did it.”

“Hal Swain said,” Kirk told her, “he'll be out in a year. Hal Swain's in politics outside. He was acquainted with some of the men down there. He knew the judge.”

Emma looked away to the window where light was just coming in. The pot of coffee boiled over and she got up to hand the cups and pour it out.

“Did you see him after?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kirk said. “For a little.”

“Did he say anything about the McEacherns?” Emma asked.

“No.”

“I never did trust them,” Emma said. “I believe right now Pap is the one suffering for the lot. I believe they sold him out.”

“He didn't say.”

Kirk pointed to a package on the table. “He couldn't take the shirt,” he said.

Emma opened the package and held up the shirt. “I'll save hit, till he comes,” she said. But she saw that Kirk's eyes were on it.

“Maybe we'd better not—maybe you'd better have it while it's new.” She held it out to him.

“Save it for him,” Kirk said roughly and pushed her away. She saw the wanting in his face.

“Now you take hit,” she insisted putting it on his lap. “Maybe when the time comes we'll have money to get Granpap another.”

Kirk reached into his pocket. There was a rattle of change and he pulled out quite a handful and let it roll on the table into a pile. John and Bonnie watched every move of his hand. They had never seen so much money at one time.

“Neighbors and kin took up a collection,” Kirk said. “Granpap said ye must buy a cow.”

The money was there. And it was important. The cow would be important. But this direct message from Granpap was what Emma had been wanting. It was a great comfort.

Presently when Bonnie had gone to sleep and John was out getting wood she asked,

“Did ye see Basil around?”

“No.”

“Seems like he might have come down. The school ain't far, is hit?”

“Hal says about twenty miles.”

“And down hill all the way,” Emma said. “He could have walked it in the time hit takes to have a good meal.”

“Well, he wouldn't.”

“I know. He could but he wouldn't. I wish he was different.”

“He is different.”

“Different from us. I don't know where he gets what he's got. And I don't know why I don't like hit. He's steady. Not like you. You're s' reckless.”

“No more than others. No more than Granpap.”

“Granpap's not near s' reckless as he was. And maybe you'll calm down later.”

K
IRK
brought back a souvenir from outside. “When court stopped for dinner,” he said, “Granpap's case hadn't come up. I was wandering round and a man in a closed-up wagon called me. ‘Want your picture took?' he asked and I said no. He looked at me and then he said. ‘If you'll hold my horse while I get some dinner I'll do you for nothing.' So I held the horse, and he took me.”

Emma held the photograph up before her. It was not very clear. But it was Kirk with his hair slipping over his forehead, though the gay, careless look wasn't there. He was stiff, and solemn as an owl.

“Hit favors you and again it don't,” Emma said, fingering the piece of cardboard.

“Hit's me all right, Kirkland McClure. The man wrote my name on the back.”

Kirk took the picture and turned it over. Sure enough on the back was written a name.

“So that's your name written down—Kirkland McClure.” Emma spoke the name as if she was reading. Going over to the chimney shelf she put the picture against the salt gourd. While she stood there admiring it Kirk spoke some words.

“What did you say?” she asked. He repeated the words with elaborate care.

“There's a sight of room here—with two gone.”

Emma turned and faced him. What was he getting at? He wanted something of her—that she knew.

“Minnie's pap has turned her out,” Kirk said.

Emma had no word to say. It was to be expected that Minnie's pap would do just that.

“When a girl like Minnie,” Kirk said, looking at the floor, “gets out on the world there're plenty of men waiting round like buzzards over a carcase.”

“And the carcase has got to stink before the buzzards smell hit,” Emma said.

“Sure enough,” Kirk answered. “A woman can't be kind to another.”

“Ye want her—now?” Emma asked. Kirk did not answer. Emma knew the answer to that question.

“Be ye going to marry?” she asked, then.

“Come spring we'd walk down. She's too big now.”

“And her carrying another man's child,” Emma said.

“She's a gal that draws men and they take her. She needs a man to keep her from temptation.”

“Her pap tried to. He didn't seem to do hit.”

“Her pap used her bad,” Kirk said. “She needs kindness.”

Emma held to the chimney shelf. She stood up quiet and still before Kirk. What was he asking? Children didn't know. They could see only their side. Like an owl in the daytime, their eyes were open but they couldn't see. They flew by night getting what they wanted and if they were shown day things they fluttered and twisted away from seeing.

“Sam McEachern is a-hanging round her,” Kirk said.

“Let him,” Emma cracked out. “They'd do for each other.”

“Ye wouldn't turn out a hog that was going t' litter,” Kirk accused his mother. “And ye won't take in a gal.”

“I've got enough t' do with Granpap gone,” Emma said. But Kirk saw that she turned away.

“I'll help,” he told her. When Emma did not answer he walked out to where John was digging the trench clean for sweet potatoes on the south side of the cabin. Kirk took the hoe from John and began digging.

“Run along and grabble taters,” he said. John stood by the open trench. He had dug hard and long and wanted to finish.

“I ain't a-going to grabble taters for nobody,” he said to Kirk angrily. “I want that hoe.”

Kirk wouldn't get angry. “Then grabble them for yourself,” he told John. “You're going to eat them, ain't ye? Run along.” Kirk began to dig long deep strokes. “I'll be ready before you're half finished grabbling,” he said, and smiled up at John from under his hair. John had been ready to fight. There were times when Kirk had a way that made people wish to do what he wanted them to do. This was one of the times. Suddenly John was satisfied to go out and join Bonnie in the potato patch.

Bonnie was reaching down into the dirt feeling after the roots with her grimy fingers. The shallow gully between the potato hills already held a number of potatoes, slim ones, and fat bellied ones with long tails. John began on the row next Bonnie at the other end. He spread his fingers and pushed them through the dirt under the yellowing vines. It was a pleasure when his finger tips touched a root. There was a moment of excitement and suspense before the fingers closed around the potato. For no one could tell until that moment whether it would be small or large and round and worth pulling out.

Emma came from the cabin. Instead of beginning at the end of a new row she started just opposite John.

“Remember Minnie?” she asked John, looking across at him from her row. “Minnie Hawkins?”

“Yes.” John gave a tug in the dirt and brought out a fat potato. He felt it carefully, then slung it on the pile behind him. “She's little side up, big side down,” he said, not looking at Emma.

“Who told ye?”

John hesitated. “I know it,” he said.

“He wants to bring her here.” Emma jerked her head toward Kirk.

“Why?”

“He wants her.”

John could understand the sounds in Emma's voice. Now he understood that she was disturbed. But he could not make out everything. Kirk wanted Minnie and his wanting should make it right for Minnie to come. Yet Emma's voice said it was not right.

“The McClures,” Emma said, “have always been people that stuck. If Kirk takes her he'll stick. And she'll ruin him, just ruin him.”

“She's a pretty gal,” John said. He had heard them say this at church, and he felt himself that Minnie was pretty.

“Too pretty for Kirk's good. He said,” Emma went on bitterly, “I wouldn't turn out a hog if it was going to litter.”

“No,” John said, “I reckon you wouldn't.”