To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin Page B

place. But he had his code about what a man could rightly do. He would betray himself and his code if he went back to sleeping with the women. And Kirk, who had begun to let John tag along on occasions, would once more think of him as belonging with them. So each night when the others were away John lay alone on his straw bed until he fell asleep or until Basil or Kirk arrived. Sometimes the fleas kept him awake. Recently they had been worse, because on the evenings when Granpap was not expected John took Georgy in to sleep with him.
    The night that Kirk and Basil went to meet Granpap John shut Georgy out. He could hear the pup whining at the door. Now he was sorry he had kept him in the bed at all. For the fleas were very bad, and he was afraid Granpap would complain about them to Emma. He did not want the others to know he had kept the dog with him. Of course if they did find out he would not be ashamed before them. He would do as Kirk had done that morning when Basil tattled. He would say he had a right and stand up to what he had done.
    Since he had joined the church and even before that Basil would creep around being sorry and ashamed if he had done anything he felt to be wrong, like taking a swallow of drink down his gullet. An example of this was the thing Basil had done that very morning. The night before, as John knew from listening, Kirk and Basil had come home drunk from the small still. Kirk was giggling as he stumbled around John’s bed, and Basil was angrily trying to quiet him. He was anxious for Emma not to know. Yet in the morning he repented and accused Kirk of having tempted him to the drink. And what did he do but go and tell Emma all about it, so she, a woman, had to know about Kirk, too.
    Sometimes, big and strong as he was, Basil seemed almost like a woman. And John felt contemptuous of women and of any kind of womanish ways in a man. He was tired of having Bonnie hang around. Two days before he and Basil and Kirk had found it necessary to slip off from her, so they could go hunting.
    The boys had taken two guns, Granpap’s and Jim McClure’s, and gone out to shoot the cotton tails off rabbits. If a man could hit the round white spot that was a rabbit’s tail while the little animal was leaping ahead through the woods, he was put down as a fine shot. And he could wear the tail on his hat, or give it to his girl. But the trip had been useless. One or the other of the boys should have proved himself. And they both missed. Granpap would have succeeded, for like his father Granpap was a fine shot. There was a story about Granpap’s father. Once when squirrels were as plentiful as chestnuts in season through the hills, Granpap’s father had seen about forty of them swimming the old South Fork single file with their tails high up; one tail right after the other above the water. He had stood on the bank and blown their tails off with one single shot from his gun.
    In a half-sleep dream John saw all the fleas that were biting him lined up in a row. He took the gun from the wall and with one shot killed them all. And Granpap said, “For that, you can have the gun.” Georgy woke him out of the dream, and he cried out “Shet up” for the hundredth time. He turned over and pulled the quilt up to keep out the cool night mist that came in through the wide cracks between the logs. He must have slept heavily when he did get to sleep for he woke to hear Kirk talking. The boys were already in bed. John felt over in his bed for Granpap, but the place was empty.
    â€œYes, you do,” Kirk said very loud to Basil. “You want to slobber out your misery on some woman’s breast. If it ain’t Ma it’s Minnie Hawkins.”
    â€œYou say that because you want Minnie yourself.” Basil’s voice was harsh and ugly.
    â€œIf I want Minnie I’ll get her, you God damned baby.”
    Basil’s voice rose up in a kind of quaver. “You call me that and