After the gap at Thunderhead, though there was not the uphill strain, the anxiety was greater. The steers could not get a hold on the hard ground and their feet slipped again and again. On the second lap the sledge struck some ice and the back slid off the trail and hung above a steep side of the mountain. Emma started forward. Ora held her back, for the men were struggling with the ropes they had tied to the back of the sledge. Ora heard the ropes that held the coffin to the sledge groan and whine as the box slipped and strained at them. She thought, “Suppose the ropes break and the coffin tumbles on the rocks below.” She looked over the side of the road at the steep descent that was almost a cliff and she shuddered against Emma, thinking of the terror if the coffin slipped and fell. It happened in a second. With a great heave of their bodies Frank and Jim pulled the back of the sledge into place on the trail, and once more the little procession moved zigzag across the face of Thunderhead. Down in the gorge where the trees were thinned out the sun had kept the ground thawed and the rest of the way was easier.
Young Frank and Jesse McDonald had come to the burying ground early in the morning to dig the grave. They stood by the mound of clay and watched the steers pull their burden up the slope. Beyond them were the four other McClure graves, one long for Jim and three short for the young ones who had died. They were not marked but the outlines could be seen in the dirt where they had sunk a little below the level of the ground. Other people from the settlement had come and were standing on the slope around the fire that Jesse and Young Frank had kept burning since morning. The smoke went up from the middle of the group of people. They turned when they heard Jesse say, “They’re coming,” and watched the procession. Their eyes picked out Emma behind the sledge. They had been talking of her, and of Kirk and his reckless ways. Everything they said had not been kind. But when they saw Emma their tongues were hushed. As they waited they drew closer together with a movement of compassion toward Emma.
When the procession reached the grave Frank McClure unhitched the steers and led them away far over to one side of the ground. Jim and Fraser stood by the sledge, and Jesse and Young Frank joined them. When Frank returned there were five men by the coffin. One more was needed. As they waited Jim Hawkins stepped from the group and stood by the other men. A little murmur went through the people, like a heavy sigh. By this act, as if he had spoken the words out loud, Jim said he was standing up for Kirk. He said that he reproached himself for driving Kirk from his cabin. And people began to remember how kind Kirk had been to Minnie, and how lucky Minnie would have been if she had married Kirk and settled down.
Hal Swain had his Bible open. While he read the men untied the coffin and lifted it clear of the sledge to the ground beside the grave. Young Frank and Jesse had already placed three long ropes on the ground. When the coffin was in place the men twisted the long ends around their forearms, and getting into place, three on one side of the grave and three on the other, they began to let the coffin down into the open grave. Hal read out loud as they let it down. “And David covered his face and he cried out with a loud voice, O my son Absalom, O Absalom my son, my son. Would to God I had died for thee.” He had selected this passage for it seemed to be the one that was appropriate. And it was short. He looked toward Emma when he was finished, for he wanted her to know he had read it with sympathy for her sorrow. She did not see him. Her eyes were on the coffin the men had lowered into the dark hole. The rope ends dropped from their hands. While young Frank and Jesse shoveled on the red clay, Emma bent above them. She heard the clay striking the coffin.
Jennie Martin heard, and she knew this was the sound that was hardest to bear. She whispered to Ora, “Can’t we start a hymn tune?” Ora nodded. “What?” Jennie whispered. Now that Ora said yes she could think of nothing to sing. Ora said the first that came to her, “Jesus Lover of my soul.”
Jennie sang the first line and her high voice pierced the bleak air above the hill. On the second line other women’s voices joined. They were hesitating and uncertain at first. Then some men’s voices took up the tune. The people stood on the hillside and lifted their heads and mouths to sing. They were like cattle lost in a storm, who sniff at the air, trying to find in which direction to go.
The song went up in the air. The women’s high voices struck the mountain sides and came back. Bonnie cried out loud. Emma, watching the grave, touched Bonnie on the shoulder with the palm of her hand, as if she was saying with it, “Hush, hush.” She saw Jesse break up a lump of clay with his shovel to make the mound smooth. When it was high enough he and Young Frank patted the mound with the round shovel backs until all the uneven lumps of clay had been smoothed down.
The song was finished and most of the people started away. Some went up to Emma. They said a few words. It was as if they had not been there. Emma was looking at the grave.
Frank McClure touched her arm. “We’ve got a long way to go, Emma,” he said. “And hit’s most night. Will ye come?”
Then she followed Frank to the place where the steers were hitched under a tree. While Frank was unhitching them so that Fraser might drive them back to Swain’s, Emma asked Ora a question.
“Did Hal write Basil?” she wanted to know.
“This morning,” Ora told her.
Emma was silent for a little. The children stood by waiting until she would move. The air was bleak on the hillside, now the sun was lower. A wind had come up and blew through them. Bonnie shivered against her mother.
“You two go ahead,” Emma said to John and Bonnie. When John started out ahead of Bonnie she told him to wait for his sister. To Ora this was a good sign. It meant that Emma, who for two days had been so silent, was beginning again to see other people. She was beginning to know that she had other children besides Kirk.
They watched the two young ones go down the road to the trail. Emma looked back at the mound that curved above the ground. It was black against the evening sky.
“He was a good boy,” she said.
She repeated the words, “He was a good boy,” as if she was insisting that Ora accept what she said.
“Yes, he was,” Ora said. “He was, Emma.” Her voice was insistent, too, as if she was speaking to the whole community and to Basil and perhaps even to Granpap who was a long way off in a city jail.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BASIL wrote that he would come in the summer for a visit. Kirk had laid up credit at the store and Emma sold the cow back to Swain to pay the debt. The cow was as thin as a rail, but Swain said he could fatten her, and perhaps sell for enough to cover the debt and have some credit left over for Emma. John drove Sukey to the store, and there Hal gave him the letter from Basil. It was very short, and before he gave it into John’s hand Hal read it out loud twice, and made John repeat it after him, so the boy might tell Emma what was in it. The letter said:
“I am sorry about Kirk, and sorry for you. Remember that the Lord chasteneth those whom He loveth. I must stay until school is over. I will come in the summer. Basil.”
Emma listened while John repeated this. Though he left out some of the large words, she remembered the part from the Bible and knew what Basil meant to say. She took the letter and put it away in the trunk with Kirk’s picture.
Basil came in the middle of the summer. He rode a horse—one he had tended all winter for the school. And he was quite a gentleman, dressed up in a store-bought suit. True, it was patched in the seat of the breeches but only a small patch where the teacher who had given it to him had worn it out sitting at his desk.
In the saddle bag Basil had a Bible for Emma. At night they lit the lamp and sat around the table while Basil read to them. He read about the making of the world. Sometimes he skipped a word if he couldn’t make it out; so the reading went something like this:
“In the—be-ginning God made . . . the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and . . . and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spi-rit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be Light.”
When the reading was over Basil wrote their names in the front of the Bible on a blank page. First, Emma McClure, then Bonnie and last John McClure. Bonnie wanted his pencil at once so she could copy her name. Basil let her have it and she marked up the table with chicken tracks.
“How are you getting on?” Basil asked Emma in his new careful voice.
“Well,” Emma said, “as well as poor folks can. We did the spring planting, but there’s not as much planted as before.”
“It’s another year before Granpap comes out,” Basil said.
“Hal Swain has promised to get him out before his time,” Emma told Basil. “Hal knows men outside who could help.”
“What’ll you do,” Basil insisted, “if Granpap don’t get out? What’ll you do in the winter?”
“I thought ye might be coming back to stay,” Emma said shyly. She was a little afraid of Basil. He was so dressed up, and he even ate differently, using a spoon to hold the fatback while he cut it with his jack-knife, instead of eating straight from his hands as they all did.
“No,” Basil answered his mother. “I’m going on fine at school. And they’re good to me. They think I’ll come to something. I want to keep on.”
Of course he was right. Emma herself would be proud to have him get on in the outside world.
“We’ll make out then,” she said. They sat around the table. Bonnie scratched with the pencil. John and Emma wanted to hear more from Basil about the school. So they waited for more. Basil had something else on his mind.
“Hal Swain wants to buy the cabin,” he said to Emma.
“And the land?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Emma wanted to know. The land she and Jim McClure had cleared and the sides of the mountains that Jim had bought were hers. They meant something to her. But what could they mean to Hal Swain?
Basil could not tell why Hal wanted them. He only knew that Hal would pay half in the fall and as long as he owned the place they could live there rent free.
“The money Hal pays in the fall will take you and the young ones through the winter,” Basil said. “The young ones mustn’t starve.”
“I don’t know . . .” Emma said. “Granpap would hate it.”
“He’d want you to care for the young ones.”
“But he would hate to lose all we have.”
“Well, hit’s my right,” Basil told her. “I’m the oldest. Hit’s my right to say we can sell or not sell.”
“Yes, hit’s your right,” Emma had to agree.
“I need the second payment for next year at school,” Basil explained. “I need books. But I don’t want to go against ye. I want ye to say yes.”
He left Emma to think it over.
In the morning to John’s surprise Basil got out of bed in a long white shirt that he must have put on the night before to sleep in. John ducked his head under the quilt to hush up a laugh. For Basil looked very queer with the white garment hanging around him, and his long legs showing through the slits in the sides. What else, John thought, would they find Basil had learned at that school?
The day before Basil left, Emma took the picture of Kirk from the trunk where she had laid it after the funeral. Around it was wrapped a piece of black cloth. She unwound the cloth and gave the picture to Basil who held it to the light.
“I wrote Granpap,” he said.
Emma had thought Basil would never speak of Kirk. She had waited for three days. At last she had to bring out the picture to remind him.
“Yes,” Basil said. “Granpap knows.” He looked at the picture again. “He could have done what I’m doing, if he’d wanted,” he said.
“He was a good boy,” Emma answered quickly. She found herself defending Kirk against Basil. And feeling so she took the picture out of Basil’s hand.
“He was a good boy,” she repeated.
“Yes, he was good,” Basil agreed. “But he didn’t have any ambition.”
John was looking over Emma’s shoulder at the picture. He heard the word that Basil used. It was one he had never heard before. At the moment he wished very much to ask Basil the meaning, but, like Emma, he stood in awe of his brother. So he repeated the word to himself and laid it up to remember at another time when he could find out the meaning from someone else.
When the first frost came, John felt a new sensation. It was a fear and dread of winter. He had known before what it was to lack food in the cold days. But there were the all powerful grown-up people who could somehow replenish the meal sack and fill his belly again. Now, since Basil had refused to stay and was back in the school, the responsibility was on the boy. Emma knew how to work. Often, like all the women she knew, she did a man’s work while the men sat and talked. But Jim McClure and Granpap after him had taken the responsibility of filling the meal sack and the fatback box. So for these things Emma, without knowing she was doing so, leaned on John. And John felt her. At first he had wanted to shake her off and shake off the responsibility she put on him. But he found this could not be done, and all at once he accepted the burden that lay on his shoulders as if it was a hump that had grown there. Each day that carried them further into the winter took some of their food. The meal bag was flat. John went about looking quiet and thoughtful. Emma had given in to Basil about selling the land, but the money had not come from Swain.
“What would ye do, John?” Emma asked. They had only Basil’s statement when he was there in the summer that he meant to sell, and that Hal would give them a first payment. That was very little to go on. It would be hard to go up to Hal and say, “Hand us the money, Hal,” for Swain might well tell them he had decided not to buy, or Basil might not have sold. It was all very vague.
They still had potatoes and a few cabbages, though these were half rotten. If the winter had been severe, with heavy snows, there would have been no hope for them except in going to Hal. And toward the last of the winter when the food was gone this became their only chance to survive. The potatoes were down to the last layer in the trench. Emma showed them to John. Then John knew he must go to Hal. He must stand up to Hal and ask for the money. There had been much hesitation in him. And it was so easy to put off an unpleasant thing. Emma had been expecting John to go and talk with Hal. Perhaps even she herself did not know that she was expecting the boy to take the responsibility. But there it was. And John knew that he must make the effort. He said to himself, “The day the last potato’s in the trench I’ll go.” That would be two days, perhaps three, in the future. And the future was a long time ahead.
On the second day of John’s waiting Hal Swain sent word by Frank McClure that Granpap was free. He would get back on the third day. But Granpap came on the second day. Bonnie and John were on the hillside getting wood, gathering up rotten pieces that had fallen from the dead trees. Emma was down with the baby in the cabin. The young ones had a pile of dead sticks and logs not far above the trail. Bonnie wiped her sweaty little face on her dress skirt. Though the air was cold they had been exerting themselves to get in a large pile of wood for Granpap’s coming.
“I’ll tote some wood to the cabin now,” Bonnie said. “Hit’s time for supper.” She kneeled down and picked up an armful. “Lay on some more,” she said to John.
“That’s all you can carry,” John told her.
“Hit’s not all,” Bonnie insisted. “Now, John, you lay on some more.” When he had piled up some sticks clear to her chin he had to steady her while she staggered up. He saw her go off down the hill pretty evenly for the load she was carrying, and went back to get an armful for himself. He heard a kind of groan, a queer sound come from Bonnie, and looking down he saw the wood fall out of her arms. She was standing near the trail. He ran down, thinking she was having some kind of woman’s spell. He might have known she was taking too much on herself. At the trail he stood behind her and looked where she was looking, up the trail. Coming toward them was a tall old figure. It stooped and walked slowly.
“Hit must be Granpap,” Bonnie
said. Still they hung back behind a laurel bush until they could be sure. The person did not walk with Granpap’s fine stride. As he came nearer they saw it was Granpap, and broke through the underbrush onto the trail. They stood waiting until he came up.
“Why, hit’s John and Bonnie,” Granpap said and laid a hand on each of them. Except for his slow movements it was as if he had been gone only a little while. His voice at least was familiar, though it had the familiar sound of Granpap when he was smoking before the fire, and not of Granpap who walked in the woods.
Emma saw them from the cabin. She had the baby in her arms and without stopping to put it down, came fast along the trail. She met them at the spring. There they stood, Emma and Granpap, and looked at each other. Emma felt at Granpap with her eyes. She saw that his head drooped and he looked up as a child does when it is ashamed or angry.
“Hit’s a long time,” Emma said. She was heavy in herself because Granpap was thin and pale as white clay, and his manner was listless.
“Yes, hit’s been a long time.”
At the cabin when they had got Granpap into a chair, Emma took John aside. “Go to Ora’s,” she said, “and ask her for the loan of some meal, and a mite of coffee, if she has it.”
Granpap had come a day too early. The neighbors had planned to meet him at the store on the next day. He had half expected this, and had fixed his mouth for a drink or two. But when he reached the store even Hal was not there. Hal was up the valley looking at some land, and only Sally was in to welcome Granpap. At the Martins’ cabin in Possum Hollow it was the same. Jim Martin was up the valley with Hal. But Jennie gave Granpap a welcome, and a drink of cider.
Emma saw Granpap watching the baby as it lay in the log cradle. In a way, because of its mother, it had been the reason for Kirk’s death. But she knew that Granpap would not blame this child for its mother’s sins, and would no more think of turning it out than he would think of cutting off his finger. The child needed care, and circumstances had given it to them. So they took it as naturally as they would have taken a child of Emma’s.
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