“Yes, I would, Emma, he had too much sass in his manners. I would have done it in another minute.”
As they went further out the red mud became so thick it sucked at their feet.
“Esther,” Ora told her daughter, “pick up Raymond and carry him to Sally. He can’t walk any more in this mud. Sally!” she called out. “Wait for Esther.”
The rows of houses on each side of the street were silent, as if all the people had deserted their homes. Only smoke coming from some of the chimneys showed there was life going on inside. The houses further out were not so nice as those close to the mill. On the edge of the village they were old looking and some were unpainted. Ora noticed that the pumps had been close together, about every two blocks, at first. Now they walked for some time before they passed another one sitting with its one arm akimbo at a corner.
Then the road stopped abruptly at a field. The boy from the office, having pointed out a place to the two boys, passed them on his way back. John and Young Frank waited at the corner. John leaned against a pump which was there and waved to them, trying to make them hurry. At the left on the side of a slope there were three unpainted houses.
John and Young Frank led the way to the middle house. They stood and looked at it, Ora and Emma tall in the midst of the young ones. The house was square and had a chimney, and a very nice porch clear along the front. In the back yard, just as in the back yard of all the houses, was a tiny outhouse. One of its hinges was broken, and the door swung back, so that inside they could see the slanted seat, with the hole which daylight from the back outlined clearly.
“Well,” Ora said, fingering the key, “let’s go in. I reckon we’ve got a right . . . . I’m glad,” she told Emma, “the water is near. Did ye notice the pump?”
“Hit’ll seem funny,” Emma thought out loud, “to get water from one of those.”
To Ora Emma’s words sounded disappointed and melancholy.
“Why, Emma, hit’s not s’ bad.”
“I sort of reckoned we’d get water out of the wall, like at the station,” Emma said. “Well . . .” She stopped speaking.
“Let’s go in.” Ora went resolutely up the high steps and unlocked the door before them.
They did not stay long in the two front rooms. Bonnie found the stove in the kitchen and called them to look. There, sure enough, just as the young man had said, stood a cooking stove in a corner of the kitchen.
Ora opened the oven door, while the children stood around gaping at the iron box, and peering when they could under the arms of the elders into the dark interior. On a plate of tin John found a piece of iron with a handle at one end. He reached under Ora’s arm and stuck the bent piece at one end of the iron into a place where it seemed to belong, and pushed on the handle. The round lid fell off with a clatter and scattered soot in every direction.
Sally, dusting her dress, walked to the window, and Bonnie followed her. But Emma and Ora stayed bent over the stove as if it was a sick person they were trying to coax back to life. It would have been good to make a fire at once, but there was no fuel. Emma stared down at the place where a fire had been once. She saw ashes and a gray end of hickory log with the bark still on. It was smooth at one end where the saw had cut through, and black at the other irregular end where the last fire used by the people before them had not quite finished burning it up.
Looking at the ashes, and the cold round piece that had not finished burning, Emma thought sadly that other people had lived in the house. Perhaps they had been glad to leave this place which she had worked so hard to reach. It made her suddenly angry against those people who had felt so little pleasure in this house. She wished she had those people before her so that she could defend this house, her house, against them. Then it came to her that the house was not hers but Ora’s. She turned her back on the dark place with the ashes and went over to Bonnie who was playing with the window, pushing it up and letting it down.
“Don’t ye do that, Bonnie,” she said. “Ye’ve got t’ remember, this is Ora’s house.”
“Now, Emma,” Ora turned away from the stove, “hit’ll be just the same as your house, too.”
Emma felt ashamed then. “Yes, Ora, I know hit will. With anybody but you it wouldn’t. But I know hit will.”
“And anyway,” Ora said, “hit ain’t mine or yours. Hit belongs t’ the mill.”
Emma touched the pane of glass with her fingers. “Granpap will be pleased with the windows,” she said. “He always did want a window.”
She looked out and saw the other house which was only a few feet away. She did not want to think about what Ora had spoken, that the house belonged to the mill. It made her feel as if all of them belonged to it. There was a sort of suffocation in that feeling and she put it away. She turned to Ora.
“Hit’ll need something hung up here, I reckon,” she said.
“I never had anything to hide,” Ora told her.
“But hit’s pretty. Ye can get some goods and make something real pretty.”
“Ye want t’ dress up a window like ye would a gal?”
“I think where you live, Ora, hit’s needful t’ have it pretty. Just the same as hit’s needful for a gal to look pretty, because . . .”
“A gal’s looking for a husband,” Ora interrupted.
“And a house is a-looking for people to live in it. A man has got to like looking at a gal, and people should like t’ look at their house.”
“When a man marries he looks to his wife for satisfactions. When he’s hungry and wants supper he don’t think whether his wife is dressed up in silk or not. A house is t’ give ye shelter and a place to cook and eat. Hit ain’t for looks, Emma.”
Ora’s voice was loud and she looked at Emma as if she wanted her out of the way. And Emma watched Ora out of the side of her eyes as if she hated her. Bonnie shrank back against the window. She wanted to cry, very loud, because everything was so sad, and it was fearful to hear Ora and Emma talking to each other in strange loud voices. The baby, lying in Ora’s arms, began to cry, as if Ora’s voice had made it want to speak out and say that it, too, was tired of waiting in the blankness of the unfurnished house, that echoed sadly to everyone’s footfalls and voices.
Granpap and Frank did not return until close to noon when the sun was almost straight overhead. All were hungry for there had been nothing to eat but some crackers from the store. The salty crackers had made all of them pay frequent visits to the pump so the house from the steps to the kitchen was tracked full of mud.
When Granpap and Frank did return Emma saw at once that Granpap was changed. She thought he must have found a place to drink and was full. Yet he walked steadily enough, and his shoulders straightened out as far as they would go. It was his eyes that gleamed as if he had drunk up a whole still. And, moving in, he urged Frank to pile more furniture on his back, when even Frank thought he had enough.
“Come on, Johnny,” Granpap called out to John. “Do your part. Granpap’s going to take ye on a journey, if you’re good and help like you should.”
“What kept us,” Frank told Ora, “was a parade. The Veterans were parading down to the station t’ go t’ the re-union. They had uniforms, and Granpap had to see.”
Frank had wanted to see and hear, too. There was a band that the railroad agent had hired and loaned out for the morning with the compliments of the railroad. Granpap had asked all about the reunion.
“They say hit’s true that people will take care of ye, board and lodging free, in the city. And Johnny and me will march there. Hit ain’t more than fifty miles, Emma.”
Granpap, telling his part of the story about the parade, ended up talking to Emma. He was almost begging her to say she wanted them to go.
She did want him to go, if it made such a difference. On the other hand she needed him. So Emma was quiet. She would not say yes or no. Granpap must decide, and she saw that he had decided. Her yes or no would mean nothing in the end. So she became reconciled. The young ones were eating bread covered with bean
s from a can, and the old ones were not far behind them in finishing up the food Granpap and Frank had brought.
Granpap was full of young energy. He and John took the steers to the store where he had been told wood could be bought, and came back with a load which they piled up under the house. The two who were going away had so much excitement in them the others had to make special efforts to keep up with them. Bonnie followed after John while they were getting the wood piled in place, and Granpap was helping to get the beds up. Bonnie wanted to hear more about the place John and Granpap were going, and what they were to do there. John was not very sure about anything, though Granpap had talked more than usual on the way to the store and back.
“I don’t know if we’ll go on a train. How do I know? But there’ll be plenty of things t’ see in the big city and the capitol building that has a governor in hit. And we’ll stay with fine folks in a big house where they keep gold in a strong box in the cellar. And maybe we’ll git on a train, Bonnie.”
“Well, I’m a-going t’ school,” Bonnie said.
“No, you’re not,” John told her. “We found out. Granpap found out before. School, hit don’t begin for a long time yet. Hit’s why Granpap’s a-taking me.”
When they went up to the house all the beds were made with quilts spread over them, making the place look as if people lived there. Emma’s room was to be the back one at the side of the kitchen. There she and Bonnie would sleep in the bed, and as they had done in the mountains before Granpap had built the extra room, Granpap and John would sleep on the floor. When he came back, Granpap said, he would find some hay for a mattress, but even if he didn’t, he and John were good soldiers and could sleep on the floor.
Emma and Ora went about the house working, getting the children fed. But they did not look at one another, nor speak any words.
Emma thought, “It’ll always be this way. Ora will remember it’s her house if I say anything. She can say it belongs to the mill, but she’ll think it’s hers. Anyway I can have something at my window, and I’ll get something pretty with some of that money.”
Ora felt that Emma was small thinking that it would make any difference that she had the key. But when Emma went out of the door to walk part of the way with Granpap and John, Ora felt sorry. She knew it was not easy for Emma to see them go.
Emma stood on a little rise and watched the two walk away from her. Granpap walked like a young man. The people at the mills were fools to think he couldn’t work. A man who could walk fifty miles to the city and back was not too old to do a man’s work anywhere. John looked back at Emma once, but Granpap went straight ahead, as if he could not hurry enough to get where he was going. Emma could see the mill some blocks away and thought she could feel the soft throb of the machines. Granpap and John were going away. But they would come back and all of them would be part of the mill, and part of the village. They were fixed, now. She walked slowly back to the house, climbed the steps, and wiped the mud from her shoes before she went inside to the others.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE flat road that stretched away toward the city was a curious thing to John. Before this the ground had come up to meet his steps, or going down a hill, it had dropped away from beneath them. Now at each step it met his bare feet at the same place. For some reason this tired him out.
“Left! Right!” Granpap said, was the way to walk along a flat road. Sometimes in the army when they marched at night so the enemy wouldn’t know where they were, about half the soldiers would be walking in their sleep. Only that Left! Right! kept the feet going when the head didn’t know whether the feet were stumbling over a rock or toad-frog.
At some places the road crossed the railroad track. Then John looked up and down for the engine. It never came, but there were times when the road led through woods when he heard a rumble and Granpap said that was a train going by on the track. Toward late afternoon they stopped to rest and get water at a station. People were on the platform and there were trunks further down. All seemed to be waiting expectantly like a hunter waits behind bushes for the bear that the pickets are driving that way.
John saw the black man who stood by the trunks on the platform wave his hand. The man called out, “Raa-a Ro-o-de,” in a big strong voice that went up into a peculiar sort of shriek at the end of the words. There was a rumbling on the tracks. Around a curve came the big engine. John knew that it was an engine and there was no need to fear. Yet the huge beast-like thing belched out smoke from its horn so fearsomely, and moved so swiftly upon them, it was hard not to fear. John moved behind Granpap as it came even with them and slowed up. Looking cautiously from behind the old man’s back he saw the great bars go round and round pushing the wheels. The thing breathed like a winded steer until one expected to see its sides move in and out with the breathing.
“Hit’s a fine sight,” Granpap said, looking hard at the engine. The wheels had stopped going round, but it kept on puffing, and little jets of white smoke went up from the top.
“Did hit scare ye?” Granpap asked. “Hit’s safer than those automobiles we saw on the road. Hit runs on a track.”
John came forward and stood just in front of Granpap with his feet apart and his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. Then, to show that he was not frightened of the monster, he went closer, and looked it over from top to bottom. Up in the little room a man in jeans was feeding coal into a red hot mouth. Under the body between the wheels there were many parts mixed in with each other like the inside of an animal. John made another step toward the engine and stooped down to have a look at these. In the beginning he had gone there to show Granpap he wasn’t afraid. Now he was intensely curious about the pipes and bolts and rods. If the thing would stay long enough he would like to get underneath and feel the parts with his hands.
He heard Granpap say very loud, “Look out!” but did not even think that the warning was for him. And almost in the same second a jet of steam hissed into his face from the bowels of the engine. The steam surrounded him so that he thought for a moment that there was no more John left, only a spirit hurrying away somewhere in a cloud. He could see nothing except the white cloud-like steam, and his face burned. Then a hand pulled him out of the cloud, just as another jet of steam came.
“Are ye hurt?” he heard Granpap asking while the white cloud was still around them. “Are ye hurt?”
The engine blew angrily at them before it drew away. He could not see Granpap yet, and he thought the cloud was still around them. Granpap saw when the last car had gone by that the boy had his eyes closed tightly. His face was turning a bright red.
“Open your eyes, Son,” Granpap said and shook John with both hands.
John opened his eyes and saw Granpap’s beard just above.
“Are you all right?” Granpap shook him again, less roughly this time.
John’s face had begun to hurt like a boil.
“Hit burns,” he said.
They crossed the tracks and walked down the road again.
“We’ll find some clay,” Granpap said. “Hit’s cool and healing.”
He watched the boy anxiously, and almost casually he watched the bank that was sometimes high and sometimes low at the side of the road. Presently a streak of gray showed where the clay was near the surface. Granpap dug into the clay and kneaded a handful in his wiry fingers before he plastered it over John’s face.
“Now, you’re a plumb sight,” he said. “If you could just see yourself you would laugh.” He was torn between anxiety about the boy, and the feeling that he must get all right, so they wouldn’t need to go back and miss the reunion. It would be almost a disgrace to be forced back when they had started with so much confidence. And Granpap had something to prove by this trip. He must prove that he was a young man, young enough to walk fifty miles to the city and fifty miles back.
The clay on John’s face was cool, but the sun and air soon dried it out, and they had to look for more. This time John would not let Granpap put it on.
/> “I’m not any young one,” he said. “I can fix hit.”
“Ye’re a wounded soldier,” Granpap said and this made John feel very fine, because there was approval in the old man’s voice and some admiration, as if John had done something especially fine and outstanding.
Presently, it was necessary to rest. They sat on top of a bank on some pine needles and leaned against a rail fence that marked off somebody’s land there.
“We’ll find a house,” Granpap said. “And maybe they’ll take us in. There must be farms along here off the road, and we’ll get the woman to put some lard or whatever she has that’s best for a scalded shoat . . . . For hit’s what ye look like,” he told John, “a scalded shoat.”
They walked on for a time looking for a road. Then Granpap selected one that led off to the right. It had wagon ruts deep in mud and was so narrow the green trees met overhead.
“Hit looks like a pore man’s road,” he said.
About half a mile up they found a ramshackle farmhouse. A woman came to the door. Her skirts were tucked up about her waist. The first thing she did when she saw them was to let the skirts down hastily.
“This boy got scalded,” Granpap said. “Could ye fix him up with something to ease the pain?”
The woman looked at them. “My man’s out in the fields,” she said. “He’ll be in soon.” She seemed to wish them to feel that there was a man around if they meant any harm.
“If ye don’t want us to come in we won’t,” Granpap told her. “But we’d be glad if you could help.”
“I’ve just come from the fields,” she said, and her face, full of sweat and dirt, showed that she had been somewhere working hard in the sun. “But if you’ll come in, I’ll try to fix the boy.”
The clay was hardened on John’s face and they had to pick it off in pieces. The woman heated some water on the cook stove and washed the face with warm suds. Then she spread on lard with some yellowroot juice mixed in.
There was a sound of feet on the tiny back porch, and a clank and clatter, then another, and two more. John knew that sound. He had made it himself when he dropped the hoe on the cabin floor after a time at weeding the corn patch. He had time to think, “These folks must be rich with four hoes,” before the door opened and they came in. Behind the father came three children, a boy about John’s age and two girls, younger. The father walked heavily across the room. His shoes were thick brogans that made the dust come up from the floor. At first he did not seem to notice at all that there were strangers in the kitchen. He went to the stove, lifted up a lid and spat his tobacco into the fire where it sizzled in the heat. He watched it until the sizzling finished, then turned to face them. The young ones were already watching the strangers. John must have been a queer sight with his face plastered with lard.
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