To Make My Bread (34 page)

“Henry,” he said, “Tell this boy you are sorry.”

“I didn't do it,” Henry said. “Not by myself.”

“Then you will speak for them all. I am ashamed that the boys of my congregation should be so—so—unmanly.”

John wanted to slide away as the other boys had done. Now he felt sympathy for the boy whose father was making a fool of him. It was a silly and foolish place to be. There he was, standing on the lawn, facing those other two, while the other boys stood at a distance and watched. He started away.

“One moment,” the man said to him . . . . “Will you do what I say, Henry?” John saw his knuckles whiten on the boy's shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” the boy Henry mumbled, and as his father's grip lightened he ducked away.

“I'm sorry, too,” the man said. “I am Mr. Warmsley, of this church.” He pointed to the church with the cross. “Did they hurt you, before I came out?”

“No,” John said, and like the other boys he slunk off. The preacher was trying to be kind, but it was uncomfortable. He wanted to get on his way, for there was the thing he had planned to do.

In the picture store, he asked the man, “How do you get to the station?”

The man gave him directions, and he found the station was not so far from the square as he had thought. He climbed up on the wooden platform of the largest warehouse, and walked up and down trying to look as if he belonged.

He saw the sign on the wall and slowly began to spell out the printed words:

COTTON OIL COMPANY
—
COTTON SEED MEAL AND HULLS FERTILIZER AND FEEDS

A man came out of one door and hurried into another. John wanted to ask him a question, but it was hard to go right up and speak out. “He can't kill ye,” he said to himself. “What are ye afraid of?”

The next time a man came out he stood in the way. “Does Basil McClure work here?” he asked.

“Who is that?”

“Basil McClure.”

“No,” the man answered. “Maybe he works at the next warehouse.” And he hurried away.

It was just beginning to get dark. Lights were turned on in the warehouses and made squares and oblongs of pale yellow on the floors of the platforms. John jumped from the end of one platform to the ground, and climbed up on the next. The door at the further end was open and he hurried there and looked in. Basil was standing at a desk behind a railing, talking to a man who sat at the desk. It was surely Basil, tall and dark, with square jaws a little too wide for the rest of his face.

A heavy wind had come up with evening. John leaned against the wall while he waited, so the wind would not pass through his coat. They must have it warm inside, he thought, for Basil was in his shirt-sleeves.

A man came out of the door. He wore an overcoat and a hat that hid his face in shadow.

“Basil,” John said. When the man turned he saw it was not his brother.

“What is it?”

John did not answer.

“Do you want Basil McClure?”

“Yes.”

The man turned and leaning around the door called out, “McClure, here's a boy to see you.” He stared at John for a moment, then walked on down the platform to the steps. His feet made quick, heavy sounds on the boards.

Someone said to John, “What do you want?” and leaned down to look in his face.

“Is it you, John?”

“Yes.”

“Come along,” Basil said.

They walked to the steps, down by the station and up a street.

“Did she send you?”

“No . . . . I came.”

“She knows I'm here?”

“She knows.”

Basil wore a long overcoat, though it did not reach down so far as John's, but he felt they were like two men walking together in the town. Basil unhooked a gate in a back fence. John had not been invited but he felt that Basil expected him to follow—and he wanted to go. His brother led him through the hallway of a house and up the stairs. As they went up someone called, “Basil,” but Basil did not answer. Upstairs he opened the door of a room at the back of the house and turned on the light.

As if expecting John to enter, he held the door open and looked at him.

“Take off your cap,” he said. Basil had taken off his own hat as he entered the house downstairs. A fire was laid in the grate and Basil touched a match to it. The paper flared up and lit the kindling. It burned low for a moment then the rosin crackled familiarly. Basil stooped lower and laid on a short hickory log.

“How do you like my room?” he asked looking up; the lines at the side of his jaws showing up in the firelight.

“Hit's fine,” John said passing his cap from one hand to another behind his back. He looked around the room, seeing all the details. There was a bed and a bureau, with a large mirror. Against the mirror at its base leaned photographs of some girls. Over in one corner there was a bookcase with a few books. A carpet covered the floor, and on it along with the other furniture sat two chairs, a rocker by the fire and a straight chair by the table.

“Sit down,” Basil said. He brought up the chair from the table for John. “This is Preacher Warren's house,” he told John. “I rent a room here.”

“Hit's a fine room,” John said again. Basil looked at him quickly. He saw the boy meant his words, that he was really admiring.

A woman called, “Basil”—from downstairs.

“Wait here,” Basil said. He went out, leaving the door open, and a warm smell of food cooking came in the door.

When Basil returned he sat down and as he sat pulled his creased trousers up a little way with a careless gesture. It was a careless gesture, yet had its fineness. It seemed to say, “Look at me, I'm a gentleman, with creased trousers and fine manners.”

“Does she speak about me?” he asked John.

“Some.”

“How is Bonnie?”

“Well. She's in the second reader now.” After a moment John added, “I'm in the second reader now.”

“That's good,” Basil told him. “It's good that you're both getting an education. It's not hard to learn if you put all your strength into it. And it means you'll get somewhere if you have sense.”

“I want to get somewhere,” John said.

“If you want to get along,” Basil told him, “you must remember that you can't think too much about other people. If you rise in this world you've got to rise by yourself. You've got to save your nickels and study. And—and not see anybody else. You've got to be practical. Then—when you've risen—you can reach down and help others. Do you see?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe by the time you're old as I am, you'll be going to college.”

“College?”

“Yes, maybe by then I can help you. I'll be glad to help you, Johnny. When I've risen. Now I'm saving for other things. I want my own business. And I know the Lord will bless me for I give him his tithe, a tenth of what I make every month. You tell her that, if you tell her anything. Say I give the Lord his due. You understand?”

The boy sitting on the edge of his chair, nodded. Basil had never talked so, before he left the hills. He had learned much, how to talk and reason. He could speak as well as a preacher, and perhaps he should have been a preacher.

“I've found out one thing, John. I've found that people think a lot of me. Up in the hills I always felt that Kirk was so—reckless—and fine looking—nobody could like me, not the girls, anyways. Now I know that girls like me. See those pictures over there? They're from girls. And I've got letters from them, letters I didn't ask for, saying they think a lot of me. If I read you some of those letters you'd be surprised what girls will say.”

He laughed and stretched his arms over his head. “Now all that is over. I'm engaged now, to be married.”

“To be married?”

“Not for a while yet. She's Preacher Warren's wife's sister. She taught in the church school, and now she's teaching in the public schools here. We're saving up for a business. She wants me to take all those pictures and throw them away, but I tell her—not yet.”

“Granpap is saving up for a farm,” John said. He felt that the knowledge of Granpap saving for something would make them all finer in Basil's eyes. He wanted to make Basil think much of them, but had forgotten the way in which Granpap was making his money and that his brother might not approve. In a moment he saw his mistake. Basil's eyes shut for a second and the lines on each side of his mouth went deep into the skin.

“He's breaking the law,” Basil said.

For the first time John felt against Basil. It was not right for him to talk against Granpap. “He's got a right,” he told his brother.

“He has not. It's one of the first things to learn, you can't go against the law. It's not right by law or religion for Granpap to be doing what he is doing.”

John's mouth set like Basil's had done, and a frown came between his eyes. “He's got a right,” he repeated. Granpap was good, this he knew. And he knew Granpap had a right to make money in the way he was doing. It was work and no easy work, at that.

“Well,” Basil said, “there's no need to worry, for Granpap will soon be finished.”

“Finished?” This was a frightening word that might signify jail again for Granpap.

“He'll be through with the work, if you call it work.”

“How?”

“The lumber company wants to build a number two camp near South Fork. The McEacherns have been holding out for a higher price for their land. Now they've got it and are moving to the city.”

“How do ye know that?”

“How do I know? Because I hear about things that are going on. One way, Hal Swain stops in to see Preacher Warren sometimes when he comes into town.”

John sat looking at the floor and at the fire. A silence came up between the two. Between them the flames burned up the dark chimney, and the ashes crackled as their live sparks went out and they settled down to die. John felt it was time to go, that now Basil wanted him to go, but he was not sure just how to leave. Basil looked at the alarm clock on the mantel and moved restlessly in his chair.

“Will they be anxious about you?” he asked.

“Maybe,” John said, and stood up. Basil took a money folder from his pocket and selected a bill.

“You went back to school all right?” he asked.

“Did Granpap tell ye?”

“It was me that got you back in school. I asked Preacher Warren, and he spoke to the superintendent of mills over the telephone.”

Basil looked at the bill he held in his hand.

“You see, John that's the way people that have got the ambition to rise can help the others. I helped you, didn't I, to get back into school. Because I knew people that had influence. It was the same when Hal Swain got Granpap out of jail. And even if the superintendent hadn't let you go back into school we could have got Hal to see or write Congressman Heilman because he owns a lot of stock in the mill. You see that I helped you, don't you, John?” Basil spoke earnestly, trying to make John understand this important question. For the time he seemed to be begging that John should realize the help that had come from him.

“Yes,” John answered the begging in Basil's voice, and he added, thinking that was what should be done, “I thank ye.”

“I was glad to do it,” Basil answered. Now he was not begging, but somewhat pompous and assured. He opened his folder and replaced the bill. “Here,” he said, and gave John a fifty cent piece from his pocket. “Take that to her, and you tell her I'm coming for a visit soon.”

John held the money in his hand. It was cold. He could feel the cold round edges making a circle in his palm.

A door opened when they reached the hall downstairs. Preacher Warren came out. He put a kind hand on John's shoulder.

“How you've grown!” he said. “But I would know Basil's brother anywhere.”

“Tell Emma,” he said, “we're proud of Basil.”

“Yes . . . sir,” John answered him, and slipped out of the front door that Basil was holding open.

B
ASIL
was right. The first of the year Granpap came to the house one evening. He walked in as if there had never been any going out.

First he had to be shown Ora's baby that was a week old. Ora lay in the bed in the front room. She was not very well, for working up to the last minute had done something to make her lame, so that she could not stand without pain and could not walk at all. But she could talk, lying in the bed. She said to Granpap, “I almost had him while I was at work, right there in among the frames.”

“I told her she ought to name him Bobbin,” Emma said, excited and flushed over Granpap being there again. “But she thought hit sounded like a name for a creature, not a child.”

She added, “Mr. Mulkey knows something of learning and his boy is named Statesrights.”

“That,” Frank said, “is not the name for creature or man.”

“Well,” Ora told Granpap, “we made a good old-fashioned name. We named him Kirkland after you . . . and him.” She turned her eyes to the crayon picture of Kirk that was high on the wall.

Emma moved over to the picture. She had watched before to see if Granpap would notice it. The old man went up and looked at it closely. “Why,” he said, “hit's as if Kirk was here in the flesh.” The frame was gold, very fine, and he ran his fingers over it.

“And there's glass,” he said. “Hit'll keep the dust from getting in.” As if everybody didn't know.

Granpap had news of Sally, which was something for Ora to get flushed over, except Ora never flushed but her face became soft as if the flesh had melted into the bones. Sally, Granpap said, was planning to make Ora a grandmother. She and Jesse were living with Fraser until the cabins the lumber company was building got ready. Sally had sent a jar of honey to Ora and a slab of bacon from Fraser's pig killed in the fall.