To Make My Bread (17 page)

While Ora was gone with the baby, Frank McClure and Fraser roped the coffin to Fraser's sledge. They had brought two steers from Hal Swain's to make the crossing over the mountain. Hal had loaned the steers and some heavy rope. When they had lifted the coffin inch by inch out to the sledge, Emma sat over the fire with John and Bonnie. John felt that Emma wanted him there, and he was torn between the desire to do what she wanted and the wish to go into the yard. Since the body was out of the room they had built the fire high. The logs crackled and spit as they caught the heat and began to burn. This was the only sound in the cabin.

Presently big Ora stood in the door.

“We're ready, Emma,” she said and waited for Emma to get up. She had to repeat the words before Emma lifted her head. The men came in to warm themselves before starting out. Jim Martin, coming over to help, had joined Ora on the trail. He went up to Emma.

“Sam McEachern will pay for this, Emma.”

“He's far away by now,” Emma said.

“Everybody comes back to the hills.”

“Hit's what I told her,” Frank said. “We can wait. There's time.”

“If ye wait long enough by its hole, a snake will come out to sun itself.”

The men's subdued voices spread into the small room and filled it. The words echoed even after the men who said them had stopped speaking.

Ora tied the black knitted shawl around Emma's head. “It's s' cold,” she said. She had brought her Sally's shawl for Bonnie. The child cried as Ora wrapped her up. Since they had brought Kirk back that night she had cried if anyone touched her. Ora wrapped Bonnie's hands in the ends of the shawl. “You keep your hands in there,” she said, “so they won't freeze.” Her own head was wrapped in a square of black woolen cloth, fastened under the chin with a pin. She wore an old coat torn at the sleeves. Emma had Granpap's coat on over her flannel dress. The long skirts on the two women dragged behind them on the floor as they took the step down at the door. Behind them the men walked out single file and gathered around the sledge. Frank directed, for he was the nearest kin. Jim was a distant cousin of the McClures. Fraser was no kin, but he was as near in his friendliness as any kin could be. Frank gave Fraser the lines for they needed his skill in the driving. Jim Martin stayed at the back of the sledge with Frank.

Frank whispered to Jim, “He's s' heavy. Hit was all we could do to get the coffin to the sledge.”

“There'll be more to help yonder,” Jim said.

The steers strained to make a start. Their bodies slanted forward and their forefeet pawed the ground, but the sledge would not move. Fraser encouraged them with sounds from his throat and Frank and Jim bent their backs to push against the sledge with their hands.

“Here, Johnny,” Frank said. He gave John his place and walked to the front. Taking the halters in his hands he pulled with the steers. Suddenly, as if the load had been made lighter, the steers began to move. Frank came to the back again and John walked between the two men. Emma walked behind the men, holding to Bonnie's hand, and just back of her, tall and protecting, came Ora.

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.

B
ASIL
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.”