To Make My Bread

by Grace Lumpkin

  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.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE 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 tens
e. 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.

  When supper was over Emma cleared away the dishes. Granpap and the stranger sat in chairs near the fire, the others on the floor. Emma, who had waited as usual, sat at the table having her own supper.

  “Got something in the pack?” Granpap asked.

  Small Hardy had been waiting for this. He pushed back his chair and pulled the pack along the floor. Emma, seeing what was going on, left her corn bread and lit the lamp. There was a little oil left in the bottom.

  The hump-back drew his pack to the place where the dim light shone on the floor. He leaned over untying various strings and as he leaned his hump stood up from his back like a mountain peak from a ridge. Emma stooped over him. The others stayed back in the shadows. Only John edged closer along the floor, always keeping the pack between him and the man who had wanted to skin Georgy. Bonnie, the sleepy head, was dozing in a corner by the fire.

  There was some red calico in the pack. It was a different pattern from that at Swain’s. Small Hardy held a red silk waist with glass buttons against his chest to show its beauty. It looked queer against his small face, but in his enthusiasm for the goods he seemed to forget himself. From different pockets of the pack he took many things—a Bible, some cotton thread; gold-eyed needles, and pins with colored tops. With a great flourish he showed them a fine looking knitted thing, a fascinator, he called it.

  “This is what you should wear,” he said to Emma.

  It was bright red, with a border knitted from silver thread. The silver shimmered in the light as Small Hardy let the scarf trail over his hands. Suddenly he gathered it into a ball with his long fingers, and held it between his two palms.

  “Oh,” Emma said. She thought he had ruined the pretty thing. But when he let go it sprang from his hands as if it was alive and fell over them again in soft folds.

  “How pretty,” Emma said, and bent her neck over it.

  “Fine ladies wear them like this,” Small Hardy told her. He reached up and put the fascinator over Emma’s hair, crossed the end pieces under her chin and let them fall across her shoulders, down her back. He dug in one of his pockets, brought out a mirror, and held it up close to the lamp so Emma could see. She looked so fine with some of her brown curls coming out in front against her face. Kirk and Basil stared at her, and she felt their eyes were admiring. Her face became softer, and her lips curved up at the corners. Her eyes turned toward the money gourd on the shelf.

  “It’s sure pretty,” she said to Small Hardy. But she did not ask how much. She lifted the red, soft thing from her head and folded it up, letting it rest at each fold in her two hands.

  “It’s sure pretty,” she said again and gave it back to Hardy.

  He laid it away carefully and brought from the same pocket two strings of beads, red, one longer than the other. Emma held them up to the light. They hung from her fingers. The light pierced into them and came away in little red rays.

  “Are they jewels?” Emma asked, her voice soft with admiring them. She had heard Sally Swain talk about the jewels rich women on the outside wore.

  “No,” Small Hardy said. “If they were real they’d be worth more than a hundred dollars.”

  “I’ve heard,” Granpap spoke out of the dark, “they find real stones somewhere up in the hills. I remember there was gold down in Georgy, mixed right in the sand.”

  “I did see some real stones in Leesville. They’d found them somewhere in the mountains. Sapphires large as the end of your finger. If you found one of them you would have something to live on.”

  “It would be nice,” Emma said. “Just to go out, pick up a stone like you’d pick up a mouth rock and be rich.”

  “Well,” Small Hardy sat back on his haunches. “They say poor folks are going to get rich now.”

  He let them taste this news. Bonnie, trying to get to bed, stumbled over Plott, who gave a sleepy grunt. All the others were looking at Small Hardy. Even the eyes back in the shadows, Kirk’s eyes and Basil’s, were looking at him. Only Bonnie, done up with sleep, lay on the bed.

  “Down in Leesville,” Hardy went on, “a Mr. Wentworth, a rich man, has a mill for making cloth like this.” He pointed to the calico. “And they say whoever goes down to work there is going to be rich like him—for he started out as poor as the next one. They sa
y out there the rivers flow with milk and honey and money grows on trees.”

  “Do,” Emma said. “And have you seen?”

  “Well,” Small Hardy put his head on one side considering. His big head leaned against the hump and he moved his right shoulder that sloped so far down as if he was not quite comfortable. His bright black eyes looked up at Emma. “You see, I haven’t been there much. But they said I was to spread the news. It’s the poor folks’ time if they’ll pick up and go.”

  “It’s a long way,” Emma said.

  “Forty miles from here as the crow flies,” Small Hardy told her.

  “There’s a store,” he went on. “Where they sell beads and other things cheap. And you get a house with windows and cook on a real stove,—no more bending over a chimney.”

  “I’ll lay the house ain’t your own,” Granpap said. “Nor the land.”

  Small Hardy had been talking to Emma. He shrank back when Granpap’s voice came out of the shadows. “Maybe so,” he said when he recovered. “But the money’s yours. Real money. Lots of it.”

  “I like to have my own land,” Granpap answered. He got up to knock the ashes from his pipe. He stood there, and Hardy knew the evening was finished. He returned the goods to their pockets, folded the pack, and set it in the corner by the chimney. Emma held the light for them to cross the passageway, then blew it out. John, who would sleep with her that night, sat on the floor trying to keep his eyes open.