To Make My Bread
Page 42
The other mourners gathered around John and Ora. They watched while Albert Burnett and Preacher Simpkins lifted Bonnie’s children into the car.
“It couldn’t be helped,” John said. “Not now.” Red flamed up under his skin as if the red mud below his feet was reflected in his face.
“What I hate,” Ora told him, and he heard in her voice that she was crying, “what I hate most is her young ones will be taught that Bonnie was evil, when she was s’ good . . . .”
The newspaper that afternoon had a story about Bonnie’s funeral. John read it in the parlor of Mrs. Sevier’s boarding house where he had gone to meet John Stevens.
The story began:
“To-day in a little mud-hole to the northeast of the Wentworth Mill Village, the first revolutionary movement in this state was buried. Ostensibly it was the funeral of Mrs. Bonnie Calhoun, mill-worker . . . .”
John Stevens coming into the room some time later could not see John’s face. It was hidden between his arms on the table. The paper was spread out before him.
“I have read that, too,” John Stevens said. He put a hand on John’s shoulder. “I cried when I heard about Bonnie . . . cried from anger and shame.”
“This on your arm,” he touched the red band on John’s sleeve, “stands for blood that has been shed, and that will be shed before we reach that which we are fighting for.”
“It seems a long way,” John said.
“It is a long way. Stand up, John.”
John slowly got up from the chair. He stood looking at John Stevens, and in his face he saw just what he had seen when he first knew him, hope and belief.
“To-night,” John Stevens said, “there will be a secret meeting in the woods north of Bonnie’s shack. You and I will go to all we can trust and tell them to come. We must let everyone know.”
“I was feeling,” John said, “as if everything was finished.”
“No,” John Stevens said. “This is just the beginning.”