Listen Here

by Sandra L. Ballard

  In 1911, after graduating from a teacher's training program at Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia, Lumpkin spent time in France, taught in a rural school, worked as a home demonstration agent, and spent summers in the North Carolina mountains. She also worked as a secretary for the YWCA and lived in New York City, where she studied writing at Columbia University and became involved in left-wing politics.

  Her first novel, To Make My Bread, won the Maxim Gorky Award for best labor novel of the year. Chronicling events she had witnessed—mountain people leaving farms for textile mills—it begins in the North Carolina mountains in 1900 and ends with union activities in the 1929 Gastonia strike.

  Her second novel also concerns proletarian issues of race, social justice, and union activity. Though a complex web of personal and public events eventually turned Lumpkin away from Marxism and toward more conservative political and religious ideas in her subsequent work, her first novel remains a significant literary contribution to American literature. The principal archive of her papers is in Columbia, South Carolina, at the University of South Carolina.

  This excerpt from the first chapter of To Make My Bread introduces John McClure, whose difficult birth in a one-room cabin is traumatic for the whole family.

  OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

  PRIMARY

  Novels: Full Circle (1962), The Wedding (1939), A Sign for Cain (1935), To Make My Bread (1932). Short stories: “The Treasure,” O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories (1940). “White Man—A Story,” New Masses (September 1927), 7–8.

  SECONDARY

  C. Michael Smith, “Grace Lumpkin,” Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary (1979), 287–88. Suzanne Sowinska, “Introduction,” To Make My Bread (1995), vii–xliii.

  TO MAKE MY BREAD (1932)

  from Chapter 1

  Granpap Kirkland and Emma McClure's two sons had ventured out to find the steer and cow. When they did not return Emma stood outside the door and screamed to them. She could not stand long against the strong wind. It blew her against the wall of the cabin with the force of a strong mans fist. Leaning over she held to the woodblock that served as a step and kept up intermittent screams until the others returned. They came crawling on hands and knees, and she did not see them until they were right on her, and Granpap called into her ear that they were safe.

  She did not learn until later that the steer and cow were lost, for as soon as her anxiety for Granpap and the boys was over, Emma felt a first sharp pain and knew that her time had come. Inside the cabin with the door shut she crouched over the fire trying to get some of the warmth of it into her body. The icy wind had reached the very marrow of her bones.

  The hickory log fire shone on her twisted face, and on the form that protruded from her belly in an oval shape. It seemed as if the child in her womb had already been born and was lying wrapped up in her lap asleep.

  On the floor at Emma's right eight-year-old Kirk lay and stared into the fire, and between them in a poplar log cradle Bonnie, the youngest, whimpered in her sleep. On the other side of the fire, Basil, who was a year older than Kirk, sat against the chimney, his legs spread out before him on the floor.

  The wind sniffed at the doors and blew gusts of icy breath through the cracks of the log cabin. Clothes hanging to pegs on the walls flapped out into the room, making strange balancing movements. If the wind died down for a moment they suddenly collapsed against the wall as a man does who gives up the struggle to keep on his drunken legs.

  In the half darkness of the small space between the circle of firelight and the end wall of the cabin, John Kirkland walked the floor. His boots stamped on the split-log flooring regularly, hesitating when he turned at the wall and again when he turned just behind Emma's chair.

  Granpap Kirkland's life had been full of varied experiences. A fight with a she bear had left three long scars across his right cheek, and there was a scar on his side from a wound received in battle. He was not a fearful man by nature. But he had known fear and dread in the last few moments since he knew that some time in the night he must deliver Emma of her child.

  Emma instructed Granpap. She took his thumb for a measure. The cord must be cut so far from the child. Neither of them had much fear for Emma. She was a strong woman. A few months before, just after Jim McClure died of fever and before Granpap had come to stay with her, Emma, then five months gone with child, had carried the best part of a thirty-pound shoat the twelve miles over steep mountain trails to Swain's Crossing. Nevertheless her children always came hard, and Emma knew there would be plenty of pain even before the child made its final struggle.

  Bonnie cried out loud. Emma walked to the wall where the clothes hung and took down a pair of old jeans. She tucked them into the cradle around the child. Back in the chair with her foot against the cradle she set it rocking slowly, and the child quieted for a moment.

  The old man came and stood behind Emma. His shoulders were bowed a little, but he was very tall, and stood high above her.

  “Do you think it'll be soon, Emma?” he asked. His voice was anxious and querulous.

  Emma did not answer. She knew he wanted it over and done with. But so did she. There was no way to hurry the child.

  “Are you going to bed?” he asked. She straightened up.

  “When hits time, Pap. Hit's s’ cold there.”

  The wind slapped against the cabin and snarled down the chimney. Snow blew in under the north door and spread over the floor in a hurry and flurry like an unwelcome quest who is trying to make himself at home.

  During one of the quiet times between the pains Emma took the coffee pot from the fire and poured out a drink for each one in the tin cups. Above the kerosene lamp on the table strings of dried apples hanging from the rafters stirred and as the lamp flame gutted and flared up the apple strings made long crooked shadows across the bed in the corner.

  “Hit'll warm up our backs,” Emma said and handed the cups. She walked over and picked up the water bucket that was in a dark corner behind Kirk.

  “Here, Kirk,” she said. “Hold the pan.”

  The water was frozen. Emma broke through the ice with her fist. When she poured it out of the bucket it clinked against the bottom of the tin basin. She set the basin down in the ashes against the live embers.

  “You'll need the hot water,” she said to Granpap. As she gulped down the warm coffee she wished in herself there was a woman who would know what to do without telling. And she wished the men were where they belonged when a woman was in travail—somewhere out on the mountains or at a neighbor's. There was a shame in having her sons near, and Granpap must see her as he had not seen her since she was a naked baby in her mother's arms. Soon, maybe, it would be over. The pains had begun to get worse, as if it was the end.

  In the bed away from the others, Emma let go. She was shaking with cold yet the quilts and her cotton flannel skirt were too much and she pushed them off. Sitting up in bed she pressed down slowly with her hands over the great lump stirring inside. Others had done this for her before to help the child come. She found that she could not do it for herself. The hot pulling cramp forced her to lie back and scream again. A bear was gnawing at her belly, pulling at the muscles with its strong teeth. She felt its fur on her face and beat at the fur with her arms.

  It was Granpap's beard. He was trying to tell her to keep covered as long as she could. She pushed him off. It was not possible to bear the agony of one hair touching her. There was no Granpap and no children now. Nothing mattered but herself and the pain.

  Bonnie kept up a fretful wail, and Granpap walked up and down the room. Outside the storm brushed against the cabin as if all the trees on the mountains had been uprooted and their dry branches were scraping over the roof and against the outside walls.

  Kirk was quiet. Now he stood with his back to the chimney, watching the corner with frightened eyes. Suddenly Emma cried out sharply to Granpap. He stooped over the bed and peered down.

  “Bring the lamp, Kirk,” he order
ed. “And you, Basil, put that pan of water and bucket on the table.”

  He rolled up his sleeves and walking quickly to the fire leaned far over to rub his cold hands in the flames.

  Kirk held the lamp over the bed and kept his eyes on his Granpap. On the bed was a woman he did not recognize as his mother. She was a stranger, a sort of beast. Granpap stood between him and the new thing, and he kept his eyes on the wide back where Granpap's old shirt and patched jeans were familiar and safe. Kirk saw the old man bending over working with his hands at Emma's body and he smelled blood. It made a familiar shudder run over him. Granpap bending over the bed was like a man bending over at a slaughtering and Emma's last cries were the same as those of a pig with a knife at its throat.

  For a while Kirk had not heard the storm because Emma's cries were closer than the sounds outside. But when they stopped there was the storm again, wheezing around the cabin and pushing at the door. When Granpap at last stood up he held in his hands something that looked to be a mass of blood and matter. But it was really a living thing. For as Granpap shook it the mass made a wailing sound—a sort of echo of the storm outside.

  There was washing to be done, and Kirk stood and held the lamp until the old man finished. At last Granpap covered Emma where she lay exhausted on the dry side of the cold bed. Then he put the washed baby in the cradle with Bonnie to keep it warm until Emma would come to and let it suck.

  GEORGE ELLA LYON

  (April 25, 1949–)

  George Ella Lyon, the daughter of Gladys Fowler Hoskins, a community worker, and Robert Hoskins Jr., a savings and loan officer, is a native of Harlan, Kentucky. “I was born with poor vision and a good ear, into a Southern mountain family and culture rich in stories,” she says. “Early on, I wanted to be a neon sign maker and I still hope to make words that glow.”

  Lyon earned a B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa, from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, in 1971. She completed her M.A. in English at the University of Arkansas in 1972, and her Ph.D. in English, with a minor in creative writing, from Indiana University in 1978. While at Indiana, she studied with poet Ruth Stone.

  “In 1972 I began trying to publish a collection of poems,” says Lyon. “Eleven years later I succeeded.” Her first book, Mountain, was published in 1983, and a steady stream of publications have followed, including more than nineteen picture books, four novels for young readers, an autobiography, and a second collection of poetry. Her first novel for adults, With a Hammer for My Heart, was selected by Borders bookstore for inclusion in its Original Voices series. She designed and hosted a five-program writers’ workshop series entitled Everyday Voices [for Kentucky Educational Television (KET).]

  Lyon's work has won numerous awards, including a Golden Kite Award for Borrowed Children and a Best Books of the Year citation from Publisher's Weekly for Who Came Down That Road? One of her children's books, Come a Tide, has been featured on PBS's Reading Rainbow.

  “Writing,” says Lyon, “is not thinking something up and putting it down, like downloading a computer. It's more like offering your clay body to the kiln. Give your heart to writing and your substance will be changed.”

  Recognized as a nurturer of young talent, Lyon jokes that she “runs a pro bono unemployment agency consulting with writers on how not to take jobs which would preclude writing.”

  Lyon has taught at a number of universities, but presently makes her living as a freelance writer, lecturer, and workshop leader. She has served as co-editor of three anthologies, including Old Wounds, New Words: Poems from the Appalachian Poetry Project. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband, Steve Lyon, a musician, and their two sons.

  In this scene from With a Hammer for My Heart, the reader is introduced to Mamaw, Lawanda's grandmother who lives in the small Appalachian community of Cardin, Kentucky.

  OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

  PRIMARY

  Novels: With a Hammer for My Heart (1997). Novels for young readers: Gina.Jamie.Father.Bear (2002), The Stranger I Left Behind Me (1997; originally published as Red Rover, Red Rover, 1989), Here and Then (1994), Borrowed Children (1988). Picture books for children: One Lucky Girl (2000), Book (1999), Counting on the Woods: A Poem (1998), A Sign (1998), A Traveling Cat (1998), Ada's Pal (1996), A Day at Damp Camp (1996), Mama Is a Miner (1994), Five Live Bongos (1994), Dreamplace (1993), Who Came Down That Road? (1992), Cecil's Story (1991), The Outside Inn (1991), Come a Tide (1990), Basket (1990), Together (1989), A B Cedar: An Alphabet of Trees (1989), A Regular Rolling Noah (1986), Father Time and the Day Boxes (1985). Poetry: where i'm from: where poems come from (1999), Catalpa (1993), Mountain (1983). Short stories: Choices (1989). Autobiography: “Voiceplace,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 168–74. A Wordful Child (1996). “Story: Making Things Whole,” Hemlocks and Balsams [Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, NC] 7 (1987), 47–55.

  SECONDARY

  Contemporary Authors, Vol. 120 (1987). Roberta T. Herrin, “From Poetry to Picture Books: The Words of George Ella Lyon,” in Her Words (2002), ed. Felicia Mitchell, 166–77. John Lang, ed. “George Ella Lyon Issue,” The Iron Mountain Review 10 (summer 1994). Donna Olendorf, ed., Something About the Author (1992).

  WITH A HAMMER FOR MY HEART (1997)

  from Part One

  MAMAW: It was at Little Splinter Creek Church that I saw what I saw. Its been thirty-five years and I remember that night like the nights my younguns was born.

  Perry Roby had took the Spirit and was shouting “Damnation” up one side of his breath and “Praise Jesus” down the other. August, dusky dark, and the hot church keeping you mindful of the Pit. All of a sudden, a light whipped out like you'd unrolled a bolt of cloth. I couldn't see the church nor nothing in it. I couldn't hear the creek out the window. There was only this lap of light. I didn't know but to climb up into it. That light held me in its arms, it laid my head on its bosom.

  And the light had a voice.

  “Mother Jesus didn't do your dying,” it said. “You'll still have to cross that river, like a child has to learn to sleep in the bed by itself. But of a morning, you'll wake up and I'll be waiting. I'm telling this to your hands. Don't let nobody go to bed before their time.”

  The light hummed something sweet as rain and it set me down in Little Splinter. My hands was so hot, my sister Gola jumped when I touched her.

  “She's with us now!” I shouted, and keeled toward Carla Dixon.

  “Praise His name!” I heard, going down, and knew they had it all wrong.

  First thing I did was make a sign that said LITTLE SPLINTER CREEK CHURCH OF THE MOTHER JESUS. Made it from boards left over from strengthening the chicken coop. I got me a poker and burnt the words in. Took me two weeks, had to wait till the kids was in bed. John said I was touched.

  “More'n touched. I was knocked down,” I told him.

  “Your insides can knock you down,” he said.

  “I know that. But my insides never took me nowhere, never told me nothing.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Well, your insides ain't never been this old before. You got lights going on where my ma used to have heat waves. She'd call one of us to pump water while she stuck her head under the spout. Maybe you could use a baptizing.”

  I didn't listen past that. No knot in the end of his string anyhow.

  Next church day I went early, learned Sam Wilder was conducting the service, and told him I was aiming to testify. I had my sign under my arm, wrapped up in a quilt.

  “You going to beat the Spirit into us?” he asked.

  “No. I got something to show.”

  “More'n I've got,” he said, running his hand over what was left of his hair. It was flat and yellow.

  So I was called first, after “Precious Memories” and Eugene Coldiron's prayer. As soon as heads went up, Sam looked at me, thinking I would speak right where I was, but I headed up front, struggling past bellies and elbows with my sign.

  “Sisters and Brothers of this church,” I said, “watered by Little Splint
er Creek, baptized in Redfox River, members of this Association, every one of you sons and daughters, some fathers and mothers to boot. I tell you: we have been led, but we have mistook the leading. We've seen a sign and read it clear wrong. Those words you carved on your heart about the Father, those words are lies. ‘Jesus is our Brother,’ you've been taught, been singing since you was a sprout. ‘Father and Son and Their Breath, that good Holy Ghost.’

  “Well, I been breathed on, let me tell you. I been lifted up to look Them in the eye. The heart's eye, friends, the One that sees it all. And this is what I'm here to tell you: there ain't no whiskers on Their faces. She ain't our Father. She ain't our Brother. She's our Mother Jesus and she longs to take us in Her arms.”

  I took the quilt off my sign and held it up.

  “Mother Jesus!” I shouted as they drug me out.

  …

  MAMAW: “It was hard being turned out of Little Splinter. I was weaned on that church—it was beans and buttermilk to me. Every time there was service, my mommy had us all there, scrubbed and shiny, with our hair skinned back. I was baptized from that church, married in it, saw my daddy and mommy prayed over there at the once-a-year funeralizing. And biggest thing of all, I saw God Herself in that church, was lifted up just like the old hymn says. And that was the very thing that put me out.

  “That Sunday, Lord, I went home so down, I felt I'd never get up again. My sign, which had weighed like the world walking over, I didn't even notice going back.