To Make My Bread (35 page)

“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.

“Did you live there?” Bonnie asked him once.

“No, I didn't, and don't ask foolish questions,” Robert said.

“Moses' wife works there, and I've heard her tell about it in the kitchen.” He said this grudgingly.

One Monday a preacher came and spoke to them in the morning in the big auditorium. He told them about the Lord's goodness, and the sins of people who did not thank him every day for his goodness.

Going home that day Robert did not say much. When they reached the bridge he stopped there and looked down into the stream that ran under it. Bonnie was glad to stop. On the sides of the stream there were white and yellow violets, and from the trees yellow jessamine hung down. The deep yellow trumpets filled the air just around them with a startling fragrance.

She sat down at the edge of the stream when she heard Robert speak out loud angrily to John.

“I don't believe in God,” he said.

“Why?” John asked him.

“I don't believe, that's all.”

“Then you'll go to hell.”

“Hell's a better place than earth.”

“You haven't been there.”

“How do you know I'll go to hell?”

“The preacher says so.”

“Then the preacher lies.”

Looking up from the violets she was picking, Bonnie saw Robert give a defiant look at John and walk away over the bridge and on up the road.

“Wait for me, John,” she begged. But when she caught up with him and they walked along some distance behind Robert she had no word to say. But the words they had said on the bridge disturbed her.

At the steps leading from the road up the high embankment to his house, Robert stopped until they came up.

“Come in,” he said commandingly.

He opened the front door and took them into the hallway. There was a scuffling in the front room at the right. He pushed them back and waited, standing in front of them and watching the door. Bonnie heard something dragging slowly across the floor. It made her heart beat up to wait for the unknown thing to show itself.

When it reached the door she saw it was a girl like any other. She had a healthy face, like Robert's. But she came walking on all fours like an animal, and behind her knees she dragged two useless legs, like sticks. When she saw them she sat up, resting both hands on the floor.

“This is my sister, Mary Louise,” Robert said. He looked at them as if he dared them to say anything except what he wanted.

“Howdy, Mary Louise,” Bonnie said, for she knew that was manners.

“She can read,” Robert said. “I taught her.”

He reached over and took John's reader and opened it at the back, far beyond the place where John had learned.

“Read that, Mary Louise,” he said and handed the book down to her. She balanced herself with one hand, and with the other held the book near her eyes; and read the whole page without hesitating once.

Robert looked at them. Probably he expected them to say words in praise, but they could only look back at him, and with wonder at the girl. He was satisfied with their silent admiration.

“She's smart,” he said and gave the book back to John. “Now go back to your room, Mary Louise,” he told her, and the girl scuffled back across the door sill.

In the kitchen Robert put food on the table that Moses, who cooked for him, had left in a pot on the slow fire.

“You see,” he said to John, “if there was a God he couldn't make my sister like that. They say God is Love, and Love couldn't do anything cruel like that.”

“Maybe hit's a punishment,” Bonnie said very softly. She was almost afraid to speak out with Robert. But something must be said for religion.

“What do you mean?” Robert stood up. His face was white and his eyes grew round and threatening. They seemed to blow out sparks. “If you mean my mother you can go out that door and never come back.”

“I didn't mean a thing,” Bonnie said. “Not a thing.”

She looked frightened and sorry for what she had said. There was no doubt of that.

“Then it's all right,” Robert told her. “But you understand my mother is not to be talked about. I licked four boys at school just for that. Everybody knows they can't say anything about my mother.”

S
UMMER
came very quickly. After months of work in the fields, Granpap was bent over like an old man. He had a misery in his back that would catch him in the fields so that he was forced to take a little time off and rest. John and Bonnie, since school was out, worked in the fields all day.

Sweat poured from Bonnie's face into her eyes, as she leaned over the long rows. She came back at the end of the first days exhausted. After that her back learned to bend without aching, though she was always ready for bed at the end of a day out there, and John was the same. They took a bucket of fresh water from the well to the field with them. And Bonnie found that if they tied up their heads in wet rags and put the straw hats Emma had bought in town for five cents over these, the sun did not give headaches. But nothing could keep it from their backs. They had worked in the sun up in the hills. It was never so hot up there even in the middle of the day. There was a saying that the sun beat down. And it was exactly what the sun did on the backs of people working in the fields. It came like a red hot hand across their backs, then went away as if to get strength for another blow and down it came again, a hot fire.

There were Negroes working in the Phillips' fields across the road, for Moses often hired the children of share-croppers to work for Mrs. Phillips. An old Negro woman, Aunt Sarah, bent with rheumatism, brought her five grandchildren to the fields. She laid the baby—its mother cooked for a white woman in the town—on a croker sack between the rows. The other children, even the five-year-old, chopped cotton. Bonnie could hear them when they came to the end of the rows near the road, over there. While she was thinning out the fresh young plants that snuggled together in a row and measuring with her eye in order to leave the healthiest plant at the right distance from the last one, she heard Aunt Sarah urging the young ones to stop playing and get to work. She always threatened them with a whipping from their mother. “Ne' mind,” she called out to them, “ne' mind”—in a threatening voice, very high and cracked.

Granpap kept after them just as Aunt Sarah kept after her young ones. When the bright nights came, because of the moon, he took John and Bonnie into the fields to work at night.