Sometimes Emma and Ora talked of going back to the hills. At these times they always remembered the terrible winters, sometimes without food; and the loneliness of living off in a little cabin. They always came back to thinking it was best to stay where they were.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE insults from the big boys rankled in John. If possible he would have liked to take Granpap’s gun after the whole lot. Why they kept at him, he did not know. Sometimes they did let up but were at it again, as bad as ever in a few days.
One day he was kept in by the teacher to learn spelling. He was hungry and on the way home hurried along the old road that was a short cut to the edge of the village. He saw the boys behind him and hurried along expecting them to call out. When he understood that they were trying to overtake him he turned. Now he was going to meet them. His fists were bony and small, and the muscles in his arms had not grown as big as they should. But he could not bring himself to run away. Big Albert was in front. In one way or another Albert had made the other boys in the school respect him. If they didn’t respect him as son of the Superintendent, then there were ways to make them fear him. He did not enjoy hurting just for the sake of hurting. In that sense he was not a bully. Just as soon as a boy acknowledged his superiority he was very kind and just.
On this day there were five other boys behind him. They came up to John at the grove of trees that grew in a dip between the road and a field on the other side. Albert took John under the armpits, holding his arms above his head, and the other boys caught his legs up from the ground. The bushes on the slope whipped against John and the briars made long scratches on his face. The blood trickled down and was like sweat in his mouth. He kicked out and saw with pleasure that the boys had to let go. He had plenty of strength in his legs. The boys helped Albert with his head and arms, and let his feet drag.
Behind some bushes at the foot of the slope they laid him flat on the ground, face downward. Boys sat on his legs and two on his body above the waist. Then, carefully, they stripped his jeans, so that he was naked from the waist down. He turned his head in the dirt, and saw a bottle in Albert’s hand. Some of it spilled as Albert took out the stopper, and he smelled turpentine. He understood, vaguely, what they had planned to do. He tried to fight again, but the five boys had him flat to the ground. They giggled like girls, high, excited giggles, while Albert leaned over his back.
The burning there was like nothing John had ever felt before. The boys stood up and watched him. He thrashed out with his legs, and fought with his arms, not at the boys, but because the pain was so intense. His eyes were glazed and at first he could not see, but he could hear acutely, and he heard some of them laughing. When their faces became clear, he saw Albert standing at his feet looking down solemnly. The pain gave him strength. He sprang right from the ground on Albert. They came down together. He had expected a fight, but Albert lay still, with blood running from his head.
“Now you’ve done it,” one of the boys said. “You’ve killed him.”
The boy ran up the slope and the others followed. John knew they would bring some of the higher-ups. He must get away. He looked for his jeans and saw them sticking out from under Albert’s body. As he pulled them out hurriedly he could see that Albert’s eyelids moved as if the eyes were going to open.
On the road he remembered the pain from the scalding and how Granpap had found some clay. If he could find some it might cool the pain. It was like a spur in his back. He did not stop running until he was on the road to the mountains. It was only then, when he stopped at a stream that ran over the road, that he remembered he had passed the house where Emma was, and Bonnie and the others. It did not matter that he remembered. He was going on to the hills.
He slept on the side of the narrow road to the mountains two nights. The burn had cooled down, but he was very weak from hunger. On the morning of the third day when he was sitting down to rest as he had to do every few feet, he thought his eyes were not right when he saw Granpap come around a curve sitting high up in the wagon behind a horse. It was just after daybreak and Granpap would have missed him altogether if he had not stood up in the way.
The old man got down from the wagon. John looked as if he was about to fall over. He was pale and haggard. Granpap reached down in his jeans and brought out his bottle. The drink went to the boy’s empty stomach and then to his head, so that Granpap had a very drunk boy on his hands, and had to lift him into the wagon seat. All the way down the mountain he held the boy, and wondered what had brought him up there looking like a scarecrow.
When they reached the restaurant, Granpap took John into the kitchen, and left him for a few minutes with Jake, the black cook. Jake was very kind and gave him some hominy and a cup of coffee. Almost immediately John had to go outside and give it all back, as a present to the ground.
That was the way Jake put it. He said John was very kind and generous making a present to the ground. When Granpap came in John tried eating again and this time the hominy stayed down. Granpap was fidgety. He wanted to get back up the mountain. First, he must hear what had brought the boy up to find him. When John told he understood at once. It was bad, of course, that the mill superintendent was also superintendent of schools, but there might be ways to fix that.
“Hit don’t do to run away,” Granpap said. Then he noticed that John looked at him, and then looked away, as if he felt something was wrong.
“Hit’s best for ye t’ stay here,” he repeated. “Ye’ve got something t’ do. I didn’t have work, and I had to go where I could find hit. Maybe I’ll make something, so we can buy a little place somewheres. You’ve got school, and after that the mill to work in, or maybe something better.”
“Do you think the boy was bad hurt?” he asked.
“His eyelids were fluttering.”
“Was the blood still flowing?”
“I think so.”
“Then he wasn’t dead.” Granpap thought a little. “Basil’s working in the town,” he said, as if he regretted telling this. “He’s living with Preacher Warren, who’s got the church in there. I talked to Basil one morning. He works in the cotton warehouse by the station. I don’t know what Basil would do for his folks. This much I know. All the high-ups go to Preacher Warren’s church. So the superintendent must go there. You go to the station and see Basil and get him t’ ask Preacher Warren to speak to the superintendent.”
Then he added, “I’ll see Basil myself and ask him this morning if I can. Now ye go right back to Emma. She’s probably plumb crazy by now a-worrying over ye.”
John had to go back.
During those three days Emma had very little sleep. The first night none of them knew why the boy did not come home. Emma had to go to work, but Frank went up and down the road for miles and called out. He came in about ten and went out again. There was no sign.
The second day Bonnie came from school with the whole story. John had fought with the superintendent’s son and had nearly killed him. Not exactly that, for Albert was back at school that day with his head bandaged. But the teacher sent word to Emma that John must apologize to Albert, or take a whipping if he wanted to come back.
That morning when John walked into the kitchen, Emma stood by the stove and looked at him. She could not move. He was so pale she wanted to cry.
“Why, John,” she said, and they were not the words she wanted to say, “look how you’ve torn your clothes.” John did not look at her. “My belly’s plumb empty,” he said and sat down on a chair, because he was weak.
She gave him food, and after eating he went off to sleep on the chair. She got him into bed, first stripping off his jeans to see if he was hurt anywhere. In between looking after Ora’s young she went in to look at him. Now he was growing up he looked like Kirk. She went to the front room and got Kirk’s picture from the Bible and compared them. But the picture was not as like Kirk as John was, lying in the bed with the hair back from his forehead.
Emma could not persuade John that
he must go back. He would neither apologize to Albert nor take a whipping. She couldn’t get it out of her mind that he was keeping something back. He left it that Albert had fought him and he had fought back. And he seemed to feel himself in the right. But she wanted him to have the schooling.
“We’ve got to do what the higher-ups say,” she told him. “Down here hit’s what they say that counts.”
It didn’t matter to John. He would not go back.
Whether Granpap saw Basil and arranged matters, no one knew. On the day after John returned Bonnie came back with word from the teacher. There was a note that Emma was to send back which said that Emma had punished John to teach him not to fight. Bonnie signed Emma’s name at the bottom as she did on the reports, and Emma made her cross on the paper. The next day John carried the note to the teacher. Emma had not punished her son. She felt that telling a lie was against the teaching of a church. But she would not give her boy a hiding for something he had a right to do. If the higher-ups demanded a lie she was willing to give them what they wanted, if it meant that John could go back.
To his surprise John found little trouble at school. Everyone knew by this time that he had got his man and gone up into the hills to hide like an outlaw. Because the boys had not dared to tell what they had done to him, John had the best of it. Soon most people forgot. But there was a feeling left with those who kept on living in the village that John McClure was a wild boy and one not easily frightened or fought down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE mill sat over them like an old hen and clucked to her chickens every day. In the morning she said, “Get up, get up.” In the day she said, “Eat, eat,” and at night, “Go home, go home.” But to Emma, working all night, the mill said other things.
There was a story the teacher told the young ones at school, and Bonnie, playing teacher, told it over to the children at home. “And the ogre said, ‘I’ll grind your bones to make my bread, ” At first the throb of the mill had been like the throb of a big heart beating for the good of those who worked under the roof, for it gave hope of desires to be fulfilled. A woman, one of the weavers, said to Ora and Emma one lunch hour during the summer, “The weave room has a sound different from the other rooms. It’s like the sound of sinners’ teeth grinding in hell.”
Now to Emma the throb of a heart had changed. She was feeling the grind of teeth. The mill crunched up and down—“I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.”
Walking before the frames in the night in her stocking feet with her head tied up to keep the lint out, Emma thought about the mill and considered where her work there was taking her. She thought of all she had promised herself. Now Granpap was up in the hills, and Basil was in the town, maybe, because he had become educated, getting the things that she had planned to get for all of them. At first when she talked to John she had thought more of him because he had been lost for three days, and less of what he said of Granpap and Basil. Now it came to her that Basil had been living in town for some time and had not come for a visit to his folks. Granpap had gone back to the hills, but sent word that he would come again, and he remembered her with two dollars.
The money was at home, and in the night Emma planned the different ways in which she might spend it. Of course it should have been spent for necessary things, but she decided to make this something for herself. It made the walking easier, when she planned what to buy. In this way she could escape from her sore feet and the night tiredness.
That Saturday afternoon she spoke to Ora, when Ora had come from work and they were settled around the fire with the pleasant settling that comes from the knowledge of a day and a half of no mill ahead. “Ora, I’d like to go to the town for once. I’d like to buy a hat for church. Will ye come?”
“Go to town like this?” Ora asked. She pointed to her big belly. The youngest child, who had been weaned in preparation for the next one, stood by her knees trying to reach up to her. “Stop that,” she said to him. “Hit ain’t for you, any more.” She dragged him on her lap where he had to sit perched on the end of her knees, so that he might not interfere with the one inside.
“I’m s’ tired, Emma.”
“Hit’ll do ye good, Ora.” Emma’s eyes had a shine to them. She had never been to town except the time she went to get the coat at Reckowitz’s store, and that was on a side street, almost an alley.
“The washing’s got to be done.”
“For once hit’ll have to go. And Bonnie here can care for the young ones.”
“I’d like to go,” Bonnie said.
She tried to frown and look grieved, but she was so healthy it was hard for her to look sad. School agreed with her. And this was the time when the “first flush of womanhood was creeping into her cheeks.” That is what the preacher called it. He said, “It is when the first flush of womanhood is creeping into the cheeks of your daughters that they need a mother’s care most.”
“Take her instead of me,” Ora told Emma.
“No, Ora. Hit’ll do ye good. Don’t ye want Ora to get a little airing, Bonnie?”
“Yes, but sometimes I want to go to town.”
“Well, you’ll go one day. I’ll take ye.”
Ora always looked queer when she was with child. She was so lean and tall the baby stood right out from her. It was not for that reason, though, that Ora and Emma walked down side streets going to the business part of the town. No mill people, even the young ones with beaus, liked to walk on the streets where the fine houses stood, though that was the quickest way. There was a feeling that the rich didn’t want the sight of poor on their streets. Mill hands’ clothes didn’t go well with the fine houses, and the pleasures of wealth.
“Let’s go behind Mr. Wentworth’s place,” Emma said. “Hit’s quicker to town and I’d like t’ see hit if only from the back.”
Perhaps it was meanness and envy, but most people in the village made fun of those who lived on Strutt Street. Some of the men had got their places by hard work, but all of them licked the boots of the bosses, the managers and superintendent. For there were plenty of hard workers who hadn’t risen. The higher-ups had to short the regular hands in weighing and making out the pay checks in order to make as much money for the mill as possible. It was a known fact that the high-ups had to do this as part of their job. But the best ones hated to do this against a neighbor, so it kept them from rising. In the case of the overseer, it was whispered his wife had lived with Burnett once, with him making no murmur against it. This was gossip, and perhaps not true.
Though there was the attitude toward the high-ups on Strutt Street, there was no such feeling toward the really big ones, those who lived in the town. There was interest, and if the man who owned the mill, who lived in Washington, came down, there was excitement. Everybody said he was as common as mill people and spoke to all as if he was on their level. His son, who lived in the town, was the same. This was the young Wentworth whose house Emma wanted to see from the back.
Emma and Ora went down a street and up another side one and came out right behind the son’s house. With the lawn it covered a whole block. There were no leaves on the trees, so they could see the large white house, very clearly, with the big central part and a wing on each side. The lawn, blue-green with winter grass, came down to the edge of the sidewalk where it was protected by a stone fence about two feet high.
They stood and looked.
“I reckon one of those rooms is as big as our whole place,” Ora said.
“The back yard is clean as if hit was the front.”
“Hit must have a hundred rooms . . . and I’d be willing to say . . .”
“Look, Ora!”
The back door opened. A black man in a white coat and dark trousers came onto the porch pushing a baby carriage. He let it down the steps into the yard. Behind him came a black girl, and in her arms was a white baby wrapped up in a warm looking pink blanket.
“Hit’s that baby.”
“Maybe we’d better go along, Ora.”
“I helped give hit that present. I’ve got a right to look.”
“I gave ten cents, and had to tell Bonnie to wait for a tablet till the next week.”
“Frank gave a quarter for both of us.”
“Wasn’t hit pretty, Ora? Gold and silver with a silver spoon.”
“Maybe they’ve got the goblet now in the carriage.”
“Let’s look if she comes closer.”
“Hit must be four months old now.”
“Look, he’s put the carriage under that tree in the spot of sunshine.”
“Did you ever see anything like hit? Hit’s like a baby hearse.”
“We’d better go, Ora. They’re a-looking at us.”
“Wait, Emma. She’s going to put him in. I can see his feet, in little shoes.”
“They’re a-looking at us.”
“Look at the blankets she’s laying on him. They’re little, like they was made for a baby.”
“We’d better go, Ora.”
Someone called the black man from the back window. He went below the window and looked up.
“I’ve got a right here, Emma. I helped give hit a present.”
The black man came toward the street, as if he wanted to speak with them.
“I’m a-going, Ora, and you can stay.” Emma started walking away down the sidewalk, and Ora had to follow.
“I don’t think he meant anything, Emma,” Ora complained. “I wanted t’ see more. Maybe the black girl would have let us go close.”
Emma walked on.
“They say that baby owns stock in the mill,” Ora said, trying to keep up. Emma slackened in her walk now she was some distance from the house.
“I haven’t yet exactly known what stock is.”
“I don’t know myself. But hit seems to mean that ye get money out of the mill.”
“We get money out of the mill.”
To Make My Bread Page 24
