To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin Read Free Book Online Page B

Emma. “You see, I haven’t been there much. But they said I was to spread the news. It’s the poor folks’ time if they’ll pick up and go.”
    â€œIt’s a long way,” Emma said.
    â€œForty miles from here as the crow flies,” Small Hardy told her.
    â€œThere’s a store,” he went on. “Where they sell beads and other things cheap. And you get a house with windows and cook on a real stove,—no more bending over a chimney.”
    â€œI’ll lay the house ain’t your own,” Granpap said. “Nor the land.”
    Small Hardy had been talking to Emma. He shrank back when Granpap’s voice came out of the shadows. “Maybe so,” he said when he recovered. “But the money’s yours. Real money. Lots of it.”
    â€œI like to have my own land,” Granpap answered. He got up to knock the ashes from his pipe. He stood there, and Hardy knew the evening was finished. He returned the goods to their pockets, folded the pack, and set it in the corner by the chimney. Emma held the light for them to cross the passageway, then blew it out. John, who would sleep with her that night, sat on the floor trying to keep his eyes open.
    â€œThey was pretty things,” Emma whispered. She sighed. “Come on, John. Get to sleep,” she said and leaned over the bed to shake Bonnie and turn down the covers.

CHAPTER SIX
    T HE next morning, after all Emma’s holding back, before Small Hardy left she bought a piece of red calico for Bonnie. As a result on Sunday, the first Sunday of the year when they had meeting, there was no change for collection. Emma could shake the money gourd all she wanted, pretending that she had expected to find something. The gourd was empty.
    â€œThe preacher’ll have to do with our company,” she said half to herself, half to Bonnie and John who were waiting to start out.
    John was very impatient. Granpap and the boys had gone long ago. They would be halfway to church. Emma still wanted to treat him as a baby and make him go with her. And the worst of it was the boys would not have him. He looked at Bonnie and saw her pulling at the narrow skirt of her new dress, trying to make it full and handsome.
    â€œLook at Bonnie a-strutting,” he said.
    â€œLet her strut,” Emma scolded. “She’s a need to with her first new dress.”
    â€œSome day,” she told John, “you’ll have new jeans, not patched ones that come from the boys.”
    She pulled her knitted black shawl over her head and followed the children up the trail. Bonnie ran on, stepping proudly along the path in her bare feet. The red calico dress with its long tight little waist and narrow gathered skirt looked nice and new.
    They walked single file along the trail. Over one hill and down another side—over another higher one and along the ridge leading to Thunderhead. They could see Frank McClure’s place down in the valley. Not a sound there. It was a good three miles away from that point but sound travels a long distance on a clear day. They knew the McClures had gone.
    Close to Thunderhead they got into the shade of the early spring leaves. The trail sloped up to the divide over Thunderhead. On the other side of the mountain the narrow sledge road took them zigzag across the steep face of the mountain. All that side of Thunderhead was quilted zigzag by the trail and at the bottom the trail went down between the sides of other mountains like a loose thread a woman has left hanging off the side of a quilt.
    All the way down the shut-in they walked by a stream that grew wider toward the bottom. Emma took off her shoes and waded over the stream when the trail crossed, but the children splashed through. Bonnie held her dress so high to protect it from the water, Emma had to call out and make her let it down, for there was nothing underneath. Just below the Martins’ house they crossed the footway, across the