To Make My Bread

by Grace Lumpkin

  “Is it you, John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come along,” Basil said.

  They walked to the steps, down by the station and up a street.

  “Did she send you?”

  “No . . . . I came.”

  “She knows I’m here?”

  “She knows.”

  Basil wore a long overcoat, though it did not reach down so far as John’s, but he felt they were like two men walking together in the town. Basil unhooked a gate in a back fence. John had not been invited but he felt that Basil expected him to follow—and he wanted to go. His brother led him through the hallway of a house and up the stairs. As they went up someone called, “Basil,” but Basil did not answer. Upstairs he opened the door of a room at the back of the house and turned on the light.

  As if expecting John to enter, he held the door open and looked at him.

  “Take off your cap,” he said. Basil had taken off his own hat as he entered the house downstairs. A fire was laid in the grate and Basil touched a match to it. The paper flared up and lit the kindling. It burned low for a moment then the rosin crackled familiarly. Basil stooped lower and laid on a short hickory log.

  “How do you like my room?” he asked looking up; the lines at the side of his jaws showing up in the firelight.

  “Hit’s fine,” John said passing his cap from one hand to another behind his back. He looked around the room, seeing all the details. There was a bed and a bureau, with a large mirror. Against the mirror at its base leaned photographs of some girls. Over in one corner there was a bookcase with a few books. A carpet covered the floor, and on it along with the other furniture sat two chairs, a rocker by the fire and a straight chair by the table.

  “Sit down,” Basil said. He brought up the chair from the table for John. “This is Preacher Warren’s house,” he told John. “I rent a room here.”

  “Hit’s a fine room,” John said again. Basil looked at him quickly. He saw the boy meant his words, that he was really admiring.

  A woman called, “Basil”—from downstairs.

  “Wait here,” Basil said. He went out, leaving the door open, and a warm smell of food cooking came in the door.

  When Basil returned he sat down and as he sat pulled his creased trousers up a little way with a careless gesture. It was a careless gesture, yet had its fineness. It seemed to say, “Look at me, I’m a gentleman, with creased trousers and fine manners.”

  “Does she speak about me?” he asked John.

  “Some.”

  “How is Bonnie?”

  “Well. She’s in the second reader now.” After a moment John added, “I’m in the second reader now.”

  “That’s good,” Basil told him. “It’s good that you’re both getting an education. It’s not hard to learn if you put all your strength into it. And it means you’ll get somewhere if you have sense.”

  “I want to get somewhere,” John said.

  “If you want to get along,” Basil told him, “you must remember that you can’t think too much about other people. If you rise in this world you’ve got to rise by yourself. You’ve got to save your nickels and study. And—and not see anybody else. You’ve got to be practical. Then—when you’ve risen—you can reach down and help others. Do you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe by the time you’re old as I am, you’ll be going to college.”

  “College?”

  “Yes, maybe by then I can help you. I’ll be glad to help you, Johnny. When I’ve risen. Now I’m saving for other things. I want my own business. And I know the Lord will bless me for I give him his tithe, a tenth of what I make every month. You tell her that, if you tell her anything. Say I give the Lord his due. You understand?”

  The boy sitting on the edge of his chair, nodded. Basil had never talked so, before he left the hills. He had learned much, how to talk and reason. He could speak as well as a preacher, and perhaps he should have been a preacher.

  “I’ve found out one thing, John. I’ve found that people think a lot of me. Up in the hills I always felt that Kirk was so—reckless—and fine looking—nobody could like me, not the girls, anyways. Now I know that girls like me. See those pictures over there? They’re from girls. And I’ve got letters from them, letters I didn’t ask for, saying they think a lot of me. If I read you some of those letters you’d be surprised what girls will say.”

  He laughed and stretched his arms over his head. “Now all that is over. I’m engaged now, to be married.”

  “To be married?”

  “Not for a while yet. She’s Preacher Warren’s wife’s sister. She taught in the church school, and now she’s teaching in the public schools here. We’re saving up for a business. She wants me to take all those pictures and throw them away, but I tell her—not yet.”

  “Granpap is saving up for a farm,” John said. He felt that the knowledge of Granpap saving for something would make them all finer in Basil’s eyes. He wanted to make Basil think much of them, but had forgotten the way in which Granpap was making his money and that his brother might not approve. In a moment he saw his mistake. Basil’s eyes shut for a second and the lines on each side of his mouth went deep into the skin.

  “He’s breaking the law,” Basil said.

  For the first time John felt against Basil. It was not right for him to talk against Granpap. “He’s got a right,” he told his brother.

  “He has not. It’s one of the first things to learn, you can’t go against the law. It’s not right by law or religion for Granpap to be doing what he is doing.”

  John’s mouth set like Basil’s had done, and a frown came between his eyes. “He’s got a right,” he repeated. Granpap was good, this he knew. And he knew Granpap had a right to make money in the way he was doing. It was work and no easy work, at that.

  “Well,” Basil said, “there’s no need to worry, for Granpap will soon be finished.”

  “Finished?” This was a frightening word that might signify jail again for Granpap.

  “He’ll be through with the work, if you call it work.”

  “How?”

  “The lumber company wants to build a number two camp near South Fork. The McEacherns have been holding out for a higher price for their land. Now they’ve got it and are moving to the city.”

  “How do ye know that?”

  “How do I know? Because I hear about things that are going on. One way, Hal Swain stops in to see Preacher Warren sometimes when he comes into town.”

  John sat looking at the floor and at the fire. A silence came up between the two. Between them the flames burned up the dark chimney, and the ashes crackled as their live sparks went out and they settled down to die. John felt it was time to go, that now Basil wanted him to go, but he was not sure just how to leave. Basil looked at the alarm clock on the mantel and moved restlessly in his chair.

  “Will they be anxious about you?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” John said, and stood up. Basil took a money folder from his pocket and selected a bill.

  “You went back to school all right?” he asked.

  “Did Granpap tell ye?”

  “It was me that got you back in school. I asked Preacher Warren, and he spoke to the superintendent of mills over the telephone.”

  Basil looked at the bill he held in his hand.

  “You see, John that’s the way people that have got the ambition to rise can help the others. I helped you, didn’t I, to get back into school. Because I knew people that had influence. It was the same when Hal Swain got Granpap out of jail. And even if the superintendent hadn’t let you go back into school we could have got Hal to see or write Congressman Heilman because he owns a lot of stock in the mill. You see that I helped you, don’t you, John?” Basil spoke earnestly, trying to make John understand this important question. For the time he seemed to be begging that John should realize the help that had come from him.

  “Yes,” John answered the begging in Basil’s voice, and he added,
thinking that was what should be done, “I thank ye.”

  “I was glad to do it,” Basil answered. Now he was not begging, but somewhat pompous and assured. He opened his folder and replaced the bill. “Here,” he said, and gave John a fifty cent piece from his pocket. “Take that to her, and you tell her I’m coming for a visit soon.”

  John held the money in his hand. It was cold. He could feel the cold round edges making a circle in his palm.

  A door opened when they reached the hall downstairs. Preacher Warren came out. He put a kind hand on John’s shoulder.

  “How you’ve grown!” he said. “But I would know Basil’s brother anywhere.”

  “Tell Emma,” he said, “we’re proud of Basil.”

  “Yes . . . sir,” John answered him, and slipped out of the front door that Basil was holding open.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  BASIL was right. The first of the year Granpap came to the house one evening. He walked in as if there had never been any going out.

  First he had to be shown Ora’s baby that was a week old. Ora lay in the bed in the front room. She was not very well, for working up to the last minute had done something to make her lame, so that she could not stand without pain and could not walk at all. But she could talk, lying in the bed. She said to Granpap, “I almost had him while I was at work, right there in among the frames.”

  “I told her she ought to name him Bobbin,” Emma said, excited and flushed over Granpap being there again. “But she thought hit sounded like a name for a creature, not a child.”

  She added, “Mr. Mulkey knows something of learning and his boy is named Statesrights.”

  “That,” Frank said, “is not the name for creature or man.”

  “Well,” Ora told Granpap, “we made a good old-fashioned name. We named him Kirkland after you . . . and him.” She turned her eyes to the crayon picture of Kirk that was high on the wall.

  Emma moved over to the picture. She had watched before to see if Granpap would notice it. The old man went up and looked at it closely. “Why,” he said, “hit’s as if Kirk was here in the flesh.” The frame was gold, very fine, and he ran his fingers over it.

  “And there’s glass,” he said. “Hit’ll keep the dust from getting in.” As if everybody didn’t know.

  Granpap had news of Sally, which was something for Ora to get flushed over, except Ora never flushed but her face became soft as if the flesh had melted into the bones. Sally, Granpap said, was planning to make Ora a grandmother. She and Jesse were living with Fraser until the cabins the lumber company was building got ready. Sally had sent a jar of honey to Ora and a slab of bacon from Fraser’s pig killed in the fall.

  “They can’t well spare hit,” Ora said. “But I’m glad to have the lean meat instead of salt pork always.”

  Emma watched Granpap, for she knew he had something on his mind that was not yet told.

  Two days later when she waked up in the afternoon, for she was still on night work until Ora would be well enough to go back, Granpap spoke to her. He had given what money he had saved, as payment down on a place two or three miles up the road. It was off Company property and the young would have to change to a county school.

  “I could have paid less, Emma, and rented,” Granpap said. “But I want to buy. I want a place that’s mine, that’s Kirkland land.”

  “And the young will go on to school?” Emma asked.

  “I mean it, Emma.”

  He had something more to say, but it was a hard thing to ask of Emma. He sat opposite her in the bedroom, where Ora could not hear. Emma looked at her father and saw the way he looked back half reluctant, yet with a shine in his eyes, meaning that he was thinking with joy of the farm.

  “There’s something I want to ask of ye, Emma.”

  “Ask hit, Granpap.”

  “If ye could keep on at work in the mill, maybe we could make the payment next year this time. I could work on the farm; but I know from talking to others that the cotton don’t always come out right. Sometimes hit’s frost or rains, and ye can’t tell. I’ve got two good clean acres, and sometimes people make as much as a bale an acre. I’ve heard of it. But the first year, not knowing, I might not make very much. And I must give the man that owns the place now a bale for the use of farm things and as part payment. I figure that if we make two bales, then one will go to us, and you can stop work in the mill.”

  “I hadn’t expected not to work in the mill,” Emma answered him. “For what would we do for meat and bread every day otherwise?”

  On the same day that Emma moved to the country, Ora moved also to another place in the village. Granpap went ahead and was waiting on the farm for Emma. Ora and Frank moved into a house with three rooms. Ora was well enough to go about, and Esther, now, must leave school and stay at home with the young baby. Ora would go back to work. If Ora hurried she could get back at noon to nurse the baby and cook dinner for all; for the new house was much nearer the mill than the old one.

  The farm made a light for Emma. For a long time she had been walking lost in darkness and suddenly she saw light ahead, which meant rest and hope. If they did well on the farm, then, sometime, they could leave the mill forever.

  The farm house had three rooms, a chicken house and a shed for animals. In the top of the shed was a place for hay where people who had lived there before them had left some hay for the next ones to come, or because they had gone back to the mills and didn’t need it. The stalls in the shed were full of manure that could be used for fertilizer. The horse which the owner of the farm had advanced to Granpap on his crop was a nice animal.

  “I can ride it,” John said and got astride. Immediately the backbone of the horse, which had seemed rather straight, sank down in the middle so that John seemed to be sitting in a valley between two hills.

  “John,” Emma said. “You’re breaking its back!”

  “No,” Granpap told her with a shamefaced look. “Hit’s just a little swayback. But the back don’t matter so long as hit’s strong enough to pull a plow.”

  “We’ll have to be right smart every morning,” Emma said to Bonnie. “If I get t’ work on time and you two get to school.” For the county school was three miles further up the road away from the village.

  They rose at dawn or before every morning and cooked on the small stove Emma had bought on instalment. Granpap was full of energy. As the time came for plowing he was up and out in the fields just so soon as he could get some breakfast in him. They were very careful and saving of food, so there was not much breakfast, but it was enough to start him out, rejoicing. He was glad to do without, for he hoped that there would be plenty from the farm the following year.

  Granpap was not new to farming, but he was new to cotton. During the early spring when he was preparing the ground and getting the seed planted he often had to go across the road to consult with Moses, the black man who cared for Mrs. Phillip’s farm.

  Mrs. Phillip’s house was only a little way up the road. It was a large place with seven rooms and new white paint on the outside, and green blinds. The black man, Moses, had charge of the whole place, for Mrs. Phillips was away all week working at some mysterious business in the city. She came back usually once a week to visit her children and the farm.

  Moses was a help to Granpap that spring. Granpap learned from the black man how to put the cotton seed in the ground with the machine, and many other things. From him Granpap bought five chickens, including a setting hen and a dozen eggs for hatching.

  Emma came home at night worn out from her work and the two-mile walk. Sometimes before coming home she stopped at Ora’s to rest, for she was feeling weak and sickly. Ora’s baby was not thriving. “Hit lacks mother’s milk,” Ora said. And probably that was true, though many of the babies in the village did without.

  “But Esther is a real help,” Ora said, wanting to praise Esther, who was in the same room. Emma looked at the little girl appreciatively, and Esther hung her head before them.

 
; “Bonnie works in the fields after school, and cooks supper every night,” Emma said, doing her share of bragging. “And John works, too, in the fields.”

  She faltered a little at the last, for she knew Granpap had to scold sometimes to make John get out his hoe and work. John liked to stay at the Phillips place and watch them there. Robert Phillips, the son, did not have to work much, and it was a bad example for John to see him doing nothing. But Emma kept this to herself.

  Bonnie and John had learned to know Robert Phillips at school. Pie seemed very lonely there, or perhaps he thought himself better than the others. He was a big boy, not tall, but almost twice as broad as John. His hair was black and heavy about his face and below it was a rosy complexion and big eyes with plenty of white to them. His mouth was large and if the younger children at school came around to watch him eat his lonely lunch he twisted his mouth into queer shapes to frighten them.

  He spoke to John first, there in the yard, when John and Bonnie were quite new in school. After that those three ate their lunches together, and having this friend made John and Bonnie free of the others, though at times Bonnie regretted that she was cut off from playing “Baa Sheepie Baa” or “Pretty Maids from the Country” with the other girls. Once at recess she went up to a crowd that was playing. She wanted to say, “Can I play with you?” but her tongue was dumb. The girls paid no attention to her, and she stood on the edge of the game ready to cry, yet with her face set, determined that she would not cry no matter what happened.

  Probably the girls would have asked her to join them if she had waited long enough. But Robert called her, and she was glad then of an excuse to get away.

  Robert said, “Those girls don’t want you. They are stuck-up. You’d better stay here. I’ll take care of you.

  “You better stay here,” he repeated angrily.

  He told them many astounding things. He liked to see their eyes grow big and wondering. He told them about his mother’s house in the city. It had a hundred rooms, and each bedroom had a bath. There was a private doctor, the same who came some week-ends to the country, and they always had music in a big room downstairs.