To Make My Bread (16 page)

Emma heard. “Better look out for Minnie,” she said.

Kirk looked at her. “Look out for Minnie?” he repeated.

Emma was silent.

“Be ye jealous because Minnie's got a man and you not?” Kirk asked. His quiet voice hit her like a fist between the eyes.

“Did Minnie tell ye to say that?” she asked, but there was no real strength in her voice. Kirk turned away from her face. “I can take care of Minnie,” he mumbled.

Emma thought over the words Kirk had spoken. Was she jealous? Was that the reason she had sent Sam McEachern away? She could say to herself it was not true. Partly, yes. Women as well as men had jealous natures and no one could tell where or when they would come out. But if she was jealous it was chiefly for Kirk's safety. She thought about it all again that evening after supper when Kirk sat over Minnie at the fire, reaching to push her throat up so he could kiss under her chin. She wondered, sitting across from them with the baby in her arms, if Kirk thought he was making her jealous. If he did he was not trying to save her any pain. Perhaps he thought of her, for he got up and said, “Come to bed, Minnie,” and pulled at Minnie's hand. And the girl went, hanging down her head like a virgin going to her marriage bed.

As the days went by and Kirk was more at home Minnie became so contrary it was surprising that even Kirk could bear with her. At times she would make John sleep with Kirk while she took his bed. At others she would sleep all night in front of the fire, keeping it going, so by morning all the wood was gone and Emma must nag at John to cut more or go out and cut it herself.

One Monday in January when Kirk and John had gone up South Trail to shoot some meat Minnie picked up her hat and coat and started out the door.

“Where ye going?” Emma asked her.

“To the settlement.” Minnie hung her head.

“What for?” Emma knew she was nagging. This was Kirk's business and she knew what Kirk thought of an interfering woman. Yet she couldn't stop. At least she could be friendly and perhaps Minnie would be friendly, too.

“There's no call for ye t' go t' the settlement,” she said persuasively. “Sit down, Minnie.”

“I got to go,” Minnie said.

“Who'll feed the young one?” Emma asked.

“He's just fed. I'll be back come nightfall.”

Minnie was so determined to go Emma was forced to give in. She left the baby to Bonnie all day. In the afternoon when it cried Emma boiled the fat end of the meat—all that was left—and Bonnie let the child suck on that.

Kirk and John came in with two rabbits. Kirk looked at the empty chair by the fire where Minnie usually sat. “Where's Minnie?” he asked.

“Gone to the settlement.”

“What for?”

“No telling.”

“Do you know?” Kirk asked Bonnie.

“She said she had to,” Bonnie answered.

Without a word and with the gun still in his hand Kirk walked to the door and out along the trail. When Bonnie was in bed and John, worn out from hunting and cleaning the rabbits, was asleep by the fire, Emma knelt down by the bed and prayed. She asked that Kirk would come back safe. He could have Minnie and keep her if she ruined him—if only he came back. She promised to be kind to Minnie so the girl would not wish to leave the cabin again.

It seemed a direct answer to her prayer when Minnie and Kirk walked into the cabin that night. They drew up to the fire for warmth, but neither of them spoke to Emma of what had happened. Later Ora told Emma what Frank McClure had told her. Kirk had found Minnie at the store sitting by the stove with Sam McEachern on a box beside her. Kirk and Minnie had quarreled behind the store counter, for Minnie refused to go back with Kirk. Then Jim Hawkins came in out of the night. And Minnie slipped through the back door with Kirk.

Emma had made a promise that night, and she would not lie to her God. After that Minnie came and went without Emma's watchful eyes measuring her footsteps. The girl would be gone whole days. She took the short cut that led over Barren She Mountain to Sam McEachern's bachelor cabin, and came back looking flushed and pretty in time for supper. Emma said not a word. She and Bonnie washed out an old bottle that had held Granpap's drink and warmed some milk that Emma had pressed out of the almost dry bag of the cow. They tied a small piece of cloth over the top of the bottle and made a hole in the center. Through this the baby could get the milk. It was not a very good substitute for Minnie and the baby fretted. But at least when Minnie was there she gave him all the milk he wanted.

Emma wondered at Kirk. He was gone during most of the days but came back every night. Sometimes he was drunk. She did not know that the night Kirk brought Minnie from the store those two had made a queer sort of bargain. Kirk was to leave Minnie alone during the day and she was to be his at night. Before the baby came, while Kirk was sure of Minnie, he had been at peace for he knew that Minnie would be waiting for him at the cabin whenever he returned. Since the child was born many things had changed. Minnie was ugly and dissatisfied. And then she had left him. He could never forget the desolation of coming back that night and finding Minnie's place at the fire empty. It was like death to come in and find her gone. So he made the bargain with her. She could go to the settlement as much as she pleased in the day, but at night she must be at the cabin when he returned.

He suspected that Minnie was unfaithful, though he would not allow the suspicion to come to a head. Yet he watched Sam McEachern. He was doing odd jobs for Swain and could not be on Sam's track all the time. So long as Sam was at the settlement Kirk was like a hound, always trying to smell him out. If Minnie met Sam it was at his cabin, and Kirk kept away from that place as if it held someone with a horrible disease. If he met a neighbor and said, “Have you seen Sam?” and they answered, “No, he must be over at his cabin,” then the unrest and pain stayed with Kirk all day. But if the person he asked said, “I saw Sam over at Two Forks,” or, “Sam has took out a load,” then he could be at peace. The other man became a sort of partner to him, almost as close as a wife. Without Sam he was miserable. In his presence, or if he knew just where Sam could be found, alone, he was happy. He became haggard and ill from the strain of watching. Most of the money he made was spent on drink, and he ran up credit at Swain's for presents to take back to the cabin for Minnie.

About this time Emma needed some new soft cloth. Bonnie was getting older and
it
had come upon her. For herself Emma could do with any rag that came along, but for Bonnie she wanted the soft cloth. If she went to the store Hal Swain would probably give the cloth on credit. Minnie was at the cabin that day. She had gone to the settlement three days running. Emma suspected from the girl's actions that she had been disappointed in some way. Instead of coming home flushed and excited, she was irritated. Sam McEachern had promised when he got enough money to take Minnie away and she had been ready to go any time. But for three days she had found his cabin empty. So Minnie was sulking by the fire when Emma started out for Swain's.

When she was halfway down the gorge leading to Possum Hollow, Emma saw a horse and rider coming up the trail. The man on the horse was Sam McEachern. He had a sprig of balsam in his hat as if he was a beau going to meet his sweetheart.

Emma waited, standing full in the middle of the trail.

“Where be ye going, Sam?” she asked, looking up into his face.

Sam was not in the best sort of humor. His woman in Leesville, a girl who worked in the factory there, had tired of waiting for him, and during this time when he was with Minnie she married one of the mill hands. She was a pretty girl and Sam had thought she was his own to do with as he pleased. It fretted him that he was not as important to her as he had thought. He was going to see Minnie and it did not help him to a better state of mind to meet Emma on the road. But his voice was quiet and suave when he answered her.

“Just a-riding over toward South Ridge, Emma,” he said.

“Be ye going to stop on the way?” Emma asked.

“Maybe,” Sam answered her. “The trail's free, ain't it?”

He gave the horse a punch in the belly with his feet and it swerved around Emma. One of Sam's feet in the stirrup scraped her shoulder. How she hated him with his horse and gun and power to ride over her, his power to ride over Kirk. This matter must be settled, she said to herself as she turned to watch the man riding so unconcernedly up the trail. Even the horse's rump as it moved sideways in the trot seemed to mock at her. She was finished with being humble. For a long time she had humbled herself before Minnie, trying to make her happy and contented. She and Kirk had humbled themselves long enough before those two. Emma turned her back on Swain's and followed the horse up the trail, back toward the cabin.

From the spring the cabin looked deserted. Perhaps she had hurried back for nothing. Perhaps Sam was not coming here, but was paying a visit to his brother at the South Ridge settlement.

John came to the door to meet her. He had Granpap's gun in his hands. Bonnie was standing in the middle of the floor holding the baby. It was crying out loud in long wails and then sucking in its breath.

Emma looked at the hearth over John's head. No one was sitting there.

“Where's Minnie?” she asked. Then she saw that Bonnie was crying. It was her breath that was making the thick sucking noise. John looked at Emma with a long heavy inquiring look. He walked over to the south door and stood there watching.

“What is hit, Johnny?” Emma asked.

“Kirk,” John said over his shoulder.

Emma went to him. “Where's Kirk?” she demanded.

“Up there,” John said, nodding up at the South Trail.

“Who else?”

“
He
came. They saw Kirk coming and rode off.”

Sam McEachern.

“Kirk came over the short trail. He got his gun and went. He told me to stay here.”

“Come,” Emma said and walked out of the door. They had got only as far as the cow shed when the shots came. One came and then two close together. Emma began to run. John kept just behind her, bending low to keep the gun from hitting against the bushes. The bushes caught Emma's dress and flew back in John's face. He bent his head, receiving them against his heavy hair. With his eyes and feet he followed Emma's feet. He could see them moving just ahead on the path. She panted in long heavy sobs of breath. John panted behind her. They were like rabbits with hounds behind them, only their danger and dread lay in front.

Far up on the edge of a bald spot they found Kirk. He had fallen back against some laurel bushes and broken their branches. One branch full of dark green leaves came up between his legs and covered his face. Emma broke away the branch with a thin snap and threw it out of her way. She bent over Kirk and tore at his shirt. With a sudden movement she put both hands on Kirk's shoulders and laid her cheek on his breast. The cheek came away covered with blood.

“He's dead,” she said abruptly. Then she repeated it in a louder tone as if she must make John hear. “He's dead!”

John wanted to laugh. Emma was excited. Kirk was hurt, certainly. The blood was there. But they would bind up his wounds and soon he would come to, as he had before when he and Basil had fought.

“Ain't it a pity?” Emma said. She felt Kirk's arms and legs, and began to knead them as if in that way she could get life back into them. “Ain't it a pity?” she kept repeating. For the first time John looked into Kirk's face. The mouth was open, and the eyes looked straight up at John. The boy thought, “Why, he's a-looking at me.” When he looked closer he saw that the pupils did not move. They were staring. He remembered the story about the frozen yearling. Its eyes were open and it stared at a laurel bush that grew out of the mountain. Its eyes were open and it was dead. John stooped by Emma and felt Kirk's face. The flesh was soft, but it did not feel alive. The jaws resisted his fingers. For a moment the face repulsed him. He lifted his fingers away and dug them into the earth as if he was grabbling for potatoes. Tears came out of his eyes and ran into his mouth, and he heard himself sobbing. Yet the sobbing seemed to come from up the trail, and not from his own mouth. Emma was not crying.

“We've got to get him back,” she said to John. He paid no attention to her.

“We've got to get him back,' she repeated to John and shook him. She was impatient because he did not understand at once.

They tried to lift the body and drag it down the trail. But the head leaned against Emma's breast and made her weak, so she had to lay it down again.

“You go,” she said to John, “and get Frank McClure and Ora—and send for Fraser.” She was panting after the exertion.

The sun had gone down when John came with Frank and Ora. Frank had a pine torch to light up the darkness. They found Emma sitting on the ground beside Kirk. She had laid him out straight and in the light from the pine torch he looked asleep. Emma sat stiffly beside him. She was stiff with cold. Ora and John helped her to her feet. She had difficulty in standing and at first they almost had to lift her down the trail. Frank stayed behind to wait for Fraser and Jesse. Young Frank had gone for them to help bring the body back to the cabin.

E
MMA
begged her neighbors to help her lay Kirk away in the regular burying ground. It would have been easier to lay him somewhere out in the clearing, for the trail was hard from the winter cold and there were places where the water that flowed over the trail from springs in the side of the mountain was frozen into ice. But Ora said if Emma, who was in sorrow, wanted Kirk laid away over the mountain, they should not be backward about helping her to have her wish.

The men knocked a coffin together from the floor of the passageway. Inside the coffin was smooth where many feet had walked over the passageway. The outside was rough with bark and the marks of the ax. The coffin was in the room on the floor. On the day of the burial Ora took the baby to her cabin and left it for her Sally to care for. Emma and the two children looked at Kirk for a last time before Frank nailed the cover down. Emma had lined the box with one of the new quilts and put another under Kirk's head, so he lay as if he was in bed asleep. But John could still feel in his finger tips the stiffness of Kirk's face that meant he was dead and not asleep. And his brother's attention was gone. The face, with the eyes closed now, was indifferent and cold, like a distant mountain covered with snow. And like the bare trees on the mountain it looked stripped. John felt, “It's stark naked.” And an impulse came up in him to cover the face. But Frank was waiting with the boards to cover it.