For a while Kirk had not heard the storm because Emma’s cries were closer than the sounds outside. But when they stopped there was the storm again, wheezing around the cabin and pushing at the door. When Granpap at last stood up he held in his hands something that looked to be a mass of blood and matter. But it was really a living thing. For as Granpap shook it the mass made a wailing sound—a sort of echo of the storm outside.
There was washing to be done, and Kirk stood and held the lamp until the old man finished. At last Granpap covered Emma where she lay exhausted on the dry side of the cold bed. Then he put the washed baby in the cradle with Bonnie to keep it warm until Emma would come to and let it suck.
CHAPTER TWO
THROUGH the summer of 1906 Granpap made mysterious journeys across the mountains. He was absent for days at a time. With the bags of corn the McEacherns had sprouted on his back, the old man climbed South Range and down again into another state. On the other side at a certain place the corn was ground and Granpap walked back again with the sweet meal. Here the mash was made into ferment and distilled.
The revenue men were thick through the mountains. If Granpap was caught with the sprouted corn he would be arrested. And he got very little money for the risk. The McEacherns took most of the money because they owned the still and peddled the liquor. That, of course, was most dangerous, for it meant going down into the outside. They had tried to persuade Granpap to peddle. But they had offered him little more money than he got for carrying the sprouted corn and mash. He had insisted that if he took the greatest risk he must get at least half the money. And they had refused. Only they promised him half a jug of liquor. This was not to be sneezed at, for the McEachern liquor was the best made in that part of the country. But Granpap enjoyed walking over the hills, though sometimes it meant climbing in the night across South Range. And he hated going to the outside, into the towns. If he did that part he must be properly paid for the risk and discomfort.
Emma knew the risks Granpap was running and each time he left the cabin for his journey she became weary and cross. For the smallest reason she threatened John with a hickory. Or she said to Bonnie, “I’ll slap ye over.” She never carried out her threats, but they made the cabin an uncomfortable place.
Hoeing time was over and it was not yet the season for shucking corn and getting the potatoes in. John and Bonnie played in the cove. They used moss and rocks for a house. Under a large walnut tree they outlined a room with rocks, and left an open space for a door through which they carefully walked each time they wished to go in or out. There was a bed made of moss. Later John added another room. Granpap was planning to add a room to their own cabin in the fall. He had promised that John might help to get the logs down from the mountain. And when the room was finished, instead of sleeping in the bed with the women while Granpap slept on the floor with Kirk and Basil, John was to sleep in the new room in one of the two homemade beds with Granpap. Emma was already preparing the tops for some new quilts from pieces she had accumulated in the old trunk. The money Granpap was earning would buy cotton for the inside of the coverings.
Whenever John thought of the two new experiences ahead of him a feeling of excitement ran through him. In anticipation of the events he outlined the other room under the tree with rocks and made a large bed of moss for himself. While he was building he spat frequently, like a man.
Something happened about this time that made the two children keep close to the cabin. They had lost interest in the play cabin and went further away from the clearing. Emma had warned them about rattlers, and both knew the sound of a diamond back. A skin hung on the wall of the cabin beside Granpap’s fiddle. There was a long finger’s length of rattles. If the skin was shaken hard enough the queer shaped little compartments made their peculiar sound.
Stories of people getting snake-bit were swapped across the hearth when Ora and Frank McClure were at the cabin, or Jennie Martin and her husband. There were discussions about the best cure. Ora said rattle-snake plant would cure, if the juice was put on with the right words. Strong whisky applied inside and out was good. Granpap had known people in Georgy to use equal parts of tobacco, onion and salt made into a poultice. The best thing to do was to cut the bite criss-cross with a jack-knife and suck the poison out—that is, if the person who sucked had no sore in his mouth. And he must be sure to make the cross straight over the wound, just as a person, when he forgets something and returns to the cabin for it, must make a cross with his heel and spit straight into the middle. Granpap knew about this cure for a snake-bite from experience. For he had made a cut on Fraser McDonald and sucked the poison out. The skin on the wall of the cabin was the skin of the snake that had bitten Fraser.
In spite of Emma’s warnings the children often forgot to think of snakes, especially when the blackberries were getting ripe. There was a large patch of these up the side of the mountain on a rocky bald spot. John and Bonnie were making for that patch one morning. Below the berry patch some large gray bowlders pointed out over the hill and flattened along the side of the slope. John walked ahead of Bonnie. He was anxious to reach the berries first. Up above the rocks the light green leaves of the berry patch shone in the sun, and between the leaves he could already see the red berries hanging.
He was concentrated on the berries, and his mouth was already watering for a taste when the ugly rattle sounded in front. The snake must have been lying out beside the rocks sunning itself. It was just above him on the slope, hardly a man’s length away. Bonnie saw it, and stepped back. John did not move. Bonnie wanted to run, but John seemed not to realize danger. He simply stood with his back to her, facing the snake. She could not see his face, but she could see the snake that was curled in rings, ready to strike. Its scales gleamed in the sun. The clumsy, rounded head on the neck that was raised from the coiled part swayed toward the boy. The head was almost as high as his own head, for he was on a lower slope. The little eyes of the rattler watched him closely. The tongue stuck straight out from the open mouth and quivered. The evil little eyes and the tongue menaced and fascinated the boy. He could do nothing. And Bonnie saw that he could do nothing. In another second, she knew, the snake would strike. She caught the back of John’s jeans and clumsily jerked him against her. The impact of his body on hers brought them down on the slope together, and they rolled downhill until a rock stopped them.
When they had untangled themselves and stood up the snake was not in sight. They did not stay long to look, for Bonnie had a bad bruise over her right eye where she had struck a sharp edge of the rock. A large drop of blood was oozing out of the puffed-up place. And on the way to the cabin it began to turn blue and yellow. It was very curious to see Bonnie’s flesh turn the different colors. It was curious to John. Bonnie was only interested in the fact that the bruise hurt. And under their interest in the bruise they were both badly shaken by the experience.
But they kept it to themselves. Emma took it for granted that Bonnie had fallen down and hurt herself on a rock, and they let this part truth rest in her mind. For some days after the experience they stayed close to the cabin. And because Granpap, who was the most important person in his world, was away, John missed him and wondered about the places outside.
In the cove as far as he could see on every side there were mountains. If he climbed Thunderhead with Emma and Bonnie and looked far away there were still mountains upon mountains. At times they looked so vast and heavy he would turn away from them and put his head to the ground to smell the black earth. If he turned clear around on his heel down in the clearing that was what he saw—hills reaching into the sky.
One day he stood outside the cabin in the hot sunshine. The sky was an even blue. It was a quilt with a yellow calico sun. On rainy days John and Bonnie sometimes played a silly game that Bonnie had made up. They sat on the bed across from each other and made a sort of cabin by holding a quilt over their heads. When their arms were tired they let the quilt come down and sat in the darkness, pretending great fear.<
br />
John felt that the sky was a quilt and the mountains piled up on each other were big children sitting close together, bent over, holding up the quilt with their shoulders. He wondered what would happen if the big children got tired and let the quilt loose from their shoulders, so it came down on the cove and covered the cabin and clearing. It would be dark. The dark would come suddenly as Emma had told him it came the afternoon before he was born. He thought, if the dark came down like that in summer, he would run into the cabin. Granpap would be there and could play the fiddle as he did on long winter evenings.
Granpap came back from his last trip that summer with money in his pocket. He gave most of it to Emma who put the nickels and quarters away in the gourd on the chimney shelf. John liked to stand on a chair and shake the gourd to hear the money clink. As he was feeling around on the shelf he found Granpap’s rosin and put it to his nose. It smelled dusty and stale, not like new rosin just out of a pine. But he sniffed at it again.
“If I had the fiddle,” he told Bonnie, “I could play ‘Big-Eyed Rabbit.’ ”
Bonnie looked at the fiddle hanging on the south wall and then at John. She did not believe he would dare to touch it.
“You wouldn’t,” she said, and sucked in her cheeks making a rabbit mouth at him. Her proud wriggling nose angered John. He had not yet learned to make a rabbit mouth, and Bonnie knew she was superior to him. He felt that he must show her there were things he could do that she would never dare attempt.
He lifted a chair over to the wall under the fiddle. The rabbit mouth left Bonnie’s face and she watched him with her mouth wide open. He saw her wonder and admiration and felt that everything was right again.
Down in the chair he laid the fiddle across his knees, and rubbed the rosin up and down the bow. The tow hair hanging across his forehead swung back and forth as he moved his arm. Then he took up the instrument and the bow, but found that he could not manage both. So he began tuning as he would a banjo. First he twanged a string timidly and turned a peg. The string whined at them. The first trial was so successful, the little whine that came from the string was so queer, he tried again. This time he was not so timid; and the second and third times the string hummed quite loud.
“Do it again,” Bonnie said. “Do it again.” She shut her mouth tight and made a sound through her nose like the fiddle. John curved his finger hard and brought it across the string. This was too much. With a snap the gut broke across and the ends curled back with tiny protesting whines.
“Now!” Bonnie said. She looked up at the door. Granpap was standing there. He had heard the sound of the fiddle out in the clearing. His anger was terrible. Bonnie held to the chair John was sitting on. She was afraid to move, though she would have liked to run away.
“For that,” Granpap said to John. “You can stay down and pull fodder when we go up for the logs.” He was really distressed, for a new string cost money and must be ordered by Hal Swain from the outside. In his distress and anger Granpap had hurt John in a most vulnerable place. The boy had looked forward so long to helping with the new room.
During the next day John sulked by himself. While Emma and Bonnie were grabbling potatoes, he sat on a corn row down in the patch. The stalks of corn hid him from his mother and sister. Each time he heard the ax bite into the wood up on the side of the mountain he felt grieved again. The sound came down clear into the cove. It came down one blow immediately after another, for Granpap had borrowed a second ax. The ax sounds came flat and mournful. They seemed to come flat across John’s belly and make it ache. He sat hunched over and felt very melancholy and sorry for himself as he looked up at the side of the mountain where Basil and Kirk were working with Granpap. A tree cracked up there and began to fall. He saw its top move among the other trees. There was no breeze and all the other trees were still. Only this one swayed a little, then sank down gently with a sound like water falling over a rock cliff.
All morning John hid himself in the cove. When dinner was ready inside Emma called and sent Bonnie to look through the corn patch. John was not there. He had gone to hide out like a dog when it is sick.
Early next morning the little boy was in front of the cabin, lolling carelessly on the woodblock. He pretended that he was indifferent to everything and everybody. But underneath was the hope that if Granpap saw him he would say, “Come, John.” Granpap did see him. But he and the boys went by without a word. Even Kirk who usually had some word for John was silent. He was at the moment wearing the red bird feather John had found in the woods and given him for the band of his old felt hat. But he did not say to Granpap, “Take John.” He walked past without looking.
The evening before John had seen Granpap eying the corn patch that he had not touched. If it was necessary to work the corn patch he would do it. Then they might give him some notice, when they found he could work like any of them.
So he worked all day at the fodder. And when he saw the strips tied to the corn stalks that evening and knew that his arms and hands had done the work, he felt proud.
“What are you scared of?” he asked himself when he thought of begging Granpap to take him up next day. “He can’t kill ye.”
The next morning he walked up to Granpap. To his own surprise instead of begging he lifted up his face that did not reach to the old man’s belly and said, “I’m a-going with you to-day, Granpap.” His mouth was stretched in a wide grin, but there was no real laughter in him. He was really afraid.
Granpap turned away to eat his breakfast. And John felt the same weight on himself that he had felt on the first day. He had tied the fodder. His arms ached from stretching up to the corn stalks. And it was no good.
Granpap finished his coffee and got his ax from the corner of the cabin. John watched him. He was going away without a word, like the day before. Of course John had not finished all the corn, but half of it. At the door Granpap turned his head and said, “Come along, Son,” to John. It was as if he had been holding the ax over John’s neck to chop it off, and had suddenly lifted it away. John rushed after the others and followed them up the mountain in the fresh morning air.
For several days after this they chopped down the trees and lopped off their branches, making them into good, even logs. While Granpap and the boys took turns in whacking at a tree John played in the woods with the two dogs. He was hunting bears, and each time the dogs caught a scent, or pretended to, John followed them, and joined in their excited search. Sometimes the dogs lost the scent or simply got tired of playing, or John felt they were going too far from the sound of the axes. Then he would call the dogs and go back to Granpap, for he must be there to watch each tree when it fell. He liked the moment when Granpap and Kirk or Basil, whichever one was helping, stood away from the tree. There would be a still second. Then the crack of the wood breaking in half came. John was never tired of hearing that sound and feeling the excitement that came when the great tree fell straight down the slope. It swished against the air and its branches brushed against the branches of the other trees that were still intact. Down the broken tree came and slid away from the trunk before it came to rest on its under branches a little distance above the ground.
When there were enough logs cut they began hauling them down with a steer hired from Swain. The boys chopped out a runway in the bushes where the trees were thinnest. The steer was hitched to one end of the log by chains. With a long branch of sweet gum tree for a whip, John walked just behind the ox and yelled, “Get up, there,” in his deepest voice. The chains clanked as the brown and white beast stooped and strained to pull the log that bumped over the uneven ground. When it caught on a bush or stob Granpap and the boys lifted and heaved it over. At the runway John came back and helped the others push the log around into place for going down hill.
Here the whip was of no use. Kirk got hold of the halter and held back to keep the ox from going on its head. Granpap and Basil took the rope tied to the other end of the log.
“Get behind,” Granpap said to John. �
�And when I say pull—pull the rope like all hell was after ye.”
Looking down between Granpap’s legs along the log John saw the ox plant its feet in the soft earth of the mountain; and each time its feet braced, the hindquarters came up slowly. At a slippery wet place Granpap called, “Pull!” and the boy braced his feet deep down against a stob of laurel bush, and as he bent over, like the ox his hindquarters came slowly up. He watched Basil and Granpap, and just as they did, he let the rope go from his hands gradually, so the log would not slide down on to the backside of the steer.
Toward midday they had several logs alongside each other on the trail. The steer, freed from the chains and watered at the stream below, bent its forelegs and lay down with a long grunt.
Granpap was satisfied with the morning’s work. He lit his pipe and gave Basil and Kirk a share of tobacco. He hoped in another year they would have a steer of their own. Somehow money went fast and it was hard to save up for a beast, when there was so little to begin with. And Granpap liked folderols. He liked to bring candy from Swain’s on Saturday nights for the young ones. Once he bought a ball for John, and Emma scolded—when they needed meal, she said, and coffee.
But they had a cabin and the land around it. Nothing could take that from them. Granpap looked down the trail to the cabin. The lower props were already up for the new room and this was something to have pride in.
He remembered when he had lost his own cabin and land and how he had felt of no account.
“You’re free men,” he said to the boys, “so long as you’ve got your own potato patch and house and a gun. The house might not be fine. When I was down in Georgy I saw some fine places with windows you could see through, and the houses painted. But I wouldn’t swap them for what we’ve got if I didn’t own.”
At fourteen Granpap ran away from his stepfather. He went over South Range to the outside and joined up to fight in the war that was going on out there. He was big for his age and the Confederates were glad to get him.
To Make My Bread Page 2