To Make My Bread (36 page)

Emma wanted the young ones to have some rest. “Hit's easier,” Granpap said, “with no sun, and we rest longer in the middle of the day when the sun's hottest.”

“But hit's like the mill,” Emma said. “We're making the young sweat.”

“If hit wasn't here, hit would be in the mill. Better for them to sweat for themselves—for the land will be theirs, Emma, if we earn hit.”

Emma wanted to go out in the moonlight when they went to work. She was too worn out for that. It was like a circle, she said. If she didn't rest, she couldn't work, and if she couldn't work, they couldn't eat, and if she couldn't eat, she couldn't work. “So,” she told Bonnie, “I've got to have rest.”

Then there was the redness on her hands. “I thought at first hit was the seven years itch,” she told Bonnie. “You never know if you're touching a place in the mill whether somebody with the itch hasn't been there before ye. So many have the itch.”

She wanted very much for Bonnie to understand what working in the mill meant. The farm was their life, but the mill was hers.

“Frank's working in the weave room now,” she said. “He's still got his cough. And there's a man next him with the consumption.”

She often talked to Bonnie when they cleared up the dishes together, but all the time she knew that Bonnie was living another life and though she tried to listen didn't even hear. Bonnie and John were not even much interested when Emma told them Ora was coming for Sunday dinner. Six of the chickens from the first setting had escaped sickness and hawks and grown big enough to eat, and Emma planned to fry two of them for that dinner. She bought sweet potatoes and rice, and a whole sack of flour, and a can of lard. On Saturday Granpap borrowed a wagon and harness from Moses and driving his own horse (for it seemed his own, though really it belonged to Mr. Ashley who owned the place) he drove into town with John and brought back the supplies Emma had bought, along with some oats for the horse.

Emma had long since stopped paying insurance, but she was still paying Ora a little each week for the board she had not paid. Ora had said, “Shucks, Emma. What's over is over.” But Ora was having the doctor for the baby, and needed the money. Now, with Ora almost paid, Emma had hopes of catching up. This was why she felt rich enough to buy flour and lard.

She was almost praying for that Sunday to be full of sunshine and peace, for then Ora could see the cotton in full bloom in the sun. Her regret was that she had no garden of fresh vegetables. Granpap had plowed the ground and she had planted. Then they had all neglected the garden, for cotton was everything. The garden fence was almost gone, and there was no money with which to buy new fencing, so the chickens ate up most of the vegetables that came up, and then laid only a few eggs in return.

That Sunday came in with plenty of sunshine just as Emma had hoped. John and Bonnie, up to now indifferent, became excited about the fact that company was coming and there was to be a fine dinner.

Granpap stayed in bed until late to give his back time to catch up with the week's work. He had coffee in bed just like a rich man, he said, when Emma brought it to him. Emma cleaned up the front room, even washing the floor first thing in the morning after breakfast. The bed there was covered with her best quilt. There was no table yet, but the Bible was on the mantel-piece, and above it hung the picture of Kirk. Two chairs sat in the room, though they would be taken into the kitchen when it was time to eat. Bonnie had brought in some late wild honeysuckle and sweet william. The honeysuckle was a deep pink and its thick stems stood up in a bottle on the table in the kitchen. The sweet william Emma put in a cup on the mantel, and the pink flowers hung over the side of the cup and trailed on the shelf as if they were growing there.

“They'll be late,” Emma said to Bonnie. “For hit's a long way the first time you walk it. Now I don't notice so much going back and forth every day like I do.”

The family came just as Emma finished cutting out the biscuits. The chicken was ready to fry and the potatoes and rice were cooking.

Ora sat down to rest in the front room and nursed the baby that fretted every minute it was not at her breast. All her young ones stayed nearby, for they smelled the cooking in the next room.

“Keep the young ones here,” Emma called out to Ora, “for dinner's most ready.”

“You couldn't get them away if you took a stick after them,” Ora called back.

“I can't hear ye.” The sizzling of the frying chicken in the pan before her was all Emma could hear clearly.

“Hit'll wait,” Ora said comfortably.

After the full meal, all the older ones with the youngest went to look at the cotton. Esther and Bonnie washed dishes in the kitchen and ate scraps, though there were not many left. John waited for Young Frank who was hesitating between following Granpap and Frank and staying around the kitchen.

“Want to come with me?” he asked Young Frank. “I'm a-going across the road.”

“I want by myself,” Young Frank said, and John left him.

Emma and Ora walked some distance behind Granpap and Frank. They had to pass along the road to reach the cotton patch further up.

“He's getting bent over like an old man sure enough,” Ora said looking ahead at Granpap who walked as if he was continually looking for something on the ground.

“Hit's his back and leaning over to plow and chop. He don't know when to say stop to himself. Hit's cotton, cotton, day in, day out. T'd like to make a bale an acre,' he says. Mrs. Phillip's black man, Moses, says it has been done, but not often. Yet everybody will work themselves sick to try.”

“Because it brings in money.”

“Yes. And I'm glad except that Granpap's wearing himself out . . . . Look! Ora,” Emma spoke in a whisper. “There's Mrs. Phillips.”

Mrs. Phillips came down the steps of the white house across the road. She was a buxom woman in a fine white dress.

“You can't see her face for that big hat,” Emma whispered. “But she's real pretty, with a bright color. That's the doctor with her. I think that's his automobile, though maybe it's hers, for she's rich.”

“And she just comes every week to see her young ones?” Ora asked.

“Yes, she's got some kind of business in town. I told you. Now she's going back there.”

“What business would keep a mother away from her young ones?” Ora asked.

“I reckon the same kind that keeps us from ours, making money to live on.” This quieted Ora. Only she thought to herself, “If I had a house like that I'd think myself rich enough to stay at home.”

John looked back again from across the road. He was waiting until Mrs. Phillips would get in the car and drive away. Then he and Robert would be free to go where they pleased. Frank was still in the yard, and had probably decided to stay near the girls. So, if he liked girls better, then he was welcome to them.

Robert was waiting at the back of the house. He had a special place for them to go. “The chain gang is camped up the road,” he said. “Let's go and watch.”

It was further than John had thought, for he knew Emma would be looking for him to be there when Ora and the others left. Yet when Robert once wanted to do a thing it was hard to say no to him; and John kept on walking. It was almost sundown when they reached the spot. The gang was camped in an open place near the schoolhouse.

“Come in here,” Robert said mysteriously, and dragged John into some blackjacks. They sat down to watch, with no one in the camp suspecting they were there. It looked as if the men had just finished supper, for at one side under a tent a black man in stripes was cleaning tin dishes and piling them on a table to dry. Beyond the tent there were two long cages on wheels, with rows of shelves inside.

“They sleep in those cages, Moses says,” Robert whispered to John. “And they're chained together so they can't get away.”

About thirty men sat on the ground. Some of them looked to be white, but most were full black. They sat pressed close together and the stripes of their clothes ran into each other and made a long ring of stripes as if the wide black lines were a fence to hold them in. Behind the circle on a sort of stool sat the guard with his big gun under his arm. At his feet were two hounds with long drooping ears. He held them by a chain that gave out a clank when the hounds moved.

The guard raised his gun a little way in the air and pointed with it at one of the black men.

“All right, Sam,” he said. “Begin.”

Sam stood up. “He's a trusty,” Robert said, very low. “You see he hasn't any chains hanging to his legs.”

All together the men raised their voices and sang. There were two hymns that John had never heard before. Then Sam began, “Nearer my God to Thee.”

This one John knew, and all the men seemed to know it well. Their deep mournful voices mixed with the heavy feeling of night just coming, and went up toward the heavens where stars were coming out.

When this third song was finished, the guard gave an order and another guard with a gun came from a small tent at the right of the cages. The men in stripes rose up and walked, one behind the other, to the cages. Their black heads became part of the night, but the stripes stood out in the one light that was fixed on a tree in the center. It looked as if only stripes were moving around in the shadows, as they marched toward the cages. But there was the sound of heavy chains rubbing together. Two of the trusties stood aside waiting for the others to pass into the cages. John saw the first cage fill up with stripes lying flat on the shelves, and in places between the bars of the cages he could see white eyes shining in the light from the lantern. There were some murmurs, then again the clanking of chains as the men climbed into the second cage. The voices of guards sounded sharp and rasping.

“Get in there; quick now. Get in there.”

Then something went wrong. The guard's voice called out. “Get in there you black—” There was a scuffle and the guard brought his gun down heavily.

“Bring him out,” he called. The other guard and a black man who was unchained stooped and dragged one of the convicts into the light.

“Get a wheelbarrow,” the guard said to the other trusty, and the man ran fast to do as he was told.

The guard and the black man laid the convict across the wheelbarrow face down and stripped him to the waist. There was a silence, terrible like that between bright lightning and a heavy crash of thunder, only it lasted longer.

The convict on the wheelbarrow had a gash across his forehead, and the blood dripped from it to the ground. The others were waiting for something, and while they waited the man cried out. “Boss,” he said, “I didn't mean it. Oh, Boss, I didn't mean to be impudent. You don't understand.”

The white guard came from the tent with a long leather whip.

“Thirty licks,” the other one said, the one who held the hounds. “Lie down,” he said to the hounds, who began to howl dismally. “Lie down.” And he touched one of them with the end of his gun. The dogs quieted.

The leather came down on the back of the convict. The sound of the leather cutting his back went up into the heavens as the sound of the hymn had gone up. And another sound went up. As the leather came down the man lying across the wheelbarrow groaned. The lashes never stopped, for when the white guard tired he handed the whip to the black man and ordered him to go on with the punishment.

“One,” Robert counted in a whisper. “Two.” And kept on counting.

Groans came from the man on the wheelbarrow. They grew fainter, then there came a groan from the cages, and another. Robert counted, “Twenty, twenty-one . . .” The groans accumulated into one sound. They swelled up until they were louder than the song had been. And they were one groan made of the groans of those who were lying on the shelves in the cages.

John heard them, but he did not see. He was lying face down on the ground with his mouth in the dirt. A sickness had come on him. Like Job of old he wanted to curse God and die.

“Twenty-nine, thirty,” Robert said. “Nearer my God to Thee,” he shouted out and laughed. Lying on the ground John heard him, and talked with his mouth in the dirt.

Robert leaned over him. “What did you say?” he asked.

“Nothing,” John told him. The sounds had stopped and he sat up. He saw the shadows that were the blackjacks all around him. The light in the camp had been turned down and everything was quiet there, except for the noise that people make when they are lying down and have not yet gone to sleep, but are restless or feverish. Looking over John saw that the guard sat under the light with the gun in his hand. At his feet lay the two hounds. One of them moved in his sleep and the chain clanked gently against the butt of the gun in the hand of the guard.

T
HE
weave room was close and hot, for no air that might break the precious threads must come in. Weavers stood at their looms wet through with sweat, and often there would be a stirring of people about some section when one of the women, overcome with the closeness, or perhaps by some kind of sickness, fainted. Frank worked at his looms there, so John, who was put in that room as a filling hauler, pushing the boxes on wheels filled with spools, saw him every day.