To Make My Bread (42 page)

“Basil?”

“Maybe I oughtn't t' have told you. He comes sometimes late at night. He thinks I'm bad, but he comes, sometimes.”

Minnie was trying to make friends with him, and she was nervous in doing it. John could feel that she was interesting to him, because of her blue eyes, that looked at him innocently, and because of her body that was still shapely, though it bulged from her corset in places. There was a sweetness to her body that he felt. Perhaps it was too sweet and had an odor like molasses that has gone sour, but the sweetness was there.

Though she urged him to talk, she seemed to be glad of a chance to speak herself, as if there had been few people to listen.

“Basil came on a trip to the city,” she said. “Hasn't he told you? Didn't you know I was here?”

“I don't see much of him.”

Minnie leaned back against the pillow. “Hand me your glass,” she told John, and without sitting up she filled the glass half full from her bottle, then with her head flung back she swallowed a drink and looked at John triumphantly over the bottle which she held next to her breasts.

“Basil says I still attract him. He said so that first time I saw him in the city. That's why I'm here, because he wanted me. He did not see me at Mrs. Phillips'. It was after she left. You know I was with Mrs. Phillips. I used to ask her about you all, and about you especially.

“Why don't you say something, John? You're mighty good-looking, you know. I believe you're better looking than any of the McClures. Turn your face around.”

She raised herself and took his chin in her hand. “There now . . . . Now I can see you. You're very sweet, John. Did you know that?”

“Well,” John said, and laughed into her face that was very near his. “Lots of girls have told me so.” He did not pull his chin away from her hand.

“All along I've thought of you as a child, for that was what you were—then. Now—now I feel that you are a man.”

He was startled when a knock came at the door. Minnie went there and whispered with the woman who had spoken downstairs. Then she said out loud, “Tell him to come back in ten minutes.”

John stood up. “Had I better go?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Well, maybe you'd better.” She lay back on the pillow.

“I want you to come back, John. Please tell me you'll come back.”

“Yes,” John said and went out of the door.

On the front steps of the house he met a man. Looking into his face he saw in the dim light from the corner street lamp that the man was Robert Phillips. They had not met since Robert had come back from the war.

“So you know Minnie?” Robert asked, and smiled at John with meaning.

“Yes, I know her,” John answered.

“I'm busy right now,” Robert told him. “But I'd like to see you again. Do you ever go to Carpenter's place?” It was a Blind Tiger that all of them knew, the restaurant on Lee Street in which John had sat with Granpap when he came back from the mountains long before.

“I go there sometimes,” John said.

“Then I'll see you.”

After that meeting John entered into a different life from that he had been leading. He became acquainted, if not at first hand then at second, with some of the men of the town. Sometimes he saw them in their hours of recreation, and talked with them at Carpenter's, and sometimes he only heard of them. There was Albert Burnett who had gone to college, and who now was a leading attorney. But it was Robert who held some interest for him, and they met several times.

They sat in the Blind Tiger one evening alone. Usually Young Frank or Statesrights Mulkey or some men from the town were with them. This evening they were alone.

Robert was persuading John to join a lodge that had a branch in the village and met over the Company store. Robert himself belonged to the town lodge, and in it were other young and old men. One of the members was Basil.

Through Robert, John learned that Basil was accomplishing what he had set out to do. The father-in-law had died and left each of his two daughters some money, and with his part Basil was starting a gasoline station and repairing garage. According to Robert, who had visited John's brother, the Basil McClures lived in a splendid house which they were buying, and in it was a piano, and much velvet furniture.

This was what Robert was planning to have for himself. He was engaged to marry the daughter of a rich grocer in the town. She was just a little bit off, as Statesrights had told John, and followed men around as if she wanted to eat them up, but her unfortunate characteristic made it easier for her father and others to forget that Robert's mother was living at the North on money made from an unmentionable source.

It was Statesrights who had told this to John. Yet Robert himself, when he had been drinking, was hardly less frank about his personal affairs. He was free, he told John that night as they sat alone at the table. His mother had given him the farm to sell when he could, and she would never come back again, but would stay in the North where she had put his crippled sister in an institution.

“You used to think a lot of your sister,” John said across the table.

“I used to think a lot of things important that I don't think are important now.”

“What is important?”

“Living, and getting what you want?”

“What do you want?”

“Ease and comfort, and the respect of my fellow citizens. I did without that long enough. Now I want it. When I get married I'll settle down, and if I want to kick up a row I'll go somewhere else, or hide it here like the others. And some day, John, you may wake up to find I'm in Congress.”

“Maybe,” John said. “Maybe I will.”

“And I want you to vote for me. Will you do that for your old friend?”

“Well, hit's a long time yet.”

“Not so long as you think. I'm going to hang out my shingle as a lawyer. Heilman wants to be Governor. Some day he will resign as Congressman, and that's when I'll step in.”

“I've even joined the church,” Robert said. “You can see I'm honest with you, John, because you know me, and you can be trusted. I can't fool you either, like I can some. I fooled Basil. He thinks I've been converted through him, and he thinks a lot of his religious protege—the hypocrite!” Robert spat out.

“Look here,” John leaned across the table. The several drinks he had put down made a warm rush of anger go to his head. “Basil may be just what you say. I'm not quarreling at the words, but the tone. He is my brother, and I don't like your tone.”

He looked straight at Robert, angrily, and Robert answered his looks with one of anger. Then, very slowly, he smiled.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Whatever Basil is, as you say, he is your brother. But I like you, John,” he added tearfully. “I like you. And I'm honest with you, ain't I, John? I've been to college and I've been to France, and I've seen a hell of a lot of life: and still I have a feeling for you because you're honest. I've got no feeling for anything and anybody—usually. Religious people say God loves us all and guides us, and others say there is some kind of plan in the universe. I've read a lot, John—philosophers and others. And I tell you there is no plan and no guidance. There is no order, no law, no purpose, no progress for the human race. History repeats itself over and over, and here we are, the human race in all its ugliness, just the same as ever. It's for a man to get out and while there's a life to be lived, grab just as much as he can and to hell with everybody else.”

“If a man feels as you do,” John said, “then he might just as well go to hell as fast as he can.”

“It's true. And I thought that for a time. But I've got too much energy. And I have a wish to lead men. I know I can do it. And men like to be led. They need a strong arm, and a strong head above them.”

What Robert had said made its impression on John. It suited him to have someone take the lead, and the responsibility for his actions. And Robert was willing to do this for all those who would follow him. Yet there was a part of himself that John without knowing he was doing so kept away from Robert and the others. It was this almost hidden independence that Robert respected. And he had his own reasons for keeping John as a friend. He knew that the boy had the respect of the men in the village, and some day when he became a politician that influence might be of help in getting him votes.

With this in mind he persuaded John to join the lodge in the village. It stood for the protection of the flag, and the motto was “Keep out the foreigner and the nigger. Neither belongs.'' One night at twelve exactly, John was initiated into the lodge with many indignities—and became a very unsatisfactory member.

He saw the members dressed up in fancy costumes parading around the hall and speaking in loud unnatural voices. The strutting did not affect him in the way it was meant to do, for he could only laugh as he had laughed once when he saw Basil in a sort of nightgown at the cabin in the mountains.

So the meetings went on without him. He preferred to see his friends at Carpenter's—to sit at a table with drinks between them, when they could talk and have a real laugh together over a joke or some story that one of them told.

Z
INIE
M
ARTIN
and Bonnie sat in the front room where Emma lay in one of the beds asleep, with Bonnie's baby at the foot of the bed, asleep like Emma. It was Sunday afternoon.

“I came over to ask about Emma,” Zinie said.

“She's about the same,” Bonnie told her, looking toward the place where Emma's gray hair showed above the quilt.

“I've been washing,” Bonnie said. “So everything is in a mess.” She straightened her apron over her belly that showed plainly that she was to have another child in a few months. “I hate t' work on Sunday, but it's a thing that has t' be done.”

“Everybody knows there's a-plenty to be done here,” Zinie whispered. “Don't you worry over working on a Sunday.

“Is Granpap asleep, too?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“How is he?”

“Well. But he tires easily, and sleeps most of the day.”

“And—and John?”

“Why, Zinie, haven't you seen him?”

“Not lately.”

“Why, he's been going to your house so steady, I thought . . .” Bonnie saw Zinie's white face go whiter, and knew that she was saying the wrong thing.

“Maybe he's at your house right now, Zinie. I know he's been wild lately. But he's young. I think hit's just the same thing that Kirk was. I've always heard how good Kirk was to his woman. I expect John is at your house right now looking for ye.”

“No, Bonnie. There's no use fooling myself. Bonnie, I saw him last night. I went to town. He was on the street with a woman.”

“Are you sure it was John?”

“As sure as I'm sitting here.”

“I knew he was drinking, but I didn't know there was any woman. Now, Zinie, maybe he couldn't help it. Maybe hit was just somebody he couldn't get away from.

“You see, I've heard him say such nice things about ye.”

“Did he say nice things?”

“Yes, he did. He said you were his freckled girl.”

Zinie put her hand to her face. She was really nice looking, Bonnie thought, at times pretty.

“Hit don't sound so nice,” Zinie said.

“But if you could have heard how he said it. As if he loved every freckle on your face. And you have just a few, Zinie, across your nose. And he said another time that you were as sweet as you were pretty.”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes, he did.”

Zinie's fingers twisted together in her lap.

“You be patient, Zinie.”

“I reckon hit's best,” Zinie said.

She went out of the door into the barren front yard where the hard ground met her feet. She missed the soft ground of the mountains that was rich with growth. There was plenty of mud on the roads there, as in the streets of the village. But on the mountains the black soil sank under her feet, and in it grew small flowers and plants she had liked to pick in the spring. John had forgotten about the mountains. He was full of the town and of making something of himself. As if he ought not to know that there was just one life for them—to marry and be happy so long as they could, then take the burdens that life gave them. But he did not want burdens. He wanted to better himself. Zinie suspected that one reason he was so emphatic about all this was that he knew if he once took on burdens he would accept them completely. Perhaps, she thought, Bonnie was right; if she waited and was patient, he would come back and take things upon himself without any urging from her.

Soon after Zinie left, John came to the house. He had come to get Granpap's gun that always stood in a corner of his and Granpap's room. It gave him a peculiar pleasure to go about the streets on Sunday with a gun under his arm, for he knew that people looked at him and either thought sorrowfully of him as an unbeliever, or reproachfully as a wicked person.

He was to meet Statesrights Mulkey and Young Frank and drive out in the country somewhere to shoot at targets. After his mother's death Statesrights' father had married Alma, his mother's sister. Mr. Mulkey had reformed Alma, and made her into a religious, money-grabbing woman, who starved the young ones of the little they had, in order to save a penny. Statesrights felt himself free of the family when his mother was gone. He boarded with Mrs. Sevier, who lived off Company property, and was able to charge very little. Statesrights had bought a second hand car that he and John and the others used when they wished to go into town or out into the country.

Granpap was sleeping. John tiptoed to the corner of the room, but as he touched the gun it fell and the barrel struck the floor. The old man raised himself under the covers.