The talk suddenly lost its interest, or else everyone had plenty to think about when it came to the idea of getting riches stored up. Quietness settled down in the store. John leaned against Granpap’s box. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. So long as there was talk his ears kept his eyes awake. But when the quiet came, the dimness in the store and the heat from the stove made him doze off. Sam Wesley picking on the banjo woke him. Sam was singing a song about a girl and her soldier lover.
The song went on interminably and Sam’s nasal voice clanged out the words, with emphasis on the piece of clothing whatever it might be. At last when Sam had sung of every piece of clothing he could think that a man or a woman might wear—he added the women’s to give zest to the song—he ended his singing. And it was very sad, for after the maiden had brought the soldier everything he demanded, the soldier in the meanest way said,
John was tired and sleepy. He hated the song because it had lasted so long. And he hated the maiden who had run around so crazily. It showed how foolish women could be. No man could have been fooled like that. He would have stopped running to the shoemaker and the hatmaker and the coatmaker. He would have stood up to the person who was ordering him around and asked, “What do you think I am—a nigger slave?”
On the way back it was John who lagged on the trail and Granpap who urged him to hurry. John trudged along behind Granpap. He was disappointed. For such a long time he had envied the boys when they went with Granpap to the store at night, and now he had been there it hadn’t seemed very unusual.
The next morning, however, the visit seemed more of an event. John remembered that no women had been sitting around the stove. And for the first time he had been away from Emma and Bonnie. So he swaggered around the cabin pretending to Bonnie that wonderful and mysterious things had happened the night before, things that she must never be told.
CHAPTER TEN
THE spring was under a cottonwood tree about fifty feet from the cabin. Some ferns grew around it and deep down at the back the roots of the cottonwood showed up through the clear water. To the right of the tree and just a little way back a fire burned under an iron pot. Near enough to this for convenience was the great round stump where Emma and Bonnie pounded out the clothes when they washed.
Emma was standing on the far side of the spring watching Granpap at work. It was summer time again and Granpap had gone back to his conniving with the McEacherns. But now there was a different situation. He was sprouting corn at his own place where before he had sprouted it somewhere else. And he had decided to peddle the liquor for the McEacherns. At least he had decided to take turns with Sam at driving it to the outside. Sam had made a fair proposition, and Granpap was tired of hiring a steer from Swain. He wanted one of his own.
Emma looked at her father. He was leaning over a bench under a rough shelter of saplings covered with walnut bark. With a hammer and nail he was making some small holes in the bottom of a large new pan. Emma wanted to speak, but Granpap was so intent on what he was doing she hesitated. For awhile she waited and then the words in her had to be spoken.
“I heard Kirk ask if he could go with ye,” she said in a low voice. She felt very shy and hesitated again, before she went on. “Are ye going to take him?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Granpap grunted.
“I want ye not,” Emma told him.
“He’d be a help,” Granpap said.
“And maybe go to his death.”
“And if he does he’s chosen his way. Kirk’s a man.”
“He’s eighteen come next fall.”
“And a man.”
“And I’m a woman and can’t keep him. I know.”
“No. Ye couldn’t keep him from Minnie though you wanted.”
“Whether I wanted or not, his drinking kept him from Minnie.”
Jim Hawkins had ordered Kirk from his cabin on a Sunday because he had gone there drunk.
“Hit’s Basil now,” Granpap said, working over the pan. He hoped to get Emma’s mind off the trip Kirk wanted to take with him.
“You don’t have to tell me. I know Basil’s there every Sunday for supper. Jim Hawkins hopes to get a steady boy like Basil for Minnie.”
“Some say Kirk and Minnie have been seen up Little Snowbird,” Granpap went on. He was leaning over and Emma could not see the triumph in his eyes. He was getting her off the trail as surely as if he was an animal and had walked into a creek to get the hounds off his scent.
“If they have,” Emma said shortly. “I don’t know hit. But I do know Sam McEachern brags she’s his girl.
“And that’s another reason,” Emma went on, catching the scent again, “him and Kirk oughtn’t to be together. They’ll be sure to fight. I wish you’d leave Kirk, Pap. I wish you’d stay yourself and not fool with all this.” She pointed to the two bags of corn that leaned against the bench.
“We’ve got a right,” Granpap said, “to make money in the best way we can. You need the money-you and the young ones. How much would the bags of corn bring me if I sold them to Swain? Made into whisky I get more. We need the money, and we’ve got a right to make hit.”
“I’m not a-talking about rights,” Emma insisted. “We’ve got a right. But the Law’s got the power.”
“We’ve got the hills.”
“Yes. But hit’s not like it was. Seems every year the outside creeps nearer. Look at that peddler, Small Hardy. The first time he come was some winters ago and now he comes every spring and always talking about the outside. And if the outside creeps nearer, the Law does, too.”
Granpap opened one of the sacks and began pouring corn into the kettle. After all, the best way to close a scolding woman’s mouth was with silence. Emma stood sullenly beside him.
“I’d rather starve,” she said. “We can eat corn pone and potatoes.”
“Shet up, Emma,” Granpap said and Emma hushed. She hadn’t heard that hard tone from him since she was a girl of sixteen and almost married. Lately he had been quieter and more lenient. The tone hushed her voice in her throat. She turned away and went over to stir the fire under the black pot.
Granpap took the gourd dipper, ladled out some of the warm water from the pot and poured it over the corn. A cloth was lying on the bench and he wrung it out in the pot and covered the vessel. Emma should be satisfied he didn’t often drink at home. But if you ever let a woman have half a cob she wants all.
“Watch the corn, Emma,” he said and walked away toward the cabin. He had spoken to her as if she was a child.
It was late afternoon and there was mist in the air. A long way off, clear across the south, the big range rose up and down. Mountains piled up, wallowing over each other. They were heavy blue in the mist with black shadows that showed where a hollow came or there was a distance between them. Looking over there, Emma felt heavy and sad and regretful of her childhood spent at the foot of South Range. Pap had been fierce then; he was, still, when he got roused. But there, once he had threatened to knife her when she was fourteen and slipped out with a boy. She had slipped out of church.
It was a church like the one at Swain’s Crossing, but larger because that was a larger settlement with the cabins closer together. She would never forget the time she and Ora joined the church. They were sixteen and attending a revival. They had come with Jim and Frank McClure who were sitting with the men across the aisle. The preacher was praying and she and Ora were leaning over side by side. Ora began it by scratching under her arm. Sometimes razor-back hogs slept in the church and left fleas. Ora started scratching. Then Emma felt a bite on her leg and began digging on her own account. Ora turned her head to look at Emma and Emma looked out of the corner of her eye at Ora. And right then Ora giggled out loud. That started Emma and soon they were laughing, but silently, so their shoulders shook with the effort to keep from making sounds. When the prayer was over they could not stop and the preacher thinking they had got religion and were mourning for their sins came and accepted them into the church. That
made them quiet enough, for everyone looked as they shook hands with the preacher.
Going home the boys were very solemn toward them both, thinking they had come through. Jim said, “You two sure did get it hard.” All the way Ora kept pinching Emma, but neither of them would own up to what had really made them get religion. The next night Jim and Frank walked up to the preacher, and lo and behold all four of them were baptized that summer. And in the fall Ora married Frank, and Emma, Jim McClure.
Children were born and some of them died. Death came like a storm. You couldn’t do anything about it. Emma’s own mother had died at her birth. Granpap’s second wife had several children before she died, too. They had mortgaged the Kirkland land to Hugh Tate who had got hold of three mountains over there and a big valley through mortgages, and they had lost the land. So the Kirklands were wandering outside somewhere and Pap had come to stay with her. And she was glad. He was a good man and what man didn’t want to be head of the house he was in? This was only right. Yet she would still fight to keep the boys from going with Granpap.
Basil would be easy. He had what the preacher called a conscience. And it worried him to death. If he had done something wrong he would come and tell about it. He was a good boy.
Emma pushed the sticks with her bare foot closer under the pot and the fire burned up. Then she remembered that the water must be just warm, not like the water she used for boiling the clothes. She picked up a dead stick from the ground and pulled the fire away from under the pot. It went on burning on the edges of the pile of coals. She saw it reflected in the spring and went over to look. The slight mist in the air made the spring smooth and glassy. Emma could see her face. It was thin and brown with brown eyes like Bonnie’s. The cheeks were hollow and drawn down, but the nose lifted them up. It was so firm and proud. Her mouth was big and generous and it was sad. The nose said, “I will stand up for what I need.” But the mouth below it said, “I don’t know what this is about. I don’t understand.”
Jim had liked Emma’s hair. When some of it got away from the tight knot at the back it curled around her face. Maybe, Emma thought, she needed another man. But then she had her young ones. The two oldest were getting beyond her but John and Bonnie were still where she could scold and sometimes love them up a little. The fire flared up for a moment and it looked as if down there in the spring her face was burning up. She put her big gnarled hands against her face, to hide out the sight.
She left the spring and lifted the cloth from the deep kettle. The corn had already softened a little and its sweet smell came up. As Granpap had done, Emma poured some of the warm water over the corn. She listened while it dripped through the holes in the bottom. Wringing out a cloth in the pot, she spread it across the kettle. She was watching the corn and feeling the sound of the regular drip from the bottom of the pan when Granpap returned. He did not speak, but stood for a while looking out over South Range. Presently without looking at Emma he said carelessly, as if he was asking for another cup of coffee at supper.
“I’ll not take Kirk this time. But next year he’s a-going if he wants.”
This was all Emma needed. Next year must take care of itself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOW big the dark room seemed to John when he went to bed alone. Sometimes at night when Granpap and Basil and Kirk were away the boy wanted to climb in with Emma and Bonnie instead of going to his own place. But he had his code about what a man could rightly do. He would betray himself and his code if he went back to sleeping with the women. And Kirk, who had begun to let John tag along on occasions, would once more think of him as belonging with them. So each night when the others were away John lay alone on his straw bed until he fell asleep or until Basil or Kirk arrived. Sometimes the fleas kept him awake. Recently they had been worse, because on the evenings when Granpap was not expected John took Georgy in to sleep with him.
The night that Kirk and Basil went to meet Granpap John shut Georgy out. He could hear the pup whining at the door. Now he was sorry he had kept him in the bed at all. For the fleas were very bad, and he was afraid Granpap would complain about them to Emma. He did not want the others to know he had kept the dog with him. Of course if they did find out he would not be ashamed before them. He would do as Kirk had done that morning when Basil tattled. He would say he had a right and stand up to what he had done.
Since he had joined the church and even before that Basil would creep around being sorry and ashamed if he had done anything he felt to be wrong, like taking a swallow of drink down his gullet. An example of this was the thing Basil had done that very morning. The night before, as John knew from listening, Kirk and Basil had come home drunk from the small still. Kirk was giggling as he stumbled around John’s bed, and Basil was angrily trying to quiet him. He was anxious for Emma not to know. Yet in the morning he repented and accused Kirk of having tempted him to the drink. And what did he do but go and tell Emma all about it, so she, a woman, had to know about Kirk, too.
Sometimes, big and strong as he was, Basil seemed almost like a woman. And John felt contemptuous of women and of any kind of womanish ways in a man. He was tired of having Bonnie hang around. Two days before he and Basil and Kirk had found it necessary to slip off from her, so they could go hunting.
The boys had taken two guns, Granpap’s and Jim McClure’s, and gone out to shoot the cotton tails off rabbits. If a man could hit the round white spot that was a rabbit’s tail while the little animal was leaping ahead through the woods, he was put down as a fine shot. And he could wear the tail on his hat, or give it to his girl. But the trip had been useless. One or the other of the boys should have proved himself. And they both missed. Granpap would have succeeded, for like his father Granpap was a fine shot. There was a story about Granpap’s father. Once when squirrels were as plentiful as chestnuts in season through the hills, Granpap’s father had seen about forty of them swimming the old South Fork single file with their tails high up; one tail right after the other above the water. He had stood on the bank and blown their tails off with one single shot from his gun.
In a half-sleep dream John saw all the fleas that were biting him lined up in a row. He took the gun from the wall and with one shot killed them all. And Granpap said, “For that, you can have the gun.” Georgy woke him out of the dream, and he cried out “Shet up” for the hundredth time. He turned over and pulled the quilt up to keep out the cool night mist that came in through the wide cracks between the logs. He must have slept heavily when he did get to sleep for he woke to hear Kirk talking. The boys were already in bed. John felt over in his bed for Granpap, but the place was empty.
“Yes, you do,” Kirk said very loud to Basil. “You want to slobber out your misery on some woman’s breast. If it ain’t Ma it’s Minnie Hawkins.”
“You say that because you want Minnie yourself.” Basil’s voice was harsh and ugly.
“If I want Minnie I’ll get her, you God damned baby.”
Basil’s voice rose up in a kind of quaver. “You call me that and blaspheme God. Ye can’t do hit.”
There was a sickening thud of a blow—then another. John raised on his elbow and stared into the room. He could see nothing. But he could hear. He heard the two over in the other bed straining at each other. They sent short panting breaths into the room. John’s elbow trembled under him. He sat up straight in the bed. The sweaty bodies struggling in the other corner creaked against each other. They made a sharp sound like crickets chirping. And every few moments came that other sound of a fist against a body. Both the boys were cursing. The words came singly as if they were forced from the mouths along with the breath. Then it seemed that the breath was gone, for there was silence except for the continual sound of the bodies scraping against each other. This half silence when there seemed no breath in the room lasted for a moment. At the end of that moment the bodies crashed onto the floor. A grunt came from one of them as if a last breath had gone out of a body with a heavy sob.
“John,” Basil’s v
oice said. “Call Ma. Get the lamp.”
Emma was already up, with her skirt on over her cotton “body.”
“Can’t they ever stop this quarreling?” she said leaning over to get a scrap of paper lit at the fire. The paper flamed up weakly then shrivelled and died out. John took another piece from Emma’s hand and lit the lamp.
Emma held the lamp in both hands. John knew why she did this. When he had touched her back there he had felt her hand tremble. He ran ahead into the other room. Emma was soon there. The light came down from the lamp and spread across the floor at the place where Kirk lay. He was lying with one cheek flat on the floor. His fair hair shone in the light except at the back where there was a black stain. Basil stood by the bed. He looked at Emma and Emma looked at him.
“He cursed God, Ma,” Basil said.
Emma walked swiftly to Kirk and set the lamp on the floor beside him.
“Bring a pan of water,” she said to John. She lifted Kirk’s head in her arm. It hung back like a young baby’s and Emma shifted her arm to bring it up further. With her left hand she felt the wet spot. Blood seeped down on her bare arm, but she made her fingers go further into the hair, feeling the scalp. The bone was sound.
John put the washpan of water by Emma.
“Now hand me a quilt and hold the lamp high,” Emma told him. Basil wanted to be of use. He lifted the quilt from his bed and held it out to his mother.
“Fold it up,” Emma said sharply, “and lay it on the floor.” When Basil had done this and stepped back, she laid Kirk’s cheek carefully against the quilt. Bending her head and lifting her arms, she slipped off the coarse shift. Her back was to John, but Basil, standing in the shadow, saw his mother’s naked breasts and he felt ashamed for her. Emma did not seem to care. She bit into the shift and tore the cloth lengthwise. The noise of the tearing startled John. It was like a gun shot in the still room. Emma bit again. She grasped the cloth with her strong fingers and brought her arms out wide above Kirk’s head, as the cloth split. With what was left from the strips, she washed the wound carefully.
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