To Make My Bread

by Grace Lumpkin

  He was looking down, not into John’s face, but at his clothes: and the boy, looking down, saw himself with Basil’s eyes. In his hurry he had forgotten that lint still clung to his jeans. He should have dressed for the wedding. The fault was his, for he had not thought of a crowd of people, but only of Basil, and of saying to Emma and Granpap, “I went to Basil’s wedding.”

  “Come here,” Basil said and took him by the shoulder with tense fingers. They stood in the corner made by the vestibule of the church and the outer wall.

  “We planned to have a small wedding,” Basil said in a whisper, and he was panting as if he had hurried from a distance, “with all our kinsfolks present. But Mary’s father is a rich man and he insisted on a big wedding. Do you see? Tell Emma we’ll come to see her soon. Now you run home. You must be drenched from these bushes. Hurry home now, and get dry, or you’ll be sick.”

  The hand left John’s shoulder, and he saw Basil hurrying up the steps into the lighted vestibule. His brother had said, “Go home,” as if he was an unwelcome dog. But he could not believe it was the end. Surely Basil, who was so powerful, could say to someone, “My brother is here. We must find him the right clothes to wear; I can’t have the wedding without him. Though I see little of him, he is really very important to me.”

  The organ played very loud music, then quieted down to a soft monotony. People came along the street and stopped to listen. Through the open door of the church they could see the decorations, the flowers and smilax, and knew it was a wedding. Presently there was quite a crowd lining the walk to the church, waiting to see the bride and groom come out. There were some black people, and others who were white. None of them was dressed finely like those in the church, and John began to feel more at home. He pushed between two of them and stood on the walk where he could see and be seen when the others came out.

  “Behold the bridegroom cometh,” one of the men near him said in a loud voice, when the music swelled up into a triumphant blast. There was the sound of many voices, especially the higher voices of women. Basil came through the door with a woman dressed in white hanging to his arm. They stood in the door a moment, fine and triumphant. The woman’s white veil floated behind her against the wooden wall of the church. Someone gave Basil his hat, and together he and the woman who was his wife ran down the walk and into the automobile that was waiting for them at the curb. The car drove off, and others took its place to take in the people who thronged out of the church.

  One of the men who watched from the walk said, “She was the homeliest bride I ever see.” And another one said, “She was ugly as homemade sin.”

  The words made John ashamed. But he repeated them to Granpap that evening, when he got into bed, after finding that Emma and Bonnie were asleep.

  “Hit’s too bad,” Granpap whispered. “With Basil getting along so well for him t’ take a wife that’s ugly. A pretty wife is God’s gracious gift to man, but an ugly one tempts him sorely to stray.”

  Later when John thought Granpap had dropped off to sleep, the old man raised up in bed and spoke again.

  “You say he didn’t see ye?” Granpap asked.

  “Who?”

  “Basil. You say he didn’t see ye?”

  “No,” John answered. “I just stood in the dark and watched. He couldn’t see me for the darkness.”

  Granpap went off to sleep. But John was awake for some time. He was trying to piece some things together. His mind was broken up into parts. In one of them he admired his brother, and in another hated him. The parts would not come together, and he went to sleep at last without having made up his mind. But for several days the resentment against Basil was strong in him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  FOR two years more Granpap struggled on the farm, trying to hold on as possible owner. The time came when Mr. Ashley’s agent gave him the choice of giving up the farm or becoming a share-cropper.

  “I have learned to know what a share-cropper is,” Granpap said to John. “I have talked to some and have watched them around here. Share-cropping is the same as slavery. Hit means food advanced, and seed and other things advanced, and at the end of the year the reckoning comes. What’s his share goes to him, and what’s my share goes to him, for I must take his word for the price of what is advanced. Hit means ruin.”

  He went down to the mill and tried to find a place as watchman. There was none open to him. So he stayed on the farm and looked on what he had lost. That was the hardest part: to stay and see that all the money paid down in the beginning, and that spent on making the place better, though it was not much, and the hard work he had put into the fields—belong to someone else. He had begun to think of the farm as his own.

  Emma was known in the mill as a skillful worker, and when she went down and asked for work she got it. Yet during the two years she had found it necessary to go back to bed, and at last had to give up and stay at home.

  There, when it was necessary for her to remain in bed, she lay in the front room alone during the day and looked at the treasures she had accumulated during her years of work. There was the picture of Kirk, which was the most precious. It hung above the mantel-piece, and opposite was the record of Births and Deaths that Granpap had bought in the first flush of their making money. John and Bonnie had written names in the spaces. Under the Deaths there were the names of Emma’s children who were in the mountains and the name of her husband. Under Marriages was Basil McClure, and there was a name under the word Births, for Basil, after being married a little over a year, had a son named Basil. It was Frank who had brought them this news, and Emma had immediately taken down the record and had Bonnie write the name, Basil McClure, carefully under the word that she had begun to know by its appearance and position on the record. She wondered, lying in her bed, how many more Births would be put down there before she left the earth.

  Under Kirk’s picture on the mantel there were two vases she had bought at the ten cent store in town. They were bright yellow and when the sun came in the west window it seemed as if lamps were lit in the vases. If Emma was in bed she watched to see this happen. It was something to look for during the day. Later there would be the young ones coming from work, and Bonnie scolding because she had, perhaps, got up to straighten the house, or wash out some clothes.

  Bonnie had grown into a young woman in those two years. When she and John first went into the mill they had become thin and pale, and John had remained so. But with some of the mountain freshness in her, Bonnie had grown plumper after she got used to the mill, and now there was plenty of redness in her cheeks.

  She was working in the twist room, and often young men passing by her frames, or in the yard at lunch time, spoke to her. She kept her head down when they did this; but after they went on thinking probably that she was unfriendly, she looked after them shyly, and would have called them back if she had dared.

  She was full of energy, and made such a feeling of hopefulness get into the farm house, that Granpap got out his fiddle, something he had not done in years, and played. So it happened that Preacher Turnipseed, coming to see Emma one Saturday afternoon, stopped in dismay, as he told Emma afterwards, at hearing the sound of dance tunes coming from the windows of their house.

  On Christmas Eve the church was to have a Tree and Box Supper. At these suppers each girl took a box provided with enough food for two people, and the boxes were auctioned off. Some of the girls were very cunning and spent all their money on decorations for the outside of the box, and put only crackers and cheese or sardines inside. So they hoped to win one of the best looking boys for supper.

  They had five chickens left, and Emma insisted that Bonnie fry one of them for her box. On the Saturday before Christmas Bonnie went to town and bought a roll of crepe paper for the outside covering of her box. She had already saved up silver paper from chewing gum and what she could find on the floor of the mill from the men’s cigarette packages. From this paper, smoothed out very carefully with her thumb, she cut stars and cresc
ents.

  Recently Bonnie had grown in stature and this was her first party as a young woman. The night before she sat on the edge of Emma’s bed with the yellow crepe paper spread out before her, and the silver laid out on a pillow beside Emma’s head where no careless person might disturb it.

  “This time to-morrow night,” she said, “I’ll be there. I wish you could go.” She spoke to Emma.

  “You make Granpap go,” Emma answered. “He never goes from the house except to work in the fields. Hit’s time he mixed with people again, for he always liked t’ do that. Hit’s unnatural for him to stay here all the time, just sitting, like an unfruitful seed.”

  On the night of the party John went first. He was dressed in a second hand suit bought at Reskowitz’ when he first began working in the mill.

  “Now, Granpap, you’ve just got t’ go,” Bonnie said to the old man. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the scars across his cheek.

  “No,” Granpap insisted. “I’m an old man.”

  “You can be my beau,” Bonnie told him.

  “You’ll have plenty of beaus with those roses in your cheeks and that light in your eyes. She’s real pretty, ain’t she, Emma?”

  “I think she won’t be left in a corner,” Emma said, more casual than she really felt. “I want ye t’ go, Granpap,” she said.

  “And leave you here alone?”

  “I have been left alone before and it never hurt me. Now, Granpap, if ye don’t go, I’ll get out of bed and go myself.”

  It ended with Granpap becoming almost as excited as Bonnie. He washed behind his ears, combed his beard and was ready.

  “Do ye reckon I might take the fiddle along?” he asked, and Emma looking at him saw that his eyes were as bright as Bonnie’s and she hated to say no to him.

  “With Preacher Turnipseed there,” she said, “hit wouldn’t do. Unless you might play hymn tunes on it.”

  Granpap drooped at the shoulders. “I reckon hit’s better left at home,” he said and followed Bonnie out of the door.

  When they reached the school auditorium a few young men were already standing just outside the door, in the cold December night. They were waiting until the tree, which was especially for women and children, should get finished and the box supper begin. Bonnie felt that their faces turned to watch her. She held the box closer to her side, so that feeling it would give her courage to walk without fear and trembling up the steps. Yet their looks gave her courage, too.

  She stopped just inside the door and put out her hand to touch Granpap who would have gone in at once.

  “Isn’t it a big crowd?” she asked him.

  People were standing in groups, talking, and seemed to fill the whole place. Benches were set against the walls, and on these sat women with small children and with some of them were their husbands.

  “Why, Granpap, hit’s good to see ye,” someone said. And there was Ora, holding the baby with one arm, and reaching out to Granpap with the other. Frank was beside her on the bench.

  “Take your box right up there to the front,” Ora said to Bonnie.

  Turning to come back Bonnie saw that John was standing in the front part of those waiting for the exercises to begin. She felt that he was looking at her with approval, and the blood burned up in her cheeks from his appreciation and from excitement. She returned to Granpap and stood before him while Mr. Turnipseed was getting the young ones together on the floor in front of the tree.

  On the platform sat the Superintendent, Mr. Burnett, the three preachers from the village, and a visiting preacher.

  When the young ones were settled, and the older ones had found places in a half circle behind them, Mr. Turnipseed stood up on the rostrum. The talking quieted down slowly until there was a silence like church.

  Mr. Turnipseed announced that the tree with all its many and fine decorations had been donated by kind people in the town. The entertainment was given by all the churches of the village, so money from the sale of boxes would be divided among them. It was the usual Christmas announcement. It was fitting, he continued, at a time of peace on earth, good will to men, for all denominations to come together as one family in Christ. The speaker of the evening was from a different denomination from any in the village. He wanted to introduce Mr. Warmsley from the town.

  Mr. Warmsley spoke in a fine voice. When Bonnie heard it she thought of molasses, brown and thick, pouring from a pitcher and spreading out on a plate. Mr. Warmsley’s voice spread through the hall slowly and quietly.

  “I have asked Mr. Turnipseed,” he said, “to let me speak to you early in the evening, because in my home little ones are waiting for their father to begin Christmas Eve. There, in my home, we have a tree, just as you have one here. Over all the earth it is the same. People of all races, nations, are celebrating the birth of Jesus.”

  Mr. Warmsley’s ruddy face glowed beneath soft white hair. His deep, slow voice reached to every part of the room and created a feeling of good will, so that people listened with attention.

  “Why do people celebrate?” he asked—and answered the question. “Because Jesus brought love to the earth. God, the Almighty, gave commandments to men. Sometimes to us he seems a bitter, jealous God who punishes and does not love. But we can never really feel that, when we realize that ‘God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.’ In Jesus Christ he gave us love divine, the love that suffers and forgives, the love that bears all things, the love that these mothers, holding their babies, have for the children in their arms.

  “There are times when your lot may seem hard to you. You may feel that you do not possess much. Let me say to you, my friends, that you possess the only true greatness and power. I have been among you and have watched when you did not know. I have seen the dignity in you that rises above worldly considerations. I have compared your dignity with that of the rich. And beside yours their dignity of wealth and possessions is nothing. Yours is the true greatness. Have I not seen your dignity and worth under abuse?

  “Let me tell you a story. One day some years ago I was in my study, which is in one of the wings of the church. I heard cries outside my window and went to find what had caused them. On the lawn were some of the boys of my congregation. They were hooting and jeering. And standing before them, the butt of their jeers, was a boy from this mill. He stood there dignified and aloof as Jesus Christ himself might have stood before his accusers.

  “That poor boy, dressed almost in rags, stood up under the lash of scorn with a dignity that shamed those other boys, rich though most of them were.

  “And I tell you that some day the rich will see your goodness: and bow before your spiritual wealth that is greater than their material wealth, so that in the end they will endeavor to become like you, simple and good.

  “And when this spiritual brotherhood will have been accomplished, the rich will say, ‘What is our wealth, that our brothers do not share in it?’ And they will straightway share the wealth, so there shall be plenty, and all will be furnished with the necessities and the good things of earth that God has given us.

  “Then the spirit of Christ will shine in all hearts like the star on the summit of that Christmas Tree, and all men will acknowledge each other as brothers in Christ and sharers of wealth. Then, my brothers, there will truly be peace on earth, good will toward men.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  WHILE the minister spoke faces strained upwards toward him, as if they were sniffing in the words he said with their nostrils. There were gaunt men and tired looking women, old before their time. There were boys and girls, wan and stunted of the second and third generation of those who had worked in the mills. They seemed about ten or twelve, but they were old enough to be looking at each other, thinking of marriage. The faces, raised to the light, seemed to have no flesh, but to be made of bone with skin stretched tightly over it.

  When the preacher finished and the people turned to each other for talk, their faces showed color and some animation. The town p
reacher shook hands with his colleagues on the platform and hurried away to his home and children. Bonnie stood near Granpap who was talking with Frank.

  “What he said had sense,” Granpap told Frank. “If the rich could get the grace of Jesus Christ in their hearts, hit stands to reason we’d all have enough.”

  “I didn’t like so much his speaking about us as being pore so much,” Frank said. “If he’d spoke it just once . . .”

  “No,” Granpap answered before Frank could finish, “hit didn’t seem to fit in exactly. But what he says is mighty true. Only all the rich would have t’ do it together—for there are so many pore.”

  “You run along, Bonnie,” Ora spoke to Bonnie and gave her a push with her big hand. “Go and mix with the girls. The young men will be in soon. Can’t you see how Lessie and Tiny and the rest are watching that door? You mustn’t let them grab all the boys from ye.”

  Bonnie wished to do what Ora wanted. She was not very timid at home, but her greatest desire was to get between Granpap and Ora and hide the fact that she was there at all. Suppose no one picked her out—no one thought her box good enough to buy!

  They were giving out gifts from the tree, a bag of candy and an orange for each child. Facing Granpap Bonnie heard the door to the yard open. She heard the heavy steps and knew the young men had come into the hall.

  “You go along,” Ora insisted. “Mr. Burnett’s going t’ speak. You go nearer and listen.”

  Some of the women had gone up front to find their young ones and take them home. People were walking around and talking together. But when Mr. Burnett rose to speak there was silence.

  Mr. Burnett said he would not make a speech. He only wished to give them all a Merry Christmas from the management, the Directors, and the President of the Company. Before anyone left he wanted to ask them all to join in singing the Doxology. Bonnie, who had slowly made her way into the crowd of people, raised her voice and sang with the rest. When the Doxology was finished someone began “The Old Time Religion.”