To Make My Bread

by Grace Lumpkin

  “Yes, I know her,” John answered.

  “I’m busy right now,” Robert told him. “But I’d like to see you again. Do you ever go to Carpenter’s place?” It was a Blind Tiger that all of them knew, the restaurant on Lee Street in which John had sat with Granpap when he came back from the mountains long before.

  “I go there sometimes,” John said.

  “Then I’ll see you.”

  After that meeting John entered into a different life from that he had been leading. He became acquainted, if not at first hand then at second, with some of the men of the town. Sometimes he saw them in their hours of recreation, and talked with them at Carpenter’s, and sometimes he only heard of them. There was Albert Burnett who had gone to college, and who now was a leading attorney. But it was Robert who held some interest for him, and they met several times.

  They sat in the Blind Tiger one evening alone. Usually Young Frank or Statesrights Mulkey or some men from the town were with them. This evening they were alone.

  Robert was persuading John to join a lodge that had a branch in the village and met over the Company store. Robert himself belonged to the town lodge, and in it were other young and old men. One of the members was Basil.

  Through Robert, John learned that Basil was accomplishing what he had set out to do. The father-in-law had died and left each of his two daughters some money, and with his part Basil was starting a gasoline station and repairing garage. According to Robert, who had visited John’s brother, the Basil McClures lived in a splendid house which they were buying, and in it was a piano, and much velvet furniture.

  This was what Robert was planning to have for himself. He was engaged to marry the daughter of a rich grocer in the town. She was just a little bit off, as Statesrights had told John, and followed men around as if she wanted to eat them up, but her unfortunate characteristic made it easier for her father and others to forget that Robert’s mother was living at the North on money made from an unmentionable source.

  It was Statesrights who had told this to John. Yet Robert himself, when he had been drinking, was hardly less frank about his personal affairs. He was free, he told John that night as they sat alone at the table. His mother had given him the farm to sell when he could, and she would never come back again, but would stay in the North where she had put his crippled sister in an institution.

  “You used to think a lot of your sister,” John said across the table.

  “I used to think a lot of things important that I don’t think are important now.”

  “What is important?”

  “Living, and getting what you want?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ease and comfort, and the respect of my fellow citizens. I did without that long enough. Now I want it. When I get married I’ll settle down, and if I want to kick up a row I’ll go somewhere else, or hide it here like the others. And some day, John, you may wake up to find I’m in Congress.”

  “Maybe,” John said. “Maybe I will.”

  “And I want you to vote for me. Will you do that for your old friend?”

  “Well, hit’s a long time yet.”

  “Not so long as you think. I’m going to hang out my shingle as a lawyer. Heilman wants to be Governor. Some day he will resign as Congressman, and that’s when I’ll step in.”

  “I’ve even joined the church,” Robert said. “You can see I’m honest with you, John, because you know me, and you can be trusted. I can’t fool you either, like I can some. I fooled Basil. He thinks I’ve been converted through him, and he thinks a lot of his religious protege—the hypocrite!” Robert spat out.

  “Look here,” John leaned across the table. The several drinks he had put down made a warm rush of anger go to his head. “Basil may be just what you say. I’m not quarreling at the words, but the tone. He is my brother, and I don’t like your tone.”

  He looked straight at Robert, angrily, and Robert answered his looks with one of anger. Then, very slowly, he smiled.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “Whatever Basil is, as you say, he is your brother. But I like you, John,” he added tearfully. “I like you. And I’m honest with you, ain’t I, John? I’ve been to college and I’ve been to France, and I’ve seen a hell of a lot of life: and still I have a feeling for you because you’re honest. I’ve got no feeling for anything and anybody—usually. Religious people say God loves us all and guides us, and others say there is some kind of plan in the universe. I’ve read a lot, John—philosophers and others. And I tell you there is no plan and no guidance. There is no order, no law, no purpose, no progress for the human race. History repeats itself over and over, and here we are, the human race in all its ugliness, just the same as ever. It’s for a man to get out and while there’s a life to be lived, grab just as much as he can and to hell with everybody else.”

  “If a man feels as you do,” John said, “then he might just as well go to hell as fast as he can.”

  “It’s true. And I thought that for a time. But I’ve got too much energy. And I have a wish to lead men. I know I can do it. And men like to be led. They need a strong arm, and a strong head above them.”

  What Robert had said made its impression on John. It suited him to have someone take the lead, and the responsibility for his actions. And Robert was willing to do this for all those who would follow him. Yet there was a part of himself that John without knowing he was doing so kept away from Robert and the others. It was this almost hidden independence that Robert respected. And he had his own reasons for keeping John as a friend. He knew that the boy had the respect of the men in the village, and some day when he became a politician that influence might be of help in getting him votes.

  With this in mind he persuaded John to join the lodge in the village. It stood for the protection of the flag, and the motto was “Keep out the foreigner and the nigger. Neither belongs.’’ One night at twelve exactly, John was initiated into the lodge with many indignities—and became a very unsatisfactory member.

  He saw the members dressed up in fancy costumes parading around the hall and speaking in loud unnatural voices. The strutting did not affect him in the way it was meant to do, for he could only laugh as he had laughed once when he saw Basil in a sort of nightgown at the cabin in the mountains.

  So the meetings went on without him. He preferred to see his friends at Carpenter’s—to sit at a table with drinks between them, when they could talk and have a real laugh together over a joke or some story that one of them told.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  ZINIE MARTIN and Bonnie sat in the front room where Emma lay in one of the beds asleep, with Bonnie’s baby at the foot of the bed, asleep like Emma. It was Sunday afternoon.

  “I came over to ask about Emma,” Zinie said.

  “She’s about the same,” Bonnie told her, looking toward the place where Emma’s gray hair showed above the quilt.

  “I’ve been washing,” Bonnie said. “So everything is in a mess.” She straightened her apron over her belly that showed plainly that she was to have another child in a few months. “I hate t’ work on Sunday, but it’s a thing that has t’ be done.”

  “Everybody knows there’s a-plenty to be done here,” Zinie whispered. “Don’t you worry over working on a Sunday.

  “Is Granpap asleep, too?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How is he?”

  “Well. But he tires easily, and sleeps most of the day.”

  “And—and John?”

  “Why, Zinie, haven’t you seen him?”

  “Not lately.”

  “Why, he’s been going to your house so steady, I thought . . .” Bonnie saw Zinie’s white face go whiter, and knew that she was saying the wrong thing.

  “Maybe he’s at your house right now, Zinie. I know he’s been wild lately. But he’s young. I think hit’s just the same thing that Kirk was. I’ve always heard how good Kirk was to his woman. I expect John is at your house right now looking for ye.”

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nbsp; “No, Bonnie. There’s no use fooling myself. Bonnie, I saw him last night. I went to town. He was on the street with a woman.”

  “Are you sure it was John?”

  “As sure as I’m sitting here.”

  “I knew he was drinking, but I didn’t know there was any woman. Now, Zinie, maybe he couldn’t help it. Maybe hit was just somebody he couldn’t get away from.

  “You see, I’ve heard him say such nice things about ye.”

  “Did he say nice things?”

  “Yes, he did. He said you were his freckled girl.”

  Zinie put her hand to her face. She was really nice looking, Bonnie thought, at times pretty.

  “Hit don’t sound so nice,” Zinie said.

  “But if you could have heard how he said it. As if he loved every freckle on your face. And you have just a few, Zinie, across your nose. And he said another time that you were as sweet as you were pretty.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  Zinie’s fingers twisted together in her lap.

  “You be patient, Zinie.”

  “I reckon hit’s best,” Zinie said.

  She went out of the door into the barren front yard where the hard ground met her feet. She missed the soft ground of the mountains that was rich with growth. There was plenty of mud on the roads there, as in the streets of the village. But on the mountains the black soil sank under her feet, and in it grew small flowers and plants she had liked to pick in the spring. John had forgotten about the mountains. He was full of the town and of making something of himself. As if he ought not to know that there was just one life for them—to marry and be happy so long as they could, then take the burdens that life gave them. But he did not want burdens. He wanted to better himself. Zinie suspected that one reason he was so emphatic about all this was that he knew if he once took on burdens he would accept them completely. Perhaps, she thought, Bonnie was right; if she waited and was patient, he would come back and take things upon himself without any urging from her.

  Soon after Zinie left, John came to the house. He had come to get Granpap’s gun that always stood in a corner of his and Granpap’s room. It gave him a peculiar pleasure to go about the streets on Sunday with a gun under his arm, for he knew that people looked at him and either thought sorrowfully of him as an unbeliever, or reproachfully as a wicked person.

  He was to meet Statesrights Mulkey and Young Frank and drive out in the country somewhere to shoot at targets. After his mother’s death Statesrights’ father had married Alma, his mother’s sister. Mr. Mulkey had reformed Alma, and made her into a religious, money-grabbing woman, who starved the young ones of the little they had, in order to save a penny. Statesrights felt himself free of the family when his mother was gone. He boarded with Mrs. Sevier, who lived off Company property, and was able to charge very little. Statesrights had bought a second hand car that he and John and the others used when they wished to go into town or out into the country.

  Granpap was sleeping. John tiptoed to the corner of the room, but as he touched the gun it fell and the barrel struck the floor. The old man raised himself under the covers.

  “That you, John?” he asked in a muffled voice.

  “Yes,” John spoke very low hoping that Granpap would go back to sleep.

  “You taking the gun?” Granpap asked.

  “Yes. You go to sleep.”

  “And hit the day of rest?”

  “There’s more to life than resting, Granpap.” It did not concern him that he might hurt Granpap by what he said. If people were so easily hurt, then it was best they should be.

  “What is there in life,” Granpap sighed, “but to wait and hope for heaven?”

  “I aim t’ live a little, Granpap, before I reach the pearly gates.”

  “Yes,” Granpap said, and huddled under the bed clothes again. “You’re young.”

  “Is that you, John?” Bonnie put her head in the doorway between the two rooms.

  “Yes,” he slipped the gun under his arm.

  “Can you stop a minute?”

  “Not now.”

  “She wants you,” Bonnie nodded back toward the room. John went in reluctantly. Emma was sitting in a chair. She had on her one dress, a dark brown calico. She sat as she always did when she was up, sideways, dejected and uncomfortable on the edge of the chair.

  John glanced at her, and as it never failed to do the sight made him miserable. As always she was picking at her dress, looking down at her hands, rearranging the skirt with patient little gestures.

  He put the gun on the bed where she had been lying not long before, and went up to her. Though she had wanted to see him she seemed to have no words to say. She looked up once. He saw her gray hairs and the deep lines on her face. Bonnie came and stood by him. He looked into her eyes and saw on her face that had been so full of grace and fineness, a sickliness, a beginning of wearing out—the lines that in another ten years would make her like an old woman. It seemed for a moment that two old women were before him and that he was old and finished like Granpap. He touched Emma’s hand and turned away, strained and impotent. There was an impulse in him to pick up the gun, kill them all, and then himself. The impulse passed, but he was trembling when Bonnie came and stood before him at the door leading on to the porch.

  “I’d like to speak with you,” she said. “Zinie was here . . .”

  “I can’t stop now.”

  He turned from her and ran down the steps, and Bonnie closed the door sorrowfully behind him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  SINCE John had joined the lodge in the village the authorities of the mill had been especially cordial to him, for some of them belonged to the same lodge, though, like John, they did not attend meetings very often. Then, one day, Superintendent Burnett called John into his office and made him a section boss.

  This was an important event. It meant that John was beginning to rise in the world. Only one thing kept him from being contented. Frank and all those with whom he had lived and worked looked at him thoughtfully and questioningly. They wanted to know what he meant to do about this new work. Would he go on the side of those above or stand up for his kin and friends? He knew the answer to that question, but did not speak it to them, for he resented their silent questioning. He would show them that he could be fair, and yet climb higher than others had done.

  He was working in the weave room, at the same looms that John Stevens had worked for so many years. John Stevens’ bad leg had become worse, for rheumatism had set in, and he had been forced, some months before, to move to Sandersville where there was an opening for a night watchman. It gave John pleasure to stand at the looms where he had seen his friend in the past, and sometimes he thought of John Stevens with a keen pang of recollection.

  Recently stories had circulated through the village of a strike in the Sandersville mills. John heard of it and wondered if his friend had taken part in the strike, and then he forgot; for there were other things which took up his attention.

  One day word went around in the mill that a young lady had come to organize clubs for girls and women in the village. She was brought there by the mill management, which had one of its houses painted inside and out, sinks and other plumbing put in, and furniture installed. People were invited to a meeting at the school house where the young lady would speak to them. Men were invited, but the girls and women were especially urged to come.

  That day John had an appointment with Mr. Burnett at lunch time. He had made the appointment, for there were several matters he wanted to take up with the Superintendent.

  All those who had come down from the mountains were having an unhappy experience in the mill. They had been given five and eight dollars as a beginning and had been promised more wages later on when they knew the work better. They had become skillful at their work, but the higher wages were not forthcoming.

  Others needed higher wages so that they might, for instance, put screens in their windows. No one ev
er seemed to have enough money ahead to buy the screens. If there were times when they spent money foolishly instead of on something that was necessary, then it was only natural. For people must have some pleasure. But Ora never spent a cent of money that was not absolutely necessary. Yet it was her baby that died of typhoid, and the doctor had said the disease could have been prevented if there had been screens at the windows.

  John wished to present facts like these to Mr. Burnett so the Superintendent would agree to raise the wages of the other workers. So many things could happen to people who did not get enough pay. If they did not have enough food, and enough sleep, and were worn down, they could not do the best work for the mill.

  In the office he spoke to Mr. Burnett quietly, referring to a paper in his hand where he had written down the requests he wished to make, and the reasons for making them.

  “Well, John,” Mr. Burnett said, “I didn’t think, and Mr. Randolph didn’t think, when we made you section boss that you would turn on us like this.”

  “According to my way of thinking,” John told him, “hit’s part of my work t’ see what the people who are under me need in the way of things that are necessary to keep them working to the best of their ability.”

  “I’m afraid you are very much mistaken in your job, then. Your part is to get work out of those people in there. You get as much as you can—see? The management can take care of the rest. It’s none of your business.”

  “It’s like this, Mr. Burnett. You tell me to care for the machines, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “If a machine gets out of order something must be done right away. And you’ve said to me, or Mr. Fellows has said every day. ‘See that folks keep their machines in order.’ Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, and we expect you to do just that.”

  “So I figure that it’s just as important t’ keep a man or woman that’s working at the machines in good order, and it’s even more important, for they are people, and the machines, they aren’t human, and can’t feel misery.”