To Make My Bread (7 page)

“To my mind,” Jim Hawkins spoke very carefully, “hit's plumb wrong and lascivious. My gal's going to stay home with her daddy till her man comes along and takes her in marriage. If she can't get a man without sashaying around for it, then unmarried she stays.”

There was a silence after Jim Hawkins had spoken. Each man was digging down into himself, holding himself back. Jim Hawkins looked at them defiantly. He knew what was in their minds about his wife. He had found her in the back shed with a fellow who lived under South Range and he had turned the woman out and done nothing to the man. Only he kept Minnie at home, never leaving her at night except for Saturday evenings when he went to the store. And his neighbors went down in their minds remembering all this. But they kept silent.

Granpap broke up the silence. “David danced before the Lord,” he repeated. “And I ain't ashamed to play before the Lord. He can look and see there's no sin in my heart.”

“Yes,” Fraser McDonald insisted. “Hit's what's in your heart that counts. Some of the round dances I've heard tell of are wrong. That's what you might call lascivious, Jim Hawkins, a-hugging up a woman for a whole dance. But young ones or old ones a prancing around doing a Ladies' Chain or Do Si Do can't be harm.”

“There's the preacher,” Hal Swain said. Preacher Warren hitched his horse to a tree down the slope. He reached in his saddle bags, got out what he wanted, and came along to the door of the church. The men followed him in silently. They sat on the homemade benches on one side and the women and children on the other. Up front there was a table with a pitcher of water and a glass that Sally Swain had brought from the store. Sally took up almost the whole of the front bench, for she weighed over two hundred pounds. Behind the pitcher the preacher laid the big Bible he carried around with him in the saddle bag.

He was a small man from one of the settlements near a church school on the other side of North Range. During May he would come every Sunday and after that only once a month until summer was over. Standing behind the table, he gave out the words of the hymn. For such a little man he had a strong voice and led the singing. First he cleared his throat and hummed down in it to get the key.

“We'll sing to-day, ‘Come ye sinners,' ” he said and cleared his throat again. Line after line they sang with him.

Bonnie, who was good at remembering words, did not need the preacher to lay the lines out for her. She could have sung right on, having learned this one the summer before. She had a good voice. John, sitting on the other side of Emma, heard her letting it out. She lifted up her nose and sang right through it. The prayer was a long one, and John was very tired before it was over. He tried to get Bonnie's attention, but Bonnie held her eyes straight in front. She liked to listen to the sing-song of the words. John was simply not interested in them. There was another song and then the sermon.

The preacher looked down at the Bible, turned the pages over to a place at the front, cleared his throat and with head bent looked impressively from under his eyebrows. He eyed them all, men, women and children, threateningly. It was what he had seen other preachers do down in the towns. And he thought it the right manner to use with a wayward flock.

The text was, “And Abraham said, ‘Here am I, Lord.' ” He read from the Bible about Abraham being ready to sacrifice Isaac in the land of Moriah on top of a mountain. “And Abraham said, ‘Here am I, Lord,' when the Lord called him. And the Lord said Abraham must take his only son, even the son he loved, and sacrifice him to the Lord. So Abraham rose up early in the morning and cut wood and took some fire and went to the place he could see afar off, the place the Lord had told him. And up on the mountain he bound his son on the wood of an altar and took up a knife to slay him. But just in time the Lord showed Abraham a ram in a thicket so that Abraham could offer up the ram instead of his son. So the Lord blessed Abraham because he was willing to sacrifice his son that he loved.”

The preacher closed the book with a snap. “How many of you,” he asked, “can say with a clean heart, ‘Here am I, Lord'? How many, while you're working in your corn patch or sitting by your fire, or while you're dancing your Chains and Under the Garden Gates can say, ‘Here am I, Lord,' and feel that for the Lord you would sacrifice anything or anybody, your son or your dancing or your playing?

“There's one amongst you,” he went on—and waited a moment, looking around at them all. “There's one amongst you that calls figures and plays the music. He leads the young ones into sin. He's old, nearing his grave, and ought to know better. Instead of playing for dancing he'd do better making his peace with the Lord.”

Suddenly preacher Warren pointed straight at Granpap. “What will you say, John Kirkland?” He called out in a high voice.

Emma gasped. All heads turned and all eyes stared at Granpap. The old man sat up straight and looked neither to the right nor to the left. He sat there like a rock with his blue eyes narrowed. He looked between the slits at the preacher.

“What will you say,” the preacher repeated, “when the Lord calls you, John Kirkland, John Kirkland?”

Granpap stood up. “I'll say this” he answered, and John felt the bench under him shake with the sound of Granpap's big voice. “I'll say David danced before the Lord and he played on the cymbal and the lute—and if King David could then John Kirkland can. And that's between him and his Lord. Now,” Granpap said, “John Kirkland's not a-going to stay and be rebuked before his brethren.”

The preacher's hand fell to his side. Granpap edged his way past Fraser McDonald and Jim Martin into the aisle and walked to the door. What a meaning there was in the sound of his boots on the floor! How they said to the preacher at every step. “You can't dictate to John Kirkland—and you can't disgrace him before his kin and neighbors.”

Everyone was looking at the place where Granpap had gone out of the door. Their heads were turned one way—away from the preacher. Then the heads came slowly around and neighbor was looking into neighbor's eyes. Emma was not looking at anyone. She wanted to follow Granpap. Must she get up and go with everyone watching? She clasped her hands together and unclasped them, twisting the shawl in her fingers. Her indecision lasied only a second. Almost as soon as Granpap was out of the door she was on her feet.

“Come on, John,” she whispered and taking Bonnie and John by the hands, she led them out of the door.

And a queer thing happened that people talked about long afterward. Kirk McClure got up from the men's side and followed Emma. The preacher trying not to notice began, “We must be willing to sacrifice like Abraham was willing to sacrifice . . . .”

Not waiting to hear the rest, Ora McClure got up. Frank McClure met her in the aisle and they walked to the door. Behind them came their six children, for Ora had the seventh in her arms. Fraser McDonald came next and his wife. Like cattle going down to the stream to drink, all the others went until only Jim Hawkins and Basil and Minnie were left.

Talking about it afterward, Ora and Emma agreed that this could never have happened at their old settlement where few people danced, and where the preacher was better liked. And the resentment did not last long.

The next Sunday all the folks were back again just as if nothing happened. Basil was there, but the rest of Emma's family stayed at home.

E
MMA
would have gone if Granpap had not been obstinate.

“Hit's s' little,” she said to him. “Other folks have been rebuked.”

Granpap would not listen. “Hit don't take a big seed to hurt a sore tooth,” he said. “The preacher hinted at me last year and the year before and I stood it. But last Sunday was the end. I'm not a-going back till they change the preacher. Sam Wesley plays the banjo and because he's not at church he don't get a word. I'm not a-going.”

Kirk walked over toward South Ridge with his gun. John and Bonnie, remembering the story from the Bible, played Abraham and the Lord. Near the spring Bonnie sat under an apple tree. John climbed out on a limb above her and made his voice as big as possible. He called out, “Abraham, Abraham.” And Bonnie, sitting below, answered, “Here am I, Lord.” And the Lord gave Abraham instructions, sometimes being corrected by Abraham who had a better memory.

Then Bonnie would say, “Now, Isaac, we must go up the mountain for a sacrifice. Come along, Isaac, or I'll slap ye over.” Isaac was Georgy the puppy, and he was not meek and lowly, but would run away when Abraham tried to pick him up to carry him up the trail. Each time Bonnie came back, and the Lord still resting on the branch called down to her “Abraham, Abraham.” And the play began again until they were tired.

And the Lord came down from the tree.

“We ought really to sacrifice something, not play,” Bonnie said. Her eyes stretched out wide, and they looked solemn and earnest.

“What?” John asked.

“A young one.”

John looked at Bonnie. Women got big with child. But Bonnie was little and slim, seven and a half years old, not yet a woman.

“We haven't got a young one,” he said.

“Then somebody we love, like . . . like . . . Georgy.” Bonnie's voice was solemn and it became troubled and hesitant when she looked at Georgy and spoke his name. The puppy ran about at their feet in the grass. Simply the fact that he stayed close to them meant that he had confidence in their power to protect him. And they must betray his confidence.

John turned away his head. He could not bear it. He looked at Bonnie. She meant every word she had said.

“We got to sacrifice,” she insisted. “To show we love the Lord. Granpap's made the Lord mad. We got to sacrifice.”

John would not say yes. He could do the thing but he would not talk about it. He caught Georgy and held him in his arms. Bonnie could see that he was ready to go. She got the knife from the table in the cabin and lit a large piece of lightwood at the chimney.

“What are you young ones up to?” Emma asked her while she was getting the fire.

“Nothing,” Bonnie said. She was sunk down in her own life and hardly understood that Emma had spoken.

Outside John looked up toward Thunderhead. “Hit's a long way,” he said. He would not have thought it a long way at another time or for another reason, for on the south side the trail to the divide over Thunderhead was not steep or long. With Georgy inside his shirt, John walked ahead of Bonnie up the trail. He carried splinters from the woodpile. Bonnie had the fire and the knife. On the turn of the trail just under Thunderhead Bonnie came up to John.

“Let me feel of him,” she said.

The puppy wrinkled its nose at her, and sniffed at her fingers.

“Hit's soft, ain't it?”

John was ready to throw down the wood and run back with Georgy. He looked at his sister. “Hit's s' soft,” Bonnie said again. John saw that she had tears coming in her eyes. He straightened up from rubbing his face against Georgy's nose. If Bonnie cried he had to be a man. They together could do no less than Abraham who said, “Here am I” to the Lord. He could hear himself saying “Here am I” on top of Thunderhead, and the Lord would feel that John was a man after his own heart, and the Lord would bless them and all their kin.

At the divide over Thunderhead where the trail crossed they stopped to gather stones and build an altar. They built it up slowly. Just above them at the left was the peak of Thunder-head. Now it was half covered with some clouds. They might have gone up into the clouds but the cleared place at the divide was better for a fire, and it was almost the top. Bonnie could not remember whether the Bible had said Abraham went right to the top of the mountain or to a cleared place. The brush was too thick on the peak for a fire, that was certain. Thunderhead had no bald spot, nor a rocky top as some mountains had.

“There was a ram,” Bonnie said when they were nearly through building the altar, “caught in a thicket.” She looked for a thicket. No laurel grew close by and the blackberry vines were below in the valley. Perhaps they had come up too far, too far away from the thickets. Yet it had to be on a mountain.

“Maybe the Lord's in that cloud,” John said. The clouds had come down over the divide. They had become blacker and made a solemn darkness around the top of Thunderhead. The altar of rocks was already high—high enough. It sloped up. On the top they piled the splinters crossways with some dry leaves underneath.

John kept looking at the clouds. “Do you think,” he whispered to Bonnie, “he's forgotten us?” His voice now was frightened and mysterious.

“No,” Bonnie said. Her voice was low and mysterious, too, as if she was already in the presence of the Lord. “We needn't hurry too fast. Maybe he can't see us yet.”

They had forgotten a cord with which to tie up the sacrifice. John broke one of the strings that held up his jeans. Georgy squirmed in rebellion at having his feet tied together. Finally they had him there. He lay on the wood, helpless. And his eyes reproached them. His nose that sniffed so cheerfully when he was happy was quite still. Bonnie stood on one side of the altar and John sat on a rock beyond it. The knife lay on the ground between them, and by it the heavy red flame at the end of the stick of fat lightwood sent up a jet of sooty smoke toward the sooty clouds. But no voice came from the clouds telling them to look for the ram.