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  TO MAKE MY BREAD

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  HERE are the human terms in which the transformation of southern mountain folk from farmers into mill hands is taking place. The story is told from their point of view, in their own poetic mountain speech, simply and powerfully, without any intrusion of literary devices. . . . . . . Poverty has stripped the life of the mountain people to primitive terms. Their virtues, their passions, their emotions rise naturally to dramatic intensity. . . . . . . The story moves from religious emotionalism, through primitive love struggles, to a powerful climax in a mill strike waged with all the desperation of a life and death struggle. All the drama of what is perhaps the greatest conflict now going on in American life is concentrated in these stirring pages. . . . . . . To Make My Bread is, we believe, an important contribution to American literature.

  TO MAKE MY BREAD

  by GRACE LUMPKIN

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  M. Evans

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  http://www.rlpgtrade.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1932 by The Macaulay Company

  First Rowman & Littlefield paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 13: 978-1-59077-436-6 pbk: alk. paper)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  TO MAKE MY BREAD

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  TO MAKE MY BREAD

  CHAPTER ONE

  BEGINNING this side of South Range and thirty miles as the crow flies to North Range, the life of the mountain people centers around Swain’s Crossing. At one place the road to the outside crosses the trail from South Range and Thunderhead. Here is Swain’s store and post office. Beyond the store and the road, Laurel Creek runs in long, uneven curves. Seen from the side of Choah Mountain it is like a huge snake, the largest part just below, its head crawling past Swain’s, and the tail somewhere out of sight toward North Range.

  On April the nineteenth, 1900, two men left their steers, hitched to sledges, in front of the store and joined another man around the stove inside. A light snow had begun to fall and the warmth of the stove was very welcome. Presently another man came in. He was Sam Wesley, whose cabin was in Possum Hollow, on the South Range trail.

  Sam took out his pipe and sat down on one of the unoccupied boxes at the stove.

  “A sack of meal,” he said to Hal Swain. Hal went to the back of the store and lifted a sack to the counter behind Sam, who reached in his pocket and laid the change on the counter beside the sack.

  “Still snowing?” Fraser McDonald asked Sam.

  “Yes,” Sam answered, and being reminded of the snow, felt his shoulders to see if the wet had come through.

  “Think it’ll come up hard?” Jim Hawkins asked the company. No one answered. But presently Fraser McDonald said, “No danger of it coming up hard.”

  “If it was winter,” Jim Hawkins said, “and it a-snowing, I’d be making tracks for my cabin.”

  The men sat bent over, close to the stove. They puffed at their pipes and occasionally one of them spoke.

  Young Sam McEachern, whose steer was hitched outside the store, had been at Siler’s Cove earlier in the day. He had business there with old man Kirkland who had come to live with his daughter, Emma McClure. John Kirkland was from the South Mountains and the two older McEachern brothers still lived there. They had sent word to Sam that he must find old man Kirkland and get his help in the business they carried on.

  “See Emma?” Sam Wesley asked McEachern. He had been a friend of Jim McClure’s before Jim’s death.

  “Yes,” Sam answered and looked at Wesley as if he expected another question and was making up some particular answer. The question did not come, though Sam Wesley wished to ask if Emma’s child had been born. His woman would wish to know. But the McEacherns could make a fool out of a man sometimes, with their smart answers, and unless a man was ready for a fight it was best not to give one of them a chance to get ugly.

  With winter over, the afternoons were already getting longer. It was still almost two hours before dark and the men were in no hurry to leave the fire. The air near the stove had been quite warm. Gradually it became colder. Hal Swain moved uncomfortably on his box, then got up and filled the stove with short green hickory logs. Jim Hawkins, who was sitting behind the stove, quivered with a sudden chill. The pipe he held loosely between his teeth fell to the floor.

  Sam McEachern, on a box next to Jim, looked out of the corners of his small, cunning eyes at his neighbor. “A rabbit run over your grave?” he asked.

  “No,” Jim leaned over to pick up the pipe. “But a blast of air cold as the tomb came up through that hole.” He pointed with the stem of his pipe to a large crack in the floor. He was ashamed of that sudden chill; and to keep his eyes from meeting those of his neighbors he began to fill the bowl of his pipe.

  From outside the store came a deep, melancholy bellow.

  “That your steer?” Fraser asked Sam McEachern.

  “It ain’t my cow,” Sam answered quickly.<
br />
  “I reckon mine’s a-ra’ring to get home,” Fraser said calmly. But he did not move to go. He was comfortable by the stove, and his cabin was a two-mile drive over a rough road. A steer does not cover two miles in a hurry.

  The steer’s bellowing roused Sam Wesley from his comfort. He remembered that his woman must have the meal for supper. There was none left in the cabin. He raised himself from the box, and taking up the sack, limped between the counters to the door.

  Steers hitched to the two sledges outside were standing with their thick necks bent down. The necks were not relaxed. They were taut as if the animals were preparing for an enemy. As Sam looked one of them raised its head a little, opened its mouth and gave a bellow. The other moved restlessly and planted its forefeet further apart in the mud. A cold northwest wind had come up as if a storm was getting ready to break. Yet there was so little snow in the air the mountains across Laurel Creek could be seen very clearly. Sam looked at them, then let the sack slide off his shoulders and spoke to the others.

  “Something’s a-happening up yonder,” he said.

  He spoke quietly. But the others sensed an unusual inflection in his voice. There was excitement in it, and some apprehension. They came and stood about him.

  The long summits of Choah and Little Snowbird were completely hidden by a snowstorm. Lower down the trees and bushes were visible. On top the sheets of snow curled and bellied like clothes hung out on a line in a high wind.

  Fraser sniffed at the air. He gave another look at the storm raging on top of the mountains. Then he buttoned his short coat to the neck.

  “I’d best be getting across that ford,” he said. “Something’s about to break loose.”

  His anxiety was felt by the other men. They left Hal Swain alone in the store and went out to the sledges. Jim Hawkins climbed up with Sam McEachern, for his cabin was on the same side of the creek as Sam’s. Fraser drove away behind them. The sledges with their wooden runners bumped uncomfortably over the rocks in the deep ruts. Sam Wesley slung the sack of meal across his shoulder and limped behind them until he turned to the left toward Possum Hollow.

  Half an hour later dark came suddenly over the whole region. Thick whirlwinds of snow filled the coves and valleys so that each isolated cabin was cut off more than ever from the world around it. The wind howled through the trees like a pack of hounds let loose.

  Doors were shut against the storm except in places where the men were out hunting for the precious animals they had neglected to shelter. At these cabins there was much activity. Women stood outside the doors with the snow stinging their faces like wasps and called to their men, or crawled to meet them, trying to make their shrill voices heard above the wind. The excited cries went on until the absent ones staggered in.

  The same thing was repeated in Siler’s Cove, where the McClure cabin sat far down between mountains. In fair weather it was like a tiny boat in the trough of huge waves. Since the blizzard began the cabin was obliterated. It had become a part of the blank whiteness from which nothing stood out.

  Granpap Kirkland and Emma McClure’s two sons had ventured out to find the steer and cow. When they did not return Emma stood outside the door and screamed to them. She could not stand long against the strong wind. It blew her against the wall of the cabin with the force of a strong man’s fist. Leaning over she held to the woodblock that served as a step and kept up intermittent screams until the others returned. They came crawling on hands and knees, and she did not see them until they were right on her, and Granpap called into her ear that they were safe.

  She did not learn until later that the steer and cow were lost, for as soon as her anxiety for Granpap and the boys was over, Emma felt a first sharp pain and knew that her time had come. Inside the cabin with the door shut she crouched over the fire trying to get some of the warmth of it into her body. The icy wind had reached the very marrow of her bones.

  The hickory log fire shone on her twisted face, and on the form that protruded from her belly in an oval shape. It seemed as if the child in her womb had already been born and was lying wrapped up in her lap asleep.

  On the floor at Emma’s right eight-year-old Kirk lay and stared into the fire, and between them in a poplar log cradle Bonnie, the youngest, whimpered in her sleep. On the other side of the fire, Basil, who was a year older than Kirk, sat against the chimney, his legs spread out before him on the floor.

  The wind sniffed at the doors and blew gusts of icy breath through the cracks of the log cabin. Clothes hanging to pegs on the walls flapped out into the room, making strange balancing movements. If the wind died down for a moment they suddenly collapsed against the wall as a man does who gives up the struggle to keep on his drunken legs.

  In the half darkness of the small space between the circle of firelight and the end wall of the cabin, John Kirkland walked the floor. His boots stamped on the split-log flooring regularly, hesitating when he turned at the wall and again when he turned just behind Emma’s chair.

  Granpap Kirkland’s life had been full of varied experiences. A fight with a she bear had left three long scars across his right cheek, and there was a scar on his side from a wound received in battle. He was not a fearful man by nature. But he had known fear and dread in the last few moments since he knew that some time in the night he must deliver Emma of her child.

  Emma instructed Granpap. She took his thumb for a measure. The cord must be cut so far from the child. Neither of them had much fear for Emma. She was a strong woman. A few months before, just after Jim McClure died of fever and before Granpap had come to stay with her, Emma, then five months gone with child, had carried the best part of a thirty-pound shoat the twelve miles over steep mountain trails to Swain’s Crossing. Nevertheless her children always came hard, and Emma knew there would be plenty of pain even before the child made its final struggle.

  Bonnie cried out loud. Emma walked to the wall where the clothes hung and took down a pair of old jeans. She tucked them into the cradle around the child. Back in the chair with her foot against the cradle she set it rocking slowly, and the child quieted for a moment.

  The old man came and stood behind Emma. His shoulders were bowed a little, but he was very tall, and stood high above her.

  “Do you think it’ll be soon, Emma?” he asked. His voice was anxious and querulous.

  Emma did not answer. She knew he wanted it over and done with. But so did she. There was no way to hurry the child.

  “Are you going to bed?” he asked. She straightened up.

  “When hit’s time, Pap. Hit’s s’ cold there.”

  The wind slapped against the cabin and snarled down the chimney. Snow blew in under the north door and spread over the floor in a hurry and flurry like an unwelcome guest who is trying to make himself at home.

  During one of the quiet times between the pains Emma took the coffee pot from the fire and poured out a drink for each one in the tin cups. Above the kerosene lamp on the table strings of dried apples hanging from the rafters stirred and as the lamp flame gutted and flared up the apple strings made long crooked shadows across the bed in the corner.

  “Hit’ll warm up our backs,” Emma said and handed the cups. She walked over and picked up the water bucket that was in a dark corner behind Kirk.

  “Here, Kirk,” she said. “Hold the pan.”

  The water was frozen. Emma broke through the ice with her fist. When she poured it out of the bucket it clinked against the bottom of the tin basin. She set the basin down in the ashes against the live embers.

  “You’ll need the hot water,” she said to Granpap. As she gulped down the warm coffee she wished in herself there was a woman who would know what to do without telling. And she wished the men were where they belonged when a woman was in travail—somewhere out on the mountains or at a neighbor’s. There was a shame in having her sons near, and Granpap must see her as he had not seen her since she was a naked baby in her mother’s arms. Soon, maybe, it would be over. The pains had begun to
get worse, as if it was the end.

  In the bed away from the others, Emma let go. She was shaking with cold yet the quilts and her cotton flannel skirt were too much and she pushed them off. Sitting up in bed she pressed down slowly with her hands over the great lump stirring inside. Others had done this for her before to help the child come. She found that she could not do it for herself. The hot pulling cramp forced her to lie back and scream again. A bear was gnawing at her belly, pulling at the muscles with its strong teeth. She felt its fur on her face and beat at the fur with her arms.

  It was Granpap’s beard. He was trying to tell her to keep covered as long as she could. She pushed him off. It was not possible to bear the agony of one hair touching her. There was no Granpap and no children now. Nothing mattered but herself and the pain.

  Bonnie kept up a fretful wail, and Granpap walked up and down the room. Outside the storm brushed against the cabin as if all the trees on the mountains had been uprooted and their dry branches were scraping over the roof and against the outside walls.

  Kirk was quiet. Now he stood with his back to the chimney, watching the comer with frightened eyes. Suddenly Emma cried out sharply to Granpap. He stooped over the bed and peered down.

  “Bring the lamp, Kirk,” he ordered. “And you, Basil, put that pan of water and bucket on the table.”

  He rolled up his sleeves and walking quickly to the fire leaned far over to rub his cold hands in the flames.

  Kirk held the lamp over the bed and kept his eyes on Granpap. On the bed was a woman he did not recognize as his mother. She was a stranger, a sort of beast. Granpap stood between him and the new thing, and he kept his eyes on the wide back where Granpap’s old shirt and patched jeans were familiar and safe. Kirk saw the old man bending over working with his hands at Emma’s body and he smelled blood. It made a familiar shudder run over him. Granpap bending over the bed was like a man bending over at a slaughtering and Emma’s last cries were the same as those of a pig with a knife at its throat.