To Make My Bread (44 page)

“There's something I want to ask you,” she told him. “I have liked you so much, John, and I know and understand that you want better things than you are getting now.”

He waited to hear what else she had to say.

“You know, don't you, there has been a strike in Sandersville?”

“Yes,” John said, looking at her, and enjoying that more than her words.

“I know I can tell you a management secret, John. Mr. Randolph says you can be trusted. He receives a paper every month which tells what is happening in the mills everywhere, all over the country. It gives information about these unions.”

“They didn't do much in Sandersville but run off with the people's money,” John said.

“Is that true?”

“It's what people say.”

“I'm glad if it is true. It will make the union unpopular. People only make misery for themselves by fighting against the owners. What did they get over at Sandersville? The leaders were expelled from the mills. And I happen to know that Mr. Randolph has a list of those expelled so that he won't take them in here. Think of the misery those men brought to their wives and children. Isn't it far better for workers and those who own the mills to live together in brotherly love?”

“Maybe,” John said, for she seemed to expect an answer. At that moment love to him meant reaching out to get her head between his own head and shoulder. It meant getting his arms around her.

“I have been asked to see if you will do a favor for the management, John.

“They will pay you for it. You will get the salary of a foreman, with promise of advancement later . . . .”

Love to him meant kissing her mouth . . . .

“All you need to do is watch the other people and report any who speak in a dissatisfied way. We are afraid the union idea will spread. Watch the other workers and listen to them . . .”

. . . And touching her hair . . . .

“No one is to know. You will report to Mr. Randolph once a week. As you are section boss it will be natural for you to go to his office. Just say this person or that one spoke favorably of unions—or someone complained of low wages. But you must watch everybody . . . .”

“Watch everybody?” He repeated her words, for he had not fully understood before what she was saying. Now her words came to him more clearly.

“Yes, they will make it possible for you to go all over the mill and talk with people. And you must listen at lunch time and when you visit people in their homes . . . . Report everyone who is discontented . . . .”

Report? Report Frank, and Jim Martin, and Bonnie, Ora and Zinie—tell on them to the management? Watch neighbors and friends?

“What did you say?” he asked her again.

“I said report any dissatisfaction. And you will have the salary of a foreman. You can have nice things, books, a victrola, and a car even. You can buy things for your family, for your mother. Perhaps she will get well.”

He looked at her. She talked on, nervously repeating herself.

“What is wrong? Have I said anything wrong? You look so queer and sad, John.

“Don't you see I want to help you? You're worthy of better things than—than other people here. I don't know. Either the women are stupid or else they are too lazy to learn anything. Many come once to the club, and never come again. The girls think of nothing except their beaus and a drink of ginger ale, or chewing gum in their mouths. I want you to have something better. I was so proud to give you the chance . . . .”

“You mean to be kind,” John told her. He was standing before her and she was looking up into his face. He spoke to her softly, meaning to hold his voice steady. During the time she had spoken his strong wish for her had changed into anger. All the fire of wishing to hold her had turned into a fire of anger. But he wished to hold himself still and quiet.

“I thank you,” he said, “for meaning to be kind. But that is not enough.”

“What have I done, John?”

He did not answer directly, for there was nothing he could say that could be said to a woman. It took him only a few seconds to reach the lower floor, and then the street outside. He walked home covering the ground more swiftly than he had ever done before. In him there was a shame that he could not get away from, no matter how fast he walked. There was a shame for her and for himself. But the greatest part was for himself. He had thought he could rise up and had gone about doing so. His work as a section man had failed. To-morrow he would say to Mr. Burnett, “I cannot be a section boss any longer. I am not your man.”

Even with this resolve the shame persisted. He reached the house, and stood irresolutely on the sidewalk in the dark. While he stood there the front door slammed and Jim Calhoun came out.

“Is anything wrong?” John asked, for Jim had hurried down the walk.

“Emma's sick. I'm going for the doctor,” Jim answered and went past him up the street.

In the house John found Bonnie working over Emma. She had had some kind of sinking spell and called out for Bonnie.

Bonnie said, “Is that you, John?”

“Is she bad?” John asked, and stood by his sister at the side of the bed.

“My head is whirling,” Emma moaned. “Give me another cloth, Bonnie.”

Presently Jim returned and said the doctor would come in the morning. He thought there was no need to be alarmed.

“You go to bed,” Bonnie whispered to Jim and her brother. “No use all of us losing sleep. You look terrible, John, as if you was sick yourself.”

Jim went into the other room, but John stayed with Bonnie. They sat by the fire. Now Emma was quiet. The cloth covered her eyes, and the quilt with its squares and triangles lay across her body where it lay hunched up as if she was cold.

“She woke up thinking something terrible was going t' happen to you and me,” Bonnie whispered to John. “She said, ‘Hit's torture to think what will happen to Bonnie and John,' The doctor says people with pellagra sometimes get spells of thinking something bad will happen, so I reckon it don't mean anything.”

“I hope not.”

They waited, each thinking his own thoughts.

“Has she been the same to-day?” John asked, for he wanted to get away from himself.

“The same as usual.”

“Bonnie,” Emma called out.

“I'm here,” Bonnie said, going straight to the bed. She leaned down to Emma and took the cloth from her eyes.

Emma straightened out in the bed. “Hit's good t' see ye, Bonnie. Will John come home soon? I'd like t' see him.”

“He's right here,” Bonnie told her and beckoned to John. He walked softly to the bed and leaned over Emma, ready to talk with her.

“I don't ache anywhere now,” Emma said. “I do feel better.” But her voice was thin.

“I'm s' glad.”

“I'm anxious for ye both,” Emma said. While they stood over her in silence she moved restlessly under the covers: then began speaking again.

John saw that her eyes were not focused, though they were open. “I tried s' hard t' make things fine for ye. I made plans. But hit seems there's no use making plans.

“You remember back in the mountains, Ora, they told us, ‘Down there money grows on trees.' But the trees have produced none since we came down.

“I wanted so much, Ora, t' give my young ones a chance in life and see them have things that children should have. But I have made only misery and unhappiness for myself and them.”

She spoke again during the night. It was hard to get her to answer anything about what was happening nearby. She seemed to forget that Granpap was on night work, and asked for him. But she remembered things that had happened some time before and spoke of them in a faltering voice.

In the morning when the doctor came she was in a stupor. Under the cover her body twitched continually. Her eyes were turned up toward the ceiling as if she was interested only in the gap between two of the wooden planks up there.

“She can't last out to-morrow,” Doctor Foley said. John received the words and gave him the money for the visit.

On the second day early in the morning, when Ora had just left after staying up with her all night, Emma died.

T
HEY
bought a ten-dollar grave for Emma. The funeral parlors had nothing in the way of coffins that were cheap. Bonnie and John went down, and Bonnie selected a gray one lined with satin, and a satin shroud. The undertakers seemed to expect that people would wish a fine funeral, and everyone usually did. It was the one time when they could, without thinking that the money should be spent on something else, use it without stint; for the insurance money would cover the costs.

John found this to be true. There was no cheap funeral. Looking at Emma, he thought, “Give me some pine boards, and I could put away what I loved without any of this.” They dressed her up in satin, when she was dead. They laid her back on soft pillows, satin pillows, to rest—when she was dead, and could neither see nor feel any more. And they let what she was down into the ten-dollar grave, so that she was finally gone.

Mr. Turnipseed was there, and spoke soft words above the grave.

“Rich and poor, we come to it just the same,” he said. “What does it matter, aristocrats, and those who live by the sweat of their brows—all must come to the same end. So we know that only righteousness counts. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

“Jesus went before,” he told them, “and he has prepared a place for Emma McClure. She has reached the Promised Land where we all hope to go.”

“She was always looking for better things,” Ora said to Bonnie after the funeral. “She thought once that down here money grew on trees. Maybe now she's found that place.”

There were two bunches of flowers, and after they had been put on the grave, John saw Zinie go over to the mound and rearrange them as if she wanted, herself, to touch something that was Emma's to show her affection and sorrow.

It was Saturday afternoon. They had hired carriages to take them to the cemetery, but except for the one that carried the preacher, they had hired none to take them back. John gave Mr. Turnipseed his fee for the prayers, and walked slowly to the village with Granpap who was almost prostrated by Emma's death. But he had insisted on going to the cemetery. It was the best he could do, and the last thing possible to show her honor.

On Sunday John got up early in the morning and went to stand out on the road, the one that led towards Sandersville. There was a need in him, and he was going to search out John Stevens, if he was still in that village. A farmer in an old car took him almost there, and he covered the rest of the way on foot. There he inquired about John Stevens, who was a watchman, as he told those whom he questioned. The third person showed him the way. The Stevens house was on the further side of the mill, near some woods. It was a little distance from the other houses.

John knocked at the door, and a woman came. Behind her stood three children, each one only a little taller than the others.

“Does John Stevens live here?” he asked.

She was about to answer when a voice from in the room called out, “Who is it, Nellie?”

“I'm John McClure, from the Wentworth Mills,” John said to her.

She went back into the room and the young ones stood together, staring at John. The woman came back and smiled at him. “He's still in bed,” she said, “but he'll get up in a minute. He'll be glad to see you.”

“I don't wish to disturb him.”

“It's about his usual time of getting up,” she said comfortably. “Come in, now, and sit down in this room. When he's up we'll go in there and sit. This room is where the children sleep and play, and it looks like it.” He could see that she was rather ashamed because the house was not cleaned up for a stranger.

He sat on a chair from which she took some jeans.

“Johnnie,” she said to the oldest boy, “go put on these old jeans while I wash your good ones.”

The boy took the jeans and went into the other room. John looked after him, for he walked with a peculiar hitching motion.

“He's got tuberculosis of the bone,” Nellie Stevens said, “so I've got two that limp.”

She did not say this with shame as someone else might have done, but very simply as if she had long ago accepted what was before her.

The door opened again and John Stevens himself limped into the room.

“I'm glad to see you,” he said to John.

“I thought maybe you might have forgotten me.”

“No,” John Stevens said. “I'd never forget you.”

“Hit's right kind of ye to say that,” John told him. They were not at home with each other. Now he was there, John was not at all sure what he had come for, or whether he would find what he wanted. He had come and must wait to see what the day would bring forth.

He had remembered that John Stevens seemed a person who possessed a knowledge of events and people, and in himself kept something hid that he did not give out to everyone but kept it secret because it was precious; knowledge, that was not to be given lightly, or without preparation.

Mrs. Stevens had the dinner ready and they all sat down around the kitchen table. There was a feeling of understanding in the whole house that was something John had not often felt when among people. They seemed to take him for what he was, a young man they might like or might not like, but one who had with them some common interest that drew them to him, and held them all together; just as the food for the time being held them together around the table.

After dinner John Stevens said: “Would you like to walk out along the big road?”

“You don't wish to sleep again?”

“I've had enough for the day.”

“Then I'd like t' go.”

“Come back in time t' get a little supper before work time,” Mrs. Stevens said to her husband.