To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin Page A

started Emma and soon they were laughing, but silently, so their shoulders shook with the effort to keep from making sounds. When the prayer was over they could not stop and the preacher thinking they had got religion and were mourning for their sins came and accepted them into the church. That made them quiet enough, for everyone looked as they shook hands with the preacher.
    Going home the boys were very solemn toward them both, thinking they had come through. Jim said, “You two sure did get it hard.” All the way Ora kept pinching Emma, but neither of them would own up to what had really made them get religion. The next night Jim and Frank walked up to the preacher, and lo and behold all four of them were baptized that summer. And in the fall Ora married Frank, and Emma, Jim McClure.
    Children were born and some of them died. Death came like a storm. You couldn’t do anything about it. Emma’s own mother had died at her birth. Granpap’s second wife had several children before she died, too. They had mortgaged the Kirkland land to Hugh Tate who had got hold of three mountains over there and a big valley through mortgages, and they had lost the land. So the Kirklands were wandering outside somewhere and Pap had come to stay with her. And she was glad. He was a good man and what man didn’t want to be head of the house he was in? This was only right. Yet she would still fight to keep the boys from going with Granpap.
    Basil would be easy. He had what the preacher called a conscience. And it worried him to death. If he had done something wrong he would come and tell about it. He was a good boy.
    Emma pushed the sticks with her bare foot closer under the pot and the fire burned up. Then she remembered that the water must be just warm, not like the water she used for boiling the clothes. She picked up a dead stick from the ground and pulled the fire away from under the pot. It went on burning on the edges of the pile of coals. She saw it reflected in the spring and went over to look. The slight mist in the air made the spring smooth and glassy. Emma could see her face. It was thin and brown with brown eyes like Bonnie’s. The cheeks were hollow and drawn down, but the nose lifted them up. It was so firm and proud. Her mouth was big and generous and it was sad. The nose said, “I will stand up for what I need.” But the mouth below it said, “I don’t know what this is about. I don’t understand.”
    Jim had liked Emma’s hair. When some of it got away from the tight knot at the back it curled around her face. Maybe, Emma thought, she needed another man. But then she had her young ones. The two oldest were getting beyond her but John and Bonnie were still where she could scold and sometimes love them up a little. The fire flared up for a moment and it looked as if down there in the spring her face was burning up. She put her big gnarled hands against her face, to hide out the sight.
    She left the spring and lifted the cloth from the deep kettle. The corn had already softened a little and its sweet smell came up. As Granpap had done, Emma poured some of the warm water over the corn. She listened while it dripped through the holes in the bottom. Wringing out a cloth in the pot, she spread it across the kettle. She was watching the corn and feeling the sound of the regular drip from the bottom of the pan when Granpap returned. He did not speak, but stood for a while looking out over South Range. Presently without looking at Emma he said carelessly, as if he was asking for another cup of coffee at supper.
    â€œI’ll not take Kirk this time. But next year he’s a-going if he wants.”
    This was all Emma needed. Next year must take care of itself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    H OW big the dark room seemed to John when he went to bed alone. Sometimes at night when Granpap and Basil and Kirk were away the boy wanted to climb in with Emma and Bonnie instead of going to his own