To Make My Bread (48 page)

At closing time John was waiting for her outside the door of the mill. “Take the young ones to Ora's,” he said, “and come to our house to-night with Frank and Ora.”

Bonnie spoke out loud, “What is it?”

But she saw that his voice was very quiet and still when he spoke, and she lowered her own before she had finished.

“Don't tell anybody you're coming,” he said. “Just come.”

She saw that he was speaking of something very important. “I'll come then.”

When he left her she saw that he went up to others and spoke the same words to them. He did it casually, as if he was talking with good friends, and that of course was what he was doing. Then he came back to her and they walked on together.

John spoke to her quietly, for there were people still around them. “A man came up to me the other night, and asked which way I was going. I told him. And he said, ‘How would you like to come up to my boarding house. I'm boarding with Mrs. Sevier.' I looked at him, for I wasn't sure he was a friend. He spoke in a way that we don't speak. So I asked, ‘What do you want?' And he said, ‘John Stevens sent me.' Then I knew. I went up to the boarding house, and we sat there and listened to the victrola in the dining-room that was empty, for everybody had eaten. Then he said to me, ‘What do you think of unions?' And I said. ‘I think they're good.' So we talked. He's a-coming tonight. His name is Tom Moore, and he has worked in a mill the same as this one, only in the North.”

The next day people who had been to the meeting the night before spoke to others, in the washroom, and at the frames, or between bites of food at lunch time. And that night Ora's house where they met was filled to the doors. They pulled down the curtains and had one light on, for the meetings were to be kept secret.

For a week they went on and had to be held in more than one house, since so many wanted to hear the words that Tom Moore had to speak. And they had words to speak for themselves, words that had been kept hidden. Everyone understood the importance of keeping what was going on a secret until it was time to carry out certain plans. And they were careful. But there must have been a spy among them.

Tom Moore went away on Saturday to another village which had sent for him, for there were many places where people were discontented.

On Monday, about the middle of the morning, something unexpected happened. In the room where John worked the section boss was summoned to the office. He came back, walked up to John and said, “Here's your time. You're to leave the mill right away.”

He spoke softly, but John answered him in a loud voice, loud enough for the others to hear.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“You heard me,” the section boss told him.

“I want you t' say hit for others t' hear.”

“All right. You've got your time. Now get out.”

Someone near by heard the loud talk and went up to the two men. Others, seeing that something was wrong, left their frames and gathered around.

“Will you tell me why?” John asked.

“No, I won't.”

John looked around him. He recognized some of those who had come to the meetings. One of them was Jesse McDonald.

The section boss turned to Jesse. “And you, too,” he said. “You're fired.”

“Anybody else?” John asked.

“Not in this room.”

He and Jesse were members of the committee that had been elected at one of the secret meetings.

“Get back to work, you,” the section boss said to the other men.

Some of them slunk off to their frames, but others stood by John and Jesse. They spoke in low tones to each other.

“Get back to work,” the section boss cried out, “all except those two.”

“No,” one of the men said slowly, “I reckon if they go I'm a-going too.”

“And me,” another one said.

“Well, John. It looks like we're in for it. Let's go,” another neighbor spoke up.

The overseer came in the room and up to the group.

“Now, men,” he said firmly, “get to work.”

The men looked at him. In the short time that they had stood together they had felt something. They had felt a sense of standing up for each other. For so long each had been alone with his family striving after enough food to keep from starving, and enough clothes to keep from going naked. And they had been alone in that fight. Now they were going to stand together, side by side, and there came to them the feeling of strength.

They looked at each other with a new light in their eyes, as if they were seeing each other for the first time. And very slowly, almost imperceptibly, they smiled, before their faces turned to Dewey Fayon, the overseer.

One of them said. “We'll see you again, Dewey.” And as John turned toward the door they walked with him.

In the hall they met others coming out. Almost the same thing had happened in the rooms where Bonnie, Ora, Frank and ten others had been given their time. Those who had attended the secret meetings, and some who had not, but were indignant over the dismissal of their friends, went out from the mill. In the middle of the morning they walked out into the sunshine. It was an amazing thing, that they felt the courage to leave their machines. There was excitement in this thought, yet they still felt the mill on them, and were quiet and thoughtful, for if this was a new thing they had done, it was also a serious thing.

They stood in the road near the gate, and did not look back at the mill which stood behind them, huge and quiet except for the low throb of the machines—until John called to them.

He had climbed up a little way on the thick wire fence.

“Come to this place to-morrow, at half past eleven,” he said.

As they walked on the road people began talking, for they had been as if they were dumb before. But the talking was not loud. They seemed to have a fear that the mill would hear them.

John spoke to Bonnie who was walking beside him.

“We've got to let Tom Moore know about this.”

“I know hit,” Bonnie said. She raised her face, and he saw that it was lit up with the warm fire that had not been there since she was first married.

“I'll find him.” John said. “You leave your young ones with Ora, and all of you keep your eyes on the mill. Ill find him and get back to-night if I can.”

B
ONNIE
stood on Ora's porch with her baby in her arms, watching for John. It was the morning after they had walked out of the mill and John had not yet returned. Somewhere, she knew, he was looking for Tom Moore, or they together were hurrying to get back. When would they come?

She was anxious and disturbed, for something must be done very soon. She thought of John Stevens, but it was too late to get him a message. If they did not hear from John during the day, then someone must go for John Stevens that night.

She thought again of the words which John Stevens had spoken, when she had talked with him at different times. At first she had not believed in his words, for they seemed too fanciful to be true. Then she had been convinced that he had a message that was founded in the facts of her everyday life. It seemed reasonable and sure. For the present she was interested in the immediate need, the things that Tom Moore had suggested they might hope to win—a day in which they would work only eight hours, and pay that was not less than twenty dollars. To Bonnie, who had been receiving nine dollars a week, twenty seemed riches.

Ora came out of the house. “You don't see him yet?” she asked and stood beside Bonnie on the porch.

They sat on the steps and talked; Ora tall above Bonnie with her rawboned old face looking fine and earnest.

“We've got t' win,” she said.

“Yes, and us women have got to fight hard, like the men,” Bonnie added.

“There'll be some who'll say women should stay at home, and not mix in men's affairs. But they don't say hit when we go out t' work, and I can't see why they should say hit now.”

“Yes, if we work out, we've got a right to speak.”

“Is that Dewey Fayon's wife a-coming up the street?”

“I don't know. Is hit?”

“I believe so. I wonder what she wants.”

Dewey Fayon lived on Strutt Street, and his wife did not often come down into the village, but stayed on her street or went into town where she had friends. She was a stout woman, but very pretty. She wore high heeled slippers and at every moment a person watching expected to see her topple over on one side; and often she did turn her ankle so that her heels were continually run down at the edges.

She came and stood right before Ora and Bonnie as if she had planned to speak with them.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” Ora told her.

“Well, it looks as if you're not working to-day.”

“Yes'm,” Ora said. “Hit looks as if you're not a-working either.”

“I was just walking around.”

“And we're just setting here.”

“Is John around?” Mrs. Fayon asked, looking at Bonnie.

“No'm.”

“You know where he is?”

“Somewheres. I don' know.”

Mrs. Fayon moved her heavy weight from one high heel to the other.

“Set down, if you want,” Ora said. She could not keep a person who was visiting her standing for long.

“Well, I'll have to be going soon. So I won't sit down. Is it most twelve?”

“I'll see,” Bonnie told her and went in to look at the alarm clock. She wanted to see for herself how much time there was. It was ten minutes of eleven. And everyone was to meet at the mill at half past.

She went out and told Mrs. Fayon the time.

“Well, I'll stay a few minutes,” Mrs. Fayon said. “But I won't sit down.”

“You know,” she said, not looking at them. “I want to tell you something as a friend. People are talking about you two. It's getting around that you want t' be like men. And people say the Bible says let women look to their houses and let men tend to the world. It's what I do,” she said, looking very righteous.

“And I believe in it like Preacher Simpkins does.”

“Well,” Bonnie began, but Ora put her big hand out and laid it on Bonnie's arm.

“The Bible says women should be in subjection to their husbands.”

Ora did not answer. She was silent as a mountain in an uninhabited country, and Bonnie sat like her, very still. Only the baby moved in her arms.

“It's well said,” Mrs. Fayon told them. “I always let my husband decide everything. He wants to be master in his own house.”

She looked up at Bonnie and Ora who sat looking out into the distance, which was bounded by the house across the road. Now Bonnie did not want John to come, not while Mrs. Fayon was there. She was hoping that he would not come—not at once.

“Well,” Mrs. Fayon said to the silent faces above her. “I suppose I'll have to be going.”

“Must ye?” Ora asked.

“Well, it seems people around here aren't used to polite conversation,” Mrs. Fayon said and turned away from them. At the corner one of her heels stuck in the mud, and she had to lean over and pull the shoe out, while she balanced on the other.

Bonnie and Ora watched, then looked at each other.

“I don't like t' feel evil toward anybody,” Bonnie said. “But I did enjoy seeing that.”

“She just came snooping to find out what she could.”

“Yes. I got t' know it, though, only after she asked us, ‘Where is John?' ”

Bonnie went inside to lay the sleeping child on the bed, and change her dress. That morning she and Ora had washed and ironed their extra dresses. For they felt a need to dress in a way that would point out to others the importance and splendor of the occasion when they went down to the mill.

“Hit's twenty after,” Bonnie said to Ora. She looked at her anxiously. Perhaps they might be forced to take the responsibility of those whom John had told to meet at the gates of the mill at half past eleven. “You think . . .” she began but Ora interrupted.

“We'd better go along,” she said firmly. “Maybe they'll come. Maybe they're there already.”

In front of the mill, some distance back from the gate, but filling the road far down on each side, were those who had walked out the day before. Like Bonnie and Ora the women were dressed in the best they had, and the men looked as if they had prepared for church.

Bonnie and Ora joined the crowd of friends and neighbors. There was a feeling like that of an outdoor church meeting in the mountains, for people were talking as neighbors do who have not seen each other in a long while.

There were some who had not come out the day before, but who did not go to work that morning, and they were welcomed by the others, as if the open road was a house full of hospitable people. There was a great deal of talk, and some almost hysterical laughing from the women especially. From a distance it all sounded joyful, and in a way the crowd was joyful. But under the joy was a tense waiting, and perhaps some fear. For across the road, just outside the high wire fence of the mill, stood guards who carried sawed-off shot guns, and it was easy to see that in their pockets were pistols ready for use.

Bonnie saw that John and Tom Moore had not yet come. People came up to her and asked, “Where is John?” And she had to say, “Just wait, hell be here soon,” though she was not sure, and watched the road.

An automobile came from the east, the direction of the town. As it approached them Bonnie saw that it was the old car that Reskowitz had loaned to Tom Moore.

The car stopped right in front of the mill, cutting off the sight of the guards. John stepped out, and then Tom Moore. They reached into the back of the car and began taking out bundles of papers. Strikers crowded around and took bundles from them. Soon the papers were distributed, and those who could read the printing spoke it aloud to the others.