Free To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin Page B

when her mother said them she was ashamed, especially when Jesse McDonald was waiting as she well knew to walk down the road with her until it was time to dress.
    â€œNo,” Sally said firmly. “I’m a-going to stay right here.” And she blushed again for Jesse was looking at her steadily.
    â€œYou go right along,” Ora said, sorry now that she had confused Sally. Taking him all in all, Jesse was a good boy, the son of a good father.
    â€œBut,” Ora said to Emma when the two had stepped off up the road, “I hope she remembers she’s a-marrying with the holy ghost to-day.”
    â€œShe’s a good girl,” Emma said, and Ora nodded. She had raised her child right, in the fear of God and man.
    Granpap wandered about with John at his heels. People were scattered along the banks in groups and on the side of the hill there were others. Now that dinner was over there was a breathing spell until time for the preacher to come. He was having a regular table dinner at Hal Swain’s.
    The sun was very bright and the women’s dresses made fine irregular patterns of color. Up on the hillside some rosepink calico plants were still blooming and there was wild honeysuckle, a rich orange. The dresses seemed to be growing there just as the flowers and when a woman moved it was as if a plant got up and made a new place for itself or joined itself to'another to make a new color against the grass or the gray of some rock. Not all the dresses were bright. Some of them had been washed many times and were faded. And among the older women were several wearing dark homespun or flannel. Granma Wesley wore a brown homespun dress, dyed with walnut juice. Her mother had woven and dyed it. At a distance it did not stand out as the flimsier but more colorful dresses of the others. But it was carefully woven and sewed with small stitches.
    The old woman walked in front of Granpap and John across the road. They could not see her face for she had on her sunbonnet and she looked neither to the right nor to the left but straight ahead as if she was making for some goal. Behind her walked Sam Wesley’s young daughter. Her waist was blue calico. But the skirt was homespun, dyed red with pokeberry juice, and around the bottom were bands of blue and yellow woven in. The child was twelve years old and the skirt dragged on the ground, for Granma Wesley would never allow her few pieces of home-spun to be cut.
    Granpap watched them. “Pore old Granma,” he said. Since she had risen from her sick bed Granma Wesley had not been exactly right in her mind. She wandered about looking for her sheep. She could not or would not believe they had been killed. Just as soon as he could make the money Sam planned to buy two others exactly like the old ones. He hoped that would ease her last days on this earth.
    â€œWe’ll go to the bend,” Granpap said to John. “Maybe Kirk will be a-coming along from Fraser’s.” The old man did not sound very hopeful. Like Jesse he had his own notion of the place where Kirk might be found.
    Down the road near the bend, drawn apart from the others as if they did not belong, or as if they felt they were too good, was a group of people. The men had not left their wives and children to mix with the other men along the road, and the women sat listlessly on the bank of the stream as if they expected no company and wanted none.
    These people were from near South Range and Granpap knew them. On one side they were kin of the rich Tates who had taken Granpap’s land. But the Tates did not recognize them as kin. This branch of the family had intermarried with the McFarlanes. They lived in a little settlement on Pinchgut Creek, ten miles from South Range. While Granpap talked with one of the McFarlane men, John stood behind the old man and looked around his legs at the people. They paid little attention to him. A dog barked at him and one of the children about his age