FOR two years more Granpap struggled on the farm, trying to hold on as possible owner. The time came when Mr. Ashley’s agent gave him the choice of giving up the farm or becoming a share-cropper.
“I have learned to know what a share-cropper is,” Granpap said to John. “I have talked to some and have watched them around here. Share-cropping is the same as slavery. Hit means food advanced, and seed and other things advanced, and at the end of the year the reckoning comes. What’s his share goes to him, and what’s my share goes to him, for I must take his word for the price of what is advanced. Hit means ruin.”
He went down to the mill and tried to find a place as watchman. There was none open to him. So he stayed on the farm and looked on what he had lost. That was the hardest part: to stay and see that all the money paid down in the beginning, and that spent on making the place better, though it was not much, and the hard work he had put into the fields—belong to someone else. He had begun to think of the farm as his own.
Emma was known in the mill as a skillful worker, and when she went down and asked for work she got it. Yet during the two years she had found it necessary to go back to bed, and at last had to give up and stay at home.
There, when it was necessary for her to remain in bed, she lay in the front room alone during the day and looked at the treasures she had accumulated during her years of work. There was the picture of Kirk, which was the most precious. It hung above the mantel-piece, and opposite was the record of Births and Deaths that Granpap had bought in the first flush of their making money. John and Bonnie had written names in the spaces. Under the Deaths there were the names of Emma’s children who were in the mountains and the name of her husband. Under Marriages was Basil McClure, and there was a name under the word Births, for Basil, after being married a little over a year, had a son named Basil. It was Frank who had brought them this news, and Emma had immediately taken down the record and had Bonnie write the name, Basil McClure, carefully under the word that she had begun to know by its appearance and position on the record. She wondered, lying in her bed, how many more Births would be put down there before she left the earth.
Under Kirk’s picture on the mantel there were two vases she had bought at the ten cent store in town. They were bright yellow and when the sun came in the west window it seemed as if lamps were lit in the vases. If Emma was in bed she watched to see this happen. It was something to look for during the day. Later there would be the young ones coming from work, and Bonnie scolding because she had, perhaps, got up to straighten the house, or wash out some clothes.
Bonnie had grown into a young woman in those two years. When she and John first went into the mill they had become thin and pale, and John had remained so. But with some of the mountain freshness in her, Bonnie had grown plumper after she got used to the mill, and now there was plenty of redness in her cheeks.
She was working in the twist room, and often young men passing by her frames, or in the yard at lunch time, spoke to her. She kept her head down when they did this; but after they went on thinking probably that she was unfriendly, she looked after them shyly, and would have called them back if she had dared.
She was full of energy, and made such a feeling of hopefulness get into the farm house, that Granpap got out his fiddle, something he had not done in years, and played. So it happened that Preacher Turnipseed, coming to see Emma one Saturday afternoon, stopped in dismay, as he told Emma afterwards, at hearing the sound of dance tunes coming from the windows of their house.
On Christmas Eve the church was to have a Tree and Box Supper. At these suppers each girl took a box provided with enough food for two people, and the boxes were auctioned off. Some of the girls were very cunning and spent all their money on decorations for the outside of the box, and put only crackers and cheese or sardines inside. So they hoped to win one of the best looking boys for supper.
They had five chickens left, and Emma insisted that Bonnie fry one of them for her box. On the Saturday before Christmas Bonnie went to town and bought a roll of crepe paper for the outside covering of her box. She had already saved up silver paper from chewing gum and what she could find on the floor of the mill from the men’s cigarette packages. From this paper, smoothed out very carefully with her thumb, she cut stars and crescents.
Recently Bonnie had grown in stature and this was her first party as a young woman. The night before she sat on the edge of Emma’s bed with the yellow crepe paper spread out before her, and the silver laid out on a pillow beside Emma’s head where no careless person might disturb it.
“This time to-morrow night,” she said, “I’ll be there. I wish you could go.” She spoke to Emma.
“You make Granpap go,” Emma answered. “He never goes from the house except to work in the fields. Hit’s time he mixed with people again, for he always liked t’ do that. Hit’s unnatural for him to stay here all the time, just sitting, like an unfruitful seed.”
On the night of the party John went first. He was dressed in a second hand suit bought at Reskowitz’ when he first began working in the mill.
“Now, Granpap, you’ve just got t’ go,” Bonnie said to the old man. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the scars across his cheek.
“No,” Granpap insisted. “I’m an old man.”
“You can be my beau,” Bonnie told him.
“You’ll have plenty of beaus with those roses in your cheeks and that light in your eyes. She’s real pretty, ain’t she, Emma?”
“I think she won’t be left in a corner,” Emma said, more casual than she really felt. “I want ye t’ go, Granpap,” she said.
“And leave you here alone?”
“I have been left alone before and it never hurt me. Now, Granpap, if ye don’t go, I’ll get out of bed and go myself.”
It ended with Granpap becoming almost as excited as Bonnie. He washed behind his ears, combed his beard and was ready.
“Do ye reckon I might take the fiddle along?” he asked, and Emma looking at him saw that his eyes were as bright as Bonnie’s and she hated to say no to him.
“With Preacher Turnipseed there,” she said, “hit wouldn’t do. Unless you might play hymn tunes on it.”
Granpap drooped at the shoulders. “I reckon hit’s better left at home,” he said and followed Bonnie out of the door.
When they reached the school auditorium a few young men were already standing just outside the door, in the cold December night. They were waiting until the tree, which was especially for women and children, should get finished and the box supper begin. Bonnie felt that their faces turned to watch her. She held the box closer to her side, so that feeling it would give her courage to walk without fear and trembling up the steps. Yet their looks gave her courage, too.
She stopped just inside the door and put out her hand to touch Granpap who would have gone in at once.
“Isn’t it a big crowd?” she asked him.
People were standing in groups, talking, and seemed to fill the whole place. Benches were set against the walls, and on these sat women with small children and with some of them were their husbands.
“Why, Granpap, hit’s good to see ye,” someone said. And there was Ora, holding the baby with one arm, and reaching out to Granpap with the other. Frank was beside her on the bench.
“Take your box right up there to the front,” Ora said to Bonnie.
Turning to come back Bonnie saw that John was standing in the front part of those waiting for the exercises to begin. She felt that he was looking at her with approval, and the blood burned up in her cheeks from his appreciation and from excitement. She returned to Granpap and stood before him while Mr. Turnipseed was getting the young ones together on the floor in front of the tree.
On the platform sat the Superintendent, Mr. Burnett, the three preachers from the village, and a visiting preacher.
When the young ones were settled, and the older ones had found places in a half circle behind them, Mr. Turnipseed stood up on the rostrum. The talking quieted down slowly until there was a silence like church.
Mr. Turnipseed announced that the tree with all its many and fine decorations had been donated by kind people in the town. The entertainment was given by all the churches of the village, so money from the sale of boxes would be divided among them. It was the usual Christmas announcement. It was fitting, he continued, at a time of peace on earth, good will to men, for all denominations to come together as one family in Christ. The speaker of the evening was from a different denomination from any in the village. He wanted to introduce Mr. Warmsley from the town.
Mr. Warmsley spoke in a fine voice. When Bonnie heard it she thought of molasses, brown and thick, pouring from a pitcher and spreading out on a plate. Mr. Warmsley’s voice spread through the hall slowly and quietly.
“I have asked Mr. Turnipseed,” he said, “to let me speak to you early in the evening, because in my home little ones are waiting for their father to begin Christmas Eve. There, in my home, we have a tree, just as you have one here. Over all the earth it is the same. People of all races, nations, are celebrating the birth of Jesus.”
Mr. Warmsley’s ruddy face glowed beneath soft white hair. His deep, slow voice reached to every part of the room and created a feeling of good will, so that people listened with attention.
“Why do people celebrate?” he asked—and answered the question. “Because Jesus brought love to the earth. God, the Almighty, gave commandments to men. Sometimes to us he seems a bitter, jealous God who punishes and does not love. But we can never really feel that, when we realize that ‘God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son.’ In Jesus Christ he gave us love divine, the love that suffers and forgives, the love that bears all things, the love that these mothers, holding their babies, have for the children in their arms.
“There are times when your lot may seem hard to you. You may feel that you do not possess much. Let me say to you, my friends, that you possess the only true greatness and power. I have been among you and have watched when you did not know. I have seen the dignity in you that rises above worldly considerations. I have compared your dignity with that of the rich. And beside yours their dignity of wealth and possessions is nothing. Yours is the true greatness. Have I not seen your dignity and worth under abuse?
“Let me tell you a story. One day some years ago I was in my study, which is in one of the wings of the church. I heard cries outside my window and went to find what had caused them. On the lawn were some of the boys of my congregation. They were hooting and jeering. And standing before them, the butt of their jeers, was a boy from this mill. He stood there dignified and aloof as Jesus Christ himself might have stood before his accusers.
“That poor boy, dressed almost in rags, stood up under the lash of scorn with a dignity that shamed those other boys, rich though most of them were.
“And I tell you that some day the rich will see your goodness: and bow before your spiritual wealth that is greater than their material wealth, so that in the end they will endeavor to become like you, simple and good.
“And when this spiritual brotherhood will have been accomplished, the rich will say, ‘What is our wealth, that our brothers do not share in it?’ And they will straightway share the wealth, so there shall be plenty, and all will be furnished with the necessities and the good things of earth that God has given us.
“Then the spirit of Christ will shine in all hearts like the star on the summit of that Christmas Tree, and all men will acknowledge each other as brothers in Christ and sharers of wealth. Then, my brothers, there will truly be peace on earth, good will toward men.”